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Saturday, March 19, 2011: Resist the War Machine!
8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq
In San Francisco, people will gather at 12 noon for a rally at UN Plaza (7th & Market Sts.) followed by a march to Lo. 2 boycotted hotels. The theme of the March 19 march and rally will be "No to War & Colonial Occupation - Fund Jobs, Healthcare & Education - Solidarity with SF Hotel Workers!" 12,000 SF hotel workers, members of UNITE-HERE Local 2, have been fighting for a new contract that protects their healthcare, wages and working conditions.
http://www.answercoalition.org/sf/index.html
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RALLY AGAINST THE WARS AGAINST WORKING PEOPLE AT HOME AND ABROAD! BACK TO THE STREETS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2011
ASSEMBLE AT DOLORES PARK AT 11:00 A.M.
NOON RALLY
MARCH AT 1:30 P.M.
THEY are the government, corporate, and financial powers that wage war, ravage the environment and the economy and trample on our democratic rights and liberties.
WE are the vast majority of humanity who want peace, a healty planet and a society that prioritizes human needs, democracy and civil liberties for all.
WE DEMAND Bring U.S. Troops, Mercenaries and War Contractors Home Now: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza! End support of dictators in North Africa!
WE DEMAND an end to FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
WE DEMAND the immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads.
WE DEMAND trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for ail, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
Next organizing meeting Sunday, February 20, 1:00 P.M., Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia Street (between 15th and 16th Streets, San Francisco)
Sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
www.unacpeace.org
unacnortherncalifornia@gmail.com
415-49-NO-WAR
Facebook.com/EndTheWars
Twitter.com/UNACPeace
TRADUCCION:
Marcha en contra de las guerras: en casa y en el exterior
Ellos son el gobierno y las corporaciones que financian las guerras, destruyen el medio ambiente, la economía y pisotean nuestras libertades y derechos democráticos.
Nosotros, somos la gran mayoría de la humanidad y queremos paz. Un planeta saludable y una sociedad que priorice en las necesidades humanas, la democracia y las libertades civiles para todos.
Nosotros, demandamos que las tropas militares, los mercenarios y los contratistas de guerra que enviaron a Irak, Afganistán, y Paquistán sean traídas de regreso a los Estados Unidos ¡Ahora! Que paren con las sanciones y las amenazas de guerra en contra de los pueblos de Irán, Corea del Norte y Yemen; y que los Estados Unidos deje de colaborar con Israel en la invasión y acoso a Palestina y Gaza. No al saqueo de los pueblos de América Latina, el Caribe y África; que paren la persecución racista que amenaza las comunidades musulmanas y que paren el terror policiaco en contra de las comunidades negras y latinas; derechos totales y legalización para los emigrantes.
Nosotros, demandamos que el FBI pare de inmediato la persecución a los luchadores por la justicia social y la solidaridad internacional; como también pongan un alto a todos los esfuerzos que reprimen y castigan a los contribuidores y fundadores de Wikileaks.
Nosotros, demandamos trillones de dólares para trabajos, educación y servicios sociales; que cesen todos los embargos de viviendas y desalojos; un programa de salud gratuito y de calidad para todos; un programa energético de conversión masiva que salve al planeta y buen el sistema de transporte público. Y reparaciones para las víctimas del terror de estados unidos aquí en casa y en el exterior.
VICTORY IN EGYPT!
U.S. Hands off the Ongoing Egyptian Revolution!
End US Military Aid to Egypt and Israel!
A Statement by the United National Antiwar Committee
On Friday, February 11th, the heroic Egyptian people won a historic victory with the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Now they are proceeding to secure this victory by moving on to eliminate the rest of this hated regime, and to win the freedom, jobs, equality and dignity which has motivated their revolution from the start.
The announcement of Mubarak's resignation was coupled with news that the officers of the Armed Forces are now running the country. This comes as more and more rank and file soldiers and lower-level officers were joining the protests, and as others stood by as protesters blockaded the state TV, parliament and other government facilities.
We can be sure that the military hierarchy in alliance with what's left of the old regime will do everything in their power to stop the blossoming revolution in its tracks, to tell the protesters they must go home now and wait for gifts from on high.
AND THE DANGER IS REAL THAT WHEN THE MASSES SAY NO THAT THE MILITARY WILL DO WHAT IT DOES BEST.
We can be equally sure that Washington will give its full blessing and backing to these efforts of the remnants of the old regime and the military. Obama has made clear that he is solidly committed to the new face of the Egyptian regime, Omar Suleiman, who has proven over the years that he will collaborate with Washington in its torture and rendition policies. Meanwhile Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quoted in the New York Times saying that Washington would help organize political parties for future elections in Egypt - a typical maneuver used to subvert revolutions.
The United National Antiwar Committee has repeatedly urged supporters to mobilize for demonstrations called by Egyptian organizations in the US in solidarity with the revolution in Egypt and against US military and diplomatic intervention. UNAC hails the call for today's march in Washington, DC by Egyptian groups, and takes this opportunity to point out the special obligations of antiwar activists in the US given Washington's multifaceted efforts to obstruct the wishes of the majority of the Egyptian people.
The $1.3 billion a year in military aid which the US gives to Egypt must be cut off immediately. All US soldiers serving in Egypt, such as those in the Multinational Force in the Sinai, must be immediately withdrawn. And the US warships headed for Egypt must be immediately turned around.
UNAC has from its founding opposed all US aid to Israel. That position takes on particular importance given the real danger that as the Egyptian revolution advances, Israel will intervene to derail it - or launch new attacks against Lebanon, Gaza, or elsewhere, as a diversionary tactic.
Amidst the euphoria in Cairo, Al Jazeera interviewed a young woman in the crowd, who said:
"Its not just about Mubarak stepping down. It is about the process of bringing the people to power... The issue of women, the issue of Palestine, now everything seems possible."
WE MUST ENSURE THOSE POSSIBILITIES STAY ALIVE! UNAC ENCOURAGES ALL ANTIWAR ACTIVISTS AND ORGANIZATIONS TO STEP UP SUPPORT FOR RALLIES PLANNED BY THE EGYPTIAN COMMUNITY, AND TO INITIATE THEM WHERE NONE ARE PLANNED.
Finally, we urge all supporters of the Egyptian people to redouble efforts to build the national antiwar marches called by UNAC for April 9th in New York and April 10th in San Francisco. These marches, called to demand an end to US wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, an end to support for Israeli occupation, and in favor of social justice and jobs, take on ever more importance with the revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere throughout the Arab world and Washington's attempts to crush or derail them.
SUPPORT THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY AND AGAINST EXPLOITATION AND OPPRESSION THROUGHOUT THE ARAB WORLD!
BUILD THE NATIONAL ANTIWAR MARCHES ON APRIL 9TH AND 10TH!
For more information: In SF: UNACNorthernCalifornia@gmail.com; (415) 49 NO War; www.unacpeace.org, unacpeace@gmail.com. For NYC information: unac-nyc@juno.com
San Franciscans/Northern California: Next UNAC Organizing Meeting: Sunday February 20 at 1 PM, Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia Street, (between 15th and 16th Streets in the rear) SF
SAVE THE DATE: Sunday, APRIL 10, Mass antiwar/social justice march and rally, Assemble: 11 AM Dolores Park, 19th and Dolores; Rally Noon; March at 1:30 pm.
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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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Next Meeting of United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) Meeting to Build April 10!
All BAy Area antiwar and peace and justice activists invited.
Sunday, February 20, 1:00 P.M.
Centro del Pueblo
474 Valencia Street (Between 15th and 16th Streets -- second floor, in the rear.)
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MEDIA RELEASE from Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists (BFUU)
A Benefit Evening to Support Bradley Manning
Thursday, Feb 24, 2011 7 - 9 pm
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists
Fellowship Hall address: 1924 Cedar Street , Berkeley CA 94709
Sponsored by: Courage To Resist, Social Justice Committee of the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists & Code Pink Golden Gate
Wheelchair Accessible. Suggested Donation is $5 - 10. No one turned away for lack of funds.
Dr. Caroline Knowles of the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists will give the welcoming remarks.
Daniel Ellsberg will speak. As the "Pentagon Papers" whistle-blower of the Vietnam War era, he is in a unique position to put the the current issues into historical context.
http://www.ellsberg.net
Senator Mike Gravel has been referencing the damage to a democratic society that excessive secrecy and media manipulation has had on the ability of citizens to exercise informed judgment. All the while the government has passed more repressive laws since the 9/11 attacks that intrude on citizen privacy and rights.
http://www.mikegravel.us
Jeff Patterson of "Courage To Resist" will provide an overview of the issues and the history of Bradley Manning's case.
http://www.couragetoresist.org
Cynthia Papermaster of Code Pink Golden Gate chapter will MC. She will offer views on the treatment of Bradley Manning and will report on her recent experience at the demonstration on MLK DAY at Fort Quantico Prison where Bradley Manning is being held in solitary confinement.
http://www.codepinkgoldengate.org
Details of the event can be found at BFUU Upcoming Events Webpage.
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists
Fellowship Hall address: 1924 Cedar Street , Berkeley CA 94709
Phone: 510-841-4824
www.bfuu.org
office@bfuu.org
Submitted by
Shirley Adams
404-245-7977 (cell)
BFUU Membership Team
The only gift is a portion of thyself.- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Saturday, March 19, 2011: Resist the War Machine!
8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq
In San Francisco, people will gather at 12 noon for a rally at UN Plaza (7th & Market Sts.) followed by a march to Lo. 2 boycotted hotels. The theme of the March 19 march and rally will be "No to War & Colonial Occupation - Fund Jobs, Healthcare & Education - Solidarity with SF Hotel Workers!" 12,000 SF hotel workers, members of UNITE-HERE Local 2, have been fighting for a new contract that protects their healthcare, wages and working conditions.
Come to Washington, D.C., on March 19 for veterans-led civil resistance at the White House
March 19 is the 8th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iraq today remains occupied by nearly 50,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries.
Saturday, March 19, 2011, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, will be an international day of action against the war machine.
The war in Afghanistan is raging. The U.S. is invading and bombing Pakistan. The U.S. is financing endless atrocities against the people of Palestine, relentlessly threatening Iran and bringing Korea to the brink of a new war.
While the United States will spend $1 trillion for war, occupation and weapons in 2011, 30 million people in the United States remain unemployed or severely underemployed, and cuts in education, housing and healthcare are imposing a huge toll on the people.
Actions of civil resistance are spreading.
Last Dec. 16, a veterans-led civil resistance at the White House played an important role in bringing the anti-war movement from protest to resistance. Enduring hours of heavy snow, 131 veterans and other anti-war activists lined the White House fence and were arrested.
In Washington, D.C., on March 19 there will be an even larger veterans-led civil resistance at the White House initiated by Veterans for Peace. People from all over the country are joining together for a Noon Rally at Lafayette Park, followed by a march on the White House where the veterans-led civil resistance will take place.
Many people coming to Washington, D.C., will be also participating in the Sunday, March 20 demonstration at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia to support PFC Bradley Manning. Quantico is one hour from D.C. Manning is suspected of leaking Iraq and Afghan war logs to Wikileaks. For the last eight months, he has been held in solitary confinement, pre-trial punishment, rather than pre-trial detention.
The ANSWER Coalition is fully mobilizing its east coast and near mid-west chapters and activist networks to be at the White House.
In Los Angeles, the March 19 rally and march will gather at 12 noon at Hollywood and Vine.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488
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Are you joining us on April 8 at the Pentagon in a climate chaos protest codenamed "Operation Disarmageddon?" It has been decided that affinity groups will engage in nonviolent autonomous actions. Do you have an affinity group? Do you have an idea for an action?
So far these are some of the suggested actions:
Send a letter to Sec. of War Robert Gates demanding a meeting to disclose the Pentagon's role in destroying the planet. He will ignore the letter, so a delegation would then go to the Metro Entrance to demand a meeting.
Use crime tape around some area of the Pentagon. The idea of crime/danger taping off the building could be done just outside the main Pentagon reservation entrance (intersection of Army/Navy) making the Alexandria PD the arresting authority (if needed) and where there is no ban on photography. Hazmat suits, a 'converted' truck (or other vehicle) could be part of the street theater. The area where I am thinking is also almost directly below I-95 and there is a bridge over the intersection - making a banner drop possible. Perhaps with the hazmat/street closure at ground level with a banner from above. If possible a coordinated action could be done at other Pentagon entrances and / or other war making institutions.
A procession onto the Pentagon reservation, without reservations, and set up a camp on one of the lawns surrounding The Pentagon. This contingent would reclaim the space in the name of peace and Mother Earth. This contingent would plan to stay there until The Pentagon is turned into a 100% green building using sustainable energy employing people who work for peace and the abolishment of war and life-affirming endeavors.
Bring a potted tree to be placed on the Pentagon's property to symbolize the need to radically reduce its environmental destructiveness.
Since the Pentagon is failing to return to the taxpayers the money it has misappropriated, "Foreclose on the Pentagon."
Banner hanging from a bridge.
Hand out copies of David Swanson's book WAR IS A LIE. Try to deliver a copy to Secretary of War Robert Gates.
Have short speeches in park between Pentagon and river; nice photo with Pentagon in background.
Die-in and chalk or paint outlines of victim's bodies everywhere that remain after the arrest to point to where real crimes are really being committed.
Establish command center, Peacecom? Paxcom? Put several people in white shirts and ties plus a few generals directing their armies for "Operation Disarmageddon."
Make the linkage between the tax dollars going to the Pentagon and war tax resistance. Use the WRL pie chart and carry banners "foreclose on war" and "money for green jobs not war jobs."
Hold a rally with representative speakers before going to the Pentagon Reservation. This would be an opportunity to speak out against warmongering and the Pentagon's role in destroying the environment.
As part of "Operation Disarmageddon," we will take a tree and plant it on the reservation. Our sign reads, "Plant trees not landmines."
Use crime tape on Army/Navy Drive to declare the Pentagon a crime scene. Do street theater there as well. Other affinity groups could go to selected entrances.
Establish a Peace Command Center at the Pentagon. Hold solidarity actions at federal buildings and corporate offices.
What groups have you contacted to suggest joining us at the Pentagon? See below for those who plan to be at the Pentagon on April 8 and for what groups have been contacted.
Kagiso,
Max
April 8, 2011 participants
Beth Adams
Ellen Barfield
Tim Chadwick
Joy First
Jeffrey Halperin
Malachy Kilbride
Max Obuszewski
David Swanson
April 8 Outreach
Beth Adams -- Earth First, Puppet Underground, Emma's Revolution, Joe Gerson-AFSC Cambridge, Code Pink(national via Lisa Savage in Maine), Vets for Peace, FOR, UCC Justice & Witness Ministries, Traprock, Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order, (National-INt'l) Vets for Peace and WILPF, Pace e Bene, Christian Peace Witness & UCC Justice & Witness (Cleveland).
Tim Chadwick -- Brandywine, Lepoco, Witness against Torture, Vets for Peace (Thomas Paine Chapter Lehigh Valley PA), and Witness for Peace DC.
Jeffrey Halperin -- peace groups in Saratoga Spring, NY
Jack Lombardo - UNAC will add April 8 2011 to the Future Actions page on our blog, and make note in upcoming E-bulletins, but would appreciate a bit of descriptive text from the organizers and contact point to include when we do - so please advise ASAP! Also, we'll want to have such an announcement for our next print newsletter, which will be coming out in mid-December.
Max Obuszewski - Jonah House & Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore
Bonnie Urfer notified 351 individuals and groups on the Nukewatch list
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RALLY AGAINST THE WARS AGAINST WORKING PEOPLE AT HOME AND ABROAD! BACK TO THE STREETS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2011
ASSEMBLE AT DOLORES PARK AT 11:00 A.M.
NOON RALLY
MARCH AT 1:30 P.M.
THEY are the government, corporate, and financial powers that wage war, ravage the environment and the economy and trample on our democratic rights and liberties.
WE are the vast majority of humanity who want peace, a healty planet and a society that prioritizes human needs, democracy and civil liberties for all.
WE DEMAND Bring U.S. Troops, Mercenaries and War Contractors Home Now: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza! End support of dictators in North Africa!
WE DEMAND an end to FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
WE DEMAND the immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads.
WE DEMAND trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for ail, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
Next organizing meeting Sunday, February 20, 1:00 P.M., Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia Street (between 15th and 16th Streets, San Francisco)
Sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
www.unacpeace.org
unacnortherncalifornia@gmail.com
415-49-NO-WAR
Facebook.com/EndTheWars
Twitter.com/UNACPeace
TRADUCCION:
Marcha en contra de las guerras: en casa y en el exterior
Ellos son el gobierno y las corporaciones que financian las guerras, destruyen el medio ambiente, la economía y pisotean nuestras libertades y derechos democráticos.
Nosotros, somos la gran mayoría de la humanidad y queremos paz. Un planeta saludable y una sociedad que priorice en las necesidades humanas, la democracia y las libertades civiles para todos.
Nosotros, demandamos que las tropas militares, los mercenarios y los contratistas de guerra que enviaron a Irak, Afganistán, y Paquistán sean traídas de regreso a los Estados Unidos ¡Ahora! Que paren con las sanciones y las amenazas de guerra en contra de los pueblos de Irán, Corea del Norte y Yemen; y que los Estados Unidos deje de colaborar con Israel en la invasión y acoso a Palestina y Gaza. No al saqueo de los pueblos de América Latina, el Caribe y África; que paren la persecución racista que amenaza las comunidades musulmanas y que paren el terror policiaco en contra de las comunidades negras y latinas; derechos totales y legalización para los emigrantes.
Nosotros, demandamos que el FBI pare de inmediato la persecución a los luchadores por la justicia social y la solidaridad internacional; como también pongan un alto a todos los esfuerzos que reprimen y castigan a los contribuidores y fundadores de Wikileaks.
Nosotros, demandamos trillones de dólares para trabajos, educación y servicios sociales; que cesen todos los embargos de viviendas y desalojos; un programa de salud gratuito y de calidad para todos; un programa energético de conversión masiva que salve al planeta y buen el sistema de transporte público. Y reparaciones para las víctimas del terror de estados unidos aquí en casa y en el exterior.
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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First Responders
Wednesday, February 16th, in the State Capitol, Madison, Wisconsin, well over ten thousand citizens representing many others (teachers and students, nurses, custodial workers, firefighters, parents, families, community members and staunch union supporters) gathered to say NO! to Governor Scott Walker's so-called "Repair Bill"
The message was unequivocal and clear: no rolling back workers collective bargaining rights and to NEGOTIATE not LEGISLATE our way toward a better future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ5CqhL5X4o
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WikiLeaks Mirrors
Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack.
In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, you will find below a list of mirrors of Wikileaks website and CableGate pages.
Go to
http://wikileaks.ch/Mirrors.html
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Streaming TV from Egypt
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/spotlight/anger-in-egypt/
Mr. ElBaradei, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for his work as the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on Friday: "The Egyptian people will take care of themselves. The Egyptian people will be the ones who will make the change. We are not waiting for help or assistance from the outside world, but what I expect from the outside world is to practice what you preach, is to defend the rights of the Egyptian to their universal values."
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Labor Beat: Labor Stands with Subpoenaed Activists Against FBI Raids and Grand Jury Investigation of antiwar and social justice activists.
"If trouble is not at your door. It's on it's way, or it just left."
"Investigate the Billionaires...Full investigation into Wall Street..." Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNUSIGZCMQ
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Oil Spill Commission Final Report: Catfish Responds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ZRdsccMsM
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New music video by tommi avicolli mecca of the song "stick and stones," which is about bullying in high school, is finished and up on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of_twpu3-Nw
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New antiwar song that's bound to be a classic:
box
http://www.youtube.com/user/avimecca
by tommi avicolli mecca
(c) 2009
Credits are:
Tommi Avicolli Mecca, guitar/vocals
John Radogno, lead guitar
Diana Hartman, vocals, kazoo
Chris Weir, upright bass
Produced and recorded by Khalil Sullivan
I'm the recruiter and if truth be told/ I can lure the young and old
what I do you won't see/ til your kid's in JROTC
CHO ooh, put them in a box drape it with a flag and send them off to mom and dad
send them with a card from good ol' uncle sam, gee it's really just so sad
I'm the general and what I do/ is to teach them to be true
to god and country flag and oil/ by shedding their blood on foreign soil
CHO
I'm the corporate boss and well I know/ war is lots of dough dough dough
you won't find me over there/ they just ship the money right back here
CHO
last of all it's me the holy priest/ my part is not the least
I assure them it's god's will/ to go on out and kill kill kill
CHO
it's really just so sad
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You might enjoy a bit of history:
William Buckley Show with Socialist Workers Party Presidential Candidates
http://vimeo.com/18611069
William Buckley Show with Socialist Workers Party Presidential Candidates from asi somburu on Vimeo.
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Wall Street Fat-Cats Flip Public Service Workers the Bird
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTcSOygSBBM
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Free Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4eNzokgRIw&feature=player_embedded
Song for Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_eood7DUwI
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Supermax Prison Cell Extraction - Maine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jUfK5i_lQs&feature=player_embedded
Warning, this is an extremely brutal video. What do you think? Is this torture?
