IRAN WORRIED ABOUT CITIZENS PROTESTING

CIA AGENT CNN I WAS JUST LISTENING TO AND FAREED ZAKARIA WAS JUST ON SAYNG BY NEXT FRIDAY THE PEOPLE WILL PROTEST AGAIN BECAUSE THE ARMY HAS DONE NOTHING SINCE TAKING OVER RULE IN EGYPT.AND ITS ELBARADEI THE AMERICAN PUPPET WHO HAS TOLD ZAKARIA THIS.IF THIS WILL HAPPEN,I PREDICT THE LEADERS OF THE MOVEMENT WILL BE THAT GOOGLE HACK GHONIM AND ELBARADEI,BOTH PUPPETS OF THE U.S.A. I CAN TELL AMERICA WANTS ELBARADEI AND THAT GOOGLE HACK GHONIM IN QUICK TO GO AFTER IRAN AND ITS NUCLEAR SITE.THEN THE CIA WILL EASILY BE ABLE TO CONTROL THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND TEAM UP WITH THEM TO DO FALSE FLAGS ON COUNTRIES AND OBAMA WILL SAVE THE EARTH BY STOPPING THESE FALSE TERROR ATTACKS.OBAMA WILL DO ANYTHING FROM HERE ON IN TO WIN THE 2012 ELECTIONS.GET READY FOLKS FOR LOTS OF FALSE FLAG TERROR ATTACKS WORLDWIDE FROM HERE ON IN.

The Facebook Freedom Fighter-Wael Ghonim’s day job was at Google. But at night he was organizing a revolution.FEB 13,2011

After spending almost two weeks in detention, Ghonim found himself anointed a leader by the leaderless movement he'd helped to create.The telephone call from Cairo came late on Thursday, Jan. 27. I think they’re following me, the caller told the friend on the other end. I’m going to destroy this phone.And then the line went dead.Soon after, so did cell phones across Egypt, and then the Internet, as authorities cut communication in a last-ditch effort to halt the protests gripping the country.The only trace the caller left was in cyberspace, where he had delivered a haunting message via Twitter: Pray for #Egypt.Three days later in Washington, D.C., Nadine Wahab, an Egyptian émigré and media-relations professional, sat staring at her computer, hoping rumors of the caller’s disappearance weren’t true.Suddenly his screen name flashed to life. She stared at the message.Admin 1 is missing, it said. This is Admin 2.

Admin 1 was the caller, the anonymous administrator of a Facebook page that had played a crucial role in inspiring the uprising in Cairo. He had left Wahab with a contingency plan. If he disappeared, Wahab should wait until Feb. 8, two weeks from the date of the first protest, before she revealed his identity and sounded the alarm. At all costs, she was to maintain the appearance of normalcy on the page.
The Agony and the Ecstasy The contingency plan had made no mention of an Admin 2, and Wahab worried that the message might be a trap.For the next week, Wahab and her small cadre of online associates became immersed in what seemed like a shadowy cyberthriller. At its center was a bespectacled techie named Wael Ghonim, a 30-year-old father of two, and Google’s head of marketing in the Middle East.Months of online correspondence between Ghonim and Wahab, parts of which were provided to NEWSWEEK, as well as telephone and online conversations with the magazine, reveal a man who adopted a dead man’s identity to push for democracy, taking on a secret life that nearly consumed him.Ghonim had received a master’s degree in marketing and finance from American University in Cairo and began working for Google in late 2008. In little more than a year, he was promoted to head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa, a position based in Dubai, where he and his family moved into a house in one of the city’s affluent suburbs.

