Category Archives: Issues

Israel shuts liberal radio station in attempt to silence criticism of right

The Independent reports: Israel has closed down a dovish Israeli-Palestinian radio station in what its backers say is a politically-motivated decision to silence criticism of the Jewish state.

The Communications Ministry ordered the Kol Hashalom station, or All for Peace, to shut down earlier this month for broadcasting into Israel illegally. But Danny Danon, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s hawkish Likud party, boasted that he had instigated an investigation into the station for alleged incitement against Israel.

The attack on the radio station, which has broadcast for seven years, raises fresh concerns about press freedoms at a time when many of Israel’s liberals view the country’s democracy as under threat from the right wing.

Israel claims that All for Peace, established by Palestinian and Israeli activists, is a pirate radio station operating without a licence, but the station has countered that it has a licence from the Palestinian Authority, and does not require permission from Israel. The station has offices in East Jerusalem, but broadcasts from Ramallah in the West Bank.

Managers of the station, unique for its willingness to talk to far-right Israelis as much as to militant Palestinians, have been in regular contact with the Communications Ministry over the past seven years, said the Jewish co-director Mossi Raz, who insists that he has never in that time been told to seek an Israeli licence.

“It is a political decision,” said Mr Raz, a former politician with the left-wing party Meretz. “I am very concerned. There is no democracy here. People think that democracy is only the right to vote, but it’s not only that. You cannot have democracy without freedom of the press.” He added that he is preparing to challenge the decision in court.

Facebooktwittermail

Lobbyists plan to defend Wall Street and attack the Occupy movement

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

MSNBC reports: A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”

The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.

CLGC’s memo [PDF] proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.

According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”

Here’s an extract from the memo:

Facebooktwittermail

Don’t let them destroy the revolution

An anonymous #OWS activist urges President Obama to break his silence on the bloodshed in Cairo where 24 people have already been killed. But let’s not forget that this is a man who in 2006 supported the carpet-bombing of Beirut, in 2008 remained mute while Israelis slaughtered Palestinians in Gaza, and in 2009 was slow to condemn the Iranian government as it crushed the Green Revolution. Obama is consistent in this respect: he displays an unswerving loyalty to power.

President Obama, where are you? Are you not watching the same images that the world is watching of the massacres in Tahrir? Are you too busy preparing for Thanksgiving to take a minute to make a strong statement about what’s happening in a country in which your government has invested so much money and support?

Are you not outraged at the brutal suppression of pro-democracy protesters by the military junta in Egypt? If so, why have you offered no meaningful condemnation of the attempt to crush a revolution that has so inspired millions of Americans? After all, their encouragement to Occupy Wall Street might actually wind up saving your presidency.

During the fateful 18 days in January and February when Egyptians took to the streets by the millions to topple Hosni Mubarak, you remained largely silent, refusing to call directly for democracy until it was clear that young Egyptians would not be denied their wish to be free of his three-decade-long rule.

In the months since then, as thousands of Egyptians have been attacked, imprisoned, sexually assaulted and murdered by their government, the United States has not merely remained silent, but has continued to provide crucial diplomatic, economic and military aid to the regime responsible for these crimes.

Now that the facade of a democratic transition has been ripped away and Egyptians are once again battling the military government in Tahrir Square for the future of the country, your administration remains as quiet as it was in the early days of the revolution. Such silence is both morally indefensible, and politically and strategically disastrous for the US. The march for freedom in Egypt cannot be stopped, and when Egyptians finally rid themselves of the military government and establish a democratic system, the US will have few friends in Egypt, or the Arab world more broadly, if it is seen as having supported the military rather than the people at this pivotal moment.

The tear gas being fired at demonstrators in Cairo is manufactured by the US company, Combined Systems.

Facebooktwittermail

UC Davis: The power of silence

After the UC Davis pepper spraying, a string of lies and vacuous declarations:

“The students had encircled the officers,” UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza said. “They needed to exit. They were looking to leave but were unable to get out.”

As the video above shows, police officers were able with perfect ease to step over the peacefully sitting demonstrators whenever they chose to do so.

