Monday, 14 February 2011

The Strange Powers of the Placebo Effect

Evgeny Morozov: The Future of WikiLeaks

Al Jazeera English vs. Russia Today

Anyone getting their information about Egypt from Russia Today would have learned that the United States orchestrated the uprising, the Muslim Brotherhood was formed by MI6 and opposition leader Mohamed El Baradei was a Free Mason. Five years since its launch, the English-language channel has become home to fringe ideas and rabid anti-American rhetoric. At the same time, Qatar-based Al Jazeera English has proved itself indispensable, in a time of decreasing television budgets, to the coverage of global stories such as the Egypt uprising — bringing non-stop live coverage as the events unfolded and holding interviews with those most relevant to the story.
Another difference between the two? Russia Today is widely carried by major U.S. cable providers such as TimeWarner. Al Jazeera is not.
Al Jazeera English launched to suspicious fanfare in November 2006. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had famously called the coverage of the Iraq War provided by its Arabic-language sister channel “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.” Former U.S. President George W. Bush reportedly mused about bombing its Doha headquarters (a report the White House denied).
Yet in four years it has grown into a respected news channel, watched by policymakers as it provides — by virtue of its budget, location and focus — incomparable breadth of coverage of the Middle East. What the 1991 Persian Gulf War was for CNN, so the ongoing crisis in Egypt may well be for Al Jazeera English...

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Miriam Elder @'Global Post'

HA!

Alireza Gorbani & Dorsaf Hamdani present Ivresses @ Festival Au Fil des Voix 2/9/11

1. Le Sacre de Kayyam
2. L'Ivresse
3. L'Existence
4. Amoureux
5. Enivrement
6. L'Echanson

Alireza Ghorbani (chant classique persan)
Dorsaf Hamdani (chant classique arabe)
Ali Ghamsary (composition, tar, divan)
Sohrab Pournazeri (Kamanche, Tanbur)
Hussein Zahawy (Daf, Bendir, Darbouka, Dayera)
Sofiane Negra (Oud)
Keyvan Chemirani (Zarb, Udu)

01:13:37

Display of affection

♥Happy Valentine's♥

(Thanx Rob!)

Sunday, 13 February 2011

Yemeni protesters march on palace; clashes erupt

A protester has portraits of Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his son Ahmed (C-top) stapled on her clothes during a demonstration in Sanaa (AFP)
Anti-government protesters clashed with police trying to prevent them from marching towards Yemen's presidential palace in Sanaa on Sunday, witnesses said.
Shortly before the clashes, the opposition agreed to enter talks with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is keen to avert an Egypt-style revolt in the country, a US ally against Al Qaeda.
"The Yemeni people want the fall of the regime," protesters shouted during the demonstration attended by about 1,000 people, before dozens broke off to march to the palace. "A Yemeni revolution after the Egyptian revolution."
Sporadic anti-government protests have gathered momentum in Yemen. Earlier this month, tens of thousands took part in an opposition-led "Day of Rage" to demand a change of government, inspired by popular protests in Tunisia and Egypt.
Pro- and anti-government protesters have clashed in recent days.
Opposition officials said 10 protesters were detained in Sanaa and 120 were taken into custody overnight in the city of Taiz, where authorities broke up a demonstration on Saturday.
Four people were hurt in the Sanaa clashes, in which police hit protesters with batons and demonstrators threw rocks at police, witnesses said.
Saleh, in power for more than three decades and concerned about unrest in some parts of the Arab world, has said he will step down in 2013 and pledged his son will not take over the reins of government. He invited the opposition for talks.
"The opposition does not reject what came in the invitation by the president and is ready to sign an agreement in no more than a week," said former Foreign Minister Mohammed Basindwa, now an opposition politician, adding that the talks should include Western or Gulf observers.
"Past experience is what has spurred us to request that representatives of the Friends of Yemen (donor countries) be in observance," he said.
Instability in Yemen would present serious political and security risks for Gulf states. The United States relies heavily on Saleh to help combat al Qaeda's Yemen-based arm, which also carries out attacks in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
Saleh, a shrewd political survivor, has backed out of previous promises to step aside. Analysts say his concessions could be a genuine way to exit gracefully but he may hope to wait out regional unrest and reassert his dominance another day.
The offer of talks, along with other concessions, was his boldest gambit yet to stave off turmoil in Yemen and avert a showdown with protesters in the poverty-stricken state.
Yemen's opposition wants assurances that reforms would be implemented and has demanded better living conditions for Yemenis, about 40 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day, while a third suffer from chronic hunger.
@'Emirates 24/7'

Why Bradley Manning Is a Patriot, Not a Criminal: An Opening Statement for the Defense of Private Manning

Crude reality

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines. If Washington is dreaming of 2040 or 2050 as the end of the American Century, a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could all be over except for the shouting.
Despite the aura of omnipotence most empires project, a look at their history should remind us that they are fragile organisms. So delicate is their ecology of power that, when things start to go truly bad, empires regularly unravel with unholy speed: just a year for Portugal, two years for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 years for Great Britain, and, in all likelihood, 22 years for the United States, counting from the crucial year 2003.
Future historians are likely to identify the Bush administration’s rash invasion of Iraq in that year as the start of America's downfall. However, instead of the bloodshed that marked the end of so many past empires, with cities burning and civilians slaughtered, this twenty-first century imperial collapse could come relatively quietly through the invisible tendrils of economic collapse or cyberwarfare.
But have no doubt: when Washington's global dominion finally ends, there will be painful daily reminders of what such a loss of power means for Americans in every walk of life. As a half-dozen European nations have discovered, imperial decline tends to have a remarkably demoralizing impact on a society, regularly bringing at least a generation of economic privation. As the economy cools, political temperatures rise, often sparking serious domestic unrest.
Available economic, educational, and military data indicate that, when it comes to US global power, negative trends will aggregate rapidly by 2020 and are likely to reach a critical mass no later than 2030. The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, will be tattered and fading by 2025, its eighth decade, and could be history by 2030.
Significantly, in 2008, the US National Intelligence Council admitted for the first time that America's global power was indeed on a declining trajectory. In one of its periodic futuristic reports, Global Trends 2025, the Council cited “the transfer of global wealth and economic power now under way, roughly from West to East" and "without precedent in modern history,” as the primary factor in the decline of the “United States' relative strength—even in the military realm.” Like many in Washington, however, the Council’s analysts anticipated a very long, very soft landing for American global preeminence, and harbored the hope that somehow the US would long “retain unique military capabilities… to project military power globally” for decades to come...