Politics

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.

President Barack Obama signed a slew of bills into law during the lame-duck session of Congress, and was dubbed the “Comeback Kid” amid a flurry of fawning press reports.
In the hail of this surprise bipartisanship, though, the one issue over which Democrats and Republicans always agree, war, was completely ignored.

President Lula begins the last week of his presidency on Monday with various ribbon-cuttings and farewells throughout the country.
After his weekly Coffee with the President radio program today, he will inaugurate the new offices of the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development in the capital, where the last annual meeting of that organization will be held.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, now free on bail in the UK, believes his extradition to USA is politically impossible because he is at risk of being killed there.

Assange told The Guardian newspaper it would be unlikely for British authorities to hand him over to the United States if he has public support in the UK.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says he believes the Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START-III) will be the cornerstone of the world’s security for the next decade.
“I also think that U.S. President, Barack Obama, did a good job when accomplishing the ratification of the START-III in the Senate,” Medvedev said at a Friday press conference.