Hosni Mubarak Reportedly in Coma; Maybe in Germany

According to unconfirmed reports, including from the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who resigned last week after almost three weeks of violent protests in his country, is in a coma. Other (pro-government) sources say that the 82-year-old former president is in a "severe psychological condition" but not in a coma, while yet another report places him "on death's door in a hospital in Baden, Germany.

The Obama administration and Egypt's prime minister believe Mubarak is in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where he has a private residence.

There are also reports that Mubarak fainted twice during his final speech on Thursday night, possibly precipitating the coma? At any rate, wow. Bad month.

Mubarak Mystery: In Egypt, In Germany, In Coma? [CBS]

»»  Read More

How Hosni Mubarak Got So Rich

The mounting pressure from 18 days of historic protests finally drove Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office, after three decades as his nation's iron-fisted ruler. But over that time, Mubarak amassed a fortune that should finance a pretty comfortable retirement. The British Guardian newspaper cites Middle Eastern sources placing the wealth of Mubarak and his family at somewhere between $40 billion and $70 billion. That's a pretty good pension for government work. The world's richest man--Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim--is worth about $54 billion, by comparison. Bill Gates is close behind, with a net worth of about $53 billion.
[See how to survive tax hikes and spending cuts.]
Mubarak, of course, was a military man, not a businessman. But running a country with a suspended constitution for 30 years generates certain perks, and Mubarak was in a position to take a slice of virtually every significant business deal in the country, from development projects throughout the Nile basin to transit projects on the Suez Canal, which is a conduit for about 4 percent of the world's oil shipments. "There was no accountability, no need for transparency," says Prof. Amaney Jamal of Princeton University. "He was able to reach into the economic sphere and benefit from monopolies, bribery fees, red-tape fees, and nepotism. It was guaranteed profit."

Had the typical Egyptian enjoyed a morsel of that, Mubarak might still be in power. But Egypt, despite a cadre of well-educated young people, has struggled as an economic backwater. The nation's GDP per capita is just $6,200, according to the CIA--one-seventh what it is in the United States. That output ranks 136th in the world, even though Egypt ranks 16th in population. Mubarak had been working on a set of economic reforms, but they stalled during the global recession. The chronic lack of jobs and upward mobility was perhaps the biggest factor driving millions of enraged Egyptian youths into the streets, demanding change.

[See 5 reasons to stop fearing China.]

Estimates of Mubarak's wealth will probably be hard to verify, if not impossible (one reason dictators tend not to make it onto Forbes's annual list). His money is certainly not sitting in an Egyptian vault, waiting to be counted. And his delayed exit may have allowed Mubarak time to move money around and hide significant parts of his fortune. The Swiss government has said it is temporarily freezing any assets in Swiss banks that could be linked to Mubarak, an uncharacteristically aggressive move for the secretive banking nation. But that doesn't mean the money will ever be returned to the Egyptian people, and it may even find its way to Mubarak eventually. Other Mubarak funds are reportedly sitting in British banks, and Mubarak was no doubt wily enough to squire away some cash in unlikely places. Plus, an eventual exile deal could allow Mubarak to retain some of his wealth, no questions asked, as long as he and his family leave Egypt and make no further bids for power.

Epic skimming is a common privilege of Middle Eastern despots, and Mubarak and his two sons, Gamal and Alaa, were a bit less conspicuous than some of the Saudi princes and other Middle Eastern royals seen partying from time to time on the French Riviera or other hotspots. The family does reportedly own posh estates in London, New York, and Beverly Hills, plus a number of properties around the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh, where Mubarak reportedly went after resigning the presidency.

Mubarak also spread the wealth far and wide in Egyptian power circles--another Middle Eastern tradition--one reason he incurred the kind of loyalty that allowed him to rule for a remarkable three decades. Top Army officials were almost certainly on his payroll, which might help explain why the Army eased him out in the end--allowing a kind of in-country exile--instead of hounding him out of Egypt or imprisoning him once it was clear the tide had turned against him for good.

[See how government spending skyrocketed.]

That money trail, in fact, will help determine whether Egypt becomes a more prosperous, democratic country, or continues to muddle along as an economic basket case. Even though he's out of power, Mubarak may still be able to influence the Army officials running the country, through the financial connections that made them all wealthy. And if not Mubarak, the next leader may be poised to start lining his pockets the same way Mubarak did. For Egypt to have a more effective, transparent economy, all of that will have to be cleaned up. There are probably a lot of people in Cairo who have been checking their bank balances lately.