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Did You Know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
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These videos refer to what happened at the G-20 Summit in Toronto June 26-27 of this year. The importance of this is that police were caught on tape and later confirmed that they sent police into the demonstration dressed as "rioting" protesters. One cop was caught with a large rock in his hand. Clearly, this is proof of police acting as agent provocatours. And we should expect this to continue and escalate. That's why everyone should be aware of these facts...bw
police accused of attempting to incite violence at G20 summ
Protestors at Montebello are accusing police of trying to incite violence. Video on YouTube shows union officials confronting three men that were police officers dressing up as demonstrators. The union is demanding to know if the Prime Minister's Office was involved in trying to discredit the demonstrators.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWbgnyUCC7M
quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=related
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Published on Thursday, December 16, 2010 by Countdown With Keith Olbermann
Quantico, the New Gitmo
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/12/16-0
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_gHUiL4P8&feature=player_embedded#
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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Video of massive French protest -- inspiring!
http://www.dailymotion.com/Talenceagauchevraiment
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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MECA Middle East Children's Alliance
Howard & Roslyn Zinn Presente! Honor Their Legacy By Providing Clean Water for Children in Gaza
http://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=13
Howard Zinn supported the work of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) from the beginning. Over the years, he lent his name and his time countless times to support our work. Howard and Roz were both personal friends of mine and Howard helped MECA raise funds for our projects for children in Palestine by coming to the Bay Area and doing events for us.
On the first anniversary of Howard's passing, I hope you will join MECA in celebrating these two extraordinary individuals.
- Barbara Lubin, Executive Director
YES! I want to help MECA build a water purification and desalination unit at the Khan Younis Co-ed Elementary School for 1,400 students in Gaza in honor of Howard & Roslyn Zinn.
http://www.mecaforpeace.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=13
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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Email received from Lynne Stewart:
12/19/10; 12:03pm
Dear Folks:
Some nuts and bolts and trivia,
1. New Address
Lynne Stewart #53504 - 054
Unit 2N
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
2. Visiting is very liberal but first I have to get people on my visiting list Wait til I or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
3. One hour time difference
4. Commissary Money is always welcome It is how I pay for the phone and for email. Also need it for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing , ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons , 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated ? Of course, it's the BOP !)
5. Food is vastly improved. Just had Sunday Brunch real scrambled eggs, PORK sausage, Baked or home fried potatoes, Butter(sweet whipped M'God !!) Grapefruit juice Toast , orange. I will probably regain the weight I lost at MCC! Weighing against that is the fact that to eat we need to walk to another building (about at far as from my house to the F Train) Also included is 3 flights of stairs up and down. May try to get an elevator pass and try NOT to use it.
6. In a room with 4 bunks(small) about two tiers of rooms with same with "atrium" in middle with tv sets and tables and chairs. Estimate about 500 on Unit 2N and there are 4 units. Population Black, Mexicano and other spanish speaking (all of whom iron their underwear, Marta), White, Native Americans (few), no orientals or foreign speaking caucasians--lots are doing long bits, victims of drugs (meth etc) and boyfriends. We wear army style (khaki) pants with pockets tee shirts and dress shirts long sleeved and short sleeved. When one of the women heard that I hadn't ironed in 40 years, they offered to do the shirts for me. (This is typical of the help I get--escorted to meals and every other protection, explanations, supplies, etc. Mostly from white women.) One drawback is not having a bathroom in the room---have to go about 75 yards at all hours of the day and night --clean though.
7. Final Note--the sunsets and sunrises are gorgeous, the place is very open and outdoors there are pecan trees and birds galore (I need books for trees and birds (west) The full moon last night gladdened my heart as I realized it was shining on all of you I hold dear.
Love Struggle
Lynne
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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Help end the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning!
Bradley Manning Support Network. December 22, 2010
The Marine Brig at Quantico, Virginia is using "injury prevention" as a vehicle to inflict extreme pre-trial punishment on accused Wikileaks whistleblower Army PFC Bradley Manning (photo right). These "maximum conditions" are not unheard-of during an inmate's first week at a military confinement facility, but when applied continuously for months and with no end in sight they amount to a form of torture. Bradley, who just turned 23-years-old last week, has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest in late May. We're now turning to Bradley's supporters worldwide to directly protest, and help bring a halt to, the extremely punitive conditions of Bradley's pre-trial detention.
We need your help in pressing the following demands:
End the inhumane, degrading conditions of pre-trial confinement and respect Bradley's human rights. Specifically, lift the "Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order". This would allow Bradley meaningful physical exercise, uninterrupted sleep during the night, and a release from isolation. We are not asking for "special treatment". In fact, we are demanding an immediate end to the special treatment.
Quantico Base Commander
Colonel Daniel Choike
3250 Catlin Ave, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-2707 (phone)
Quantico Brig Commanding Officer
CWO4 James Averhart
3247 Elrod Ave, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-4242 (fax)
Background
In the wake of an investigative report last week by Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com giving evidence that Bradley Manning was subject to "detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries", Bradley's attorney, David Coombs, published an article at his website on Saturday entitled "A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning". Mr. Coombs details the maximum custody conditions that Bradley is subject to at the Quantico Confinement Facility and highlights an additional set of restrictions imposed upon him under a Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order.
Usually enforced only through a detainee's first week at a confinement facility, or in cases of violent and/or suicidal inmates, the standing POI order has severely limited Manning's access to exercise, daylight and human contact for the past five months. The military's own psychologists assigned to Quantico have recommended that the POI order and the extra restrictions imposed on Bradley be lifted.
Despite not having been convicted of any crime or even yet formally indicted, the confinement regime Bradley lives under includes pronounced social isolation and a complete lack of opportunities for meaningful exercise. Additionally, Bradley's sleep is regularly interrupted. Coombs writes: "The guards are required to check on Manning every five minutes [...] At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay."
Denver Nicks writes in The Daily Beast that "[Bradley Manning's] attorney [...] says the extended isolation - now more than seven months of solitary confinement - is weighing on his client's psyche. [...] Both Coombs and Manning's psychologist, Coombs says, are sure Manning is mentally healthy, that there is no evidence he's a threat to himself, and shouldn't be held in such severe conditions under the artifice of his own protection."
In an article to be published at Firedoglake.com later today, David House, a friend of Bradley's who visits him regularly at Quantico, says that Bradley "has not been outside or into the brig yard for either recreation or exercise in four full weeks. He related that visits to the outdoors have been infrequent and sporadic for the past several months."
In an average military court martial situation, a defense attorney would be able to bring these issues of pre-trial punishment to the military judge assigned to the case (known as an Article 13 hearing). However, the military is unlikely to assign a judge to Bradley's case until the pre-trial Article 32 hearing is held (similar to an arraignment in civilian court), and that is not expected until February, March, or later-followed by the actual court martial trial months after that. In short, you are Bradley's best and most immediate hope.
What can you do?
Contact the Marine Corps officers above and respectfully, but firmly, ask that they lift the extreme pre-trial confinement conditions against Army PFC Bradley Manning.
Forward this urgent appeal for action widely.
Sign the "Stand with Brad" public petition and letter campaign at www.standwithbrad.org - Sign online, and we'll mail out two letters on your behalf to Army officials.
Donate to Bradley's defense fund at www.couragetoresist.org/bradley
References:
"The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention", by Glenn Greenwald for Salon.com, 15 December 2010
"A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning", by attorney David E. Coombs, 18 December 2010
"Bradley Manning's Life Behind Bars", by Denver Nicks for the Daily Beast, 17 December 2010
Bradley Manning Support Network
Courage To Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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KOREA: Emergency Response Actions Needed
The United National Antiwar Committee urges the antiwar movement to begin to plan now for Emergency 5pm Day-of or Day-after demonstrations, should fighting break out on the Korean Peninsula or its surrounding waters.
As in past war crisis and U.S. attacks we propose:
NYC -- Times Square, Washington, D.C. -- the White House
In Many Cities - Federal Buildings
Many tens of thousands of U.S., Japanese and South Korean troops are mobilized on land and on hundreds of warships and aircraft carriers. The danger of a general war in Asia is acute.
China and Russia have made it clear that the scheduled military maneuvers and live-fire war "exercises" from an island right off the coast of north Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) by South Korea are very dangerous. The DPRK has made it clear that they consider these live-fire war exercises to be an act of war and they will again respond if they are again fired on.
The U.S. deployment of thousands of troops, ships, and aircraft in the area while South Korea is firing thousands of rounds of live ammunition and missiles is an enormously dangerous provocation, not only to the DPRK but to China. The Yellow Sea also borders China. The island and the waters where the war maneuvers are taking place are north of the Korean Demilitarized Zone and only eight miles from the coast of the DPRK.
On Sunday, December 19 in a day-long emergency session, the U.S. blocked in the UN Security Council any actions to resolve the crisis.
UNAC action program passed in Albany at the United National Antiwar Conference, July 2010 of over 800 antiwar, social justice and community organizations included the following Resolution on Korea:
15. In solidarity with the antiwar movements of Japan and Korea, each calling for U.S. Troops to Get Out Now, and given the great increase in U.S. military preparations against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, National Peace Conference participants will organize immediate protests following any attack by the U.S. on Korea. U.S. war preparations include stockpiling hundreds of bunker-busters and conducting major war games near the territorial waters of China and Korea. In keeping with our stand for the right of self-determination and our demand of Out Now, the National Peace Conference calls for Bringing All U.S. Troops Home Now!
UNAC urges the whole antiwar movement to begin to circulate messages alerts now in preparation. Together let's join together and demand: Bring all U.S. Troops Home Now! Stop the Wars and the Threats of War.
The United National Antiwar Committee, www.UNACpeace.org
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In earnest support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:
http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
rsn:Petition
We here undersigned express our support for the work and integrity of Julian Assange. We express concern that the charges against the WikiLeaks founder appear too convenient both in terms of timing and the novelty of their nature.
We call for this modern media innovator, and fighter for human rights extraordinaire, to be afforded the same rights to defend himself before Swedish justice that all others similarly charged might expect, and that his liberty not be compromised as a courtesy to those governments whose truths he has revealed have embarrassed.
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GAP Inc: End Your Relationship with Supplier that Allows Workers to be Burned Alive
http://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/workers_burned_alive_making_clothes_for_the_gap
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KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT! FREE KEVIN COOPER!
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row in California for 25 years, is asking the outgoing state governor to commute his death sentence before leaving office on 2 January 2011. Kevin Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence of the four murders for which he was sentenced to death. Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.
On the night of 4 June 1983, Douglas and Peggy Ryen were hacked and stabbed to death in their home in Chino Hills, California, along with their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes. The couple's eight-year-old son, Joshua Ryen, was seriously wounded, but survived. He told investigators that the attackers were three or four white men. In hospital, he saw a picture of Kevin Cooper on television and said that Cooper, who is black, was not the attacker. However, the boy's later testimony - that he only saw one attacker - was introduced at the 1985 trial. The case has many other troubling aspects which call into question the reliability of the state's case and its conduct in obtaining this conviction (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/013/2004/en).
Kevin Cooper was less than eight hours from execution in 2004 when the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted a stay and sent the case back to the District Court for testing on blood and hair evidence, including to establish if the police had planted evidence. The District Court ruled in 2005 that the testing had not proved Kevin Cooper's innocence - his lawyers (and five Ninth Circuit judges) maintain that it did not do the testing as ordered. Nevertheless, in 2007, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld the District Court's ruling. One of the judges described the result as "wholly discomforting" because of evidence tampering and destruction, but noted that she was constrained by US law, which places substantial obstacles in the way of successful appeals.
In 2009, the Ninth Circuit refused to have the whole court rehear the case. Eleven of its judges dissented. One of the dissenting opinions, running to more than 80 pages and signed by five judges, warned that "the State of California may be about to execute an innocent man". On the question of the evidence testing, they said: "There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing and...imposed unreasonable conditions on the testing" ordered by the Ninth Circuit. They pointed to a test result that, if valid, indicated that evidence had been planted, and they asserted that the district court had blocked further scrutiny of this issue.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had already denied clemency in 2004 when the Ninth Circuit issued its stay. At the time, he had said that the "courts have reviewed this case for more than eighteen years. Evidence establishing his guilt is overwhelming". Clearly, a notable number of federal judges disagree. The five judges in the Ninth Circuit's lengthy dissent in 2009 stated that the evidence of Kevin Cooper's guilt at his trial was "quite weak" and concluded that he "is probably innocent of the crimes for which the State of California is about to execute him".
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
On 2 June 1983, two days before the Chino Hills murders, Kevin Cooper had escaped from a minimum security prison, where he was serving a four-year term for burglary, and had hidden in an empty house near the Ryen home for two nights. After his arrest, he became the focus of public hatred. Outside the venue of his preliminary hearing, for example, people hung an effigy of a monkey in a noose with a sign reading "Hang the Nigger!!" At the time of the trial, jurors were confronted by graffiti declaring "Die Kevin Cooper" and "Kevin Cooper Must Be Hanged". Kevin Cooper pleaded not guilty - the jury deliberated for seven days before convicting him - and he has maintained his innocence since then. Since Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency in 2004, more evidence supporting Kevin Cooper's claim of innocence has emerged, including for example, testimony from three witnesses who say they saw three white men near the crime scene on the night of the murders with blood on them.
In 2007, Judge Margaret McKeown was the member of the Ninth Circuit's three-judge panel who indicated that she was upholding the District Court's 2005 ruling despite her serious concerns. She wrote: "Significant evidence bearing on Cooper's guilt has been lost, destroyed or left unpursued, including, for example, blood-covered coveralls belonging to a potential suspect who was a convicted murderer, and a bloody t-shirt, discovered alongside the road near the crime scene. The managing criminologist in charge of the evidence used to establish Cooper's guilt at trial was, as it turns out, a heroin addict, and was fired for stealing drugs seized by the police. Countless other alleged problems with the handling and disclosure of evidence and the integrity of the forensic testing and investigation undermine confidence in the evidence". She continued that "despite the presence of serious questions as to the integrity of the investigation and evidence supporting the conviction, we are constrained by the requirements of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)". Judge McKeown wrote that "the habeas process does not account for lingering doubt or new evidence that cannot leap the clear and convincing hurdle of AEDPA. Instead, we are left with a situation in which confidence in the blood sample is murky at best, and lost, destroyed or tampered evidence cannot be factored into the final analysis of doubt. The result is wholly discomforting, but one that the law demands".
Even if it is correct that the AEDPA demands this result, the power of executive clemency is not so confined. Last September, for example, the governor of Ohio commuted Kevin Keith's death sentence because of doubts about his guilt even though his death sentence had been upheld on appeal (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/079/2010/en). Governor Ted Strickland said that despite circumstantial evidence linking the condemned man to the crime, "many legitimate questions have been raised regarding the evidence in support of the conviction and the investigation which led to it. In particular, Mr Keith's conviction relied upon the linking of certain eyewitness testimony with certain forensic evidence about which important questions have been raised. I also find the absence of a full investigation of other credible suspects troubling." The same could be said in the case of Kevin Cooper, whose lawyer is asking Governor Schwarzenegger to commute the death sentence before he leaves office on 2 January 2011. While Kevin Cooper does not yet have an execution date, it is likely that one will be set, perhaps early in 2011.
More than 130 people have been released from death rows on grounds of innocence in the USA since 1976. At the original trial in each case, the defendant had been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is clear beyond any dispute that the USA's criminal justice system is capable of making mistakes. International safeguards require that the death penalty not be imposed if guilt is not "based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts". Amnesty International opposes all executions regardless of the seriousness of the crime or the guilt or innocence of the condemned.
California has the largest death row in the USA, with more than 700 prisoners under sentence of death out of a national total of some 3,200. California accounts for 13 of the 1,234 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977. There have been 46 executions in the USA this year. The last execution in California was in January 2006.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:
- Acknowledging the seriousness of the crime for which Kevin Cooper was sentenced to death;
- Urging Governor Schwarzenegger to take account of the continuing doubts about Kevin Cooper's guilt, including as expressed by more than 10 federal judges since 2004, when executive clemency was last requested;
- Urging the Governor to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence.
APPEALS TO:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building, Sacramento, CA 95814, USA
Fax: 1 916-558-3160
Email: governor@governor.ca.gov or via http://gov.ca.gov/interact#contact
Salutation : Dear Governor
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.
Check with the AIUSA Urgent Action office if sending appeals after 2 January 2011.
Tip of the Month:
Write as soon as you can. Try to write as close as possible to the date a case is issued.
** POSTAGE RATES **
Within the United States:
$0.28 - Postcards
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To Canada:
$0.75 - Postcards
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$0.79 - Postcards
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Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights.
This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal.
Urgent Action Network
Amnesty International USA
600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl
Washington DC 20003
Email: uan@aiusa.org
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/
Phone: 202.509.8193
Fax: 202.675.8566
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Free the Children of Palestine!
Sign Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
Published by Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition on Dec 16, 2010
Category: Children's Rights
Region: GLOBAL
Target: President Obama
Web site: http://www.al-awda.org
Background (Preamble):
According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old.
Children and teen-agers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are commonplace.
Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100 of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank with Defense Children International, a Geneva-based non governmental organization, found that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand.
Minors were often asked to give names and incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release. Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is supposedly a signatory.
Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
We, the undersigned call on US President Obama to direct Israel to
1. Stop all the night raids and arrests of Palestinian Children forthwith.
2. Immediately release all Palestinian children detained in its prisons and detention centers.
3. End all forms of systematic and institutionalized abuse against all Palestinian children.
4. Implement the full restoration of Palestinian children's rights in accordance with international law including, but not limited to, their right to return to their homes of origin, to education, to medical and psychological care, and to freedom of movement and expression.
The US government, which supports Israel to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars a year while most ordinary Americans are suffering in a very bad economy, is bound by its laws and international conventions to cut off all aid to Israel until it ends all of its violations of human rights and basic freedoms in a verifiable manner.
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"Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests."..."Publishing State Secrets" By Leon Trotsky
Documents on Soviet Policy, Trotsky, iii, 2 p. 64
November 22, 1917
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917/November/22.htm
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING! STOP THE FBI RAIDS NOW!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
To understand how much a trillion dollars is, consider looking at it in terms of time:
A million seconds would be about eleven-and-one-half days; a billion seconds would be 31 years; and a trillion seconds would be 31,000 years!
From the novel "A Dark Tide," by Andrew Gross
Now think of it in terms of U.S. war dollars and bankster bailouts!
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MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN'S ALLIANCE
Your Year-End Gift for the Children
Double your impact with this matching gift opportunity!
Dear Friend of the Children,
You may have recently received a letter from me via regular mail with a review of the important things you helped MECA accomplish for the children in 2010, along with a special Maia Project decal.
My letter to you also included an announcement of MECA's first ever matching gift offer. One of our most generous supporters will match all gifts received by December 31. 2010 to a total of $35,000.
So, whether you are a long time supporter, or giving for the first-time... Whether you can give $10 or $1,000... This is a unique opportunity to double the impact of your year-end gift!
Your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar, making it go twice as far so that MECA can:
* Install twenty more permanent drinking water units in Gaza schools though our Maia Project
* Continue our work with Playgrounds for Palestine to complete a community park in the besieged East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where violent Israeli settlers attack children and adults, Israeli police arrest the victims, and the city conducts "administrative demolitions" of Palestinian homes.
* Send a large medical aid shipment to Gaza.
* Renew support for "Let the Children Play and Heal," a program in Gaza to help children cope with trauma and grief through arts programs, referrals to therapists, educational materials for families and training for mothers.
Your support for the Middle East Children's Alliance's delivers real, often life-saving, help. And it does more than that. It sends a message of hope and solidarity to Palestine-showing the people that we are standing beside them as they struggle to bring about a better life for their children.
With warm regards,
Barbara Lubin
Founder and Director
P.S. Please give as much as you possible can, and please make your contribution now, so it will be doubled. Thank you so much.
P.S.S. If you didn't receive a MAIA Project decal in the mail or if you would like another one, please send an email message to meca@mecaforpeace.org with "MAIA Project decal" in the subject line when you make your contribution.
To make a gift by mail send to:
MECA, 1101 8th Street, Berkley, CA 94710
To make a gift by phone, please call MECA's off at: 510-548-0542
To "GO PAPERLESS" and receive all your MECA communications by email, send a message to meca@mecaforpeace.org with "Paperless" in the subject line.
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For Immediate Release
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
12/2/2010
For more information: Joe Lombardo, 518-281-1968,
UNACpeace@gmail.org, NationalPeaceConference.org
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) calls for the release of Bradley Manning who is awaiting trial accused of leaking the material to Wikileaks that has been released over the past several months. We also call for an end to the harassment of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and we call for an independent, international investigation of the illegal activity exposed through the material released by Wikileaks.
Before sending the material to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning tried to get his superiors in the military to do something about what he understood to be clear violations of international law. His superiors told him to keep quiet so Manning did the right thing; he exposed the illegal activity to the world.
The Afghan material leaked earlier shows military higher-ups telling soldiers to kill enemy combatants who were trying to surrender. The Iraq Wikileaks video from 2007 shows the US military killing civilians and news reporters from a helicopter while laughing about it. The widespread corruption among U.S. allies has been exposed by the most recent leaks of diplomatic cables. Yet, instead of calling for change in these policies, we hear only a call to suppress further leaks.
At the national antiwar conference held in Albany in July, 2010, at which UNAC was founded, we heard from Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers on the ground during the helicopter attack on the civilians in Iraq exposed by Wikileaks (see: http://www.mediasanctuary.org/movie/1810 ). He talked about removing wounded children from a civilian vehicle that the US military had shot up. It affected him so powerfully that he and another soldier who witnessed the massacre wrote a letter of apology to the families of the civilians who were killed.
We ask why this material was classified in the first place. There were no state secrets in the material, only evidence of illegal and immoral activity by the US military, the US government and its allies. To try to cover this up by classifying the material is a violation of our right to know the truth about these wars. In this respect, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should be held up as heroes, not hounded for exposing the truth.
UNAC calls for an end to the illegal and immoral policies exposed by Wikileaks and an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to threats against Iran and North Korea.
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Courage to Resist needs your support
By Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist.
It's been quite a ride the last four months since we took up the defense of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Since then, we helped form the Bradley Manning Support Network, established a defense fund, and have already paid over half of Bradley's total $100,000 in estimated legal expenses.
