A couple days ago, I came across the photo below, taken from a wall in New York City. Under it was the caption, “Think about it, if only for a second.” So I did.
The global banking pig is already wearing lipstick and full make-up and it's still pretty ugly, despite Bernanke's best efforts at printing and pretending his way to future bliss and a spot in the Keynesian hall of fame.
I usually find the quarterly homeowner vacancy and homeownership report from Census pretty lackluster, but the latest one released this morning was anything but.
America's home ownership rate, after holding steady for a while, took a pretty big plunge in Q4, from 66.9 percent to 66.5 percent. That's down from the 2004 peak of 69.2 percent and the lowest level since 1998...
We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company weacquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.
Right on, Google. Let's hope you would always be so helpful....
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — More than $46 million was spent for and against a failed November ballot measure that would have suspended California's landmark global warming law, according to campaign finance reports filed Monday...
All the US can do is "watch and respond", trying to make the best of what it transparently regards as a bad situation.
Our words betray us. US spokesmen stress the protesters' desire for jobs and for economic opportunity, as though that were the full extent of their aspirations. They entreat the wobbling, repressive governments in the region to "respect civil society", and the right of the people to protest peacefully, as though these thoroughly discredited autocrats were actually capable of reform.
They urge calm and restraint. One listens in vain, however, for a ringing endorsement of freedom, or for a statement of encouragement to those willing to risk everything to assert their rights and their human dignity - values which the US nominally regards as universal.
This is an upstairs/downstairs story that takes us from the peak of a Western mountaintop for the wealthy to spreading mass despair in the valleys of the Third World poor.
It is about how the solutions for the world financial crisis that the CEOs and Big pols are massaging in a posh conference centre in snowy Davos, Switzerland have turned into a global economic catastrophe in the streets of Cairo, the current ground zero of a certain-to-spread wave of international unrest. Yes, the tens of thousands in the streets demanding the ouster of the cruel Mubarak regime are pressing for their right to make a political choice, but they are being driven by an economic disaster that have sent unemployment skyrocketing and food prices climbing.
But as one Egyptian woman said, “If they fire on the Egyptian people, Mubarak is finished . . . And if they don’t fire on the Egyptian people, Mubarak is finished.”
The military said it considers the people's demands "legitimate".
It comes as Egypt's new vice president, Omar Suleiman, says he has been asked by Mr Mubarak to begin a dialogue with the opposition for constitutional change.
Interestingly, it comes as those various political factions, which as a rule do not get on, said they are prepared to talk and work together to bring about change.
To many people it is being seen as an attempt by Mr Mubarak to cling onto power - to get his political opponents to do some type of deal with him by which he stays in place.
When the military made its announcement, several tanks blocking access to Cairo's main square where protests have been held, rolled back some 500 metres.
Avi Dichter, the Israeli Internal Security Minister, said in a lecture at the ‘Israeli National Security Research Center’ “about the Israeli role in destroying Iraq after it was occupied in 2003 “we achieved in Iraq more than we expected and plan!” Dichter confirmed that keeping Iraq weak and isolated is an Israeli national interest.
“Weakening and isolating Iraq is no less important than weakening and isolating Egypt,” he said. Weakening and isolating Egypt done by diplomatic methods while everything is done to do achieve a complete and comprehensive isolation to Iraq”, Dachter added.
“Iraq has vanished as a military force and as a united country. Our strategic option is to keep it divided,” he added.
CAIRO - Qatar-based new channel Al Jazeera said six of its English service journalists were released in Egypt hours after being detained on Monday, a day after the news network was told to shut down its operations in the country.
ERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday warned of the dangers of an Iranian-style regime led by Islamic extremists arising out of the political chaos sweeping through Egypt.
“In a time of chaos, an organised Islamic group can take over the state. It happened in Iran and it also happened in other places,” the Israeli leader said at a press conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
His remarks were made as the Egyptian regime wrestles with a wave of unprecedented anti-government protests, which have pitted hundreds of thousands of demonstrators against the regime of embattled President Hosni Mubarak.
CAIRO — The all-poweful army said on Monday Egyptians’ demands were legitimate and vowed not to fire on them as protesters, who are demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, prepared a general strike and million-strong marches. But while the posture the police will take in the face of the strike and marches remains unknown, the army said unequivocally it will not stop them.
“To the great people of Egypt, your armed forces, acknowledging the legitimate rights of the people,” stress that “they have not and will not use force against the Egyptian people,” said a statement published by the state news agency, Mena.
