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A construction birthday party is perfect for your little builders. So, whether you’re serving up your dirt dessert from a bright yellow dump truck or directing your crew through construction zone activities, put on your hard hat and get ready to construct some birthday fun! CONSTRUCTION BIRTHDAY PARTY INVITATIONSCAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s largest opposition group has not won a single seat in the first round of parliamentary elections with more than 40 percent of contests decided.
The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, which has alleged rampant fraud in Sunday’s vote, controls a fifth of the seats in the outgoing parliament. The leading opposition group suffered the dramatic setback after years of government crackdowns, especially during the election campaign.
The Brotherhood says it is weighing its next move and may boycott runoffs on Dec. 5, when 26 of its candidates are slated to compete.
Official results for the first round, announced late Tuesday, gave President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party 209 of 508 seats. The round decided 43 percent of seats.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
CAIRO (AP) — President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party has captured nearly all the parliament seats that were decided in a first round of voting, according to results announced Tuesday from elections that Egypt’s opposition has decried as riddled with violations.
Egypt’s largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, dismissed the results, which accounted for 43 percent of parliament’s 508 seats. The rest will be decided in runoffs on Dec. 5, but the fundamentalist Brotherhood expects to be almost entirely swept out of parliament by what it said was rampant rigging, intimidation and vote-buying — allegations echoed by rights groups.
That would be a huge blow to the most powerful opposition force, which shocked the ruling National Democratic Party in the last election in 2005 by winning 88 seats, or a fifth of parliament. A sustained government crackdown has since weakened the group, which is outlawed but fields candidates as independents.
Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie said Mubarak’s government had broken its promise to hold clean elections, but vowed his group would not resort to violence.
“We will not allow anyone to tempt us into breaking the law,” he told a news conference. “The crimes committed by the regime clearly reflect its weakness and confusion. … Whatever is built on falsehood is false,” he added. “The election is invalid.”
Results announced Tuesday showed the ruling party has so far secured 209 seats. Opposition parties won five seats and independents seven — none of them for the Brotherhood. The group has 27 members who will stand in the weekend runoffs for those contests where no candidate won more than 50 percent of votes.
Sunday’s vote has been closely watched for any indications on the political direction of Egypt ahead of a more crucial presidential election in 2011. Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for nearly 30 years and is now 82, underwent surgery earlier this year to remove a gallbladder. Many believe he is positioning his son, Gamal, to succeed him, but there is widespread public opposition to “inheritance” of power.
The ferocity of the crackdown on the Brotherhood could indicate a concern among authorities that uncertainty over Mubarak’s continued grip on power could open the way for escalating dissent in a country with widespread poverty and increasingly vocal protests over food prices, unemployment and other economic hardships. Opponents say the ruling party aimed to sweep parliament to ensure it does not become a platform for dissent.
The Obama administration said Monday it was dismayed by reports of election-day interference and intimidation by security forces — irregularities that call into question the fairness and transparency of the process. Egypt is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Tuesday that ultimately it was up to the Egyptian government to satisfy its people’s desire for broader participation in the political process.
“We will, as part of our ongoing dialogue with Egypt, continue, where we feel appropriate, to express our concerns about these kinds of developments,” Crowley said.
Egypt’s High Election Commission acknowledged a few isolated cases of fraud and violence but denied they undermined the integrity of the election. Spokesman Sameh el-Kashef told reporters Tuesday that 1.4 percent of nearly 90,000 ballot boxes were discarded due to tampering.
“While the commission deeply regrets these violations, it is satisfied and reassured that these violations didn’t impact the integrity and fairness of the results of the first round of elections,” he said.
The commission said turnout was 35 percent, considerably higher than the figure of no more than 15 percent given by most observers and rights groups.
Though it considers the election to be rigged, the Brotherhood maintains it is better to have a presence within parliament to expose Egypt’s electoral and political problems.
In the run-up to the Nov. 28 election, at least 1,400 Brotherhood supporters were arrested.
The group, founded in 1928, has been outlawed for more than 50 years, but its network of social services and participation in elections as independents has been largely tolerated by the government.
Other opposition parties leveled similar charges against the government of violating promises to hold free and fair elections.
___
Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Cairo and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
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From our newly-published blog post for the New York Review of Books:
Foreign aid observers have often worried that Western aid to Africa is?propping up autocratic regimes. Yet seldom has such a direct link from aid to political repression been demonstrated as in “Development without Freedom,” an extensively documented new report on Ethiopia by Human Rights Watch. Based on interviews with 200 people in 53 villages and cities throughout the country, the report concludes that the Ethiopian government, headed by prime minister Meles Zenawi, uses aid as a political weapon to discriminate against non-party members and punish dissenters, sending the population the draconian message that “survival depends on political loyalty to the state and the ruling party.”
