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Fintan Site Admin

Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 7825
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:59 am Post subject: Arab Spring / Mid-East Revolutions Latest |
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_________________ Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open.
Last edited by Fintan on Wed May 02, 2012 8:29 pm; edited 23 times in total |
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Fintan Site Admin

Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 7825
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 12:06 pm Post subject: |
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Dunno if the violence is really over.
Hard to see the people buying this:
Quote: | Senior Tunisian ministers keep posts in new govt
Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:26am EST
* Priority is security plus political and economic reform -PM
* Ben Ali's RCD party keeps significant presence in cabinet
TUNIS, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Tunisia's ministers of defence, the interior,
finance and foreign affairs will keep their posts in the new government
but opposition leaders including Najib Chebbi will also have posts, the
prime minister said on Monday.
Interior Minister Ahmed Friaa was originally appointed only last week in
Ben Ali's final days when the then president tried to mollify a protest
movement against poverty, corruption and political repression.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE70G1X520110117 |
The PTB are keeping defence, finance and foreign affairs.
Probably a realistic compromise, for now --but will it fly?..... _________________ Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open. |
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Fintan Site Admin

Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 7825
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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On TV, a flowering of Arab democracy
looks good to the masses of the west.
But our leaders are no friends of Tunisian democracy,
or any other Arab democracy --says Robert Fisk
Quote: | The Brutal Truth About Tunisia
Bloodshed, tears, but no democracy.
Bloody turmoil won’t necessarily presage the dawn of democracy
By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent
Monday, 17 January 2011
The end of the age of dictators in the Arab world? Certainly they are shaking in their boots across the Middle East, the well-heeled sheiks and emirs, and the kings, including one very old one in Saudi Arabia and a young one in Jordan, and presidents – another very old one in Egypt and a young one in Syria – because Tunisia wasn't meant to happen.
Food price riots in Algeria, too, and demonstrations against price increases in Amman. Not to mention scores more dead in Tunisia, whose own despot sought refuge in Riyadh – exactly the same city to which a man called Idi Amin once fled.
If it can happen in the holiday destination Tunisia, it can happen anywhere, can't it? It was feted by the West for its "stability" when Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was in charge. The French and the Germans and the Brits, dare we mention this, always praised the dictator for being a "friend" of civilised Europe, keeping a firm hand on all those Islamists.
Tunisians won't forget this little history, even if we would like them to. The Arabs used to say that two-thirds of the entire Tunisian population – seven million out of 10 million, virtually the whole adult population – worked in one way or another for Mr Ben Ali's secret police. They must have been on the streets too, then, protesting at the man we loved until last week.
But don't get too excited. Yes, Tunisian youths have used the internet to rally each other – in Algeria, too – and the demographic explosion of youth (born in the Eighties and Nineties with no jobs to go to after university) is on the streets.
But the "unity" government is to be formed by Mohamed Ghannouchi, a satrap of Mr Ben Ali's for almost 20 years, a safe pair of hands who will have our interests – rather than his people's interests – at heart.
For I fear this is going to be the same old story. Yes, we would like a democracy in Tunisia – but not too much democracy. Remember how we wanted Algeria to have a democracy back in the early Nineties?