“I spoke with students this weekend, and I feel their outrage. I have also heard from an overwhelming number of students, faculty, staff and alumni from around the country. I am deeply saddened that this happened on our campus, and as chancellor, I take full responsibility for the incident,” Linda P.B. Katehi.

I take full responsibility has been turned into a phrase whose meaning extends no further than its utterance.

There was a day these words would preface a tangible demonstration of their meaning: “I take full responsibility and have therefore tendered my resignation.”

Then comes Katehi’s boss’s declaration of deep concern:

“I am appalled by images of University of California students being doused with pepper spray and jabbed with police batons on our campuses.

“I intend to do everything in my power as president of this university to protect the rights of our students, faculty and staff to engage in non-violent protest.

“Chancellors at the UC Davis and UC Berkeley campuses already have initiated reviews of incidents that occurred on their campuses. I applaud this rapid response and eagerly await the results,” said University of California President Mark G. Yudof today.

Nothing is more predictable in the practice of damage control than the promise of an inquiry — bury the story in the mud of time and deadening bureaucratic detail.

“I will be asking the chancellors to forward to me at once all relevant protocols and policies already in place on their individual campuses, as well as those that apply to the engagement of non-campus police agencies through mutual aid agreements.

“Further, I already have taken steps to assemble experts and stakeholders to conduct a thorough, far-reaching and urgent assessment of campus police procedures involving use of force, including post-incident review processes.

“My intention is not to micromanage our campus police forces. The sworn officers who serve on our campuses are professionals dedicated to the protection of the UC community.

“Nor do I wish to micromanage the chancellors. They are the leaders of our campuses and they have my full trust and confidence.”

Yudof might trust Katehi but the students in her university do not.

After a news conference on Saturday she was presented with an instant report on the conduct of her administration. The text was scornful silence — a message from hundreds of students who sat and watched as Katehi retreated to her car..

“Corporate America is using our own police departments as hired thugs, and that’s a disgrace,” says Retired Captain Ray Lewis from the Philadelphia PD.

And if we need any further reminders that the police in the US have indeed become hired thugs, here’s another view of their assault on peaceful protesters in Berkeley.

Facebooktwittermail

10 killed, 1700 injured in Cairo clashes

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports: Presidential hopefuls Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh and Mohamed ElBaradei are speaking to Dream TV, a private satellite channel, criticizing both the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the government for mishandling the situation in Tahrir.

ElBaradei said the prime responsibility for the situation in the country is the SCAF, which he says has admitted it cannot run the country. ElBaradei asked who is responsible for starting this barbaric use of force that left over 1000 injured, 10 dead and 10 more blind; he answered: the Interior Ministry.

Abouel Fotouh said that, once again, protesters are being subjected to the same oppressive tactics used during the era of ex-president Hosni Mubarak. He added that until today, the blood of Egyptians is being shed only because the pure youth are trying to save their homeland. He said that the youth in Tahrir now are the same revolutionaries we all know.

Anjali Kamat, an independent journalist and correspondent for Democracy Now! posted a photo of “8 unmoving bodies” in Tahrir. There have been multiple reports of Egyptian security services firing live rounds during the protest.

A podcast from The Arabist puts today and yesterday’s violence in context.

Egyptian blogger, Hossam El-Hamalawy interviewed by Al Jazeera:

Facebooktwittermail

A fight for control of Tahrir Square

Al Jazeera reports: Egyptian security forces are engaged in back-and-froth street battles in downtown Cairo’s Tahrir Square with thousands of defiant activists who filled the square for the second day of protests against the country’s interim military leaders.

Thick clouds of tear gas filled the air on Sunday as military police armed with batons and shields charged into the square, firing rubber bullets and forcibly clearing the area of protesters. The assault sparked panic among the estimated 5,000 protesters, many of whom had remained in Tahrir since early on Saturday.

A short time affter the offensive, however, a surge of protesters returned to the square, overwhelming security forces and retaking the area.

“This is what the Egyptian army calls protecting the revolution,” Salma Said, a democracy activist, told Al Jazeera. “We’ve lost so many people in the last nine months. We want Field Marshall Tantawi gone. We’re going to keep fighting, we don’t have any other options.”

