In Yemen, police have arrested a woman suspected of posting the packages.
She was detained in the capital, Sanaa, after being traced through a telephone number she had left with a cargo company, officials said.
The unnamed young woman, described as a medical student and the daughter of a petroleum engineer, was arrested along with her mother on the outskirts of the city, a security official told AFP news agency.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh said the US and the United Arab Emirates had provided Yemen with information that helped identify the woman and pledged that his country would continue fighting al-Qaeda "in co-operation with its partners".
"But we do not want anyone to interfere in Yemeni affairs by hunting down al-Qaeda," he added, as heavily armed troops patrolled Sanaa.
The Yemeni authorities also closed down the local offices of the US cargo firms UPS and FedEx, who had already suspended all shipments out of the country and pledged full co-operation with investigators.
US President Barack Obama's national security adviser, John Brennan, has phoned Mr Saleh to offer US help in fighting al-Qaeda, the White House said.
The US authorities have been impressed by the speed and determination the Yemeni authorities have shown in their response, the BBC's Jon Leyne reports from Cairo.
The explosive devices, which triggered security alerts in the US, UK and Middle East, were apparently both inserted in printer cartridges and placed in packages addressed to synagogues in the Chicago area.
Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) - an explosive favoured by the Yemeni-based militant group, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - was discovered in the device intercepted in Dubai.
Mr Obama discussed the apparent terrorist plot with Mr Cameron by phone on Saturday, expressing his "appreciation for the professionalism of American and British services involved" in disrupting it, the White House said.
'Professional manner'
Later, Mr Cameron told reporters at his country residence, Chequers, that it was believed the explosive device intercepted at East Midlands Airport was "designed to go off on the aeroplane".
David Cameron: "We believe the device was designed to go off on the aeroplane"
"We cannot be sure about when that was supposed to take place," he added.
"There is no early evidence that it was meant to take place over British soil, but of course we cannot rule it out."
The prime minister said the authorities had immediately banned packages coming to or through the UK from Yemen, and would be "looking extremely carefully at any further steps we have to take".
UK Home Secretary Theresa May said the government did not believe the plotters would have known the location of the device when it was planned to explode.
While details of the device found in Britain were not released, photographs emerged on the US media of an ink toner cartridge covered in white powder and connected to a circuit board.
The British government's remarks suggest the authorities in both the UK and the US remain uncertain about the precise targets and, indeed, aim of this latest apparent plot, BBC defence and security correspondent Nick Childs reports.
Parcels could be seen stacked outside Sanaa airport on Saturday
According to Dubai police, the explosives they found were also inside the toner cartridge of a printer, placed in a cardboard box containing English-language books and souvenirs.
The cartridge contained PETN and plastic explosives mixed with lead azide, they said. Lead azide is an explosive commonly used in detonators.
"The device was prepared in a professional manner and equipped with an electrical circuit linked to a mobile telephone [Sim] card concealed in the printer," the police said.
For US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the plot bore "all the hallmarks of al-Qaeda and in particular [AQAP]".
Unnamed US officials quoted by the Associated Press said al-Qaeda's explosives expert in Yemen, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, was the likely suspect behind the bomb-making.
They said Mr Asiri had helped make the bomb used in the failed Detroit Christmas bomb attack and another PETN device used in a failed suicide attack against a top Saudi counter-terrorism official last year.
The White House has said Saudi Arabia provided information that helped identify the threat, while the UK's Daily Telegraph reported that an MI6 officer responsible for Yemen had received a tip-off.
How the alerts were raised (all times GMT):
• Early hours of Friday morning: alert raised at East Midlands airport after suspect package found on UPS plane. Security cordon put in place, then lifted.
• 0900: suspect package found on FedEx plane in Dubai.
• 1300: security cordon reinstated at East Midlands airport, apparently after a second suspect device is found.
• 1700: FBI says two suspect packages were addressed to religious buildings in Chicago.
• 1835: Emirates Flight 201 from Yemen via Dubai lands at JFK airport, New York, escorted by US fighter jets. The plane is carrying a package from Yemen.
