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London, England, United Kingdom (AHN) – The Archbishop of Canterbury criticized the year old British coalition government on Wednesday in an editorial.

Dr. Rowan Williams, the guest editor of the New Statesman magazine, wrote that Britons are afraid of the reforms in education, health and benefit systems initiated by Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

Williams questioned the legitimacy of the coalition and their radical policies since both parties that Cameron and Clegg came from did not secure a majority vote in last year’s election.

Williams belittled Cameron’s Big Society idea as a stale slogan, claiming the concept is not an excuse for the coalition to blame Britain’s current economic and social woes to the previous Labour government.

The archbishop said that many Britons view the Big Society concept with suspicion because of confusion over how volunteer organizations will assume the responsibilities supposed to be carried out by a government.

He said that although mass-based initiatives have gained widespread acceptance across British society, these organization have been weakened by years of cultural fragmentation.

The archbishop urged the coalition to clarified what it is aiming for in key policy areas because British politics is stuck. Williams said he issued the scathing statements to stimulate a livelier debate and challenge the left to come up with its counter big idea which could serve as an alternative to the political marriage between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.

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Israel (TML) – As Egyptians debate the role of Islam in the post-Mubarak era and the West looks on nervously, a new poll shows that the vast majority of Egyptians supports a limited role for clerics and believe that their say in writing legislation should be restricted.

Conducted by the Abu-Dhabi Gallup Center, a research hub of the U.S. polling organization based in the United Arab Emirates, the poll found that 69% of Egyptians favored an advisory role for religious leaders in writing national legislation. Only 14% said that clerics should have full authority to draft legislation while 9% of the said they should have no authority whatsoever is the legislative process.

“I’m certain that if you were to ask Egyptians if they would like to see clerics more involved in public life, such as the media and the education system, they would be much more favourable,” Sobhy Essaila, a researcher at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, told The Media Line. But he stressed that Egyptians were suspicious of clerics’ involvement in politics.

Husni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for 30 years before he was ousted in the face of mass protests in February, suppressed Islamic political activity. But since then, the Muslim Brotherhood has emerged as the single most powerful political force in Egypt, stoking fears it may seek to change the face of Egyptian society and reorient the country’s pro-West foreign policy.

On Tuesday, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party was officially recognized as a party, clearing it to run candidates in the September elections for parliament. The group has said it plans to field candidates in about half of Egypt’s districts. Brotherhood candidates, running as independents, won 20% of the vote in a 2005 parliamentary election that was relatively free and fair.

In fact, the Gallup results also illustrate the depth to which religion plays a central role for Egyptians. Some 96% of the respondents said that religion was important for them and 92% said they had confidence in religious institutions. The survey was conducted face-to-face interviews with 1,000 Egyptians aged 15 and older during in late March and early April 2011.

Even in politics, other surveys have detected a more favorable stance for Islamic political figures among Egyptians. A Pew Research Center survey taken in April, for instance, found that 62% of Egyptians believed laws should “strictly follow the teachings of the Quran”.

Ishaq Ibrahim, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Human Rights, a Cairo-based organization, said he doubted the Gallup data, saying that all indications show that religious parties with a clear agenda of “Islamizing” politics are growing stronger in Egypt.

“The success of these parties will greatly depend on the response and the level of fear of liberal Egyptian parties, and their ability to unite and form coalitions,” Ibrahim told The Media Line.

While Egypt has seen economic growth evaporate and chaos and disorder explode in the streets since Mubarak’s fall, the Gallup poll found that Egyptians are more optimistic about the future today than they were last year. When asked how they rated their lives on a scale of 0 to 10, Egyptians gave an average answer of 3.9 as opposed to 4.4 in the fall of 2010, when the survey was previous taken.

But, when asked how their lives would look five years from now, they ranked it an average of 5.7, up from the 4.9.

The most dramatic change, perhaps, occurred in Egyptians’ confidence in their political system. Nine out of every 10 Egyptians said they believed the presidential elections to be held this autumn would be fair and honest. The same proportion of eligible voters said they intended to vote. In 2010, by comparison, only 30% said they had confidence in the fairness of their elections.

