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Now revolution takes hold in Algeria: Hundreds arrested as '30,000' riot police try to quell democracy march inspired by downfall of Hosni Mubarak


The Daily Mail
Sun, 13 Feb 2011 20:30 UTC
Algerian protesters
© Reuters
Not-so-thin blue line: Riot policemen surround protesters during the demonstration. Estimates put the numbers of police at 30,000 - three times the number of protesters
  • Estimated police figures outnumber demonstrators by three to one
  • Human rights activist says more than 400 arrested
  • Government cuts food prices and promises end of state of emergency to mollify demonstrators
Thousands of riot police arrested hundreds of demonstrators in the Algerian capital today as they tried to stop a banned pro-democracy rally a day after Egypt's authoritarian leader was toppled.

Armed police blocked off streets in Algiers and set up security barricades at strategic points along the march route and outside the city to try to stop busloads of demonstrators from reaching the capital.

Armed police were also posted near newspaper headquarters.

Organisers of the march estimated some 10,000 people had flooded Algiers, where they skirmished with riot police attempting to block off streets and disperse the crowd.
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Evil Rays

Dream Time on the Road to Shitville

Les Visible
zippittydodah
Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:56 UTC
Dog Poet Transmitting.......

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© Unknown
Maybe 13 years ago or so, I saw part of one episode of MTV's Big Brother. That's been the extent of my exposure to reality TV, which joins the short list of great oxymorons, like 'military intelligence'. The last time I watched network TV with any regularity would have been before I left home; that place you can't go again and may not have had in the first place. Probably "All in the Family" was on then. I've seen regular news, like CNN, a half a dozen times since the stolen election of 2000 and Fox News for a couple of minutes on the night I check into my hotel room, at the halfway point between dreaming Italy and the apneic northern realms.

I left the mainland USA twenty years before I left the country entirely. I was going back to Maui in the winter (after I left the USA) and thinking it might be a trend, until they played games with my passport and I realized I was on a kind of a list from something like The Mikado. I've spent time with friends for a total of about two months in eight years, maybe less. I have no friends close by in Europe but I do have some too far away to drive and visit.

I get mail from all over the world and probably piss people off when I forget to answer because the page rolls up and life has moved on and I didn't mean it. I even get mail from a military attaché kind of a guy in Mongolia. I wish he would write again. I like hearing from him. I get mail from Patagonia, Iceland and by now I've gotten mail from everywhere except North Korea and Greenland, I think. My world is a planet inside my head that rotates in virtual space and includes close personal friends I may never see in this life (cue Bob Marley). I compare my life to that of an astronaut whose only social life takes place over satellite communications.
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Che Guevara

Trade unions strike across Egypt

Tarek El-Tablawy & Ben Hubbard
The Huffington post
Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:52 UTC
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© AP
Cairo - Egypt's military rulers called for an end to strikes and protests Monday as thousands of state employees, from ambulance drivers to police and transport workers, demonstrated to demand better pay in a growing wave of labor unrest unleashed by the democracy uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak's regime.

The statement by the ruling military council that took power from Mubarak appeared to be a final warning to protest organizers in labor and professional unions before the army intervenes and imposes an outright ban on gatherings, strikes and sit-ins.

Soldiers cleared out almost all the remaining demonstrators from Cairo's Tahrir Square, the giant traffic circle that was turned into a protest camp headquarters for the 18-day revolt. During more than two weeks of round-the-clock demonstrations at the square, protesters set up tents, brought in blankets, operated medical clinics and festooned the entire plaza with giant banners demanding removal of the regime.

At the height of the uprising, hundreds of thousands packed the downtown crossroads.
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Cut

Obama on the Budget: "Target the Military? No, I'm gonna hit the working poor, the middle class and students"


The Huffington post
Sun, 13 Feb 2011 13:30 UTC
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Washington - Less than two months after signing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans into law, President Barack Obama proposed a spending plan to Congress that cuts funding to programs that assist the working poor, help the needy heat their homes, and expand access to graduate-level education, undermining the kind of community-based organizations that helped Obama launch his political career in Chicago.

Obama's new budget puts forward a plan to achieve $1.1 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade, according to an administration official who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in advance of the formal release of the budget.

Those reductions -- averaging just over $100 billion each year -- are achieved mainly by squeezing social programs. A deal struck to extend the Bush tax cuts for just two years, meanwhile, increased the deficit by $858 billion dollars. More than $500 billion of that bargain constituted tax cuts, with billions more funding business tax breaks and a reduction in the estate tax. Roughly $56 billion went to reauthorize emergency unemployment benefits.

The president's budget was expected to mostly target "non-defense discretionary spending," which makes up less than one-quarter of the overall budget, making balancing the budget with such cuts mathematically impossible.
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USA

Grapes of Wrath - 2011


The Burning Platform
Sun, 13 Feb 2011 12:55 UTC
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"And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed." - John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck wrote his masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath at the age of 37 in 1939, at the tail end of the Great Depression. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize for literature. John Ford then made a classic film adaption in 1941, starring Henry Fonda. It is considered one of the top 25 films in American history. The book was also one of the most banned in US history. Steinbeck was ridiculed as a communist and anti-capitalist by showing support for the working poor. Some things never change, as the moneyed interests that control the media message have attempted to deflect the blame for our current Depression away from their fraudulent deeds. The novel stands as a chronicle of the Great Depression and as a commentary on the economic and social system that gave rise to it. Steinbeck's opus to the working poor reverberates across the decades. He wrote the novel in the midst of the last Fourth Turning Crisis. His themes of man's inhumanity to man, the dignity and rage of the working class, and the selfishness and greed of the moneyed class ring true today.
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MIB

Egyptians concerned about plot to hijack revolution


Tehran Times
Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:43 UTC
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Egypt's people power movement forced out an arrogant pharaoh, who had ruled the country for the last thirty years with the help of the United States, other Western powers, and Israel, but now it seems that new dangers are arising.