Ghonim and Wahab met electronically last spring, after Ghonim volunteered to run the Facebook fan page of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner who had emerged as a key opposition leader; Wahab offered to help with PR. Ghonim had a strong tech background, having already founded several successful Web ventures. But it was his marketing skills that would fuel his transformation into Egypt’s most important cyberactivist.Under Ghonim, ElBaradei’s page, which promoted democratic reform, grew rapidly. He surveyed its fans for input, pushing ideas like crowdsourced video Q&As. Voting is the right way to represent people in a democratic way,he wrote Wahab in May. We use it even inside Google internally. Even when our CEO is live, if someone posts a tough question and others vote, he must answer it.
Ghonim thought Facebook could be the ideal revolutionary tool in Egypt’s suffocating police state. Once you are a fan, whatever we publish gets on your wall, he wrote. So the government has NO way to block it later. Unless they block Facebook completely.As the page grew, it became increasingly consuming, and Ghonim began to feel he was leading two separate lives. In the morning I lead a 1m budget, he mused to Wahab in June. At night, I am a video editor at YouTube.That month, a young Alexandria businessman named Khaled Said, who had posted a video on the Web showing cops pilfering pot from a drug bust, was assaulted at an Internet café by local police. They dragged him outside and beat him to death in broad daylight. Photos of his battered corpse went viral.

Ghonim was moved by the photos to start a new Facebook page called “We Are All Khaled Said,to which he began devoting the bulk of his efforts. The page quickly became a forceful campaign against police brutality in Egypt, with a constant stream of photos, videos, and news. Ghonim’s interactive style, combined with the page’s carefully calibrated posts—emotional, apolitical, and broad in their appeal—quickly turned it into one of Egypt’s largest activist sites.Only select people, including Wahab, who quickly signed on to help, knew of Ghonim’s involvement with the page. To run the page, Ghonim had assumed the pseudonym El Shaheed, or The Martyr, to protect himself and commemorate the dead man—creating a persona that became one of Ghonim’s most powerful tools. My purpose, he said in a conversation with Wahab, is to increase the bond between the people and the group through my unknown personality. Thisway we create an army of volunteers.On Jan. 14, protests in Tunisia felled that country’s longstanding dictator, and Ghonim was inspired to announce, on Facebook, a revolution of Egypt’s own. Each of the page’s 350,000-plus fans was cordially invited to a protest on Jan. 25. They could click yes,no, or maybe to signal whether they’d like to attend.In the space of three days, more than 50,000 people answered yes. Posing as El Shaheed in a Gmail chat, Ghonim was optimistic but cautioned that online support might not translate into a revolt in the streets.

The bottom line is: I have no idea, he said. While some commentators hyped that the internet is making a revolution, others proclaimed that the revolution can’t be tweeted, he said. I don’t know, and I don’t give a s--t. I’m doing what it takes to make my country better.Ghonim implored his Facebook fans to spread word of the protest to people on the ground, and he and other activists constantly coordinated efforts, combining online savvy with the street activism long practiced by the country’s democracy movements. Ghonim seemed to view the page both as a kind of central command and a rallying point—getting people past the psychological barrier.

Ghonim insisted that neither he nor anyone else was in charge. The real driving force behind the protest, he predicted, would be the people he was trying to empower. What you don’t understand, and it seems what you don’t want to understand, is that this protest doesn’t have real organizers, he told NEWSWEEK.It’s a protest without a leader.Despite his insistence on anonymity, Ghonim was far from humble. BTW, I want my photo to be on the cover of the magazine, he joked.When reminded that this might compromise his still-hidden identity, he suggested using a photo of the Guy Fawkes mask worn by the protagonist in V for Vendetta, a film about a mysterious revolutionary, and insisted on being referred to as V in any stories, before eventually settling for El Shaheed.An American NGO had contacted him to offer financial assistance, he claimed. I replied with two words, he said. F--k You.In another conversation, he mocked the idea that any politician could corral the growing protest push. A virtual guy that they don’t know is telling them what to do, he said. I have the people on my side.Ghonim seemed to think the anonymous persona was an equalizer that could prevent the protest push from being hijacked—by politicians like ElBaradei, groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps even by Ghonim himself. I’ll keep my identity anonymous even if a revolution kicks in and this government is kicked, he said. Cause the reason why I think we are f--ked up in this country is that everyone is looking for his personal fame. Everyone starts somewhere with good intentions. Then eventually they get corrupted.