Internet access across Egypt is still shoddy according to most reports. Khadija Sharife wrote in the Huffington Post that Egyptians can still connect "via traditional phone lines using the following instructions: FDN (Free World Dial up) to access the Internet anonymously at the following number: 33172890150 with login: toto and password: toto."
We are wondering how many Egyptians are actually connecting via this old-school proxy technique.
10:13pm Twitter reports from this evening say that four large screens have been installed by protesters in central Cairo to show Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera Mubasher (Live) to the crowds gathering around.
Make no mistake about it, the Egyptian government did what they intended to do: They’ve cut their people from using the modern broadband Internet. Using cobbled together technology, however, Egyptian Internet users has continued on.
"We stand with the people of Egypt in their demand for freedom and basic rights, an end to the crackdown and internet blackout, and immediate democratic reform. We call on our governments to join us in our solidarity with the Egyptian people."
AVAAZ.org at http://tiny.cc/ar77z is sponsoring a statement of international solidarity with Egypt where signers can see the list of names and countries literally growing every second. The count is now around 360,000. The goal is 500,000 signatures.
A federal judge declared the Obama administration’s health care overhaul unconstitutional Monday, siding with 26 states that argued people cannot be required to buy health insurance.
Senior U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson agreed with the states that the new law violates people’s rights by forcing them to buy health insurance by 2014 or face penalties. He went a step further than a previous ruling against the law, declaring the entire thing unconstitutional if the insurance requirement does not hold up.
Attorneys for the administration had argued that the states did not have standing to challenge the law and that the case should be dismissed.
Egypt today shut down the operations of the Arabic satellite TV channel al-Jazeera, blaming it for encouraging the country’s uprising – and demonstrating that the repressive powers of central government are still functioning.
The state-run Mena news agency reported that the information ministry had ordered “suspension of operations of al-Jazeera, cancelling of its licences and withdrawing accreditation to all its staff, as of today”
An immigration officer tried to rid himself of his wife by adding her name to a list of terrorist suspects. He used his access to security databases to include his wife on a watch list of people banned from boarding flights into Britain because their presence in the country is 'not conducive to the public good'. As a result the woman was unable for three years to return from Pakistan after travelling to the county to visit family.
Jonathan Cook considers the future of the Palestinian National Authority in the light of the revelations in the "Palestine Papers", leaked to the pan-Arab television channel Al-Jazeera, which show that the authority, under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, had been prepared to give away to Israel fundamental Palestinian rights.
Mubarak's days are numbered and the US is in a quandary: can it trust a new regime's foreign policy – the implications are huge for the West and Israel, writes Richard Spencer.
Mike Huckabee was in Jerusalem today on an important junket related to his likely presidential campaign. He used his speech before the Knesset to denounce the Egyptian uprising as a threat to all humankind, warning that “the situation could threaten the world and all those who seek peace and security. The real threat to Israelis is not the bomb but the people behind it, not weapons but the madmen behind them.”
Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries over the weekend to curb their criticism of President Hosni Mubarak to preserve stability in the region. Preserve stability? Don’t they mean preserve tyranny? Israel has been content with Mubarak’s government, they were able to control their every move. Now they are worried that without Mubarak, the ‘stability’ might change to reality. The reality of a new government that supports the rights of the Egyptian people as well as the Palestinian people rather than one that has been cooperating in keeping both of them down.
Hebrew newspaper sources have revealed the existence of an "urgent" message sent by the Israeli government at the end of last week to a number of world leaders. Aimed particularly at the US and the EU, Israel is appealing to the leaders to "save" Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's regime.
The billionaire conservatives hold a gathering of elected officials, political donors and strategists. Outside, liberals hold signs condemning 'corporate greed.' 25 are arrested for trespassing.
By Gordon Duff -- Egyptians, by the millions, have hit the streets to bring down 30 years of a government that wasn’t hated 30 years ago, not by so many. 30 years is a long time, trading stability and security for freedom, and getting neither. 30 years of Mubarak America is ten years into the same cycle, patriot acts, habeas corpus gone, a Department of Homeland Security, demonstrations only allowed in “free speech zones.” I so envy the people of Egypt and the pride they are feeling, no matter how this ends. They stood on their feet, something the people of America have failed at since the early 1970s.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has instructed his government to begin talks with the opposition parties who support the mass anti-government protests across the country, the pan-Arab satellite network Al-Arabiya reported on Monday.
