SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT AUSTRALIA!!!

Ciggy wrote:I'm not even interested enough, anymore, to slag her as a spammer.

She is merely a beer fart in a whirlwind of her own spam.

Ciggy wrote:I'm not even interested enough, anymore, to slag her as a spammer.

She is merely a beer fart in a whirlwind of her own spam.

It's about time for rates cut joy

THE typical Victorian home buyer will save about $50 a month after the
Reserve Bank cut interest rates for the first time in 2 1/2 years.

Westpac profit soars to $6.9 billion

WESTPAC has increased full-year profit by 10 per cent,
saying its business strategy is "delivering tangible benefits".

Europe's debt jitters return

THE Australian share market
is again falling on renewed fears
the European debt crisis will spread to Italy.

Asylum seekers die in boat tragedy

• Video: Grave fears for asylum seekers
  
• Asylum seekers: Boat carrying 94 arrives in Australia
  
• Indonesia: Convicted people-smuggler denied appeal
  

true lilly wrote:Why NO Reviews of David Icke PREACHING in MELBOURNE Oct 2011?

Well?

David Icke OFFICIAL FORUMS is chock full of 'australian's'
(according to the multiple I.D. 'names' that post there),
and even 'Billy Ruben' was REJOICING about his imminent
arrival, and then of course there is 'TISWAS' that's always
DEMANDING David Icke Be WORSHIPED, YET Google has
NOTHING to offer in the way of a review of this latest
PROPAGANDA Tour HIT On MELBOURNE...WHILE THE QUEEN
(that David Icke ATTACKS), was here...AND, ALL QANTAS
Planes were GROUNDED when SHE flew out, and David Icke
should have still been in Melbourne.

'Should Have'...but who knows, all information that was available
is no longer, and there are "date CHANGES"...it used to show
the weekend the Queen was here, but now showing (only at
an events site) that he was here 3 weeks earlier???

Well I found this, and despite all the ICKE DEFENDERS
(see comments),
http://www.vexnews.com/2011/10/darkness-within-neo-nazi-conspiracy-theorists-at-the-heart-of-occupy-melbourne-protest/comment-page-2/#comment-59338
still NO REVIEW!!!???

DARKNESS WITHIN:
Neo-Nazi conspiracy theorists
at the heart of Occupy Melbourne protest
By VEXNEWS ⋅ October 22, 2011

VEXNEWS can reveal that Tina Athanasopoulos,
a key organiser of the Occupy Melbourne
is a devotee of a bizarre anti-Semitic
neo-Nazi conspiracy theorist David Icke. But more of that later.

Occupy Melbourne ended predictably.

Even small-l liberal inner-city Melbourne had thought the protesters
had had a good run, longer than some of its less successful artistic
offerings and that it was time for it to decently conclude.

MESSED OPPORTUNITY
It was a missed opportunity for the mostly naive extremists – and their
Greens party allies – to honour their commitments and leave declaring
some kind of imaginary success over ‘the man’. Instead, in the manner of
the spoiled child, they blocked tram lines used by workers to get home
and fouled up the City Square, leaving it for Council workers to clean
up.


If empowering the “99%” against the “1%” was really the aim, they used and
abused a lot of innocent “99%” victims along the way to make a point
that no-one has yet articulated and no-one comprehends. For reasons we
shall see, some of what lurked behind Occupy Melbourne was much smellier
than even the most unwashed sleeping bag.

Naturally the chancers in the increasingly cynical and sleazy Greens
political party sniffed the opportunity over the body odour.

A self-appointed leader of the gathering, whose involvement in
funny-money “charity” schemes in the past prompt real questions about
his own corporate greed that he has failed to answer, Nick Carson was a Greens party political candidate at the last state election and continues as a member.

POWER BANDT
Their current MP for Melbourne, Dr Adam Bandt PhD, who is so nervous
about holding his seat that he had his party spend $10,000 of
taxpayer-generated funds on Galaxy opinion-polling to rebut claims he
was doing a woeful job as a local MP because he’s a regular no-show at
community events and has alienated many community groups in
inner-Melbourne, jumped all over the Occupy Melbourne sleeping bag,
declaring it was a “blunder” to move the protesters on.

Bandt was supportive of Occupy Melbourne, opining:

“It is no wonder that people are protesting. The richest 20% of
households in Australian have 60 times the wealth of the poorest 20% of
Australians. CEOs are getting huge pay increases and banks are posting
record profits.”