He had already laid the groundwork for the El Shaheed persona to live on without him, acknowledging in another conversation with NEWSWEEK that the moniker of The Martyr might come to represent his own fate. It was clear, as he flew to Egypt to join the protest, that he would be under threat.On Tuesday, Jan. 25, Ghonim joined the first demonstration, along with hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Esraa Abdel Fattah, another organizer, who knew Ghonim but didn’t realize he was El Shaheed, saw him that night in Tahrir Square, along with scores of other protesters.In an online conversation the following day, Ghonim was ecstatic but also worried. Activists, he said, were beginning to disappear. On Thursday night, as organizers were planning another major protest the following day, Facebook began flicking in and out of service. Facebook is blocked again. Sons of bitches. I was just announcing the locations, Ghonim said.A few hours later, he made the ominous phone call to his friend, saying he thought he was being followed.The next morning, plainclothes police officers came for him.

Ghonim—Admin 1—was now missing.

Admin 2, who asked not to be named—I’m the guy who’s the backup in case something really horrible happens, he said in a Skype call with NEWSWEEK—had his own protocol to follow. Once he realized Ghonim was missing, he notified Google and Ghonim’s family, and then set to work changing passwords and securing things on the Web. I wanted the page to stay alive. The most important thing is the page itself,he said. The page is more important than any individual.In fact, he worried that by changing the passwords, he could be risking greater harm for Ghonim—what if police were torturing him for access to the site? I either protect my friend or I continue the movement, he said, clearly haunted by the dilemma. It turns out I am not a good friend.Still following Ghonim’s instructions, Admin 2 proceeded to pore through the El Shaheed inbox to find the person Ghonim had described only as the girl in the United States, whom he had been told to contact.When Nadine Wahab got his message, she first worried that Admin 2 was Egyptian police, but she quickly saw that Admin 2 was equally frightened, and the two began posting on the Facebook page, posing as El Shaheed. (Admin 2 also gave a sealed envelope to a friend, with instructions to open it if he went missing for more than a day. The envelope contained user names, passwords, and instructions on maintaining the site.)

For more than a week, it was unclear whether Ghonim had even been arrested—an exhaustive search of local prisons and hospitals turned up nothing. Google put out a statement that Ghonim was missing, without mention of his political involvement. The company also set up a phone line and email address for any tips about his whereabouts.As the search continued, and word of the missing Google executive spread, rumors began swirling on the streets and in the press that Ghonim was El Shaheed, which Ghonim’s family feared might put him in even greater danger. Protesters in Tahrir Square, meanwhile, announced him as their symbolic leader. Facebook pages titled We Are All Wael Ghonim began to emerge.Between frantic calls to the State Department, Wahab tried desperately to quash the rumors—even emailing NEWSWEEK from the El Shaheed address in an attempt to suggest that all was well.

All the while, she felt like she was trapped in a movie plot. She put pillow feathers beneath her front door, to tell if someone sneaked into the house. (Her cat dragged them away.) It’s been a theater of the absurd, Wahab said recently. How did I get myself into this? As Ghonim sat blindfolded in detention, trapped in the custody of Egypt’s notorious security forces, the very people he’d spent the last eight months excoriating online, his main concern, he later said in a television interview, was that his identity would be revealed to the protesters.Ghonim spent nearly two weeks in custody with no idea of the fomenting revolution taking place outside. When he was finally released, Ghonim discovered that he had become the face of Egypt’s revolt—the exact fate he had said he wanted to avoid.In a phone interview with NEWSWEEK hours after his release on Monday, Feb. 7, in which he finally admitted his real identity, Ghonim tried at first to distance himself from this new role. That was not my plan, and I hate it, but it was out of my hands, he said.I’m not a hero. I’m just one guy. Actually I did the easiest thing, which was writing. A lot of people died.Yet as Mubarak clung to power, and then finally fell, protesters continued to look to Ghonim for a voice.The anonymous persona was finally dead. But in its absence, it seemed Ghonim had been anointed a leader by the leaderless movement he’d helped to create.