Now, I'm asking for your support of Courage to Resist so that we can continue to support not only Bradley, but the scores of other troops who are coming into conflict with military authorities due to reasons of conscience.
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Iraq War over? Afghanistan occupation winding down? Not from what we see. Please take a look at, "Soldier Jeff Hanks refuses deployment, seeks PTSD help" in our December newsletter. Jeff's situation is not isolated. Actually, his story is only unique in that he has chosen to share it with us in the hopes that it may result in some change. Jeff's case also illustrates the importance of Iraq Veterans Against the War's new "Operation Recovery" campaign which calls for an end to the deployment of traumatized troops.
Most of the folks who call us for help continue to be effected by Stoploss, a program that involuntarily extends enlistments (despite Army promises of its demise), or the Individual Ready Reserve which recalls thousands of former Soldiers and Marines quarterly from civilian life.
Another example of our efforts is Kyle Wesolowski. After returning from Iraq, Kyle submitted an application for a conscientious objector discharge based on his Buddhist faith. Kyle explains, "My experience of physical threats, religious persecution, and general abuse seems to speak of a system that appears to be broken.... It appears that I have no other recourse but to now refuse all duties that prepare myself for war or aid in any way shape or form to other soldiers in conditioning them to go to war." We believe he shouldn't have to walk this path alone.
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Add your name! We stand with Bradley Manning.
"We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad... We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning."
Dear All,
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist are launching a new campaign, and we wanted to give you a chance to be among the first to add your name to this international effort. If you sign the letter online, we'll print out and mail two letters to Army officials on your behalf. With your permission, we may also use your name on the online petition and in upcoming media ads.
Read the complete public letter and add your name at:
http://standwithbrad.org/
Courage to Resist (http://couragetoresist.org)
on behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://bradleymanning.org)
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Dear Friend,
On Friday, September 24th, the FBI raided homes in Chicago and Minneapolis, and turned the Anti-War Committee office upside down. We were shocked. Our response was strong however and we jumped into action holding emergency protests. When the FBI seized activists' personal computers, cell phones, and papers claiming they were investigating "material support for terrorism", they had no idea there would be such an outpouring of support from the anti-war movement across this country! Over 61 cities protested, with crowds of 500 in Minneapolis and Chicago. Activists distributed 12,000 leaflets at the One Nation Rally in Washington D.C. Supporters made thousands of calls to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Solidarity statements from community organizations, unions, and other groups come in every day. By organizing against the attacks, the movement grows stronger.
At the same time, trusted lawyers stepped up to form a legal team and mount a defense. All fourteen activists signed letters refusing to testify. So Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox withdrew the subpoenas, but this is far from over. In fact, the repression is just starting. The FBI continues to question activists at their homes and work places. The U.S. government is trying to put people in jail for anti-war and international solidarity activism and there is no indication they are backing off. The U.S. Attorney has many options and a lot of power-he may re-issue subpoenas, attempt to force people to testify under threat of imprisonment, or make arrests.
To be successful in pushing back this attack, we need your donation. We need you to make substantial contributions like $1000, $500, and $200. We understand many of you are like us, and can only afford $50, $20, or $10, but we ask you to dig deep. The legal bills can easily run into the hundreds of thousands. We are all united to defend a movement for peace and justice that seeks friendship with people in other countries. These fourteen anti-war activists have done nothing wrong, yet their freedom is at stake.
It is essential that we defend our sisters and brothers who are facing FBI repression and the Grand Jury process. With each of your contributions, the movement grows stronger.
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
18) A Tunisian-Egyptian Link That Shook Arab History
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and DAVID E. SANGER
February 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/middleeast/14egypt-tunisia-protests.html?hp
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL (Unless otherwise noted)
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1) FBI harasses Michigan anti-war activist
By Tom Burke
February 13, 2011
Read more articles in FBI Repression
Via Email
2) Bahrain Protests Expand on Third Day
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17bahrain.html?ref=world
3) Students in Iran Clash at Funeral
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and ALAN COWELL
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17iran.html?ref=world
4) Police Try to End Clashes in Yemen
By LAURA KASINOF and J. DAVID GOODMAN
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17yemen.html?ref=world
5) Unrest Reported in Libyan City of Benghazi
By ALAN COWELL
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17libya.html?ref=world
6) Egypt Leaders Found 'Off' Switch for Internet
By JAMES GLANZ and JOHN MARKOFF
February 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?ref=world
7) Police Fire on Protesters in Iraq
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and DURAID ADNAN
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17iraq.html?ref=world
8) In One Slice of Egypt, Daily Woes Top Religion
By ANTHONY SHADID
February 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/world/middleeast/16islam.html?ref=world
9) Lawsuit Says Military Is Rife With Sexual Abuse
By ASHLEY PARKER
February 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16military.html?ref=us
10) Freed Man's Suit Accuses Brooklyn Prosecutors of Misconduct
By JOHN ELIGON
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/nyregion/17brooklyn.html?ref=nyregion
11) Obama Declares Open Season on Unions
By Gregg Shotwell
February 15, 2011
Live Bait & Ammo #162
VIA Email
12) Egyptians defy call to end strikes
Airport and textile workers among those refusing to heed military's appeal not to protest.
Agencies
Al Jazeera
February 16, 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011216141815340645.html
13) Bahrain's Military Takes Control of Key Areas in Capital
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18bahrain.html?hp
14) Brutal Crackdown in Moderate Bahrain
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/opinion/18kristof.html?hp
15) Protests Spread to More Iraqi Cities
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and DURAID ADNAN
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18iraq.html?hp
16) Workers Strike Along Suez Canal
By ANTHONY SHADID
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18egypt.html?hp
17) Security Forces in Bahrain Open Fire on Mourners
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and NADIM AUDI
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19bahrain.html?hp
18) Now Bahrain
New York Times Editorial
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/opinion/18fri2.html?hp
19) Battle Lines Harden Across the Mideast as Rulers Dig In
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19protests.html?hp
20) Egyptians Say Military Discourages an Open Economy
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18military.html?hp
21) 24 Reported Killed in Libya Crackdown
By ALAN COWELL
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/africa/19libya.html?hp
22) Yemen Protesters Face Off for 8th Day
By LAURA KASINOF
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19yemen.html?ref=world
23) Violence Erupts at Jordan Protest
By RANYA KADRI and ISABEL KERSHNER
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19jordan.html?ref=world
24) Among Egypt's Missing, Tales of Torture and Prison
By LIAM STACK
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18missing.html?ref=world
25) In Puerto Rico, Protests End Short Peace at University
By TAMAR LEWIN
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/education/18puertorico.html?ref=us
26) Patriot Act Extended for 3 Months
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/us/politics/18brfs-PATRIOTACTEX_BRF.html?ref=us
27) Cellphones Become the World's Eyes and Ears on Protests
By JENNIFER PRESTON and BRIAN STELTER
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19video.html?ref=business
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1) FBI harasses Michigan anti-war activist
By Tom Burke
February 13, 2011
Read more articles in FBI Repression
Via Email
Kalamazoo, MI - FBI agents continue to harass anti-war and international solidarity activists, this time in Michigan. On Feb 3., longtime Michigan peace activist Dave Staiger received a phone call from the FBI. Special agent Karlie Wood asked to interview Dave in person. Staiger told the agent, "My policy is to contact a lawyer if the FBI or police want to talk to me." The agent said, "Contacting a lawyer is not necessary," and that Staiger was not in any trouble. Special Agent Wood then stated that she wanted to talk about matters relating to the Grand Jury subpoenas and FBI investigation in Minneapolis and Chicago.
On Sept. 24, 2010
Sixty cities and campuses across the country and some overseas held protests Jan. 25. The original 14 and the new nine activists subpoenaed all refuse to speak at Fitzgerald's Grand Jury. The Grand Jury is a secret court of inquisition, handpicked by Fitzgerald's office, with no judge. Those called before a Grand Jury have no right to a lawyer in the room with them and no press is allowed to witness the proceedings.
Dave Staiger said he participated in the recent National Call-In Day to Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney General Holder and President Obama, asking them to stop the FBI raids and shut down Fitzgerald's Grand Jury. This helped him in knowing what to say to the FBI and to not be intimidated.
Staiger states, "This is an attack on free speech and it is undemocratic. It is starting to remind me of the 1950s and the McCarthy era."
Mick Kelly, of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression
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2) Bahrain Protests Expand on Third Day
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17bahrain.html?ref=world
MANAMA, Bahrain - Propelled by the funeral of a slain protester, thousands of people poured into this nation's symbolic center, Pearl Square, and flooded the streets on Wednesday, dramatically expanding pro-democracy protests on their third straight day.
Emulating the occupation of Cairo's Tahrir Square that helped toppled Hosni Mubarak as president, news reports said, around 2,000 people camped out at the major road junction in the city center demanding a change in the government of this strategically placed Persian Gulf kingdom that is home to the United States Navy's 5th Fleet. Hundreds more joined a procession to mourn one of the two protesters slain in confrontations with the authorities since Monday.
The police massed near Pearl Square but did not intervene, apparently anxious to avoid further violence.
The renewed unrest was the latest in a wave of dissent spreading from the shores of the Gulf as far west as the Mediterranean coastline of Libya where, for the first time, demonstrations were reported to have broken out overnight in the second city of Benghazi. Police reinforcements also took to the streets of Sana, the Yemeni capital, as hundreds of demonstrators for and against the pro-American government massed for a sixth consecutive day. And there were reports of fresh clashes in Iran between government forces and protesters at the funeral of a demonstrator killed on Monday.
Late on Tuesday in Bahrain, protesters entered Pearl Square in a raucous rally that again demonstrated the power of popular movements that are transforming the political landscape of the Middle East.
In a matter of hours on Tuesday, this small monarchy experienced the now familiar sequence of events that has rocked the Arab world. What started as an online call for a "Day of Rage" progressed within 24 hours to an exuberant group of demonstrators, cheering, waving flags, setting up tents and taking over the grassy traffic circle beneath the towering monument of a pearl in the heart of Manama, the capital.
The crowd grew bolder as it grew larger, and as in Tunisia and Egypt, modest concessions from the government only raised expectations among the protesters, who by day's end were talking about tearing the whole system down, monarchy and all.
Then as momentum built up behind the protests on Tuesday, the 18 members of Parliament from the Islamic National Accord Association, the traditional opposition, announced that they were suspending participation in the legislature.
The mood of exhilaration stood in marked contrast to a day that began in sorrow and violence, when mourners who had gathered to bury a young man killed by the police the night before clashed again with the security forces.
Mr. Matrouq was killed in that melee, also by the police.
"We are going to get our demands," said Hussein Ramadan, 32, a political activist and organizer who helped lead the crowds from the burial site to Pearl Square on Tuesday. "The people are angry, but we will control our anger, we will not burn a single tire or throw a single rock. We will not go home until we succeed. They want us to be violent. We will not."
Bahrain is known as a playground for residents of Saudi Arabia who can drive over a causeway to enjoy the nightclubs and bars of the far more permissive kingdom. Its ruler, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, is an important ally of the United States in fighting terrorism and countering Iranian influence in the region.
A spokeswoman for the United States military in Bahrain said the unrest has not affected its base nor any of its roughly 6,100 military and civilian personnel stationed there.
"The U.S. is not being targeted at all in any of these protests; this is strictly a Bahrain issue," said the spokeswoman, Jennifer Stride, in a telephone interview, the sound of Al Jazeera English audible in background.
It is far too soon to tell where Bahrain's popular political uprising will go. The demands are economic - people want jobs - as well as political, in that most would like to see the nation transformed from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional one. But the events here, inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, have altered the dynamics in a nation where political expression has long been tamed by harsh police tactics and prison terms.
In a rare speech to the nation, the king expressed his regret on national television over the two young men killed by the police and called for an investigation into the deaths. But in an unparalleled move he also instructed his police force to allow more than 10,000 demonstrators to claim Pearl Square as their own.
As night fell Tuesday and a cold wind blew off the Persian Gulf, thousands of demonstrators occupied the square or watched from a highway overpass, cheering. Where a day earlier the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at any gatherings that tried to protest, no matter how small, or peaceful, people now waved the red and white flag of Bahrain, gave speeches, chanted slogans and shared food.
The police massed on the other side of a bridge leading to the square. A police helicopter never stopped circling, but took no action, to the protesters' surprise.
By 10 p.m., many of the people headed home from the square, with many saying they had plans to return the next day. A core group planned to spend the night there in tents.
"Now the people are the real players, not the government, not the opposition," said Matar Ibrahim Matar, 34, an opposition member of Parliament who joined the crowd gathered beneath the mammoth statue. "I don't think anyone expected this, not the government, not us."
Bahrain's domestic politics have long been tangled. The king and the ruling elite are Sunni Muslims. The majority, or about 70 percent, of the local population of about 500,000, are Shiite Muslims. The Shiites claim they are discriminated against in jobs, housing and education, and their political demands are not new.
The demonstrators have asked for the release of political prisoners, the creation of a more representative and empowered Parliament, the establishment of a constitution written by the people and the formation of a new, more representative cabinet. They complain bitterly that the prime minister, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the king's uncle, has been in office for 40 years.
They also want the government to stop the practice of offering citizenship to foreigners willing to come to Bahrain to serve as police officers or soldiers, a tactic they say is aimed at trying to reduce the influence of Shiites by increasing the number of Sunnis.
While the demands are standard here, what is new is the way the demonstrations have unfolded, following the script from Egypt and Tunisia. Young people organized a protest using online tools like Twitter and Facebook. They tapped into growing frustrations with economic hardship and political repression but were not aided by the traditional opposition movements.
On Tuesday, the day began with about 2,000 mourners lining up in a parking lot at the Salmaniya Medical Complex behind a truck that on its roof carried the coffin of Ali Mushaima, 21, who died the night before from a shotgun wound to his back.
As soon as the procession exited the hospital grounds, a young man, Mr. Matrouq, bolted from the crowd and charged at the police standing nearby. He threw a rock and the police fired tear gas into the crowd. They fired other weapons, too, and Mr. Matrouq was killed.
Nadim Audi contributed reporting from Bahrain, Alan Cowell from Paris, and J. David Goodman from New York.
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3) Students in Iran Clash at Funeral
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and ALAN COWELL
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17iran.html?ref=world
Two days after the largest antigovernment protest in Iran in more than a year, supporters and opponents of the authorities fought Wednesday in a battle for the memory of a slain protester, state media and an opposition Web site reported.
The clashes erupted at Tehran University during the funeral of Saane Zhaleh, one of two students reported killed during protests on Monday.
Images on the Web site of the state broadcaster IRIB showed a throng of people surrounding a coffin, wrapped in the green, white and red Iranian flag, as it was carried above the heads of the crowd. But the opposition Kaleme Web site said the university's arts campus had been taken over by pro-government forces who beat and arrested anti-government students.
The contest to claim Mr. Zhaleh as a martyr reflected divisions that seemed to have emerged once more into the open following the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
The authorities said Mr. Zhaleh, a Kurdish student, was a Basij, one of the student vigilantes on many campuses, who was shot by a government opponent. Opposition accounts said plainclothes security officers roaming the streets beat him to death and claimed that he had joined the antigovernment protest.
With the fighting on Wednesday both sides seemed to be seeking to claim him as one of their own.
"Students and the people attending the funeral ceremony of the martyred student Saane Zhaleh have clashed with a limited number of people apparently linked to the sedition movement and forced them out by chanting slogans of death to hypocrites," IRIB's Web site was quoted as saying.
The protests on Monday in Tehran and other cities were taken by the opposition as a sign that it has resurfaced after the huge crackdown on its followers following Iran's disputed presidential election in 2009.
But on Tuesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed opposition attempts to revive mass demonstrations as doomed to fail, while members of the Iranian Parliament clamored for the two most prominent leaders of the protest movement to be executed.
Critics have called in the past for the two men, Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, to be prosecuted for alleged crimes that would carry the death penalty. The calls for punishment on Tuesday, however, appeared to be the most strident yet, with members of Parliament shouting in unison, "Moussavi, Karroubi should be hanged!"
But while the government has tried and convicted many opposition members since large street protests in 2009, it has so far shied away from putting the two men on trial, perhaps fearing that would lead to further unrest.
On Wednesday, Mr. Karroubi's Web site reported that the house of his eldest son, Hossein Karroubi, had been raided and damaged by security officers seeking to arrest him.
The government tried to squelch reports about the Monday demonstrations, arresting or sequestering critics on Tuesday and revoking the working credentials of about a dozen foreign correspondents who had been ordered not to cover the protests.
Opposition supporters were elated about the demonstrations, saying they felt people's willingness to come out despite beatings by the police proved that the antigovernment movement born after Mr. Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election was still alive after 20 months of brutal government suppression.
"The friends I talked to in Iran were so happy that people had shown up after months of nothing going on," said Sadra M. Shahab, who helped spread the word about the demonstrations from overseas.
Mr. Karroubi, who has been under house arrest since the eve of the protests, said Tuesday that "the government should take the cotton out of its ears and hear the voice of the people," according to a statement posted on Saham News, his Web site.
"Violent and aggressive actions in response to the will of the people can halt continuing protests up to a point," he said, addressing the government, "but you should learn from the history of the governments that have fled." He was referring to the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, who were recently driven out by street protests.
Mr. Karroubi did not mention any future plans, and it is unclear if the opposition has a clear idea of what to do next. Organizers of a special Facebook page dedicated to the protests in Iran said the authorities would never allow Iranian demonstrators to set up the type of permanent encampment that came to represent the tenacity of the Egyptians in Tahrir Square in Cairo as they called for Hosni Mubarak to leave.
There were reports at least two people died in the protests in Iran on Monday. Few reporters were able to cover the demonstrations, but witness accounts and some news reports suggested that perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 people took to the streets in several cities, including Tehran.
Mr. Ahmadinejad, in a live interview on state television, pursued the government line that such demonstrations were foreign attempts to undermine a great nation, according to reports by the official news agency, IRNA.
"The Iranian nation is like the sun in that it is so brilliant. And of course this brilliance has enemies and they make true efforts," he said. "but ultimately their efforts are like throwing dirt at the sun. It falls right back on them."
By chanting against the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Monday, protesters were demanding that the entire government system should go, rather than simply attacking Mr. Ahmadinejad. In doing so, they forged rare unity between him and Parliament, which have been at odds over domestic policy.
Of the 290 Parliament members, 222 signed a statement on Tuesday demanding that the government prosecute Mr. Moussavi and Mr. Karroubi, according to IRNA. It was at least the third time that the two men have been threatened publicly with prosecution.
"They would like to provide an atmosphere for the government to take harder action against the opposition leaders," said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, an exiled former member of Parliament now at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. "But I do not think they could do anything like execute the leaders - even if they arrested them, it would motivate a new round of the uprising."
On Tuesday, pro-government demonstrators staged a sit-in at Mr. Karroubi's house, according to opposition Web sites.
President Obama, speaking Tuesday at a Washington news conference, expressed support for the courage of the Iranian demonstrators and criticized the Tehran government's response.
"I find it ironic that you've got the Iranian regime pretending to celebrate what happened in Egypt," he said, "when in fact they have acted in direct contrast to what happened in Egypt by gunning down and beating people who were trying to express themselves peacefully in Iran."
The leadership of the Islamic republic has been hailing the demonstrations in the Arab world, saying they show the triumph of popular support for Islam, even though Islamists had a low profile in both the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also denounced Iran in a speech on Internet freedom, criticizing its government for using the Web to hunt down critics.
Reports of the number of people arrested over the latest protests in Iran varied, with the official number put at 150 and the opposition's estimate at 1,500.
The protesters who died Monday were identified as Mr. Zhaleh and Mohammad Mokhtari, 22, a student at Islamic Azad University in Shahrood.
Neil MacFarquhar reported from New York, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Artin Afkhami contributed reporting from Washington.
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4) Police Try to End Clashes in Yemen
By LAURA KASINOF and J. DAVID GOODMAN
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17yemen.html?ref=world
SANA, Yemen - Large numbers of police officers took up positions around the capital here on Wednesday in an attempt to end six days of running street battles between small groups of pro- and antigovernment protesters. Students again organized protests at the capital's central university calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Mr. Saleh attributed the effort to drive him and other regional leaders from office to "foreign agendas," according to the state-run Saba news agency, quoting a telephone conversation between Mr. Saleh and the king of Bahrain, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, who is also facing widespread street protests.
"There are schemes aimed at plunging the region into chaos and violence targeting the nation's security and the stability of its countries," Mr. Saleh told the king, the state agency reported.
Several hundred students marched against the Yemeni leader through the streets from Sana University, the gathering point for many young protesters who have sought to emulate the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. The police moved to block students from demonstrating near the university, Reuters reported, but the demonstrators broke free. There was no indication of violence against them.
In the southwestern city of Taiz, thousands of students who have occupied the streets in overnight protests that began on Friday vowed to remain there until Mr. Saleh stepped down. The police have arrested more than 100 demonstrators and around 30 have been injured in skirmishes with pro-government groups who have periodically set upon the antigovernment encampment wielding sticks and hurling stones.
There were also fresh protests by southern secessionists in Aden, the port city east of Taiz, where demonstrations have been notably more violent. One protester, about 20 years old, was said to have been shot to death in battles with the police on Wednesday, according to reports from the city, as hundreds took to the streets in several neighborhoods.
Though Yemen's southern secessionists have also sought inspiration from a regional wave of protests, their demand for independence is longstanding and their goals differ from those of the students protesting against Mr. Saleh in Sana and other areas, including Taiz, which is not part of the area that secessionists have claimed.)
Since Sunday, when police officers in Sana attacked more than 1,000 young protesters with batons and stun guns, the police have mostly refrained from attacking them, instead stepping in to break up skirmishes between rival groups.
Despite the increased police presence on Wednesday, the two groups clashed at the university and there were reports of several injuries as government supporters attacked students with batons. Reuters reported that the police had fired shots in the air to separate the groups, and that some of those protesting in favor of the government were picked up by luxury cars and sped away.
