Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

[vanlose kid]

Ibrahim Arafat on AJ: "the Arabs, you know, they used to dance politics like a kabuki, now they have to do the hiphop".

[vanlose kid]

harrowing. consider before viewing.



*

11.03pm GMT:CloseLink to this update: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/20 ... #block-131 Horrific video circulated yesterday of a vehicle speeding through Cairo and hitting several people. Now the US embassy has put out a statement:

We have seen a video that alleges a US embassy vehicle was involved in a hit and run incident that injured dozens in Cairo. We are certain that no embassy employees or diplomats were involved in this incident. On January 28, however, a number of our US Embassy vehicles were stolen. Since these vehicles were stolen, we have heard reports of their use in violent and criminal acts. If true, we deplore these acts and the perpetrators.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/20 ... #block-131

*

[WakeUpAndLive]

We have seen a video that alleges a US embassy vehicle was involved in a hit and run incident that injured dozens in Cairo. We are certain that no embassy employees or diplomats were involved in this incident. On January 28, however, a number of our US Embassy vehicles were stolen. Since these vehicles were stolen, we have heard reports of their use in violent and criminal acts. If true, we deplore these acts and the perpetrators.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/20 ... #block-131

*

They were stolen or we let people take them? hmmmm

[vanlose kid]

...They were stolen or we let people take them? hmmmm

semantics, huh?¨they do that to you. it does that to you.

(grammar.)

*

[WakeUpAndLive]

...They were stolen or we let people take them? hmmmm

semantics, huh?¨they do that to you.

*

I never paid as much attention to the words people use as I do now since visiting this site. One word can change the whole meaning of a sentence while still conveying the same message.

[vanlose kid]

State Department Approved Export of U.S.-Made Tear Gas to Egyptian Gov’t
by Marian Wang
ProPublica, Feb. 4, 2011, 5:12 p.m.

The American-made tear gas used to disperse pro-democracy protestors in Egypt earlier this week was sold to the country after government review, a State Department spokeswoman told us.

The tear gas canisters used by Egyptian police against the protesters bore the label “Made in U.S.A. [1],” stirring controversy and bolstering the impression among Egyptians that the U.S. has propped up a dictatorship [1] at the expense of its citizens.

Two government agencies, the Department of State and Department of Commerce, regulate the export of tear gas by granting export licenses allowing U.S. manufacturers to sell tear gas to foreign buyers. The State spokeswoman, Nicole Thompson, said she didn’t immediately know when the approval was given for Egypt.

The chemical compounds in the tear gas determine whether it’s State or Commerce that’s responsible for licensing the product. In general, the State Department licenses the export of defense items—including military-grade tear gas—as spelled out on its Munitions List[2]. The Commerce Department licenses the export of tear gas formulations that are considered “dual use”—that is, for either military or civilian purposes—as well as products considered strictly civilian.

The tear gas canisters photographed in Egypt and Tunisia appear to have been manufactured by Combined Systems Inc[3]. The company did not respond to our requests for comment. A spokesman for the company had previously told CNN that it operates well within the law [4] by selling tear gas to countries like Tunisia and Egypt.

CNN also reported that labels on the tear gas canisters [5] found in both countries read, “Danger: Do not fire directly at person(s). Severe injury or death may result.” According to CNN, a 32-year-old photographer in Egypt died recently after he was hit by a tear gas grenade at close range.

In the case of the tear gas used in Egypt, the State Department confirmed to me that it approved the sale of tear gas as a direct commercial sale between the manufacturer and the government of Egypt, as opposed to a government-to-government sale.

As part of a multi-agency approval process, the State Department said it takes a number of issues into consideration, including whether the purchaser could use it in a way that violates human rights.

“We want to ensure that when a defense article is being sold to a government, say the government of Egypt, we want to make sure it’s not going to fall in hands of another government … or any individual or organization who wants to do harm,” explained Thompson.

So why did the State Department license the sale of American-made tear gas to be used by the Egyptian police, when the State Department itself has documented the police’s history of brutality [6]? When I asked this question, I received the following response, in full:

The US government licensed the sale of certain crowd dispersal articles to the government of Egypt. That license was granted after a thorough vetting process and after a multi-agency review of the articles that were requested.

Noticeably absent in that answer was anything about the Egyptian police. When I pressed further and mentioned this WikiLeaks cable [7]—written by U.S. Ambassador Margaret Scobey describing “routine and pervasive” police brutality and torture in Egypt—the response was immediate.