• 1845: FedEx in Dubai confirms it has confiscated a suspect package sent from Yemen and is suspending all shipments from Dubai.
• 1900: two other FedEx flights investigated after landing at Newark, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. Both receive the all-clear.
• 2330: BA flight from London to New York (JFK) met by US officials as a "precautionary measure".
WASHINGTON -- Tens of thousands of people are expected to flood the National Mall on Saturday for the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear -- which raises the question, so what?Is this event mere entertainment,... Read more
Seward Deli--Haven for writers like me... Topic: seward deli, biodun iginla
Seward Deli at East Franklin Avenue is now this reporter's office until February 2011 when yours truly file for Social Security payments when am 62..wouldn't wait till when am 65..coz SS might not be around then...
....then i'm off to London peramently...
love to all at Seward Deli..especially Leo, Sean (whio loaned me a buck for the bus one night)...and all else...
At a small table between stacks of paperbacks and beneath an enormous map of the world in Minneapolis' Franklin Library, fifth grader Bintou Dibba concentrates on her homework for the next day. Homework Hub volunteer tutor Peg Hoff, newly semi-retired from 34 years as an educator with the Burnsville School District, leans in to help Dibba with questions about story problems and long division.MORE »
Received an email that October 13 the Twin Cities' favorite Rasta bard, David Daniels, on his way up from Denver to perform in Duluth (partnering with folk-blues icon Charlie Parr) would stop off in Minneapolis to put in an appearance at, of all place, BarFly. I wasn't quite sure I was reading what was right in front of my eyes. David Daniels at BarFly is like Bob Marley, for instance, playing at Studio 54. You just don't see this firebrand, counterculture maverick holding forth at a disco-type venue. But, there it is. Daniels on the bill with a slew of other notables (including host MJ Kroll), working gratis, to a benefit for fellow area luminary and equally self-defining spirit Jazzy J, founder of the Internet station Twin Cities Radio. Both, it happens, are contending with cancer.MORE »
Election Integrity Watch, a coalition of groups including Minnesota Majority and the North Star Tea Party Patriots, filed suit in district court on Thursday afternoon against the state of Minnesota to allow their members to wear “Please ID Me” buttons and tea party t-shirts at polling places throughout the state.MORE »
A cluster of church-goers carefully climb the University Avenue steps to Holy Cross, as most of the group are both wobbly and deliberate on their feet.MORE »
For a music fan, writing about Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979) is a bit like a theater fan writing about Shakespeare. What more could you possibly say that hasn't already been written thousands of times before? I'll admit right off the bat thatThe Wall has never been one of my favorite Pink Floyd albums. Like almost every double album, it's a bit bloated and overdone in spots, but that's exactly what makes it so successful and engaging in the live setting.MORE »
As frontman Torquil Campbell acknowledged on Wednesday night, it's intimidating to be a band called Starsarriving at First Avenue, a club decorated in stars "with the names of bands a lot better than us." That's far from being entirely true, but unfortunately Stars failed to muster much of a challenge, playing a glossy set in which bright lights and bubbles distracted from the heartbreaking songs that have rightly earned the Canadian indie rockers a raft of critical acclaim.MORE »
Strong signs from the past couple of weeks suggest the economic recovery is gaining force and, at long last, American companies are again creating jobs at home, not just overseas.MORE »
The posters for Edgar Wright's wonderful comic book adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World came with the tagline, "An epic of epic of epicness." It was all too appropriate, given that film's attitude towards its clichéd, hipster doofus of a main character. Take that same line, but drop the irony, totally literalize it, and you have a perfect fit for Olivier Assayas's latest film, Carlos, screening this weekend at the Walker Art Center as the closing film in the director's month-long retrospective.MORE »
Ramsey County Sheriff: Bob Fletcher vs. Matt Bostrom by Lawrence Schumacher, TC Daily Planet The controversial head of law enforcement in Ramsey County for the last 16 years is facing another significant election challenge from a high-ranking officer in the St. Paul Police Department this year.
