Arab Regimes 129

PERFECT STORM: MIDEAST TURMOIL, PEAK OIL, CLIMATE, ECONOMY, FOOD

Uprising in Egypt: Al-Jazeera,Twitter, & Democracy Now! Live Coverage
Saturday, February 5, 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/uprising

Robert Fisk: Exhausted, scared and trapped, protesters put forward plan for future
On a day of drama and confusion in Cairo, opponents of the Mubarak regime propose a new kind of politics.
Saturday, 5 February 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-exhausted-scared-and-trapped-protesters-put-forward-plan-for-future-2205079.html
  Caged yesterday inside a new army cordon of riot-visored troops and coils of barbed wire – the very protection which Washington had demanded for the protesters of Tahrir Square – the tens of thousands of young Egyptians demanding Hosni Mubarak's overthrow have taken the first concrete political steps to create a new nation to replace the corrupt government which has ruled them for 30 years. Sitting on filthy pavements, amid the garbage and broken stones of a week of street fighting, they have drawn up a list of 25 political personalities to negotiate for a new political leadership and a new constitution to replace Mubarak's crumbling regime. They include Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League – himself a trusted Egyptian; the Nobel prize-winner Ahmed Zuwail, an Egyptian-American who has advised President Barack Obama; Mohamed Selim Al-Awa, a professor and author of Islamic studies who is close to the Muslim Brotherhood; and the president of the Wafd party, Said al-Badawi.

Chomsky: Why the Mideast Turmoil Is a Direct Threat to the American Empire
An interview with Noam Chomsky about what this means for the future of the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in the region.
February 3, 2011  By Amy Goodman and Noam Chomsky
http://www.alternet.org/story/149786/chomsky%3A_why_the_mideast_turmoil_is_a_direct_threat_to_the_american_empire/
  AMY GOODMAN: For analysis of the Egyptian uprising and its implications for the Middle East and beyond, we’re joined now by the world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred books, including his latest, Hopes and Prospects. Noam, welcome to Democracy Now! Your analysis of what’s happening now in Egypt and what it means for the Middle East?

Right Wing Mocks Reporters In Egypt: Not ‘A Great Deal Of Sympathy For Those Who’ve Been Attacked’
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/04/reporters-egypt-sympathy/
  Foreign journalists reporting on the anti-government protests have increasingly been under attack by supporters of President Hosni Mubarak’s government. Pro-government forces have detained, beaten or arrested dozens, if not hundreds, of reporters in the past few days as they were trying to get the story out to the world. CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported that he and his crew were repeatedly beaten. An ABC News correspondent and his crew were carjacked and threatened with beheading.
  Watch the compilation: VIDEO

The Egyptian Uprising Is a Direct Response to Ruthless Global Capitalism
Economic decline at the hands of 'hot' money has driven Egyptians' discontent.
February 4, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/world/149793/the_egyptian_uprising_is_a_direct_response_to_ruthless_global_capitalism/
  The revolution in Egypt is as much a rebellion against the painful deterioration of economic conditions as it is about opposing a dictator, though they are linked. That's why President Hosni Mubarak's announcement that he intends to stick around until September was met with an outpouring of rage. When people are facing a dim future, in a country hijacked by a corrupt regime that destabilized its economy through what the CIA termed, "aggressively pursuing economic reforms to attract foreign investment” (in other words, the privatization and sale of its country’s financial system to international sharks), waiting doesn’t cut it.

Expert consensus grows on contribution of record high food prices to Middle East unrest
February 4, 2011
http://climateprogress.org/2011/02/04/contribution-of-high-food-prices-to-mideast-unrest/
  Scientific American on Egypt: "... there is no doubt that rising food prices added fuel to an already combustible mix," other MidEast countries "have been snapping up supplies of wheat in the world market to forestall any hint of food price spikes—or regime change"

Mubarak family fortune could reach $70bn, say experts
Egyptian president has cash in British and Swiss banks plus UK and US property
Friday 4 February 2011 17.58 GMT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/04/hosni-mubarak-family-fortune
  President Hosni Mubarak's family fortune could be as much as $70bn (£43.5bn) according to analysis by Middle East experts, with much of his wealth in British and Swiss banks or tied up in real estate in London, New York, Los Angeles and along expensive tracts of the Red Sea coast. After 30 years as president and many more as a senior military official, Mubarak has had access to investment deals that have generated hundreds of millions of pounds in profits. Most of those gains have been taken offshore and deposited in secret bank accounts or invested in upmarket homes and hotels. According to a report last year in the Arabic newspaper Al Khabar, Mubarak has properties in Manhattan and exclusive Beverly Hills addresses on Rodeo Drive. His sons, Gamal and Alaa, are also billionaires. A protest outside Gamal's ostentatious home at 28 Wilton Place in Belgravia, central London, highlighted the family's appetite for western trophy assets.
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A Time of More Complex Global Crises
By Mario Osava
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54363
  RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 4, 2011 (IPS) - Neoliberalism and the attendant financial globalisation were a common enemy that unified and mobilised activists of the most diverse tendencies who founded, ten years ago in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, the World Social Forum (WSF) as a space to meet, reflect and debate, under the slogan "Another World Is Possible". But in its 11th year, the WSF is meeting Feb. 6-11 in Dakar, Senegal, at a time when neoliberal, free-market policies stand out less in a world threatened by collapse from a combination of crises: financial, climate change, food and water.