“I cannot provide any authentication of anything that has been published by the website WikiLeaks,” Thompson said.

http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/sta ... ptian-govt

*

[vanlose kid]

9:51pm Wael Abbas, a pro-democracy activist and blogger, tells Al Jazeera that the protesters have no need for leadership. He is outside Liberation Square (Tahrir).

There is no need for leadership, people are organising themselves. People already know what there demands are, they don't need someone to tell them what to do.

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/node/3164

*

[vanlose kid]

More than a prod to reform
THE EDITORIAL - Feb 04 2011 00:00

The protests blazing across the Arab world in the past three weeks represent a radical opening up in the frozen politics of the Middle East.

An epochal rearrangement is under way, upending the balance of power between Western-backed autocrats, both secular and Islamic, Israel, the main Palestinian factions, Iran, Syria, the United States and, crucially, the people of the region. Amid the intense global focus, first on Tunisia and latterly on Egypt, there has been little focus on the African dimensions of these uprisings.

Egypt and Tunisia are African countries for footballing purposes but too often we treat the Sahara as a dividing ocean, cutting them off physically, politically, culturally and ethnically from the rest of the continent. Although there is a growing expectation that the sparks of revolt will travel eastwards to ignite resentment -- as they already have in Jordan and Yemen -- almost no one is talking about the African context of the uprisings.

There are certainly countries -- not least among those close to Egypt -- that could do with broad-based civil movements against authoritarianism. Chad is perhaps the most benighted, but the depth of its isolation and tyranny are such that it is difficult to imagine a people-power movement succeeding.

What about Ethiopia and its increasingly authoritarian president, Meles Zenawi? Or Uganda, where Yoweri Museveni is consolidating his grip on power? Or Angola, where oil revenues fatten the ruling elite and human development stalls? Or Zimbabwe? Or any of the pseudo-democracies that dot the continent.

In these countries, engaged as they are with the global community, and possessed of at least the rudiments of civil society, the crowds in Tahrir Square ought to be an inspiration, and for their leaders, a prod to reform. Popular protest needn't culminate in revolution or civil war; it can be a crucial democratic instrument in countries where institutional arrangements are incapable of representing the will of the people.

At present an Egypt effect south of the Sahara seems too much to expect. To be sure, the security consequences will be weighed. What would a government in Egypt led by the Muslim Brotherhood mean for Somalia, for example, or for Sudan? And what would that in turn mean for countries like Kenya that bear the consequences of instability in the Horn?

It would be tragic, however, if the discussion ended there, in a sigh of ­resignation and a meeting of intelligence agencies. The Sahara may be a sand sea, but it does not divide the continent nearly as neatly as the caricature of the Arab north and the "properly African" rest suggests. The Mahgreb gives way to the transition zones of the Sahel and the Horn.

Islam is a potent political and social force in countries as diverse as Nigeria, Mali and Kenya. Refugees, traders, armed men and of course the Al Jazeera satellite signal have opened routes north and south. Oceans, since globalisation began 400 years ago, have been for crossing, and the Sahara is no different.

Whether the impulse of popular revolt can spread along these complex channels is far from clear. But the tinder was stacked dry and ready for decades in Egypt. The levels of poverty, frustration and repression are if anything higher further south. Is it too much to hope that Africans choose to treat the Egyptian and Tunisian protests, with all their peril and potential, as our own?

Political disconnect
South Africans spend a lot of time talking in abstract terms about tenderpreneurship, cronyism and corruption. The hyenas offend us morally, even, in the case of Kenny Kunene and his sushi parties, aesthetically.

But the impacts are very concrete, literally in the case of the construction industry cartel bust this week for rigging bids in major public and private sector projects. Of course, the poor feel the effects most directly.

If -- as seems highly likely -- the Competition Commission is able to prove that South Africa's biggest construction firms colluded on projects such as the Gautrain and World Cup stadiums, then we will be able to conclude that South African citizens overpaid for very high-quality outcomes.

The better-off among us will have enjoyed the "world class" benefits even as we winced at the price, the poorer will have felt the direct effects of budgets diverted away from housing, healthcare and education.

In Johannesburg right now, however, some of the country's wealthiest citizens are among those experiencing what amounts to a service-delivery failure, with the municipal billing system in a state of near-collapse.

As we report this week, the roots of the crisis are far simpler than the city's spin doctors make out. A crucial, and exceptionally complex, tender was given to an inexperienced company whose qualifications appear to have been limited to its directors' personal connections. The consequence? Inflated prices and appalling service.