The aid agencies say their?own investigations fail to find widespread evidence of the misdeeds that the report documents—withholding government-provided seeds, fertilizer and microloans from non-party members, barring suspected critics of the regime from food for work programs, and denying emergency food aid to women, children and the elderly for refusal to join the ruling party. However, some aid officials admitted to Human Rights Watch (HRW) knowing about them:
As one western donor official said, “Every tool at [the government’s] disposal—fertilizer, loans, safety net—is being used to crush the opposition. We know this.”
Our post concludes by suggesting ways that the aid community might help Ethiopians rather than their rulers.
We of course welcome alternative views, including criticisms of the HRW report and?HRW’s operations in Ethiopia.
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Seal in a low basis in TUP
In case you missed the Tupperware party during the fall season, consider this week’s 2% correction an invitation to arrive fashionably late.
The “Tupperware space” was a big winner over the past two-plus months. Since September 2, Jarden Corporation, Newell Rubbermaid, and of course Tupperware Brands have rallied 12.9 percent, 10.7 percent, and 14.2 percent, respectively. This past week, Newell and Jarden bent to the market’s force, providing opportunities for those who didn’t join the party.
Since hitting a 6-month high in October, tupperware and diversified consumer products producer Jarden Corporation are down a little over 4 percent, serving to drastically repair Jarden’s technical picture. Over that time, Jarden’s relative strength index (RSI) has improved from an overbought position above 75 to a reading near 47, and the stock’s slow stochastics have fallen from an overbought reading above 80 to below 40.
Jarden stock has been consolidating and building support following profit taking in the wake of Jarden’s third-quarter earnings report last month, potentially preparing for a new rally.
The charts for Georgia-based Newell Rubbermaid?appear even more favorable. The stock formed a rounding top pattern, but volume has been steadily declining on the downturn. Newell, who also produces writing instrument brands like Sharpie and Papermate, in addition to other products, features an RSI near 37 and slow stochastics below 12, both being indicative of an oversold position. Currently priced near $17.14, look for Newell’s technicals to form a bottom before a potential retracement to the 10-day exponential moving average and to the last strong-volume open price near $17.93 which occurred on November 5.
Newell?also has?the advantage being?priced at 19-times earnings, versus Jarden which trades at a rich price-to-earnings multiple of 47. Yet both stocks?have strong short-term potental based on the charts. Although Newell and Jarden offer extremely modest annual dividend yields of about one percent, compared with Tupperware Brands’ two percent, both stocks may be sending out?invitations to buy the dips.
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Seal in a low basis in TUP
In case you missed the Tupperware party during the fall season, consider this week’s 2% correction an invitation to arrive fashionably late.
The “Tupperware space” was a big winner over the past two-plus months. Since September 2, Jarden Corporation, Newell Rubbermaid, and of course Tupperware Brands have rallied 12.9 percent, 10.7 percent, and 14.2 percent, respectively. This past week, Newell and Jarden bent to the market’s force, providing opportunities for those who didn’t join the party.
Since hitting a 6-month high in October, tupperware and diversified consumer products producer Jarden Corporation are down a little over 4 percent, serving to drastically repair Jarden’s technical picture. Over that time, Jarden’s relative strength index (RSI) has improved from an overbought position above 75 to a reading near 47, and the stock’s slow stochastics have fallen from an overbought reading above 80 to below 40.
Jarden stock has been consolidating and building support following profit taking in the wake of Jarden’s third-quarter earnings report last month, potentially preparing for a new rally.
The charts for Georgia-based Newell Rubbermaid?appear even more favorable. The stock formed a rounding top pattern, but volume has been steadily declining on the downturn. Newell, who also produces writing instrument brands like Sharpie and Papermate, in addition to other products, features an RSI near 37 and slow stochastics below 12, both being indicative of an oversold position. Currently priced near $17.14, look for Newell’s technicals to form a bottom before a potential retracement to the 10-day exponential moving average and to the last strong-volume open price near $17.93 which occurred on November 5.
Newell?also has?the advantage being?priced at 19-times earnings, versus Jarden which trades at a rich price-to-earnings multiple of 47. Yet both stocks?have strong short-term potental based on the charts. Although Newell and Jarden offer extremely modest annual dividend yields of about one percent, compared with Tupperware Brands’ two percent, both stocks may be sending out?invitations to buy the dips.
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The Coffee Party is alarmed that our discourse has been hijacked by Partys named after other Beverages. The Coffee Party is for all the reasonable people, which happens to be correlated with drinking good coffee.
Here is our manifesto:
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