Several foreign journalists were singled out and set upon by pro-government groups, Reuters reported. Since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, security forces have made scattered efforts to prevent foreign journalists from covering the spread of demonstrations, which have taken on a younger and more spontaneous cast in recent days.
Indeed, a rift is emerging between the student organizers, who have called for the president to step down immediately, and the established opposition groups, who have wrested significant concessions from Mr. Saleh - including a promise that he would give up power in 2013 - but who would prefer to move more slowly toward political reform.
Mr. Saleh, an important ally of the United States in the fight against terrorism, has in recent weeks sought to counter the rising tide of opposition and preserve his three-decade rule by raising army salaries, halving income taxes and ordering price controls, among other concessions. But as protests by young Yemenis continued, it was clear that those efforts were not stemming the unrest.
Student protesters have begun organizing online, with large numbers joining the social media site Twitter and posting updates on their activities to Facebook in recent days. Several Facebook pages have been created calling on mass protests for either Thursday or Friday of next week.
Government supporters and armed police officers continued to occupy Sana's central square - which, like its Cairo counterpart, is called Tahrir Square. The pro-government men, mostly from the outskirts of the capital and some carrying weapons, have pitched tents in the square and vowed to remain until the unrest ends. Police officers moved to restrict access with concertina wire to prevent antigovernment protesters from gathering there.
Laura Kasinof reported from Sana, Yemen, and J. David Goodman from New York.
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5) Unrest Reported in Libyan City of Benghazi
By ALAN COWELL
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17libya.html?ref=world
PARIS - The wave of turmoil and protests sweeping the Middle East appeared on Wednesday to have reached Libya, ruled for four decades by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, according to news reports.
The eruption of violence in Libya's second city, Benghazi, was not reported in the state-run media, which said rallies would be held Wednesday in support of Colonel Qaddafi - a tactic reflecting the pro-government demonstrations unleashed on protests in Egypt and Yemen.
Resorting to a time-honored technique among Arab leaders, Colonel Qaddafi tried to deflect attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, delivering a speech Wednesday urging Arabs to join in a mass march on Israel. He also reportedly said he would like to join the Libyan protesters himself, to improve the performance of a government that he professes not to have a hand in running.
Quryna, a privately owned newspaper in Benghazi, said a crowd armed with gasoline bombs and rocks protested outside a government office to demand the release of a human rights activist, Reuters reported. The demonstrators, numbering at least several hundred and possibly more, went to the central Shajara Square and clashed with police.
The fighting coincided with news reports of demonstrators massing for a third successive day on the easternmost rim of the Arab world in the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, while clashes were reported in Iran and Yemen.
The eruption in Libya was highly unusual since a pervasive security apparatus keeps dissent in check and protects Colonel Qaddafi against perceived foes, including Islamists. Reuters quoted a Benghazi resident as saying the protesters were led by relatives of prisoners slain 15 years ago in a massacre of more than 1,000 detainees at the notorious Abu Salim jail in Tripoli.
The Associated Press quoted Ashur Shamis, a Libyan opposition activist in London, as saying demonstrators chanted, "No God but Allah, Muammar is the enemy of Allah," and "Down, down to corruption and to the corrupt."
Some analysts said Benghazi has long been regarded as having a political dynamic that sets it apart from the rest of the country.
Libyan state television showed images of a pro-Qaddafi rally in Tripoli, the capital, where demonstrators chanted slogans critical of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite broadcaster that provided close coverage of events in Tunisia and Egypt, speeding images of uprising that rattled the autocratic leaders of the Arab world.
As in other parts of the Arab world, protesters had used social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to call for demonstrations, but they had not been scheduled until Thursday.
The BBC quoted witnesses as saying the unrest in Benghazi was inspired by the arrest of a lawyer who has criticized the government. Around 2,000 people took part, the BBC said, quoting witnesses as saying police used water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets.
Al Jazeera said on its Web site that the detained lawyer, Fathi Terbil, a spokesman for the families of those killed in 1996 at Abu Salim prison, had been released.
The region's turmoil began in Tunisia, where the former president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, was forced into exile in Saudi Arabia in mid-January. It spread to Egypt where an 18-day uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak after almost three decades in power.
Protests have erupted in Yemen, Bahrain and Iran.
Colonel Qaddafi took power in a bloodless coup in 1969 and has ruled his oil-exporting country with an iron fist, seeking to spread Libya's influence in Africa. He has been accused in the West of sponsoring terrorism.
Apart from his security forces, Colonel Qaddafi has built his rule on a cult of personality and a network of family and tribal alliances supported by largesse from Libya's oil revenues.
Internationally, he is regarded as an erratic and quixotic figure who travels with an escort of female bodyguards and likes to live in a large tent of the kind used by desert nomads.
Starting in 2003, he moved to refurbish his image abroad, renouncing both terrorism and a program to build nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He also pledged to pay compensation to victims of a disco bombing in Berlin in 1986 and the Lockerbie bombing of 1988.
While those moves eased some strains in his relationship with the outside world, Western governments have continued to question his human rights record.
None of that weakened his hold on power.
The turmoil in the Middle East, however, has shaken his immediate neighbors to the east in Egypt and to the west in Tunisia, prompting him to lower food prices to pre-empt popular discontent. The high cost of food was one of the factors contributing to the explosion in Tunisia.
Like Mr. Mubarak in Egypt and other rulers, Colonel Qaddafi has sought to build a dynasty to succeed him, with speculation currently centering on his son Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi.
The son was the focus of international attention when he flew to Scotland in August 2009 to repatriate Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the Lockerbie airliner bombing, after the Scottish government ordered his release on compassionate grounds. Mr. Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent suffering from prostate cancer, had served 8 years of a 27-year minimum sentence on charges of murdering 270 people in Britain's worst terrorist attack.
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6) Egypt Leaders Found 'Off' Switch for Internet
By JAMES GLANZ and JOHN MARKOFF
February 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html?ref=world
Epitaphs for the Mubarak government all note that the mobilizing power of the Internet was one of the Egyptian opposition's most potent weapons. But quickly lost in the swirl of revolution was the government's ferocious counterattack, a dark achievement that many had thought impossible in the age of global connectedness. In a span of minutes just after midnight on Jan. 28, a technologically advanced, densely wired country with more than 20 million people online was essentially severed from the global Internet.
The blackout was lifted after just five days, and it did not save President Hosni Mubarak. But it has mesmerized the worldwide technical community and raised concerns that with unrest coursing through the Middle East, other autocratic governments - many of them already known to interfere with and filter specific Web sites and e-mails - may also possess what is essentially a kill switch for the Internet.
Because the Internet's legendary robustness and ability to route around blockages are part of its basic design, even the world's most renowned network and telecommunications engineers have been perplexed that the Mubarak government succeeded in pulling the maneuver off.
But now, as Egyptian engineers begin to assess fragmentary evidence and their own knowledge of the Egyptian Internet's construction, they are beginning to understand what, in effect, hit them. Interviews with many of those engineers, as well as an examination of data collected around the world during the blackout, indicate that the government exploited a devastating combination of vulnerabilities in the national infrastructure.
For all the Internet's vaunted connectivity, the Egyptian government commanded powerful instruments of control: it owns the pipelines that carry information across the country and out into the world.
Internet experts say similar arrangements are more common in authoritarian countries than is generally recognized. In Syria, for example, the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment dominates the infrastructure, and the bulk of the international traffic flows through a single pipeline to Cyprus. Jordan, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries have the same sort of dominant, state-controlled carrier.
Over the past several days, activists in Bahrain and Iran say they have seen strong evidence of severe Internet slowdowns amid protests there. Concerns over the potential for a government shutdown are particularly high in North African countries, most of which rely on a just a small number of fiber-optic lines for most of their international Internet traffic.
A Double Knockout
The attack in Egypt relied on a double knockout, the engineers say. As in many authoritarian countries, Egypt's Internet must connect to the outside world through a tiny number of international portals that are tightly in the grip of the government. In a lightning strike, technicians first cut off nearly all international traffic through those portals.
In theory, the domestic Internet should have survived that strike. But the cutoff also revealed how dependent Egypt's internal networks are on moment-to-moment information from systems that exist only outside the country - including e-mail servers at companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo; data centers in the United States; and the Internet directories called domain name servers, which can be physically located anywhere from Australia to Germany.
The government's attack left Egypt not only cut off from the outside world, but also with its internal systems in a sort of comatose state: servers, cables and fiber-optic lines were largely up and running, but too confused or crippled to carry information save a dribble of local e-mail traffic and domestic Web sites whose Internet circuitry somehow remained accessible.
"They drilled unexpectedly all the way down to the bottom layer of the Internet and stopped all traffic flowing," said Jim Cowie, chief technology officer of Renesys, a network management company based in New Hampshire that has closely monitored Internet traffic from Egypt. "With the scope of their shutdown and the size of their online population, it is an unprecedented event."
The engineers say that a focal point of the attack was an imposing building at 26 Ramses Street in Cairo, just two and a half miles from the epicenter of the protests, Tahrir Square. At one time purely a telephone network switching center, the building now houses the crucial Internet exchange that serves as the connection point for fiber-optic links provided by five major network companies that provide the bulk of the Internet connectivity going into and out of the country.
"In Egypt the actual physical and logical connections to the rest of the world are few, and they are licensed by the government and they are tightly controlled," said Wael Amin, president of ITWorx, a large software development company based in Cairo.
One of the government's strongest levers is Telecom Egypt, a state-owned company that engineers say owns virtually all the country's fiber-optic cables; other Internet service providers are forced to lease bandwidth on those cables in order to do business.
Mr. Cowie noted that the shutdown in Egypt did not appear to have diminished the protests - if anything, it inflamed them - and that it would cost untold millions of dollars in lost business and investor confidence in the country. But he added that, inevitably, some autocrats would conclude that Mr. Mubarak had simply waited too long to bring down the curtain.
"Probably there are people who will look at this and say, it really worked pretty well, he just blew the timing," Mr. Cowie said.
Speaking of the Egyptian shutdown and the earlier experience in Tunisia, whose censorship methods were less comprehensive, a senior State Department official said that "governments will draw different conclusions."
"Some may take measures to tighten communications networks," said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Others may conclude that these things are woven so deeply into the culture and commerce of their country that they interfere at their peril. Regardless, it is certainly being widely discussed in the Middle East and North Africa."
Vulnerable Choke Points
In Egypt, where the government still has not explained how the Internet was taken down, engineers across the country are putting together clues from their own observations to understand what happened this time, and to find out whether a future cutoff could be circumvented on a much wider scale than it was when Mr. Mubarak set his attack in motion.
The strength of the Internet is that it has no single point of failure, in contrast to more centralized networks like the traditional telephone network. The routing of each data packet is handled by a web of computers known as routers, so that in principle each packet might take a different route. The complete message or document is then reassembled at the receiving end.
Yet despite this decentralized design, the reality is that most traffic passes through vast centralized exchanges - potential choke points that allow many nations to monitor, filter or in dire cases completely stop the flow of Internet data.
China, for example, has built an elaborate national filtering system known as the Golden Shield Project, and in 2009 it shut down cellphone and Internet service amid unrest in the Muslim region of Xinjiang. Nepal's government briefly disconnected from the Internet in the face of civil unrest in 2005, and so did Myanmar's government in 2007.
But until Jan. 28 in Egypt, no country had revealed that control of those choke points could allow the government to shut down the Internet almost entirely.
There has been intense debate both inside and outside Egypt on whether the cutoff at 26 Ramses Street was accomplished by surgically tampering with the software mechanism that defines how networks at the core of the Internet communicate with one another, or by a blunt approach: simply cutting off the power to the router computers that connect Egypt to the outside world.
But either way, the international portals were shut, and the domestic system reeled from the blow.
The Lines Go Dead
The first hints of the blackout had actually emerged the day before, Jan. 27, as opposition leaders prepared for a "Friday of anger," with huge demonstrations expected. Ahmed ElShabrawy, who runs a company called EgyptNetwork, noticed that the government had begun blocking individual sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Just after midnight on Jan. 28, Mahmoud Amin's iPhone beeped with an alert that international connections to his consulting company's Internet system had vanished - and then the iPhone itself stopped receiving e-mail. A few minutes later, Mr. ElShabrawy received an urgent call telling him that all Internet lines running to his company were dead.
It was not long before Ayman Bahaa, director of Egyptian Universities Network, which developed the country's Internet nearly two decades ago, was scrambling to figure out how the system had all but collapsed between the strokes of 12 and 1.
The system had been crushed so completely that when a network engineer who does repairs in Cairo woke in the morning, he said to his family, "I feel we are in the 1800s."
Over the next five days, the government furiously went about extinguishing nearly all of the Internet links to the outside world that had survived the first assault, data collected by Western network monitors show. Although a few Egyptians managed to post to Facebook or send sporadic e-mails, the vast majority of the country's Internet subscribers were cut off.
The most telling bit of evidence was that some Internet services inside the country were still working, at least sporadically. American University in Cairo, frantically trying to relocate students and faculty members away from troubled areas, was unable to use e-mail, cellphones - which were also shut down - or even a radio frequency reserved for security teams. But the university was able to update its Web site, hosted on a server inside Egypt, and at least some people were able to pull up the site and follow the emergency instructions.
"The servers were up," said Nagwa Nicola, the chief technology officer at American University in Cairo. "You could reach up to the Internet provider itself, but you wouldn't get out of the country." Ms. Nicola said that no notice had been given, and she depicted an operation that appeared to have been carried out with great secrecy.
"When we called the providers, they said, 'Um, hang on, we just have a few problems and we'll be on again,' " she said. "They wouldn't tell us it was out."
She added, "It wasn't expected at all that something like that would happen."
Told to Shut Down or Else
Individual Internet service providers were also called on the carpet and ordered to shut down, as they are required to do by their licensing agreements if the government so decrees.
According to an Egyptian engineer and an international telecom expert who both spoke on the condition of anonymity, at least one provider, Vodafone, expressed extreme reluctance to shut down but was told that if it did not comply, the government would use its own "off" switch via the Telecom Egypt infrastructure - a method that would be much more time-consuming to reverse. Other exchanges, like an important one in Alexandria, may also have been involved.
Still, even major providers received little notice that the moves were afoot, said an Egyptian with close knowledge of the telecom industry who would speak only anonymously.
"You don't get a couple of days with something like this," he said. "It was less than an hour."
After the Internet collapsed, Mr. ElShabrawy, 35, whose company provides Internet service to 2,000 subscribers and develops software for foreign and domestic customers, made urgent inquiries with the Ministry of Communications, to no avail. So he scrambled to re-establish his own communications.
When he, too, noticed that domestic fiber-optic cables were open, he had a moment of exhilaration, remembering that he could link up servers directly and establish messaging using an older system called Internet Relay Chat. But then it dawned on him that he had always assumed he could download the necessary software via the Internet and had saved no copy.
"You don't have your tools - you don't have anything," Mr. ElShabrawy said he realized as he stared at the dead lines at his main office in Mansoura, about 60 miles outside Cairo.
With the streets unsafe because of marauding bands of looters, he decided to risk having a driver bring $7,000 in satellite equipment, including a four-foot dish, from Cairo, and somehow he was connected internationally again by Monday evening.
Steeling himself for the blast of complaints from angry customers - his company also provides texting services in Europe and the Middle East - Mr. ElShabrawy found time to post videos of the protests in Mansoura on his Facebook page. But with security officials asking questions about what he was up to, he did not dare hook up his domestic subscribers.
Then, gingerly, he reached out to his international customers, his profuse apologies already framed in his mind.
The response that poured in astonished Mr. ElShabrawy, who is nothing if not a conscientious businessman, even in turbulent times. "People said: 'Don't worry about that. We are fine and we need to know that you are fine. We are all supporting you.' "
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7) Police Fire on Protesters in Iraq
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and DURAID ADNAN
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17iraq.html?ref=world
BAGHDAD - Security forces in the eastern Iraqi city of Kut on Wednesday fired on a group of protesters calling for the provincial governor to step down, killing at least three people, according to a local government official.
After the security forces opened fire the protesters stormed the governor's headquarters and his home, burning both buildings, according to the official. At least 27 people were injured in the violence, including one security officer, the official said.
"They burned all the rooms in the buildings and all the generators. They also burned the cars of the employees," said the official, who was in Kut at the time the violence erupted. "We were able to take the deputy and the employees out the back door. Some of the employees were women, and they were choked by the fires."
The melee was the most violent protest in Iraq since unrest began in the Middle East last month. Until now there have been several small scattered demonstrations in Iraq calling for better government services.
Wednesday's protests were organized by a group called the Youth of Kut, which wants the governor of the province to step down because they say he has failed to create jobs and increase the supply of electricity. The protesters also say that the governor, Latif Hamad al-Tarfa, has stolen money from the government.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his access to sensitive information, said Mr. Tarfa was in Baghdad on Wednesday.
The protest began around 10 a.m. with people gathering in the center of the city.
"We had a delegation that went up and asked for the governor to step down ," said Ali al-Wasity, one of the protesters. "They refused to come out and talk to us."
The protesters then began throwing rocks, bricks and concrete blocks at the governor's offices.
Mr. Wasity said security officers responded with gunfire. "When they opened fire on us, I was feeling that we are not a free country," he said. "We are under a dictatorship system. I tell them one thing: we will not stop going out on protest unless the governor steps down and leaves us."
The official said the government forces had used tear gas to try and disperse the crowd.
"The situation now is going to be bad here," the official said. "The forces have imposed a curfew on the city."
Television images showed a large cloud of smoke billowing from the governor's headquarters and images of protesters flinging rocks at the building and waving the Iraqi flag.
"We have received many calls from all around the province and they told us that they will be joining us," Mr. Wasity said. "Now there is a curfew but we will not stop. We will do it again and again."
Kut, a mostly Shiite city of about 850,000, is close to Iraq's border with Iran and has a large Iraqi military base that was heavily bombed during Iraq's eight-year war with Iran and during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
Khalid D. Ali contributed reporting.
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8) In One Slice of Egypt, Daily Woes Top Religion
By ANTHONY SHADID
February 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/world/middleeast/16islam.html?ref=world
CAIRO - A generation ago, Ahmed Mitwalli's parents were Islamists in this neighborhood along the Nile once nicknamed the Islamic Republic of Imbaba. But their son is not, and his convictions, echoed in the caldron of frustrations of one of the world's most crowded quarters, suggest why the Muslim Brotherhood is not driving Egypt's nascent revolution.
"Bread, social justice and freedom," the 21-year-old college graduate said. "What's religious about that?"
Egypt's revolution is far from decided, and the Muslim Brotherhood remains the most popular and best-organized opposition forces in the country, poised to play a crucial role in the transition and its aftermath. But in a neighborhood once ceded to militant Islamists, who declared their own state within a state in the early 1990s, sentiments here are most remarkable for how little religion inflects them. Be it complaints about a police force that long resembled an army of occupation, smoldering class resentment or even youthful demands for frivolity, a growing consciousness has taken hold in a sign of what awaits the rest of the Arab world after President Hosni Mubarak's fall on Friday.
Three times more crowded than Manhattan, Imbaba offers a window on the shift away from religious fervor. A fiery preacher, derided as a drummer-turned-cleric, imposed his rule on Imbaba's streets for years until the government drove him and his followers out after a long siege in 1992. With American largess, the government tried to wrangle a city still not recognized on its maps back on the grid. By the accounts of residents, it failed, eventually withdrawing from a sea of resentment that neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor anyone else has managed to channel.
"The last thing youth are thinking about is religion," said Mr. Mitwalli, who hides his cigarettes from a family where all the women wear the most conservative veil. "It's the last thing that comes up. They need money, they need to get married, a car, and they don't have anything to do with anything else. They'll elect whoever can deliver that."
Though parts of Imbaba are upscale, much of it feels like the countryside washing across the pretenses of a city, unfinished red-brick buildings overlooking markets disgorged in the streets. Three-wheel buggies known as tuk-tuks, blaring the latest pop song of Amr Diab, an ageless Egyptian pop star, navigate a mélange of overflowing trash bins, mannequins in the median and racks of clothes in the street.
Mr. Mubarak's government long stigmatized neighborhoods like Imbaba as a netherworld of crime and danger. There is that, though its people extol their own sense of community, where streets band together at the slightest provocation. When the uprising devastated the economy, vendors brought down prices to help people cope. And in almost every conversation, residents, especially the young, frame their plight as us against them.
"There was no dialogue," said Walid Sabr, a 29-year-old who works at a shoe store. "There was force and there was bullying. Dialogue with that? It's impossible."
Samih Ahmed, a vendor down the street, added, "This isn't the Jan. 25th revolution," calling the uprising by its most popular name. "This is a revolution of dignity."
Everyone in the neighborhood had a story about officials - a $2 bribe to enter a hospital to see a relative, a $20 fine imposed for stealing electricity, a $10 payoff to a municipal official to get an identity card. Mr. Sabr talked about getting arrested for trying to report a traffic accident. Ibrahim Mohamed complained that he had been thrown in jail after the police planted hashish on him. Umayma Mohamed, a 23-year-old woman carrying her 3-month-old baby, begged for help in getting her brother released after a fight.
"You raise your voice," Mohamed Ali said, "and they answer by beating you."
Egypt is deeply devout, and imposing labels often does more to confuse than illuminate. Amal Salih, who joined the protests against her parents' wishes, dons an orange scarf over her head but calls herself secular. "Egypt is religious, regrettably," she said. Mr. Mitwalli wears a beard but calls himself liberal, "within the confines of religion." A driver, Osama Ramadan, despises the Muslim Brotherhood but has jury-rigged his car to blare a prayer when he turns on the ignition.