But Bandt is part of the problem of which he complains. He is Mr 1%
in a suit with a smug grin. He flies first class, at taxpayer expense.
He employed his girlfriend in his MP’s office at public expense. He then
got her another cushy job. He is paid nearly $4000 a week to serve as
an MP. He is chauffeured around to the airport in a V8 luxo-barge
ComCar.

He does not eat his own mung-bean cooking of the revolution.

And who could blame him?

KEEPING IT REAL
We don’t think MP’s are paid excessively or should lose perks that
perhaps slightly compensate for all the crap that gets thrown at them
but we do ask wannabe revolutionaries to be consistent and live the
words they preach.

That Socialist Party Yarra councillor Steve Jolly is a shocker. He
wants to reinstate socialism in the world, despite a rather embarrassing
experiment where whole countries were held back in a mire of waste and
indolence for decades with millions of people sent to gulags, persecuted
and murdered by the system that pretended to be a “worker’s paradise”.
In PR terms, we might call this something of a setback, perhaps slightly
“diminishing brand equity” as they might say on St Kilda Road.

But Jolly slings back his council honorarium – and is apparently
required to by his comrades – to the party whose dead horse he so
sincerely flogs and only receives a “living wage.”

If the Greens did that rather than pretend to be groovy
revolutionaries while flying around like pampered poodles, they’d be
more convincing. Jolly may be wrong but the Greens are wrong while being
frauds of the most outrageous kind.

WORKERS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED
Meanwhile, there are workers who do it tough. One group of them – highly
unionised – have very high levels of workplace injury and trauma. Most
of them get around $60,000 to $70,000 per annum, maybe a little more
with overtime. They risk their lives, many of them, every time they go
out on the job.


Yep, it’s the Police.
They are working people.

But state Greens MP Colleen Hartland wasn’t impressed. She told her friends at The Age:

“Police in riot gear just started to push me and once that happened I decided that I would be joining in.”

They were doing their job. They did so very cautiously, deliberately
and responsibly in circumstances that ought never have been necessary
because the protesters ought to have packed up, cheered themselves
through the drizzle and declared a victory of some kind over the “man.”

It’s worth contemplating why they didn’t.

It’s because at the heart of the leadership of Occupy Melbourne were
the truly, raving mad. And, even worse, vile and dangerous anti-Semites
and neo-Nazis.

A key Occupy Melbourne organiser
was Tina Athanasopoulos.
She set up its Facebook page,
gave interviews on 3CR
representing them and so on.

And who is this Tina Athanasopoulos?


She’s a devotee of David Icke. VEXNEWS has obtained Facebook entries made by
her in a private David Icke group, where she assured members of his
group that she was a central player in the Occupy Melbourne and that she
would ensure Icke’s views were advanced.

David Icke, apparently touring the nation at the moment, is a leading
conspiracy theorist who expounds views including according to
Wikipedia:

At the heart of his theories lies the idea that the world is
becoming a global fascist state, that a secret group of reptilian
humanoids called the Babylonian Brotherhood controls humanity, and that
many prominent figures are reptilian, including George W. Bush, Queen
Elizabeth II, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie

Ominously:

According to Barkun, Icke has actively tried to cultivate the far
right. In 1996, he spoke to a conference in Reno, Nevada, alongside
opponents of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act—which mandates
background checks on people who buy guns in the United States—including
Kirk Lyons, a white nationalist lawyer who has represented the Ku Klux
Klan. Barkun argues that the relationship between Icke, the militias,
and the Christian Patriots is complex because of the New Age baggage
Icke brings with him, and he stresses that Icke is not actually a member
of any of these groups, but he has nevertheless absorbed the world view
of the radical right virtually intact.

and, as such, he doesn’t think much of the Jews:

In The Robots’ Rebellion (1994), Icke introduced the idea that
the Global Elite’s plan for world domination was laid out in The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax published in Russia in 1903,
which supposedly presented a plan by the Jewish people to take over the
world. The Protocols is the most influential piece of antisemitic
material of modern times, portraying the Jewish people as cackling
villains from a Saturday matinee, as Jon Ronson put it in his
documentary about Icke, David Icke, the Lizards and the Jews (2001)

These are the dogs that elected Greens party politicians have –
hopefully unwittingly – associated themselves with. Little wonder those
who attended Occupy Melbourne were left scratching at fleas afterwards.