Then when it looked like the Islamists might win the second round of voting, we supported its military-backed government in suspending elections and crushing the Islamists and initiating a civil war in which 150,000 died.
No, in the Arab world, we want law and order and stability. Even in Hosni Mubarak's corrupt and corrupted Egypt, that's what we want. And we will get it.
The truth, of course, is that the Arab world is so dysfunctional, sclerotic, corrupt, humiliated and ruthless – and remember that Mr Ben Ali was calling Tunisian protesters "terrorists" only last week – and so totally incapable of any social or political progress, that the chances of a series of working democracies emerging from the chaos of the Middle East stand at around zero per cent.
The job of the Arab potentates will be what it has always been – to "manage" their people, to control them, to keep the lid on, to love the West and to hate Iran.
Indeed, what was Hillary Clinton doing last week as Tunisia burned? She was telling the corrupted princes of the Gulf that their job was to support sanctions against Iran, to confront the Islamic republic, to prepare for another strike against a Muslim state after the two catastrophes the United States and the UK have already inflicted in the region.
The Muslim world – at least, that bit of it between India and the Mediterranean – is a more than sorry mess. Iraq has a sort-of-government that is now a satrap of Iran, Hamid Karzai is no more than the mayor of Kabul, Pakistan stands on the edge of endless disaster, Egypt has just emerged from another fake election.
And Lebanon... Well, poor old Lebanon hasn't even got a government. Southern Sudan – if the elections are fair – might be a tiny candle, but don't bet on it.
It's the same old problem for us in the West. We mouth the word "democracy" and we are all for fair elections – providing the Arabs vote for whom we want them to vote for.
In Algeria 20 years ago, they didn't. In "Palestine" they didn't. And in Lebanon, because of the so-called Doha accord, they didn't. So we sanction them, threaten them and warn them about Iran and expect them to keep their mouths shut when Israel steals more Palestinian land for its colonies on the West Bank.
There was a fearful irony that the police theft of an ex-student's fruit produce – and his suicide in Tunis – should have started all this off, not least because Mr Ben Ali made a failed attempt to gather public support by visiting the dying youth in hospital.
For years, this wretched man had been talking about a "slow liberalising" of his country. But all dictators know they are in greatest danger when they start freeing their entrapped countrymen from their chains.
And the Arabs behaved accordingly. No sooner had Ben Ali flown off into exile than Arab newspapers which have been stroking his fur and polishing his shoes and receiving his money for so many years were vilifying the man. "Misrule", "corruption", "authoritarian reign", "a total lack of human rights", their journalists are saying now. Rarely have the words of the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran sounded so painfully accurate: "Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again." Mohamed Ghannouchi, perhaps?
Of course, everyone is lowering their prices now – or promising to. Cooking oil and bread are the staple of the masses. So prices will come down in Tunisia and Algeria and Egypt. But why should they be so high in the first place?
Algeria should be as rich as Saudi Arabia – it has the oil and gas – but it has one of the worst unemployment rates in the Middle East, no social security, no pensions, nothing for its people because its generals have salted their country's wealth away in Switzerland.
And police brutality. The torture chambers will keep going. We will maintain our good relations with the dictators. We will continue to arm their armies and tell them to seek peace with Israel.
And they will do what we want. Ben Ali has fled. The search is now on for a more pliable dictator in Tunisia – a "benevolent strongman" as the news agencies like to call these ghastly men.
And the shooting will go on – as it did yesterday in Tunisia – until "stability" has been restored.
No, on balance, I don't think the age of the Arab dictators is over. We will see to that. |
_________________ Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open. |
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skinters