Defining sentiments is no more precise. Youths defiant in their praise of Mr. Mubarak only last week joined the celebrations on Friday, some bringing flags and fireworks to Tahrir Square. Residents say some of the most ardent Islamists here had the best connections with the police, who sought to cultivate them as informants. But in streets suffused with trash, occasionally drawing flocks of sheep, a common refrain is that political Islam, as practiced by the Muslim Brotherhood, does not offer the kind of solutions that may decide an election.
"We don't need prayers, sheiks and beards," said Mr. Mohammed, standing with the angry crowd on a street filled with trash. "We've had enough of the clerics."
The Islamic Group, known in Arabic as Al Gamaa al-Islamiyya, waged an intermittent insurgency against the government in the 1990s, and Mr. Mitwalli's uncle was one of its leaders. He was jailed for 13 years. A man known as Sheik Gaber belonged to the same group, and he and his followers imposed their notion of order here, drawing thousands to sermons where they occasionally - and triumphantly - broadcast a tape of President Anwar el-Sadat's assassination in 1981. They arbitrated disputes and provided for the poor, while sauntering through the slum to drive away prostitutes and drug dealers, to impose the veil, to burn shops that rented Western videos, and to force Christians to pay a religious tax.
An embarrassed government eventually sent in 12,000 soldiers and armored cars in a crackdown that began a six-week occupation. With the help of American aid, it flooded the neighborhood with investment for a time, paving roads and bringing sewerage, telephones and electricity. Just last year, the governor of Giza, which oversees Imbaba's side of the Nile, pledged it would soon look like one of Cairo's wealthier neighborhoods.
It does not. In fact, Imbaba feels overwhelmed, as the rich flee to suburbs with names like Dreamland, Beverly Hills and the European Countryside, and a new government faces its predecessor's failure to provide housing for a population where nearly 7 in 10 are under the age of 34, numbers that mirror much of the Arab world.
"The youth today think this way: let me live my life today, and I don't care if you kill me tomorrow," said Mohammed Fathi, a 23-year-old friend of Mr. Sabr's at the shoe store. "Next year isn't important. All I'm thinking about is getting by today."
In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and grim stretches of urban Iraq, populist clerics often manage to channel youthful anger. But the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood is perhaps most distinguished for representing the demands of an aspiring middle class; it counts some of Cairo's wealthiest among its ranks. No one in Imbaba mentioned a religious figure as an inspiration. Asked about their choice for a new president, many shrugged or offered up Amr Moussa, the aging departing secretary general of the Arab League.
The biggest draw here seemed to be one of Imbaba's favorite sons, the Little Arab, a pop singer who runs a cafe on Luxor Street decorated with his own pictures.
"I don't want to be pinned down by any political tendency," Ms. Salih said.
It remains an oddity of the long struggle between the government and the Muslim Brotherhood that both an aging opposition and a corrupt state spoke the same language of moral conservatism. It has left Egypt more ostensibly religious over the years. Measured by sentiments here, it may have also provoked a backlash among youth recoiling at the prospect of yet more rules promised by an even more stringent application of Islamic law.
"In my view?" asked Osama Hassan, a high school student who joined the protests in their climactic days. "We need more freedom not less. The whole system has to change."
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9) Lawsuit Says Military Is Rife With Sexual Abuse
By ASHLEY PARKER
February 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16military.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses the Department of Defense of allowing a military culture that fails to prevent rape and sexual assault, and of mishandling cases that were brought to its attention, thus violating the plaintiffs' constitutional rights.
The suit - brought by 2 men and 15 women, both veterans and active-duty service members - specifically claims that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, "ran institutions in which perpetrators were promoted and where military personnel openly mocked and flouted the modest Congressionally mandated institutional reforms."
It also says the two defense secretaries failed "to take reasonable steps to prevent plaintiffs from being repeatedly raped, sexually assaulted and sexually harassed by federal military personnel."
Myla Haider, a former Army sergeant and a plaintiff in the suit, said she was raped in 2002 while interning in Korea with the military's Criminal Investigative Command. "It is an atmosphere of zero accountability in leadership, period," she said an interview.
Ms. Haider, who appeared with other plaintiffs at a news conference earlier Tuesday at the National Press Club, said: "The policies that are put in place are extremely ineffectual. There was severe maltreatment in these cases, and there was no accountability whatsoever. And soldiers in general who make any type of complaint in the military are subject to retaliation and have no means of defending themselves."
In the complaint, Ms. Haider said she did not report her rape because she "did not believe she would be able to obtain justice." But she said she joined the suit because she wanted to "address the systematic punishment of soldiers who come forward with any type of complaint," whether it involves sexual assault or post-traumatic stress disorder related to combat.
The plaintiffs' stories in the complaint include accounts of a soldier stripping naked and dancing on a table during a break in a class on preventing sexual assault, physical and verbal harassment, and the rape of a woman by two men who videotaped the assault and circulated it to the woman's colleagues.
Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that "sexual assault is a wider societal problem" and that Mr. Gates was working to ensure that the military was "doing all it can to prevent and respond to it."
"That means providing more money, personnel, training and expertise, including reaching out to other large institutions, such as universities, to learn best practices," Mr. Morrell said. "This is now a command priority, but we clearly still have more work to do in order to ensure all of our service members are safe from abuse."
Though the suit, which was filed in Federal District Court in Virginia, seeks monetary damages, those involved with the case said their goal was an overhaul of the military's judicial system regarding rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment.
"You should not have to be subjected to being raped or sexually assaulted because you volunteered to serve this nation," said Susan L. Burke, the plaintiffs' lead lawyer.
At the news conference Tuesday, Anuradha Bhagwati, a former Marine captain and executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, called for a new system to improve accountability and provide other avenues for filing complaints.
"There are veterans who, after service, are literally reeling from post-traumatic stress" as a result of rape and sexual assault, she said in an interview. "It can be a lifelong process. We hear from veterans who are in their 50s and 60s who are still coping with the trauma of having been psychologically and physically tortured."
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10) Freed Man's Suit Accuses Brooklyn Prosecutors of Misconduct
By JOHN ELIGON
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/nyregion/17brooklyn.html?ref=nyregion
When Brooklyn prosecutors vacated his murder conviction last year, granting him freedom after 16 years behind bars, Jabbar Collins was naturally elated.
That turn of events, however, still left him unfulfilled. Mr. Collins and his lawyer were about to present to the court accusations of misconduct against the Brooklyn district attorney's office. But the dismissal of the conviction ended the court proceeding and prevented a public hearing of a case where the district attorney's handling was described by the judge as "shameful."
Mr. Collins, 38, has found a new vehicle to air his accusations: a civil lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, in which he accused the Brooklyn district attorney's office of a wide range of unethical, and in some cases illegal, conduct, and blamed the district attorney himself, Charles J. Hynes, for fostering the wrongdoing.
Many of the accusations touched on issues that were already raised in Mr. Collins's previous efforts to get his conviction overturned. Among them: Michael F. Vecchione, a top assistant in the district attorney's office, was accused of improperly using court orders to detain witnesses, physically threatening them and coercing them into providing false testimony that would benefit the prosecution's case.
But the lawsuit, which seeks $150 million, also alleges that such tactics were standard practice for the office under Mr. Hynes, detailing several other cases in which Brooklyn prosecutors took similar steps to elicit witness testimony. Several prosecutors, including Mr. Vecchione, were listed as defendants; Mr. Hynes was not among them.
The lawsuit also raised new accusations that Mr. Vecchione, a glib and sometimes controversial advocate, submitted affidavits in various cases to the court that he did not sign and that were falsely notarized, which would violate ethics rules and the law.
Mr. Hynes "maintained a policy, custom and/or practice of deliberate indifference to violations by his employees of the constitutional rights of individuals who were investigated and criminally prosecuted," Mr. Collins's lawyer, Joel B. Rudin, wrote in the 106-page complaint.
A spokesman for the district attorney's office declined to comment.
Mr. Collins, a father of three from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was arrested in March 1994 on charges that he shot and killed Abraham Pollack, a landlord, during an attempted robbery a month earlier.
The prosecution relied on three main witnesses to convict Mr. Collins, who said he was innocent. Each of those witnesses, the lawsuit said, was compelled to testify by Mr. Vecchione, who was the head of the homicide bureau at the time but is now in charge of the rackets bureau.
According to the lawsuit, Mr. Vecchione used a subpoena to get one of the witnesses, Angel Santos, to come to his office, where he tried to convince him to cooperate with the prosecution, threatening at one point to hit Mr. Santos over the head with a coffee table. Mr. Santos was said to have seen Mr. Collins running from the scene after the shooting, though Mr. Santos had told investigators that his drug use made it difficult to recall events and that there were inconsistencies in his story, the complaint said.
After Mr. Santos refused to cooperate, Mr. Vecchione ratcheted up the pressure by obtaining a court order that allowed him to put Mr. Santos in jail, the lawsuit said. Mr. Santos buckled and agreed to testify, according to the lawsuit.
Mr. Santos could not be reached for comment, but his account in the lawsuit was taken from testimony he gave during Mr. Collins's habeas hearing last year.
Mr. Rudin said the example of Mr. Santos illustrated how the district attorney's office used subpoenas and material witness warrants to pressure witnesses to cooperate.
While subpoenas are supposed to compel a witness to come to court to testify, the district attorney's office routinely uses them to direct witnesses to come to the office, where the authorities may try to convince witnesses to cooperate, Mr. Rudin wrote. In one case in 1994, Justice Abraham G. Gerges criticized a Brooklyn prosecutor for subpoenaing a witness to appear on a day there was no testimony "in the hope that it would coerce the witness into consenting to be interviewed prior to testifying." Justice Gerges wrote that the "practice should not be replicated."
Material witness warrants are orders that judges issue for the arrest of witnesses who otherwise might ignore subpoenas to testify. But those orders stipulate that the witnesses be brought before a court, where they are assigned a lawyer and have an opportunity to be released or have bail set.
In the complaint, Mr. Rudin said the district attorney's office regularly brought witnesses picked up on warrants to their office for interrogation, rather than directly to court. During a post-conviction hearing in a 1991 murder case, an assistant district attorney, Stan Irvin, testified that the office usually brought witnesses picked up on warrants to their office first to assess their potential testimony and to determine whether they required further detention.
After prosecutors got a warrant to pick up Mr. Santos, they had him locked up without presenting him before a judge, according to the complaint.
The complaint also accused Mr. Vecchione of allowing subordinates to sign his name for him, and it cited a report from a handwriting expert who found that Mr. Vecchione's signature on sworn affidavits in multiple cases did not match his actual signature. Some of the signatures that the complaint said were false were notarized by other assistant district attorneys, meaning that if Mr. Vecchione did not sign his name himself, the notaries were breaking ethics rules and the law.
Lawyers can be reprimanded, suspended and, in rare cases, disbarred for submitting sworn statements with signatures that do not belong to them.
"It's a cardinal rule; it's not debatable," said Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University Law School.
If lawyers were allowed to have colleagues sign their affidavits for them, it could foster laziness in which lawyers submit statements they have not thoroughly reviewed, Mr. Gillers said.
"The reason we want lawyers to sign affidavits that contain their names is to avoid any risk that facts will be presented to the court that the lawyer does not support," he said.
Reached by telephone on Wednesday, Mr. Vecchione referred all inquiries to the district attorney's press office. "Whatever the press office said is what I'm saying," he said.
Mr. Vecchione has been accused by defense lawyers and former colleagues of overstepping the bounds of legal propriety. One of his notable failures was the case against Roy Lindley DeVecchio, a former F.B.I. agent whose murder prosecution fell apart after it became apparent that Mr. Vecchione withheld information that seriously questioned the credibility of his star witness.
Still, Mr. Hynes has stuck with Mr. Vecchione through the criticism, even awarding him with the Thomas E. Dewey Medal for outstanding state prosecutors in 2008. After prosecutors decided to vacate Mr. Collins's conviction during a habeas corpus hearing last year, Mr. Hynes said it had nothing to do with the accusations of misconduct and called Mr. Vecchione "a very, very principled lawyer."
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11) Obama Declares Open Season on Unions
By Gregg Shotwell
February 15, 2011
Live Bait & Ammo #162
VIA Email
One's disappointment with the Obama administration may be tempered by ideology, loyalty, or world-weariness. Most issues have more sides than a pentagon. Most of us are mature enough to understand that our personal opinion is as fraught with prejudice and pride as the next point maker at happy hour.
Even the most ideologically inebriated understand compromise is the essence of politics. But some ethical decisions are void of gray area. Certain actions indicate a point of moral divergence as stark and plain as a crossroad. You may choose the road less traveled, but you can't choose both and remain one moral crusader.
The Obama administration chose not to pursue criminal investigations against officials who deceived Americans about Weapons of Mass Destruction and the alleged Iraqi connection to 9/11 in order to lead us into an unjustified war. The Obama administration chose not to pursue criminal investigations against officials who authorized torture.
The Obama administration chose not to pursue criminal investigations against the finance wizards who were responsible for the diabolically complicated transactions, which devastated pension funds, life savings, and home values while the electronic version of Brink's trucks carted millions of dollars in commissions, fees, and nefarious default swaps onto ships bound for safe deposits in offshore accounts much as GM-Delphi transferred assets overseas before declaring bankruptcy in the U.S. The Obama administration did choose to pursue an investigation against fourteen workers who advocate for peace, solidarity, equality, and justice.
These fourteen people are wage earners. They live paycheck to paycheck. They believe the U.S. should end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They think union leaders in Columbia don't deserve to be murdered. They think Palestinian workers deserve as much right to peace, dignity, and security as Israeli workers. These activists have not been charged with a crime, yet under the auspices of the Obama administration the FBI raided their homes, confiscated their computers, and is conducting a grand jury investigation of their activities and relationships [www.stopfbi.net]. The investigation has expanded to 23 and now includes students.
What distinguished these workers in the eyes of Obama? Why should they be investigated while torturers, warmongers, and high finance swindlers ride away-high in the saddle, rich, and free? These advocates of peace and labor rights stand for values that challenge imperialism, inequality, dishonesty, and a government for, by, and of the wealthy. In the view of the Obama administration, that warrants a crackdown. For Democrats this isn't a road less traveled, it's a familiar pattern.
The neoliberal vision of prosperity is one of labor enthralled with a game controlled by brokers, landlords, and banks. If you choose not to pretend the game is fair, you are liable to be treated like an enemy combatant, that is, deprived of a citizen's rights to free speech, assembly, and a jury of peers; then subjected to unlawful search and seizure, and interrogated by a grand jury where legal representation and the Fifth Amendment are nullified.
Obama didn't close Gitmo, he imported the policy: guilt without proof and punishment prior to trial. Abrogation of freedom and individual rights is a hangover from the Bush administration but since Obama has abided by the Bush agenda in war, taxation, and the scapegoating of teachers, the political aberration machine runs full throttle.
The two capitalist parties traverse parallel roads to the same dead-end alley where an exchange of risk and wealth is transacted. The working class accepts all the risk and the investing class pockets all the rewards. In common parlance, extortion. After investing thirty years of labor, UAW retirees are left with a healthcare trust 50 percent underfunded and reliant on stock.
How is thirty years of labor different from thirty years of mortgage payments? After the investment of so much time and effort we should own something more than the gambling debts of the investing class. Profits made in the U.S.A. were invested overseas while 43,000 factories were closed in the U.S. since 1993. Labor has a legitimate lien on capital-no matter where it's transferred-we earned it.
The notion that capital can stripmine a community with impunity is contemptible. Yet Democrats and Republicans choose to pursue a fast track recovery that leaves some passengers on the platform holding tickets, which were paid in advance while the train pulls away from the station without them.1
Rather than address the underlying social and economic injustice that afflicts our nation, Obama like Bush blames teachers and proposes wage cuts, wage freeze, and two-tier as a solution to unemployment. It's obscene. The policy lacks any social redeeming value or common economic sense. You can't pay workers less and simultaneously prime the consumer pump.
Democrats and Republicans both say education is the key to the job crisis because it lets them off the hook and puts teachers on the spear. Tests measure whatever test designers choose to measure, but tests don't educate students to research, analyze, synthesize, and articulate. Tests teach the right answer is whatever authority tells you is the right answer. I'm proud to be a bad test taker.
We all know from experience that the key to a good education is smaller classrooms, but that would require more teachers, and neither Republicans nor Democrats are pro-worker, let alone pro-union. Every kid on the American playground knows how it feels to be at the top of the teeter-totter when your partner finds a new friend. Organized Labor, Wake-up! Democrats are not on our side.
Indeed, it's hard to keep one's balance when all the odds are tipped in your opponents' favor. The recession was brought on by recklessness and avarice in the investing class, but the working class was extorted into paying clean up costs and rewarding malfeasance with tax breaks, bailouts, and immunity for crooks in high places. Rewarding failure, incompetence, and criminal behavior is a moral hazard that far outweighs welfare in cost, consequence, and ethical relevance.
Our children and grandchildren will suffer because we put our tails between our legs and let Rimbaugh ranters and Obama decanters convince us that workers must take bigger wage cuts while shitfaced labor leaders shilled for their paymasters. [Decant: to draw off without disturbing the lower layers.]
Meanwhile UAW bureaucrats contend concessions will not only save jobs but organize the unorganized. Hell, they didn't drink the Kool-Aid, they drank the lab rat's piss. The metaphor is vulgar but the picture fits the frame-up: workers are vilified and union reps collaborate with prosecutors.
Rimbaugh's parrots like to repeat the ditto-headed mantra only rich people hire workers as if working people don't contribute to society and our purchases don't stimulate commerce.
Fact is, only workers support the businesses in my neighborhood, and those businesses are not owned by rich people. Workers collectively hire workers everyday, but unlike predatory capitalists, we don't lie, cheat, and steal. Workers build communities, vulture capitalists exploit communities.
Workers fight the wars. Workers build the roads, bridges, skyscrapers, and homes. Workers mine, mill, construct, farm, teach, nurse, serve, repair, and deliver the goods on time. But Rimbaugh's mimics-well prepared to repeat-after-me after years of test taking-have the gall to give all the credit to speculators and money changers. Without labor there would be no wealth to invest or a marketplace to invest in. Without labor the rich would go hungry. But I digress, while the endgame progresses steadfast across the board and organized pawns plod forward to their own demise in defense of democratic concession making, that is, we get to vote for what we give up next to benefit the rich.
The U.S. government under both Republicans and Democrats condones U.S. corporations doing business with nations who support terrorism2, but peace and labor activists can't talk to the victims of war and union persecution. Under the thumb of corporate governance, teachers, nurses, first responders, public servants-all workers in general-are scapegoated and forced to pay for the crimes and recklessness of the investing class. The workers and students targeted by the FBI are picture poster threats, promo faces on the U.S. brand of repression intended to serve as a warning: workers who advocate for peace and labor rights are outlaws in America.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is not a credible solution; it's a disease, a symptom of decadence. The body politic is sickened unto death by the conceit of a better evil.
Obama's attack on the teachers' union is tantamount to Reagan busting PATCO, and union office rats like Bob King are lining up behind him. Obama is sending a clear, unequivocal message: it's open season on unions. No license nor limit required. Only dissenters will be prosecuted.
Notes:
1) Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, 2-7-2011, Obama Wrong on Trade and Jobs
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2011/02/in-speech-to-us-chamber-obama-gets-it-wrong-on-trade-jobs.html
2) New York Times, "U.S. Approved Business with Blacklisted Nations," Jo Becker, 12-24-2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/world/24sanctions.html
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12) Egyptians defy call to end strikes
Airport and textile workers among those refusing to heed military's appeal not to protest.
Agencies
Al Jazeera
February 16, 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/2011216141815340645.html
Emboldened by the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak last week, Egyptians have been airing grievances over issues ranging from low wages to police brutality and corruption.
Workers in banking, transport, oil, tourism, textiles, state-owned media and government bodies are striking to demand higher wages and better conditions, said Kamal Abbas of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers' Services.
Staff at Cairo airport and in the textile industry were among those who on Wednesday defied the call by Egypt's new military rulers to stop all protests.
While hundreds of airport employees protested inside the arrivals terminal for better wages and health coverage, in the industrial Nile Delta city of Mahallah al-Koubra, more than 12,000 workers at a state-owned textile factory went on strike over pay and calls for an investigation into alleged corruption at the factory.
In Port Said, a coastal city at the northern tip of the Suez Canal, about 1,000 people demonstrated to demand that a chemical factory be closed because it was dumping waste in a lake near the city.
Banks closed
In sectors not hit by strikes, the central bank's decision to keep banks closed was forcing many to scale back production because clients were unable to pay for the goods.
The military had urged Egyptians on Monday not to strike and appealing to their sense of national duty in what was seen as a final warning before an outright ban on strikes and protests.
Pro-democracy leaders plan a big "Victory March" on Friday to celebrate the revolution.
Meanwhile, the health ministry said at least 365 people were killed during the 18-day uprising that began on January 25. It said 5,500 people had been treated for injuries and that the death toll could rise as the government is still gathering information.
Rights groups say hundreds are still missing after the protests.
Gamal Eid, a lawyer who heads the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said: "There are hundreds of detained, but information on their numbers is still not complete ... The army was holding detainees."
In Tahrir Square, the focal point of the revolt, traffic flowed on Wednesday and some of the army tanks and armoured vehicles had been pulled back, although military armour remained in other Cairo locations.
Given the instability around the country, authorities decided to put back by another week the reopening of schools and universities across the country.
Schools and universities were just starting their midyear break when the protests broke out in January.
Council formed
Some protest organisers said on Wednesday they had formed a "Council of Trustees" to negotiate on the country's transition to democracy with the ruling military council.
"The head of the regime is gone but the body of the regime is still here," Abdullah Al-Ashaal, a former ambassador and a university professor, told a new conference announcing the formation of the council. "I'm worried there is much uncertainty about this transitional period."