⋅ Email This Post
⋅ Tags: Adam Bandt, Nick Carson, Tina AthanasopoulosPost a comment

true lilly wrote:Well?

It's been a while...and
you PANICKED
and THREW ME OUT OF
THE THE REPLY PAGE,
when I was just about to
ask the next KILLER QUESTION...


...still no reviews hey....

...so, to quote "Ciggy/Billy":

NO PHOTOS. IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

• Barclays in U-turn on staff poppies
  
• The last of the summer winos...
  
• Red tape bans Legion sellers
  
• The Sun Says
  

Play video (Flash broadband)

• 
  Julian Assange has failed to stop an extradition bid
  
  
• to send him to Sweden to face rapeand sexual assault allegations.
  
  
• Supporters applauded Assange as he left court. “The look on his face -
  
  
• he was terrified,” Susan Gian Steffani, of Melbourne, said.
  Read More
  

• Kevin Rudd is being urged by backers within and outside the Labor caucus
  
  
• to challenge Julia Gillard for the leadership this month. Labor figures say
  
  
• he is now being advised by his closest confidantes not to wait until next year.
  Read More
  

These (above) are the 3 lead IMAGES/stories (in order) of today's (3=11=2011)
Melbourne Herald Sun.
The full articles and other other images (inc. the stills linked the to video reports),
combine to tell a Very Big Story...

Sod-Haus...!!! wrote:How blue skies and sun are no longer enough to stop the 'ping pong Poms' from heading back to Britain after emigrating to Australia.

Many are returning because they find Australia 'boring'
Pull of family back in the UK is too much for many, research shows
Emigrants also miss British life and culture

By Richard Shears

Last updated at 1:06 AM on 2nd November 2011

For decades, the promise of sunny weather, a family-friendly lifestyle and affordable property has driven hundreds of thousands of Britons to make the move to Australia.

But it seems, for many, their dream life Down Under has turned into something of a disappointment.

A record number of Britons left Australia last year, many bored with their ex-pat life and keen to spend more time with family in the UK, research has revealed.

Researchers Mary Holmes, a senior lecturer in sociology at Australia’s Flinders University, and Roger Burrows, of the University of York, studied why so many ‘ping-pong Poms’ are returning home.

They said: ‘A better life is not about good jobs, sunshine or bigger houses.

‘What is most important is feeling close to family and feeling “at home”.’

The researchers added that ‘pursuing this dream life can result in disappointment’.



And for others, not ‘feeling at home’ in Australia was a crucial factor in their decision to leave, the research showed.

One Briton who had left Australia said: ‘Coming back has been a bit like slipping into an old pair of shoes.’

Another told the researchers that since returning to her old home town she had ‘come alive again’ despite having to move into a smaller house, drive a smaller car and having less money.

She said: ‘I love walking everywhere, wrapping up warm, politeness, greenery, quality TV.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056167/Revealed-Why-thousands-Britons-emigrated-Australia-returning-home.html’

Poppies at the British Legion poppy factory in Richmond, west London. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

A number of people have been arrested in Northern Ireland after a picture of two youths burning a poppy was posted on Facebook.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland confirmed it was questioning people
from the Coleraine area after the image appeared on the website.
The Royal British Legion member Stephen Phillips, who reported the image
to the police, said he was shocked when he saw it.
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," he said.

He added that those responsible for such incidents should realise "it
wasn't just Protestants, there were Catholics, there were Muslims, there
were Hindu people who laid their lives down in both world wars".

Robin Swann, an Stormont assembly member for the Ulster Unionist party, also denounced the online image.

"Clearly something is lacking in the lives of these young people and they
deserve our utter contempt. They certainly have no grasp of history or
current affairs. If they did they would know that the poppy remembers
the tens of thousands of Irishmen from both traditions who served in the
British army in the first world war, and also those who stood against Hitler
and fascism in the second world war. How anyone could be so ignorant
as to burn a symbol which remembers the fallen is beyond belief," he said.

"The tragic irony is that the freedoms
which the poppy burners both enjoy and abuse
have been paid for by other young men and women
who have the courage to
put on a uniform and place themselves in harm."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_British_Legion_Riders_Branch

true lilly wrote:Remember I told you of how
"TINTIN" SPAT VENOM AT EVERY MEMORIAL
TO OUR FALLEN SOLDIERS, while he was here...

