Category: Middle East

Midddle East Demonstrations · Middle East · Middle East Unrest · Yemen

U.S. Changes Mind About Yemen

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Well what took the President and the State Department so damned long?

Gawker

The U.S. will no longer support jerkoff Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, The New York Times reports, and is actively negotiating for his departure. Which is good, we guess, insofar as Saleh was a brutal, repressive autocrat whose people have been calling for his resignation (or more) for weeks; on the other hand, the deal seems to be that his vice-president will take power until elections are held, an outcome that’s unlikely to pacify Yemen’s angry protestors.

Oh, and, terrorism: One reason the U.S. hasn’t called for Saleh’s resignation is that Yemen is “because he was considered a critical ally in fighting the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda.” (Fret not, however, for the State Department’s stated position is that fighting al Qaeda in Yemen “goes beyond any one individual.”) Student protestors, meanwhile, are “really very, very angry” with the U.S. for dragging its feet. [NYT; image via AP]

Yemen Police Beat Female Protesters With Sticks: Activists

Huffington Post

Thousands of women calling for the ouster of Yemen’s longtime ruler were attacked on Sunday by police with sticks and rocks, setting off a furious battle with male protesters that left several people hurt, activists said.

The women were marching down a main street in the southern town of Taiz shouting “peaceful! peaceful!” when they were attacked, activist Ghazi al-Samei said.

Three of the young men suffered serious gunshot wounds when police opened fire, protester Bushra al-Maqtari told The Associated Press by telephone. She said over 200 more suffered breathing problems caused by inhaling tear gas.

Army tanks and armored cars stopped other demonstrators from entering Taiz, the site of some of the largest and angriest protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s rule.

Protesters have been camping out in main squares throughout Yemen for weeks, demanding Saleh immediately leave power after 30 years. The president has offered to resign by the year’s end and says leaving without a negotiated transition, would lead to chaos. On Saturday, opposition groups demanded he hand power to his vice president and set up committees to thrash out constitutional reform and elections.

Continue reading…

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Egypt · Egyptian President Mubarak · Egyptian Unrest · Midddle East Demonstrations · Middle East · Middle East Unrest

Egypt PM: Mubarak to stay through September

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Hosni Mubarak
Image by robertxcadena via Flickr

It looks like President Mubarak of Egypt will not give in to the demands of the citizens of Egypt and step down.  His plan is to stay until September.  Then again, the situation in Egypt is fluid, so it’s a matter of “wait and see” at this point.

MSNBC

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq confirmed Friday President Hosni Mubarak’s intentions to remain in office until elections in September, Egyptian state TV reported.

“We as civilized people must honor the president, who did a good job regardless of mistakes here and there,” said Ahmed Shafiq on Egyptian state TV, which was translated by msnbc TV. “Today the Egyptian people see that the president will not step down.”

Shafiq, a former air force commander and aviation minister, also said it’s unlikely that Mubarak would transfer power to Vice President Omar Suleiman, saying, “I doubt that this is acceptable.”

Shafiq said efforts were underway for a resolution, but he did not provide details.

“There are more points that need to be discussed,” he said, according to msnbc TV. “Both sides must give concessions so we can meet halfway.”

President Barack Obama urged the country to begin its transition process now.

The president said that “the entire world is watching,” and the issues at stake in Egypt won’t be resolved through violence. He condemned attacks on journalists and human rights activists, without blaming the government for them.

Checkpoints and children
Tens of thousands packed central Cairo Friday, waving flags and singing the national anthem, emboldened in their campaign to oust Mubarak after they repelled pro-regime attackers in two days of bloody street fights.