At 5.50pm local time, Al-Masry Al-Youm reported: Protesters marching through Tahrir Square are chanting, “Tantawi is the enemy of God.” Another group is chanting Ultra football fan anti-security songs.

Meanwhile, EgyNews, an official state website, just announced that military police and security forces have completely cleared Tahrir Square of demonstrators. However, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm correspondents in the square, thousands of protesters remain.

Facebooktwittermail

The roots of the UC-Davis pepper-spraying

Glenn Greenwald writes: The now-viral video of police officers in their Robocop costumes sadistically pepper-spraying peaceful, sitting protesters at UC-Davis (details here) shows a police state in its pure form. It’s easy to be outraged by this incident as though it’s some sort of shocking aberration, but that is exactly what it is not. The Atlantic‘s Garance Franke-Ruta adeptly demonstrates with an assemblage of video how common such excessive police force has been in response to the Occupy protests. Along those lines, there are several points to note about this incident and what it reflects:

(1) Despite all the rights of free speech and assembly flamboyantly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the reality is that punishing the exercise of those rights with police force and state violence has been the reflexive response in America for quite some time. As Franke-Ruta put it, “America has a very long history of protests that meet with excessive or violent response, most vividly recorded in the second half of the 20th century.” Digby yesterday recounted a similar though even worse incident aimed at environmental protesters.

The intent and effect of such abuse is that it renders those guaranteed freedoms meaningless. If a population becomes bullied or intimidated out of exercising rights offered on paper, those rights effectively cease to exist. Every time the citizenry watches peaceful protesters getting pepper-sprayed — or hears that an Occupy protester suffered brain damage and almost died after being shot in the skull with a rubber bullet — many become increasingly fearful of participating in this citizen movement, and also become fearful in general of exercising their rights in a way that is bothersome or threatening to those in power. That’s a natural response, and it’s exactly what the climate of fear imposed by all abusive police state actions is intended to achieve: to coerce citizens to “decide” on their own to be passive and compliant — to refrain from exercising their rights — out of fear of what will happen if they don’t.

The genius of this approach is how insidious its effects are: because the rights continue to be offered on paper, the citizenry continues to believe it is free. They believe that they are free to do everything they choose to do, because they have been “persuaded” — through fear and intimidation — to passively accept the status quo. As Rosa Luxemburg so perfectly put it: “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” Someone who sits at home and never protests or effectively challenges power factions will not realize that their rights of speech and assembly have been effectively eroded because they never seek to exercise those rights; it’s only when we see steadfast, courageous resistance from the likes of these UC-Davis students is this erosion of rights manifest.

Facebooktwittermail

Open letter to the chancellor of UC Davis

18 November 2011

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi

Linda P.B. Katehi,

I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

You are not.

I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:

1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today

2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality

3) to demand your immediate resignation

Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. These were protesters who participated in a rally speaking out against tuition increases and police brutality on UC campuses on Tuesday—a rally that I organized, and which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week. In the highest tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, those protesters had linked arms and held their ground in defense of tents they set up beside Sproul Hall. In a gesture of solidarity with those students and faculty, and in solidarity with the national Occupy movement, students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police outfitted with riot helmets, brandishing batons and teargas guns to remove their tents today, those students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.

What happened next?

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

This is what happened. You are responsible for it.

You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt. One of the most inspiring things (inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly) about the demonstration in Berkeley on November 9 is that UC Berkeley faculty stood together with students, their arms linked together. Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground, and arrested. Associate Professor Geoffrey O’Brien was injured by baton blows. Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also struck with a baton. These faculty stood together with students in solidarity, and they too were beaten and arrested by the police. In writing this letter, I stand together with those faculty and with the students they supported.

One week after this happened at UC Berkeley, you ordered police to clear tents from the quad at UC Davis. When students responded in the same way—linking arms and holding their ground—police also responded in the same way: with violent force. The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this. Many more people are learning it very quickly.

You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds.