...well, here's yet another REAL WORLD,
REAL TIME, REAL PEOPLE, LINK TO TINTIN'S,
NO LONGER SECRET AGENDA, that I've paid
so heavily for REFUSING TO BUY...BASTARD!!!
WANTED ME TO DISHONOUR ALL WHO GAVE
THEIR LIVES FOR OUR LIVES!!!

Don't know how many times I had to remind him
that there is a BIG difference between war mongers,
and HONOURABLE HEARTED SOLDIERS who FOUGHT
FOR KIN, COUNTRY, and OUR CHOICE OF RULER!

No arrest for poppy attacks in shake-up

Protest ... poppies on fire





Poundland U-turn after poppy ban

BUDGET retailer decides staff CAN wear poppies to work after an online outcry

• Barclays in U-turn on staff poppies
  
• The last of the summer winos...
  
• Red tape bans Legion sellers
  
• The Sun Says
  

By GRAEME WILSON
Published: 14 Oct 2011
Add a comment
(95)

BURNING poppies or abusing soldiers may no longer be illegal under plans
unveiled yesterday.

Ministers are considering making it legal to use insulting words or actions to
avoid "criminalising free speech".

Yobs can currently be nicked for being "threatening, abusive or insulting".


Tougher rules ... Theresa May

Emdadur Choudhury, 26, was charged last year after burning poppies and five
Muslims were convicted for shouting insults at a homecoming parade.

Ministers have also unveiled plans to let cops make thugs remove "face
coverings" or masks.

But minister James Brokenshire said: "We must make sure any powers do not
trample upon traditional British freedoms."

Meanwhile, tighter laws brought in by Theresa May saw the number of
anti-terror stop and searches fall from 102,504 to 9,652 last year.
__________________________________________

Yet...YET, HE and "THEY" PROUDLY CALL FOR
REVOLUTIONS AROUND THE WORLD TODAY,
TO HAND RULE TO "THEM"!!!

AND LOOK WHAT THAT COST THOSE,
MOST VULNERABLE, WHO BOUGHT HIS/"THEIR"
CURRENT WAR MONGERING PROPAGANDA!!!

Revolution Hijacked
Broadcast: 01/11/2011
Reporter: Ben Knight

Play video (Flash broadband)


With over 50 new political
parties, the upcoming round of elections draw many candidates to Tahrir
Square each week hoping to influence the voters.

“I do have one regret, that on the 11th of February, we accepted to leave the square. Maybe we should have stayed.” - Salma el Tarzi, documentary maker and protester.

"Salma in the Square",
broadcast in February, was one of Foreign Correspondent’s most
memorable stories this year. As protesters occupied Tahrir Square in
central Cairo, refusing to leave in the face of violence, threats and
intimidation from the regime of Hosni Mubarak, we were there, following
the drama through the eyes of a charismatic young rebel, Salma el Tarzi.

Like
so many others, our crew was beaten by pro-government thugs and
detained by military police. Protesters were shot, beaten and injured.

For
eighteen long days and nights no-one knew whether the revolution would
succeed. Eventually President Mubarak stepped down. The Egyptian Army
stayed neutral; the people had triumphed, or so they thought.

Now we're back in Egypt to see what the revolution has delivered.

Despite
military promises to supervise a quick transition to democracy, that
hasn’t happened. Instead we’ve seen state-sponsored thuggery, the
reimposition of censorship, and thousands of military trials where
people convicted have no right of appeal.

Our crew was on hand on
two occasions when Coptic Christians and Muslim allies clashed with
military and police near the government television station.

In
the second clash at least 27 people were killed and three injured.
Foreign Correspondent was one of the few media teams able to enter the
Coptic Hospital morgue where the dead, many of them squashed by armoured
personnel carriers, had been brought.

“You know the army council is trying to kill the revolution.” - Bothaina Kamel, former newsreader and now presidential candidate

Amid
the bloodshed and trouble there are signs of hope as well. Visit Tahrir
Square and you’ll find a democratic nursery, full of passionate
speakers and throbbing sound systems selling the merits of just some of
Egypt’s fifty new political parties.

Bothaina Kamel and Salma el
Tarzi are just two of many women who now have a voice and a more
prominent role in the new Egypt. Kamel has begun campaigning for a
presidential election which may be as far off as 2013.

