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Cameroon Bans Night Travel to End Road Carnage

Tansa Musa
Reuters
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:41 UTC
Image
© AFP
Only 20% of Cameroon's roads are tarred
Cameroon has banned night-time public transport between cities after a spate of deadly accidents last year, many involving heavy drinking on the country's infamously poor roads.

"Night traffic represents just about 5 percent of human transport, but represents 35 percent of road accidents," Aoudou Dotel Moussa, director of land transport at the Cameroon transport ministry, said Monday.

Cameroon, the largest economy in the Central African region, has one of the continent's poorest road networks, with less than 20 percent of the country's roads asphalted.
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Bizarro Earth

Actress Yeoh blacklisted, deported from Myanmar

Aung Hla Tun
Reuters
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© unknown
Michelle Yeoh
Authorities in Myanmar have deported Hollywood actress Michelle Yeoh who plans to play pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in an upcoming film, an immigration official said Tuesday.

Yeoh, a Malaysian known for playing Chinese spy Wai Lin alongside Pierce Brosnan in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies among other roles, was detained on arrival at Yangon's international airport on June 22 and sent out of the country on the next flight.

"She was deported on the same day because she is on a blacklist," the official told Reuters, requesting anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the media.

Yeoh, 48, has been in Thailand, Britain and France filming scenes for the film The Lady, as Suu Kyi is known in Myanmar. The film is due to be released in October.
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Bell

The Attack on the Middle Class

Sen. Al Franken
Readersupportednews.com
Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
On Saturday, June 18th, I was given the honor of speaking at Netroots Nation 2011 in Minneapolis, the 6th annual convention of progressive grassroots leaders and activists. I was the opening speaker at Saturday's Morning Keynote session, which focused on how to save the middle class and build progressive infrastructure. I had an amazing time at the conference and met a ton of passionate activists and progressives.

It was fitting that Netroots Nation was in Minnesota this year. Minnesota is the state that sent Hubert Humphrey to the U.S. Senate, where he cheerfully waged - and usually won - great battles in the name of the young and the old, the poor and the vulnerable, the oppressed and the disenfranchised.

It's the state where Walter Mondale rose to become the living embodiment of common-sense Midwestern progressive values. And it's the state where Paul Wellstone became my hero - and the hero of a generation of progressives who believed, as he did, that we all do better when we all do better.

These Minnesotans were instrumental in establishing the America we know and love today - from building the social safety net to establishing workers' rights to investing in our manufacturing sector - they helped build the middle class. And defending those progressive values is crucial to saving the middle class today.

My speech, entitled: "The Attack on America's Middle Class, and the Plan to Fight Back," laid out some ideas on what we can do to preserve these values that began as 'progressive,' but have become simply American.
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People

Two-Day General Strike Hits Greece, International Airport Affected

Nick Iliev
The Sofia Echo
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 03:40 UTC
Image
© Reuters
Greece will be shut by another 48-hour general strike organised by the trade unions, as the Pasok ruling party and prime minister George Papandreou try to convince parliament to support the second austerity package due to be passed on June 29 2011.

All public transport except for the Athens metro system will be shut on June 28-29, and public services will also be disrupted. The strike will affect buses, trolley buses, the tram, trains, the suburban railway and the Kifissia-Piraeus electric railway. Additionally, air traffic controllers are to join the industrial action from 8am until noon and once again from 6pm until 10pm, the Greek daily Kathimerini reported.

The Greek government will attempt to pass a second round of austerity measures on June 29 to qualify for another bail out from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.
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Propaganda

Gone With the Papers

Chris Hedges
Truthdig.com
Mon, 27 Jun 2011 06:38 UTC
I visited the Hartford Courant as a high school student. It was the first time I was in a newsroom. The Connecticut paper's newsroom, the size of a city block, was packed with rows of metal desks, most piled high with newspapers and notebooks. Reporters banged furiously on heavy typewriters set amid tangled phone cords, overflowing ashtrays, dirty coffee mugs and stacks of paper, many of which were in sloping piles on the floor. The din and clamor, the incessantly ringing phones, the haze of cigarette and cigar smoke that lay over the feverish hive, the hoarse shouts, the bustle and movement of reporters, most in disheveled coats and ties, made it seem an exotic, living organism. I was infatuated. I dreamed of entering this fraternity, which I eventually did, for more than two decades writing for The Dallas Morning News, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor and, finally, The New York Times, where I spent most of my career as a foreign correspondent.

Newsrooms today are anemic and forlorn wastelands. I was recently in the newsroom at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and patches of the floor, also the size of a city block, were open space or given over to rows of empty desks. These institutions are going the way of the massive rotary presses that lurked like undersea monsters in the bowels of newspaper buildings, roaring to life at night. The heavily oiled behemoths, the ones that spat out sheets of newsprint at lightning speed, once empowered and enriched newspaper publishers who for a few lucrative decades held a monopoly on connecting sellers with buyers. Now that that monopoly is gone, now that the sellers no long need newsprint to reach buyers, the fortunes of newspapers are declining as fast as the page counts of daily news sheets.
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2 + 2 = 4

'Benevolent Sexism' is the last thing feminists should be worrying about

Jenny McCartney
Blogs.telegraph.co.uk
Wed, 15 Jun 2011 06:04 UTC
Image
© Getty
I have, with some personal difficulty, now plodded my way through the turgid text of the report on perceived sexism by Julia Becker and Janet Swim, in the Psychology of Women Quarterly, which has caused a stir with its identification of a syndrome called "Benevolent Sexism". The study's full, throat-clearing title is: Seeing the Unseen: Attention to Daily Encounters with Sexism as a Way to Reduce Sexist Beliefs.