On Wednesday November 16, you issued a letter by email to the campus community. In this letter, you discussed a hate crime which occurred at UC Davis on Sunday November 13. In this letter, you express concern about the safety of our students. You write, “it is particularly disturbing that such an act of intolerance should occur at a time when the campus community is working to create a safe and inviting space for all our students.” You write, “while these are turbulent economic times, as a campus community, we must all be committed to a safe, welcoming environment that advances our efforts to diversity and excellence at UC Davis.”

I will leave it to my colleagues and every reader of this letter to decide what poses a greater threat to “a safe and inviting space for all our students” or “a safe, welcoming environment” at UC Davis: 1) Setting up tents on the quad in solidarity with faculty and students brutalized by police at UC Berkeley? or 2) Sending in riot police to disperse students with batons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas guns, while those students sit peacefully on the ground with their arms linked? Is this what you have in mind when you refer to creating “a safe and inviting space?” Is this what you have in mind when you express commitment to “a safe, welcoming environment?”

I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience—including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.

Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students. And I want you to know that this is clear. It is clear to anyone who reads your campus emails concerning our “Principles of Community” and who also takes the time to inform themselves about your actions. You should bear in mind that when you send emails to the UC Davis community, you address a body of faculty and students who are well trained to see through rhetoric that evinces care for students while implicitly threatening them. I see through your rhetoric very clearly. You also write to a campus community that knows how to speak truth to power. That is what I am doing.

I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such, I call upon you to resign immediately.

Sincerely,

Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis

A petition can be signed here.

Facebooktwittermail

Demonstrations in Britain ‘to be banned during Olympics’

The Independent reports: Ministers are planning legal action to restrict public protests during the Olympics, amid fears that Britain could be disrupted by lengthy and high-profile demonstrations.

The Home Office is so concerned about the impact of the stalemate over the Occupy London (OLSX) encampment outside St Paul’s Cathedral that officials have been ordered to produce plans for avoiding a similar conflict during the Games next summer.

Ministers’ plans, based on the measures put in place to remove long-term protesters from outside Parliament, includes identifying “exclusion zones” around key locations, and fast-tracking the removal of protests that do not have the blessing of the authorities. It would permit police to move in and disperse encampments quickly, in line with last week’s clearance of the Occupy Wall Street camp in New York.

Protesters and legal experts condemned the moves as an assault on the right to peaceful protest. An OLSX spokeswoman, Naomi Colvin, said: “If the Government wants to do something that will restrict the right of peaceful protest, it will be in serious trouble. The coalition appears to be abandoning any attempt to behave like a democratic government.”

Facebooktwittermail

China vice premier sees chronic global recession

Reuters reports: A long-term global recession is certain to happen and China must focus on domestic problems, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan has said.

“The one thing that we can be certain of, among all the uncertainties, is that the global economic recession caused by the international financial crisis will be chronic,” Wang was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying at the weekend.

Wang’s comments were the most bearish forecast ever by a top Chinese decision-maker about the world economy, and Beijing’s worry about a worsening global environment could translate into an impetus for pro-growth policies at home.

China launched a massive fiscal stimulus package with a price tag of 4 trillion yuan ($650 billion) in late 2008 to avert a big impact from the global financial turmoil.

According to Xinhua, Wang did not speak this time about any major policy change but reiterated that banks should be more flexible lending to the agricultural sector and small firms.

“As for our country, which relies highly on external demands, we must see the situation clearly and get our own business done,” Xinhua quoted Wang as saying, referring to exports.

Facebooktwittermail

The capture of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi

Reuters reports: Caught exactly a month after his father met a violent end, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is wanted by the International Criminal Court at The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity – specifically for allegedly ordering the killing of unarmed protesters last spring. Libya’s interim leaders want him to stand trial at home and say they won’t extradite him; the justice minister said he faces the death penalty.

His attempt to flee began on Oct. 19, under NATO fire from the tribal bastion of Bani Walid, 100 miles from the capital. [Ahmed] Ammar and his fellow fighters said they believed he had been hiding since then in the desolate tracts of the mountainous Brak al-Shati region.