And we
meet Ghalia Mahmoud, formerly a humble housewife, now Egypt’s latest
television sensation, with her own cooking show featuring local cuisine.


“The old regime did not want to show on TV that 90 per cent
of the population eat this kind of food. They always had these high
class programs, trying to show the rest of the world that Egyptians are
always eating turkey, lamb, and lobster. They didn’t want to show the
real Egypt.” - Ghalia Mahmoud, television chef
__________________________________

Further information

The Australian Coptic Movement is planning a
Vigil for Peace
in Sydney on Friday November 4
__________________________________
Transcript

KNIGHT:
Being here in this square back in February on the night that Hosni
Mubarak quit was something that I will simply just never forget. Just to
be around so many people who were exploding with joy and relief and
probably most of all, hope. Well coming back you can still find the hope
but I’m also seeing a lot of anger and confusion.

On the right
day, in the right light, Cairo looks serene. The Nile is a timeless
constant. So too it seems is the struggle for power. The revolution is
far from over.
The rebellion gathered and grew nine months ago at a
busy roundabout in the centre of Cairo. As the world knows well enough
now, it’s a place called Tahrir Square. For 18 days and nights,
Egyptians occupied the centre of the city.

Early on Foreign
Correspondent met one of the revolution’s most impressive young leaders,
Salma el Tarzi and followed her as the mood swung from day to day,
hopes rising and falling that President Hosni Mubarak would give up
power.

SALMA EL TARZI: [During February protest] “It’s
overwhelming because there are so many emotions. It’s so beautiful and
so ugly at the same time but there’s this feeling of pride. Everyone in
this square is walking with their backs straight for the first time in
their lives. We are not animals. We have the right to be people and hold
our heads high”.

KNIGHT: Noor Ayman Noor was also in Tahrir
Square in February on the day the Mubarak regime paid thugs to attack
pro-democracy demonstrators.

NOOR AYMAN NOOR: [During February
protest] “They’re trying to get Egyptians to kill each other. They sent
their supporters with horses and camels so that they can be violent with
us, so that we will kill each other”.

KNIGHT: On the 11th of February, Hosni Mubarak finally stepped down.

SALMA EL TARZI: [During February protest] “I think we’re going to celebrate for another couple of days”.

KNIGHT:
The Egyptian army took over promising it would manage a transition to
democracy. The revolutionaries had won… or so they thought. Now Salma el
Tarzi fears that the army has no intention of going back to the
barracks.

SALMA EL TARZI: “It’s unfortunate that it has to be
this ugly and that the army is forcing the situation that there should
be so much bloodshed but if this is what it takes, then this is what it
takes”.

KNIGHT: Every day, the Egyptian army is looking more and
more like the regime it replaced. This video posted on YouTube has
provoked disgust. It’s hard to watch. It shows soldiers and police
bashing and giving electric shocks to two men they accuse of selling
weapons. This is the sort of brutality for which the Egyptian police
were despised, methods which the army was thought not to practice.

NOOR
AYMAN NOOR: “What breaks my heart is the fact that we all knew it would
be a difficult road after Mubarak left. I just never thought that we’d
be oppressed in the exact same way by very similar people, using the
exact same mechanisms”.

KNIGHT: Noor Ayman Noor is the son of a
prominent Egyptian politician and bears the scars of being a
revolutionary. Aged just twenty-one, all his energies go into resisting
the military’s repression.

NOOR AYMAN NOOR: “People getting
beaten up, people getting killed, people getting arrested, people being
placed on military trials. As well as again using the media to scare
people, to give them the impression that okay the revolution is over,
now it’s time to start building again”.

SALMA EL TARZI: “They’re
just not going to give it to us like this. I mean, let’s be realistic.
These people were running the country for the past 60 years and it would
be very naive to expect that we tell them, okay we want a civil state,
we don’t want you to have anything to do and then they just going to
tell us, okay fine. Take it. I mean it wouldn’t make sense”.

KNIGHT:
Each year Egypt marks the anniversary of the 1973 war with Israel as
Armed Forces Day. The army has traditionally had the trust of the
Egyptian people and that trust was strengthened back in February when
soldiers came onto the street promising not to fire on protesters.

It
was the turning point of the revolution and it paved the way for the
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, known as SCAF to take over –
promising elections within six months.

