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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Police continue attacks on protesters, Tahrir chants for field marshal to go
Today's Headlines
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Page 6: Politix
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Africa North
Egyptian generals
[Dawn] JUDGING by the intensifying demonstrations in Tahrir Square, the gulf between Egyptian protesters and the country's military-led government seems to be getting wider. The protestors' ire is directed at the generals -- especially Field Marshal Mohammad Tantawi --whom they see as a continuation of the Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
regime. The demonstrations reflect the widespread belief that the generals want to stick to power. No less than 39 political parties and groups are behind the rallies in Cairo and elsewhere. This shows the extent to which the civilian government and the military have alienated themselves from the people. Even though these political parties, including the rival Islamists (Moslem Brüderbund and the Salafis), differ among themselves, they share anti-army sentiments and seem determined to resist the military's proposals to amend the constitution. Briefly, the military wants exemption from a parliamentary review of its budget and internal working. More ominously, it wants to delay the presidential election due in April. This has added to doubts that the generals are really interested in a transition to democracy.

Countries that have experienced the Arab Spring fall into two categories -- those where the dictators have fallen (Tunisia, Libya and Egypt) and those where the struggle goes on (Bahrain, Syria and Yemen). The task for the caretaker regimes in the first category is to move towards democracy, and Tunisia has shown the way. If Libya is taking time to settle down and hold elections, one can understand, given the duration of the civil war and the extent of havoc wreaked in that country. But in Egypt it took only 18 days for the Mubarak regime to fall. That the generals should still prevaricate casts doubts on their intentions. The sensible course is not to delay the presidential election and to leave the constitutional amendments to the elected assembly, with the parliamentary election process scheduled to begin next Monday. The discarded Turkish model, in which the army was the protector of the constitution, will obviously not be acceptable to the Egyptian people, who have gained a new confidence in their ability to resist dictatorship.
Posted by: Fred || 11/24/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This is a parody, right?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 11/24/2011 16:19 Comments || Top||

#2  Mubarak stepped aside because the general guaranteed his future: a little show trial and then it is off to the expensive villa with the protective troop screen and all of the goodies. If they renege on that, then none of the other generals and politicians will ever trust them again. And the lying generals will face a series of coups to depose them and then execute them.
Posted by: Shieldwolf || 11/24/2011 21:06 Comments || Top||

#3  And Bahrain is not a dictatorship, it is an Emirate-form of government. Besides which, most of the 'protestors' in that country have been shown by outside reports to be on the Iranian payroll.
Posted by: Shieldwolf || 11/24/2011 21:08 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Attack on FC
[Dawn] EXACTLY two years ago, on Nov 23, 2009, parliament unanimously approved the Aghaz-i-Huqooq-i-Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
package. Militants marked the second anniversary of the package with a ferocious attack on a Frontier Corps convoy in the Balochistan district of Musa Khel on Monday. The Balochistan Liberation Army grabbed credit for the assault, which left 15 security personnel, including a major, dead. This was a brute reminder for the state of Pakistain of the militants' ability to violently oppose whatever effort is undertaken to norma-lise the situation in the province. The attacked FC troops were to be deployed as security for newly discovered coal reserves in the area. This imparted greater meaning to this strike by those who accuse the state of usurping Balochistan's rights and plundering its resources.

The government admits the pace of reforms has been slow, and everyone from nationalists to rights activists to journalists agree that the official Balochistan campaign is falling far short of winning the approval of the people of the province, let alone neutralising the rebels and others, such as sectarian killers, who thrive in times of instability. The space for politics within the existing framework has shrunk. The Balochistan Assembly, born of an election that was boycotted by many nationalist parties, is not what one would call a house representative of the people. Outside the assembly, many politicians who could help initiate a process of reconciliation have been forced to stay away from areas stalked by cut-thoats.

In the absence of an effective political mechanism to facilitate a search for solutions, the civilian administration is totally dependent on security personnel to maintain order. This is an option fraught with dangers. As disappearances and deaths in the province continue to be linked to the security agencies, they fuel the cut-thoats' description of Balochistan as a besieged land and adds to the impact of their attacks on troops. The interior ministry recently informed the National Assembly that FC personnel were 'confronted' 258 times between 2007 and 2011. Such attacks have drawn a strong response from the security agencies, as is evident in Musa Khel where a search operation is under way. It is not easy to talk of peace in moments of heat and hurt. Ultimately, however, it does not have to be a test of just how capable the security agencies are. Balochistan is in need of an urgent push towards a lasting solution -- one which must be based on politics, on honest, fair assessments of the situation and on the will and ability to push through decisions based on these assessments.
Posted by: Fred || 11/24/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan


Home Front: Culture Wars
Will: Be grateful '11 wasn't that bad
"People who live in a Golden Age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks."