Protesters Clash with Egyptian Military Regime
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu FEB 13,11

Hosni Mubarak is gone as president, but the revolution remains - at least for now. The military is in full control in Egypt, where it clashed with protesters after clearing Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Many citizens have returned to work for the first time in two weeks.Hundreds of thousands of people had filled the square the past two weeks, demanding the ouster of now former-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and implementation of reforms for a democratic Egypt. Mubarak quickly became the principle symbol of protesters' anger, and there even have been calls for his death sentence for corruption.With Mubarak out of office, the people’s revolution has run out of steam as the military fills a vacuum of power, but thousands of opponents, fearing that the military will be a carbon copy of Mubarak's rule, say they are determined to remain in the square until reforms are instituted.The Egyptian military issued a statement saying it will act as a caretaker government, promising a peaceful transition of authority in a free democratic framework which allows an elected civilian authority to rule the country, to build a free democratic country.

Theoretically, elections must be held in 60 days, but the military’s emergency legal takeover supersedes stipulations in the Egyptian constitution.Soldiers surrounded Tahir Square on Sunday and opened the area to traffic, sometime forcefully but without the brutal violence used by police in the early days of the protests.The demonstrations prior to the downfall of Mubarak were spontaneous and leaderless, spurred by the revolution in Tunisia. Mohammed ElBaradei, the former director of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, belatedly encouraged the revolution but said from the outset he was not interested in succeeding Mubarak.The revolutionary movement severely crippled Egypt's economy, especially the tourism industry, a factor that has dampened enthusiasm of continue mass protests. We are hungry, we want to eat, we want to work, businessman Ayman el Myonir told CNN.One factor absent in the dramatic events in Egypt is Israel, which many advisors in the Obama administration have blamed as reason for most problems in the Middle East because of the failure of the Palestinian Authority to reach an agreement with the Jewish state. The Arab-Israeli struggle was barely mentioned during the two weeks of protests in Egypt.Many demonstrators brought Israel into their agenda by demanding that Egypt break the peace treaty that was established with Israel on 1979, in which Israel surrendered the Sinai Peninsula. The military has declared it will not tamper with the treaty.The fall of the Mubarak regime has left the area prone to a de facto takeover of Bedouin and Hamas terrorists, many of whom have operated from Gaza.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)

Ashton endorses army as guardians of Egypt's transition
LEIGH PHILLIPS 11.02.2011 @ 20:09 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Union appears to have endorsed the role of the army as guardians of the transition process, while paying tribute to protesters for their calmness. The priority now, Brussels believes, is on regional stability.We respect the decision Mubarak has taken to stand down. We have witnessed scenes of people entering [Tahrir] Square by their hundreds and thousands, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told a hastily arranged press conference on Friday evening (11 February).I pay enormous tribute to the calm way people have conducted themselves, she said.To those charged with guardianship of the transition process, we have high expectations that they will deliver to the people,she added, addressing the army.She appeared to back the role of the Supreme Council of the armed forces in shepherding developments. The army has always had a very particular relationship with the people. They have been given the opportunity to take the country forward.People really feel a process is underway.She said the EU could help with organising elections: The EU has a lot of knowledge and experience in building democracy. I hope to personally go.

An al Arabiya reporter asked her to compare this moment of freedom to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but she demurred.I never like to make too much of a comparison. The situation is different. It is fantastic to see all the young people to come out and to say way they want in a calm and orderly way. We want them to have a future.She refused to be drawn on when Europe hopes to see fresh elections, Ashton said: It is for the people to decide. Democracy is a process not a moment.Throughout the upheaval in the country, the EU has tailed Washington's endorsement of a orderly transition and looked not to immediate elections, but those already scheduled for September.We will help and support you but we will not dictate, Ms Ashton said. We hope to see a plan, taking Egypt from here through elections and beyond.

