Friday, December 30, 2011

End of the World, Oops, Time, Oops, year

End of the World, Oops, Time, Oops, Year

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Dec 302011

Oops. Big OOPS!. The biggest OOPSES of all. The record of previous Persons of the Year has been broken.

Shame upon you. Time (traveler).
You had a chance to name my good buddy, the jury is out on that, Osama bin-Laden. You lost that chance. He lost his precious life to bunch of gun toting, mask wearing, Navy Seal thugs.
You had a chance to name my another good buddy, Muammar Gaddafi, the guy hiding in a sewer pipe, from his tormenter and senators, Oops, assassinaters. He was clean shaved, at least in his last few days.
You had a chance to name my yet another good buddy, Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, assassinated by US drones, while praying (for the death of the Western Satan).
You lost a good chance in naming my gooder best buddy, Newt-the-cute-Gingrich. He was almost ordering a newt, Oops, new Tuxedo for his (First) inauguration, come January 2013. Sad. Very sad, indeed, that he lost his (filthy) reputation of a morally challenged manger dog when reports about his divorce came tumbling down like an avalanche and buried him (alive).
You missed the greatest and the best opportunity to select Barack (Nobel) Obama. Obama may not last this winter, what with his bad habits of leaving footprints in the sands of the TIME, Oops, time in, of all the places, Pacific Ocean. I believe, Barack had a good fortune in being born in Pacific and not in Atlantis, oops, Atlantic. Fish do get born in little backwater, stinking ponds, Oops, big oceans, you know.
You lost a chance to name my good buddy, (Big) Apple-man, Oops, Madman, Oops, Mac-man. Stevie Wonder, Oops, Stevie ain’t not dead, Steve Jobs is.
How about Kim Jonge-il? Now, he was a guy who wouldn’t die. He ain’t dead, either. At least in the hearts and minds of millions and millions of North Koreans, oops, North Americans.
How about Václav Zítek, Oops, Václav Havel, The man who invented, much touted term, Spring, Oops, Havana Spring, Oops, Prague Spring, Oops, Budapest Spring. Oops, Buda Spring or, perhaps, Pest Spring, one of them twin cities, like American, Oops, Minnesotan,

Minneapolis–Saint Paul

Anyway, I ain’t dead. next year? Okey-Dokey.
…and I am Sid Harth@sidileaks.net

Click here to find out more!

Introduction

Cover Story

Runners-Up

Videos

People Who Mattered

Fond Farewells

Profiles of Protesters

To Our Readers

The Protester
No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square, it would incite protests that would topple dictators and start a global wave of dissent. In 2011, protesters didn’t just voice their complaints; they changed the world.
Cover Story

Introduction
History often emerges only in retrospect. Events become significant only when looking back

To Our Readers
The 2011 Person of the Year issue is the product of a year’s worth of reporting and thinking

Yuri Kozyrev: My Year On Revolution Road
Photographer Yuri Kozyrev shares about the remarkable experience of covering uprisings in seven countries and what all the revolutions had in common

The Protester: A Portfolio by Peter Hapak
As TIME names the protester its 2011 Person of the Year, a look at protesters from around the world, from New York and Oakland to the Middle East

Meet Loukanikos, Athens’ Protest Dog
The stray dog who joined the lines of demonstrators in the Greek capital has become an international celebrity

Why TIME Chose ‘The Protester’
Managing editor Richard Stengel talks with Kurt Andersen, author of our cover story, about the decision to recognize the global protest movements of 2011 in TIME’s Person of the Year issue

Why They Protest: Bahrain, Tunisia and Yemen
TIME world editor Bobby Ghosh explores the success of the protests in Tunisia and the setbacks and continuing violence protesters face in Bahrain and Yemen

The Media Messenger of Zuccotti Park
How an activist/journalist’s live video stream from New York City’s Zuccotti Park garnered mainstream attention and helped galvanize a movement