»»  Read More

Barack Obama Biography

President of the United States. Born Barack Hussein Obama on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas, where her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dunham's father, Stanley, enlisted in the service and marched across Europe in Patton's army. Dunham's mother, Madelyn, went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, the couple studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program and, after several moves, landed in Hawaii.
Obama's father, Barack Obama, Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. The elder Obama grew up herding goats in Africa, eventually earning a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams of college in Hawaii. While studying at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Obama, Sr. met fellow student, Ann Dunham. They married on February 2, 1961. Barack was born six months later.
Obama's parents separated when he was two years old, later divorcing. Obama, Sr. went on to Harvard to pursue Ph.D. studies, and then returned to Kenya in 1965. In 1966, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, another East–West Center student from Indonesia. A year later, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro Ng was born. Several incidents in Indonesia left Dunham afraid for her son's safety and education so, at the age of 10, Barack was sent back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. His mother and sister later joined them.
While living with his grandparents, Obama enrolled in the esteemed Punahou Academy, excelling in basketball and graduating with academic honors in 1979. As one of only three black students at the school, Obama became conscious of racism and what it meant to be African-American. He later described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage with his own sense of self. "I began to notice there was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog...and that Santa was a white man," he said. "I went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror with all my senses and limbs seemingly intact, looking the way I had always looked, and wondered if something was wrong with me."
Obama also struggled with the absence of his father, who he saw only once more after his parents divorced, in a brief 1971 visit. "[My father] had left paradise, and nothing that my mother or grandparents told me could obviate that single, unassailable fact," he later reflected. "They couldn't describe what it might have been like had he stayed." Obama, Sr. eventually lost his legs in an automobile accident, also losing his job as a result. In 1982, he died in yet another car accident while traveling in Nairobi. Obama, Jr. was 22 years old when he received the news of his father's passing. "At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me," Obama said, "both more and less than a man."

»»  Read More

Westboro Baptist Church Squares Off With Anonymous Hackers; No One Wins

The havoc-causing internet collective known as Anonymous -- most notable for their attacks on Scientology and more recently, in support of WikiLeaks and rebellion in the Middle East -- briefly considered Westboro Baptist Church (of "God Hates Fags" fame) as their next target. But it barely lasted the weekend, with threats traded, bluffs called and ultimately, no one coming out on top except the passive observer.
The Church, not really a church at all, is known as the army of the intolerable Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kansas, a man who leads his mindless minions to picket funerals across the country while holding bright, bigoted signs, thereby winning media attention.
Anonymous, then, messed up in the first place by giving Phelps and friends even more eyeballs thanks to an open letter announcing war, unless Westboro ceased its activities:

TO THE CONGREGANTS OF WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH: We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS - the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People - have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism. We have always regarded you and your ilk as an assembly of graceless sociopaths and maniacal chauvinists & religious zealots, however benign, who act out for the sake of attention & in the name of religion.
...
ANONYMOUS cannot abide this behavior any longer. The time for us to be idle spectators in your inhumane treatment of fellow Man has reached its apex, and we shall now be moved to action. Thus, we give you a warning: Cease & desist your protest campaign in the year 2011, return to your homes in Kansas, & close your public Web sites.
...
The warning has been given. What happens from here shall be determined by you.

Westboro supposedly responded by daring Anonymous to do something. "BRING IT!" their response letter on Saturday read. Plus, via Gawker:

A puddle of pimple-faced nerds organized under the cowardly banner of "Anonymous" claim they plan to hack Westboro's Websites... Bad miscalculation, girls! Let us tell you how this will go: rebels will build a full head of steam based on false hope; the media will predictably do much breathless anticipating while giving another tsunami of coverage to Westboro's message; God will defeat your council; your efforts will fail.

The following day, a group of Anonymous members, who realized the futility of attacking Westboro, mostly considering the attention it would bring the hate group, wrote a letter going back on their promises to attack to the Church. The partly unintelligible response-to-the-response letter shows the fragmented nature of Anonymous, or just how sloppy the operation can be. The takeaway? Going after Westboro isn't worth it. Or in their words:

In closing, let us assure you: We are not BAWWWING sissies, nor are we afraid of your false god; we're just really busy. Stay tuned, and we'll come back to play another day. We promise. To the Media: Just because it was posted on AnonNews doesn't mean every single Anon is in agreement, in fact in this case it doesn't even mean a single Anon is in agreement. Next time, if you could give us a few minutes to put all our paperwork in order, we'll be sure to let you know what we're up to. (LOL)
To Anonymous: It's a trap. They've got their ports wide open to harvest IPs to sue. Don't DDoS, and boycott Operation Westboro. If you really want to continue messing with them, just send them a few male prostitutes and faxes of goatse. Nothing more.

In all, anti-climactic and masturbatory on both sides, and yet, totally amusing in its own right.
[jcoscarelli@villagevoice.com / @joecoscarelli]

»»  Read More

The Red Cross's Accidental Drunk Tweet Is Adorable

The Red Cross has won us over, not just because they're a nonprofit that does good things for people, but because they actually have a sense of humor, and they might, every so often, like to booze -- responsibly! On Tuesday night, a Red Cross social media specialist accidentally tweeted this from the Red Cross account via Hootsuite, meaning to send it from a personal account but instead sending it out to the organization's 268,000 followers:

It stayed up for about an hour. The tweet has since been deleted, but Red Cross savvily acknowledged that that doesn't always mean anything. (They also promise the tweeter was not drunk!) They then tweeted this:
No harm, no foul. In fact, this "rogue tweet" may be making for their best donor campaign yet, as folks are coming forward to pledge using the hashtag #gettngslizzerd, and Dogfish is encouraging their fans to donate as well.
Hm, if the Red Cross wasn't so good and humanitarian we might even be suspicious this was some really fantastic viral marketing campaign. Hm. But anyway, go, beer: Bringing us together.

»»  Read More