The Egyptians may be chanting that their country is free, but their struggle is far from over since some lackeys of the USA and Israel in the Egyptian establishment are already making efforts to hijack the historic revolution.

The Egyptian military is now officially in control of Egypt and the counter-revolution is unfolding. So a new phase of the liberation struggle has started.

On Sunday, protesters again took to the streets across the country and thronged Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square as the new military rulers announced that they would stay in power for six months, when they say elections will be held.

The military rulers also dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution on Sunday.

The protesters want all their demands met, including the transition of power from the military to a civilian, democratic government.

On Sunday, clashes broke out between the army and the protesters as troops tried to disperse thousands of demonstrators in Tahrir Square, a Press TV correspondent reported.

The wave of demonstrations in and around the square is showing no sign of stopping, with hundreds of thousands of protesters continuing to gather in the square.
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Red Flag

China's Wheat Crop at Risk, World Wary

Subodh Varma
Times of India
Mon, 14 Feb 2011 11:58 UTC
drought/China
© Lu Jian / EPA
New Delhi: There is bad news on the global food front. In an alert issued this week, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that more than two-thirds of China's gigantic wheat crop may be under risk "because of substantially below-normal rainfall" this winter.

The affected areas in the northern plains of China produced over 75 million tonne of China's total production of 112 million tonne of wheat last year. Any shortfall in Chinese production would have serial effects on availability and prices of wheat around the world.

Global food prices have been silently climbing upward through the past six months and with production and consumption very finely balanced, any disruption in production may wreak havoc with prices. Already, food prices are touching the record levels set in 2008 although prices of rice - the world's largest staple food - are still below those levels.

High food prices have been feeding growing restlessness and anger in a swathe of countries including West Asia. Egypt had experienced an 18.5% rate of inflation driving up prices of all food commodities except bread which is subsidized by the government to the tune of $1.5 billion annually. This was a major contributory factor to the 18-day uprising that dislodged the three-decade-long dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Protests against high food prices have taken place in Oman, Israel and Jordan and have contributed to political unrest in Yemen, Tunisia and Algeria.
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Hourglass

Bread, dignity and lies

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:43 UTC
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So Omar "Sheik al-Torture" Suleiman has warned that the only alternative to dialogue with the opposition is "a coup". The suave United States Central Intelligence Agency point man for extraordinary renditions to Egypt, now Washington-anointed "orderly transition" conductor, may be more versed in electroshocks than onanism; otherwise he would have realized that a military dictatorship toppling itself still ends up as a military dictatorship.

Yet maybe that's exactly what he meant. Suleiman said protests are "very dangerous" - not so subtly implying the interference of hidden agendas by foreign journalists; a subversive coalition of the US, Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and al-Jazeera; the Muslim Brotherhood (MB); and all of the above (and all duly evoked by the regime).

Osama Saraya, editor-in-chief of the pro-government newspaper al-Ahram, who was there when Suleiman uttered his sinister warnings, is assured he meant not only a military coup, but an Islamist coup as well.
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Shoe

Clashes mark Bahrain 'Day of Rage', depsite regime's efforts to pay off protesters


Al Jazeera
Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:23 UTC
Image
© Sara Hassan
Activists are demanding reforms, better human rights and stopping of discrimination against Shias
Minor clashes reported from parts of kingdom as security forces remain on alert over planned day of protests.

Small-scale clashes have been reported from parts of Bahrain amid heightened security over planned protests by the kingdom's disgruntled Shia majority.

Protesters have called for a "Day of Rage" to be observed on Monday, inspired by anti-government uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

Helicopters circled over the capital Manama, where protesters were expected to gather in the afternoon, and there was greater police presence in Shia villages.

At least 14 people were injured in clashes overnight and on Monday, news agencies reported.

The reports said police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse marchers in the mostly Shia village of Newidrat in the southwest region of the island kingdom - a key Western ally. The marchers were demanding the release of those detained during earlier protests.

Nabeel Rajab of the Bahrain Centre for human rights told Al Jazeera: "We are only asking for political reforms, right of political participation, respect for human rights, stopping of systematic discrimination against Shias.

Comment: Kuwait's ruler gifts money and food coupons to all his subjects!

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Stormtrooper

Police attack Yemeni protesters


Press TV
Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:19 UTC
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Yemeni police lay razor wire at Al-Sabiine square near the presidential palace in the capital, Sana'a on February 13 to block the protesters.
Yemeni police have clashed with thousands of protesters calling for the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for 32 years.

At least one woman was injured during the clashes which took place on Sunday in the capital, Sana'a, AFP reported. At least 10 demonstrators have also been arrested.

Around 2,000 people marched during the rallies from Sana'a University towards Al-Sabiine square near the presidential palace. Government forces laid razor wire to prevent people from reaching the palace.

Police also apprehended 120 people among hundreds of protesters, who were rallying in the southern city of Taez's main square.

Pro-democracy protests have been bubbling up in Yemen since January.

On Saturday, thousands of Yemenis took to the streets of the capital, urging Saleh to follow the example of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "Get out, Get out Ali" and "The people want the regime to fall," some shouted.

Mubarak handed power over to the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces on Friday, giving in to 18 straight days of pro-democracy protests.
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