Regional stability

In a co-ordinated statement, Ms Ashton together with EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso called for an acceleration in the government's national dialogue process.It is important now that the dialogue is accelerated leading to a broad-based civilian government which will respect the aspirations of, and deliver stability for, the Egyptian people, the communique said.
Brussels however stresses regional stability as the priority.An orderly and irreversible transition towards democracy and free and fair elections is the shared objective of both the EU and the Egyptian people ... The preservation of regional peace and stability should remain our shared priority.The future of Egypt rightly remains in the hands of the Egyptian people. We call on army to continue to act responsibly and to ensure that the democratic change takes place in a peaceful manner.No decisions have been taken on an EU freeze of Mr Mubarak's assets, Ms Ashton added.

MEP mistrusts army

Meanwhile, the chairwoman of the European Parliament's Human Rights Sub-committee, Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala warned that the Egyptian army has been a cornerstone of the Mubarak regime and that the EU should proceed with caution in its dealings with the generals.The Egyptian military must immediately release political prisoners and accept an independent enquiry on the serious allegations of torture by the military police, she said. She urged the EU to closely follow the actions of the Armed Forces Supreme Council that is now ruling Egypt. We cannot befriend rulers or temporary military governments whose commitment for human rights are not clearly evidenced.Let us see how genuine the promises of the Egyptian army are regarding the lifting of the state of emergency.She also said the EU should not be endorsing a leadership role for Omar Suleiman, the head of the dreaded General Intelligence Directorate since 1993 until appointed vice-president two weeks ago. He was the man who announced on television on Friday evening the resignation of Mr Mubarak, but his current position is unclear.It should be made clear that Egypt's vice-pesident cannot lead the transition with cases of torture on his record while he headed Egypt's Intelligence Directorate.He does not fulfill the minimal conditions,she warned.

Sighs of relief as Egyptian leader resigns
VALENTINA POP 11.02.2011 @ 18:21 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU figureheads on Friday (11 February) welcomed the resignation of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down after weeks of street protests and handed over power to the military ahead of elections due this fall.The news was broken late Friday afternoon by Mr Mubarak's vice-president, himself formerly in charge of the country's intelligence service, renowned for its cruel treatment of suspects, but condoned by the US government due to his help with interrogating radical Islamists.In these difficult circumstances that the country is passing through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave the position of the presidency,Mr Suleiman said on national TV.He has commissioned the armed forces council to direct the issues of the state.The end of the 30-year long Mubarak regime has not come about easily. More than 300 people are believed to have died in street clashes with police since the beginning of the anti-government demonstrations, on 25 January.The EU, at the beginning cautious in supporting the popular movement, has since grown gradually critical of Mr Mubarak - as Washington had also taken a cautious stance due to Israel's concerns that a regime change may usher in radical Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Reacting to the news, EU Parliament chief Jerzy Buzek however called this a historic day of peaceful, lasting and democratic change. I fully support the aspirations of the Egyptian people,he said in a press statement.But he also urged to carefully cherish and protect the flowers of freedom obtained,especially in regards to the military taking over the reigns of power ahead of general elections due this fall. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton took a less enthusiastic line. The EU respects President Mubarak's decision today,she said in a press statement.By standing down, he has listened to the voices of the Egyptian people and has opened the way to faster and deeper reforms, she added, while also saluting the courage of Egyptians demonstrating peacefully for democracy.Ms Ashton repeated calls for an orderly and irreversible transition towards democracy, urging for the general elections to be free and fair.