Joined: 07 Sep 2009 Posts: 603
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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There some news coming in on youtube,Its kicking off over there.
Swedish tourists were beaten because guns were found used for their hunting trip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Kr1wOtHDc8 |
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Fintan Site Admin

Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 7825
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 5:08 pm Post subject: |
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_________________ Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open. |
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Fintan Site Admin

Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 7825
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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_________________ Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open. |
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skinters

Joined: 07 Sep 2009 Posts: 603
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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The Tunisian government needs to go,and bring in new forwards thinking attitudes.If they let in outside investment and expanded in other areas apart from simple agriculture and textiles,the country would prosper beyond belief.
There are a lot of young educated people there going to waste,and the potential for growth is incredible.
Its time for Tunisia to expand its technologies via the internet/media.
I did notice listening to that last vid that the only avenue open to the young people of tunisia is the internet.
Thats all thats needed. |
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Fintan Site Admin

Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 7825
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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According to the internet gutter press, the people
arrested in Tunisia were intelligence agents.....
The story is all over the Fake's sites, Icke included.
This is roughly how it goes:
Quote: | Three Taxis Full Of Europeans
With Guns Arrested In Tunisia
IranContraScumDid911 | 16 January 2011
A senior police officer said on state television earlier that several people including four German nationals had been arrested after being found carrying weapons inside three taxis in the capital.
"We arrested four German nationals and others of different nationalities. I don't know the number or the nationalities of the other foreigners," the officer said, without giving further details.
The incident took place near the headquarters of the main opposition party, the PDP, where a gunfight broke out around the time of the arrests.
12 Swedish "boar hunters" also arrested. French and Dutch. All the traces of Gladio.
These guys are spooks caught running operations as the country is falling apart in violence. Certain Europeans are purposefully destabilizing African nations so they can readjust power and control. The Dutch are fully committed to imperialism through staged terror in Africa. Every nation the Dutch presence is strong in is the source of terror and violence. The past month Nigeria and Tunisia (both Dutch controlled) have exploded in staged violence. Royal Dutch Shell OWNS Nigeria (Flight 253).
http://www.youtube.com/user/IranContraScumDid911#p/u/2/ffQe4oMlA6o |
Here's the alleged intelligence agents recovering:
Quote: |
Swedish boar hunters safe after Tunisia attack
Published: 17 Jan 11 10:46 CET
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Camilla Åkesson Lindblom told AFP that the 12, who earlier said they had been beaten on suspicion of being "foreign terrorists", were all accounted for after the incident on Sunday.
"We have had contact with all of them, and the three who we hadn't heard from yesterday are also now at their hotel," she said.
The Swedes were not being held against their will, she emphasised, pointing out that "they are simply waiting at the hotel until they are able to go home."
The Swedes, who had arrived in Tunisia nearly two weeks ago to hunt wild boar, had been in three separate taxis traveling to the airport Sunday when they were stopped at a checkpoint, dragged out of the vehicles and beaten, one of them said.
"They searched the vehicles. They found our rifles and everything degenerated. They dragged us out of the cars, treated us like foreign terrorists. We were kicked and beaten," Ove Öberg told reporters at the Africa Hotel after the ordeal on Sunday.
The incident took place near the headquarters of the main opposition party, the PDP, where a gunfight broke out around the time of the arrests.
"We arrived about 10 days ago in Tunisia to hunt boars. We boarded three taxis today to go to the airport and while we were on our way we were stopped at a checkpoint," Öberg told reporters in a hotel in central Tunis on Sunday.
According to Öberg, police arrested a group of nine Swedish boar hunters travelling in taxis toward a nearby hotel after their flight home was cancelled amid gun battles in the city. Öberg and the five others had a bloodied face and bruises.
"The police arrived. We showed our permits and we could explain to them. The police helped us get out of the situation. The only thing we want now is to go home," said the man, who was visibly still in shock.
A senior police officer said on state television earlier that several people, including four German nationals, had been arrested after being found carrying weapons inside three taxis in the capital.
"We arrested four German nationals and others of different nationalities. I don't know the number or the nationalities of the other foreigners," the officer said, without giving further details.
http://www.thelocal.se/31466/20110117/ |
So is their tale of boar hunting in Tunisia believable?
This video shows Norwegian's wild boar hunting in Tunisia.
Norwegians and Swedes it seems, like nothing better than
to haul their frozen asses and go get some boar action
somewhere that not so frikkin' cold the whole year!
Not my thing, but I wouldn't beat 'em up for it.
Thanks CIA Fakes for another tinfoil pseudo~conspiracy.
_________________ Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open. |
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skinters

Joined: 07 Sep 2009 Posts: 603
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 6:18 pm Post subject: |
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Im sure the gun shown on that vid was an over and under shotgun,the same used in that hunt vid.
Also i spyed a bit of cammo gear in that guys suitcase. |
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Fintan Site Admin

Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 7825
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Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:30 am Post subject: |
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I didn't think the "compromise"
government would last long...
Quote: |
Ministers Resign From Tunisia's New Government
VOA News 18 January 2011
Three ministers have resigned from Tunisia's day-old coalition government.
Officials with the country's main labor union, the UGTT, announced Tuesday that the group's three ministers were withdrawing because the union has decided it will not recognize the new government.
One resigning minister had been appointed to head training and employment. The other two were also named to junior positions.
The Associated Press says the health minister, who is from another opposition party, also stepped down. |
_________________ Minds are like parachutes.
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MichaelC

Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 2089
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Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:45 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | Swedish tourists were beaten because guns were found used for their hunting trip. | It would be nice if the guns were used ON the hunters. |
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Fintan Site Admin

Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 7825
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Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 11:26 pm Post subject: |
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_________________ Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when open. |
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