Labels: change, small house movement
Submit To Propeller
posted by profmarcus at
2/12/2011
Labels: Al Jazeera, Cairo, egypt, fear barrier, fear-mongering, people power, Tahrir Square
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/11/2011
Celebrations erupted across the Middle East on Friday after Hosni Mubarak stepped down as Egypt's president. From Beirut to Gaza, people rushed into the streets, handing out candy, setting off fireworks and shooting in the air.
Even in Israel, which had watched the Egyptian protesters' uprising against Mubarak with concern, a former Cabinet minister said Mubarak did the right thing. "The street won. There was nothing that could be done. It's good that he did what he did," former Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who knew Mubarak well, told Israel TV's Channel 10.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, and there are fears the 1979 accord could now be challenged.
Moments after Egypt's Vice President Omar Suleiman made the announcement of Mubarak's resignation, fireworks lit up the sky over Beirut. Celebratory gunfire rang out in the Shiite-dominated areas in south Lebanon and in southern Beirut.
On Al-Manar TV, the station run by the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah faction, Egyptian anchor Amr Nassef, who was once imprisoned in Egypt for alleged ties to Islamists, cried emotionally on the air and said: "Allahu Akbar (God is great), the Pharaoh is dead. Am I dreaming? I'm afraid to be dreaming."
In Tunisia, where a successful uprising expelled a longtime leader only weeks earlier, cries of joy and the thundering honking of horns greeted the announcement. "God delivered our Egyptian brothers from this dictator," said Yacoub Youssef, one of those celebrating in the capital of Tunis.
[...]
In the Gaza Strip, ruled by the Islamic militant Hamas, thousands rushed into the streets in jubilation. Gunmen fired in the air and women handed out candy. "God bless Egypt, it's a day of joy and God willing all corrupt leaders in the world will fall," said Radwa Abu Ali, 55, one of the women distributing sweets.
Labels: Beirut, egypt, Gaza, Hosni Mubarak, Inshallah, Israel, Lebanon, Omar Suleiman, Tunis, Tunisia
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/11/2011
One thing that even the dim bulbs in the media should understand by now is that there is in fact a class war going on, and it is the rich and powerful who are waging it. Anyone who does anything that empowers the little people or that threatens the wealth and power of the plutocracy must be destroyed. [emphasis added] There is a reason for these clowns going after Think Progress and unions, just like there is a reason they are targeting wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald, Planned Parenthood, and Acorn. To a lesser extent the fail parade that was the Daily Caller expose on Journolist was more of the same.
You have to understand the mindset- they are playing for keeps. The vast majority of the wealth isn’t enough. They want it all. Anything that gets in their way must be destroyed. They don’t care if they poison every stream or crack the foundation to your house or if your daughter dies getting a back alley abortion or if every one in your mining town has an inoperable tumor. They just don’t give a shit.
And they are well financed, have a strong infrastructure, a sympathetic media, and entire organizations dedicated to running cover for them. They’ve even created their own mythical ideology in which they are superhero Galtian overlords, and this lets a few rubes who babble ignorantly about the free market get to feel like they are playing along, when they are really just being played. It’s these guys versus all of us, yet half the people being rogered (Republicans and glibertarians and hell, half the Democrats) have been convinced the other side is a bigger threat to their well being than the people with all the power, money, and resources. Hell, even in this post I can guarantee that at least five shitheads will come in and tell me they don’t like Glenn Greenwald because he uses too many words or that Jane Hamsher is shrill or because neither of them fellate Obama to satisfaction. Talk about not fucking getting it.
I don’t even know why we bother to hold elections any more, to be honest, the game is so rigged. We’re a banana republic, and it is just a matter of time before we descend into necklacing and other tribal bullshit.
