Weekend Links: Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and others

One of the things that amazed me most about the Egypt uprising was that they shut down the internet. They just shut it off. I couldn’t believe that was possible but the Egyptian government just did it!

Then I was even more amazed to learn that the people actually favor the military, and that the military is going to try and steer the country towards democracy. They can get absolute control, but they will do what’s good for their country – I sure hope it happens.

But the thing that I find most amazing is how it all started in Tunisia with one frustrated young man burning himself alive, and how quickly it has spread to other countries with no one able to predict what is going to happen.

Here is a very good piece from the Economist titled The Autumn of Patriarchs which gives a very good account of what happened in Egypt.

Bahrain is engulfed in a lot of tension right now, and this NYT article provides a very good account on what’s going on there right now, and how the military is firing on its own people. The situation there is improving though, and today’s NYT has accounts of the army pulling back.

Bahrain is not alone in its strife though; this brief Reuters article reports grim news from Libya.

Closer to home, here is John Elliot’s excellent piece on the rare press conference by Dr. Manmohan Singh.

I guess people everywhere are tired of their governments and weirdest example of this that I’ve come across in a while is in Brazil where a clown has won the election, and that too with a landslide!

His election slogan was “It can’t get any worse” and he planned to do nothing more than report how other politicians spent their time!

Here is the Reuters piece on that.

Just so that I have one link relevant to the topics I usually discuss here I’m going to share Hemant Beniwal’s piece on the Reliance Gold Mutual Fund – this piece has great info on the mutual fund, and more than that it has got a lot of insight on why you’re mostly on your own when it comes to managing your finances.

Oh, and I almost forgot to congratulate the Indian team for their first win of the world cup. Sreesanth was the only real hope Bangladesh had after India made 370, but luckily he didn’t get to bowl his full quota today.

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