Profiles of Protesters
Dr. Arthur Chen

Chelsea Elliott

Olmo Gálvez

Ahmed Harara

Natalia Klossa and Antonis

Wael Nawara

Katerina Patrikarakou

Carmen Rodríguez

Javier Sicilia

Mohammad Bouazizi’s Unexpected Sequel

Q&A: Bouazizi’s Mother

Runner-Up: William McRaven

Runner-Up: Ai Weiwei

Runner-Up: Paul Ryan

Runner-Up: Kate Middleton

People Who Mattered
TIME surveys the key figures, from politics and sports to entertainment and religion, who shaped our world over the past year

Fond Farewells
Remembering those who left us in 2011: Carrie Fisher on Elizabeth Taylor, John Lasseter on Steve Jobs, Rosalynn Carter on Betty Ford

The Town Where the Arab Spring Began
Mohamed Bouazizi ignited a rebellion that roiled the Arab world

Kate Middleton’s Best Fashion Moments
The Duchess of Cambridge’s fashion influence is a matter of empirical evidence

Ai Weiwei’s Photographs
A gallery of the Chinese artist’s work in the medium

Video: The Making of ‘The Protester’ Portfolio
Photographer Peter Hapak traveled to seven countries to capture portraits of dozens of protesters for TIME’s Person of the Year issue

Why They Protest: American Movements
TIME’s Nate Rawlings on the protests in the U.S., from the sit-in at the Wisconsin statehouse to the ‘Occupiers’ in cities throughout the nation

Why They Protest: Egypt, Libya and Syria
TIME’s Abigail Hauslohner on the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Libya’s civil war and Syria’s ongoing violence

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin
The life and career of chairman of the House Budget Committee

Special Ops: A Photo History
The fascinating history of America’s secret warriors

Molly Katchpole: The Woman Who Helped Abolish Debit Fees
She started an online petition against Bank of America’s debit fees that eventually garnered more than 306,000 signatures

OWS: Protests and Camp Shutdowns
The Occupy Wall Street protest and similar demonstrations against corporate and financial systems continue globally

Russia: Protests and Counterprotests
After a narrow win by the Prime Minister’s party, United Russia, demonstrators take to the streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg

Egypt: 18 Days that Shook the World
A day-by-day photo chronicle of the 2011 Egyptian uprising

Crazy, Stupid, Cool
Yes, he’s Canadian. But Ryan Gosling is still the Coolest Person of the Year

Gabrielle Giffords
A survivor’s faith, inspiration and hope

TIME’s Person of the Year 1927-2011
TIME’s Person of the Year is bestowed by the editors on the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year. See who made the grade over TIME’s first eight decades

More on Time.com

Story

All Best and Worst Lists

Cover Story

The Protester
By Kurt Andersen Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011
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“Mohamed suffered a lot. He worked hard. But when he set fire to himself, it wasn’t about his scales being confiscated. It was about his dignity.”
—Mannoubia Bouazizi, Tunisia