Egyptians were three times more optimistic about the future of their economy than they were in fall 2010; with 46% today versus only 15% in 2010.

Essaila, the Al-Ahram researcher, said the Egyptian’s optimism isn’t surprising, but he attributed it to their strong religious beliefs.

“Ordinary Egyptians are optimistic by nature,” he said. “This stems from the Egyptian culture and religious reliance on God.”

Intellectuals in the country, including academics and journalists, are generally more pessimistic than the uneducated public, he said.

The Egyptian revolution was dubbed “the Facebook revolution,” but the new poll found that only 8% of Egyptians followed the events on social network websites like Facebook and Twitter, as opposed to 81% who follow the events on Egyptian State television and 63% on Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera.

Ibrahim said this isn’t surprising given the high level of Egyptian illiteracy, which some estimate is as much as 30%. “There is also a high level of ‘cultural illiteracy,’ which means that even Egyptians who know how to read and write don’t use technology like the Internet for their information,” he said.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Talks between former North Carolina John Edwards and federal prosecutors are about to end, with the outcome either an indictmnent or a plea agreement, according to CNN.

Edwards’ lawyer, former White House Counsel Greg Craig, was in the Tar Heel State on Friday, CNN cited an unnamed source.

Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee and a 2008 White House contender, was investigated by the Justice Department for allegedly using campaign donations to cover up an extramarital affair.

Craig, who served as counsel to President Barack Obama as well as to former President Bill Clinton, issued a statement last week signaling Edwards may fight the charges. The former senator, a highlly successful trial lawyer before he entered politics, said through his lawyer that the government’s case was “novel and untested,” and that no funds were misused.

A plea agreement and the resulting felony conviction would strip Edwards, 57, of his law license, one of the reasons he was said to be unwilling last week to take a deal from prosecutors.

Edwards admitted last year he fathered the child of a novice filmmaker, Rielle Hunter, hired by his 2008 campaign to make documentaries. He made the revelation weeks before a book written by a former aide, Andrew Young, exposed details of the affair and alleged cover-up. 

Young, who pretended to be the father of the child before his book was released, said campaign contributions from top donors, including Rachel Mellon, the widow of banking heir Paul Mellon, were used to pay for flights, rent and other expenses to to hide and support Edwards’ then-pregnant mistress.

The contributions used for Hunter were said to be between $700,000 and $1 million.

Edwards initially insisted he was not the father of Hunter’s child. His subsequent admission to paternity led to his separation from his wife and staunch political ally, Elizabeth, who died of breast cancer last December. 

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Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico (AHN) – The U.S. government has made preparations for a sudden mass migration of Cubans after the death of Fidel Castro, according to recently published WikiLeaks documents.

The plan could include a coordinated effort with Mexico to use the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy to stop Cubans fleeing their country by sea.

WikiLeaks is an investigative news website that has been publishing leaked U.S. State Department documents in recent months.

The documents reported in the Mexican news media this week came from discussions between former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Mexican government officials.

The discussions followed a nearly fatal intestinal illness of Cuban President Fidel Castro in July 2006.

Before undergoing lifesaving surgery, Castro turned over power in his country to his brother, Raul.

Raul Castro, who turns 80 years old on June 3, has largely followed policies of his older brother. Fidel Castro reportedly consults with Raul about how to handle the day-to-day politics of Cuba.

Chertoff and Medina discussed the likelihood of a power vacuum in Cuba when the octogenarian Castros and other aging government leaders no longer are in control.

One possibility they mentioned is that defectors from the Cuban Army might create an organized crime threat in the hemisphere that could touch the United States and Mexico, according to the Wikileaks documents.

A summary of the discussion, written by former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Anthony Garza, said the Cuban military personnel might operate like the Russian mafia in Europe.

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora recommended that a “semi-authoritarian” government take control of Cuba during a transition to democracy.

In a later February 2007 meeting with Mexican Interior Minister Francisco Ramirez Acuna, Chertoff asked whether the Mexican Navy was prepared to stop a mass exodus to Mexico if the Cuban government becomes destabilized after Castro’s death.