-- Randall Jarrell, "A Sad Heart at the Supermarket"

This is not a Golden Age, which distinguishes it from no other age. Although we are told it is our duty to be morose about the nation's trajectory, many satisfying, edifying or entertaining things have happened this year. So on Thanksgiving, which still keeps Super Bowl Sunday in second place on the list of days when Americans eat the most, gorge yourself on some reasons for feeling at least a bit grateful for 2011:

A new genre of humor was born, the currency crisis joke. A Spaniard, an Italian and a Greek go into a bar. They drink until dawn. Who pays the tab? A German.

The euro is unraveling and might dissolve the European Union, that product of transnational progressivism based on the belief that national sovereignty should be leeched away to clever experts who, uninhibited by the consent of the governed, can create clever things like the euro.

In 2011, someone actually asked how an Amtrak employee with a $21,000 salary earned $149,000 in overtime.

A week after President Barack Obama cited an Ohio restaurant as a beneficiary of the Chrysler bailout, the restaurant closed.

The reputation of a mass murderer was tweaked by Russia's chief investigator reporting that "there is no reliable document" proving the "instigation" of Lenin in the 1918 murder of Czar Nicholas II, his wife and five children.

No one saw the possible problem with the word "despite" in this headline: "Gun crime continues to decrease, despite increase in gun sales."

In Texas, Georgia, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Maryland, lemonade stands run by scofflaw children were put out of business in a government crackdown against wee people who commit capitalism without getting bureaucratic permissions.

Ford Motor Co. issued a careful non-denial when some incorrigible cynics wondered whether political pressure from Detroit's Washington masters caused Ford to take down a YouTube ad in which a customer says he is in a Ford showroom because "I wasn't going to buy another car that was bailed out by our government."

In a TV commercial for Ameriprise Financial, actor Tommy Lee Jones says: "Helping generations through tough times, good times, never taking a bailout."

Manning the ramparts on the wall of separation between church and state, a Seattle teacher required Easter Eggs to be called "spring spheres."

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, told an interviewer -- before bolting from the interview -- that he sends his children to private schools because "my children are not an instrument of me being mayor. ... I'm making this decision as a father."

In the year when Americans became aware that there is more student debt than credit card debt, Yale offered a course on how people with disabilities are portrayed in fiction: "We will examine how characters serve as figures of otherness, transcendence, physicality or abjection. Later may come examination questions on regulative discourse, performativity and frameworks of intelligibility."

"I carpooled this morning with my trooper," explained Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick when, during what he designated "Car-Free Week" to save the planet, he was seen commuting in his SUV.

When the Wisconsin Education Association Council, having spent liberally defending public-sector union privileges, announced it was laying off 40 percent of its staff, it was denounced by the National Staff Organization, a union for employees of education unions.

Picking up a theme from America's economist in chief, who suggested that ATMs and ticket kiosks at airports aggravate unemployment, Rep. Jesse JacksonJr. said the iPad is "responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs," such as "all of the jobs associated with paper."

A market research firm found that people who buy the $43,000 Chevy Volt (seats four in space not taken by its 400-pound battery) or the $34,500 Nissan Leaf, and who get a $7,500 government bribe (aka tax credit) for doing so, have average annual incomes of $150,000. Half of the buyers own at least two other vehicles.

Only about one in five drivers (according to State Farm research) admits to surfing the Internet while driving, which means that perhaps 80 percent of the drivers in front, behind and next to you are not.

Doris Day, 87, released an album of new songs. Que sera, sera
Posted by: Beavis || 11/24/2011 09:26 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Brilliant! But then, Mr. Will generally is.
Posted by: trailing wife || 11/24/2011 23:22 Comments || Top||



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Two weeks of WOT
Thu 2011-11-24
  Police continue attacks on protesters, Tahrir chants for field marshal to go
Wed 2011-11-23
  Yemen's president signs power transfer deal
Tue 2011-11-22
  Yemen Opposition: Saleh Agrees to Sign Peace Plan. Really.
Mon 2011-11-21
  Colombia Farc rebel radio station 'shut down' by army
Sun 2011-11-20
  Libya: 'the executioner' Abdullah al-Senussi captured
Sat 2011-11-19
  Saif al-Islam Gaddafi captured in Libya
Fri 2011-11-18
  Sufi Mohammad's sons acquitted by Swat ATC
Thu 2011-11-17
  Saleh again refuses to sign power transfer
Wed 2011-11-16
  Missile raid targeted top Shabaab leaders
Tue 2011-11-15
  Suspected suicide bomber killed near Afghan loya jirga site
Mon 2011-11-14
  Syria Calls for Urgent Arab Summit
Sun 2011-11-13
  Syrian brownshirts storm Saudi embassy
Sat 2011-11-12
  Iranian Terror Plot Against Bahrain Uncovered
Fri 2011-11-11
  Mexican minister who fought drug cartels killed in crash
Thu 2011-11-10
  Cash shortage threatens Pakistan flood aid

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