Photograph by Peter Hapak for TIME

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Once upon a time, when major news events were chronicled strictly by professionals and printed on paper or transmitted through the air by the few for the masses, protesters were prime makers of history. Back then, when citizen multitudes took to the streets without weapons to declare themselves opposed, it was the very definition of news — vivid, important, often consequential. In the 1960s in America they marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War; in the ’70s, they rose up in Iran and Portugal; in the ’80s, they spoke out against nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Europe, against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, against communist tyranny in Tiananmen Square and Eastern Europe. Protest was the natural continuation of politics by other means.
And then came the End of History, summed up by Francis Fukuyama’s influential 1989 essay declaring that mankind had arrived at the “end point of … ideological evolution” in globally triumphant “Western liberalism.” The two decades beginning in 1991 witnessed the greatest rise in living standards that the world has ever known. Credit was easy, complacency and apathy were rife, and street protests looked like pointless emotional sideshows — obsolete, quaint, the equivalent of cavalry to mid-20th-century war. The rare large demonstrations in the rich world seemed ineffectual and irrelevant. (See the Battle of Seattle, 1999.)
There were a few exceptions, like the protests that, along with sanctions, helped end apartheid in South Africa in 1994. But for young people, radical critiques and protests against the system were mostly confined to pop-culture fantasy: “Fight the Power” was a song on a platinum-selling album, Rage Against the Machine was a platinum-selling band, and the beloved brave rebels fighting the all-encompassing global oppressors were just a bunch of characters in The Matrix. (See pictures of protesters around the world.)
“Massive and effective street protest” was a global oxymoron until — suddenly, shockingly — starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining trope of our times. And the protester once again became a maker of history.
Prelude to the Revolutions
It began in Tunisia, where the dictator’s power grabbing and high living crossed a line of shamelessness, and a commonplace bit of government callousness against an ordinary citizen — a 26-year-old street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi — became the final straw. Bouazizi lived in the charmless Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, 125 miles south of Tunis. On a Friday morning almost exactly a year ago, he set out for work, selling produce from a cart. Police had hassled Bouazizi routinely for years, his family says, fining him, making him jump through bureaucratic hoops. On Dec. 17, 2010, a cop started giving him grief yet again. She confiscated his scale and allegedly slapped him. He walked straight to the provincial-capital building to complain and got no response. At the gate, he drenched himself in paint thinner and lit a match. (See pictures of Sidi Bouzid.)
“My son set himself on fire for dignity,” Mannoubia Bouazizi told me when I visited her.
“In Tunisia,” added her 16-year-old daughter Basma, “dignity is more important than bread.”
In Egypt the incitements were a preposterously fraudulent 2010 national election and, as in Tunisia, a not uncommon act of unforgivable brutality by security agents. In the U.S., three acute and overlapping money crises — tanked economy, systemic financial recklessness, gigantic public debt — along with ongoing revelations of double dealing by banks, new state laws making certain public-employee-union demands illegal and the refusal of Congress to consider even slightly higher taxes on the very highest incomes mobilized Occupy Wall Street and its millions of supporters. In Russia it was the realization that another six (or 12) years of Vladimir Putin might not lead to greater prosperity and democratic normality.
In Sidi Bouzid and Tunis, in Alexandria and Cairo; in Arab cities and towns across the 6,000 miles from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean; in Madrid and Athens and London and Tel Aviv; in Mexico and India and Chile, where citizens mobilized against crime and corruption; in New York and Moscow and dozens of other U.S. and Russian cities, the loathing and anger at governments and their cronies became uncontainable and fed on itself.
The stakes are very different in different places. In North America and most of Europe, there are no dictators, and dissidents don’t get tortured. Any day that Tunisians, Egyptians or Syrians occupy streets and squares, they know that some of them might be beaten or shot, not just pepper-sprayed or flex-cuffed. The protesters in the Middle East and North Africa are literally dying to get political systems that roughly resemble the ones that seem intolerably undemocratic to protesters in Madrid, Athens, London and New York City. “I think other parts of the world,” says Frank Castro, 53, a Teamster who drives a cement mixer for a living and helped occupy Oakland, Calif., “have more balls than we do.”
In Egypt and Tunisia, I talked with revolutionaries who were M.B.A.s, physicians and filmmakers as well as the young daughters of a provincial olive picker and a supergeeky 29-year-old Muslim Brotherhood member carrying a Tigger notebook. The Occupy movement in the U.S. was set in motion by a couple of magazine editors — a 69-year-old Canadian, a 29-year-old African American — and a 50-year-old anthropologist, but airline pilots and grandmas and shop clerks and dishwashers have been part of the throngs.
In a new book from TIME, What Is Occupy? Inside the Global Movement, our journalists explore the roots and meaning of the uprising over economic justice. To buy a copy as an e-book or a paperback, go to time.com/whatisoccupy.

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Who is TIME’s 2011 person of the year?
The results are in.

Special Features:

Introduction

Person of the Year: The Protester

A Year in the Making

Runner-Up: William McRaven

Runner-Up: Ai Weiwei

Runner-Up: Paul Ryan

Runner-Up: Kate Middleton

People Who Mattered

Fond Farewells

Profiles of Protesters

Crazy, Stupid, Cool

Videos

Photos: Peter Hapak’s Profiles of Protesters Around the World

Photos: My Year On Revolution Road by Yuri Kozyrev

Photos: Kate Middleton’s Best Fashion Moments of 2011

Photos: Meet Loukanikos, Athens’ Protest Dog

Photos: Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin

Ai Weiwei’s Photographs

Special Ops: A Photo History

Photos: Sidi Bouzid, the Tunisian Town Where the Arab Spring Began

Protests and Counterprotests in Russia

OWS: Protests and Camp Shutdowns

18 Days that Shook the World

Graphic: TIME’s Person of the Year, from 1927 to 2011

Around the Web
Will Mitt Romney Kill Bird Bird? From THE HUFFINGTON POST

Jeremy London Sought In Girlfriend’s Assault From THE HUFFINGTON POST

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psyospc

Today: CAIRO (AP) — “Around 10,000 women marched through central Cairo demanding Egypt’s ruling military step down Tuesday in an unprecedented show of outrage over soldiers who dragged women by the hair and stomped on them, and stripped one half-naked in the street during a fierce crackdown on activists the past
week.
The dramatic protest, which grew as the women marched from Tahrir Square
through downtown, was fueled by the widely circulated images of abuses
of women. Many of the marchers touted the photo of the young woman whose
clothes were partially pulled off by troops, baring her down to her blue bra, as she struggled on the ground.
Some also criticized Islamic parties, which stayed out of the antimilitary protests and did not participate in Tuesday’s march — even though religious conservatives
often tout their defense of “women’s honor.” Pro-democracy activists
accused them of being worried about anything that might derail ongoing,
multistage parliamentary elections, which the fundamentalist Muslim
Brotherhood and the more conservative Al-Nour Party have dominated so
far.
“This is a case of honor. But they clearly don’t care for honor or religion. They now care only about their political interests,” said Mohammed Fawaz, one of the men in
the protective chain around the marching women.
The protest also is likely to deepen the predicament of the military as critics began to talk openly about putting them on trial for abuses, and politicians are floating ideas for their exit, perhaps in return for immunity…”

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1 week ago

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psyospc

This past weekend was the first anniversary of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian man who self-immolated. In Egypt, the anniversary came in the midst of some very violent clashes. Nearly 200 people are in detention right now, and are being accused of crimes of inciting violence and burning buildings. Some of them have broken arms, are very badly beaten. They’re being refused medical attention. One of them actually just died after being refused medical attention. And so, this is happening while the army is
claiming that no violence is being conducted. 14 people have died, some of them have been killed by live ammunition. One of the people who was killed was a sheikh from Al-Azhar, which is the most important religious institution in Egypt. He was the chief of staff to the Grand Mufti, and on Saturday, there was a massive burial service for him and a massive march that came to Tahrir, as well. With regard to the elections, the Muslim Brotherhood has captured about 40 percent of the seats. The real surprise has been the ultraconservative Salafis, who have made very big gains. The liberal parties have come a very, very distant third, while revolutionary youth parties have captured almost a negligible amount. The Muslim Brotherhood has not really participated in these protests whatsoever. They wanted the elections to go forward as planned, because they stand to gain the most from them. As a consequence they are being very severely accused by the revolutionary youth of political opportunism in the face of a real clampdown by the army 10 months after their revolution began.

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1 week ago

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psyospc

I’ve taken the time to read through each and every post made before mine. It’s amazing to see how worked up some people get. It’s sad to see how many ‘sock-puppets’ there are on here as well. This is part of the cointelpro, disinformation, psychological warfare mindset that now pervades the MS and sites like this. Many of you are arguing with psyops participants who are using modern warfare against you. I personally know this to be true because I have associates in agencies such as the FBI, Homeland Security, and the NSA who are like me, fresh out of the military and especially JSOG who now routinely employ psychological methods to sow fear and dissension. This plays perfectly into the hands of those who want control and work tirelessly 24/7 to obtain it.

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1 week ago

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TucsonTerpFan

Was Time’s choice simply made in order to help sell its “occupy” book?