The Globe's Limitations: How Peak Oil Threatens Economic Growth
The Nation and On The Earth Productions
January 11, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/video/157635/globes-limitations-how-peak-oil-threatens-economic-growth
  In the second video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth productions, Richard Heinberg, senior fellow with the Post Carbon Institute, discusses how depleting oil supplies threaten the future of global economic growth. According to Heinberg, historically there has been a close correlation between increased energy consumption and economic growth. If the economy starts to recover after the financial crisis and there is an increased demand for oil but not enough supply to keep up with that demand, we may hit a ceiling on what the economy can do.
  “What politician is going to be able to standup in front of the American people and tell them the truth?”  Heinberg asks. “Every politician is going to want to promise more economic growth and blame the lack of growth on the other political party…. The whole political system starts to get more and more polarized and more and more radical until it just comes apart at the seams.” For Heinberg, however, there is still hope: alternative energy sources, though difficult to implement on a large scale, do exist, and a grassroots movement is strongly advocating for new thinking about our energy consumption. Go here to learn more about "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate," and to see the other videos in the series.
http://www.thenation.com/article/157434/peak-oil-and-changing-climate

A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice
The first anniversary of 'Climategate', Part 1: The media blows the story of the century
November 15, 2010
http://climateprogress.org/2010/11/15/year-in-climate-science-climategate/
  This week marks the one-year anniversary of what the anti-science crowd successfully labeled ‘Climategate’.  The media will be doing countless retrospectives, most of which will be wasted ink, like the Guardian’s piece — focusing on climate scientists at the expense of climate science, which is precisely the kind of miscoverage that has been going on for the whole year! I’ll save that my media critiques for Part 2, since I think that Climategate’s biggest impact was probably on the media, continuing their downward trend of focusing on style over substance, of missing the story of the century, if not the millennia.

Simple rebuttals to denier talking points — with links to the full climate science
December 28, 2010
http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/28/simple-rebuttals-to-denier-talking-points-with-links-to-the-full-climate-science/
  Progressives should know the most commonly used arguments by the disinformers and doubters — and how to answer them. You should know as much of the science behind those rebuttals as possible, and a great place to start is SkepticalScience.com. BUT most of the time your best response is to give the pithiest response possible, and then refer people to a  specific website  that has a more detailed scientific explanation with links to the original science.   That’s because usually those you are talking to are rarely in a position to adjudicate scientific arguments.  Indeed, they would probably tune out.  Also, unless you know the science cold, you are as likely as not to make a  misstatement.
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10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/05/reagan-centennial/
  Tomorrow will mark the 100th anniversary of President Reagan’s birth, and all week, conservatives have been trying to outdo each others’ remembrances of the great conservative icon. Senate Republicans spent much of Thursday singing Reagan’s praise from the Senate floor, while conservative publications have been running non-stop commemorations. Meanwhile the Republican National Committee and former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich are hoping to make few bucks off the Gipper’s centennial. But Reagan was not the man conservatives claim he was. This image of Reagan as a conservative superhero is myth, created to untie the various factions of the right behind a common leader. In reality, Reagan was no conservative ideologue or flawless commander-in-chief. Reagan regularly strayed from conservative dogma — he raised taxes eleven times as president while tripling the deficit — and he often ended up on the wrong side of history, like when he vetoed an Anti-Apartheid bill.

The Right-Wing Dough Supporting the 'Stings' at Planned Parenthood
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/461558/the_right-wing_dough_supporting_the_%27stings%27_at_planned_parenthood/
  On a conference call with bloggers convened by Media Matters for America with Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and Vice President Stewart Schear, I got a little tip into where Lila Rose, who leads the right-wing sting group Live Action, gets some of her funding. Quite a rogue's gallery, it would seem. Rose, you'll recall, has been going "undercover" to Planned Parenthood clinics for years, often posing as an underage client, and taking video with a concealed camera. Her avowed purpose is to put Planned Parenthood out of business.