The SCAF leader is Field
Marshall Mohammed Tantawi who was Mubarak’s Defence Minister for 20
years and now fills the TV screens once dominated by the President. He
claims progress towards democracy is being made, but many Egyptians have
stopped listening.

BOTHAINA KAMEL: “You know the Army Council,
the SCAF, trying to kill the revolution. We went to the streets on the
25th of January against police and the torture and now we have police
and army police. We have military trials. We have over than 12 thousand
Egyptians accused”.

KNIGHT: Bothaina Kamel was a newsreader on
Egyptian state television until she quit five years ago, saying she
could no longer spruik the government’s propaganda. The revolution has
given her a direction – she’s now running for president.

BOTHAINA
KAMEL: “How to trust army? The mentality of the army is to give orders
and to obey orders. I believe that the army don’t want to give the power
to a civil president. That’s what I believe”.

KNIGHT: When the
military council SCAF announced last month it was bringing back
censorship laws, journalists were furious. In recent months reporters
have been harassed and arrested. Newspapers have been closed and at
Egyptian State Television, very little has changed as Bothaina Kamel
discovered when she appeared on a talk show.

BOTHAINA KAMEL:
[Egyptian talk show] “My program is the revolution’s demands – bread,
freedom and dignity. My slogan is ‘Egypt is my agenda’.”

KNIGHT: State TV management weren’t impressed. The presenter was told to kill the interview.

SHOW
PRESENTER: “Actually, I’m being forced to end the program now. The
producer in the control room has had calls from Dr Sami el-Sherif, head
of the Egyptian television union, ordering us to end this programme now.

BOTHAINA KAMEL: “This is worse than Mubarak’s media”.

KNIGHT: Two days later the army called.

BOTHAINA
KAMEL: “They charged me with insulting a member of the army council and
insulting the army but I said, ‘I respect very much the Egyptian Army
but me and all the Egyptians have the right to criticise the army
council and his politics’. They can’t accept criticising them, but why
we need a revolution?”

KNIGHT: In the working class area of Shoubra, many people are asking the same question.

“So you’re saying the mosques have got louder in recent times?”

DR NAWAL SADAAWI: “Yes. And even after the revolution of course they started under Sadat. We never had that before”.

KNIGHT: Dr Nawal Sadaawi is one of Egypt’s most famous authors and activists and another veteran of Tahrir Square.

DR
NAWAL SADAAWI: “We have a backlash. We have a backlash against the
revolution, against women, against secularism, against equality, against
democracy”.

KNIGHT: This is the problem. Everyone in Egypt has their own idea about what their revolution was about.

“Do you trust the army to steer Egypt towards democracy?”

DR NAWAL SADAAWI: “No. Two things I don’t trust. Military rule and religious rule. We must have a secular civil government”.

KNIGHT: “And what if you don’t get it?”

DR
NAWAL SADAAWI: “We fight for it. Nobody dreamt, I am a very, I am a
woman of struggle, of confrontation you know? I am a fighter, not only a
writer, so I struggle for everything – in my private life and in my
public life – so we never dreamt that Mubarak would leave”.

KNIGHT: The revolution was not just a reaction to the excesses of the regime, it was also driven by the fundamentals of life.
Ghalia Mahmoud is in many ways fairly typical of Egypt’s massive working class.

“So the poverty, was that why you supported the revolution or was there another reason?”

GHALIA
MAHMOUD: “Of course. The revolution grew out of poverty and hunger –
that’s the main reason behind it. Some people had too much, while others
were hungry. That was the reason for the revolution – social justice”.

KNIGHT: “So Ghalia what’s your weekly food budget for your family?”

GHALIA MAHMOUD: “No more than 100 Egyptian pounds for the whole week”.

KNIGHT: “So for about 15 American dollars a week you’re feeding a family of ten, so what do they eat for that much money?”

GHALIA MAHMOUD: “Once a week I’ll feed them chicken or meat. The rest of the week is all vegetables with rice”.

KNIGHT:
While Ghalia still skimps on the household budget, the revolution has
given her a chance to show other Egyptians what they can do.

GHALIA MAHMOUD: [on her TV show] “Welcome my friends – and today is a new and delightful day”.

KNIGHT: It’s changed her life in ways she could never have expected. Ghalia Mahmoud is Egypt’s newest celebrity chef.