The council's membership includes political scientist Hassan Nafaa, Judge Zakaria Abdel-Aziz, Mohamed el-Beltagi of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khaled Abdel-Qader Ouda, an academic, author Alaa el-Aswany, and veteran television presenter Mahmoud Saad, among others.
Meanwhile, a committee set up to amend the constitution as a prelude to parliamentary and presidential elections in six months has met as the military dismantles mechanisms used
to maintain Mubarak's rule. The military council has already dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution.
Egypt also imposed travel bans and froze the assets of another former cabinet minister and two more businessmen on Wednesday.
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13) Bahrain's Military Takes Control of Key Areas in Capital
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18bahrain.html?hp
MANAMA, Bahrain - The army took control of this city on Thursday, except at the main hospital, where thousands of people gathered screaming, crying, collapsing in grief, just hours after police opened fired with birdshot, rubber bullets and tear gas on pro-democracy demonstrators camped in Pearl Square.
As the army asserted control of the streets with tanks and heavily armed soldiers, the once- peaceful protesters were transformed into a mob of angry mourners chanting slogans like "death to the king," while the opposition withdrew from the Parliament and demanded that the government step down.
But for those who were in Pearl Square in the early morning hours, when police opened fired without warning on thousands who were sleeping there, it was a day of shock and disbelief. Many of the hundreds taken to the hospital were wounded by shotgun blasts, doctors said, their bodies speckled with pellets or bruised by rubber bullets or police clubs.
In the morning, there were three bodies already stretched out on metal tables in the morgue at Salmaniya Medical Complex: Ali Mansour Ahmed Khudair, 53, dead, with 91 pellets pulled from his chest and side; Isa Abd Hassan, 55, dead, his head split in half; Mahmoud Makki Abutaki, 22, dead, 200 pellets of birdshot pulled from his chest and arms.
Doctors said that at least two others had died and that several patients were in critical condition with serious wounds. Muhammad al-Maskati, of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, said that he received at least 20 calls from frantic parents searching for young children lost in the chaos of the attack.
A surgeon, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said that for hours on Thursday the Health Ministry prevented ambulances even from going to the scene to aid victims. The doctor said that in the early morning, when the assault was still under way, police officers beat a paramedic and a doctor and refused to allow medical staff to attend to the injured.
"They refused to let ambulances into the roundabout the help the injured," the doctor said.
News outlets in Bahrain reported that the health minister, Faisal al-Hamar, resigned after doctors staged a demonstration to protest his order barring ambulances from going to the square.
In the bloodstained morgue, Ahmed Abutaki, 29, held his younger brother's cold hand, stroking his arm tearfully recalling the last time they spoke Wednesday night. "He said, 'This is my chance, to have a say, so that maybe our country will do something for us,"' he recalled of his brother's decision to camp out in Pearl Square. "My country did do something, it killed him."
Emotions ran high in this small Persian Gulf nation, even as the foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, defended the police action as a last resort meant to pull Bahrain back from the "brink of a sectarian abyss." Tanks rolled into the city center, many stores remained closed, sidewalks and public spaces stayed eerily empty.
There was a collective anxiety gripping the country as it waited to see whether the opposition would challenge the government's edict to stay off the streets, and if it did, whether the government would follow through on its threat to use "every strict measure and deterrent necessary to preserve security and general order."
There seemed little chance for now that the confrontation would fade away, as both sides said they would not back down.
"You will find members of Al Wefaq willing to be killed as our people have been killed," said Khalil Ebrahim al-Marzooq, one of 18 opposition party members to announce Thursday that they had resigned their seats in Parliament. "We will stand behind the people until the complete fulfillment of our demands."
Arab leaders have been badly shaken in recent days, with entrenched presidents in Egypt and Tunisia ousted by popular uprisings and with demonstrations flaring around the region. And now as the public's sense of empowerment spread, the call to change has reached into this Persian Gulf kingdom. That has raised anxiety in Saudi Arabia, connected to Bahrain by a bridge, and Kuwait, as well, both Sunni-governed states with restive Shiite populations. Officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council met here to discuss how to handle the crisis.
The international community also weighed in, concerned as yet another Arab leader decided to try using lethal force to put down peaceful opposition protests. Bahrain is small, but it is a strategic ally of the United States, which bases its Fifth Fleet here, and the royal family has long been an ally in efforts to fight terrorism and push back the regional influence of Iran.
But here in the streets, people were not focused on geopolitics. The events centered on very domestic demands for democracy, rule of law and social justice. The island nation is 70 percent Shiite and is governed by a king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, who is Sunni. When protests started on Monday, the demands were for a constitutional monarchy, but in the anger of the day the chants evolved into calls for tearing down the whole system.
"Death to Khalifa! Death to Khalifa!" chanted a frantic crowd massed in the driveway of the hospital. "Bring down the government," cried out the thousands of men and women. Several people literally collapsed, their eyes rolling back, in the frenzied moment.
The fearful and hostile mood was set the night before, when the police opened fire. Doctors, victims and witnesses gave a detailed account of how the police assault unfolded, revealing details of a calculated, coordinated attack that closed in from all sides, offering no way out.
"They had encircled us and they kept shooting tear gas and live rounds," said Ali Muhammad Abdel Nabi, 25, as he rested in a hospital bed after having been hit by shotgun pellets on both his legs and his shoulder. "The circle got closer and closer."
Doctors at the hospital said that 226 demonstrators had been recorded as being treated in the hospital and that many more were given aid on the run.
At the scene, the doctors said protesters were handcuffed with thick plastic binders, laid on the wet ground and stomped on by the police.
"I said, they will attack, and they did," said Hussein Mohammed, 39, a member of Al Wefaq. "It's a slaughter."
The hospital corridors were packed with people angry and crying, the beds filled with many wounded by shotgun blasts. Hassan Mohammed, 19, who also had shotgun pellets in his legs, said that after the assault he saw uniformed men tossing the wounded into refrigerator trucks, though he had no idea where they were taken. There was no way to confirm his account.
Outside the hospital, the police stayed away, as the fuming crowd of mourners remained on the medical campus. But not far away, in the symbolic center of the city, beneath the towering statue of a pearl on a setting, soldiers patrolled, armored vehicles blocked all arteries and a circle of barbed wire was laid around the square. Within 24 hours, the site of the first tolerated expression of public dissent had been transformed into a memorial to fear and death.
"We are a people of mourners now, we have nothing," said Taghreed Hussein, 35, as she and her friends crowded the hospital waiting in grief.
Nadim Audi contributed reporting.
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14) Brutal Crackdown in Moderate Bahrain
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/opinion/18kristof.html?hp
MANAMA, Bahrain
As a reporter, you sometimes become numbed to sadness. But it is just plain heartbreaking to be in modern, moderate Bahrain today and watch as a critical American ally uses tanks, troops, guns and clubs to crush a peaceful democracy movement and then lie about it.
This kind of brutal repression is normally confined to remote and backward nations, but this is Bahrain! An international banking center. An important American naval base, home of the Fifth Fleet. A wealthy and well-educated nation with a large middle class and cosmopolitan values.
To be here and see corpses of protesters with gunshot wounds, to hear an eyewitness account of an execution of a handcuffed protester, to interview paramedics who say they were beaten for trying to treat the injured - yes, all that just breaks my heart.
So here's what happened.
The pro-democracy movement has bubbled for decades in Bahrain, but it found new strength after the overthrow of the dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. Then the Bahrain government attacked the protesters early this week with stunning brutality, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and shotgun pellets at small groups of peaceful, unarmed demonstrators. Two demonstrators were killed (one while walking in a funeral procession), and widespread public outrage gave a huge boost to the democracy movement.
King Hamad initially pulled the police back, but early on Thursday morning he sent in the riot police, who went in with guns blazing. Bahrain television has claimed that the protesters were armed with swords and threatening security - that's preposterous. I was on the roundabout earlier that night and saw many thousands of people, including large numbers of women and children, even babies. Many were asleep.
I was not at the roundabout at the time of the attack, but afterward at the main hospital (one of at least three to receive casualties) I saw the effects. More than 600 people were treated with injuries, overwhelmingly men but including small numbers of women and children.
One nurse told me that she was on the roundabout and saw a young man of about 24, handcuffed and then beaten by a group of police. She said she then watched as they executed him at point-blank range with a gun. The nurse told me her name, but I will not use full names of some people in this column to avoid putting them at greater risk.
I met one doctor, Sadiq Al-Ekri, who was lying in a hospital bed with a broken nose and injuries to his eyes and almost his entire body. He couldn't speak to me because he was still unconscious and on oxygen, after what colleagues and his family described as a savage beating by riot police outraged that he was treating people at the roundabout.
Dr. Ekri, a distinguished plastic surgeon, had just returned from a trip to Houston. He identified himself as a physician to the riot police, according to other doctors and family members, based partly on what Dr. Ekri told them before he lost consciousness. But then, they said, the riot police handcuffed him and began beating him with sticks and kicking him, while shouting insults against Shiites. Finally, they pulled down his pants and threatened to rape him, although they abandoned that idea and eventually allowed an ambulance to rescue him.
"He went to help people," said his father, who was at the bedside. "It's his duty to help people. And then this happened."
Three ambulance drivers or paramedics told me that they had been pulled out of their ambulances and beaten by the police. One, Jameel, whose head was bandaged and his arm was in a cast, told me that police had clubbed him and that a senior officer had then told him: "If I see you again, I'll kill you."
A fourth ambulance driver, Osama, was unhurt but said that a military officer - whom he said was a Saudi, based on his accent in Arabic - held a gun to his head and warned him to drive away or be shot. (By many accounts, Saudi tanks and other military forces participated in the attack, but I can't verify that).
The hospital staff told me that ambulance service has now been frozen, with no ambulances going out on calls except with approval of the Interior Ministry.
Some of the victims, though not all, said that the riot police shouted anti-Shiite curses when they attacked the protesters, who were overwhelmingly Shiite. Sectarianism is particularly delicate in Bahrain because the Sunni royal family, the Khalifas, presides over a country that is predominately Shiite, and Shiites often complain of discrimination by the government.
Hospital corridors were also full of frantic mothers searching desperately for children who had gone missing in the attack.
In the hospital mortuary, I found three corpses with gunshot wounds. One man had much of his head blown off with what mortuary staff said was a gunshot wound. Ahmed Abutaki, a 29-year-old laborer, stood by the body of his 22-year-old brother, Mahmood, who died of a shotgun blast.
Ahmed said he blamed King Hamad, and many other protesters at the hospital were also demanding the ouster of the king. I think he has a point: when a king opens fire on his people, he no longer deserves to be ruler. That might be the only way to purge this land of ineffable heartbreak.
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15) Protests Spread to More Iraqi Cities
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and DURAID ADNAN
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18iraq.html?hp
BAGHDAD - Unrest continued to spread in Iraq on Thursday, with new protests erupting in several cities and reports from law enforcement officials that private security guards in a city in Kurdistan fired on a group of protesters who tried to storm the political offices of the region's leader.
Early reports from law enforcement officials said that five people had been killed and dozens injured in that city, Sulaimaniya. But the head of the health department there later said that only one person had died.
Protesters have been calling for better government services, including more electricity, and in some cases, for local government officials to resign.
The demonstrations, although over long-festering grievances that neither the American military nor successive Iraqi governments solved, appear to have been inspired by unrest elsewhere in the Middle East.
The protests in Sulaimaniya and in the eastern city of Kut, where three people died Wednesday, were far more violent than others that have popped up around Iraq over the past few weeks.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, at a press conference in Baghdad, suggested that the protests were something of a positive development, although he cautioned against violence.
"I am happy to see the Iraqis are able to protest," Mr. Maliki said, saying that the ability to challenge the government had been only a "dream" under Saddam Hussein. "But the protesters should not set fire to a building. We should express our demands in a civilized manner."
Mr. Maliki also acknowledged that Iraqis had a right to be upset with such problems as sporadic electricity, but he blamed these problems on Mr. Hussein's government and said Iraq still needs time to recover from the former dictator's rule and the war.
Insurgent violence also continues to disrupt the country. In Muqdadiya, a city 50 miles northeast of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded killing seven and injuring 30. Among the dead was one policeman.
In Sulaimaniya, the protesters attacked the headquarters of the political party headed by the president of the semiautonomous Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani.
At first, guards fired their guns in the air, according to Adel Abdulah Hamid, a member of parliament from Mr. Barzani's party. But when the protesters continued throwing rocks at the building, the guards opened fire.
The authorities imposed a curfew from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Many jewelry store owners emptied their stores of products because they were concerned that riots might break out.
Meanwhile, in Kut, about 1,000 protesters took to the streets demanding the release of 45 people arrested Wednesday after clashes with government security forces.
The protesters on Wednesday had set the provincial government headquarters and governor's home on fire after security forces fired on them as they threw rocks at the building, demanding that the governor resign. Three people died in the melee and at least 27 were injured, including a security officer.
The protesters in Kut have called on the province's governor, Latif Hamad al-Tarfa, to resign over accusations that he stole money from the government and failed to improve the economy and electrical supply.
A donkey with the word "the governor" scrawled on its side stood with demonstrators in front of the headquarters on Thursday.
"We will stay here in the street until the governor walks out," said Mahdi al-Yasiry, a 37-year old engineer who is unemployed. "Everything in this province is bad. No gas. No electricity. No jobs. No nothing."
Kut, a mostly Shiite city of about 850,000, is about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad and is one of the poorest cities in Iraq. The authorities there imposed a curfew at 5 p.m. but a local law enforcement official said he expected that 500 protesters outside of government buildings would be allowed to camp there.
According to Akel Salah, a 27-year old who took part in the protest, said his brother was arrested during the demonstrations.
"I am calling his phone, but it is switched off," he said. "His wife and son are going crazy," he said.
Mr. Salah said that he and other protesters had assembled tents on the streets so they could sleep there overnight, a tactic used in Egypt where protesters set up camp in a busy Cairo square. He said they would remain until their demands were met.
In Basra, about 600 people gathered in front of the provincial headquarters, calling for the governor's ouster.
And in the northern city of Kirkuk about 400 people protested in front of a government building, calling for better services for widow and orphans.
The protesters there shouted: "We want justice. Where are our rights? Protect the orphans from the thieves. We are hungry in a country of oil."
Employees for The New York Times contributed reporting from Sulaimaniya, Erbil, Diyala, Kirkuk, Basra and Kut.
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16) Workers Strike Along Suez Canal
By ANTHONY SHADID
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18egypt.html?hp
CAIRO - Hundreds of workers went on strike on Thursday along the Suez Canal, one of the world's strategic waterways, joining others across Egypt pressing demands for better wages and conditions. The protests have sent the economy reeling and defied the military's attempt to restore a veneer of the ordinary after President Hosni Mubarak's fall last week.
The labor unrest this week at textile mills, pharmaceutical plants, chemical industries, the Cairo airport, the transportation sector and banks has emerged as one of the most powerful dynamics in a country navigating the military-led transition that followed an 18-day popular uprising and the end of Mr. Mubarak's three decades of rule.
Banks reopened last week, but amid a wave of protests over salaries and management abuses promptly shut again this week. The opening of schools was delayed another week, and a date has yet to be set for opening the stock market, which some fear may plummet over the economic reverberations and anxiety about the political transition.
The military has repeatedly urged workers to end their strikes, to no avail.
"For 30 years, there were no protests at all - well, not really - and now that's all there is," Ibrahim Aziz, a merchant in downtown Cairo, said. "The situation's a mess."
For days now the military leadership has sought to steer a country in the throes of a political transition that could remake Egypt more dramatically than at any time since the monarchy was overthrown in 1952. In a series of statements, it outlined steps to amend the Constitution and return Egypt to civilian leadership within six months, though the exact date for elections for the presidency and Parliament was left ambiguous.
So far the military seems to enjoy broad popular support, not least for forcing the departure of Mr. Mubarak to his residence in the Sinai town of Sharm el Sheik, though some have complained of decision-making that remains utterly opaque to the public. Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel laureate and critic of Mr. Mubarak, complained this week about that lack of transparency and the speed of the transition the military has outlined.
Other critics have questioned why the military has refused to free thousands of political prisoners and lift the Emergency Law, which gave the Mubarak government wide powers in arresting and imprisoning people it deemed opponents. Thursday was the second day without the military's issuing any communiqués on its intentions in the weeks ahead, and questions about forming political parties and civil rights are left unanswered.
"There has not been very much coming out about what I call the infrastructure - even the temporary infrastructure - for democracy," a Western diplomat in Cairo said Thursday. "That seems to me an area where further clarification would be important."
The diplomat said Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi had emerged as the clear leader of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, to which Mr. Mubarak delegated power when he resigned last Friday. "Tantawi seems to be the acting president of Egypt," the diplomat said. Though the council has maintained contacts with the United States through the Defense Department and the National Security Council, it has proved disciplined in keeping its deliberations from diplomats and opposition leaders.
"What one would have liked to see is more transparency in this whole Supreme Council deliberation process," the diplomat said under customary rules of anonymity.
Egypt's revolution was, in some ways, remarkable for the consensus over its demands, primarily the end to Mr. Mubarak's authoritarian rule, with disparate ideologies subsumed in the narrative of a popular uprising. But already this week some of the fundamental rules that have underlined republican Egypt have begun to be renegotiated.
The head of Al-Azhar, once one of the world's foremost institutions of religious scholarship, has called for its leadership to be elected, not appointed by the government, a change that could reverse decades of the institution's abject subordination to the state. The strikes may prove no less decisive as they gather momentum in turning back years of privatization that left workers with fewer protections and more grievances.
In a statement Thursday, striking workers in Mahalla el-Kobra, the center of the country's textile industry and a stronghold of labor resistance in the Nile Delta, said they would no longer take part in a government-controlled labor union but rather join the new Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, which it said was set up on Jan. 30.
The striking workers at the Suez Canal Authority said their protests in the three major canal cities - Suez, Port Said and Ismailiya - would not interfere with the operations of the canal, which links the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. One of the world's busiest waterways, the canal serves as one of Egypt's primary sources of revenue and a major transit route for global shipping and oil.
Other strikes were reported at textile plants in the coastal city of Damietta and a pharmaceutical factory in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city. Taken together they are thought to number in the tens of thousands of workers in one of Egypt's most pronounced episodes of labor unrest. The problems point to a growing challenge for the military and the caretaker government: How to satisfy demands as the economy staggers.
"Everyone is looking for money, and there is none to be had," said Hani Shukrallah, a political analyst and editor.
The economic woes have done little to dim the surge of optimism voiced in both Cairo and the countryside. Just days after the tumult in Tahrir Square, among the few tell-tale signs of the protests are vendors hawking Egyptian flags, and a memorial to protesters killed on Jan. 25 and the demonstrations that followed. On the lawyers' syndicate building a banner called for Thursday to be a "Day of Purification." Young protest leaders posted a plea on the walls of buildings in a nearby square to persist in their revolutionary fervor.
"From this day, your country is yours," one read. "Don't throw trash, don't disobey traffic signals, don't pay bribes, don't forge papers and complain about anyone who neglects their job. This is your chance to build your country with your hand."
It was signed "Youth of the Jan. 25 Revolution."
"The problem with the old system was that it separated us," said Sherif Abdel-Aziz, 34, a businessman. "Nothing brought us together. Everyone lived to eat and survive, and you didn't even care about your brother. Now people want to do something."
Kareem Fahim contributed reporting.
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17) Security Forces in Bahrain Open Fire on Mourners
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and NADIM AUDI
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19bahrain.html?hp
MANAMA, Bahrain - Government forces opened fire on hundreds of mourners marching toward Pearl Square on Friday, sending people running away in panic amid the boom of concussion grenades. But even as the people fled, at least one helicopter sprayed fire on them and a witness reported seeing mourners crumpling to the ground.
It was not immediately clear what type of ammunition the forces were firing, but some witnesses reported fire from automatic weapons and the crowd was screaming "live fire, live fire." At a nearby hospital, witnesses reported seeing people with very serious injuries and gaping wounds, at least some of them caused by rubber bullets that appeared to have been fired at close range.
Even as ambulances rushed to rescue people, forces fired on medics loading the wounded into their vehicles. That only added to the chaos, with people pitching in to evacuate the wounded by car and doctors at a nearby hospital saying the delays in casualties reaching them made it impossible to get a reasonable count of the dead and wounded.
A Western official said at least one person had died in the mayhem surrounding the square, and reports said at least 50 had been wounded. The official quoted a witness as saying that those shooting were in the military, not the police, indicating a hardening of the government's stance against those trying to stage a popular revolt.
Thousands of people gathered at the hospital, offering blood for the wounded, and doctors said they had to work as "volunteers" because the government had issued orders against helping protesters.
The mourners who defied a government ban to march on Pearl Square were mostly young men who had been part of a funeral procession for a protester killed in an earlier crackdown by the police.
Minutes after the first shots were fired, forces in a helicopter that had been shooting at the crowds opened fire at a Western reporter and videographer who were filming a sequence on the latest violence. Two young men who had been in the march said some of the fire came from snipers.
The crown prince, Sheik Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, went on Bahrain TV to call for calm, saying, "Today is the time to sit down and hold a dialogue, not to fight," Reuters reported.
The violence came a day after both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the leaders of the country, a longtime ally, to show restraint. President Obama reiterated that message on Friday and condemned the violence in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen.
"The United States condemns the use of violence by governments against peaceful protesters in those countries and wherever else it may occur," Mr. Obama said. "We express our condolences to the family and friends of those who have been killed during the demonstrations."
The president, who also spoke of the right of assembly as a "universal" right, made the remarks in a statement read to reporters traveling with him on a domestic trip on Air Force One.
At least seven people had died in clampdowns in Bahrain before Friday's violence.
The chaos has left the Obama administration in the uncomfortable position of dealing with a strategic Arab ally locked in a showdown with its people.