And in the municipalities of the North West province, even those appointed to sort municipal mismanagement appear to have got the job on political grounds.
2011 is a local government election year. There will be nothing abstract about the impact of these failures at the ballot box.

http://mg.co.za/article/2011-02-04-more ... to-reform/

*

[vanlose kid]

great set of pictures from Cairo by the great Joao Pina here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/p ... -pina.html

*

[vanlose kid]

Limbaugh Jokes About Detention of NYT Journalists, Until He Learns Fox 'News' Reporters Hospitalized
By Brad Friedman on 2/3/2011 6:15pm

Rush Limbaugh is a disgusting human being. But you probably knew that. If you didn't, audio from his show today --- which is broadcast over our public airwaves to some 15 million Americans a day, and even over U.S. Armed Forces Radio --- makes it as clear as ever.

First, as highlighted by Media Matters, Limbaugh made light of foreign journalists, including two reporters from the New York Times, being rounded-up in Cairo today because being detained while covering a story of huge import to this nation and the world, by a regime that has spent decades torturing such people is, of course, hilarious...

LIMBAUGH: Ladies and gentlemen, it is being breathlessly reported that the Egyptian army --- Snerdley, have you heard this? The Egyptian army is rounding up foreign journalists.

I mean, even two New York Times reporters were detained. Now, this is supposed to make us feel what, exactly? How we supposed to feel? Are we supposed to feel outrage over it? I don't feel any outrage over it. Are we supposed to feel anger? I don't feel any anger over this. Do we feel happy? Well --- uh --- do we feel kind of going like, "neh-neh-neh-neh"?

I'm sure that your emotions are running the gamut when you hear that two New York Times reporters have been detained along with other journalists in Egypt. Remember now, we're supporting the people who are doing this.

Next, later on in the very the same show, after he's learned that two Fox "News" reporters had been beaten and hospitalized following detention in Egypt, suddenly Rush gives a damn, and says he was just "kidding before about The New York Times"...

LIMBAUGH: According to Mediaite, Fox News' Greg Palkot and crew have been severely beaten and are now hospitalized in Cairo. Now we were kidding before about The New York Times, of course. This kind of stuff is terrible. We wouldn't wish this kind of thing even on reporters.

Moral depravity. As appalling as it gets.

For the record, as White House correspondent Paul Brandus tweeted last night as the round-up was beginning, "79 journalists were killed around the world last year - just for trying to tell a story."

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 849 journalists have been killed since 1992. Isn't that hysterical, Rush?


http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8338

[audio at link.]

*

[Plutonia]

[crikkett]

great set of pictures from Cairo by the great Joao Pina here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/p ... -pina.html

*

Sympathy for the regime is a bias that I hadn't seen in photographic coverage of Cairo, until now. Thanks for posting this.

[vanlose kid]

great set of pictures from Cairo by the great Joao Pina here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/p ... -pina.html

*

Sympathy for the regime is a bias that I hadn't seen in photographic coverage of Cairo, until now. Thanks for posting this.

wow...

*

[vanlose kid]

great set of pictures from Cairo by the great Joao Pina here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/p ... -pina.html

*

Sympathy for the regime is a bias that I hadn't seen in photographic coverage of Cairo, until now. Thanks for posting this.

João de Carvalho Pina was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1980 and started working as a photographer at the age of 18.

In 2002 he started working in Latin America, and has worked in countries like Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba and Paraguay.

In 2004-2005 he decided to go back to school and enrolled in the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography program of the International Center of Photography in New York, USA.

In 2007 he published his first book “Por teu livre pensamento” featuring the stories of 25 former portuguese political prisoners, with his colleague and friend Rui Daniel Galiza who wrote the texts.

His work has been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, GEO Magazine, El Pais, EPs, La Vanguardia Magazine, D Magazine, Io Donna, Days Japan, Expresso and Visão among others.

He has exhibited his work in New York (ICP and Point of View Gallery), London (Ian Parry Award), Tokyo (Canon gallery), Lisbon (KGaleria and Casa Fernando Pessoa) and Oporto (Centro Português de Fotografia).

Since late 2007 he is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he continues to document the remnants of a military operation named Operation Condor aimed at destroying the political opposition to the military dictatorships in South America during the 1970s.