Ramirez Acuna said the Mexican government had made plans for a naval blockade, which prompted Chertoff to offer assistance from the U.S. Coast and Navy, Wikileaks reported.

Chertoff also expressed concern about Venezuelans entering Mexico without visas.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is a harsh critic of U.S. foreign policy. His alliances with traditional adversaries of the United States – such as Cuba – made Chertoff ask about Mexico’s progress in keeping out Venezuelans who might pose a threat to Americans or Mexicans.

Publication of the WikiLeaks documents coincides with ongoing confrontations between the United States and Cuba.

This week, the Cuban government publicly condemned new U.S. sanctions against the Venezuelan oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).

The U.S. government imposed the sanctions after PDVSA sold gasoline to Iran.

Cuba responded with a statement that accuses the United States of “attempts to divide” Latin America that could create “new conflicts,” a Cuban Foreign Ministry statement said.

“When Venezuela is attacked, the same happens to Cuba,” the statement said.

In a separate incident, members of Congress are demanding assurances that Cuba’s plans to drill for oil off the coast of Havana will not create an environmental hazard for the United States.

The Spanish oil company Repsol plans to deliver an oil platform to Cuba in the fall. Drilling is scheduled to begin next year.

About 20 billion barrels of oil have been discovered under the seafloor only 60 miles from Florida.

One proposal from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) would forbid American companies from assisting Cuba to develop its petroleum industry.

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Baghdad, Iraq David E. Miller – Khaled Al-Obaidi, until recently a leading candidate to be Iraq’s defense minister, was driving with his armed motorcade in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday when a powerful “sticky bomb” attached to his car exploded, injuring him and a bodyguard. Al-Obaidi was hospitalized to remove shrapnel from his leg. He was reportedly driving a police car in an attempt to hide his identity.

Ali Al-Lami, a senior member of Iraq’s legal establishment, wasn’t as lucky. Last Thursday he was shot dead in Baghdad by pistol-toting assailants, who used silencers in a drive-by shooting. Al-Lami headed the Justice and Accountability Commission, a body charged with preventing people associated with Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party regime from returning to politics.

As America’s 46,000-person peacekeeping force prepares to leave Iraq this December, political violence is welling up again and many Iraqis are beginning to wonder aloud whether it would be better for the American troops to stay a bit longer. It is not simply an upsurge in violence that worries the country’s leaders, but the fact that it is now targeting them rather than people in the street.

“The forces should stay for at least two more years,” Haitham Numan, director of Asharq Research Center, a Baghdad-based think tank, told The Media Line. “Those who demand their withdrawal are speaking more emotionally than rationally.” Americans had a moral obligation to stay in Iraq and rectify the strategic mistakes made since the country’s occupation in 2003, he said.

Delaying the withdrawal would put U.S. President Barack Obama in an awkward position. After eight years and more than 4,000 U.S. casualties, the fighting in Iraq is unpopular with American voters who go to the polls in 2012. The prolonged U.S. presence has also complicated America’s image in the Arab world, where Obama has sought to mend ties strained during the war years.

Ordinary Iraqis are much safer today than they were in 2007, when the average civilian death toll reached 2,000 victims a month. Now, it is Iraq’s politicians and senior civil servants who have most to fear. In April, 50 Iraqis were assassinated by shootings and car bombs, the Ministry of Interior told the Washington Post in early May, a steep increase compared to the previous average of 20 deaths a month.

“[Al-Lami's killing] was perpetrated in the wake of unfortunate security conditions which have noticeably deteriorated in the past months,” Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister

Ruz Nouri Shawees said in statement Sunday. “Assassinations with silenced pistols have increased, as have terrorist acts with sticky charges, car bombs and missiles.”

Ronen Zeidel, director of research at the Center for Iraq Studies in Haifa University, said that the main menace threatening Iraqi stability is not a takeover by Islamist Sunni Al-Qaida operatives, but rather tacit threats of violence made by Shiite leader Muqtada Al-Sadr, through his organization, the Mahdi Army. Underscoring his interests in the U.S. departing as soon as possible, Al-Sadr staged a huge rally last Thursday in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood against the American presence in Iraq, with tens of thousands of Shiite militiamen marching in unison, the Associated Press reported.