Labels: Barack Obama, egypt, elites, Glenn Greenwald, John Cole, plutocracy, super-rich, We the People
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/11/2011
Labels: Cairo, egypt, Hosni Mubarak, protestors, Tahrir Square
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/11/2011
Labels: Cairo, egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, regime change, Tahrir Square
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/11/2011
Labels: Cairo, egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, Tahrir Square
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/11/2011
Labels: Cairo, egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Twitter
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/11/2011
The uprising in Egypt has discredited every Western media stereotype about the Arabs. The courage, determination, eloquence and grace of those in Liberation Square contrast with “our” specious fear-mongering with its al-Qaeda and Iran bogeys and iron-clad assumptions, bereft of irony, of the “moral leadership of the West”. It is not surprising that the recent source of truth about the imperial abuse of the Middle East, WikiLeaks, is itself subjected to craven, petty abuse in those self-congratulating newspapers that set the limits of elite liberal debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps they are worried. Across the world, public awareness is rising and bypassing them. In Washington and London, the regimes are fragile and barely democratic. Having long burned down societies abroad, they are now doing something similar at home, with lies and without a mandate. To their victims, the resistance in Cairo’s Liberation Square must seem an inspiration. “We won’t stop,” said the young Egyptian woman on TV, “we won’t go home.” Try kettling a million people in the centre of London, bent on civil disobedience, and try imagining it could not happen.
Labels: Cairo, egypt, elites, John Pilger, protestors, super-rich, Tahrir Square, world revolution
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/10/2011
Labels: Al Jazeera, Cairo, disconnected, egypt, fuck you, Hosni Mubarak, protestors, Tahrir Square
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/10/2011
Labels: assholes, Cairo, Cee-Lo-Green, egypt, fuck you, Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, protestors, Tahrir Square
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/10/2011
Labels: Al Jazeera, Barack Obama, Cairo, corruption, egypt, protestors, revolution, Tahrir Square, tectonic shift
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/10/2011
Egypt's Mubarak to step down
Sources tell NBC News that Vice President Suleiman to take over as leader
Vice President Omar Suleiman will take over
Hosni Mubarak to address Egypt; protesters are told demands will be met
A general tells protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square that their demands will be met, and the military says it is taking the 'necessary measures to protect the nation and support the legitimate demands of the people.' Protesters have been adamant that Hosni Mubarak step down.
Labels: Cairo, democracy, egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, protestors, Tahrir Square
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/10/2011
Labels: Al Jazeera, complexity theory, egypt, elites, emergent properties, leadership, news media, protestors, self-organizing systems, super-rich, Tahrir Square
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/09/2011
Labels: CFR, Dr. Evil, global awakening, one world government, Zbigniew Brzezinski
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/08/2011
Britain saddled banks with an extra 800 million pounds ($1.3 billion) in tax on Tuesday, drawing protest from the industry as talks between bosses and ministers over bonuses and lending come to a head.
Finance minister George Osborne said he hoped the move would hurry along a deal under the government's Project Merlin, which is designed to encourage banks to lend more and rein in bonuses for top bankers.
"What I am absolutely focused on is two things: One, the banks paying a fair share in tax and making sure that they are contributing to the economic recovery. Second, that they lend to businesses -- that is an absolute priority because that is how we are going to get this economy moving," Osborne said.
The British Bankers' Association said it understood the need to raise money from banks but added that "constant chopping and changing risks making the UK a less attractive place for businesses to operate."
Labels: banksters, executive bonuses, taxes, United Kingdom
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/08/2011
Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square for the latest protest calling for Hosni Mubarak's government to step down.
The BBC's Jim Muir, in the Egyptian capital, says it is the biggest demonstration since the protests began on 25 January.
It comes despite the government's announcement of its plans for a peaceful transfer of power.
President Mubarak has said he will stay until elections in September.
In Tahrir Square, attempts by the army to check the identity cards of those joining the demonstration were abandoned because of the sheer weight of numbers.
Hosni Mubarak, the current president, according to a leaked diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website, and published by the UK daily, The Telegraph.
The August 2008 cable said David Hacham, a senior adviser at the Israeli ministry of defence (MoD), told US officials the Israelis expected Suleiman, spelt Soliman in some cables, to take over.
"Hacham noted that the Israelis believe Soliman is likely to serve as at least an interim president if Mubarak dies or is incapacitated," the cable sent from the US embassy in Tel Aviv said.
