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Posts Tagged ‘Tunisia’

Riots Break Out in Bahrain

February 15, 2011 2 comments
Bloomberg
By Glen Carey – Mon Feb 14 15:04:21 GMT 2011
Bahrain Deploys Police as Demonstrators Demand Freedom, Jobs

Police fired tear gas into a crowd of protesters in the Diraz area today. Photographer: -/AFP/Getty Images

Bahraini riot police were deployed to break up protests across the island nation as demonstrators, inspired by revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, demanded more political freedom and jobs.

Police fired tear gas into crowds in the areas of Diraz and Bani Jamrah. Earlier, residents of the Shiite Muslim village of Nuweidrat said clashes broke out between activists and police after morning prayers. Police were present on the outskirts of Nuweidrat, where Shiite flags adorned buildings along alleyways.

”We were starting our peaceful protests when riot police attacked us with tear gas,” Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said in an interview after the protest in Bani Jamrah was dispersed. “We will continue Read more…

Algeria shuts down internet and Facebook as protest mounts

February 13, 2011 1 comment

Internet providers were shut down and Facebook accounts deleted across Algeria on Saturday as thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators were arrested in violent street demonstrations.

Internet providers were shut down and Facebook accounts deleted across Algeria on Saturday as thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators were arrested in violent street demonstrations.
Algerian protesters chant slogans during a demonstration in Algiers Photo: EPA
By Nabila Ramdani 7:25PM GMT 12 Feb 2011

Plastic bullets and tear gas were used to try and disperse large crowds in major cities and towns, with 30,000 riot police taking to the streets in Algiers alone.

There were also reports of journalists being targeted by state-sponsored thugs to stop reports of the disturbances being broadcast to the outside world.

But it was the government attack on the internet which was of particular significance to those calling for an end to President Abdelaziz Boutifleka’s repressive regime.

Protesters mobilising through the internet were largely credited with bringing Read more…

World hunger threat Shown By Arab Protests:Economist

February 13, 2011 Comments off

DAKAR: Uprisings across the Arab world are just a foretaste of the instability facing other poor states unless a global food crisis is tackled, leading development economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Saturday.

Popular anger at rising food prices has been an explosive ingredient in the mix of grievances that triggered the fall of leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, and is now putting the heat on authorities in Algeria and Jordan.

Sachs, a long-time adviser of governments and world agencies on the fight against poverty, said the root causes applied right across an already unstable belt of states stretching from Iraq through the Sahara to the shores of Read more…

Hosni Mubarak gives authority to VP Omar Suleiman

February 10, 2011 Comments off

Egyptian Presidential Palace

On October 14, 1981 Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak assumed the Presidency of Egypt following the assassination of President Anwar El Sadat. He is the longest-serving Egyptian ruler since Muhammad Ali Pasha.  He announced today that he will not resign but will handover power to Vice President Omar Suleiman ,however, he will no longer run for office.

He quotes “Will work for a peaceful transition of power; says he wants honesty and transparency…I will not run for next presidential election; wants smooth transfer of power…Praises youth and sacrifices; says he will punish those responsible for attacks”

On Feb 4, 2011 there was a failed assassination attempt on Egypt’s vice president left two of his bodyguards dead.

Since January 25, 2011, for a total of 17 days, a popular uprising from the people of Egypt called for his resignation as president of Egypt due to corruptness and illegal activities that the government was associated with.  Because of inflation, many Egyptians are currently struggling to feed themselves as the country’s food crisis is beginning to spiral out of control utilizing anywhere between 40 to 60 percent of their wages going to food.

With this announcement brings many questions to mind. Who will lead Egypt?  What will the future of Egypt bring to the world?  How will this affect the relationship with Israel and the United States?  Is this just a preview of what is to come in other Middle East/ North Africa countries whom are in an eerily similar format?  What will happen with crude oil prices?  As of now all we can do is watch and see history unfold before our eyes.  September awaits…

China police stop spread of Egypt news: activist

February 10, 2011 1 comment

By Agence France-Presse

BEIJING — Police in southwest China have barred activists from distributing leaflets about anti-government protests in Egypt and Tunisia, deeming the news too sensitive, one dissident said Wednesday.

Activists in Guizhou province tried to hand out information about the demonstrations over the weekend, but police told them this was an “unusual period” and gave them 3,000 yuan ($450) to stop, Chen Xi told AFP.