“The central issue in Iraq today is whether to ask the Americans to extend their stay in the country,” Zeidel told The Media Line. “The majority of supporters are scared to speak up, but there is a small group of Iraqis who support an unlimited extension of the American presence in Iraq.”

Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s position on the matter is still unclear. But some Iraqi commentators have publicly indicated they prefer to see American forces stay in Iraq for the time being.

“No one wants foreign forces to remain on Iraqi soil,” wrote columnist Karim Abed in the Iraqi daily Al-Sabah on Saturday. “But we must examine our position before we display our national enthusiasm which may backfire, allowing Baathist and terrorist remnants to establish a foothold among us.”

Numan said the U.S. needed to deeply reform the flawed Iraqi political system before leaving the country. In Iraq’s coalition government, the three key security portfolios, namely defense, state security and interior, are still unmanned, temporarily occupied by Prime Minister Al-Maliki.

Zeidel of Haifa University said the recent increase in political assassinations in Iraq gave more credence to the proponents of continued American presence in Iraq, but he doubted that mainstream Iraqi politicians would muster the courage needed to publicly request this.

“Asking the Americans to stay doesn’t look good. It’s like admitting failure; asking the occupier to continue his occupation,” he said.

The presence of American troops has diminished on Iraqi streets, with soldiers remaining largely in their barracks. But at least some Iraqis are scared of being abandoned by the U.S. during an increasingly unstable period in the Middle East.

The Arab Spring has created new elements to the regional balance of power, with regimes in Syria, Libya and Yemen pushed against the wall and Saudi Arabia taking a new, assertive stance. Iran has also been encouraged by the unrest, or at least so fear many Arabs, including Iraq’s Sunni minority.

“The Iraqis are fearful of being symbolically abandoned,” Zeidel said. “Even with 10,000 American troops in Iraq, you can be sure that Obama is still thinking about you.”

But Bashar Al-Mandalawi, an Iraqi freelance journalist, put the blame for violence in Iraq on political infighting, adding that it was the responsibility of the government and the Iraqi army to stabilize the country.

“Assassinations are no worse today than they were two years ago,” he told The Media Line. “I think neither the Iraqis nor the American soldiers would be pleased to extend their stay here. It’s time for them to leave.”

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Kathmandu, Nepal (AHN) – Nepal’s 3-year-old Constituent Assembly is scheduled to expire on Saturday. The assembly has a mandate to carve a new republic and legal framework. Political crisis is looming large in the Himalayan country as political parties have failed to reach an agreement on a future constitution and new roadmap for peace.

Life across the country is crippled by daily strikes called by different organizations against the backdrop of the failure to write a constitution and a lack of tangible progress on the peace process. The future of 19,000 former Maoist guerillas also hangs in the balance. The integration and rehabilitation of the former combatants languishing in 28 camps around the country has been the prime bone of contention among the key political players of Nepal.

The political impasse has dragged on for the last two years since the Maoist government was toppled from power in May 2008. The lethargy likely to be invited by a constitutional void could pose serious political repercussions.

If the incumbent Constituent Assembly topples, there will be a political and constitutional void in Nepal and the present interim constitution would be scrapped. Senior Maoist leader C.P. Gajurel recently told a press conference: “There is no provision in the constitution that the president can take over and we are not in a position to raise our weapons again.”

The worried Kathmandu-based international community on Thursday urged flexibility by all parties in order to find solutions to the issues that divide them.

Nepal has been undergoing a huge political transition following the declaration of the republic and institution of secularism in 2006, when Nepal’s Maoist party agreed to join mainstream politics. Afterward, a massive people’s uprising flushed out the centuries-old monarchy from Nepal, muddling the Hindu nation’s identity.

The decade-long insurgency launched by the Maoist party in 1996 killed more than 13,000 people, thousands disappeared and millions were displaced from their home.

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Bremen, Germany (AHN) – In a bid to attract young people to the country’s politics, a German city in Bremen has lowered the legal voting age to 16 years for the first time.

The state elections witnessed Green candidate Karoline Linnert’s 16-year-old son, Johann Linnert, casting his ballot this weekend.