The protests in Bahrain started Monday, inspired by the overthrow of autocratic governments in Egypt and Tunisia. The Bahraini government initially cracked down hard, then backed off after at least two deaths and complaints from the United States.
But since Thursday morning, security forces have shown little patience with the protesters, first firing on demonstrators sleeping in Pearl Square early Thursday morning, killing at least five, and then shooting today at those who gathered to mark an earlier death.
The violence appeared to be transforming the demands of the protesters, who early on were calling for a switch from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one. On Thursday, the opposition withdrew from the Parliament and demanded that the government step down. And on Friday, the mourners were chanting slogans like "death to Khalifa," referring to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.
The protests here, while trying to mimic those in Egypt and Tunisia, add a dangerous new element: religious division. The king and the ruling elite of Bahrain are Sunni, while the majority of the population are Shiites, who have been leading the demonstrations and demanding not only more freedom but equality.
The king is distrustful enough of his Shiite subjects that many of his soldiers and police officers are foreigners hired by the government.
The events on Friday began at a mourning ceremony at a cemetery attended by tens of thousands of people. Afterward, the crowd began to march peacefully, but when they reached an intersection of a road that would lead toward Pearl Square, some people became visibly nervous and headed in the other direction. About 1,000 people turned toward the square.
Although the government had issued a strict warning against protests, there were no signs that forces were waiting in the square. But when the marchers approached, shots began to ring out, sending them fleeing.
The mourning ceremony was one of at least two held on Friday. The other, a funeral in the village of Sitra, south of Manama, drew a crowd of thousands who accompanied the coffins of Ali Mansour Ahmed Khudair, 53, and Mahmoud Makki Abutaki, 22, both killed by shotgun fire on Thursday.
The coffins were carried on the roofs of two cars as a man with a loudspeaker led the crowd in its chants from the bed of a pickup truck, alternating between calls to the faithful - "There is no God but God" - with political messages such as, "We need constitutional reform for freedom."
In the sun-scorched, sandy cemetery with its crumbling white headstones, the bodies were laid to rest on their sides so that they faced the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. "Have you seen what they have done to us?" said Aayat Mandeel, 29, a computer technician. "Killing people for what? To keep their positions?"
After the burials, the crowds moved off to a major mosque for noon prayers on the Muslim holy day, an occasion that has provided a focus for protests elsewhere in the region. But it was not clear whether religious leaders would urge them to continue their demonstrations.
For the Obama administration, the violence in this tiny Persian Gulf State was the Egypt scenario in miniature, a struggle to avert broader instability and protect its interests - Bahrain is the base of the Navy's Fifth Fleet - while voicing support for the democratic aspiration of the protesters.
The United States has said it strongly opposed the use of violence. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Bahrain's foreign minister on Thursday morning to convey "our deep concern about the actions of the security forces," she said. President Obama did not publicly address the Thursday crackdown, but his press secretary, Jay Carney, said that the White House was urging Bahrain to use restraint in responding to "peaceful protests."
In some ways, the administration's calculations are even more complicated here, given Bahrain's proximity to Saudi Arabia, another Sunni kingdom of vital importance to Washington, and because of the sectarian nature of the flare-up here.
This has broader regional implications, experts and officials said, since Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its eastern, oil-producing districts and the Shiite government in Iran would like to extend its influence over this nearby island kingdom. Shiite political figures in Bahrain deny that their goal is to institute an Islamic theocracy like that in Iran.
For those who were in the traffic circle known as Pearl Square on Thursday when the police opened fire without warning on thousands who were sleeping there, it was a day of shock and disbelief. Many of the hundreds taken to the hospital were wounded by shotgun blasts, doctors said, their bodies speckled with pellets or bruised by rubber bullets or police clubs.
In the morning, there were three bodies already stretched out on metal tables in the morgue at Salmaniya Medical Complex: Mr. Khudair, dead, with 91 pellets pulled from his chest and side; Isa Abd Hassan, 55, dead, his head split in half; Mr. Abutaki, dead, with 200 pellets of birdshot pulled from his chest and arms.
Doctors said that at least two others had died and that several patients were in critical condition with serious wounds. Muhammad al-Maskati, of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, said he had received at least 20 calls from frantic parents searching for young children.
A surgeon, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said that for hours on Thursday the Health Ministry prevented ambulances even from going to the scene to aid victims. The doctor said that in the early morning, when the assault was still under way, police officers beat a paramedic and a doctor and refused to allow medical staff to attend to the wounded. News agencies in Bahrain reported that the health minister, Faisal al-Hamar, had resigned after doctors staged a demonstration to protest his order barring ambulances from going to the square.
In the bloodstained morgue, Ahmed Abutaki, 29, held his younger brother's cold hand, tearfully recalling the last time they spoke Wednesday night. "He said, 'This is my chance, to have a say, so that maybe our country will do something for us,'" he recalled of his brother's decision to camp out in the circle. "My country did do something; it killed him."
There was collective anxiety as Friday approached and people waited to see whether the opposition would challenge the government's edict to stay off the streets. The government had made it clear that it would not tolerate more dissent, saying it would use "every strict measure and deterrent necessary to preserve security and general order." Both sides said they would not back down.
"You will find members of Al Wefaq willing to be killed, as our people have been killed," said Khalil Ebrahim al-Marzooq, one of 18 opposition party members to announce Thursday that they had resigned their seats. "We will stand behind the people until the complete fulfillment of our demands."
Arab leaders have been badly shaken in recent days, with entrenched leaders in Egypt and Tunisia ousted by popular uprisings and with demonstrations flaring around the region. And now as the public's sense of empowerment has spread, the call to change has reached into this kingdom. That has raised anxiety in Saudi Arabia, which is connected to Bahrain by a bridge, and Kuwait, as well, and officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council met here to discuss how to handle the crisis.
After the meeting - and before Friday's clampdown - the council issued a statement supporting Bahrain's handling of the protests. It also suggested that outsiders might have fomented them, in a clear effort to suggest Iranian interference.
"The council stressed that it will not allow any external interference in the kingdom's affairs," said the statement, carried on Bahrain's state news agency, "emphasizing that breaching security is a violation of the stability of all the council's member countries."
"The Saudis are worried about any Shia surge," said Christopher R. Hill, who retired last year as United States ambassador to Iraq, where he navigated tensions between Sunnis and Shiites. "To see the Shia challenging the royal family will be of great concern to them."
Still, Mr. Hill said there was little evidence that Arab Shiites in Bahrain would trade their king for Iranian rulers.
Bahrain's king and his family have long been American allies in efforts to fight terrorism and push back the regional influence of Iran. In diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks, he urged American officials to take military action to disable Iran's nuclear program.
While Bahrain has arrested lawyers and human rights activists over the last two years, it had taken modest steps to open up the society in the eight years before that, according to Human Rights Watch. King Hamad allowed municipal and legislative elections last fall, for which he was praised by Mrs. Clinton during a visit to Bahrain in December.
In the streets, however, people were not focused on geopolitics or American perceptions of progress. They were voicing demands for democracy, rule of law and social justice.
Mark Landler and Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from Washington, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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18) Now Bahrain
New York Times Editorial
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/opinion/18fri2.html?hp
King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain is the latest autocrat to choose brutality, rather than reform, to try to silence his people's demands for a more just government. His actions are unconscionable and miss the lessons of Egypt and Tunisia where violence only fed popular anger. Hosni Mubarak and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali are now gone.
Protests in Bahrain were peaceful and festive on Wednesday when thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators - including children - bedded down in Pearl Square for the night. Hours later, hundreds of riot police stormed the area without warning, firing tear gas, concussion grenades, rubber bullets and shotguns.
Nicholas D. Kristof of The Times interviewed paramedics who said they were beaten for treating the injured. At least five people were killed. Two other protesters were killed earlier in the week.
Bahrain's pro-democracy movement was inspired by Egypt and Tunisia, but the grievances of its Shiite majority are longstanding. They compose 70 percent of the citizenry but hold only four of 23 cabinet slots. They are excluded from serving in the police and army. In last October's election, the Shiites won less than half of the seats in the National Assembly, raising charges of vote-rigging.
King Hamad has repeatedly vowed both political and economic reforms but has never really delivered. Now the government is looking for a scapegoat - blaming Iran for the unrest. Tehran certainly never misses a chance to foment trouble. But the Shiites' demands are legitimate, and the appeal of Iran and other extremists will only grow if the government continues on this path.
For too long, the United States has muted its criticism of what goes in Bahrain, to ensure the kingdom's cooperation on security issues. Bahrain is home to the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet and an ally in efforts to counter Iran, terrorism and piracy.
After all of its backing and forthing on Egypt, we hoped the White House would have figured this one out. On Wednesday, President Obama criticized Iran's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, and pointedly did not mention Bahrain. On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did better, expressing strong opposition to the violence and support for reform.
Bahrain's brutality is not only at odds with American values, it is a threat to the country's long-term stability. Washington will need to push harder.
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19) Battle Lines Harden Across the Mideast as Rulers Dig In
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19protests.html?hp
Security forces and government supporters attacked protesters on Friday - using tear gas, batons, shotguns and grenades - in pitched street battles in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen.
The clashes followed a week of deepening unrest as protesters, emboldened by the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, have called for swift revolutions in their own countries. The battle lines between protesters and authoritarian rulers across the Arab world appeared to be hardening with governments turning to an increasingly brutal script in trying to quash the protests that have swept the region.
The severity of a Libyan crackdown on its so-called Day of Rage began to emerge Friday when a human rights advocacy group said 24 people had been killed by gunfire on Thursday and news reports said further clashes with security forces were feared at the funerals for the dead.
That apprehension also seized Bahrain, where mourners for some of the five people killed in an assault on a democracy camp a day earlier marched on Pearl Square and were fired on by security forces. The violence has pitted a Sunni minority government against a Shiite majority in the strategic island state that is home to the American Navy's Fifth Fleet.
In the Bahraini village of Sitra, south of Manama, thousands of Shiites gathered for more funerals of slain protesters, chanting "The people want the fall of the government" before noon prayers. No security forces were reported in the area, The Associated Press said.
In Yemen protests appeared to grow larger and more violent in the city of Taiz, 130 miles south of the capital, where thousands of protesters called for the ouster of President Ali Abullah Saleh and clashed with government supporters, news reports said. Reuters reported that a grenade exploded in a large crowd of protesters who had camped out since last Friday in the city's Hurriya Square, killing at least one person and wounding many more.
Across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen thousands of demonstrators gathered on Friday in the tiny African nation of Djibouti to demand that the country's president step down, after a series of smaller demonstrations seeking to capitalize on the wave of unrest, The Associated Press reported. A former French colony and a strong ally of the United States, Djibouti, like Bahrain, plays host to an American military base, the only one in Africa.
President Obama condemned the attacks on protesters around the region. "I am deeply concerned by reports of violence in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen," Mr. Obama said in a statement on Friday. "The United States condemns the use of violence against peaceful protesters in those countries, and wherever else it may occur."
Clashes between pro- and antigovernment demonstrators were reported in Amman, the capital of Jordan, The Associated Press reported. And in Kuwait, the police attacked about 1,000 members of the group known as bedouns who had gathered to demand greater rights, Bloomberg reported.
In Egypt the ouster of Mr. Mubarak has not ended disruptions. In a sermon delivered to hundreds of thousands gathered in Tahrir Sqaure and televised around the Middle East, Yousef al-Qaradawi, perhaps the most influential cleric in the Sunni Muslim world, urged Egyptians to guard the achievements of their own revolution and warned Arab rulers that they were facing a revolt without precedent.
"Don't fight history," Mr. Qaradawi said. "You can't delay the day when it starts. The Arab world has changed."
Mr. Qaradawi, who returned Thursday night from three decades in exile, spoke at a combination victory rally and democracy demonstration that brought hundreds of thousands of Egyptians back to the epicenter of the revolution that toppled Mr. Mubarak. State television, which until Mr. Mubarak's departure last Friday had consistently belittled the crowds in the square, put attendance at two million.
"The people want to build a new regime" and "the people want to cleanse the system" they chanted, updating the slogans of the revolt.
Speakers and demonstrators expressed an anxious optimism. Many said they had come to celebrate their achievement and remember those who had died in the protests. Many carried signs with pictures of the "martyrs," and vendors sold plastics emblazoned with them as well.
But they also said they had come to pressure the military officers now ruling the country to deliver on its promises of a transition to democracy, beginning with the release of political prisoners and the repeal of the so-called emergency law allowing extra-legal detentions.
Mr. Qaradawi, a popular television preacher as well as an influential theologian, echoed those calls, urging the military rulers to remove the cabinet ministers held over from the Mubarak government. "I say to the youth, protect the revolution and protect its unity," he said. "Beware of those who want to divide our ranks and those who want to corrupt your brotherhood."
Mr. Qaradawi's return is likely to worry some in the West because of his past support for violence against Israel and the American forces in Iraq. He has sometimes served as a de facto spiritual leader for the Muslim Brotherhood, the most organized opposition group under the Mubarak government.
But he also used his sermon Friday to call for tolerance and peace between Muslims and Christians in Egypt, and many in the crowd carried signs emblazoned with a crescent and a cross - the symbol of interfaith solidarity here.
In another turn of events likely to provoke the anxiety of the West about the potential consequences of Egypt's revolution, the government of Egypt granted permission to two Iranian warships to pass through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, officials said. No Iranian warship has traversed the canal since Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel, and some in the Israeli government called the Iranian move an act of provocation.
J. David Goodman from New York. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris; David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo; and Michael Slackman from Manama, Bahrain.
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20) Egyptians Say Military Discourages an Open Economy
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18military.html?hp
CAIRO - The Egyptian military defends the country, but it also runs day care centers and beach resorts. Its divisions make television sets, jeeps, washing machines, wooden furniture and olive oil, as well as bottled water under a brand reportedly named after a general's daughter, Safi.
From this vast web of businesses, the military pays no taxes, employs conscripted labor, buys public land on favorable terms and discloses nothing to Parliament or the public.
Since the ouster last week of President Hosni Mubarak, of course, the military also runs the government. And some scholars, economists and business groups say it has already begun taking steps to protect the privileges of its gated economy, discouraging changes that some argue are crucial if Egypt is to emerge as a more stable, prosperous country.
"Protecting its businesses from scrutiny and accountability is a red line the military will draw," said Robert Springborg, an expert on Egypt's military at the Naval Postgraduate School. "And that means there can be no meaningful civilian oversight."
Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the minister of defense and military production who now leads the council of officers ruling Egypt, has been a strong advocate of government control of prices and production. He has consistently opposed steps to open up the economy, according to diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks.
And already there are signs that the military is purging from the cabinet and ruling party advocates of market-oriented economic changes, like selling off state-owned companies and reducing barriers to trade.
As the military began to take over, the government pushed out figures reviled for reaping excessive personal profits from the sell-off of public properties, most notably Mr. Mubarak's younger son, Gamal, and his friend the steel magnate Ahmed Ezz. On Thursday, an Egyptian prosecutor ordered that Mr. Ezz be detained pending trial for corruption, along with two businessmen in the old cabinet - former Tourism Minister Zuhair Garana and former Housing Minister Ahmed el-Maghrabi - as well as former Interior Minister Habib el-Adli.
But the military-led government also struck at advocates of economic openness, including the former finance minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali, who was forced from his job, and the former trade minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid, whose assets were frozen under allegations of corruption. Both are highly regarded internationally and had not been previously accused of corruption.
"That mystified everybody," said Hisham A. Fahmy, chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt.
In an interview, Mr. Rachid said he felt like a scapegoat. "People who have been supporting liberal reforms or an open economy are being caught up in the anticorruption campaign," he said. "My case is one of them."
"Now there are a lot of voices from the past talking about nationalization - 'Why do we need a private sector?' " he added. He declined to talk specifically about the military but said that in general within the government, "some people have tried to say that the cause of the revolution was simply economic reform."
Though some Western analysts have guessed that the military's empire makes up as much as a third of Egypt's economy, Mr. Rachid said it was in fact less than 10 percent. But economists say that because of its vested interests they still worry that the military will impede the continuation of the transition from the state-dominated economy established under President Gamal Abdel Nasser to a more open and efficient free market that advanced under Mr. Mubarak.
Moreover, the military's power to guide policy is, at the moment, unchecked. The military has invited no civilian input into the transitional government, and it has enjoyed such a surge in prestige since it helped usher out Mr. Mubarak that almost no one in the opposition is criticizing it.
"We trust them," said Walid Rachid, a member of the April 6 Youth Movement that helped set off the revolt. "Because of the army our revolution has become safe."
Some of the young revolutionaries at the vanguard of the revolt identify themselves as leftists or socialists. And the idea of liberalizing the economy was thrown into disrepute because of the corrupt way that the Mubarak government carried out privatization, bestowing fortunes on a small circle around the ruling party while leaving most Egyptians struggling against grinding poverty and rampant inflation.
"People think that liberalization creates corruption," said Abdel Fattah el-Gibaly, director of economic research at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "I think we will go back, not exactly to socialism, but maybe halfway."
And the Egyptian military, said Mr. Springborg of the Naval Postgraduate School, is happy to go along. "The military is like the matador with the red cape attracting the bull of resentment against the corruption of the old regime," he said, "and they are playing it very successfully."
Gen. Fathy el-Sady, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense Production, declined to comment, saying the minister in charge was tied up dealing with strikes at military-run companies.
The military has used its leverage in times of crises to thwart free market reforms before, most notably during the 1977 bread riots set off after President Anwar el-Sadat cut subsidies for food prices to move toward a free market. The military agreed to quell the unrest only after extracting a promise from Mr. Sadat that he would reinstate the subsidies, said Michael Wahid Hanna, who studies Egypt's military at the Century Foundation in Washington.
Field Marshal Tantawi, the defense minister, and other senior officers were all commissioned before Mr. Sadat switched Egypt's allegiance to the West in 1979. They trained in the former Soviet Union, where sprawling business empires under military control were not uncommon.
"In the cabinet, where he still wields significant influence, Tantawi has opposed both economic and political reforms that he perceives as eroding central government power," the American ambassador at the time, Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., wrote in one 2008 cable released by WikiLeaks.
"On economic reform, Tantawi believes that Egypt's economic reform plan fosters social instability by lessening G.O.E. controls over prices and production," the ambassador added, referring to the government of Egypt and calling Field Marshal Tantawi "aging and change-resistant."
In a cable later that year describing the tensions pitting the military against the businessmen around Gamal Mubarak, the new ambassador, Margaret Scobey, wrote: "The military views the G.O.E.'s privatization efforts as a threat to its economic position, and therefore generally opposes economic reforms. We see the military's role in the economy as a force that generally stifles free market reform by increasing direct government involvement in the markets."
Mr. Mubarak, scholars and Western diplomats say, allowed the military to expand its empire, ensuring the allegiance of its officers and quieting discontent by dismantling other state-owned businesses. And with so many businesses under their control, the military's top officials have doled out chief executive jobs and weekends at military-owned resorts to cultivate loyalty. Though deprivation and inequality were major complaints leading to the uprising, economists credit the Mubarak government with expanding the economy and increasing its growth rate by loosening state controls and attracting foreign investment.
But the Mubarak government carried out reforms from the top, without changing burdensome regulations that made it hard for small businesses to compete, and the benefits flowed mainly to a few. Most Egyptians felt, if anything, more impoverished, watching new Mercedeses and BMWs zip by donkey carts hauling garbage through the streets.
"The Mubarak government privatized basically by offering state properties to their cronies," said Ragui Assaad, an economist who studies Egypt at the University of Minnesota.
Paul Sullivan, an expert on Egypt and its military at Georgetown University, said the military leaders were farsighted enough to see that stability would now require continued economic as well as political liberalization. But he also acknowledged the possibility of a return to the past. "There is a witch hunt for corruption, and there is a risk that the economy might go back to the days of Nasser," the apex of centralized state control, he said.
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21) 24 Reported Killed in Libya Crackdown
By ALAN COWELL
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/africa/19libya.html?hp
CAIRO - Thousands gathered Friday for a fourth day of demonstrations in Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city, in an unprecedented challenge to the mercurial 41-year reign of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi. Human rights groups said 24 people have been killed in clashes across the North African country, though activists say the count may be higher.
The escalating unrest bears the hallmarks of uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, as protesters copy slogans heard there and the government moves to cut Internet and phone lines and disrupt text messaging by cellphones. But the posture of security forces has proven a crucial difference, with security forces moving to crush the unrest with force.
Since seizing power in a coup in 1969, Colonel Qaddafi has imposed his idiosyncratic, sometimes bizarre rule on a country that is one of the world's biggest exporters of oil. With a population of just 6.4 million, Libya is one of the region's wealthiest nations, though eastern Libya and Benghazi have witnessed periodic uprisings. Tripoli, the capital, has seen sporadic protests but remains firmly in the government's grip, residents say.
"I don't see them being easily overpowered, especially at this point, because of the powers of the Libyan security forces and their tendency to crack down very brutally on protests," said Heba Morayef, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in contact with residents in Libya. "I'm not saying it will never happen, but it won't happen today."
Residents reached by telephone said the most intense unrest was in Benghazi and Bayda, a city about 125 miles northeast. As many as 15,000 people gathered in front of the courthouse in Benghazi on Friday and, in a possible sign of withering authority, security forces had withdrawn from at least part of the city by afternoon, residents said.
"Security has retreated to allow the protesters to march because the masses are in a state of extreme anger," said one of the protesters, Idris Ahmed al-Agha, a writer and activist. "I don't know what's going to happen but I think it's going to escalate."
In the background, demonstrators' chants could be heard.
"The people want to topple the government," they cried, an expression first heard in protests in Tunisia, then picked up by the demonstrators in Cairo's 18-day uprising.