Mubarak told his new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, to start talking to the opposition and find out their specific demands. Webmaster's Commentary:
Tunisia has issued an international arrest warrant for ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his family, the nation's justice minister has said.
Even when the US pretends to help others economically, there are strings attached. Much of the aid America gives is military aid. The aid recipients are pressured to buy American manufactured armaments. Egypt is a case in point.
The US has kept Mubarak in power—it gave his regime $1.5 billion in aid last year—mainly because he has supported America’s pro-Israel policies, especially by helping Israel maintain its stranglehold on Gaza. Egypt has been the number two recipient (after Israel) of US foreign aid. In both 2009 and 2010, the economic aid amounted to 250 million dollars while the military aid reached 1.3 billion dollars.
"Egyptian people shaking the foundations of US policy in the Middle East" Paul Jay Senior Editor of "The Real News Network" interviews Amjad Atallah,the Co-Director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation.
What universe is this guy living in? How can the Egyptian people “lose” that which they never had? It’s interesting how people like this – I mean crazy people, of course – routinely invert the true meaning of words, employing Bizarro-speak to communicate their underlying nuttiness. He talks about how the Egyptians will “lose” an “open and unbridled media”– at the very moment his buddy Hosni is turning off the Internet and kicking Al Jazeera out of the country. Bizarro-speak is his native language.
"American officials must already be wondering what will happen to the fight against Al Qaeda if Mr. Saleh is deposed. And what will happen to efforts to counter Iran and promote Arab-Israeli peace if Mr. Mubarak is suddenly gone?"
Webmaster's Commentary:
Fool me once...Israel has spent the last 60 years constantly attacking its neighbors, stealing their land, subverting other governments, starving the Gazans into surrendering their elected government for a puppet of Israel's choosing, then when these other nations get angry, Israel hides behind the lumbering behemoth United States who threatens war while screaming for peace, and promises balance while giving Israel whatever it wants.
‘How many years can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see’? In the case of the dictatorship in Egypt, it was 30 years. Thirty years of relentless support for a regime contrary to the very principles of the governments that supported them.
Many of you have been asking what has been going on with our latest victim of zionist mind control on campus…. This morning I received the following email from Kris Petersen bringing us up do date….
The US embassy in Pakistan has called for "the immediate release" of an American charged with murdering two Pakistanis in the city of Lahore. The embassy said the man had US diplomatic status and therefore was immune from prosecution.
Climbing on to an American-made battle tank myself, I could only remember those wonderful films of the liberation of Paris. A few hundred metres away, Hosni Mubarak's black-uniformed security police were still firing at demonstrators near the interior ministry. It was a wild, historical victory celebration, Mubarak's own tanks freeing his capital from his own dictatorship.
Webmaster's Commentary: I hope Fisk is right on this. But I am concerned that any Israeli incursion into Egypt in the name of "stability" would engulf the entire region, and potentially, the world, in flames.
On Thursday, an Israeli cabinet minister who spoke on condition of anonymity to Israeli media had stated that the Egyptian president backed by a strong militarily prowess will eventually subdue the crisis, The Washington Post reported.
"His regime is well-rooted in the military and security apparatus," said the Israeli minister, adding that, "They will have to exercise force, power in the street and do it. But they are strong enough according to my assessment to overcome it," the Israeli minister had said.
Webmaster's Commentary: There is no solid evidence to prove that Israel has provided the Egyptian government weapons But even if Israel has supplied weapons to the Egyptian government, I wouldn't bet on Mubarak being able to stay in power for very long. There may well not be enough bullets at Mubarak's disposal, and enough army members ready to shoot to kill, to stop this. And if the army starts killing the elderly, the medically infirm, women, and children, this is all over for Mubarak in very short order.
Israeli officials are keeping a low profile on the events in Egypt, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even ordering cabinet members to avoid commenting publicly on the issue.
Senior Israeli officials, however, said that on Saturday night the Foreign Ministry issued a directive to around a dozen key embassies in the United States, Canada, China, Russia and several European countries. The ambassadors were told to stress to their host countries the importance of Egypt's stability. In a special cable, they were told to get this word out as soon as possible.
Webmaster's Commentary: Israel is attempting to control the agenda here, but ultimately may not be able to.
"Stability" under the reign of a tinpot dictator has ultimately cost the Egyptian people a price they are no longer willing to bear.