To encourage this initiative, politicians as well as sports are trying to convince teenagers to participate in politics, while schools organized classes to show how to vote. In the rest of the other 15 German states, a person has to be at least 18 years of age to cast vote. Critics say that it is inappropriate to allow 16-year-olds to vote while they cannot drive or get a mobile phone before 18.

With the latest amendment in voter law, Germany has become the second country in the European Union’s 27-nation bloc after Austria to allow vote at 16 years of age.

Bremen’s ruling, however, apparently affects the Christian Democrats party as exit polls show that the Greens overtook the conservatives in regional elections for the first time in Germany. The polls show Social Democrats’ return to power with Green allies in the smallest German city of Bremen.

“For the first time in the history of the German Federal Republic, we are ahead of the CDU in a regional election,” said one of the Green federal leaders Claudia Roth.

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Ramallah, Palestinian Territory (TML) – The person behind the “People Want to End the Division” Facebook page must have been celebrating two months ago ahead of planned rallies across the West Bank and Gaza Strip calling for Palestinian national unity. Almost 41,000 people promised to turnout and close to another 6,700 said they would try.

But on March 15, the day of the event, only 4,000 turned out in Ramallah, which was the largest gathering. Another 1,500 assembled in Nablus. In the Gaza Strip, 3,000 rallied but their demonstration was quickly dispersed by Hamas operatives.

Hamas and its arch-rival, Fatah, did sign a unity agreement in early May, just as the Facebook campaigners were demanding, but most analysts say the two movements acted in response to regional politics. Compared to the size and persistence of the social-media-inspired protests at Cairo’s Tahrir Square that brought down Egyptian president Husni Mubarak, Palestinian social media was barely a blip.

Social media experts and activists are bemoaning the failure of Palestinians to join the Arab Spring and bring about bottom-up change through viral campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Indeed, the disappointment was palpable at a one-day conference in Ramallah last week that brought together academics, politicians and social activists.

Palestinians’ ability to mobilize social media could emerge as a key obstacle as activists try to build on what many perceive as the start of a new era of resistance against Israel with massive, non-violent protests. Many are pointing to the breach of Israel’s Golan Heights border with Syria this week by thousands of people as a model, although it’s not clear who or how they were organized.

Awed by the ability of their fellow Arabs over the last several months to use social networking to mobilize masses and topple dictators, many participants admitted they still had much to learn, even from Israeli activists, who they admitted often blog and Tweet their cause better than Palestinians do. The conference was aptly titled “Palestine in the World of New Social Media – a Culture in the Making.”

Salah Dawabsheh, a Palestinian blogger and social media expert, pointed to Bilin, a West Bank village whose farm fields have been cut off by the Israeli security barrier and has become the site of weekly protests. But Dawabsheh said activists failed to use all the on-line tools at their disposal to document their cause and get the word out.

“The village of Bilin, for instance, is doing a great job, but no one knows about it,” he said. “A website is for old times. Today the real question is: do you have a Facebook page?”

Another activist, Atallah Al-Tamimi from the village of Nabi Saleh, northwest of Ramallah, said his village hosted a number of Facebook pages, but admitted that recruitment for demonstrations relied largely on international and Israeli volunteers. He blamed official Palestinian television for inadequately covering popular activity.

By regional standards, the Palestinians are well connected and enjoy greater freedom of expression. Some 32 out of every 100 Palestinians used the Internet in 2009, compared with approximately 24 per 100 Egyptians and 34 out of 100 Tunisians, two countries where mass rallies brought down dictators.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) says that nearly half of Palestinian households have a computer and almost a third is connected to the Internet. Use of the internet among Palestinian youth is particularly high, with some 88% of those between the ages of 15 and 29 reporting they use it.

“After the Arab revolutions, all my friends opened Facebook accounts,” said Ali Taqatqa, 19, a student at Al-Quds Open University. “Today it is rare to find someone who doesn’t use Facebook.”

Dawabsheh added that Palestinians had the highest rate of smart phones in the Arab world, and could use them to video demonstrations and upload them to sites such as Facebook and Twitter, where they would have a viral effect. According to Dawabsheh, 3,000 Palestinian bloggers could also help spread the message.

