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Soros says Israel is “main stumbling block” in Mideast
The Arab liberation revolution will fundamentally change the Middle East. The acceleration of the West’s decline will change the world. One outcome will be a surge toward China, Russia and regional powers like Brazil, Turkey and Iran. Another will be a series of international flare-ups stemming from the West’s lost deterrence. But the overall outcome will be the collapse of North Atlantic political hegemony not in decades, but in years. When the United States and Europe bury Mubarak now, they are also burying the powers they once were. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the age of Western hegemony is fading away.
Egypt is more complex and, ultimately, more influential, which is why it is so important to get it right. The protesters are very diverse, including highly educated and Read more…
The Youth Unemployment Bomb
From Cairo to London to Brooklyn, too many young people are jobless and disaffected. Inside the global effort to put the next generation to work
Cairo, Egypt: A cloud of tear gas drives back antigovernment protesters on Jan. 28 Jorge Dirkx/Reporters/Redux
By Peter Coy
In Tunisia, the young people who helped bring down a dictator are called hittistes—French-Arabic slang for those who lean against the wall. Their counterparts in Egypt, who on Feb. 1 forced President Hosni Mubarak to say he won’t seek reelection, are the shabab atileen, unemployed youths. The hittistes and shabab have brothers and sisters across the globe. In Britain, they are NEETs—”not in education, employment, or training.” In Japan, they are freeters: an amalgam of the English word freelance and the German word Arbeiter, or worker. Spaniards call them mileuristas, meaning they earn no more than 1,000 euros a month. In the U.S., they’re “boomerang” kids who move back home after college because they can’t find work. Even fast-growing China, where labor shortages are more common than surpluses, has its “ant tribe”—recent college graduates who crowd together in cheap flats on the fringes of big cities because they can’t find well-paying work.
In each of these nations, an economy that can’t generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a Read more…
Unrest in Egypt at Tahrir Square
Bursts of gunfire are erupting in the area around Cairo’s Tahrir Square as pro- and anti-government protesters continue to defy an Egyptian government curfew.
News reports cite witnesses saying at least three people have been killed in the latest violence early Thursday morning.
On Wednesday, supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak charged into the square on horseback and camels while others rained firebombs from rooftops in what appeared to be an orchestrated assault against protesters calling for an end to his near-30-year-rule.
Anti-government demonstrators, after first trying to respond peacefully, fought back with rocks and Molotov cocktails as battles broke out around Tahrir Square. Doctors set up a makeshift clinic in a mosque near the square to help the more than 640 injured. Egypt’s health ministry says three people were killed in Wednesday’s clashes.
Reporters said Egyptian troops initially fired Read more…
Hundreds of Russians protest against Putin
MOSCOW (AP) — About 500 people demonstrated in a central Moscow square on Monday to demand the ouster of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his “rule of thieves.”
The rally took place peacefully, but police detained a separate group of 20 opposition activists nearby. About 60 protesters also were detained in St. Petersburg, one of a number of other cities where demonstrations were held.
Prominent opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was arrested and jailed for 15 days following a similar demonstration a month ago, kept up his assault on Russia’s longtime leader as he addressed the protesters on Moscow’s Triumph Square.
He compared Putin to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek, who is facing mass unrest after 30 years in power.
“Please, someone tell me how our Read more…
Egyptian riots day 6: THOUSANDS of Prisoners escape, Musems Looted,many stranded.
More than 102 dead and thousands of prisoners on the loose in Egypt as 30,000 stranded Britons struggle to leave the country
Around 30,000 British tourists were stranded in Egypt today as army planes buzzed low over Cairo on the sixth day of uprisings.
At least 102 people have been killed, more than 2,000 are injured and there were calls for a multi-party democracy to emerge as President Hosni Mubarack’s grip on power loosens.
Gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt before dawn today, helping to free hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates as police vanished from the streets of Cairo and other cities.
Now scroll down to see the video:
Show of strength: Egyptians surround an army tank during protests in central Cairo on the sixth day of action
Last night a handful Brits that managed to board flights returning back from Cairo described their relief at escaping the riot-torn country. Read more…
Thousands rally against government in Yemen
SANAA, Yemen – Tens of thousands of people are calling for the Yemeni president’s ouster in protests across the capital inspired by the popular revolt in Tunisia.
The demonstrations led by opposition members and youth activists are a significant expansion of the unrest sparked by the Tunisian uprising, which also inspired Egypt’s largest protests in a generation. They pose a new threat to the stability of the Arab world’s most impoverished nation, which has become the focus of increased Western concern about a resurgent al-Qaida branch, a northern rebellion and a secessionist movement in the south.
Crowds in four parts of Sanaa have shut down streets and are chanting calls for an end to the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for nearly 32 years.
“We will not accept anything less than the president leaving,” said independent parliamentarian Ahmed Hashid.