"Benevolent Sexism" is a form of patriarchal control designed to promote sexist attitudes in a pseudo-friendly way. Manifestations of it - as identified by the authors - include calling women "girls" but not men "boys"; believing that women should be cherished and protected by men; helping a woman choose a laptop computer in the belief that it's not the sort of task for which her gender is suited; and complimenting a woman on cooking or looking after children well because that is behaviour especially suited to a woman.
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Bulb

Russia to cut off electricity to Belarus at midnight over debt


RIA Novosti
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 05:29 UTC
Image
© RIA Novosti. Anton Denisov
Russia to cut off electricity in Belarus at midnight over debt
Russia will cut off electricity supplies to Belarus on Wednesday until Belarus repays its 1.2-billion ruble ($43 million) debt, a spokesman for Russia's electricity export monopoly Inter RAO said on Tuesday.

Russia prolonged until Tuesday morning the deadline for Belarus to pay off its electricity debt for April and May, threatening to cut off supplies if it does not, but no payment has been made.
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Laptop

Dealing With Assange and the WikiLeaks Secrets

Bill Keller
The New York Times
Sun, 26 Jun 2011 17:07 UTC
Image
© Jenny Morgan (left) and Daniel Gordon (right)
This past June, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, phoned me and asked, mysteriously, whether I had any idea how to arrange a secure communication. Not really, I confessed. The Times doesn't have encrypted phone lines, or a Cone of Silence. Well then, he said, he would try to speak circumspectly. In a roundabout way, he laid out an unusual proposition: an organization called WikiLeaks, a secretive cadre of antisecrecy vigilantes, had come into possession of a substantial amount of classified United States government communications. WikiLeaks's leader, Julian Assange, an eccentric former computer hacker of Australian birth and no fixed residence, offered The Guardian half a million military dispatches from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. There might be more after that, including an immense bundle of confidential diplomatic cables. The Guardian suggested - to increase the impact as well as to share the labor of handling such a trove - that The New York Times be invited to share this exclusive bounty. The source agreed. Was I interested?


Comment: In short, Wikileaks were fed documents that they believed to be from a true 'whistle-blower' when in reality they were very likely from a US (or other) government source that wanted to create the impression that big governments can still be called to account in this world. The Wikileaks documents have provided little if anything in the way of an exposé of the truth of what has been happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and within the seedy depths of agencies like the CIA. Wikileaks therefore checks all the boxes of a 'limited hangout'.

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Attention

UK: Major Strike Looms After Talks With Government Fail


Sky News
Tue, 28 Jun 2011 02:01 UTC

A strike by hundreds of thousands of teachers, lecturers, civil servants and other public sector workers is set to go ahead on Thursday after negotiations failed.

Union leaders were unable to reach an agreement with the Government in a row over pensions and spending cuts.

Up to 750,000 workers will walk out for 24 hours, closing thousands of schools and colleges in England and Wales and disrupting Government departments, courts, driving tests and job centres.

The unions had called for a "serious response" from ministers but one leader said the discussions were a "farce".

See the full list of which unions are striking and when

Officials from the TUC and several trade unions met Cabinet Minister Francis Maude and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander - but the talks failed.

Further negotiations between the two sides are expected to take place in the coming weeks.

The ministers insisted the talks at the Cabinet Office in London had been "constructive".
Image

The walkout is set to hit thousands of schools
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Cell Phone

Bearded Mickey Mouse Cartoon Causes Stir in Egypt


The Associated Press
Mon, 27 Jun 2011 02:32 UTC
Image
© unknown
Egypt’s tycoon Naguib Sawiris is the executive chairman of Orascom Telecom Holding (OTH) and a Founding Member of Al Masreyeen Al Ahrrar political party.
An Egyptian Christian telecom mogul has angered Islamic hard-liners by posting an online cartoon of Mickey Mouse with a beard and Minnie in a face veil.

The ultraconservative Islamists, known as Salafis, called the cartoon posted by Naguib Sawiris on Twitter a mockery of Islam. They launched an online campaign calling on Muslims in Egypt to boycott Sawiris' mobile phone company Mobinil. Shares of Mobilnil and Orascom Telecom, which Sawiris founded, both fell Monday on the Egyptian stock exchange.

Sawiris, who is also a politician, promotes a secular Egypt. He owns media companies and after Mubarak stepped down on Feb. 11, he launched a political party that calls for separation of state and religion.

After the cartoon posted a few days ago stirred complaints on Twitter, Sawiris tweeted an apology on Friday and claimed he was joking.

"I apologize for those who don't take this as a joke; I just thought it was a funny picture; no disrespect meant. I am sorry," he tweeted.

But new Facebook groups cropped and quickly gained more than 60,000 followers, calling for a boycott of his widely used cell phone company.

Named "We are joking Sawiris," the Facebook group said: "If you are really a Muslim, and you love your religion, boycott his projects. We have to cut out the tongue of any person who attacks our religion."
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