Time names the protester as its 2011 person of the year

Time magazine has announced its person of the year for 2011 as the "protester"

As the weekly magazine says

No one could have known that when a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself on fire in a public square in a town barely on a map, he would spark protests that would bring down dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and rattle regimes in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain

adding that

Protests have now occurred in countries whose populations total at least 3 billion people, and the word protest has appeared in newspapers and online exponentially more this past year than at any other time in history.

Its runner up was Admiral William McRaven, who was commander of the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

It is not the first time in recent history that the magazine has chosen a group.In 2006 itchose "You" as the Person of the Year to reflect the growing power of social media.

Although the smile may be wiped off his face when this week's Time magazine is delivered to No 10.

However he has made the frontcover

Barack's Time's person of the year

No surprise that Time magazine's person of the year has gone to Barack Obama

The magazine writes that

It's unlikely that you were surprised to see Obama's face on the cover. He has come to dominate the public sphere so completely that it beggars belief to recall that half the people in America had never heard of him two years ago — that even his campaign manager, at the outset, wasn't sure Obama had what it would take to win the election. He hit the American scene like a thunderclap, upended our politics, shattered decades of conventional wisdom and overcame centuries of the social pecking order.

Time says Blair one of the 100 most influential people

Gordon Brown wont be waking up in a very good mood this morning.Let's hope that he doesnt get a copy of Time magazine in his reading material.

The magazine has voted Tony Blair one of the world's most influential people

Bill Clinton writes the epilogue

When my friend Tony Blair stepped down as U.K. Prime Minister last year, I advised him to take some time off with his family and make a list of the issues he felt passionately about and that he could continue to pursue. It was the least he had earned after a decade of modernizing his country's economy, making the U.K. one of the few nations to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions more than required to meet their Kyoto target and leading the G-8 to historic commitments to support Africa and fight global poverty.
Tony listened to my advice graciously but ignored it completely by immediately accepting a new job as Middle East envoy for the Quartet. I have always admired Tony's willingness to wade into troubled waters. Ten years ago, he did a masterly job in helping to end 30 years of sectarian violence and broker a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. Now he is demonstrating the dedication and intensity to promoting economic opportunity in the Middle East, learning from his Irish experience that showing the concrete benefits of peace can play a crucial role in making a just and lasting peace possible.
Tony, 54, also knows that even the benefits of an enduring peace in the Middle East and the dramatic reductions in terrorism it would bring could be wiped away if we don't save the planet from the worst consequences of global warming. So he has taken on another big challenge: shaping a new global agreement to cut carbon emissions. Because my foundation is involved with projects to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in more than 40 large cities on six continents, I know how important and difficult Tony's work is, and I look forward to the visionary leadership he will bring to it.
As his friend, I hope Tony finds fulfillment in advancing the public good as a private citizen. As a member of our interdependent global community, I thank him for not taking a day off when we need him the most.

A right old mish mash

This week's American political magazines are so confused about the Presidential race that they have decided to put a mish mash of candidates on their front cover,literally.

The Huffington Post reports that

Everything old is new again! Or, put another way, it's always fun to smoosh peoples' faces together for comic and/or dramatic effect.. It's been done with celebrities to imagine what their babies would look like for ages, and, in the case of newsweeklies, this week on the cover of Time which combines the faces of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and boldly declares "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

A throwback to the 2000 elections