Iranian diplomat: Egyptian protesters should beware EU help
ANDREW RETTMAN 11.02.2011 @ 23:22 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Iran's ambassador to the EU, Ali Asghar Khaji, has said that Egyptian protesters should be wary of EU and US patronage of the revolution due to the Western powers' historic relations with the Mubarak elite.Speaking to EUobserver on Friday (11 February) at an event in Brussels to mark the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran, Mr Khaji said: The Egyptian people should remember that the US and the EU were the principal supporters of President Mubarak. After his election, [US] President Obama gave his first speech to the Islamic world in Cairo [in 2009].The ambassador welcomed the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, who abdicated power earlier the same day. It is very important that the Egyptian people have taken a step toward realising their objectives. The coincidence that this took place on the anniversary [of the Iranian revolution] is a good omen, he said.It is a very important and positive development for the region. We consider Egypt to be part of our region. It is a fellow Islamic country.Asked if Iranian authorities are concerned that the current of popular uprisings in north Africa could embolden anti-government movements in Iran, he added: No. We are not concerned. You must remember that the Iranian state is also the product of a popular revolution.In terms of official ideology, Iran is depicting the events in Egypt as a mirror image of events in Iran in 1979, when Islamist opposition forces overthrew the regime of US ally, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Iran would like to see the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood party in Egypt share power in a future coalition government.It is concerned that if the EU-and-US-backed former Egyptian spy chief, Omar Suleiman, and the Egyptian army take over, it would be as if the revolution never happened.It is also concerned that Egyptian opposition forces have no clear vision how to rule the country. One negative option for Tehran is a political vacuum in Egypt that would allow EU and US ally Turkey to take over Egypt's role as the pre-eminent Islamic power in the region. Iran has become an international pariah primarily due to its alleged nuclear weapons programme.But Mr Khaji's remarks about the popular nature of the 1979 uprising come in the context of Iran's brutal repression of latter-day anti-government movements. In 2009, at least 15 Green Movement demonstrators were killed in the streets. Iran in January executed on drugs charges a Dutch-Iranian woman who took part in the protests, prompting the Netherlands to cut diplomatic ties.On the likelihood of an Egypt-type uprising in Iran in future, some analysts believe the Iranian opposition's moment of opportunity came and went two years ago.But one diplomat from the region at Mr Khaji's anniversary event on Friday was not so sure.The revolution in Egypt happened because people were kept under pressure for too long, like a spring, the contact said. You can keep a spring under pressure even for 1,000 years. But after 1,001 years, it will rebound.The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported the Green Movement has galvanised 30,000 people to take part in anti-government protests in the coming days on the back of events in Egypt.

Iran Blocks Pre-Rally Internet Sites; US: Tehran Running Scared
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu FEB 13,11

Revolution fever is returning to Tehran, where new and illegal protests are planned tomorrow as the United States charges Iran is scared of the will of its people.The regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already blocked several opposition websites, including one named Bahman, the 11th month of the Persian calendar, in advance of the planned rally Monday.Elsewhere in the Middle East, opposition elements in Yemen have accepted an offer by President Ali Abdullah Saleh not run again after demonstrations threatened stability in the country. Bahrain’s kingdom tried to stem trouble by offering every family $2,653 to praise the 10th anniversary of its constitution.In Algeria, where protesters defied a ban on demonstrations, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika promised to lift emergency laws.Iran was the scene of massive opposition rallies nearly two years ago after Ahmadinejad won re-election in a vote that opponents charged was riddled with fraud. Leaders of the opposition remain under house arrest, and others have been taken into custody ahead of Monday’s planned rally.

The Islamic Republic has praised the Egyptian uprising as being a copy of the Islamic revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979, but the prospect of new protests in the streets of Tehran have prompted charges of a double standard against the government.Ahmadinejad as recently as last week told Egyptian anti-Mubarak protesters, The Iranian nation is your friend and it is your right to freely choose your path. We will soon see a new Middle East materializing without America and the Zionist regime and there will be no room for world arrogance in it.The Obama administration, which had remained silent on Iran during the Egyptian turmoil, charged on Saturday that the Iranian regime is scared of the will of its people. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, We know that what they really are scared of is exactly what might happen.Iran has jammed BBC’s Persian-language television channel and has arrested several foreign journalists. The recent arrests and effort to block international media outlets underscores the hypocrisy of the Iranian leadership, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said.By announcing that they will not allow opposition protests, the Iranian government has declared illegal for Iranians what it claimed was noble for Egyptians, he added in a statement. We call on the government of Iran to allow the Iranian people the universal right to peacefully assemble, demonstrate and communicate that's being exercised in Cairo.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)