Judging by funerals and residents' account, he put the death toll at 50 in Benghazi. Other opposition activists said 60 had died in Benghazi and dozens more in Bayda, though Libya's isolation made the numbers were almost impossible to verify.
Libyan opposition groups said protesters had wrested control of several towns - among them Bayda and, to its northeast, the port city of Darnah, though the degree of their authority seemed ambiguous. They said several police stations were burned down in towns across Libya, and Mr. Agha said a military office was attacked in Benghazi.
In Kufrah, an oasis town in southeastern Libya, protests had been planned for after Friday prayers, but security forces deployed outside the mosques forbade demonstrations, and allowed worshipers to leave only one by one, said Badawi Altobawi, an activist there.
Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo and Nada Bakri from Beirut.
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22) Yemen Protesters Face Off for 8th Day
By LAURA KASINOF
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19yemen.html?ref=world
SANA, Yemen - Pro-government demonstrators armed with sticks ran down rivals calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Friday in the capital, breaking up the show of dissent as the country's turmoil went into an eighth day.
In the city of Taiz, 130 miles south of the capital, thousands of antigovernment protesters massed and clashed with government supporters, news reports said. Reuters reported that a grenade exploded in a large crowd of antigovernment protesters who had gathered in the city's Hurriya, or Freedom, Square, camping out in emulation of Egyptian protesters who turned Cairo's Tahrir Square into the center of their uprising. At least eight people were wounded in the blast, Reuters reported.
The protests in Taiz, where thousands of students have set up encampments in the street since last Friday, have appeared more intractable than the daily skirmishes in Sana. The police there have arrested more than 100 demonstrators in recent days as the nation fights over the future of Mr. Saleh's 32-year-old American-backed regime.
As on Thursday, the police in Sana fired shots into the air as hundreds of protesters from each camp traded volleys of rocks on the streets in clashes reflecting the turmoil across the Middle East and North Africa.
In what now seems a pattern, pro-government forces wearing traditional dress that prevails outside the capital routed antigovernment protesters as the police and army looked on. The demonstrators had been seeking to march to a mosque from the university. After they were dispersed, their foes, waving sticks aloft, celebrated with a victory parade.
As the protests stretched into a second week, opponents of Mr. Saleh appeared divided. A formal coalition of opposition parties organized earlier demonstrations that extracted concessions from him, including a pledge to stand down in 2013. For the moment they appear content to push for greater concessions under that timetable.
But a younger cohort of opponents is pressing for Mr. Saleh's earlier departure, organizing their resistance - as elsewhere - using cell phone text messages and Facebook.
The delicate position of the United States seems as evident in Yemen as it is in Bahrain, where pro-American leaders have cracked down on adversaries on the street clamoring for the monarchy to make way for democratic change. Demand for reform has already toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, both close allies of Washington.
Antigovernment activists here are increasingly concerned about the government's apparent deployment of out-of-town Yemenis paid to disrupt their protests. "These guys are not from Sana," said Ibrahim el-Farzy, a shopkeeper.
Southern secessionists have also renewed their protests in the port city of Aden, where demonstrations have been notably more violent. One protester, about 20 years old, was said to have been shot to death in battles with the police on Wednesday, according to reports from the city, as hundreds took to the streets in several neighborhoods.
Though Yemen's southern secessionists have also sought inspiration from a regional wave of protests their demand for independence is longstanding and their goals differ from those of the students protesting against Mr. Saleh in Sana and other areas, including Taiz, which is not part of the area that secessionists have claimed.
J. David Goodman contributed reporting from New York, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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23) Violence Erupts at Jordan Protest
By RANYA KADRI and ISABEL KERSHNER
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19jordan.html?ref=world
AMMAN, Jordan - A protest turned violent here in the Jordanian capital on Friday as government supporters clashed with demonstrators calling for political change, injuring several, witnesses said.
Antigovernment protests, though rare for Jordan, have become routine on Fridays in the weeks since popular uprisings swept over Tunisia, Egypt and other parts of the region, but this was the first time that one ended in confrontation.
Jordanians expressed surprise over the turn of events, saying that this Friday's antigovernment gathering was actually smaller than previous ones, with only a few hundred participants, as opposed to earlier demonstrations that had attracted several thousand.
The protest started out peacefully outside the King Hussein mosque in downtown Amman, according to participants, with the demonstrators calling for an end to corruption and constitutional monarchy and for the lowering of prices.
"Then," recounted Firas Mahadin, 30, a movie director who took part in the protest, "more than a hundred young thugs surrounded us from in front and behind and started attacking us."
Mr. Mahadin was speaking by telephone from the hospital, where he had gone with a suspected concussion after being hit on the head with a metal club, he said. He said that the attackers were shouting slogans in favor of King Abdullah II and against Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite station that has been accused by parts of the Middle East establishment of fomenting the recent upheavals and unrest.
Mr. Mahadin and others described the pro-government supporters as young men in civilian clothing armed with metal bars and wooden clubs.
Witnesses said that the police at the scene did not intervene.
A police spokesman, Mohamed Khatib, described the clashes as the result of a "quarrel" that broke out "between a pro-government rally and another demonstration staged in the same location," Agence France-Presse reported.
Most of the rallies for change have been led by the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, joined by leftist groups, students and trade unions.
Another antigovernment protester, Sufian al-Tell, an engineer and a member of the Jordan National Party, said that the Muslim Brotherhood did not participate in this Friday's demonstration.
During previous Friday protests, Mr. Tell said, there were fewer police officers and the atmosphere was relaxed, with the police offering protesters juice and water. This Friday there was a stronger police presence, he said, "and although we asked for help, they walked away."
The demonstrations in Jordan have represented the first serious challenge to the decade-old rule of King Abdullah II, a critical American ally in the region. The king enjoys absolute powers, and appoints the prime minister and the cabinet. But he is contending with the country's worst economic crisis in years.
King Abdullah has already taken some measures to try to calm the atmosphere. Responding to the protesters' demands, he dismissed the prime minister, Samir Rifai, on Feb. 1 and replaced him with Marouf al-Bakhit, a former general who has served before in the post and is widely viewed as clean of corruption. The royal palace said in a statement that Mr. Bakhit was asked to take "practical, swift and tangible steps" toward comprehensive political change.
A week later, several dozen Jordanian tribesmen, historically core loyalists to the monarchy, issued a rare statement calling for urgent and far-reaching political reform and an end to corruption. They said that without a more open and responsive political system, the country was headed down the path taken by Tunisia and Egypt. The statement, signed by 36 members of tribes, mostly Bedouins, was published on Jordan's most popular news Web site.
Despite the growing undercurrent of unease, there was little sign before Friday's clashes that things could turn violent. Opposition forces had said that they would keep up their symbolic protests but that they did not intend to escalate the situation.
Few consider either the monarchy or the country at imminent risk of serious turmoil, not least because the population is divided between groups with differing grievances and interests. Jordan is a country of six million, more than half of them Palestinian, and 40 percent members of tribes, also known as East Bankers.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem.
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24) Among Egypt's Missing, Tales of Torture and Prison
By LIAM STACK
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/middleeast/18missing.html?ref=world
CAIRO - Ramadan Aboul Hassan left his house one night about three weeks ago to join a neighborhood watch group with two friends and did not return. The next time their relatives saw the three men they were emerging Wednesday night from a maximum security prison, 400 miles from home, run by Egypt's military. Some family members said they bore signs of torture, though others denied it.
While many here have cheered the military for taking over after last week's ouster of President Hosni Mubarak and for pledging to oversee a transition to democracy, human rights groups say that in the past three weeks the military has also played a documented role in dozens of disappearances and at least 12 cases of torture - trademark practices of the Mubarak government's notorious security police that most here hoped would end with his exit.
Some, like Mr. Aboul Hassan and his two friends, were not released until several days after the revolution removed Mr. Mubarak.
Now human rights groups say the military's continuing role in such abuses raises new questions about its ability to midwife Egyptian democracy.
"The military is detaining people incommunicado, which is illegal, and so it is effectively disappearing people," said Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch, which has documented four cases that it describes as involving torture. Amnesty International has documented three such cases, and the Front for the Defense of Egyptian Protesters has documented five.
Human Rights Watch has also documented one case in which the military transferred a prisoner to the country's feared State Security forces, where it says he was tortured.
Ms. Morayef said the cases of detention and torture did not appear to be "systematic," but added, "It is enough to set off alarm bells and call for an investigation into abuses by the military police."
Most victims were arrested by the military, she says, though two were detained by neighborhood watch groups and then handed over to soldiers. The interrogations accompanying abuse all revolved around victims' suspected participation in the antigovernment protests that toppled the Mubarak government.
Hundreds of unidentified bodies have shown up at hospitals around the country, says the Front for the Defense of Egyptian Protesters, deepening the uncertainty. On Wednesday, Egypt's Health Ministry reported that 365 had died during the uprising and that 5,500 were injured.
Military officials said at a meeting of youth activists on Monday that they would search for those who had disappeared during the uprising, and confirmed that at least 77 people had been detained in fighting in Tahrir Square, according to notes of the meeting published on Facebook.
Local media reported that the army chief of staff, Sami Enan, had agreed to release all of those detained during the revolution, but rights groups complain that he did not commit to a timetable. They have seen little movement toward fulfilling the pledge.
Ramadan Aboul Hassan, 33, vanished well after the battle with the police around Tahrir Square had ended. On Jan. 29, after the police fled the city and the military stepped in, Ramadan left home with his nephew Ahmed Aboul Hassan, 22, and their friend Mostafa Mahrous Mostafa to join neighbors in fending off looters. Then they disappeared.
For 18 days Mohamed Aboul Hassan, 51, Ramadan's eldest brother, worked the phones, each call introducing him to a new lieutenant or government bureaucrat offering a different story about the men's whereabouts and counseling a different course of action.
The family combed hospitals and police stations and begged military officials they managed to get on the phone. They asked the national prison authority if the men's names were in the country's database of inmates, and were told they were nowhere to be found.
Five days after the disappearance, their families learned that the men had been arrested by the military under a bridge on nearby Revolution Street close to the local headquarters of military intelligence. Mohamed was called in to the intelligence office, given their national ID cards and asked to sign for them before he could take the cards home. He was not told why they had been arrested or when they would be released.
"I don't understand why the government is doing this," Mohamed said Tuesday, the height of the search. "If they would just give me some piece of information about them, it would mean so much for me."
The military has little experience directly governing and policing the civilian population, leaving it ill equipped for tasks like notifying families of arrests or detentions, said Ahmed Ragheb, the executive director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, a human rights organization. "The army is not prepared to operate an incarceration system or facilities."
Early Tuesday afternoon, a contact in the military told the Aboul Hassan family that the three men had been released from Wadi Gedid maximum security prison in a distant southern province and put on a military train bound for Cairo. A short while later a cousin with friends working in the train station told them no such train existed, and an official at Wadi Gedid said the prison had no record of them.
Later, another prison official told Mohamed that the men were in the custody of the civil police in Upper Egypt, while a military official told another brother, Rabie, 36, that the men were awaiting military trials on unknown charges.
On Wednesday, Rabie hired a taxi and made the 400-mile journey to Wadi Gedid prison to ask about the men himself. He found them awaiting release with several hundred others, and said they bore the physical and psychological scars of torture.
The men had been detained at Hikestep Military Base, in the desert outside Cairo, before being sent to Wadi Gedid. They were beaten, whipped, exposed to electric shocks and suspended from the door frames of their cells, Rabie said. They were offered bread doused in gasoline and had guns held to their heads, he asserted. "They treated them like a herd of sheep," he said.
After their release, Mohamed said, "They are psychologically traumatized and physically ill," although he denied that they had been tortured. Because of concerns for their well-being, the Aboul Hassan family did not allow reporters access to the three men after their return to Cairo and none were interviewed for this article.
The Aboul Hassans are a poor family in an upper-class neighborhood. Ramadan, Ahmed and Mostafa are the children of men who tend the gardens and guard the doors at upscale apartments in the Heliopolis district of Cairo. Their homes are a grim warren of windowless concrete rooms in the building's basement, sparsely furnished and bursting at the seams with children.
For weeks, the men's recovered national ID cards were the only clues family members had about their fates.
"We joined the protests to liberate the country and end the problems of the regime," said Rabie, who had accompanied his brother to Tahrir Square in the days before his arrest. His family's ordeal at the hands of the military, an institution he said he respected, has shaken his faith in the revolution.
"After 18 days the regime is gone but the same injustices remain."
Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, Enas Muthaffar and Dawlat Magdy contributed reporting.
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25) In Puerto Rico, Protests End Short Peace at University
By TAMAR LEWIN
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/education/18puertorico.html?ref=us
SAN JUAN, P.R. - Months of unrest at the University of Puerto Rico seemed to be reaching a finale over the last 10 days. Scores of students were arrested or injured by riot police officers. Faculty and staff members held a two-day walkout. The president of the university resigned Friday, the police who had occupied campus were withdrawn Monday and an interim president arrived Tuesday.
But there were only three days of peace.
On Thursday morning, students blocked the stairs to classrooms in the social science department with trash cans and chairs, and also closed down the humanities department. At the social sciences building, students said only one professor had tried to get through the blockade.
The spark for the university's problems was a budget cut that required students to pay a new $800 fee, increasing their costs by more than 50 percent.
"It is the same situation that many universities in the United States are facing," said Miguel A. Muñoz, the interim president. "Our budget is about $1 billion, and we have been cut about $200 million. We need the $800 fee to cover the deficit, and our tuition is so low, $51 a credit, that it's almost a gift."
The tuition is indeed far lower than most other flagship public universities. But Puerto Rico is poorer than the mainland United States, and two-thirds of the students have incomes low enough to qualify for Pell grants.
As at many public universities elsewhere in the United States, students here worry that the new fiscal realities will restrict who can attend.
"This is a public university, and it should be accessible to everyone," said Eduardo Galindez, a second-year student. "I work in the physics department, and I know some graduate students who couldn't come back this semester because they couldn't afford the fee."
Student leaders estimate that at least 5,000 of the university's students were not able to pay the fee this semester. And the administration acknowledges that there are now fewer than 54,000 students this semester, compared with about 60,000 last semester.
Dr. Muñoz, however, attributed the drop to instability, not the new fee. "As a parent, you don't want to send your son, your daughter to a campus where you see so many protests, and police," he said. Still, if there are threats to security and safety, he said he would not hesitate to bring back the police.
"A university is not a different place from the rest of Puerto Rico," he said.
Protests may well flare up again. A general student assembly is scheduled for Tuesday, to discuss whether to call a further strike to protest the $800 fee, program cuts, and the unwillingness of the authorities to negotiate.
"We have to see if students will ratify a strike or not," said Giovanni Roberto, one of the student protest leaders. "We know there are alternatives and we have proposed them, but we don't have any power to get them to listen."
But the students have flexed their muscles. A two-month strike last spring shut down the university's 11 campuses. And since the current strike began in December - this time, largely at the main Rio Piedras campus in San Juan - people across the island have been riveted by television and YouTube videos of violent confrontations between students and the police.
Many students were outraged that the police had been called to the campus.
"Calling in the police, for the first time in 30 years, was one of the most rash decisions they could have made," said René Vargas, a law student who represents the student body on the university board of trustees. "The university's intransigence and refusal to talk to students has worsened the whole situation. The students presented a 200-page document suggesting alternatives and ways to increase revenues, and the trustees have not even been willing to look at it."
Some students, like Liz Lebron, a freshman, said they thought the administration had been right to bring in the police, because some students were destroying property and stopping others from attending class.
Whether or not they approved of the police presence, many students said they found it frightening.
"I didn't go to class when I saw the police because I was scared of getting hurt," said Carmen Gonzalez, a senior majoring in English literature who supported the protesters. "On television I saw people getting hurt, and if you're in class and you hear those police helicopters, you can't concentrate."
Many students complained about the university's decision to put several academic programs, including Hispanic studies, "on pause," meaning they are not accepting new undergraduates.
Some faculty members and students say that local politics have played a large role in the university's problems.
Puerto Rico has its first Republican governor in decades, Luis G. Fortuño, a pro-statehood conservative who has cut the number of public employees by about 17,000. Last weekend, while the protesters were marching in the streets, Mr. Fortuño was in Washington as a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action conference.
Even in the lull from protests early this week, students and faculty members alike said they had no illusion that the situation had been resolved.
"We still have a very volatile situation," said Maritza Stanchich, an English professor who has supported the students. "This all started out over anger about the new fees that were being imposed, but the issues have expanded to the style of governance and the lack of negotiation."
While it is hard to predict what will happen next, some students may be changing their approach.
"What a lot of people are saying, and I believe too, is that we should be thinking about a movement of protest now, not really a strike," said Omar Oduardo, a Student Council representative who spent Thursday at the social sciences department lobby, discussing the situation.
"Maybe stopping classes is working against the movement," he added, "and it's time to go outside the university, to the legislature and the community, to work for change."
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26) Patriot Act Extended for 3 Months
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 17, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/us/politics/18brfs-PATRIOTACTEX_BRF.html?ref=us
Congress on Thursday gave itself three more months to consider provisions of a counterterrorism law that help track security threats but have drawn fire from defenders of privacy rights. The House vote of 279 to 143 followed a Senate vote Tuesday. President Obama is expected to sign the bill before the provisions expire on Feb. 28. At issue are two powers established in the 2001 Patriot Act that allow law enforcement officials to set roving wiretaps to monitor multiple communication devices and to ask a special court for access to "any tangible thing" - including business and library records - that could be relevant to a terrorist threat. A third provision, from a 2004 intelligence act, gives the F.B.I. court-approved rights for surveillance of non-American "lone wolf" suspects not known to be tied to specific terrorist groups.
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27) Cellphones Become the World's Eyes and Ears on Protests
By JENNIFER PRESTON and BRIAN STELTER
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/world/middleeast/19video.html?ref=business
For some of the protesters facing Bahrain's heavily-armed security forces in and around Pearl Square in Manama, the most powerful weapon against shotguns and tear gas has been the tiny camera inside their cellphones.
By uploading images of this week's violence in Manama, the capital, to Web sites like YouTube and yFrog, and then sharing it on Facebook and Twitter, the protesters upstaged government accounts and drew worldwide attention to their demands.
A novelty just 15 years ago, the cellphone camera has become a vital tool for both human rights advocates and protesters to document the government response to the unrest that has spread through the Middle East and North Africa, and to connect with the rest of the world.
Recognizing the power of such documentation, human rights groups have published guides and provided training on how to use cellphone cameras effectively. Images captured by amateurs have proven to be especially important in countries where freedom of speech is limited and where professional journalists have been targets of intimidation, as in Egypt.
"You finally have a video technology that can fit into the palm of one person's hand, and what the person can capture can end up around the world," said James E. Katz, director of the Rutgers Center for Mobile Communication Studies. "This is the dagger at the throat of the creaky old regimes that, through the manipulation of these old centralized technologies, have been able to smother the public's voice. Now there is this tool that has empowered each person to make these dramatic changes."
In Tunisia, cellphones were used to capture video images of the first protests in Sidi Bouzid last December, which helped spread unrest to other parts of the country. The uploaded images also prompted producers at Al Jazeera, the satellite television network, to begin focusing on the revolt, which toppled the Tunisian government in mid-January and set the stage for the demonstrations in Egypt.
"Bless him, really, that guy who put a camera in people's phones," said Wadah Khanfar, the director general of Al Jazeera. "He liberated people."
While built-in cameras have been commercially available in cellphones since the late 1990s, it was not until the tsunami that struck southeast Asia on Dec. 26, 2004, and the London subway bombings the following July that media organizations began to take serious note of the outpouring of images and videos created and posted by nonprofessionals. Memorably, in June 2009, cellphone videos of the shooting death of a young woman in Tehran known as Nedawere uploaded on YouTube, galvanizing the Iranian opposition and rocketing around the world.
Now, news organizations regularly seek out, sift and publish such images. Authenticating them remains a challenge, since photos can be easily altered by computers and old videos can resurface again purporting to be new. YouTube is using Storyful, a news aggregation site, to help manage the tens of thousands of videos that have been uploaded from the Middle East in recent weeks, and to highlight notable ones on the CitizenTube channel.
But journalists are not the only conduits. Cellphone images are increasingly being shared between users on mobile networks and on the social network pages of individuals, and they are being broadly consumed on Web sites that aggregate video and images, like YouTube, Flickr, yFrog, Plixi, Qik, and Bambuser, a Swedish-based company that enables live streaming.
The hosting Web sites have reported increases both in submissions from the Middle East and in visitors viewing the content.
Among the sites, Bambuser has stood out as a way to stream video. Mans Adler, the site's co-founder, said it had 15,000 registered users in Egypt, most of whom signed up just before last November's election. He said there were more than 10,000 videos on the site that were produced around the time of the election, focusing on activity at the polls, in what appeared to be an organized effort.
Afterward, the level of activity settled down to 800 to 2,000 videos a day, but then soared back to 10,000 a day again when the mass protests erupted in Egypt last month, he said.
In Bahrain, the government has blocked access to Bambuser.
At training sessions to help activists use their cameras, Bassem Samir, the executive director of the Egyptian Democratic Academy, said that improving the quality of the images and video was a high priority. He said many of the YouTube videos of protests in Iran after the elections in 2009 were marred by shaky camerawork. "If I'm running while taking the video, the people who see the video will not understand what is going on," he said in a telephone interview from Cairo.
Some groups, like the Brooklyn-based human rights group Witness, have been working to instill such lessons. Last year, Witness held training sessions for bloggers and activists from an array of Middle Eastern countries.
"Videos are stories," said Mr. Samir, who attended the sessions. "What happened on the 25th and 28th of January, it's a story. It's like a story of people who were asking for freedom and democracy, and we had, like, five or three minutes to tell it."
He added, referring to the protesters who are featured in the videos, "The heroes, the actors, don't know that they are actors."
Robert Mackey contributed reporting.
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