The Palestinian media, unlike its counterpart in Egypt and Tunisia on the eve of the Arab Spring, enjoy relative freedom.

Khaled Abu-Aker, a conference participant and journalist, recalled that he established Amin.org in 1996 to provide a platform for Palestinian journalists to publish articles that were censored in mainstream media. Over the years, his site has been hacked but it hasn’t been shut down. He gradually came to realize that traditional journalism, including the on-line variety, wasn’t enough.

“Today news is not conveyed by a journalist, but by a regular citizen in a remote village with a camera in his hand,” Abu-Aker said.

In 2007, Amin.org began hosting Palestinian blogs, he said, and today some 1,500 bloggers from Gaza and the West Bank use Amin to make their voice heard. Amin also provides training to Palestinians in creating blogs, use of social media networks, uploading videos and what he called “citizens’ journalism”.

In fact, some conference participants contended that the Palestinian failure to make use of social media was due to the fact the Palestinians enjoy comparative freedom.

“We don’t need Facebook like the Egyptians did,” said Dawabsheh. “We have freedom of speech, which they didn’t. Even in this conference, we are free to criticize whoever we want.”

Indeed, the biggest obstacle to Palestinians exploiting social media comes from the providers, rather than the government. A Facebook page calling for a Third Palestinian Intifada, or popular uprising, against Israel was shut down in March by the company after Israeli Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein complained it was inciting violence against Jews and Israelis.The page had garnered some 500,000 supporters, and was eventually closed. Facebook started by taking down comments and ripped out the whole page when the company found its administrators were echoing the violent statements of commentators.

But Pro-Palestinian activists haven’t given up and have set up a new Facebook group with the same name calling for mass marches on Israel’s borders this Friday. The page currently has 100,000 “likes.” The group urges Arab activists in neighboring countries to storm Israel’s borders as they did last Sunday, Nakba Day on the Palestinian calendar that commemorates the “catastrophe” of the State of Israel’s founding.

Jihad Shajaeha is suspicious of Facebook. A 20-something project coordinator for a West Bank youth forum, Shajaeha said he used to regularly upload photos and videos of Israeli attacks on Palestinians and write political status updates. One day the site’s administrator suddenly closed his account.

“Social media are not free, it’s monitored,” he told The Media Line on the sidelines of the conference. “If you want to organize a revolution, you can’t sit in front of the computer. You need one hour in front of the computer and 10 hours on the street – that’s where the real power base is

The Palestinians’ other problem may also be an overload of national politics. Unlike Egyptians and other, whose right to organize and express themselves politically was severely constrained, Palestinians have been fighting an open and upfront battle against the Israeli occupation for decades.

No one at last week’s conference, which numbered about 50 people, would admit top political exhaustion. But a group of teenagers sitting on the sidelines admitted that even though they were heavy users of Facebook, they employed it for fun and social purposes, like campaigning against the high cost of weddings in Palestinian society.

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United States (ProPublica) – by Tracy Weber

The week’s news about the sexual conduct of politically powerful men gives me a queasy feeling of déjà vu.

As the French agonize over whether Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s star power quashed past allegations, I can respond cynically: Yes, that probably happened. But we should not automatically assume that timelier reporting about Strauss-Kahn’s sexually aggressive behavior (including an alleged violent incident in 2002) would have slowed the 62-year old Socialist’s march towards the French presidency.

I speak from experience.

Eight years ago I was dragged scowling and complaining into an investigation of allegations that Arnold Schwarzenegger – the leading candidate for governor of California – had sexually harassed and molested women, including those who worked on his movies.

A team of reporters for The Los Angeles Times, where I then worked, had been pursuing the story for weeks and were about to publish a first piece. With the election days away, I was pulled in. At the time I was deep into an investigative project about a troubled Los Angeles hospital that had a history of harming or even killing its patients. Digging into The Terminator’s salacious back story seemed a tawdry detour.

But the orders came from on high. They needed someone adept at persuading reluctant sources to share traumatic or humiliating experiences. So out I went crisscrossing Southern California in search of women groped by the Republican candidate for governor. Some declined to speak. Others brusquely said nothing had ever happened.