Minnesota Latino voters organize, Latino restaurant says no to Emmer by Jessie Lieb, TC Daily Planet Last week, a Latino restaurant owner told Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer that he didn't want Emmer's business. Oscar Reyes, owner of Las Mojarras restaurant on Lake Street, received a call scheduling an event for Saturday October 23 at his restaurant. Reyes was unaware that this event was a campaign rally for Emmer until he began receiving angry phone calls from Latino community members. They asked why he was hosting an event for Emmer, and cited Emmer's previous anti-immigration stances. After learning what the event was, Reyes cancelled it.
Beyond Independence: The fourth, fifth, or sixth parties in Minnesota's 2010 election by Mary Turck, TC Daily Planet While Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner is making a strong third-party showing in opinion polls and enjoying substantial media attention, several fourth, fifth or sixth parties are struggling for any media time or recognition in Minnesota's 2010 elections.
MUSIC | Bruce in the USA prove it all Tuesday night at Bunker's by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet Bruce in the USA are "as close as you can get to seeing the real thing in concert," says the band's website. True enough, and in some ways—not all ways, but in some ways—it may be even better.
New districts, new candidates for Minneapolis school board by Lawrence Schumacher, TC Daily Planet No matter what the result, Minneapolis' Public Schools Board of Education will look quite different after next month's election than it does now.
MUSIC | Sleigh Bells come as they are at the Triple Rock by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet While one stream of popular music has been maturing over the past couple millennia, another has been immaturing. The first reached puberty with-what? Monteverdi?-and the second may have finally attained its spurting climax of primal devolution with Sleigh Bells, the New York duo who brought their shuddering eruption of pop to the Triple Rock on Monday night.
MUSIC | "A high five goes off inside of me": The Dandy Warhols' Courtney Taylor-Taylor on his favorite things by Natalie Gallagher, TC Daily Planet I caught up with lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor over the phone on Thursday afternoon, fully prepared to ask him a slew of questions about music, and found him surprisingly chatty about everything from the new album to fine wines and classic literature. For the record, Taylor-Taylor's speaking voice is just as enigmatic as you would want it to be, and music legend or not, it wasn't hard to hold down a conversation—albeit a very tangential one.
THEATER | BLM/Seifert/Flink CREATE a beautiful but hollow Woyzeck Project by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet The Woyzeck Project is the Avatar of experimental theater. The site-specific work for which Luverne Seifert, Carl Flink, and Michael Sommers (under the ad hoc name of BLM/Seifert/Flink CREATE) have taken over the entirety of the Southern Theater and much of the surrounding area is a tremendous technical achievement in scope and vision-a technical achievement that's reason enough the see the show, which from a purely dramatic standpoint is disappointing.
VISUAL ARTS | With the Void, Full Powers: At the Walker Art Center, Yves Klein is forever blue by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet It would be going a little too far to call Yves Klein's death at the age of 34, in 1962, a "career move," but as the exhibitWith the Void, Full Powers—at the Walker Art Center through February 13-and its elegant catalog make clear, Klein had moved so swiftly and effectively toward immateriality in art during his seven-year career that for the artist to take the next step and become immaterial himself seems perfectly consistent. With Klein himself gone, we are left with only the idea of Klein and the relatively few, but transcendent, objects he left behind.
THEATER | U of M Theatre Arts Department ventures intoUndiscovered Country at Rarig by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet Any play about deceptive games of the heart, about sexual charades, is bound to bring to mind Les Liaisons Dangerouses—and for good reason. Pierre Choderos de Laclos's whip-tight plot, admirably adapted for the stage and screen (Dangerous Liaisons) by Christopher Hampton, is the definitive statement on the intersection of love, lust, and honor. Arthur Schnitzler's Das Weite Land is no Les Liaisons, but as adapted by Tom Stoppard, it's a dark and potentially thrilling venture into the same territory. Stoppard's version, Undiscovered Country, is well-served by the production currently playing at the Rarig Center under the aegis of the University of Minnesota's Department of Theatre Arts and Dance.
THEATER | The House of Spirits gets an unmissable bilingual production at Mixed Blood by Bev Wolfe, TC Daily Planet Mixed Blood's latest production, The House of Spirits, is an engrossing tale of torture and human rights as well as a compelling family saga. The play is written by Caridad Svich and is based upon the novel by Isabel Allende, the niece of President Salvador Allende, a freely elected Maxist president who was killed during a military overthrow of his government in Chile in the 1970s.
