Tunisian Revolution and the Middle East

[visionary]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...=MasterAccount

Shafiq and Morsi confirmed for Egypt runoff

The Egyptian presidential election will come down to a runoff between Ahmed Shafiq, the final prime minister under deposed president Hosni Mubarak, and Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, according to final results released on Monday.

Farouq Sultan, the head of the presidential election commission, announced the results at a press conference. Morsi garnered the largest share of votes, nearly 5.8 million; Shafiq came in a close second, with 5.5 million.

The third-place finisher was Hamdeen Sabbahi, a former parliamentarian who had emerged as a favourite candidate for many of Egypt's liberals. He received just over 4.8 million votes.

Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a moderate former member of the Brotherhood, received just over 4 million votes, and Amr Moussa the former Arab League chief, came in fifth with 2.58 million.

Last week's election was the first free presidential ballot in Egyptian history. Around 23 million people voted, Sultan said, a turnout of roughly 46 per cent.

Sultan said that seven candidates had filed complaints about the results. Four were dismissed because of a lack of evidence; the other three were rejected because candidates missed the filing deadlines.

Two of them, Moussa and Aboul Fotouh, refused to endorse either of the frontrunners during separate press conferences on Monday. Moussa lashed out at both winners, saying that "a return to the old regime is unacceptable, [and] so is exploiting religion in politics".

Aboul Fotouh also warned against returning to Mubarak-era leadership, and said he would announce his position later in the week. "The most important thing is that people don't vote for felool," he said, referring to so-called "remnants" of the old regime.

Sabbahi has not yet announced a position, though it seems unlikely that a candidate who campaigned vigorously against the old regime would endorse Shafiq.

[Larry]

Sounds like they certainly had a wide array of choices. Ans several ov them got significant support.

Also sounds like a lot of Egyptian are gonna be complaining about "I gotta pick one of those two???"

Welcome to democracy. .

[visionary]

Sounds like they certainly had a wide array of choices. Ans several ov them got significant support.

Also sounds like a lot of Egyptian are gonna be complaining about "I gotta pick one of those two???"

Welcome to democracy. .

True, but let me add some more context.
Shafiq the ex pm was ruled out of the election by the parliament for being an ex-Mubarak minister.
He was later accepted by the election commision, which is run by judges and somewhat controlled by the military.
(He is also an air force chief) Shafiq also said he wanted to pardon Mubarak and any cabinet members a while back.
In addition there's mention in a recent New York Times article of a statement by him saying he will end the protests and chaos with executions and force.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/wo...er=rss&emc=rss

Also somehow he got many more votes than the islamists, in districts that are considered Muslim brotherhood strongholds.
Oh yeah and there's reports that hundreds of military conscripts illegally stuffed ballots for him.
So there's some concern by just about everyone over whether he should have been allowed to run and if he really got the number of votes that he got.

As to Morsi the MB guy, there's unhappiness that the Muslim Brotherhood put him forward after saying they wouldn't run any candidates in the pres election.
But that's more of a dishonesty, trust, and them having too much power issue, not necessarily a legal one.

[Larry]

True, but let me add some more context.
Shafiq the ex pm was ruled out of the election by the parliament for being an ex-Mubarak minister.
He was later accepted by the election commision, which is run by judges and somewhat controlled by the military.
(He is also an air force chief) Shafiq also said he wanted to pardon Mubarak and any cabinet members a while back.
In addition there's mention in a recent New York Times article of a statement by him saying he will end the protests and chaos with executions and force.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/wo...er=rss&emc=rss

Also somehow he got many more votes than the islamists, in districts that are considered Muslim brotherhood strongholds.
Oh yeah and there's reports that hundreds of military conscripts illegally stuffed ballots for him.
So there's some concern by just about everyone over whether he should have been allowed to run and if he really got the number of votes that he got.

As to Morsi the MB guy, there's unhappiness that the Muslim Brotherhood put him forward after saying they wouldn't run any candidates in the pres election.
But that's more of a dishonesty, trust, and them having too much power issue, not necessarily a legal one.

Yeah, but there are other ways of explaining his numbers, too.

This could well be a case where there's one "regime" candidate, and 15 "non-regime" candidates.

Look at the GOP primaries. How much different would they have been if Santorum and Gingrich hadn't been splitting the SoCon vote?

[visionary]

Yeah, but there are other ways of explaining his numbers, too.

This could well be a case where there's one "regime" candidate, and 15 "non-regime" candidates.

Look at the GOP primaries. How much different would they have been if Santorum and Gingrich hadn't been splitting the SoCon vote?