But several reluctantly began to describe behavior that appeared to cross every imaginable line. As I interviewed these women, I came to believe in the importance of the story. They were strong, professional, independent people, women like me: competent and assertive.

Their experiences with Schwarzenegger were double humiliations. First they suffered through the acts themselves: demeaning-often public-groping, unwanted, invasive kisses, crude, belittling comments.

Far worse, they felt forced by circumstance to let Schwarzenegger behave badly-like an over-indulged toddler, as one woman put it. A complaint against the bigger-than-life moneymaker could tank their careers. Not a single woman felt anyone would have taken their side or chastised the star.

The abuse of power-and the judgments underlying it – were relevant facts for Californians preparing to cast a historic vote. (As was Hollywood’s repeated willingness to look the other way, but that is another story).

So in urging women to go public with their accounts, I was arguing something I truly believed, which was that their stories would be of use to voters.

I went to the door of a woman in Orange County who supposedly had conceived a child with Schwarzenegger. She became teary-eyed the moment I identified myself as a reporter, repeatedly and emphatically denying that Schwarzenegger had fathered her son. Soon after, a British tabloid published her name and said she had a “love child” with the actor. We were never able to confirm this. (The 2003 story resurfaced this week when Schwarzenegger admitted he had fathered a child with a member of his household staff more than 10 years ago. The LA Times, which broke the story, described the mother as a staff member who recently retired. This does not appear to be the woman I interviewed, a former flight attendant on a charter plane.)

Ultimately, several women agreed to recount their experiences with Schwarzenegger, courageously diving into the maw of a nasty political campaign.

Three days before the election, Linnea Harwell, who had become the manager of an Atlanta art museum, described how Schwarzenegger regularly stripped naked in front of her on the’88 Santa Fe, N.M. set of the movie “Twins.”

Once, Harwell recalled, he pulled her down on a bed while he was wearing only underwear and let her go only when someone called her on her walkie talkie. “He was laughing like it was all a big joke,” she said then. “Well it wasn’t. It was scary.”

Unless his wife, Maria Shriver, was on the set, Harwell said, Schwarzenegger made rude comments without caring who heard. She recalled wondering “Why does he think he could get away with it? But he could.”

Carla Baron, a stand-in on the same movie set, said the actor and his buddy had sandwiched her between them, then forced his tongue down her throat. Another woman haltingly told me how Schwarzenegger pinned her against him and spanked her.

Schwarzenegger denied that the alleged events on the “Twins” set had occurred, but issued a general apology. “I have done things that were not right, which I thought then was playful,” he said. His wife stood by him.

Election Day arrived and Schwarzenegger was elected by a wide margin. The Los Angeles Times was castigated for smearing Schwarzenegger close to the election. Ten thousand readers cancelled their subscriptions. I received a string of vicious calls and emails. The women were branded as liars desperate for a share of fame.

One of the women called me in tears. I’d cajoled her into revealing her humiliations-and here was yet another. The voters, like Hollywood, ignored the star’s troubling behavior. I was devastated and angry too-and guilty for wasting their courage.

If the press had simply investigated and reported on the past allegations against Strauss-Kahn, would it have mattered?

Or did it take an arrest to change the course of French politics?

– Provided by ProPublica.org

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Cairo, Egypt (TML) – There’s bloody sectarian violence, privatization deals are being rescinded, businessmen are being jailed and the prospects of short term economic growth remain dim. But even as the country is gripped by political and economic distress, foreign investors are taking a surprisingly positive view on Egypt.

Financial investors, particularly from the Gulf, have been putting money into Egypt’s stock market, as evidenced by the relative strength of the Egyptian pound and the cost of short-term money. But long-term investors are eyeing the country, too. Sweden’s Electrolux announced in April it was dusting off plans to acquire an Egyptian appliance maker and an unnamed Qatari group is reportedly in talks with the government to buy the iconic chain store Omar Effendi.

“There is a lot to be positive about,” Daniel Broby, chief investment officer at London-based Silk Invest, told The Media Line. “If you look where the yield on bonds is, for example, and what’s happened to the currency, the yields could have been substantially higher and the currency substantially lower than where they are were it not for institutional investors. A number of people are taking a second look.”