The police paid the money to compensate for losses incurred from the printing costs, and when the activists tried to distribute more information in Guiyang city on Monday, police again barred them from doing so, Chen said.

“We do this (hand out leaflets) all the time but the Read more…

Leaked cables reveal anger at regime may make Libya the next Arab domino to fall

February 7, 2011 Comments off

THE violence and corruption of members of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s family have made Libya a gangster state with a worse record of governance than Egypt or Tunisia, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.

The documents reveal previously undisclosed details of how family greed, rivalry and extremism have complicated British and US efforts to normalize relations with Libya since it decided to abandon nuclear weapons and renounce terrorism. Gaddafi’s children plunder the country’s oil revenues, run a kleptocracy and operate a reign of terror that has created simmering hatred and resentment among the people, according to the cables released by WikiLeaks.

In the light of the upheavals in the Arab world, the diplomatic traffic also shows that far from being stable, Libya could be another corrupt authoritarian domino poised to fall.

One intriguing sequence of cables tells how Switzerland faced down threats after Swiss police arrested Hannibal Gaddafi, a younger son, and his wife for allegedly abusing two of their domestic staff.

Swiss police officers drew their guns and fought to disarm two Read more…

The Youth Unemployment Bomb

February 6, 2011 Comments off

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

https://i0.wp.com/images.businessweek.com//mz/11/07/600/1107_mz_58youth1.jpg

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…

Egypt is Just the Beginning for Gold’s Next Move

February 6, 2011 Comments off

Watching CNN, its easy to be lulled into the sense that the cute little third world African country that is home to Cleopatra, mummies and pyramids is having a little revolution to get rid of a tired old tyrant. That the old goat is putting up such resistance to the national message is to be expected, and might be forgiven. Unleashing bands of paid thugs under the guise of ‘supporters’ reveals true brutality and illuminates the character of the man, Hosni Mubarak – a sociopath.

This phenomenon, originated in Tunisia, a nation of 10 million, and now raging in Egypt, of 85 million has spread to Yemen, population 25 million and Jordan, population 6 million is no mere regional political shift: this is the beginning of America’s loss of control over the region.

That the democratic process even got a foothold in the tribal and historically despotically governed middle east is due to a series of historical power plays, and not so much to a nascent and organic inclination towards the idea of democracy. When oil emerged to become the most strategic substance on earth after the second world war, the United States, armed with the economic windfall from the war machine, set about toppling governments and seeding insurrection through the offices of the C.I.A., bolstering governments that were ‘incentivized’ to protect U.S. interests, and destroying those that were not.

Back then, before the light-sped connected world, the C.I.A. could operate with Read more…

Inflation Group Says U.S. Cities Will Be Like Egypt in Four Years

February 5, 2011 Comments off

The National Inflation Association has issued a chilling new advisory in which it warns that the inflationary time bomb being created by the policies of the Federal Reserve will lead to American cities experiencing similar chaos currently unfolding in Egypt by 2015.

Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak has been in power for three decades and in that time has managed to handle all manner of threats to the stability of his regime. But it was the huge unrest sparked by soaring food prices that finally led the Egyptian people to launch a revolution which is likely to see Mubarak forced out of office for good.

“Food inflation in Egypt has reached 20% and citizens in the nation already spend about 40% of their monthly expenditures on food. Americans for decades have been Read more…

HOW BANKS AND INVESTORS ARE STARVING THE THIRD WORLD

February 5, 2011 Comments off

Ellen Brown

“What for a poor man is a crust, for a rich man is a securitized asset class.”
–Futures trader Ann Berg, quoted in the UK Guardian

Underlying the sudden, volatile uprising in Egypt and Tunisia is a growing global crisis sparked by soaring food prices and unemployment. The Associated Press reports that roughly 40 percent of Egyptians struggle along at the World Bank-set poverty level of under $2 per day. Analysts estimate that food price inflation in Egypt is currently at an unsustainable 17 percent yearly. In poorer countries, as much as 60 to 80 percent of people’s incomes go for food, compared to just 10 to 20 percent in industrial countries. An increase of a dollar or so in the cost of a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread for Americans can mean starvation for people in Egypt and other poor countries.

Follow the Money

The cause of the recent jump in global food prices remains a matter of debate. Some analysts blame the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” program (increasing the money supply with credit created with accounting entries), which they warn is sparking hyperinflation. Too much money chasing too few goods is the classic explanation for Read more…