Possibly, but Amr Mousa the former foreign minister was considered a regime candidate as well and was expected to get the most votes.
He came in 5th and actually called for investigations into the results and for Shafiq to resign, lol.
But you may be right. Shafiq was not supposed to get very many votes, but may have been overlooked.
People in Egypt though are terrified that he and the SCAF are trying to reverse the revolution now.
Some protesters even torched and ransacked his office tonight.
Although that could be a false flag type thing, but I don't really see any reason to believe that.
In any case things are getting very tense right now.

[visionary]

Mubarak Trial happening now (EGYPT)
A verdict is expected today

Live Updates
http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/43473.aspx

Mubarak's been staying at the International Medical Centre. According to a Reuters piece, it isn't exactly hard times for this jailbird:

"Hosni Mubarak has appeared in court lying on a stretcher during his trial, where he faces a verdict on Saturday, but Egypt's former president is living in a comfortable hospital where he is free to see relatives, walk in the garden and exercise, news reports and a source said this week.

The newspaper depicted the 84-year-old Mubarak, ousted in an uprising in February 2011, as a cosseted retired official, exercising and swimming as doctors and family attend to his needs at Cairo's International Medical Center (IMC).

The ousted president, who is wearing a training suit with a biege top and black trousers and a pair of sunglasses, is wheeled in, lying on a stretcher and wheeled into the Police Academy. For those out there following Mubarak's past fashion picks, the ousted leader was last wheeled in wearing a blue training suit with light blue stripes...and sunglasses.

Live coverage
http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/



https://twitter.com/#!/SultanAlQassemi

Wow, the judge calls Mubarak's era "black, black, black" "hopeless era" that came to an end through the "brave sons of Egypt"
4:05 AM

https://twitter.com/#!/sharifkouddous

Judge Refaat on Mubarak rule: "30 years of oppression," "depriving people of daily bread...minimum amount of dignity"
4:07 AM

Judge is really giving it to Mubarak's rule and praising revolution in poetic-heavy terms
4:08 AM

https://twitter.com/#!/sharifkouddous

Former Interior Minister Habib El Adly sentenced to life in prison for accessory murder
4:21 AM

https://twitter.com/#!/imothanaYemen

Life in prison for Mubarak for premeditated murder.
4:22 AM

https://twitter.com/#!/Beltrew

Habib El-Adly's 6 aides are not guilty
4:24 AM

Mubarak's sons Alaa and Gamal are acquitted
4:29 AM

People's elation at Mubarak's verdict has turned to anger and now chaos and fighting, after the others got off with no punishment. There is a sense that Mubarak and Adly were sacrifices and will both be living it up in confinement and that this is all for show.


https://twitter.com/#!/Sarahcarr

The State Security officers have been found innocent just in time to resume their activities under Shafiq.
4:25 AM

https://twitter.com/#!/HodaAH

so the policemen were acquitted a few days ago, their superiors acquitted so who killed the protestors?
5:13 AM

https://twitter.com/#!/sharifkouddous

I repeat: court convicted Mubarak & Adly for failing to stop killings, not convicted for having aiding and abetting killing protesters
5:16 AM

https://twitter.com/#!/SultanAlQassemi

CNN: Husni Mubarak transferred to Tora maximum security prison
5:34 AM

The government scrambling to do damage control?
Clashes going on across Cairo now.

[visionary]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...282116563.html

Mubarak given life term for protester deaths

Egypt's ex-president and his interior minister sentenced to life while his sons and six other officials are acquitted.

Following the announcement of the verdict, several groups called for protests to be held across the country.

By mid-afternoon, hundreds of people had converged on Cairo's Tahrir Square, with larger crowds expected in the evening.

Almost 1,000 people staged a separate march to the supreme court, where they threw rocks and broke windows.

https://twitter.com/#!/SultanAlQassemi

Two images live from Tahrir. Crowds chanting "Baatel" (void) in reference to Mubarak cronies verdict http://pic.twitter.com/gcRT5mqY
1:50 PM

Tens of thousands gather now in Tahrir. Ahmed Shafik (Mubarak's lash PM) big loser from today's verdicts http://pic.twitter.com/zoZOIK0A
2:00 PM

Mubarak's room in Tora prison cost EGP8 million ($1.3million). - Sky News Arabia correspondent
2:08 PM

https://twitter.com/#!/shadihamid

RT @Zeinobia: Abu El Fotouh is in Tahrir square now
3:16 PM

RT @liamstack: Morsi's car arrives and is thronged w supporters. Some scream "mr president!"
3:16 PM

As all of this is going on, I can't help but wonder whether we're underestimating SCAF once again.
3:18 PM

I'd like to think Egyptians are united in anger over #MubarakTrial but the events of the past year and a half suggest they're probably not.
3:21 PM