"We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman," the memo cited US diplomats as saying.
Labels: Al Jazeera, Cairo, egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Israel, Omar Suleiman, protestors, succession, Tahrir Square
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/08/2011
One would never, ever find in The New York Times such a sweeping denunciation of the plutocratic corruption and merger of private wealth and political power that shapes most of America's political culture. Just like "torture"-- which that paper has no trouble declaring is used by Egypt's government but will never say is used by ours -- such systematic corruption can exist only elsewhere, but never in America. That's how this genre of Look Over There reporting is not just incomplete but outright misleading: it actively creates the impression that such conditions are found only in those Primitive Foreign Places, but not here.
Labels: American exceptionalism, corruption, egypt, Glenn Greenwald, hypocrisy, Salon
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/07/2011
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is convening an unprecedented mass meeting of U.S. ambassadors.
The top envoys from nearly all of America's 260 embassies, consulates and other posts in more than 180 countries will be gathering at the State Department beginning on Monday. Officials say it's the first such global conference.
Labels: D.C., Secretary of State, State Department, U.S. ambassadors
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/07/2011
For bipartisan Washington, there are "good" democracies (those that keep serving US strategic interests) and "bad" democracies which vote "wrong" (such as in Gaza, or in a future Egypt, against US interests).
This is the dirty secret of the "orderly transition" in Egypt - which implies Washington only meekly condemning the bloody Mubarakism wave of repression of protesters and international media. That's considered OK - as long as the military dictatorship remains in place and the glacial status quo is maintained. Moreover, sacrosanct Israel came out swinging praising Mubarak; this also means Tel Aviv will do everything to "veto" Mohamed ElBaradei as an opposition leader.
[...]
In a sane world - and if Obama had the will - the White House would back people power unconditionally. One can imagine, in terms of improving the US's image, what a roaring success that would be.
Labels: Alternet, Asia Times, democracy, egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed ElBaradei, Pepe Escobar, U.S. foreign policy
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/07/2011
Ayman Mohyeldin, an Al Jazeera correspondent who was detained while covering the unrest in Egypt, has been released.
He was seized by the Egyptian military near Tahrir Square in Cairo on Sunday, but was freed seven hours later following a concerted appeal by the network and supporters of Mohyeldin.
There had been many calls on Twitter for the release of Mohyeldin, who has more than 20,000 followers on his page.
Dozens of journalists have been detained, injured and threatened while covering events in Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets calling for an end to the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, the president.
Nadia el-Awady, president of the World Federation of Science Journalists, told Al Jazeera that both foreign and Egyptian media workers were being specifically targeted during the protests.
Speaking about her experiences reporting from Tahrir Square, she said: "There were pro-Mubarak civilian-clothed people planted within the square that were trying to instigate other protesters to get angry.
"They tried to create this kind of mob mentality among protesters to get angry at the journalists."
Labels: Al Jazeera, Ayman Mohyeldin, egypt, Hosni Mubarak, protestors, Reporters Without Borders
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/06/2011
West Backs Gradual Egyptian Transition
The United States and leading European nations on Saturday threw their weight behind Egypt’s vice president, Omar Suleiman, backing his attempt to defuse a popular uprising without immediately removing President Hosni Mubarak from power.
American officials said Mr. Suleiman had promised them an “orderly transition” that would include constitutional reform and outreach to opposition groups.
Cheney calls Mubarak a good friend, US ally
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a good friend and U.S. ally, and he urged the Obama administration to move cautiously as turmoil continued to shake that nation's government.
[...]
"There is a reason why a lot of diplomacy is conducted in secret. There are good reasons for there to be confidentiality in some of those communications. And I think President Mubarak needs to be treated as he deserved over the years, because he has been a good friend," Cheney said at an event commemorating the centennial of President Ronald Reagan's birth.
Labels: egypt, extraordinary rendition, Hosni Mubarak, incrementalism, Omar Suleiman, the EU, torture, U.S. foreign policy, United States
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
2/06/2011
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