Bloody protests against soaring living costs: 'It’s a struggle just to get by' "There’s so much inflation that it’s a struggle just to get by" Patrick Munyaneza is a graduate student and financial management teacher in Maputo. Born in Rwanda, he has lived in Mozambique for 15 years.
Yesterday people went out in the street and set up barricades. Slum dwellers tried to come down to the city centre, but were kept out by the police. The entire city is devastated: banks were destroyed, shops looted. The protests are going on today. "We received an SMS calling for us to protest on September 1" The situation reminds me of the hunger riots in 2008, which occurred for the same reasons.
Inflation is a major problem in Mozambique: it affects every product. People are very angry. The government is doing nothing to help. Egypt braces itself for biggest day of protests yet | World news. Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, will face escalating challenges on all fronts tomorrow, with Cairo expecting the biggest day yet of street protests and Mohamed ElBaradei, one of his fiercest critics, calling explicitly for a "new regime" on his return to Cairo. Redoubling the sense of crisis for 82-year-old Mubarak, who has ruled for the past three decades, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most potent opposition force, said it was backing the latest call for demonstrations scheduled to follow Friday prayers.
ElBaradei, the former UN nuclear inspector who plans to join tomorrow's marches, arrived tonight at Cairo's airport to a media scrum and a heavy presence from the country's state security. He said he had come because "this is a critical time in the life of Egypt and I have come to participate with the Egyptian people". Speaking to reporters earlier as he set off from Vienna, ElBaradei said he was seeking regime change and was ready to lead the opposition movement. US may cut Sudan from 'terror list' - Africa. The United States has said it may remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism if the government in Khartoum recognises the outcome of the south's referendum on whether to split from the north. "Should the referendum be carried out successfully and the results are recognised by the government, President Obama would indicate his intention to begin the process of removing them," Princeton Lyman, the lead US negotiator with Sudan, said on Tuesday.
"It is a process that takes some time, but by beginning the process in the wake of the referendum, the hope is if they meet all the conditions it can be done by July. " Lyman made the remarks on the third day of voting in the referendum, which was organised as part of a peace agreement in 2005 that ended two decades of civil war between the north and the south. The referendum is widely expected to lead to mainly Christian and animist southern Sudan seceding from the predominantly Muslim north of the country.
Global arms exports: Present arms. ONI Report Details Western Complicity in Mideast Online Tyranny. Today, the OpenNet Inititative has released a report on the roles Western tech companies have played in enabling repressive Arabic regimes to filter and control the use of the Web by their citizens. In the report, authors Helmi Noman and Jillian C. York "find that nine countries in the region utilize Western-made tools for the purpose of blocking social and political content, effectively blocking a total of over 20 million Internet users from accessing such websites. " Key Findings Among the key findings by the investigation team of Ronald Deibert, John Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain, are nine Middle Eastern countries with ISPs who use Western tech to muzzle the Internet: Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Sudan and Tunisia.
Among the products used are U.S. tools including Intel's McAfee SmartFilter and Websense, as well as Canadian-made Netsweeper. Why Should We Care? Of course there's also that little issue of whether we actually believe in democracy. 5395159043_c4029c5a39_b.jpg (1024×506) EGYPT: Stock market stumbles amid nationwide turbulence | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times. Days of unrest and protests forced a temporary suspension of trading in Egypt's stock market on Thursday, as the nation's index EGX30 hit its lowest level in more than six months.
"The situation is a direct result of the ongoing protests, as retailers panic and start reacting to political unrest," Wael Ziada, head of research at EFG-Hermes for Investment banking and securities brokerage, told the Los Angeles Times. "These type of events spread in the market like a contagion, and the situation is most likely to stay the same as long as the situation remains influx.
" The index had already fallen by 6% to reach 6,138 points when trading ended Wednesday before closing at a 10.52% slide Thursday, a decrease which is the lowest since last July. A loss of 54 billion Egyptian Pounds ($9.2 billion) was recorded during trading Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. The Egyptian Pound is also reaching its lowest slide against the US Dollar, reaching 5.8472 against the greenback. Anti-Government Protests Continue to Rock Egypt | Africa. Egyptian riot police clashed with thousands of anti-government activists for a second day Wednesday, firing rubber bullets and using tear gas and batons on protesters who defied a government ban on demonstrations.
At least four people have died in two days of demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year-old rule. Another two people were killed Wednesday as the protests unfolded, but officials gave contradictory accounts of their deaths. In the city of Suez, east of Cairo, protesters set a government building on fire late Wednesday. Others attempted to firebomb the ruling National Democratic Party's local headquarters before police pushed them back with teargas. After nightfall, more than 2,000 people continued their protests in various parts of Cairo.
The government says at least 700 people have been arrested in the waves of unrest across the country. The protests, which have rolled through in Cairo and other major cities, saw thousands of people calling for an end to Mr. Fresh anti-govt protests in Egypt - Middle East. Fresh protests over living conditions and an autocratic government have broken out in Cairo a day after large and deadly demonstrations, calling for the ouster of president Hosni Mubarak, swept across the country.
More than 500 protesters were arrested by security forces as the government vowed to crackdown on them. On Wednesday evening, thousands of demonstrators were spread throughout downtown Cairo after being dispersed by security forces. Many had gathered on Gelaa Street, near central Tahrir Square - the site of a violent early morning confrontation between security forces and protesters who had been planning to sleep the night in defiance of the government.
Police fired tear gas and broke up concrete to use as rocks to throw at protesters and "egg them on," Al Jazeera's Adam Makary reported. Protesters lit a fire - possibly on a tyre - in the middle of a nearby street and were pelting police officers with stones, said Al Jazeera correspondent Rawya Rageh. Possible concession Safe haven. Protesters torch Egypt police post - Middle East. Angry demonstrators in Egypt have torched a police post in the eastern city of Suez, where violence between police and protesters has racheted up amid a security crackdown. Police fled the post before protesters used petrol bombs to set it on fire Thursday morning, witnesses told the Reuters news agency. Police in Suez responded to other demonstrators by firing rubber-coated bullets, water cannons and teargas.
Dozens of protersters gathered in front of a second police post later in the morning, demanding the release of relatives who were detained during a wave of unprecedented protests that authorities have failed to quell since they began on Tuesday. Meanwhile, activists calling for the outser of Hosni Mubarak, who has served as Egypt's president for 30 years, clashed with police in the capital, Cairo, in the early hours of Thursday. Responding to a reporter's question as he departed Vienna for Cairo, ElBaradei said on Thursday that he was ready to "lead the transition" in Egypt if asked. AJE. The Egypt I never knew existed. I arrived in Cairo on Wednesday afternoon, less than 24 hours after tens of thousands of protesters had brought the Egyptian capital to a standstill. I wasn't sure what to expect when I arrived, but I can safely say what I saw was far beyond my imagination.
The scenes I witnessed, violent, brave, barbaric, and above all revolutionary in nature, surpassed anything I had ever seen from the Egyptian people. The taxi taking me from the airport was forced to stop about half a kilometre from our offices in central Cairo. The road had been blocked by protesters, rubber tyres had been set alight, and chants of "down, down Hosni Mubarak" echoed like the call to prayer. Within a minute of stepping out of the taxi, I was choking from the tear gas being fired by riot police towards the demonstrators. But those on the street, mainly youth in their 20's, were defiant. They stood their ground for half an hour, their anti-government chants got louder and their numbers began to increase.