Politics

As the Middle East Quartet prepares to meet on February 5 in the southern German city of Munich to end the agonizing deadlock in Israeli-Palestine peace talks, a high-ranking United Nations official has expressed “an extreme concern” about the precarious situation in the tension-ridden and war-torn Middle East region.

The protests that led to Ben Ali’s overthrow gained momentum after unemployed university graduate Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire. He died earlier this month. Copycat self-immolations have followed in at least 4 other North African states. In Egypt, 52-year-old lawyer Mohamed Farouk Hassan became the latest Egyptian protester to set himself on fire following two others.

Chinese President Hu Jintao has wrapped up a state visit to the U.S. were he delivered an address in which he renounced “hegemony” and “expansionism.”
Hu Jintao: “We will remain committed to the path of peaceful development, continue to strive for a peaceful international environment to develop ourselves and uphold and promote world peace through our own development”.

Colombia, Egypt and Macedonia have withdrawn their objection to Bolivia’s request to end the prohibition of coca-chewing. US continues to support the racist ban on coca chewing. The pressure is now to make sure they are alone and particularly that the following nations: Russia, Japan, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Sweden don’t support the US and that they are left isolated.

Tunisia is in its way now that the dictator has been driven out and the country is looking to a new future.
But Tunisians are skeptical regarding a new regime, focusing on the fact that key posts in the new national unity government remain in the hands of the old government party, the RCD.
The opposition parties will need to play an important role in the new Tunisia.

“Democracy is a contract with the voters: “if elected I will try to enact my program.” That traitor to democracy, Obama, with a rhetoric of change, attracted the underprivileged–blacks, reds, Hispanics, women, youth, workers, and betrayed them all; but not his benefactor Goldman Sachs, favoring bailing them out way above stimulus.”

Foreign diplomats will tour a plant where Iran is enriching uranium in defiance of UN sanctions, after Tehran declared it will push ahead with the controversial work “very strongly.”
The Islamic republic open two of its atomic sites to the diplomats in a rare move to garner support for its contentious atomic drive ahead of key talks with six world powers in Istanbul next week.

Echo from the recent past: a letter from Humanist Association of Hong Kong that appeared in the *South China Morning Post* regarding Iran was posted on the same newspaper’s website 16 January 2011 as a side-post to the issue of sanctions against Iran for its nuclear weapons programme. As chairman of the Association I re-iterate, what programme?

U.S. Vice President Biden has reaffirmed a U.S. pledge to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of the year. Biden met top officials in Baghdad for the first time since Iraqi lawmakers agreed on a new government last year. Biden says he told the Iraqi government the U.S. is committed to meeting a status of forces agreement that calls for a full U.S. withdrawal this year.

Thousands of people have taken themselves to the streets of the Tunisian capital of Tunis today in order to demand the resignation President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Nationwide protests have erupted over the past month against unemployment, police brutality and government repression under Ben Ali’s twenty three years rule.