PA CONTINUES TO PRAISE FEMALE TERRORIST BOMBER
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142293

Outcry at EU plan to mix aid and foreign policy
ANDREW WILLIS 10.02.2011 @ 17:53 CET

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Discussions are under way for a potential merger between the EU's humanitarian aid and crisis management budgets after 2013, raising concerns among a number of NGOs and MEPs that EU aid could become increasingly politicised.
The commission's humanitarian aid budget in 2010 was €1.2 billion, administered by Bulgarian commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, while crisis management resources are being increasingly directed by the EU's new External Action Service under Italian official Agostino Miozzo, working for high representative Catherine Ashton.There is an idea on the table [to merge the two budgets] which is being considered by some people,a commission official working in the humanitarian aid sector said on Thursday (10 February) on condition of anonymity. It's not a formal proposal at the moment and it's not something we would support.The commission is to come forward with a blueprint for the EU's next multi-annual budget in June this year. But some MEPs are already warning they will not tolerate any transfer of humanitarian decision making, implied by the budget merger, to Catherine Ashton, who answers primarily to member states despite her official duties in the EU-centric commission.I don't know where the idea came from or how developed it is. It may be a wrongly interpreted idea of efficiency or part of the inter-institutional power politics currently going on, Dutch Socialist MEP Thijs Berman told this website.If it ends up in the June proposals I will fight it. Humanitarian aid needs to be impartial in order to ensure that all parties in a recipient country accept it as not favouring one side or the other. This is also crucial for the safety of humanitarian aid workers distributing support on the ground.

The issue of securing political goals through the distribution of aid has come to the fore recently, with UK Prime Minister David Cameron suggesting this week that money from the EU's neighbourhood policy instrument for Egypt could be cut if Cairo fails to implement desired reforms.We have spent billions of taxpayers' money in Egypt and neighbouring countries, Mr Cameron said on Monday. But in Egypt, there has been little or no progress on torture, the judiciary, democracy or ending a 30-year-old state of emergency.This, say NGOs, is precisely the kind of realpolitik that should not influence where the EU delivers money to those suffering from floods, earthquakes or political violence, for example.Scrapping the budget for humanitarian aid would be a fatal error. It would not only tarnish the excellent credentials of the commission as an outstanding humanitarian actor but also endanger millions of people, said Elise Ford, head of Oxfam Internationals EU office.A report published by the NGO on Thursday entitled Whose Aid is it Anyway? says the commission has so far managed to fight the global trend towards humanitarian and development aid being driven by political interests.Government humanitarian agencies in Canada, Spain and the European Commission, for example, have developed principled policies that allocate humanitarian aid according to transparent indices of global needs, to ensure that different crises and countries are not overlooked or over-funded, says the report.

Undermining such progress, however, long-standing political and security biases have since 2001 being written formally into some donors' aid policies and practices, as in the USA and France,continues the document.Other donors, including Australia, the UK and the European Union, may be on the cusp of bringing aid budgets newly under the sway of such priorities.Under a deal reached last year, the EU external action service will now make key decisions under the bloc's development policy, a decision which also faced much opposition.

Apocalypse by Giulio Meotti FEB 13,11

Several days ago a video was shot in the Israeli town of Netivot, a dusty corner of the world in the Negev desert. The latest Hamas rocket missed a wedding party by few meters. In Netivot, hundreds of people were drinking, laughing and dancing. It would have been a massacre.The video explains better than thousands of analyses the current historical process arrayed against Israel: the collapse of the Arab regimes that signed peace deals with the Jewish State; the strengthening of the terror organizations Hamas and Hezbollah; Turkey that has been lost to the West; a weak US administration and political Islam that is on the rise everywhere. The only development awaited is the announcement that Iran has developed the atomic bomb.