He is a member of the Portuguese collective Kameraphoto since 2003.

http://www.joao-pina.com/bio/

*

edit: here's a link to some of Pina's work. educate yourself.

http://www.joao-pina.com/features/

*

[vanlose kid]

It's not radical Islam that worries the US – it's independence
The nature of any regime it backs in the Arab world is secondary to control. Subjects are ignored until they break their chains


Noam Chomsky guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 February 2011 16.30 GMT

'The Arab world is on fire," al-Jazeera reported last week, while throughout the region, western allies "are quickly losing their influence". The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator's brutal police.

Observers compared it to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there are important differences. Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless properly tamed.

One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the east European dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his overthrow while the past was erased. That is a standard pattern: Ferdinand Marcos, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Chun Doo-hwan, Suharto and many other useful gangsters. It may be under way in the case of Hosni Mubarak, along with routine efforts to try to ensure a successor regime will not veer far from the approved path. The current hope appears to be Mubarak loyalist General Omar Suleiman, just named Egypt's vice-president. Suleiman, the longtime head of the intelligence services, is despised by the rebelling public almost as much as the dictator himself.

A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.

A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological centre of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan's dictators and President Reagan's favorite, who carried out a programme of radical Islamisation (with Saudi funding).

"The traditional argument put forward in and out of the Arab world is that there is nothing wrong, everything is under control," says Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian official and now director of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment. "With this line of thinking, entrenched forces argue that opponents and outsiders calling for reform are exaggerating the conditions on the ground."

Therefore the public can be dismissed. The doctrine traces far back and generalises worldwide, to US home territory as well. In the event of unrest, tactical shifts may be necessary, but always with an eye to reasserting control.

The vibrant democracy movement in Tunisia was directed against "a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems", ruled by a dictator whose family was hated for their venality. So said US ambassador Robert Godec in a July 2009 cable released by WikiLeaks.

Therefore to some observers the WikiLeaks "documents should create a comforting feeling among the American public that officials aren't asleep at the switch" – indeed, that the cables are so supportive of US policies that it is almost as if Obama is leaking them himself (or so Jacob Heilbrunn writes in The National Interest.)

"America should give Assange a medal," says a headline in the Financial Times, where Gideon Rachman writes: "America's foreign policy comes across as principled, intelligent and pragmatic … the public position taken by the US on any given issue is usually the private position as well."

In this view, WikiLeaks undermines "conspiracy theorists" who question the noble motives Washington proclaims.

Godec's cable supports these judgments – at least if we look no further. If we do, as foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes reports in Foreign Policy in Focus, we find that, with Godec's information in hand, Washington provided $12m in military aid to Tunisia. As it happens, Tunisia was one of only five foreign beneficiaries: Israel (routinely); the two Middle East dictatorships Egypt and Jordan; and Colombia, which has long had the worst human-rights record and the most US military aid in the hemisphere.

Heilbrunn's exhibit A is Arab support for US policies targeting Iran, revealed by leaked cables. Rachman too seizes on this example, as did the media generally, hailing these encouraging revelations. The reactions illustrate how profound is the contempt for democracy in the educated culture.

Unmentioned is what the population thinks – easily discovered. According to polls released by the Brookings Institution in August, some Arabs agree with Washington and western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10%. In contrast, they regard the US and Israel as the major threats (77%; 88%).

Arab opinion is so hostile to Washington's policies that a majority (57%) think regional security would be enhanced if Iran had nuclear weapons. Still, "there is nothing wrong, everything is under control" (as Muasher describes the prevailing fantasy). The dictators support us. Their subjects can be ignored – unless they break their chains, and then policy must be adjusted.

Other leaks also appear to lend support to the enthusiastic judgments about Washington's nobility. In July 2009, Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, informed Washington of an embassy investigation of "legal and constitutional issues surrounding the 28 June forced removal of President Manuel 'Mel' Zelaya."

The embassy concluded that "there is no doubt that the military, supreme court and national congress conspired on 28 June in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the executive branch". Very admirable, except that President Obama proceeded to break with almost all of Latin America and Europe by supporting the coup regime and dismissing subsequent atrocities.

Perhaps the most remarkable WikiLeaks revelations have to do with Pakistan, reviewed by foreign policy analyst Fred Branfman in Truthdig.

The cables reveal that the US embassy is well aware that Washington's war in Afghanistan and Pakistan not only intensifies rampant anti-Americanism but also "risks destabilising the Pakistani state" and even raises a threat of the ultimate nightmare: that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists.

Again, the revelations "should create a comforting feeling … that officials are not asleep at the switch" (Heilbrunn's words) – while Washington marches stalwartly toward disaster.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... dependence

*