January 2011
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Top 20 Green Tech Ideas →
Why Tunisia's winds of change aren't blowing south... →
The winds of change that swept aside Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali have swiftly blown east to test the long-serving leaders of Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan.
Yet if these winds can blow east across North Africa to the Middle East, can’t they also blow south to sub-Saharan Africa? Surely there are plenty of dictators in Africa’s other countries who have outworn their welcome...
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Egypt protests: People to watch →
“The most impressive thing about Georgia’s Rose Revolution, which happened in...”
– How 5 revolutions got their names
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“Canadian-Albanian Saimir Lojlia has produced what might be the most...”
– Albania’s untold story: Thousands of Jews found refuge in Europe’s only Muslim state, where an ancient honor code saw all as guests.
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“Obama’s new policy restores the “people-to-people” contacts...”
– Strait Talk: Barack Obama doesn’t want you to know about it, but his administration just made the biggest move in more than a decade to open up Cuba.
Thanks to everyone for passing around the post about Troy Davis. :)
National Marrow Donor Program - Be The Match... →
squee-gee:
bluntlyblue:
Registry is so easy - they mail you a cheek swab, you use it and mail it back. Marrow donation is always needed.
I’m registered! Are you? (There is a dire need for People of Color to register!)
I’m registered too! I have more info about bone marrow donation in my previous posts, so go check it out and sign up!
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What about corruption? →
Recently, I was asked whether I thought Nigeria’s problems would be solved if only we managed to fight corruption effectively. I responded that this alone would not be enough. That while important for sure, other problems needed to be tackled as well. The next day a headline in one of the papers read “World Bank says corruption not Nigeria’s Bane.” After I had looked up what “bane”...
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The Casablanca Call for Democracy and Human Rights →
We, the signatories to this call, as politicians, intellectuals and civil society advocates, believe that the achievement of democracy and the embodiment of human rights in the Arab world is an absolute necessity and requires a broader engagement of all citizens and political and social forces. We observe, with great concern, the dramatic and alarming backsliding of political reforms in the Arab...
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“In November, 20 poor countries submitted their requests to GAFSP for projects...”
– Hungry for votes: How much do rich governments really worry about feeding the world?
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Mahmood Mamdani on the Congo
The supreme difficulty in Congo … is the persistence of the native authority, which, for all the complexities of ethnicity, is still in place as an organising principle. It is now the terrain on which new forms of political authority, flaunted by young men bearing arms, confront older forms steeped in patriarchal tradition … Faced with the extreme violence that has racked Congo and always...
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“The government continued to use state of emergency powers to detain peaceful...”
– Amnesty International 2010 Report: Egypt
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This week in Global Health
No HIV test? No marriage Couples wishing to marry in the Russian republic of Chechnya must prove that they are HIV-negative, according to Muslim leaders. Such orders hold no legal weight and violate Russian law, but are generally followed because of the respected position held by such Islamic scholars, known as mufti. The UN estimates that a million people in Russia are HIV-positive.
Millions for...
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Palestine and the papers →
…Once the most politicised people in the Arab world, Palestinians have been rendered amongst their most docile since Salam Fayyad, a World Bank official, was installed as the Palestinian Authority’s prime minister in 2007. Buffeted by Western funding and diplomatic support, the winds of change sweeping the West Bank have seen the Palestinian parliament muzzled, elections cancelled, and...
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“Though ties with Egypt since their 1979 peace treaty have never been warm, a...”
– An anxious Israel watches neighboring Egypt unravel
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“A lot of Tunisians were annoyed that senior ministers from Mr Ben Ali’s...”
– Tunisia’s Upheaval: No one is really in charge
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“Iran and Egypt were and are very different places, with very different political...”
– The Worst of Both Worlds
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Pharaoh's End →
Protests rocked Egypt, calling into question whether President Hosni Mubarak’s regime can survive. Foreign Policy asked five top experts how Barack Obama should respond to the growing signs of revolt on Egypt’s streets.
Read more…
5 countries with low taxes →
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Going to sleep now. I leave you with this gif because I cannot stop laughing (and we all need a good laugh tonight):
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Making Sense Of U.S. Foreign Aid To Egypt And... →
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Q+A: Key elements of the U.S.-Egyptian... →
WHY ARE THE UNITED STATES AND EGYPT ALLIES?
Egypt’s decision in March 1979 to become the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel cemented its relationship with the United States and has resulted in its receiving an annual average of $2 billion in U.S. aid in the years since.