BOOKS | David Sedaris shows his animal side at the State Theatre by Natalie Gallagher, TC Daily Planet "I am experimenting with the sweater vest," announced David Sedaris after he thanked the audience at the State Theatre for coming on Thursday night. Indeed, he was wearing one, and he quickly set the mood for the evening as the audience rippled with laughter. (For the record, he looked very much like an interesting and dynamic author, not like Mr. Rogers.)
THEATER | MMT's Evil Dead musical: Less blood, but still filling by Becca Mitchell, TC Daily Planet I challenge you not to be intrigued by the thought of Evil Dead: The Musical. Sure, there are plenty of Halloween-related events that pop up each year around this time, but there's something about singing demons, campy puns, fake blood—did I mention singing demons?—that my cheesy self just can't resist. And for the most part, the Minneapolis Musical Theatre's area premiere of the musical, now playing at Illusion Theater, delivers on all expectations except, surprisingly, the gore. Which begs the question, should this musical be renamed Evil Dead: Lite?
MUSIC | The Script stick to it at the State Theatre by Kate Gallagher, TC Daily Planet Friday night's lineup at the State Theatre featured Irish trio The Script and opening act Hugo, who played to a full house of nearly 2,200 people. I arrived excited to see The Script in concert and curious about Hugo, who is touring the U.S. for the first time. This was The Script's second visit to Minneapolis. In August 2009 they played the Triple Rock, which Mark Sheehan (lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and backing vocals) described as "somebody's living room."
Frogtown residents discuss Promise Neighborhood future by Andrea Richards, TC Daily Planet More than forty people nearly filled the cafeteria of Jackson Elementary School October 14 for a discussion of community development initiatives. The meeting was one of many similar neighborhood meetings, this one being the first regarding the Promise Neighborhood Project since Saint Paul received the grant on September 21.
Spero's social conscience shapes business plans by A.J. MacDonald, TC Daily Planet "Social responsibility in entrepreneurship. That's what we're all about," said Rebecca Brandt-Fontaine, General Contractor of Spero Properties, LLC, a home remodeling company working to revitalize housing in the Twin Cities.
Remodeling St. Paul: The Foundry on Raymond by Jeannette Fordyce, TC Daily Planet The Foundry on Raymond Avenue in St. Paul was under furious construction on September 28 as finishing carpenters and painters worked to make their September 30 deadline
Twin Cities group plans for urban agriculture future by Jeanette Fordyce, TC Daily Planet Gardening Matters, an independent organization dedicated to community gardeners, convened a meeting of 65 people on October 10 at the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis to plan for the future of urban agriculture in the Twin Cities.
NEW IN BLOGS
FRONT ROW SEAT | My grandmother, New Ulm, and the life of a community by Jay Gabler • NEW ULM, MINNESOTA—As I write, I'm sitting on a balcony under a white drop-panel sky, overlooking the ersatz Bavarian street that is the hallway of the New Ulm Holiday Inn, with a German flag hanging over the Rhine and Danube conference rooms. In just over an hour, the alarm will ring and we'll get dressed to lay my grandmother Rosalie Grossmann to rest.
THINK FORWARD | Health disparities and neighborhoods by Ben Lilliston • The Twin Cities are lot like other parts of the U.S. when it comes to health. "Health is strongly connected to race, income and the specific parts of the metro area in which people live in," according to a report released earlier this month by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation of Minnesota.
POKING AROUND | The Uptake journalists banned in Edina by Mary Treacy • The intrepid crew from The Uptake hit its first bump in the transparency world this week when the Edina Chamber of Commerce banned all video and audio recording from Wednesday's debate between candidates Erik Paulsen and Jim Meffert.
A PARALLEL UNIVERSE | My U of M football coach application (and response) by Chuck Turchick • I would bring my unblemished record as a football coach—I have never coached football—to the University. I did, however, coach the all-star basketball team of the Minneapolis Jewish Community Center. I remember Lou Holtz once said, "We may be small, but we're slow."
