Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters have poured into the streets in main cities across Yemen, demanding President Ali Abdullah Saleh‘s ouster.
In the capital, nearly 50,000 protesters gathered outside Sana’a University for the 16th consecutive day after the Friday Prayers, calling for an end to Saleh’s 32-year rule. Anti-Saleh protesters have been camped in the area since February 20.
Similar protest rallies were held in the southern port city of Aden, where protesters poured into the streets after mourning two anti-government protesters, who were killed after security forces opened fire on demonstrators.
Mass anti-government protest rallies were also reported in the provinces of Amran, al-Hodayda, al-Bayda, Taiz, al-Dhalee, Lahj, Abyan and Hadramout.
Elsewhere in Yemen, at least five people have been injured after forces loyal to President Saleh armed with batons, knives and guns attacked a peaceful anti-government protest rally in al-Baeda. A child is among the injured.
The Friday protests came after President Saleh rejected an offer by opposition and religious figures for him to transfer power by the end of 2011.
In a bid to contain the protests, Saleh announced that he would leave power after his term expires in 2013. He also promised not to hand power to his son.
He has also pledged to raise wages of government employees and to provide 60,000 job opportunities for university graduates.
But the concessions do not seem to have been enough for the Yemenis, who still want Saleh’s ouster. They also want the constitution changed and demand elections in which they can have a direct say in the government line-up.
Since the beginning of demonstrations in Yemen, at least 25 people have been killed and hundreds more have been injured during clashes with security forces.
Laurent Gbagbo‘s security forces have shot dead at least six women at a demonstration in support of his rival, Alassane Ouattara.
Thanks to Saphtir for sending me this video response.
Thursday’s shooting took place after several hundred women gathered in the Abobo neighbourhood of Abidjan, the country’s commercial capital, shouting “Gbagbo, get out!” and “Alassane for president”, a resident told the AFP news agency.
Mohamed Dosso, an assistant to the mayor of Abobo, said an armoured personnel carrier and several pickup vehicles showed up as the women were protesting and opened fire.
Sirah Drane, 41, who helped organise the march, said she was holding a megaphone, preparing to address the large crowd, when she saw tanks arriving.
“There were thousands of women,” she said. “And we said to ourselves, ‘They won’t shoot at women.’ … I heard a boom. They started spraying us. … I tried to run and fell down. The others trampled me. Opening fire on unarmed women? It’s inconceivable.”
LeakSource was greatly affected by the attacks, not operational at times during the past few days. During those times, testing other WordPress blogs seemed fine, including the WordPress.com homepage.
After recovering from the largest Distributed Denial of Service attack in the service’s history (“multiple Gigabits per second and tens of millions of packets per second”) yesterday morning, blog host WordPress.comwas attacked again very early this morning, finally stabilizing its service at 11:15 UTC (around 3:15 am PST).
WordPress.com serves 18 million sites, many of them news sites like our own, which lead some to conjecture that the attacks had come from the Middle East, a region experiencing its own Internet issues at the moment. Not so says Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg, who tells me that 98% of the attacks over the past two days originated in China with a small percentage coming from Japan and Korea.
According to Mullenweg one of the targeted sites was a Chinese-language site operating on WordPress.com which also appears to be blocked on Baidu, China’s major search engine. WordPress.com doesn’t know exactly why the site was targeted and won’t release the name until it does. Based on the extent of the attacks Mullenweg tells me that they appear to be politically motivated.
“WordPress.com was hit with a another wave of attacks today (the fourth in two days) that caused issues again. This time we were able to recover more quickly, and also determined one of the targets to be a Chinese-language site which appears to be also blocked on Baidu. The vast majority of the attacks were coming from China (98%) with a little bit of Japan and Korea mixed in.”
While Mullenweg tells me that DDoS attacks are fairly common at WordPress.com but its the strength of its infrastructure (distributed across three data centers in three cities) usually prevents anyone from noticing. The recent attacks have impacted not just WordPress.com sites, other servers in the same part of the network causing the outages. WordPress.com is collaborating with upstream providers to shift the attacks.
Says Mullenweg, “Right now there are huge asymmetric risks on the internet because any bad actor, for a few tens of thousands of dollars, has the online equivalent of a dirty nuke and can bring even the largest sites to their knees and silence millions of voices.”
WordPress.com isn’t the only one suffering from recent DDoS attacks, a slew of South Korean sites also took a hit during the same time period.
Thousands of Iraqi citizens in Baghdad and other provinces took to the streets on Friday, March 4th, calling for reforms in their country and denouncing weak services, incompetence of officials and corruption.
Iraqi Health Ministry affirmed on Friday that protests ended peacefully with no death and serious injuries reported in exception for two minor injuries in Basra Province.
Health Ministry delegations in Baghdad and Iraqi Provinces reported no casualties due to the protests of March 4, the Ministry’s official spokeswoman Hawraa’ Abdullah told Alsumaria News.
PressTV:
Hundreds of people marched in Sadr city, chanting anti-US slogans and denouncing what they called Washington’s risky interference in the region.
A number of politicians were among the protesters. The Friday prayer leader, Suhail Al Eqabi called on the people of Libya and Bahrain to be wary of US intervention.
Iraqis are deeply opposed to any military intervention by the US or any other country in Libya. Many believe they have experienced, first hand, what a trail of destruction a war can leave behind.