Aides who were captured at Bani Walid said Saif al-Islam’s convoy had been hit by a NATO air strike in a place nearby called Wadi Zamzam – “Holy Water River”. Since then, there had been speculation that nomadic tribesmen once lionised by his father might have been working to spirit him across Libya’s southern borders – perhaps, like his surviving brothers, sister and mother, into Niger or Algeria.

He did not get that far. Obari is a good 200 miles from either. But his captors believe he was headed for Niger, once a beneficiary of Muammar Gaddafi’s oil-fueled largesse, which has granted asylum to Saif al-Islam’s brother Saadi.

Ammar said his unit, scouring the desert for weeks, received a tip-off that a small group of Gaddafi loyalists – they did not know who – would be heading on a certain route toward Obari. Lying in wait, they spotted two all-terrain vehicles grinding through the darkness.

“We fired in the air and into the ground in front of them,” Ammar said. The small convoy pulled up, perhaps hoping to brazen it out.

“Who are you?” Adeljwani Ali Ahmed, the leader of the squad, demanded to know of the man he took to be the main passenger in the group.

“Abdelsalam,” came the reply.

It’s a common enough name, though it means “servant of peace” in Arabic; Saif al-Islam’s real name means “Sword of Islam”.

Ahmed, sizing the man up, took Ammar aside and whispered: “I think that’s Saif.”

Turning back to the car, a Toyota Land cruiser of a type favoured on these rugged desert tracks, Ammar said: “I know who you are. I know you.”

CASH AND KALASHNIKOVS

The game was up. The militiamen retrieved several Kalashnikov rifles, a hand grenade and, one of the Zintani fighters said, some $4,000 in cash from the vehicles.

It was a tiny haul from a man whose father commanded one of the best-equipped armies in Africa and who is suspected by many of holding the keys – in his head – to billions stolen from the Libyan state and stashed in secret bank accounts abroad.

“He didn’t say anything,” Ammar said. “He was very scared and then eventually he asked where we are from, and we said we are Libyans. He asked from which city and we said Zintan.”

Zintan sits far from the spot of Gaddafi’s capture in the Western, or Nafusa, Mountains, just a couple of hours drive south of the capital. The people of Zintan put together an effective militia in the uprising, and they are seeking to parlay their military prowess into political clout as new leaders in Tripoli try to form a government.

Facebooktwittermail

In Egypt, revolution 2.0?

Ursula Lindsey writes: After the police violently cleared 100 or so demonstrators (including a group of the relatives of revolutionary martyrs and injured) from Tahrir Square today, thousands more poured into the square and began clashing with the security forces, burning one police truck and trying to reach the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior denies using any bullets, pellets or bird shot, but witnesses have widely documented their use. Hundreds are injured, and one dead confirmed so far. Tens of thousands have streamed into Downtown Cairo and are demonstrating in Alexandria, Suez and Mansoura. The fighting goes on, and people are saying that it feels like January 28 all over again.

These clashes feel almost unavoidable, given the military council’s terrible performance, the increasing vocal criticism it is facing, the rising tensions of all kinds surrounding the upcoming (poorly planned, utterly confusing) elections — given the terribly unclear transition process that has been put in place, and the fact that none of the revolution’s demands, including the reform of the security forces and real transitional justice, have been met.

Islamist leaders — the Salafist sheikh Hazem Salah Abu Ismail and the Islamist presidential candidate Mohammed Selim El Awwa — have gone to Tahrir. Mohammed El Baradei is once again calling for the creation of a “national salvation” government.

Facebooktwittermail

Homs: inside the city at the heart of Syria’s rebellion

James Harkin reports: On Thursday morning, I woke up in Homs, the city labelled by the international media as the “capital of the Syrian revolution”.

Homs has been in more or less open revolt since at least April, but in recent weeks what is going on here has acquired ominous new significance. Facing the full force of a crackdown on their demonstrations by the Syrian army and police, at least some of the city’s residents have taken up arms, either to defend themselves and their communities or to go on the attack.

Outside Syria and in the international media, the siege has become a cause célèbre. But events here show not only the courage and the forbearance of its citizens, but also the traps that lie in wait for an unhappy people suppressed by a brutal military crackdown.