GHALIA
MAHMOUD: “Today we’re going to cook breaded marrows in olive oil with
marrows and tomatoes. It’s a beautiful dish – you will enjoy it”.

KNIGHT:
There’s never been a show like this on Egyptian television and not just
because Hosni Mubarak’s wife Suzanne banned women in headscarves from
appearing on screen.

GHALIA MAHMOUD: “The old regime did not
want to show on TV that 90 per cent of the population cook this kind of
food. They always had these high-class programs trying to show the rest
of the world that Egyptians are always eating turkey, lamb and lobster.
They didn’t want to show the real Egypt”.

KNIGHT: Ghalia Mahmoud
was discovered while she was working as a cook for the sister of TV
producer Mohamed Gohar. He knew she’d be perfect for his new station,
called “25” after the January 25th revolution. Channel 25 broadcasts
from a studio in the shadow of the massive state television building. As
we left it that night, we walked straight into demonstrators who were
targeting that TV centre, known as the Maspiro.

Coptic
Christians were demanding that the army keep its promise to protect all
Egyptians. Since the revolution, they’ve come under increasing attack
from Muslim extremists.

MOHAMED ATEF: “The Egyptian revolution
meant for all Egyptians, freedom. But unfortunately the freedom didn’t
reach us until now. Until now we didn’t get it. I am Muslim but I am
talking in the same tongue as my Coptic brothers. The Egyptian
revolution didn’t protect them, didn’t protect their freedom to
religion”.

KNIGHT: Four nights later we’re back near the
government television centre again watching a much bigger rally by
Christians and some of their Muslim allies. Initially they’re attacked
by thugs. Then, there are running street battles with riot police and
soldiers. State TV inflames the situation telling its viewers the army
is coming under attack from Christians and that people should come onto
the streets to help the soldiers.

Armoured vehicles career into
crowds, crushing protestors to death. We heard gunshots, riot police
fired tear gas and charge with batons raised. We’re chased across a
bridge spanning the Nile. State TV reports that three soldiers have been
killed but it says nothing about any other casualties.
At Cairo’s Coptic Hospital we find them. Chaos reigns in the morgue. People are keen to show us the victims.

There’s
only room for three bodies in the refrigerated section. The bodies of
14 others are laid on the floor. Their faces uncovered for their
families to identify them.

“This is not the first time that I’ve
been in a morgue but it would have to be the most distressing. Normally
you’re looking at the bodies that are casualties of war. These are
casualties of something else. I can’t describe the injuries. When a face
is caved in, it doesn’t come from a bullet, it comes from something…
who knows what.

What is also distressing is the way that the
grief here is now turning to anger and outside these walls is the
Egyptian Army. Now this is now where the protest and the riot took
place. It was four or five kilometres away from here, but the Army has
now come here. There are running battles outside in the street. We can’t
leave. No one in here can leave. Why are they there?”

PAULUS ZAKI: “We are Christian. We come for the peace. We only came to Maspiro and we told them we’d finish about 8 o’clock”.

KNIGHT: “They said that you set fire to the police vehicles, that police officers were killed”.

PAULUS
ZAKI: “Yes police officers and the army, the Egyptian Army. I cannot
believe the Egyptian Army has killed Egyptian people. Whatever
nationality we are, we are Egyptian. We cannot believe that. How can you
do this to people, why?”

KNIGHT: At least 27 people were killed and 300 wounded in the worst episode of violence since the revolution.
SCAF called a media conference to defend itself against accusations of murder.

ARMY PERSONNEL: “The Armed Forces would never direct its fire at the people”.

KNIGHT:
“The army claims soldiers didn’t use live ammunition and didn’t
deliberately run over anyone. It blames the deaths on unnamed
infiltrators trying to destroy the revolution”.

SALMA EL TARZI:
“And they always use big words like, ‘foreign conspiracy’, ‘mysterious
powers’, ‘powers of darkness’ and this is not a joke. One of the
statements said ‘the mysterious powers of darkness’. It was like Darth
Vader is invading Cairo. They never tell you who this is but they always
keep it vague and they always make you feel that there is this huge
conspiracy against Egypt and it’s everyone’s duty to really protect it
and the only way to protect it is to kill the people that are
demonstrating in the street”.