Anti-US sentiments run high and a lot of people blame Washington for the political difficulties their country has been going through.
Foreign interference aside, most Iraqis are frustrated with a lack of improvement in their daily lives.
Here is an update on the entire situation in Iraq from 11 am-1 pm. Thanks to @hamzoz for reporting.
Translation:
I am Hamzoz from Iraq. I am currently headed to Tahrir Square, Where the Facebook youth organized protests in the 4th of March; persisting on the demands we are requesting from the Iraqi government and demanding reform of the regime. The Army is scattered everywhere. Aircraft are flying everywhere. Also, the Army is banning any water battles to enter the square, and any personal cameras that are not approved. Moreover, they banned us from carrying any sign/banner mentioning the violations that happened last Friday from the Riot control/anti-vandalism movements and the Iraqi army.
Translation:
I am Hamzoz, now from Tahrir Square in Baghdad. Today the protesters are putting forward their requests, anti-riots forces are blocking the entries and exits of the square. Now all the roads towards the Green Area are closed where the politics are gathered. A moment ago, someone with a mask, anonymous, put a stone in a bag and said it was a Molotov Cocktail but the protesters are strong, they staid where they were, they took the bags and showed the rocks and said, “Wrong, Wrong, Wrong” “No to terrorism” “Peaceful, Peaceful.”
Translation:
I am hamzzoz from Altahreer square in Baghdad, the number of protesters is growing here, thousands are gathering now around the Statue of Freedom, and i can see around 500 are coming to join the protests, security forces today stopped the journalists from going back to their head offices to broadcast what they have been recording from the protests, and there is only 5 TV Channels broadcasting live from here though it broadcast one hour late and only pictures without a sound, this is a disturbance for the media from covering the peaceful protests in Iraq and the security are now requesting protesters to evacuate Tahreer square an hour from now which is 2 pm in Baghdad, thank you.
A directive went out to public servants late last year that “Government of Canada” in federal communications should be replaced by the words “Harper Government.”
Public servants from four different line departments told The Canadian Press the instruction came from “the Centre” — meaning the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office that serves the prime minister.
None would speak on the record for fear of retribution. It’s a well-grounded concern given the treatment of a senior government scientist who was fired in 2006 after rebelling against a directive to use “Canada’s New Government” in government communications.
Andrew Okulitch was subsequently reinstated after his story went public, and the Conservatives finally retired the “Canada’s New Government” handle after 21 months in office.
The “Harper Government” moniker rose to prominence in 2009, when its use was noted in light of a controversy over Conservative MPs posing with giant, mock government cheques bearing the party logo and MPs’ signatures. The mock cheques were consigned to the dust bin, and the “Harper Government” handle went into partial hibernation.
Since December, the “Harper Government” has returned with a vengeance, sprouting like mushrooms across departmental communications.
Scores of recent news releases — from the Canada Revenue Agency to Fisheries and Oceans, Finance, International Trade, Health Canada and Industry Canada — are all headlined by “Harper Government” actions.
Even the Treasury Board Secretariat is using the term.
Treasury Board is the federal department charged with policing government communications policy, including the Federal Identity Program — which to a layman’s eyes appears to forbid such off-handed personalization in government titles.
Among other things, the policy states that “the criteria for creating an applied title include that it must: incorporate the word Canada or appear with the words Government of Canada….”
Indeed, journalists routinely use the “Harper government” to describe Conservative government actions. But the moniker’s employment by the government itself is raising hackles among more than just some straight-laced civil servants.
“It is one thing for journalists or even the public to use the more partisan ‘Harper government,’ but it is another thing for the state to equate the Government of Canada with the leader of the governing party,” said Jonathon Rose, a specialist in political communications at Queen’s University.
He notes such language is expressly forbidden under an Ontario law that prohibits partisanship in government messaging.
“The effect of this subtle framing just before an election is to equate government with Harper,” said Rose. “It creates a perception of a natural affinity between one party’s leader and the act of governing.”
The Harper-centric messaging prompted Rose to recall French King Louis XIV and his 17th century divine right of kings: “L’Etat, c’est moi,” quipped the political scientist. “The state is me.”
But Mel Cappe, a former clerk of the Privy Council, finds nothing amusing in the development.
“It is not the Harper Government,” Cappe said in an interview, tersely enunciating each word. “It is the Government of Canada.
“It’s my government and it’s your government.”
Cappe said the usage brings to mind Harper’s own quip of last summer on the Arctic tundra: “I make the rules,” Harper told journalists after he disembarked from an all-terrain vehicle.
“What this shows is the hubris of this government’s approach,” said Cappe, president of the Institute for Research in Public Policy in Montreal.
“We are governed by laws. Not by men. This is trying to change that.”
Peter Aucoin, an expert in public administration at Dalhousie University, also said the “Harper Government” branding exercise should be belled for public consideration.
“It’s the executive abusing the powers of government for purely partisan reasons. Period,” said Aucoin.
Joe Warmington of the Toronto Sun writes, “So when are we going to start seeing the massive billboards erected? How about a Harper coin? We could have the loonie, toonie and for a $3 coin call it the Harpoonie. Perhaps there should be a statue, or 10? Or even some Harper Palaces?
It worked for Saddam Hussein, the Ayatollah, Lenin and even Gaddafi — at least for a while.”
