CAIRO – There is no money at the banks. Fuel is scarce. Tourism is evaporating.
As a popular uprising to oust President Hosni Mubark enters its second week, Egyptians are feeling the economic pinch.
Banks have been shut since Sunday, and they remained so on Tuesday, the day that protesters hope will see a million-strong demonstration in Cairo to demand an end to Mubarak’s regime.
Many automatic teller machines (ATM) in the teeming capital have run out of cash, and those still working were dispensing only a limited number of banknotes.
“I scoured the city in search of an automatic teller and I found only one place — in a neighbourhood where people do not normally use ATMs,” said Mohamed, a driver.
In Cairo, supermarkets that usually accepted credit cards insisted on cash instead, while crowds flocked to grocery stores in several neighbourhoods to stock up on essentials.
Many gas stations were closed, with long lines at those that were still open. The Chamber of Commerce in Cairo appealed to shopkeepers on Monday to reopen, but most ignored the call.
Some kiosks complained of an early shortage of cigarettes, in a country with a large number of smokers and relatively cheap tobacco. Top-up cards for mobile phones were also running short.
Responding to growing fears of shortages, the authorities said Egypt still had sufficient stocks of food, including wheat reserves, to feed itself until June.
Tourism, a crucial source of foreign revenue, has been hit hard by the uprising in which at least 125 people have died and thousands injured since it began last Tuesday.
This is high season for the tourist industry, with Europeans escaping their winter for sunshine by the Red Sea and the River Nile, but many tour operators have suspended departures and leisure bookings have dried up.
With 14.7 million visitors in 2010 and revenues estimated at about 13 billion dollars, tourism is an important source of income for Egypt, a developing nation with an estimated 20 percent living under the poverty line.
Some foreign firms have suspended their activities, such as the Danish shipping and oil concern A.P. Moeller-Maersk, the French cement manufacturer Lafarge and Japanese automaker Nissan.
Egyptair cancelled all domestic and international flights between 3 p.m. and 8 a.m. — the hours of a government-imposed curfew — starting Monday. Other flight times are to be modified.
Air freight is off sharply as well, said Ayman Nasr, head of Egyptair’s cargo department.
He said foreign trade had been affected by “the inability to pay for imports due to lack of liquidity resulting from the closure of banks or, the inability to arrive at the airport (to collect shipments) due to the curfew.”
The Cairo stock exchange had been shut since Thursday, after more than 10 percent of its value or 70 billion Egyptian pounds (about 12 billion dollars) was wiped out over its last two days of trading.
February 1, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular |
Leave a comment
Israel has told its diplomats in the United States, Europe and elsewhere to encourage their host nations to support the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israeli daily Haaretz reported Monday.
The newspaper said Israel’s foreign ministry told its diplomats to stress that it is in “the interest of the West” and of “the entire Middle East to maintain the stability of the regime in Egypt.” “We must therefore curb public criticism against President Hosni Mubarak,” the message sent at the end of last week said, according to Haaretz.
The newspaper said the message was sent to Israeli diplomats in at least a dozen embassies in the United States, Canada, China, Russia and several European countries.
A foreign ministry spokesman and a spokesman for the prime minister’s office questioned by AFP both refused to confirm or deny that such instructions had been issued.
Israel has so far kept a low profile on the upheaval rocking Egypt, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying on Sunday he had instructed ministers not to speak publicly about the situation. He himself has said little more than that he watching developments closely.
But a senior Israeli official quoted by Haaretz suggested Israel was unhappy with the public comments made so far by US and European officials in response to the growing Egyptian crisis. The United States and Europe have yet to call for Mubarak to step down, but they have called for a transition to democracy and warned him to allow peaceful protests to continue.
February 1, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular |
Leave a comment
Soon after Pakistan appeared on the world map as a sovereign country, it was placed in the US sphere of influence. From the signing of the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement with the United States in 1954 to Musharraf’s blind subservience to the US, the incompetent Pakistani rulers have effectively turned Pakistan and US relations into the relationship between the vassal and suzerain state; with Pakistani rulers’ abject submissiveness, Pakistan’s sovereignty has been very much reduced to flag waving and singing the national anthem.
General Musharraf during ten years of his rule pushed Pakistan to a new low in subservience to the US In his constant bid to prove his unwavering loyalty, Musharraf, in his docile act of obedience, sold Pakistani and foreign citizens to the US for a bounty of $5,000 to 5 million per head. These people were kidnapped and hunted in flagrant contravention of Pakistani and international laws, handed over to the US without any charge, concrete evidence or due judicial process, and then they were thrown in the torture pit of Guantanamo Bay. Musharraf, without feeling a single iota of guilt, says in his memoir, “We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars. Those who habitually accuse us of ‘not doing enough’ in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan. Here, I will tell the stories of just a few of the most significant man-hunts…” This is perhaps the first instance in civilized history that a head of state abducted and sold his own people for prize money and was proud of it and unabashedly mentioned it in his memoirs.
