Tunisian Revolution and the Middle East

[visionary]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...330792426.html

Aid efforts under way after Iran quakes

Rescue teams have stopped looking for survivors from two powerful earthquakes near northwestern city of Tabriz, state television said, adding all those trapped under the rubble had been located and saved.

At least 227 people have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded in the massive earthquakes that hit the towns of Ahar and Varzaghan on Saturday.

"There are no people left to recover from under the rubble in any village, and all necessary aid is currently being distributed," an interior ministry official in charge of disaster management, Hossein Ghadami, told state television on Sunday.

He said he hoped the death toll would not rise further. Some of those critically injured had already succumbed to their wounds.

Efforts are on to provide water and shelter to the affected people, as thousands of people huddled in makeshift camps or slept in streets after Saturday's quakes in fear of more aftershocks.

[visionary]

https://twitter.com/DavidKenner

Libyans are really, really pro-US. (h/t @robinenergy) http://www.gallup.com/poll/156539/Op...BDtWjA.twitter
3:05 PM

http://www.gallup.com/poll/156539/Op...BDtWjA.twitter

Opinion Briefing: Libyans Eye New Relations With the West

---------- Post added August-13th-2012 at 03:48 PM ----------

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/13/world/...kes/index.html

More than 300 killed, 3,000 injured in Iran earthquakes

The death toll from a pair of earthquakes that jolted Iran on Saturday has escalated once again, state-run media reported Monday.

At least 306 people have been killed and 3,037 injured in the two quakes in northwest Iran, Press TV reported, citing the country's Health Ministry.

The head of emergency services, Gholamreza Masoumi, told the semi-official Fars News Agency that 4,500 people were injured. About 1,200 were taken to hospitals, and the remaining 3,300 were treated as outpatients and released, he said.

Rescue operations were reported to have ended Sunday.

The Red Crescent's Faqih said 230 villages in the Varzaqan, Haris and Ahar regions suffered 70% to 100% damage.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the United States is prepared to offer earthquake assistance but had received no request.

"Americans wishing to provide humanitarian assistance to Iranians during this time may donate food and medicine without obtaining an Iranian transactions regulations license," she told reporters. "Additionally, certain noncommercial personal financial transactions for Iran are authorized under existing general licenses."

I could have sworn the Iranian media said no one else would die, after it was about 227 or so dead.
Of course they also said it was not a big incident when the news first broke.

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...87C16020120813

Thousands rally in Tunisia for women's rights

Thousands of Tunisians rallied on Monday to protest against what they see as a push by the Islamist-led government for constitutional changes that would degrade women's status in one of the Arab world's most liberal nations.

The protest, by some 6,000 mostly Tunisian women, is the latest twist in a row over the role of Islam in a constitution being drawn up by a new assembly.

Tunisia's ruling Ennahda Movement is under pressure from both hardline Salafi Muslims, calling for the introduction of Islamic law, and secular opposition parties.

Activists are not happy with a stipulation in a draft of the constitution that considers women to be "complementary to men" and want a pioneering 1956 law that grant women full equality with men to remain in place.

[FanboyOf91]

http://www.gallup.com/poll/156539/Op...BDtWjA.twitter

I'm okay with this.

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...87D0C120120814

Iran finds more bodies after quake, public criticism

Rescue workers in Iran on Tuesday recovered more bodies three days after two powerful earthquakes struck the northwest of the country, killing more than 300 people, but officials played down reports that casualty numbers may still sharply rise.

The quakes, with magnitudes of 6.4 and 6.3, struck East Azerbaijan province on Saturday afternoon, flattening villages and injuring thousands of people around the towns of Ahar, Varzaghan, and Harees, near the provincial capital Tabriz.

A rescue team using sniffer dogs had pulled out the body of a young woman in the village of Sorkhgav, Fars news agency reported on Tuesday, and was close to finding others.

Another report, by Iran's Labour news agency, said hundreds of villages had suffered severe damage, raising fears that the number of dead could mount sharply as rescuers reach previously inaccessible areas.

[visionary]

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/201...rthquakes.html

Iran earthquakes

Twin earthquakes hit northwest Iran near the Azerbaijan border, injuring thousands and killing over 300

Simple mud brick homes in the sparsely populated region collapsed quickly in the quakes, the larger of which measured 6.4 on the Richter Scale. Iran sits on several active fault lines and experiences earthquakes regularly.

With western media hindered by restrictions in Iran, many of the images presented here are by Iranian news services, including the Iranian Students' News Agency.

Photos of earthquake damage, casualties, and refugees in Iran

[visionary]

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

Police open fire on South African miners

At least seven people have been killed when police opened fire on miners staging a protest at a platinum mine in South Africa, according to Reuters.

South African police opened fire and dispersed a crowd of striking miners at the Lonmin mine in the North West province on Thursday after issuing an order to the protesters to lay down their machetes and sticks.

News TV images showed people lying on the ground, one with blood flowing from a wound.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...285_story.html

Bahrain sentences prominent activist to 3 years prison for instigating, partaking in protest

MANAMA, Bahrain — A prominent Bahraini human rights activist was found guilty Thursday of instigating and participating in several illegal gatherings and sentenced to three years in jail.

The unexpectedly stiff sentence against Nabeel Rajab will raise questions about the Western-backed Sunni monarchy’s commitment to reform, and embolden anti-government protesters who have been demonstrating the past 18 months for greater rights in the Gulf island kingdom, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet.

Rajab, who is already serving a three-month sentence for posting anti-government comments on Twitter, was in court for the verdict. He is president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

Rajab’s attorney Mohammed al-Jishi said each of three cases yielded a year imprisonment, for a total of three years. Al-Jishi said he plans to appeal the ruling.