CRAZY BOY FARM | One almost-large family's dance of coats by Amy Doeun • Overnight we have been plunged into winter. Yesterday was my first prenatal since becoming overdue and rumor has it that the large winter storm that came through last night and is still lingering today will effect the barometric pressure so much that all the babies due within a couple weeks will be born before Halloween. I can only hope.
OUTSIDE THE WALLS | What's at stake next Tuesday by Dick Bernard • I vote absentee as I'm an election judge next Tuesday. This morning I was looking at my absentee ballot for November 2. There are 109 candidates for 42 positions. It is a daunting, impossible task to know everything about everyone. A group of us are collaborating to find out who might know something about some of the more obscure races in our area, like for city council. One can't research everything. But being as well-informed as possible IS everything. Few take the time to be informed, and it is a danger to our democracy.
HINDSIGHT 2020 | For some cities, it's easier being green by Mina Bakhtiar • National Geographic recently came out with its America's "greenest" cities list; St. Paul ranked near the top at #4. Before capital city residents pat ourselves on the back, we should analyze St. Paul's unique factors that helped us make the list.
The Twin Cities Daily Planet is a project of the Twin Cities Media Alliance 2600 East Franklin Avenue Minneapolis, MN, 55406
Commentary: Managing decline Topic: us empire, bbc news, biodun igin
Published: Oct. 29, 2010 at 10:18 AM
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 -- Is the world balance of power shifting away from the West and moving to India and China? That's what a number of geopolitical sages are discussing in think tanks from Moscow to Beijing to London to Washington.
In a joint SOS piece in the November-December issue of Foreign Affairs, former U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman and the President of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass, warned U.S. leaders to curb "the current debt addiction -- or global capital markets will do it for them." An age of austerity and draconian belt tightening -- and sudden decline in U.S. power – is upon us. Gridlocked Congress, fiscal train wreck, climbing without a rope, all the stuff of headlines the world over.
The political move to center stage of satirical humorist Jon Stewart with his mass "Rally to Restore Sanity" is seen by some as throwback to the collapse of Germany's post-World War I Weimar Republic.
But where can the United States afford to disengage and leave heavy geopolitical lifting to regional powers? In some key areas, U.S. power remains indispensable for the indefinite future. The Persian Gulf and its huge oil resources are at the top of the list.
North Korea, faced with total economic collapse, is unpredictable and makes a U.S. Army division-plus an indispensable tripwire in South Korea. Everything else is marginal -- and debatable.
America's global military footprint (outside of Iraq and Afghanistan) tops $250 billion a year. There are still 200 U.S. military facilities in Germany 65 years after World War II. U.S. military hospitals for U.S. casualties in transit from Afghanistan and Iraq as an intermediary stage home are important. All else is marginal. If CENTCOM and SOCOM can be in Tampa, Fla., why not EUCOM in Norfolk, Va., where NATO's Atlantic command is based?
World War II hastened the end of the British Empire but it took several decades to manage its decline. The partition of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947 triggered a bloodbath that took 1 million lives.
There were several more last gasps of empire before a British government decided in October to live within its means, slashing defense to where it could no longer be used to defend the Falkland Islands against another Argentine invasion, as it did successfully in 1982.
In the mid-1950s, British-controlled Aden was the world's largest bunkering port, servicing traffic in and out of the Red Sea and Suez Canal. But in 1967, Britain took another drubbing as it exited Aden, then, a year later, London, under Laborite Harold Wilson, gave up all its commitments and obligations east of Suez, from the canal to the Persian Gulf to Singapore. It took another 10 years to turn over Hong Kong to its original owner.
From Oman, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, all the way up to Kuwait, Britain kept the peace until 1972 with the British officered "Trucial Oman Scouts" for a total annual outlay of $40 million. The Nixon Doctrine succeeded Pax Britannica in the gulf and the Shah of Iran became America's proxy.
Instead, the shah was overthrown in 1979 and a hostile, obscurantist religious dictatorship has kept the rest of the gulf in psychological thrall ever since.