I was lucky to get here. It’s not quite true that all foreign journalists are banned from Syria, but it was extremely difficult to get in, even before the uprising, and those who succeed are carefully shepherded around. It took me two journeys back and forth from Beirut even to get across the border into Damascus.

After a few days there, I went to the bus station and bought a ticket to Homs. A policeman was on hand to check foreign passports, but fortunately he didn’t bother to check mine carefully – it clearly indicates, by means of a Syrian government stamp, that I am a journalist.

My second stroke of luck was to have been befriended by an 18-year-old boy as we boarded the bus. An engineering student on his way back home to Homs, he was concerned that here was an idiotic tourist about to get himself into trouble. “There are no tourists in Homs,” he told me, looking serious. “My mother and father are afraid to go out. Yesterday my sister saw a body in the street, and she’s been crying ever since.”

On arrival, he ushered me past any prying eyes and directly into a taxi, going out of his way to take me straight to a hotel in the city centre. The city centre is the only safe place, he said.

Homs is a city of more than half a million people in the heart of the country. It’s where Syrians go to escape the hustle of Damascus, to let their hair down in its cafes and restaurants, or watch football: Homs boasts two football teams, as well as a museum where tourists can read about the famous battles that were fought here.

Nowadays it’s fighting another battle: the city is under total military lockdown. The hotel I’ve been taken to overlooks the main square and its now infamous clock tower, where the Syrian army apparently ran amok and gunned down peaceful demonstrators in April.

Since then, the violence has moved into the residential areas, and into the shadows. In the weeks before my arrival the death rate rose, making it the most violent place in the country.

Al Jazeera reports: William Hague, the British foreign minister, has announced that he would meet with Syrian opposition representatives in London next week in an intensification of contact with opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian opposition members would also meet senior aides of David Cameron, the UK prime minister, at his Downing Street office, the foreign ministry said on Friday.

It said that Frances Guy, the former British ambassador to Lebanon, had been appointed to co-ordinate relations with the Syrian opposition.

The delegation would include members of the opposition Syrian National Council and the National Co-ordination Committee for Democratic Change, in meetings expected to take place on Monday, a Foreign Office source said.

“We have been having regular contacts with a variety of figures in the Syrian opposition for several months. We are now intensifying these,” the Foreign Office said.

The announcement came as the Arab league said that Syria had agreed “in principle” to allow an Arab League observer mission into the country.

Facebooktwittermail

Egyptian police clash with protesters in Tahrir Square

The New York Times reports: Thousands of protesters chanting for an end to military rule battled riot police officers firing tear gas, rubber bullets and bird shot in Tahrir Square on Saturday, as the military-led interim government appeared to soften its demands for special powers and protections in the future Egyptian constitution.

Coming just nine days before the scheduled beginning of parliamentary elections, the clashes were the biggest outbreak of violence here since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February, and the most violent manifestation yet of the growing anger at the ruling military council.

The clashes began midday Saturday after the police cleared out the last remnants of a large demonstration in Tahrir Square the day before. That demonstration, organized by Islamists but appearing to represent a far broader cross-section of Egyptians, drew tens of thousands of people calling for a swift end to military rule.

The fighting on Saturday began after news circulated that the security forces had moved into the square, the iconic heart of the Egyptian revolution, to force out a few hundred protesters who had spent the night. Hundreds and eventually thousands of other civilians stormed into the square to defend it, setting off battles that spread across downtown Cairo into the night.

Protesters threw rocks at police vehicles, capturing a police truck and passing out handcuffs, hats and other gear found inside. Others smashed the sidewalk into rocks to hurl at the police, and threw Molotov cocktails. Plumes of black smoke from a burning police truck wafted through the white clouds of tear gas.

Retreating riot police officers fired nonlethal weapons from their trucks to try to push back the crowd.

“Police and thugs and thieves,” the protesters chanted. Taking aim at Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who leads the ruling military council, they adapted the signature chant of the Arab Spring revolts sweeping the region: “The people want to bring down the field marshal.”

Facebooktwittermail