The treaty has been vital to Israel, a close U.S. ally, allowing it to worry less about its western...
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China censoring Egypt protests, are they afraid? →
China has blocked the search for “Egypt” on Sina’s microblogging service, reported Al Jazeera.
Instead of getting results, users who search for that term are greeted with the message “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not shown.”
Sina’s service is seen as China’s version of Twitter.
While the homepages of...
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“The oldest of three children, the son of an ambulance driver and a mother who...”
– The Arab World’s Youth Army
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“The Egyptian government can’t reshuffle the deck and then stand...”
– US to Egypt: Don’t ‘stand pat’ need ‘real reform’
dougstumblr-deactivated20111012 asked: your tumblr is too important right now to be reblogging any pretty pictures....I don't watch the news, I watch your tumblr..... keep up the amazing work..:)
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“After so many years of political stagnation, we were left with choices between...”
– Yearning for Respect, Arabs Find a Voice
Apologies if I’ve posted things instead of reblogging from you, the internet here is painfully slow and I can’t go back very far on my dash to see what’s already been posted. :(
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Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel... →
…The US government has previously been a supporter of Mr Mubarak’s regime. But the leaked documents show the extent to which America was offering support to pro-democracy activists in Egypt while publicly praising Mr Mubarak as an important ally in the Middle East.
In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that...
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Just got this email from Amnesty USA:
Dear Cara,
Thirty years of repression is spilling out onto the streets of Egypt in the forms of tear-gas, blood and bitter demonstrations.
For four days, Egyptian protestors have suffered at the hands of President Mubarak’s security forces.
At least 14 protestors have been killed and scores more have been injured. The crackdown on freedoms is intensifying as authorities have cut all...
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LIVE: Egypt unrest day five →
1927 The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, says the protests will die down if new policies are introduced in Egypt. “A new policy in my opinion has to be announced, addressing the needs of the young people, addressing the needs of the society in a way that would convince the people, this would calm down everybody,” he told the BBC’s Newshour programme. Mr Moussa...
if you know anyone in egypt.
carpe-cerevisi:
If you know anyone in Egypt, please pass this on to them. To bypass government blocking of websites, use numerical IP addresses: Twitter ”128.242.240.52” Fb ”69.63.189.34” Google ”172.14.204.99”. A French ISP offers free dial up internet access ~ +33 1 72 89 01 50 Login password: toto. Please pass this on and share.
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As Egypt crisis continues, would US cut foreign... →
…Also, aid to Egypt (exceeded only by aid to Israel, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) is a politically entrenched part of the “military-industrial complex” and high-powered lobbying.
“It’s worth noting that [Egypt] employs some of the most powerful and high-profile lobbyists in the District of Columbia,” writes Chris Good, associated editor at The Atlantic. “Since 2007, the government of...
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LIVE: Egypt unrest day five →
1851 Al Arabiya TV reports there has been shooting in Cairo’s Agouza neighbourhood, citing witnesses.
1848 If the new government can’t calm the anger in the streets, it’s hard to see how President Mubarak can stay in power, adds our world affairs editor. It is hard, too, to think that the Americans, who keep Egypt afloat with their money, would want him to. Omar Suleiman, the...
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Why Egypt matters →
If Egyptian unrest turns into an Egyptian revolution, the implications for the Arab world - and for Western policy in the Middle East - will be immense.
Egypt matters, in a way that tiny Tunisia - key catalyst that it has been in the current wave of protest - does not.
Egypt, the most populous Arab state, can help determine the thrust of Arab policies - whether towards Israel or Iran or in the...
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newsflick:
New protests erupt in Yemen
Dozens of activists calling for the ouster of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s president, have clashed with government supporters in Sanaa, the country’s capital.
Plainclothes police also attacked the demonstrators, who marched to the Egyptian embassy in Sanaa on Saturday chanting “Ali, leave leave” and “Tunisia left, Egypt after it and Yemen in the coming...
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“What is … very disappointing to the Egyptian people is the message coming from...”
– Mohamed ElBaradei (via soupsoup)
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“We will not be silenced, whether you’re a Christian, whether you’re a Muslim,...”
– Protester speaking in this video (via soupsoup)
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Images of what is going on in Egypt. →
mendmyheart:
*Warning, some images are horrific.
May Allah grant them the strength and will power to overcome such a difficult time.
These are really disturbing.