The French empire unraveled with 16 years of rearguard fighting (1946-54; 1954-62) -- eight years in Indochina, followed by a six-month break before another eight years of warfare in Algeria. World War II hero Charles de Gaulle rode to the rescue and managed decline by putting France on the road to modernity -- with nuclear weapons and a new high-tech vision of the future (that produced the Caravel and the supersonic Concorde).
Is the time at hand for a new leader to manage the decline of the modern American empire? Iraq was clearly an expensive geopolitical illusion, a weird concoction of motives, inspired by neocons who thought they were making Israel more secure.
Precisely the opposite was achieved. Seven years and $1 trillion later, Iran now has more influence in Iraq than the United States. Its agents are also dropping off the occasional million-dollar bundle to keep Afghan President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff sweet and compliant.
Psychologically, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is more beholden to Tehran these days than to Washington. After the United States coughed up $1 trillion it didn't have to fight the Iraq War, Baghdad still has less electric power today than it had under Saddam Hussein.
None of our modern knuckle-headed empire builders, who thought they perceived Israel's interests more clearly than the rest of the country, understood that Saddam Hussein, albeit a cruel dictator, was our best defense against Iranian expansionism.
In 1980, Saddam had taken on the evil empire next door. But Iran's obscurantist zealots used teenagers with golden keys to paradise to walk across Iraqi minefields and a million dead and eight years later, the two gulf giants fought themselves to a Mexican standoff.
The decline of the American empire may be hastened by another war in the gulf -- this time triggered by Israeli and/or U.S. bombs on Iran's nuclear installations. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be pushing his luck by moving Iran's frontiers to Israel's borders -- with Hezbollah to the north in Lebanon, Syria to the east and Hamas in Gaza to the south.
Iran's medieval hawks have convinced themselves an asymmetrical gulf war would speed up the end of what they call "American imperial colonialism."
The burdens of a global Pax Americana have shunted domestic priorities off center stage. Long postponed and now increasingly urgent infrastructure projects are pending.
Bridges, roads, railroads, airports (from runways to terminals to air traffic control), schools, hospitals, all have deteriorated to what author Arianna Huffington's new book describes in the title -- "Third World America." Some $1 trillion worth of urgent infrastructure is in arrears.
The once acclaimed Acela Express in the eastern corridor is an embarrassing joke next to the high speed trains of Europe, Japan and China. A bullet train that covers the equivalent mileage of Washington-New York in 90 minutes made its debut last week on China's rapid rail network of 4,617 miles.
At the same time, the United States is awash with unemployed -- pushing 18 million if one includes those who have given up looking and whose benefits have run out. Surely this points to a domestic Marshall Plan for a high-tech renaissance. But the current political rumblings -- from the Tea Party to ultra-liberal kibitzing -- leave little hope for a quiescent phase of historical reawakening.
Meanwhile, China continues to spread its worldwide influence -- without the military. Its new supercomputer just beat America's, with a speed of 1.4 quadrillion operations per second.
President Barack Obama says two suspicious packages bound for the US appear to have contained explosive materials and constituted a "credible terrorist threat". Listen live to BBC World Service news.
Nick Rankin travels to Alaksa to experience the greatest wild salmon run on earth. He joins commercial and subsistence fishermen as they battle it out for the best catch.
In some corners of the world, our audience have listened to BBC World Service under some very difficult circumstances. With this in mind our writer in residence Hamid Ismailov asks, what is your most memorable encounter with the BBC World Service?
Some species are more important than others. In preventing extinction, why conserve one species over another? Achim Steiner, the UN's environmental chief explains.
It's disrespectful and demeaning, not only to the couple but also to everyone else who goes there and isn't from there. You have to remember that without such tourists places like this wouldn't flourish as they do. Its not the couple that is ignorant.
Breaching the great firewall Topic: blogging in china, bbc news
Blogging in China
by Xian Wan, Southeast Asia Editor for the BBC's Biodun Iginla
Home-grown microblogs are succeeding where Twitter failed
Oct 28th 2010 | BEIJING | From The Economist print edition
CHINA’S military mouthpiece, the Liberation Army Daily, is not a fan of microblogging. On October 19th it said Twitter had caused chaos during Iran’s political turmoil last year, and gave warning that such instant information-sharing tools posed “hidden dangers” to national security. Having blocked access to Twitter, however, China is encouraging home-grown versions. Both the government and its critics have become avid users.
