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autocracy

Friday March 16, 2012

March 16, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Friday March 16, 2012

Shopping amid a massacre

A cache of e-mails leaked to CNN is giving extraordinary insight into the life of Syria’s first family during the regime’s move to crush a now-year-long civilian uprising.

The e-mails were obtained by CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” from a source in the region after the e-mail accounts were hacked. They appear to shed light on a family often occupied with YouTube videos and shopping while the brutal crackdown continued, and they also apparently reveal some of Iran’s influence over Syria’s president.

Just before Bashar al-Assad delivered a speech January 10, an aide apparently e-mailed him, saying a political adviser to the Iranian ambassador was encouraging al-Assad to use “strong and violent” language.

In that speech, al-Assad then promised to strike the opposition with an “iron fist.”

There are also e-mails from a man named Hosein Mortada, who — according to his Facebook page — is the Damascus bureau chief for two Iranian news networks. Mortada twice offers advice to the president’s aide, who passes it on to al-Assad.

On Christmas Eve, Mortada apparently wrote to an al-Assad aide that al Qaeda should not be blamed for a recent attack.

“I even received calls from Iran and Hezbollah, being the director of several Iranian and Lebanese channels, and they advised me NOT to even mention al Qaeda being behind the incident … because this would be a serious tactical media error,” Mortada wrote, according to the e-mail. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Posted in: International Tagged: autocracy, Bashir Assad, cake, death, Syria, tyranny, uprising, violence

Wednesday November 23, 2011

November 23, 2011 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday November 23, 2011

International criticism of Egypt’s rulers mounts

Egyptian police clashed with anti-government protesters for a fifth day in central Cairo Wednesday as a rights group raised the overall death toll from the ongoing unrest to at least 38. The United Nations strongly condemned what it called the use of excessive force by security forces.

February 12, 2011

The clashes resumed despite a promise by Egypt’s military ruler to speed up a presidential election to the first half of next year, a concession swiftly rejected by tens of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square. The military previously floated late next year or early 2013 as the likely date for the vote, the last step in the process of transferring power to a civilian government.

The standoff has plunged the country deeper into crisis less than a week before parliamentary elections, the first since the ouster nine months ago of longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak.

Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi tried to defuse tensions with his address late Tuesday, but he did not set a date for handing authority to a civilian government, instead offering a referendum on the immediate return of the armed forces to their barracks.

The Tahrir crowd, along with protesters in a string of other cities across the nation, want Tantawi to step down immediately in favor of an interim civilian council to run the nation’s affairs until elections for a new parliament and president are held.

Street battles have centered around the heavily fortified Interior Ministry, near the iconic square, with police and army troops using tear gas and rubber bullets to keep the protesters from storming the ministry, a sprawling complex that has for long been associated with the hated police and Mubarak’s former regime. (Toronto Star) 

 

Posted in: International Tagged: Arab Spring, autocracy, coup, Democracy, dictator, Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, International, military, protest, tyranny

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