The government relaxed a capital curfew, which runs from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. instead of 5 p.m. to 7 a.m., according to media reports.   More…

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Midddle East Demonstrations · Middle East · Middle East Terror Plots · Middle East Unrest

Time Magazine’s Top Stories About The Unrest In The Middle East

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Midddle East Demonstrations · Middle East · Middle East Unrest · Time Magazine · Time Magazine's Top 10 Lists

Top 10 Autocrats in Trouble

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I really like Time Magazine’s “Top 10 Lists”, so here is the latest one.  The top 10 Autocrats (dictators) in trouble…

Time Magazine

Livin’ on the Edge

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Egypt · Jordan · Jordanian Prime Minister · Midddle East Demonstrations · Middle East · Middle East Unrest · Tunisia

Thousands protest in Jordan

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It appears that discontent in the Middle East has manifested a “domino effect”.  Now it’s Jordan…

Aljazeera

Protesters gather across the country, demanding the prime minister step down.

Thousands of people in Jordan have taken to the streets in protests, demanding the country’s prime minister step down, and the government curb rising prices, inflation and unemployment.

In the third consecutive Friday of protests, about 3,500 opposition activists from Jordan’s main Islamist opposition group, trade unions and leftist organisations gathered in the capital, waving colourful banners reading: “Send the corrupt guys to court”.

The crowd denounced Samir Rifai’s, the prime minister, and his unpopular policies.

Many shouted: “Rifai go away, prices are on fire and so are the Jordanians.”

Another 2,500 people also took to the streets in six other cities across the country after the noon prayers. Those protests also called for Rifai’s ouster.

Members of the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood and Jordan’s largest opposition party, swelled the ranks of the demonstrators, massing outside the al-Husseini mosque in Amman and filling the downtown streets with their prayer lines.

King Abdullah has promised some reforms, particularly on a controversial election law. But many believe it is unlikely he will bow to demands for the election of the prime minister and Cabinet officials, traditionally appointed by the king.

Rifai also announced a $550 million package of new subsidies in the last two weeks for fuel and staple products like rice, sugar, livestock and liquefied gas used for heating and cooking. It also includes a raise for civil servants and security personnel.

Record deficit

However, Jordan’s economy continues to struggle, weighed down by a record deficit of $2bn this year.

Inflation has also risen by 1.5 per cent to 6.1 per cent just last month, unemployment and poverty are rampant – estimated at 12 and 25 per cent respectively.

Ibrahim Alloush, a university professor, told the Associated Press that it was not a question of changing faces or replacing one prime minister with another.

“We’re demanding changes on how the country is now run,” he said.

He also accused the government of impoverishing the working class with regressive tax codes which forced the poor to pay a higher proportion of their income as tax.

He also accused parliament as serving as a “rubber stamp” to the executive branch.

“This is what has led people to protest in the streets because they don’t have venues for venting how they feel through legal means,” Alloush said.
 

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Kuwait · Middle East · Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity Suggests The U.S. Invade Kuwait And “Take All Their Oil”

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The first Gulf War was about protecting Kuwait from an invasion by Sadaam Hussein from uh, “taking over their oil” among other things.  Now Hannity suggests we take over their oil by invading Kuwait!    

Looks like idiocracy is taking form in this country at alarming an alarming rate.

News Hounds

For Sean Hannity, it seems you can never be too rich or have too many wars – for other people to fight. While basking in the luxury of his multimillion dollar waterfront mansion, chickenhawk Hannity is in a bullyboy pique over rising oil prices and is ready to rumble. Correction: he’s ready for other people to do the rumbling for him.

Never mind that our troops are a bit occupied in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hannity has a new front for them in Kuwait – to make them pay for their liberation back in the early 90’s. Oh and those Iraqis? How ungrateful were they that after we invaded their country -under false pretenses and caused at least 100,000, possibly a million, Iraqi deaths – they didn’t turn over their oil? No word yet on whether we should put off Hannity’s other pet war, attacking Iran, while we’re on this latest mission. (H/T Think Progress)

During the Great American Panel segment of Hannity last night (1/14/11), Hannity said:

There’s two things I’ve said. I said why isn’t Iraq paying us back with oil, and paying every American family and their soldiers that lost loved ones or have injured soldiers, and why didn’t they pay for their own liberation? For the Kuwait oil minister: how short his memory is. You know, we have every right to go in there and frankly take all their oil and make THEM pay for the liberation as these sheiks, etcetera, etcetera, you know were living in hotels in London and New York, as Trump pointed out, and now they’re gouging us.

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