In the mindset of the Islamic multitudes and Western appeasers, the goal is clear: they want an Israel that packs up and goes away.A fascinating novel written by the Dutch best selling author Leon de Winter, titled The Right of Return, tells a story of Israel’s imagined apocalypse and all out war for survival. The book is going to be published in many European countries, but not in Tel Aviv. The Israeli publishing houses perceive the book as demoralizing, but it is not meant to cause demoralization, it is meant to awaken the public to the dangers surrounding Israel.

De Winter’s novel describes a State of Israel in 2024 that is reduced to the City-State of Tel Aviv. Even adjoining Jaffa is cut off from the city.I gave in to the deepest pessimistic corners of my soul, De Winter said. It is not what I think will happen, but rather what I fear could happen. A friend and defender of Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her fight against Islamic ideology, De Winter describes an Israel that is basically the area of greater Tel Aviv, with the northern part of the Negev, including Dimona. The north is gone, the south is gone, Jerusalem is gone. No Jews are living in Judea and Samaria.What’s left is a heavily fortified and secured but small area, with the remaining and largely old population centered around Tel Aviv. Cameras and drones keep vigil on the Jewish population, and the rare journey into the unprotected Palestinian-dominated territories requires passing through check-points that are far more heavily secured than contemporary ones.The book has a desperate undertone. The country falls apart because of external pressure - continuous rocket bombardments and suicide attacks - that cause families to leave, and in addition, because of internal erosion: the Israeli Arabs and the hareidi Jews move away from the Zionist heart of the nation. Those with a criminal record, those who are old, a group fascinated to be part of an apocalypse, and those who just want to stay and defend the country no matter what happens, stay behind.

De Winter doesn’t tell us what happened, whether Israel shrinks because of a peace process or because of the Islamic war of attrition. I couldn’t make it concrete, I had to jump over those years, but I always imagined a process of erosion, an increasing pressure with terrorist attacks that will pressure people to leave, De Winter tell us. What we see happening in Egypt right now, is part of that process.The main focus of the book is on Bram Mannheim, originally a Dutch Jew who makes aliyah when he is 18 and becomes, at a young age, a celebrated leftist professor. He teaches history of the Middle East at Tel Aviv University. But tragedy hits when, in 2008, he has moved to Princeton with his wife and young son to become a professor there. His 4-year-old son disappears. His marriage collapses, his life stops, and he turns into a madman, a psychotic transient wandering around in the States.His old father finds him and brings him back to Tel Aviv. And in 2024, Bram runs a little bureau that helps parents of children who have disappeared as well in this Jewish ghetto-city called Israel. And after a devastating attack, apparently executed by a young Jew who disappeared in the same period as Bram’s child, Bram starts to hope again, starts to think that maybe his son is still alive, just like these other Jewish boys - a group that seems to have been kidnapped and trained to become Muslim suicide killers, Jewish children who will come back to Israel to kill their parents.

De Winter is one of the rare Jewish writers of the Diaspora still able to shed the real drama of Israel’s struggle for survival. I am an admirer of the Zionist project, of the historical necessity to create a safe haven for European Jews as a reaction to 19th century anti-Semitism, De Winter said. I fear that Israel will not see its first centennial. Not because of a lack of vitality or commitment, but because after many decades in a region where they have been met with violence, wars, and hatred, the Israeli Jews will conclude that they love their children more than their country.De Winter’s unique book is a glimpse into Israel’s nightmares, however, they remain nightime imaginings.De Winter projects rational, Western, self-oriented processes on Israeli society, a society that has fought many major wars and suffered suicide bombers, rockets and other forms of barbarian terror non-stop since Israel's 1948 creation as a state. Perhaps due to having had enough of bloodsoaked Jewish history in the Diaspora, as he says, perhaps because Israelis are a tough breed, perhaps out of idealism, or all of the above, the 62 years of Israel's existence that include over a thousand civilian victims in one year in what is known as the Oslo War of terror, have had an effect opposite to the one De Winter predicts for 2024.Adar 9, 5771 / 13 February 11