Protests continue for the 14th day in Egypt. Al Jazeera's Arabic language channel showed protesters saying they will not leave Tahrir Square in Cairo until Mubarak steps down and reported that the army is trying to close off the square.

Iran's Arabic language channel, Al Alam, reported that protest leaders have formed a unified group called the "Youth of the Egyptian Revolution." The group said they will continue protesting until all of their demands are met, including Mubarak's resignation. According to Al Alam, the Muslim Brotherhood said their talks with the regime had failed.

Egyptian state television, Nile TV, reported that Egyptian Prime Minister Dr. Ahmed Shafiq believes it would be "unacceptable" for Mubarak to step down and that the regime was necessary to maintain stability for the next few months. He also said the army is not disturbing the protests and is only there for security. Nile TV also reported that the government approved a draft bill that would increase military and government employee salaries by 15 percent by April.

According to the BBC Arabic channel, U.S. President Barack Obama told Fox News that the Muslim Brotherhood is not the majority in Egypt. Press TV, the English language channel from Iran, showed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's first speech since the demonstrations began in Egypt. He supports the Egyptian protesters, saying they are "restoring the dignity of Arab people," and criticized the United States for supporting dictatorships.

Lebanon's New TV looked back at the life of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. They recount his career and the protests that led up to his 1981 assassination, which left his Vice President Hosni Mubarak in power.

Dubai TV reports that violence has erupted in Tunisia, including in the northwest city of Kef where youth set a police station on fire and the army was deployed in the streets. They also said protests broke out in Algeria, where youth unemployment is 20 percent.

For a number of Arab countries, including Bahrain, Jordan, and Egypt, 2010 witnessed yet another round of disappointing parliamentary elections.  

In all three countries, ruling parties faced serious competition from the opposition. However, as elections neared and campaigns heated up, the undermining of opposition parties intensified. The authoritarian regimes' methods ranged from media censorship and mass arrests to violent crackdowns.

On October 23, 2010, Bahrain, the only Gulf state that allows political organizations known as "societies," held its third parliamentary elections. The predominantly Shiite Gulf state, ruled by a Sunni government, managed to pull off a reasonably free but unfair election. Granted, no reports of direct electoral fraud emerged after the election but it was preceded by a crackdown on government critics, a clampdown on the media, the intimidation of opposition members, and arrest of prominent activists.

Undeterred, the Shiite-led Wefaq Party participated and swept 18 of the 40-seat Council of Representatives. But for Bahrain’s Shiite majority that has long complained of discrimination in accessing government jobs and housing, the election did not lead to a change in the political makeup of the government since the members of the upper house, Bahrain’s main legislative body, are directly appointed by the king.

Unlike Bahrain where main opposition group Al-Wefaq and Sunni Islamist groups Al-Asalah and Al-Menbar participated in the elections, Egypt and Jordan’s opposition parties chose to boycott theirs. The hope that elections in those two countries might provide a glimpse into democratization in the Middle East were quickly dashed as the rigging or manipulation of the vote was carefully crafted long before election day. 

On November 9, 2010, Jordan held parliamentary elections that were also perceived as free but unfair. The Jordanian government passed a new electoral law earlier that year that was viewed by the opposition as favoring tribal allegiances at the expense of political and social platforms. This led the Muslim Brotherhood and its political wing, the Islamic Action Front, to boycott the elections citing a “lack of genuine desire for reform” on the part of the government.

As a result, loyalists to Jordan's King Abdullah II and tribal-affiliated candidates won most of the upper and lower house seats. And although the boycott damaged the credibility of the elections, the royal family was able to cling on to power domestically while preserving its democratic image internationally.

On November 28, 2010, Egypt held its parliamentary elections after violently clamping down on the opposition. In the weeks and months leading up to the parliamentary election, the government carried out wide-scale sweeps, targeting members and supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Despite the latter's participation in the first round, it failed to secure any seats, citing vote rigging, fraud and ballot stuffing. 

Both the liberal Wafd Party and the Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the run-off round on December 5, 2010 and with 97 percent control of the People's Assembly, President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party managed to further tighten its grip on power in Egypt.

The electoral farce held in Bahrain, Jordan, and Egypt is part of what has become a familiar political game aimed at diffusing Arab anger and frustration with stagnating and unpopular regimes. Indeed, Arabs are growing tired of meaningless elections that merely offer a facade for change but leave them even more cynical about the possibility of a democratic transition of power.  

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index for 2010 classified all three countries as “authoritarian” and the Middle East and North Africa region as the most repressive globally. How much longer will these crumbling regimes be able to quell popular mobilization? And if boycotting campaigns keep on failing to delegitimize these regimes, one has to wonder what opposition parties will do next.

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2010 could go down in history as the year of natural and environmental disasters. We’ve witnessed earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, wildfires and a drought in Russia, a devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and now one fifth of Pakistan is submerged under water due to floods leaving more than 20 million people without potable water, food, shelter and medicine.

The United Nations general secretary, Ban Ki-moon, called this latest disaster a “slow-motion tsunami,” and appealed for swift aid.

