May 2011
April 2011
One of the great myths about the protests occurring simultaneously in North Africa and the Middle East is that the Egyptian protests (which continue to this day) that removed Hosni Mubarak were “peaceful.” On the contrary, hundreds died and thousands fought back, that many more did not die is truly a miracle.
“Suez was dubbed as Egypt’s Sidi Bouzid during the 18 day uprising. The city witnessed some of the bloodiest crackdowns by the police, and also some of the fiercest resistance by the protesters. In the video above, shot on the Friday of Anger, January 28, the revolutionaries in Suez after storming the police stations and confiscating the rifles, are using them to fight back the police. One of the biggest myths invented by the media, tied to this whole Gene Sharp business: the Egyptian revolution was “peaceful.” I’m afraid it wasn’t. The revolution (like any other revolution) witnessed violence by the security forces that led to the killing of at least 846 protesters. But the people did not sit silent and take this violence with smiles and flowers. We fought back. We fought back the police and Mubarak’s thugs with rocks, Molotov cocktails, sticks, swords and knives. The police stations which were stormed almost in every single neighborhood on the Friday of Anger–that was not the work of “criminals” as the regime and some middle class activists are trying to propagate. Protesters, ordinary citizens, did that.”
As the protests continue, it’s frustrating and interesting to read or listen to commentators repeatedly make the claim to defend x position or hand credit to white men (USA/ Gene Sharp/ Facebook/ Twitter.) It’s an injustice to the memory of those, who like the Libyan rebels, risked their lives to fight back against the oppressive rule of Hosni Mubarak and his violent forces.
There is no evidence that Libyan military forces are being given Viagra and engaging in systematic rape against women in rebel areas, US military and intelligence officials told NBC News on Friday. →
msnbc.msn.com
Diplomats said Thursday that US Ambassador Susan Rice told a closed-door meeting of officials at the UN that the Libyan military is using rape as a weapon in the war with the rebels and some had been issued the anti-impotency drug. She reportedly offered no evidence to backup the claim.
While rape has been a weapon of choice in many other African conflicts, the US officials say they’ve seen no such reports out of Libya.
Several U.N. diplomats who attended the closed-door Security Council meeting on Libya told Reuters that Rice raised the Viagra issue. The allegation was first reported by a British newspaper.
Pfizer Inc.’s drug Viagra is used to treat impotence.
Diplomats said if it were true that Moammar Gadhafi’s troops were being issued Viagra, it could indicate they were being encouraged by their commanders to engage in rape to terrorize the population in areas that have supported the rebels. That would constitute a war crime.
But several diplomats said Rice provided no evidence for the Viagra allegation, which they said was made in an attempt to persuade doubters the conflict in Libya was not just a standard civil war but a much nastier fight in which Gadhafi is not afraid to order his troops to commit heinous acts.
“She spoke of reports of soldiers getting Viagra and raping,” a diplomat said. “She spoke of Gadhafi’s soldiers targeting children, and other atrocities.”
And on Friday, military and intelligence officials, speaking anonymously, said there was no evidence that that was true.
“
That theory first emerged in the spring of 2008, as Clinton supporters circulated an anonymous email questioning Obama’s citizenship.
“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy. She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth,” asserted one chain email that surfaced on the urban legend site Snopes.com in April 2008.
” —Birtherism: Where It All Began by Ben Smith/ Byron Tau
Oh Hillary supporters…
“Nearly a quarter of Egyptians (23%) say they have used social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to obtain news about their country’s political situation; 6% access these sites but have not used it as a source of political news. About two-thirds (65%) do not use the internet or email.”
—The Role of Social Networking in Egypt from Pew Research Center. HT: AngryArab
From 2007, a Mitt Romney classic. →
time.com
“The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney station wagon. How it got there: Romney strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus’s rather visceral protest.”
“I’m taking great credit and you have to ask the president, ‘why didn’t he do this a long time ago? Why didn’t he do it a long time ago?’ When Hillary Clinton was asking, when everybody was asking, why didn’t he do it? It’s shocking. It’s shocking.”
—Donald Trump on Obama’s birth certificate. It’s over Trump.
“
True, Bernie Madoff ripped off rich and famous people, and true also, Bill Maher is rich and famous, and the guys who ripped him off - namely Lehman Brothers execs like Dick Fuld - have gotten off, unlike Madoff. So I suppose that’s sort of a contradiction. I think the point I was trying to make is that Madoff was really an anomaly, more of a common street con-man who ripped off high-society types, while guys like Fuld and the other bankers represented a more sophisticated systemic sort of fraud that broadly targeted foreigners, pensioners, and the middle and lower classes (and especially the urban poor). Going after one of the latter types would have opened a giant Pandora’s box and forced an industry-wide examination of financial practices that caused the crisis, while busting Madoff was a relatively simple matter that didn’t force the Justice Department and the SEC to take on the whole financial sector.
Madoff is exactly the kind of case that the SEC likes: a soft target whose investigation doesn’t necessarily lead in too many directions. Also, as former Lehman lawyer Oliver Budde just pointed out to me in an email, they couldn’t NOT prosecute Madoff - he confessed and was turned in! They would have had to do crazy intellectual somersaults to avoid jailing the guy. Not that they aren’t capable, of course.
” —Matt Taibbi in response to a question about Bernie Madoff. This is Bernie Madoff as political theater, while those that truly committed the injustices are walking around today as free men.Presenting leaks by several newspapers, Check out the difference
[…]
The Guardian:
The difference among the various newspapers in how these leaks are being presented is stark, predictable and revealing. The Guardian emphasizes exactly what is most important about these documents: how oppressive is this American detention system, how unreliable the evidence is on which the accusations are based, and how so many people were put in cages for years without any justification:
- The New York Times:
On its front page, the Telegraph trumpets the “more than 150 innocent people held at the U.S. prison.”
The NYT, by stark contrast, emphasizes how Dangerous and Menacing these Evil Terrorists are shown to be (while at least noting underneath that many were held without cause):
- The Washington Post: Unsurprisingly, the Washington Post is the most absurd of all; here’s what they found most newsworthy:
Source.
I guess if you’re going to be objective about gross human rights violations and torture then The New York Times managed to get it right. I guess if you’re going to disregard impartiality then The Washington Post was spot on. I guess if you expect the US media to do their job then you’re better off reading foreign news sources to learn about domestic issues.
i feel so dejected. i read about all that's happening and i dont know what to do. there's nothing i can do. do you ever feel helpless as your read about all the shit we do to other people?
I’ve somewhat covered this in the past (http://thenoobyorker.tumblr.com/post/3063619357/where-do-you-draw-the-line-as-far-as-moral-culpability). It might answer your question or help you. Thank you for the question.
Because I Like You
I’m thinking of purchasing some Casio watches and mailing them to tumblr users who wish to join my Tumbl-Qaeda crew (a select group of political extremists who just like Casio watches and don’t want to physically harm anyone but denounce fundamentalism/ extremism in all of it’s regressive/ oppressive forms while reducing complex problems to gifs.)
This could be the ~start of something new.~