Will there be some "payback" in terms of Israel when the new government in Egypt is established?!? Most probably; however, the new Egyptian government will, under no circumstances, want a war with Israel; they will be too busy trying to keep up with the promises they will have made to the people of Egypt.
"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."-- Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, about Chile prior to the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvadore Allende in 1973
Connecticut National Guard Detachment 2, Company I, 185th Aviation Regiment of Groton left Connecticut on January 15 for Fort Benning, for further training and validation, a Press TV correspondent reported on Monday.
Fort Benning is a United States Army base located southeast of the city of Columbus in Alabama.
The unit, which has been deployed to the Middle East three times in the past seven years, has provided support for US and international forces stationed in war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan.
Webmaster's Commentary: When we see this unit deploy from Fort Benning, we'll know that the US has decided to do everything possible, including military intervention in Egypt, to crush this rebellion. And a short memo to President Obama; sir,of all the really bad ideas upon which you have signed off during your administration this has to be one of the worst.
Budget cuts carried out on the quiet have prevented emergency warming centers in Detroit from opening their doors all winter, leaving thousands of homeless and poor residents in the bitter cold. Homeless advocates were given little notice that the city had eliminated all funding to operate the single remaining warming center, Operation Get Down, on Detroit’s east side.
Webmaster's Commentary:
So, the FCIC report makes it clear that the economy devastation of the United States was indeed caused by Wall Street's greed which led to the selling of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities, which in turn were revealed as fraud, which forced a repurchase by Wall Street, who asked the US Government to save their asse(t)s by stealthily transferring the losses from the buy-back of the "toxic assets" onto the American people. Along the way there was a firestorm of fraudulent foreclosures throwing millions of Americans into the streets in a massive wealth confiscation program because the banks, again with the complicity of the United States Government, needed your homes on their balance sheets to stay solvent and fund record bonuses for themselves (Goldman Sachs just tripled all top executive salaries last Friday). Yet another major financial scam was the global warming hoax, intended to trick the people of the world into agreeing to a carbon tax, and the buying and selling of carbon credits. So intense was the propaganda to sell this latest snake-oil to the public that local communities and farms around the world were not prepared for three hard winters in a row. So now, the mortgage fraud crosses lances with the warming fraud, and people wrongly made homeless by the banks are dying in the freeze the US Government insisted would not happen.
So tell me again why the Egyptian people have more reason to revolt than Americans.
Speaking today in a series of television interviews, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated that the Obama Administration does not seek and would not support the ouster of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Webmaster's Commentary: Memo to Secretary of State Clinton: The US government may not be able to prevent Mubarak's ouster at this point.
As you are well aware, under Mubarak's 30 year watch, Mubarak's government has routinely tortured political prisoners; in fact, Egypt excelled so brilliantly at this that the US subcontracted it for precisely these kinds of services under President Bush!
But that aside, if this man and his political machine have been pathologically incapable of responding to the needs and requirements of his people, what in heaven's name makes you believe that he will start now?!?
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is convening an unprecedented mass meeting of U.S. ambassadors. The top envoys from nearly all of America's 260 embassies, consulates and other posts in more than 180 countries will be gathering at the State Department beginning on Monday. Officials say it's the first such global conference.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Translation: Secretary of State Clinton is going to tell these Ambassadors precisely how they are going to "sell" Israel's agenda of what happens if Mubarak stays, or if he is overturned to those countries where they are representatives of the US.
Two of the worst scenarios which could unfold would be if Israel invades at the Sinai desert to encircle Gaza, and really starve the Gazans into submission, or if American troops come into the fray, as either of these moves will only antagonize both Egypt - and the rest of the Arab world - against it.
Such a move could go regional in a heartbeat, inflaming all of the Middle East.
Unfortunately, as I type this, the Connecticut National Guard is on its way to Sinai, and this does not bode well for peace or tranquility in the region at all.
The timing was immaculate. Last Tuesday, across a two-page extract from the memoirs of Peter Sissons, the senior BBC newsreader, was the headline: “The BBC became a propaganda machine for climate change zealots – I was treated as a lunatic for daring to dissent.” The previous evening the BBC had put out a perfect example of the zealotry which had made Mr Sissons, as a grown-up journalist, so angry. Horizon’s “Science Under Attack” turned out to be yet another laborious bid by the BBC to defend the global warming orthodoxy it has long been so relentless in promoting.