Bloody ethnic riots in the far-western region of Xinjiang in July last year sealed the fate of Twitter and its domestic clones. The government, observing their growing popularity, feared that troublemakers in Xinjiang could use them to foment unrest. Since then Twitter has been available in China only to those with the skills to penetrate the Chinese internet’s “great firewall”. But the authorities quickly gave approval to new China-based microblogging services, or weibo, which employ armies of censors. In February even the Communist Party’s own mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, opened one.
The party’s all-powerful Publicity Department tells operators to filter postings for sensitive words. Their detection means automatic deletion. But dissidents are undeterred. News on October 8th that an imprisoned activist, Liu Xiaobo, had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize spread quickly through domestic microblogs despite the authorities’ best efforts to block it. Users wrote homonyms for Mr Liu’s name, or abbreviations in Latin characters.
Since last year, weibo use has grown rapidly. Before it was closed last July, the most popular domestic provider, Fanfou, had acquired nearly a million subscribers in two years of operation. The new leading service, Sina Weibo, says it has gained more than 20m registered users since it was launched in August 2009. Last August China Youth News, a newspaper run by the ruling party’s Communist Youth League, reported that in a nationwide survey more than 45% of people under 40 said they were frequent weibousers. More than 94% said that weibo had changed their lives.
Hu Yong of Peking University estimates that more than 10m people are weibo regulars. In an article published abroad earlier this month, he claimed that the Chinese were world leaders in microblogging, using it for everything from “social resistance” to “mailing postcards to prisoners of conscience”. Mr Hu argued that this was promoting subtle social progress rather than lighting the fuse of a “Twivolution”, but he reckoned the phenomenon was nonetheless opening up “new possibilities for reshaping China’s authoritarian regime”.
Many of the government’s most prominent critics have accounts on the blocked Twitter service as well as on weibo. One of them, Wen Yunchao (who has more than 32,000 Twitter followers), says he prefers to use weibo if he wants information to be picked up by domestic media. Some of China’s more aggressive journalists are also keen users. In September several tweeted live on the plight of two women who were hiding in an airport lavatory in Jiangxi province. Officials were trying to prevent them flying to Beijing to issue complaints to the central authorities.
But the government clearly believes that weibo can be useful, too. Security officials can use it to monitor what dissidents are up to. This week a Twitter user in the south-western city of Chongqing was said to have been detained briefly after tweeting that she was preparing to raise a banner in support of Mr Liu, the Nobel prizewinner, during an anti-Japanese demonstration. Mid-ranking officials in Beijing are being trained at the city’s Communist Party school in the art of communicating with the public through weibo.
Rebecca MacKinnon, an internet analyst, says anyone wanting to organise something “truly subversive” would not use microblogs anyway, since the government might be able to trace them. And if weibo become more threatening to the party, they can be shut down. In July China’s microblogging services relabelled themselves as “beta” versions, a possible hint that this was all just an experiment.
CommonDreams.org is an Internet-based progressive news and grassroots activism organization, founded in 1997. We are a nonprofit, progressive, independent and nonpartisan organization.
BREAKING!!!!--Obama Says Packages Bound for U.S. Contained Explosives Topic: airport security, bbc news, biod
by Melissa Gruz, US Editor for the BBC's Biodun Iginla
Fri, October 29, 2010 -- 4:36 PM ET -----
Two packages containing explosive devices originating in Yemen and addressed to two places of Jewish worship in Chicago were intercepted in Dubai and Britain, setting off a global terror alert, President Obama said at the White House on Friday.
The president called the packages a "credible threat," prompting searches of cargo planes landing at Philadelphia and Newark and a delivery truck in Brooklyn, and a military escort for an inbound passenger flight. No explosive packages were found to have reached the United States.
The printer found in Dubai had a circuit board linked to a mobile phone card 
Parcels could be seen stacked outside Sanaa airport on Saturday 
Telecommunications
© MMX