RT @ghazalairshad: Khaled Ali, Hamdeen Sabbahi, Abul Fotouh, & Morsi in Tahrir tonight. Shafiq MIA.
3:26 PM

https://twitter.com/#!/ManarMohsen

Tens of thousands in Tahrir, with chants varying from "one hand" to "down with the military regime." Demands fairly scattered as well
3:32 PM

Aboul Fotouh just went through Tahrir, chants of "eed wahda" (one hand) as hundreds surround him.
3:32 PM

https://twitter.com/#!/evanchill

Sabahi's campaign has announced a joint presser with Aboul Fotouh and Khalid Ali on Monday to state position on prez elec and protests.
5:34 PM

https://twitter.com/#!/Bassem_Sabry

Incredible picture of protesters and Hamdeen Sabahi in Tahrir earlier today. You can see the Free Syrian & Libyan flags http://pic.twitter.com/tox8JXaG
5:56 PM

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8530P320120604

Yemeni troops, tanks advance on al Qaeda-held town

Hundreds of Yemeni troops backed by tanks advanced in a bid to retake a coastal town from al Qaeda-linked fighters on Monday, residents said, part of a U.S.-backed offensive in a country Washington sees as a frontline against Islamist militants.

"They are getting ready to fight," one resident, who declined to be named, told Reuters by telephone. Via text message, the head of the southern military zone asked people living in the area not to use the roads around Shaqra and two other towns controlled by militants.

Shaqra lies on Yemen's southern coast, along a major shipping route that is also the gateway for Somalis entering the country to fight alongside militants.

[visionary]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/y...7#.T81087XIjIU

Yemen Democracy Opponents Could Face Sanctions

A proposed U.N. Security Council resolution that circulated Monday supports efforts by Yemen's president to advance the country's transition to democracy and threatens non-military sanctions against those trying to undermine the country's national unity government.

Diplomats said the five veto-wielding council members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — agreed on the text and circulated the draft to the 10 non-permanent members. Experts from the 15 council nations are expected to discuss the text Wednesday, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the draft has not been made public.

Last week, the U.N. envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar, told the council that despite President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's "strong leadership," the country's transition is taking place "against a backdrop of serious security concerns, an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and many unresolved conflicts." Benomar also said al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula "continues to pose a major threat."

Hadi was sworn in on Feb. 25 to replace longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, following an uncontested election aimed at ending more than a year of political turmoil.

[visionary]

http://tweepforum.ly/opinion/despite...Ynd5Jc.twitter

Despite Airport Incident, Henry Kissinger is Wrong about Libya

There is a kind of black legend about Libya, that it has become a failed state and is a mess, that there are armed militiamen everywhere, that everybody is a secessionist, that the transitional government is not doing anything, that people of subsaharan African heritage are bothered in the streets, etc., etc. The black legend is promoted in part by remnants of the Qaddafi regime and his admirers in the West, in part by overly anxious middle class Libyans navigating an admittedly difficult transition, in part by media editors looking for a dramatic story.

Henry Kissinger, in his recent op-ed against intervention in Syria, listed the erasure of the Libyan state as an argument against such interventions. I read the allegation with disbelief. Libya is not like Somalia! It isn’t even like Yemen. (The Libyans I talked to about Yemen sympathized with the country’s problems but were astonished to hear that some Western observers looked a their situations as similar!)

So imagine my surprise on visits to Benghazi, Misrata and Tripoli, to find that there were no militiamen to be seen, that most things were functioning normally, that there were police at traffic intersections, that there were children’s carnivals open till late, families out, that jewelry shops were open till 8 pm, that Arabs and Africans were working side by side, and that people were proud in Benghazi of having demonstrated against calls for decentralizing the country.

[visionary]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18364762

Defections put militant al-Shabab on the run in Somalia

The Islamist al-Shabab group that controls much of southern Somalia has recently suffered several significant defeats. The BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse has been travelling with Ugandan soldiers in the African Union force that has been fighting the al-Qaeda-allied militants and reports from Afgoye, until last month one their key strongholds.

In the town of Baidoa, near the Ethiopian border, local residents said al-Shabab had been forcing young men and even boys to fight in a desperate attempt to bolster their numbers.

The result, they say, has been a wave of defections.

And the defectors have helped the African Union and their Somali interim government allies to arrest yet more fighters.

For many years now, the balance of power in Somalia has shifted among a patchwork of rival clan warlords.

People understand this system. They respect it.

For a while, al-Shabab became the dominant force in this power struggle.

But now the group is in retreat - many here sense its weakness and that may turn out to be the most fatal blow of all.

One man here observed: The African Union is now the biggest warlord in town.

[visionary]

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/43056

Cold War

Why are India and Pakistan sacrificing hundreds of soldiers' lives over an uninhabitable icy wasteland?