KNIGHT: On the night of the Coptic
protest, Channel 25 shows pictures of the melee outside its windows.
Suddenly, armed soldiers burst into its studio. The pregnant news
presenter is terrified. A Christian staffer is beaten up.
Channel 25
protests against the army raid and shuts down. Ghalia Mahmoud’s new
career looks short lived. But in the past week, both Channel 25 and
Ghalia are back on the air.

Many other Egyptians are also finding
that the revolution isn’t delivering change. The economy is paralysed.
Half the population lives on less than two dollars a day. Even in the
fertile Nile Valley, farmers can only afford to lease tiny plots of
land. They’re desperately poor. In the village of Kafr Hemayed there’s
no sanitation and very little running water and electricity. It has only
a junior school and as many as eighty-five students are crammed into
each classroom.

“This village is believed to be the poorest in
the governorate of Giza, although figures are almost impossible to come
by. But it’s exactly the sort of place that was ignored and taken for
granted by the ruling party. No politician of any consequence ever came
here and certainly no one ever felt the need to campaign here, but
tonight that’s going to change”.

Bothaina Kamel wants to be president to improve villagers’ lives yet she’s asking some difficult questions of potential voters.

BOTHAINA
KAMEL: “Do you believe in equality, meaning that the rich and the poor
are equal and that we’re all equal? We must believe that this is the
principle we must fight for – that no Muslim is better than a Christian.
And when we educate, we educate the boy and the girl”.

KNIGHT:
She crashes a wedding party, but no one seems to mind. Her TV profile
probably helps. Most people just seem stunned that someone like her is
actually paying attention to them. At the mayor’s house, village leaders
are pouring out their problems. Bothaina Kamel asks them to swear a
pledge.

BOTHAINA KAMEL: [village leaders repeat after her] “I
swear by the Almighty God I will not go back to my old ways, being a
passive citizen. And that I will not let anyone steal my rights and my
homeland’s rights and my children’s rights”.

KNIGHT: One positive
effect of the February revolution has been the emergence of grass roots
political debate in Egypt. There are now more than 50 new political
parties - and in Tahrir Square come most Friday’s, each sets up its own
stage and PA system, each trying to drown out the others with ear
splitting speeches. The first round of parliamentary elections is due at
the end of the month, but even now after nine months in charge, SCAF
issues contradictory instructions about how those elections will be
conducted. The pro democracy campaigners have no confidence in them.

NOOR
AYMAN NOOR: “We’re going to see lots of bloodshed during these
elections so that the army can come back and say, look we said it before
the Egyptian people aren’t ready now for democracy, there’s going to be
a mini-military takeover, we’re going to take things over until things
are stable again and then we’ll open things up for democracy later”.

KNIGHT:
18 days of defying the Mubarak regime dramatically changed Salma el
Tarzi’s life and while maintaining the rage still dominates her life,
she is getting back to work making documentaries. It’s not easy finding
the balance.

SALMA EL TARZI: “I do not expect the revolution to
be over soon. We are cleaning up the mess of the past, not only 30
years, I believe the past 60 years and it’s not going to happen in nine
months”.

COPTIC GROUP CHANTING: [at funeral] “With our spirit,
with our blood we sacrifice for the Cross. With our spirit, with our
blood we sacrifice for the Cross”.

KNIGHT: When the Coptic
community buried their dead, they called them martyrs. It’s an overused
word in the Middle East, but it’s still highly loaded. As each coffin
arrives, waves of emotion rip through the cathedral. For some the
anguish is too much to bear. Respect for human rights was a key demand
for pro democracy campaigners. While the army initially seemed to
understand this, the slaughter of Egyptian Christians has triggered the
biggest crisis in the country since the revolution.

The military
council intends to hold onto power until the Constitution is rewritten
and a presidential election is held. That could be as late as 2013 – far
too long for an impatient, angry people.

Billy Ruben wrote:

Ciggy wrote:

Billy Ruben wrote:

Billy Ruben wrote:

Ciggy wrote:

Billy Ruben wrote:

Should've been here whenh I posted it...she logged off,45 seconds later....it burned her soul,HAHAHAHA!!!!

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Ciggy wrote:Shut the hell up about Jodie Foster's ugly sister there.

Ciggy wrote:

Billy Ruben wrote:

Ciggy wrote:

Billy Ruben wrote:

Should've been here whenh I posted it...she logged off,45 seconds later....it burned her soul,HAHAHAHA!!!!

Considering making that an avatar, hahaha...