In a separate case involving comments made on social media site Twitter, a judge delayed issuing a verdict against Rajab’s appeal until Aug. 23.

[visionary]

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/201...orld&seid=auto

Video Shows South African Police Shooting Miners

As our colleague Lydia Polgreen reports, at least 18 striking miners were shot dead on Thursday by South African police officers who opened fire as a crowd approached carrying machetes and sticks at a Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana.

News camera crews were at the mine covering the labor unrest when the shooting began. A crew from eNewsChannel in South Africa captured this video, which shows graphic images of police firing into the crowd.

[visionary]

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak

Police tell Sky News they believe 30 people have died at mine shooting
1:35 AM

https://twitter.com/AJELive

Update: South African police minister Nathi Mthethwa says 30 people were killed in Lonmin platinum mine shooting on Thursday.
1:48 AM

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...87H03I20120818

At least 18 killed in Yemen attack on intelligence HQ

Suspected al Qaeda-linked militants killed at least 18 Yemeni soldiers and security guards on Saturday in a car bombing and grenade attack on the intelligence service headquarters in Aden, the Defence Ministry and witnesses said.

The ministry said more bodies were believed buried under the rubble of the building, part of which was leveled in the attack in the southern port city. At least seven others were wounded before the militants fled.

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

Somalia moves forward to electing president

Somalia has taken a step toward electing a new president after a committee overseeing the war-torn country's transition to a replacement government named more than 200 parliamentarians, a committee member said.

"We have 202 members readied now and we are working on the reviewing of 40 others that were passed today and we hope the first parliament session will be held around (Monday)," Halimo Yarey, who co-chairs the committee, said on Saturday.

"The rest of the list is still pending because of inter-clan argument and other reasons related to a lack of fulfillment of the conditions," she told reporters.

The legislature is due to elect the next president on Monday under a UN-backed agreement, putting an end to eight years of Somalia's graft-riddled, Western-backed Transitional Federal Government, or TFG.

The Horn of Africa nation has lacked a stable central government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Siad Barre in 1991, which unleashed a bloody civil war and two decades of chaos.

But while the government until recently controlled only a few blocks of Mogadishu, African Union and other troops have since made key territorial gains in their fight against al-Shabab fighters.

With better security, members of the Somali diaspora have returned to invest in their battered homeland, and many now hope that a new government will help the war-torn country stabilise and recover.

So this comittee chooses the parliament members, and they vote for the president?
Not much of an election.

[mboyd784]

[visionary]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...87M0LU20120823

Trial of Gaddafi son due to start next month

Saif al-Islam, son of Libya's late ruler Muammar Gaddafi, will go on trial next month in the western town of Zintan, a government source said on Thursday.

"The trial of Saif al-Islam is to start next month, probably the second week of the month," the source said.

In April, Justice Minister Ali Ashour told Reuters Saif would be put on trial for financial corruption, murder and rape.

[visionary]

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

Iran opposition leader Mousavi 'hospitalised'

Leading Iranian opposition figure Mir Hossein Mousavi, under house arrest for more than a year, has been taken to hospital for treatment for a heart problem, one of his former senior advisors has said.

"Mousavi was taken to the hospital this morning after his blood vessels became blocked," Ardeshir Amir Arjomand, a senior advisor to Mousavi during his presidential campaign and leading exiled opposition figure, said on Thursday.

"He has not been feeling well since last night, but the security forces did not take him to the hospital until this morning because they wanted to install cameras there," Arjomand told the Reuters news agency by telephone from Paris.

Mousavi and fellow reformist Mehdi Karoubi ran for election against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009 and became figureheads for the large protests that followed by Iranians who accused authorities of rigging the vote to bring back the hardline incumbent.

The government denied any vote wrong-doing and said Iran's foreign enemies had plotted to overthrow the country's leaders by stirring up the protests, the biggest opposition demonstrations since the 1979 revolution.

Mousavi, his wife Zahra Rahnavard and Karoubi have been held incommunicado since February last year when the two leaders called their supporters onto the streets for a rally in support of uprisings in the Arab world - the first demonstrations by their pro-reform "Green movement" since street protests were crushed by security forces at the end of 2009.

[visionary]

http://www.aljazeera.com/video/afric...348545366.html

Libya denounces destruction of Sufi sites

Attackers in Libya have bulldozed a mosque containing Sufi Muslim graves in the centre of Tripoli, a day after Sufi shrines in the city of Zlitan were wrecked and a mosque library was burned.

The demolition of the large Sha'ab mosque happened in broad daylight on Saturday, drawing condemnation from government officials and Libyans across the country and abroad.

The president of Libya's newly elected National Congress, Mohamed al-Magariaf, called the prime minister to an emergency meeting on Sunday.

"What is truly regrettable and suspicious is that some of those who took part in these destruction activities are supposed to be of the security forces and from the revolutionaries," Magariaf told reporters on Saturday night.

http://brown-moses.blogspot.co.uk/20...destroyed.html

Images Of Shrines And Mosques Destroyed By Extremists In Libya

Yesterday Libyans all across twitter were in a rage over this and claiming collusion by the interior ministry and security services to protect the extremists.
The latest news this morning is that the interior minister has been forced to resign.
There still has not been any major arrests of the purpetrators yet though.

[visionary]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/30/world/...nce/index.html

270 miners charged in co-workers' deaths

South African authorities have charged 270 miners with murder in the killings of 34 fellow workers, even though police are believed to have fired the fatal shots.

The workers were arrested after the deadly clash with police and were charged under a common-law provision that faults them for being involved in the clash.

Police spokesman Dennis Adrio said that some of those killed in the clash had gunshot wounds in their backs and that weapons were recovered at the scene.