"They look like animals when they come down, unshaven, dirty, and thin as rods," said an Indian officer in September 2003, describing troops returning from a three-month stint on Siachen, where India and Pakistan had fought a war over an uninhabitable wasteland of snow and ice on their border since 1984. In November 2003, the two sides agreed on a cease-fire; since then neither has fired a shot. Yet thousands of men remain, still dying from the brutal conditions -- in April, an avalanche buried 140 Pakistani troops and their civilian staff alive.

This week, senior civil servants from India's and Pakistan's defense ministries are meeting in Pakistan, but expectations are low. It is a measure of the peculiar intransigence of India-Pakistan relations that despite repeated calls for a negotiated settlement -- renewed by Pakistan's Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, after the avalanche -- neither country can find a way to bring their men down from the mountains.

[visionary]

https://twitter.com/#!/adammbaron

(Secessionist leaning) sources involved in the fight in abyan confirm that ansar alshariah has been pushed out of jaar, zinjibar yemen
10:11 AM June 12

somewhat celebratory air in Aden. But many keen to give credit to (largely secessionist) 'popular committees' rather than yemen's military
10:24 AM June 12

Currently in jaar was just in zinjibar. Both under goverment control, odd calm.
4:51 AM

Met gov of aden, minister of defense on top of mount khanfar, an ansar bastion just days ago
4:56 AM

[visionary]

God...damn it!

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...538532758.html

Egypt court orders dissolving of parliament

In another setback for Egypt's fledgling political process, elected officials have been disqualified and the lower house of parliament dissolved.

The court ruled on Thursday that one third of the seats in the Islamist-dominated parliament were invalid, stirring fresh uncertainty in the politically divided country.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the country's ruling military council, then announced that if any part of the parliament is illegal, then the entire body should be dissolved.

Egypt's constitutional court also ruled against a law that would have barred deposed president Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq from standing in this weekend's presidential poll runoff.

After conflicting reports in Egyptian media over whether a third, or the entire, parliament was to be dismissed, Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh obtained a copy of the court decision, which explicitly states that the entire parliament is dismissed because of "constitutional violations".

Shafiq welcomed the court rulings in a conference before his supporters, saying an "era of political score settling" was over.

"The message of this historic verdict is that the era of political score settling has ended," Shafik told cheering crowd in Cairo. "The constitutional court has confirmed my right to participate in the election and reinforced the legitimacy of this election."

Rawya Rageh said it was "really a victory speech ... addressing Egyptians almost as president and not as a candidate".

https://twitter.com/#!/iyad_elbaghdadi

ElBaradei calls upon SCAF to delay the presidential elections.
11:26 AM

ElBaradei: Without a parliament or a constitution, we won't be electing a president, we'll be electing a tyrant.
11:27 AM

https://twitter.com/#!/SultanAlQassemi

Al Arabiya: El Baradei: Electing a prez without a parliament or constitution will give him absolute power. I demand a presidential council
11:45 AM

Al Jazeera: Military source: The next president will swear an oath in front of SCAF not the parliament
11:52 AM

[visionary]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...159451314.html

Another al-Qaeda stronghold 'falls' in Yemen

Yemen's army has recaptured the last al-Qaeda stronghold in southern Abyan province, officials and residents said.

This is the third jihadist bastion in the south to fall in the space of a week, a military official said on Friday.

"The army has taken control of Shuqra," said the official, adding that "troops have taken positions in the centre" of the coastal city while fighters fled.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47826377

Militants defecting to Somali side after losses

ELASHA BIYAHA, Somalia (AP) - Evil laughter pealed out of the mobile phone. Abshir Ali Mohamed, an al-Shabab defector now wearing a Somali military uniform, had asked his former commander to join him. The commander, an al-Shabab judge known for ordering amputations, said he would instead kill Mohamed.

Somali military and government leaders say Mohamed's defection is an example of a trend growing in their favor, with the East African country's most notorious militant group losing manpower and ground. The 24-year-old former insurgent left al-Shabab less than two weeks ago and now wears a bright blue patch with a white star - the Somali flag - on the shoulder of his government uniform.

"Al-Shabab is no longer. It's going to end soon," Mohamed said last week at freshly dug Ugandan-Somali military base on the outskirts of Mogadishu. The base was set up after African Union troops kicked militants out of the towns of Elasha Biyaha and Afgoye.

"Al-Shabab is changing sides because of heavy losses. Those who still fight with them are running away in small groups. They've lost weapons. They've lost personnel," he continued. More are looking to flee, he said.

Somali government spokesman Abdirahman Omar Osman said Thursday that some 500 al-Shabab fighters have defected to the government side.

As a foreign policy analyst mentioned on twitter earlier it seems that Al Qaeda and Shabab's time of control may be coming to an end in Yemen and Somalia.