Foreign investment will be critical for Egypt, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, as it navigates a difficult path to democratic government. As much as demonstrators called for freedom and political reform, they also want an economy that can provide jobs and a higher standard of living for the nation of 80 million. Short of cash itself, the government is counting on the private sector to build factories and drill the oil and gas wells that will do the trick.

Right now, the country’s political future is cloudy. Elections for parliament and president are slated for this autumn but, with the exception of the Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, political parties remain small and unorganized. Sectarian strife has exploded again after a hiatus of several weeks and Cairo is wracked by crime.

Meanwhile, Egypt’s economy shrank about 7% in the first quarter. The Institute for International Finance (IIF) forecasts gross domestic product will shrink 2.5% for all of 2011 and grow just 4.2% in 2012, far more slowly that it needs to in order to keep up with population growth and the need to create jobs. Finance Minister Samir Radwan has forecast foreign direct investment will fall 40% to $4.1 billion in the 2010/11 fiscal year from the previous year.

Indeed, foreign investment fell to $1.2 billion in the first quarter of the year, down by $400 million from the same period in 2010, but given Egypt’s troubles the decline was small. The Egypt pound has shed only a little more than 2% of its value since January 25, when mass protests began that toppled Egypt’s president, Husni Mubarak.

Yields on three-month bills are at their highest in two years because of the government’s yawning budget deficit, but they are not substantially more than before the revolution. Investors are cheerfully buying the debt. At yesterday’s auction of the bills, the government met its target of raising 5.5 billion Egyptian pounds ($927 million). It was the first time it hit it target after three misses.

Foreign currency reserves have fallen $8 billion since December to $28 billion, but considering the fact that tourism revenue has evaporated, the figures suggest that the much-feared phenomenon of capital flight hasn’t materialized, Broby said.

Last October, Electrolux was on its way to buying Olympic, Egypt’s biggest home appliance maker, for 2.2 billion pounds ($370 million). It pulled out in February, but Keith McLoughlin, its chief executive, told The Financial Times April 27 that he hoped to seal a deal by the end of the year.

“We’re spending time observing and assessing what is going on politically in the country and the wider region,” he told The FT. “But the [Olympic] business continues to be strong and we’re cautiously optimistic that we will complete the transaction.”

The sale of Omar Effendi follows a court ruling on May 6 that voided its 2006 sale to Saudi investor Jameel Al-Qanbeet, citing “several legal violations.” It is one of several privatization backtrackings that have worried investors and is subject to a legal appeal by Al-Qanbeet. Nevertheless, Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf negotiated the fate of Omar Effendi with Qataris in a deal that would sell management of the chain rather than its assets.

Egypt General Petroleum Corp. plans to auction licenses for oil exploration by the end of the year and for gas exploration by state-owned Egas afterwards, Petroleum Intelligence Weekly reported on Friday. But Egypt must also assuage concerns about political instability while sustaining costly – and politically sensitive – energy subsidies at home.

Egypt needs overseas companies’ capital and technology, but the price cap for selling gas from deep-water wells makes development uneconomic in some cases, though Egyptian authorities have shown flexibility on a case-by-case basis, Jill Junnola, North Africa correspondent for PIW, told The Media Line.

“Egypt has been seen as a country where you can do business,” she said. But whether it will stay that way remains to be seen. “Before parliamentary elections, it’s very difficult to say. I think Egypt will continue to want to attract foreign investment, and it has sent signals that it wants to keep the energy sector ticking over, but the political situation is in flux right now.”

All this won’t be enough to tide Egypt over the rough patch ahead. The International Monetary Fund said last Thursday that Egyptian authorities had indicated that they will require some $10 billion to $12 billion in loans from now through June 2012. The Washington Post reported that the U.S. is considering forgiving some $1 billion in debt.

“People in the street were demanding jobs and being squeezed by inflation, but you can’t address that without increasing the budget deficit, which is about 9.4% of GDP,” said Silk Invest’s Broby. “The budget deficit is ballooning and they need to do something about that. They need it to tide them over.”

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