Last year I praised Sen. Rand Paul for his proposal that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 be repealed because it gave special rights to some over others. I was criticized in the anti-Zionist right for encouraging an inveterate "bootlicker" of Israel. But now Paul is again showing himself capable of independent thought and action, demanding that all U.S. aid to Israel be cut off.
In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday Paul said that “Reuters did a poll, and 71 percent of American people agree with me that when we're short of money, where we can't do the things we need to do in our country, we certainly shouldn't be shipping the money overseas.”
Regime change in Egypt would force the IDF to reallocate resources and possibly increase its strength in the South, senior defense officials warned on Saturday.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Israel spent the last 60 years pissing all its neighbors off, and now is worried they have no friends left. When the cream cheese hits the bagel, expect Israel to demand Americans protect it from those nations Israel has been attacking all these decades, and expect your servile government to gladly spend your money and the lives of your children (the Connecticut National Guard is already headed to Sinai) to obey.
A Former CIA Analyst says it is very much possible that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will ask Israel to help him out of the mess he is in. In an interview with Press TV's U.S. Desk on Sunday, Ray McGovern said "I would not exclude the possibility that Mubarak enlist Israeli help to assist him to hang on to power."
McGovern says Israel could help Mubarak with the newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman's takeover and "repress the protests in the country."
Egypt's Hosni Mubarak appointed Omar Suleiman, the country's spy chief as the next vice-president on Saturday.
The former CIA analyst called Suleiman "poison to the people who are demanding their rights."
More than one in seven U.S. households lacked food security at some point in 2009, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). That figure is the highest since record-keeping began in 1995.
"It is revolution," another protester, sporting a beard and no mustache, added. "Who supports Hosni Mubarak? The United States of America, the British government, and Germany government, and French government. Because the United States stand beside Hosni Mubarak 100 percent. Because they know if Hosni Mubarak fail, they are, the whole people in Egypt, they're going to be free. They're going to be free."
"If the people are free in Egypt... they're going to go free Palestinians, they're going to destroy Israel. The country who control the United States is Israel!" he exclaimed.
Webmaster's Commentary: OK, we knew this was coming, from some unsourced agent/provocateur, or perhaps a Mossad agent in the crowd.
Egypt cannot attack Israel, because the Israel could conceivably nuke Egypt, and turn it into smoldering green glass. Post Mubarak, Egypt will have all it can do to keep its infrastructure together, and deliver on the promises whatever new government makes to its people.
Additionally, US is strategically bound to defend Israel, no matter what. So any real attack against Israel is an absolute no-go. But Egyptians have the right to be upset with a fossilized, 30 year old dictatorship which supported Israel in everything Israel has done, including their treatment of the Palestinians, which doesn't appear to be changing for the better any time soon.
So yes, the new government may be legitimately - and reasonably - not happy with Israeli leadership, but a call to war against it? I sincerely doubt it. The new Egyptian leadership and people will simply want to fulfill their own destiny, peacefully, and part of making that happen is going to be trade, not war.
Egyptian protesters have called for a massive demonstration and a rolling general strike on Tuesday in a bid to force out president Hosni Mubarak from power. Our producer in Egypt reports on the latest developments The so-called April 6 Movement said it plans to have more than one million people on the streets of the capital Cairo, as anti-government sentiment reaches a fever pitch.
"I know you're not threatening to default, but do you agree with administration officials and other economists that defaulting on the full faith and credit of the United States would be a financial disaster?" Fox News' Chris Wallace asked Boehner.
"That would be a financial disaster," the Speaker agreed. "Not only for our country, but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on election day said we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs. You can't create jobs if you default on the federal debt."
Webmaster's Commentary:
No, Speaker Boehner, the ultimate fiscal collapse of the US would mean that there would be an entirely new opportunity to create jobs in a new nation.
It would also mean that you and your colleagues who feed at the public trough, year after year, would be out of a job - and that might not be a bad thing. It might enlighten you to the economic pain of under employment, or unemployment, which so many Americans are experiencing right now, and may definitely be a "Buddha on the Road" moment for all of you.
The out of control Federal debt, which is causing spiraling taxes which prevent spending on job creation, has a stranglehold on the economy of this nation.
The other thing which has to happen is the abolition of the Fed, and the onerous debt burden it places on the American taxpayer. For far too many years, the Fed has been printing money out of thin air, with absolutely nothing to back it up. What that does is devalue the US currency already in existence. This shows up as massive inflation, as it already has, as demonstrated by the monstrous rise in the price of food here.