Opposition leaders called for more demonstrations on Friday.
“We’ll only be happy when we hear the words ‘I understand you’ from the president,” Hashid said, invoking a statement issued by Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali before he fled the country. Read more…
ElBaradei returns to Egypt calling for democracy
Self-exiled opposition leader publishes manifesto for toppling Mubarak regime: “It is time for a change; the only option is a new beginning.”
Democracy activist, Mohamed ElBaradei, is expected to return from Vienna to Egypt on Thursday following this week’s protests, laying out his manifesto for change in Newsweek.
“I am going back to Cairo, and back onto the streets because, really, there is no choice,” ElBaradei wrote. “So far, the regime does not seem to have gotten that message.”
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Thousands of Egyptians protest against Mubarak
“The Egyptian people broke the barrier of fear, and once that is broken, there is no stopping them,” he explained.
“Each day it gets harder to work with Mubarak’s government, even for a transition,” ElBaradei wrote. “He has been there 30 years, he is 83 years old, and it is time for a change…The only option is a new beginning.”
“I have hoped to find a way toward change through peaceful means,” he added. “In a country like Egypt, it’s not easy to get people to put down their names and government ID numbers on a document calling for fundamental democratic reforms, yet a million people have done just that.”
“The regime, like the monkey that sees nothing and hears nothing, simply ignored us,” ElBaradei explained.
ElBaradei also laments media censorship in Egypt, explaining that he has “been out of Egypt because that is the only way I can be heard. I have been totally cut off from the local media when I am there.” Read more…
Egypt on the boil, Mubarak’s son flees
Egypt‘s longtime President Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal, seen as his likely successor, has reportedly fled to Britain, along with his family following a Tunisia-inspired protest. The 48-year-old younger Mubarak boarded from an airport in western Cairo a private jet bound for London with his wife and daughter, and nearly 100 pieces of luggage, the US-based Arabic website Akhbar al-Arab reported.
Thousands of Egyptians defied a ban on protests by returning to Egypt’s streets on Wednesday and calling for Hosni Mubarak to leave office, and some scuffled with police. Activists had called on Egyptians to take to the streets again to end Mubarak’s 30-year rule after Tuesday’s “Day of Wrath” involving anti-government protests across Egypt in which three protesters and one policeman were killed. The three protesters died in the city of Suez, and the policeman was killed in Cairo.
Police used riot trucks on Wednesday to break up a crowd of as many as 3,000 people who had gathered outside a Cairo court complex, one of the places where demonstrations had started on Tuesday. Police arrested at least 500 people across Egypt on Wednesday. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the morgue in Suez demanding the release of one of the three bodies, witnesses said. Protesters said he was killed by several gunshots and demanded an autopsy.
“The government has killed my son,” the Suez protesters outside the morgue chanted. “Oh Habib, tell your master, your hands are soiled with our blood,” they said, referring to interior minister Habib al-Adli.
Hundreds of protesters also gathered outside Cairo’s journalists’ syndicate, where the authorities allow regular protests. Police beat some with batons when they tried to break a cordon. Protesters on buildings threw stones at police below. The state news agency said 90 people were arrested while trying to gather in Tahrir square in central Cairo, the focus of the biggest demonstrations. A judicial source said 64 people were detained in Alexandria.
The interior ministry had earlier banned all protest meetings. “No provocative movements or protest gatherings or organisation of marches or demonstrations will be allowed, and immediate legal procedures will be taken and participants will be handed over to investigating authorities,” the state news agency MENA cited the ministry as saying.
One opposition group, the Sixth of April Youth, called on its Facebook page for more protests on Wednesday “and after tomorrow, until Mubarak goes”. Facebook has been a key means of communication for protesters, but Egyptians said the site was blocked on Wednesday. Twitter confirmed its site was blocked on Tuesday, although users could still access it via proxy sites. The Internet has been the main platform for some of the most vociferous criticism of Mubarak. agencies
Tunisia Riots: Government on brink of Collapse
Unity Government in Tunisia Fractured by Resignations
Police formed a line in front of protesters in Tunis on Tuesday.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
TUNIS — Five or more ministers from opposition parties resigned from Tunisia’s unity government on Tuesday, bowing to a wave of street protests against the cabinet’s domination by members of the ousted president’s ruling party and putting mounting pressure on his prime minister, Mohammed Ghannouchi, to resign as well.
As the leaders of the established opposition parties renounced the unity government, the revolutionary passions unleashed across the region continued to reverberate, as two more men in Egypt set themselves ablaze on Tuesday and a third was stopped before he could do so. Those self-immolations followed six others, all in apparent imitation of the one that set off the Tunisian uprising a month ago.
The new unity government was showing strains practically from the moment it was sworn in on Monday, with new protests focused on its links to the former president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Read more…
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