Among the many ills that Musharraf inflicted on Pakistan, he allowed the personnel of the US intelligence agencies and mercenaries from American private military companies (Blackwater, Halliburton, DynCorp, etc) to operate all over Pakistan in search of Al Qaeda leaders. Today, it is well known, that hundreds of US armed operatives freely roam on the streets of Pakistani cities. Whether as a mistake or unintentional utterance, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates in an interview admitted Blackwater’s presence in Pakistan. Not only did the Musharraf regime allow American mercenary presence in the country but he also waived the visa requirement for them; they come and go as they please, without visa or traveling documents. Often, they are escorted off the plane into a waiting car on the tarmac.
Pakistan’s newspaper Nawa-e Waqt in its editorial writes, “The Blackwater operatives, who committed heinous and inhuman crimes in Iraq, come wherever they please in Pakistan without visa or travel document. They keep on roaming around in vehicles with fake number plates with dangerous weapons. These U.S. officials point guns at the security people if asked to reveal their identity. During a few minutes debate, there is a series of phone calls from the high officials, and they, who consider Pakistan as their playground, are allowed to go with honor (How Much Dignity is Left?”, Nawa-e Waqt, January 18, 2010, translated from Urdu). It is also claimed by many and cannot be dismissed easily that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was abducted independently by Americans mercenaries from Karachi and then transferred to Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s government, Musharraf’s and the present PPP regime, has turned a blind eye and keeps mum to US mercenaries violating the country’s sovereignty and assassinating its citizens. However, the recent murder of two Pakistanis by a U.S. “diplomat” Raymond Davis on a busy street of Lahore in full view of the public forced the Pakistani government to arrest the American suspect. After the shooting and killing Davis called the consulate for help, a Land Cruiser, came to the scene. The driver of the Land Cruiser went the wrong way down a one-way street and ran over a man on a motorcycle, killing a third person. The driver of the get-away vehicle and four passengers who came to rescue Davis fled the scene and are still at large. Despite repeated requests the US Consulate is not revealing any information about the driver who killed a motorcyclist. The murder incident and the aborted attempt to rescue and help the suspect flee has, once again, brought to the forefront the presence and criminal activities of secretly fielded American mercenaries in Pakistan.
The US authorities claim that the name of the man arrested for the double murder is not Raymond Davis. The US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, “We have not released the identity of our employee at this point”; however, he denied the man’s name is Raymond Davis. The US Embassy in Pakistan says that the man in Pakistan’s custody is a diplomat with a valid US diplomat passport and visa. But the copies of passport and visa of Davis obtained by Dawn News show that his name is Raymond Alan Davis, his passport is not of a diplomat and he was not on diplomatic visa but he came to Pakistan on a business visa. The US first claimed that Davis is a “Technical Adviser” and “Counselor”. Later his designation is changed to “functionary” of the US Consulate. However, ABC News says, Davis is an employee of Hyperion Protective Consultants LLC, a private security company based in Orlando, Florida.
Davis’ claim that he killed the two men in self-defense is spoiled when one considers that all the bullet wounds were found in the back of the dead bodies. Also, no shot was fired from the guns recovered on the bodies of the dead Pakistanis. His other claim that he is immune from arrest and prosecution by the virtue of his diplomatic status is also proven empty, as neither his passport nor the visa is diplomatic. If indeed Davis is a diplomat and enjoys diplomatic immunity, the US, on ethical grounds, should waive the immunity and let the judicial process take its course. It would only raise US prestige. If Davis truly acted in self-defense, he would be acquitted.
The Washington Post in its report of January 27 puts a new twist to the already complicated storyline, and even adds a dose of suspense. Here is what the Post says, “A senior former U.S. diplomatic security agent suggested Thursday that the American involved in a fatal shootout in Lahore, Pakistan, was the victim of a spy meeting gone awry, not the target of a robbery or car-jacking attempt.” The Post quoted Fred Burton, a former deputy chief of the US Diplomatic Security Service’s counter-terrorism division who worked on several major terrorism cases in the 1980s and 1990s, as saying: “It looks like an informant meet gone bad more than a car-jacking attempt.”
If we consider what a diplomat fluent in Urdu with automatic weapons and a large sum of money in a rented car was doing in the part of town that has been scene of terror bombing, Burton’s theory of “an informant meet gone bad” appears highly credible. Diplomats do not travel in a locally rented car and go cruising with large sums of money and automatic weapons in the not so desirable part of the town. It is very plausible that Davis was on a mission and the mission went awry. Pakistanis strongly suspects U.S. hands in the terror bombings in their country.
At the end of the day, the US will get its way; Pakistan’s servile administration under US pressure will let Davis go free. There will be some clamor in the press and anti US demonstrations on the streets but all will be forgotten and forgiven soon. The other likely scenario: to appease the Pakistani public, the US may release Dr. Aafia Siddique; a Pakistani neuroscientist who the US says has ties to Al Qaeda members, sentenced in the US to 86 years in prison for attempted murder, in exchange for the release of Raymond Davis. It is highly unlikely, rather unimaginable, that the trial will go to its end, and if Davis is found guilty that he will serve the full sentence in a Pakistani jail. The US is not Pakistan, and Raymond Davis is not Pakistani Aafia Siddique, who was sold and forgotten and abandoned by her Pakistani rulers.
If Raymond Davis goes free, after murdering two Pakistanis in broad daylight, without judicial process, it would be yet another abject surrender by the Pakistani government to the will of the US.
© 2011 Abdul-Majid Jaffry
February 1, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular |
Leave a comment
Aletho News
Aletho News 