So to answer your question, the peaceful collapse of this government due to financial default may not necessarily be a bad thing. In fact, it might be one of the best outcomes possible, given the circumstances!
Both NOAA and NASA this month announced that 2010 was tied for the warmest year. The UK Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University proclaimed 2010 the second warmest year since 1850. But after the incredibly cold and snowy winters in 2008/09 and 2009/10 and so far in 2010/11, those claims are falling on increasingly deaf ears. The public doubt about global warming has been increasing given the Climategate disclosures suggesting scientists have been ‘cooking the books’, especially when earlier promises of warm, snowless mid-latitude winters failed miserably.
Here’s what needs to be changed, regardless of any and all secondary needs; the construct of central banks, Federal Reserves, must end and laws made against their return. Corporations must be taxed and controlled to the degree needed. Public servants must adhere to things they say as opposed to what they actually do under severe penalties to the contrary of serving the very interests they were elected to protect the public from in the first place. Laws can’t be laws if they are so easily compromised by the ability of money to provide the lawyers to do so. This is all very general and the reader will not be satisfied with my vague embrace of what needs a tighter specification and interpretation. That’s not my job. That’s someone else’s job.
Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei urged the United States to end its support for President Hosni Mubarak on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday. Sixty-eight-year old ElBaradei, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, said the idea that "a dictator who has been in power for 30 years will be the one to implement democracy" was a farce.
Webmaster's Commentary: El Baradei is absolutely correct on this, and the US government's attitude will only harden the attitude of the new Egyptian government against it.
But, of course, El Baradei needs to understand one factor; in this circumstance, Obama is "... just following orders" - and those orders come from Israel.
Preliminary plans for the Beit Orot neighborhood on Mount Scopus call for the construction of 24 homes; former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee attends ceremony.
For thirty years, our government has spent billions of dollars to help build and sustain the system the Egyptian people are now trying to dismantle. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Egypt and around the world have spoken. We believe their message is bold and clear: Mubarak should resign from office and allow Egyptians to establish a new government free of his and his family’s influence. It is also clear to us that if you seek, as you said Friday “political, social, and economic reforms that meet the aspirations of the Egyptian people,” your administration should publicly acknowledge those reforms will not be advanced by Mubarak or any of his adjutants.
A program funded by a $3 million government grant to market home energy retrofits in Maine abruptly shut down its operation late last week.
Records show that almost six months into its first year of the no-bid contract under the grant, the Maine Green Energy Alliance had signed up only 50 households for energy retrofits, but had promised in its contract to have 1,000 signed up in 12 months.
More than one in seven U.S. households lacked food security at some point in 2009, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). That figure is the highest since record-keeping began in 1995.
The report defines food security as having access to enough food to lead an active, healthy life. In 2009, 14.7 percent of U.S. households -- comprising more than 37 million adults and 17 million children -- lacked food security on one or more occasions. This marked only a mild increase over 2008, when the figure was 14.6 percent, but a substantial increase over 2007, when it was only 11.1 percent.
According to reports circulating in Britain''s Egyptian community, President Mubarak, 82, and wife Suzanne, 69, are planning to head to their London townhouse.
Egyptian baggage handlers at Heathrow are even said to have already spotted the First Lady arriving at the airport.
Egypt is a lesson for America, teaching us to look at ourselves, at how free we really are. We are not so different, Egypt under Mubarak and America under what ever gang of financial criminals and foreign thugs is controlling the government today. Egyptians have known thousands of years of slavery. They recognize it when they see it. Slavery, for most Americans, is something new. Americans woke up one day and weren’t so free anymore, maybe not at all. Some didn’t see it coming. Others screamed a warning and were pounded into the ground for it.
Webmaster's Commentary: Wanna see my earthworm collection?
While the United States says it is concerned about the "violence" in Egypt as the unrest continues, and as protesters defy curfews in Egypt, the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden expressed support for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Saturday’s optimism on the streets of Cairo for imminent political change gave way to anger on Sunday, as thousands of demonstrators became increasingly frustrated with the lack of response from major world leaders, especially the US.
During the main protest on Sunday in downtown Cairo, one man painted a 20- meter-long message in flowing Arabic cursive that echoed across the square: “Go Away, Mubarak, you are from the Americans, and you’re working for them!”
