Cairo's Protest

In Cairo

Egypt says it’s moving towards democracy quickly -

the military, led by their Field Marshall

Mohamed Hussein Tantawi,

the military should relinquish its power in as little as

two more years,

when there have been parliamentary elections

and ratification of a Constitution. 

Muslims make up 90

percent of the populations and Christians,

Coptic Christians, make up 10 percent, and the

military partially dismantled a church

near Aswan recently.

Yesterday, the Christians marched

from a Cairo neighborhood towards the radio and

television buildings downtown, and they scuffled

at least three times with Muslims, but the violence

wasn’t awful - horrible, meant, mean - until 6

pm, where plainclothes security forces and demonstrators threw

rocks at each other. 

State televisions had urged “honest Egyptians” to go into the streets

and protect the soldiers from Christian protesters.

            Previous Christian protestors have appealed to the military

            for protection against radical Islamists.  Not this

time – at one point, groups of riot police officers beat

Muslim protestors, who were shouting in Arabic,                             

“God is Great!”

while a few yards away other Muslims were breaking pavement into

pieces, so they could throw rocks into a group of Christians –

both sides. 

The protestors chanted                       

“The people want to bring down the Field Marshall”

and

            “Muslim and Christians are one hand.”

The police officers, cushioned by hundreds of men armed

with clubs and stones chanted

            “The people want to bring down the Christians”

and

            “Islamic state, Islamic state.”

In retaliation to the fighting, military

vehicles drove into protestors, crushing at least four

people -           bones, skin, meat – were they the passionate ones or the slow ones – how fast were the vehicles going?

Soldiers fired bullets at the protesters - 

at least 24 dead, and 200 wounded.

 

Thanks to the New York Times’ “Rage at Military in Egypt Fuels Deadly Protest”

Fighting in Streets of Sirte

On Thursday, Colonel Gaddafi urged Libyans to take

to the streets “in their

millions” to resist the current leaders and

if Sirte falls, Libya will be free, even if Gaddafi

lives.  Yesterday the UTC – the National

Transitional Council looked like it rode

a rapid sweep through Sirte, like it could be tidy with a giant

dustpan in the city hall by the weekend, but the sweeping has slowed

and now its more like a stumbling sweep with a hairbrush instead of a

broom and there’s dirt in the cracks between the tiles

so go find your toothbrush. 

Efforts last week to negotiate

failed

like a doughnut boat. 

So Pro-Gaddafi snipers fight

unseen, using burning

tires or trenches to give themselves cover to

travel between buildings, taking advantage of the

dust and advancing, then aiming from rooftops,

Ouagadougou conference center, the dusty universe-

ity and a complex of flats crammed.

500 yards separate these Gaddafi

Loyalists from the UTC fighters.  Today the conference

center where the Loyalists have been holed up is

isolated.  The rest of the city they fight one

street, building, alley at

a time. 

Thousands of civilians stay trapped in the city. 

Some leave in cars crammed

with people and possessions. Others leave

on feet.  Their faces look

terrified – they were convinced that they would be killed

outside the city.  To reassure them, the UTC gives them generous bottles

of water and flags

of the new Libya.  They’re stopped

at checkpoints and searched meticulously

for any evidence of sympathies pro-Gaddafi

before they can go on – but most

often they have no

place to go. 

From the article "Lybia NTC fight Gaddafi forces in the streets of Sirte" at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15229351

Pine-Cone Truce

So this is a blog where I will try to turn a news article into a poem daily.  I will choose articles that interest me, and my poems will be biased.  But I want to remember the news, and its fascinating, but sometimes I don't understand how cool something is when it is presented as a clunky article in a newspaper.  I love images and details and playing with language.

Learn!  Educate yourself about the world!  Knowledge lets you make any decision from a position of power.  If your knowledge is limited you end up making decisions out of necessity because you don't know what else there is.

Comment!  What do you think of what is happening in the world?

(From the New York Times article "Cease-Fire for Harvests Offers Respite in Afghanistan")
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/world/asia/harvesting-cease-fire-offers-respite-in-afghanistan.html?_r=1

Pine-Cone Truce

For eleven months and one

week a year in Paktika Afghanistan,

the battalion receives contact – through

            82-millimeter rounds,

            107-millimeter rockets,

            machine gun fire and

            or rifle fire – from

the Taliban and Haqqani

but September and early Octob-

er are pine-nut season where

village men pick cones with long poles

with loops at the end until their hands grow

black black with dirt and pine

sap.  Once their nuts are removed

from their cones, they fetch $17 per kilo-

gram – how many nuts in a cone?

The Tali and Haqq are no longer nestle-

d but slipp-

ing from their safe haven and they need civilian

protection desperate-

ly, so they coord-

inate fighting and harvesting schedules –

can’t risk losing the civilians (though

another theory declares that most of the Tali

and Haqq’s fighters are local men.  I like this

less.)

(A similar pattern in Afganistan’s poppy

provinces growing.) 

I do with the pine nut

truce lasted

longer?