"Make no mistake, this is a global disaster," Ban said at the UN general assembly. "Pakistan is facing a slow-motion tsunami. Its destructive powers will accumulate and grow with time," he warned.

Relief agencies say the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Pakistan is greater than this year's earthquake in Haiti; however, relief for Pakistan may be a long time coming.

"Although governments have been coming forward with increasing generosity, the public response has not been the immediate outpouring of generosity that we've seen for Haiti and the tsunami five years ago," the U.N. Under Secretary John Holmes said.

According to a CBS news report, sixteen days after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, aid commitments totaled $1.4 billion. Sixteen days after Pakistan's floods began, promises added up to just $200 million.

Yet despite the heart-wrenching television images

broadcast across the globe showing massive destruction and enormous human suffering, the world has been slow to react to calls for aid. Why has Pakistan been forsaken?

The most common answer to the slow response is “donor fatigue.” Many believe that there have been too many disasters in one year, and donors have reached their limit in giving, especially since many still suffer from the effects of the financial crisis. Another factor has been a low death toll.  But Pakistan's tarnished image plays a major role, according to a few Pakistani Americans I’ve spoken to.

“Zardari’s government is corrupt,” said Ali Khan, a financial analyst from San Jose. “Many people do not believe that their contributions will reach the right people,” he added.

Another Pakistani American I’ve spoken to placed the blame for the slow response on the anti-Muslim sentiments sweeping the Western world.

Meanwhile, the United States has pledged an additional $60 million to the U.N. flood-relief effort in Pakistan, bringing its contribution to $150 million in a move designed to encourage other governments and private donors to boost their aid.

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has pledged $124.29 million in aid for Pakistan’s flood relief campaign, surpassing the western economic giants - and Islamabad’s allies in the war against terror – according to Al Arabiya TV. The UAE has also been leading a massive relief campaign to transport food and medicine to flood-stricken remote areas in Pakistan. Oil-rich Kuwait however,  has been criticized for it’s meager $10 million contribution.

Arab media has given the crisis extensive coverage and has played a major role in creating awareness during the holy month of Ramadan, a month known for giving.

Weather forecasts indicate that there could be four more weeks of rain, which could exasperate the situation even further.

We at Link TV have a set up a page on our website to keep you updated with the news in Pakistan and provide you with a useful guide so that you too can contribute in some way in the saving and rebuilding of lives there.

Get the latest updates and find out what you can do to help

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"The buck stops with me," declared President Obama on Thursday as he spoke about the results of an internal investigation into the failed Christmas Day airline bombing attempt. The president avoided blaming any particular agency or official for the security failures that allowed Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board an American airliner heading from Amsterdam to Detroit wearing explosives in his underpants.

Now, after the fact, this incident has sparked a renewed interest in Yemen, a country I warned about as a "powder keg" back in August, and a slew of new security measures at airports to make our travel experience more miserable than it currently is. Travelers will soon get used to going through full-body scanners, like they have gotten used to taking off their shoes at security checkpoints at airports, ever since Richard Reid, aka the shoe-bomber, tried unsuccessfully to take down another airliner in late 2001. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda and other groups will try to find other methods to bypass the new security measures until they succeed.

Last summer, Abdullah Asieri, one of Saudi Arabia's most wanted men, avoided detection by two sets of airport security including metal detectors and palace security, by borrowing a trick from the Columbian cartel. Asieri had a pound of high explosives, plus a detonator inserted in his rectum. His target was Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, head of Saudi Arabia's counter terrorism operations. The bomb was remotely detonated via a cellular phone call, but the Prince miraculously was left lightly wounded. The assassination attempt failed, but al-Qaeda managed to defeat security.

The US security failure is not at airports, but rather with overseas intelligence agencies. The President did not name the agency, but I will: the CIA, which has done a shoddy job of gathering information in Arab and Muslim countries and has relied heavily on information provided by security agencies of corrupt and despotic regimes.

What Americans should be worried about is not the few failed attempts by the likes of Reid or Abdulmutallab, but rather by what happened recently with the suicide bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a medical doctor who had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence and then agreed to work for the CIA. He was assigned a Jordanian handler who had a close working relationship with the CIA and was subsequently sent to Afghanistan to help locate top al-Qaeda leaders. In reality, he was also a jihadist sent to infiltrate US intelligence: a "triple agent!"

The reason this succeeded is due to the fact that Afghanistan is an intelligence nightmare, and the CIA does not have enough Arabic or Pashto speakers on the ground. This is also the case in Yemen, Somalia, and Northern Africa, a fact that was confirmed to me by a former CIA employee. Many of he CIA's so-called Middle East specialists lack the language skills needed to analyze the material provided to them and rely on translations, which, as part of my experience producing a news show from the Middle East, I have discovered can be misleading and inaccurate. Many CIA agents are no different than those so-called experts on al-Qaeda that one sees on CNN or FOX news.

This latest infiltration of the CIA is worse than a thousand Abdulmutallabs, and will certainly cause a setback to the agency for years to come, something that the President did not talk about.

Article first published on the Huffington Post

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