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1 week ago

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Bill Butler

Time Magazine owes its readers an apology. It states that the cover photo: “As the artist behind our Person of the Year 2011 cover commemorating
this year’s pick, The Protester, Fairey says his cover image is based on
a composite of 26 different photographs of real protests from around
the world.” On the contrary, it is of one person, Sarah Mason, photographed by LA Weekly freelancer Ted Soqui, and then posterized by Shepard Fairey. Mason was photographed at a Los Angeles Occupy protest. The altering of the image erased the “99%” message on the scarf and changed the ethnicity of Mason, no doubt to place her in the Mideast somewhere.
Of course, Time Magazine has done this sort of thing before, like when it make OJ Simpson blacker in 1994. If Time wanted a Mideast protester, then why not use a photograph from the Arab Spring instead of altering a Los Angeles woman to make her look like she’s from somewhere else?

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1 week ago

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University Leaks

www.UniversityLeaks.org UPDATES FROM MADRID on an unresolved case:
Nº Mad/Cons/415/2/2011Embassy of India (Letterhead)Madrid, 08 March 2011The Indian Embassy in Madrid conveys its sincerest greetings to the Ministry of External Affairs and Cooperation, Kingdom of Spain, and feels honoured to dispatch a REPRESENTATION, of Mr. Nick Balhara Dalal, an Indian citizen with passport nº ******, and a student of MSc. Media Management at the Faculty of Communication, University of Navarra at its Pamplona campus in the academic session 2008-2009. He has also submitted an abstract of 4 pages with this representation that has been attached herewith.He asserts that he was admitted, after having passed the entrance exam and the interview for MSc Media Management, after having paid in advance 35% of the fees of the master. However, after his arrival to Spain and on the eve of the commencement of the course, he was informed to take the Spanish version of the course, i.e. Master en Gestión de Empresas de Comunicación, instead of MSc Media Management. The University in that moment also refused to return him the part of fees already paid. That’s how he was forced to get registered in the course Master en Gestión de Empresas de Comunicación.He further asserts that he was awarded the final grades, weeks before the completion of the course even without taking into account the grades awarded to him by one or more of his professors. He also affirms that his internships were neither approved nor recommended by the University. He has mentioned other motives of discrimination by the University of Navarra.He demands his rights in accordance with the laws of Spain and the European Union, that have been violated by the University. He has also presented a lawsuit against the University in the courts, that is pending resolution.Given that the allegations formulated by Mr. Nick Balhara Dalal, a student of international Master, are very serious, the Embassy requests the Ministry of External Affairs and Cooperation to resolve this matter through other competent Spanish authorities.

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1 week ago

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Siegfried Hannig

Mohamed Bouazizi was not the anomymous Muslim charicature defacing Time’s cover as “Person of the Year”. Shame on you for downplaying his sacrifice!

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1 week ago

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Siegfried Hannig

By avoiding the name of Bouazizi up front, was Time Magazine stinting on the tribute deserved by this humble hero?

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1 week ago

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Lorenzo Gonzalez

Syllogism for a REAL DEMOCRACY. (a) Any power that can not be justified is IMMORAL.
(b) The reasons justifying the existence of Congress –the size of the assembly and the distance of its members– do not exist anymore with current technology. With Internet, cell phones, digital signatures, etc., it is possible to build a permanent electronic platform for the people to decide DIRECTLY –without a congressman– in all issues that affect the administration of the country.
(c) Therefore, the mere existence of the Congress and the representative or indirect democracy is IMMORAL.
————————————————
There is a phrase that says: “POWER CORRUPTS, AND ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY.” The second part of this phrase was used to replace monarchy with representative democracy; and the first part of this phrase will be used to replace representative democracy with DIRECT DEMOCRACY.

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1 week ago

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Lorenzo Gonzalez

The Occupy movement and ALL PROTESTERS in other parts of the world should form a party similar to the People’s Administration of the UK. Please see: http://paparty.co.uk/index.htm…
This is the best way to transition from a representative democracy to a DIRECT DEMOCRACY. In the transition to a direct digital democracy the delegates in parliament representing the party must reflect exactly what the citizens want by voting in parliament according to the citizens’ decisions on the party homepage. For example, if a pending bill is supported by 70% of party member and is opposed by 30% of party members in the party web site, and the party has 10 seats in parliament, then 7 delegates would support and 3 would oppose the bill.
Since the function of the delegates in parliament representing the party is very simple, they could be chosen by lottery from those applying to serve as delegates.
This is real people power. This is real change instead of worthless promises.

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1 week ago

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