"Today President Mubarak seems to have decided to crack down on the democracy movement, using not police or army troops but rather mobs of hoodlums and thugs. I’ve been spending hours on Tahrir today, and it is absurd to think of this as simply “clashes” between two rival groups. The pro-democracy protesters are unarmed and have been peaceful at every step. But the pro-Mubarak thugs are arriving in buses and are armed — and they’re using their weapons.
"In my area of Tahrir, the thugs were armed with machetes, straight razors, clubs and stones. And they all had the same chants, the same slogans and the same hostility to journalists. They clearly had been organized and briefed. So the idea that this is some spontaneous outpouring of pro-Mubarak supporters, both in Cairo and in Alexandria, who happen to end up clashing with other side — that is preposterous. It’s difficult to know what is happening, and I’m only one observer, but to me these seem to be organized thugs sent in to crack heads, chase out journalists, intimidate the pro-democracy forces and perhaps create a pretext for an even harsher crackdown."
They even beat up American Treasure Anderson Cooper (oh, and are shooting and killing Egyptian citizens)! Cooper, pro that he is, kept his flip cam rolling while being assaulted:
"An orbiting NASA telescope is finding whole new worlds of possibilities in the search for alien life, including more than 50 potential planets that appear to be in the habitable zone.
"In just a year of peering out at a small slice of the galaxy, the Kepler telescope has spotted 1,235 possible planets outside our solar system. Amazingly, 54 of them are seemingly in the zone that could be hospitable to life -- that is, not too hot or too cold, Kepler chief scientist William Borucki said.
"Until now, only two planets outside our solar system were even thought to be in the "Goldilocks zone.'"
So, really, this just proves what Blink-182 were on top of way back in the day.
Edit: Although, Bill O'Reilly makes a VERY compelling argument, seemingly rooted in the belief that our solar system is the only one in the universe.
And, lastly, so much for Republicans repealing "Obamacare."
Update: Rachel Maddow cited historical precedents for the propaganda tactics Mubarak has employed in the past couple of days and illustrated very well how the Egyptian people and the world media have been able to thwart these efforts this time around.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
I absolutely agree about the idiocy of referring to yesterday's events as "clashes." It's just another demonstration of the bankruptcy of journalistic language.
ReplyDelete