The anger spilling into the streets of Cairo, Suez, Alexandria and other cities was focused like a laser beam on President Hosni Mubarak on Friday. As the protests move forward, however, the resentment is spreading beyond Mubarak and his immediate underlings, and toward the United States and Israel.
Webmaster's Commentary:
"But remember, they only hate us for our freedoms!" -- Official White Horse Souse
Ever since he first stood at the helm of power nearly 30 years ago, President Mubarak has ravaged his country in every conceivable manner. Under his corrupt and despotic regime, the status and stature of Egypt in the international arena declined to an unprecedented low degree.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Of course Mubarak must go. If the Egyptian people falter and allow him to stay, the tyranny of the last 30 years will seem a fond memory compared to the clamp down on political dissident activity Mubarak, more paranoid than Khufu himself, will impose in the people of Egypt for however long he remains in power. Once started on the road to revolution, return to status quo ante is not an option.
What was really surprising is how far the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its negotiators have been willing to offer the Israelis, who have rejected all the Palestinian generous and free concessions, and the total pro-Israeli bias of the self-claimed American honest peace broker, who exerted tremendous pressure on the PA to surrender even more concessions.
The US has kept Mubarak in power—it gave his regime $1.5 billion in aid last year—mainly because he has supported America’s pro-Israel policies, especially by helping Israel maintain its stranglehold on Gaza.
Your ill-informed advisers won’t tell you this, Hillary [Clinton], but I hate to see an empowered female make such a prat of herself, so here’s a piece of advice. The time has come when you really must step back and take a vow of silence. Every time you open your mouth you are looking and sounding even more stupid than the female presenter on Egyptian state TV who assures us all is at peace with the world and the streets of Egypt are empty and calm.”
A decorated Army veteran accused of plotting to blow up a Metro Detroit mosque served time in federal prison for threatening to kill President George W. Bush and bomb a Vermont veterans' clinic in 2002. Roger Stockham, 63, who flew 600 combat helicopter missions in Vietnam, is behind bars in Michigan after he drove from his home in California last week and parked a car with a trunk full of explosives outside the Islamic Center of America, authorities said.
Buy local? Ok! I will do that! Wait . . . this says product of China, product of Brazil, product of Mexico, product of Egypt, Guatemala, Argentina . . . where is the stuff produced in the US?
How am I supposed to buy local to support my local economy when there is nothing here that was produced locally or even in the United States? And this stuff over here? It just says “distributed by” a company in the US and I have no idea where the heck it came from...
This is live video sent back from the Quarantine the Kochs rally in Rancho Mirage about an hour and a half ago. John Amato is on the scene and has called me a couple of times with updates. There are about 1500 people or so there, peacefully protesting the convocation of billionaires at the Rancho Las Palmas resort. The purpose of the meeting is to figure out how to impeach Obama and take over our government in order to preserve their wealth, justice, and liberty at the expense of ours.
“While we allowed ourselves to be pre-occupied and entertained, while we became lazy and apathetic and allowed ourselves to be drawn into fictional political divides, our own government divided our country up, sold us off and are on the verge of the final coup’ which will render us without land, freedom, wealth or country; or at the very least a country to call our own. ”
As Egypt's government attempts to crackdown on street protests by shutting down internet and mobile phone services, the US is preparing to reintroduce a bill that could be used to shut down the internet...
Last week, Standard & Poor’s lowered Japan’s bond rating to AA-, the fourth-highest level. By that standard, the U.S. got away with a slap on the wrist from Moody’s Investors Service, which warned merely that “the probability of assigning a negative outlook in the coming two years is rising.” ...
When Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum started the yearly pilgrimage to the inner sanctums of the Swiss Gnomes, he could hardly conceive that the ritual would turn into a celebrity bash of the super rich...
Many Texans are seeing independence is the only solution to stop an out of control federal government in Washington DC. The Federal reserve system has the economy in its death grip with a burdensome tax system to stifle productivity. The federal agencies and regulations bogging down small enterprises to the point going out of business.The TSA is hurting tourism and Homeland Security is trying to take over matters reserved for the states and local government is seen as a threat to everyone's personal freedoms with a tyrannical police state .To reverse this trend all the big government's heavy handed laws.This is a long list to undue that may not happen. Succession seems the only true nullification as the real solution in many Texans hearts today.
(As regards Iran, it is interesting to note that when Ahmadinejad steals one election, it's out he should go for the DC crowd, but when Hosni Mubarak steals half-a-dozen, well, he should in good faith reform how he does business, and hold a freer election.) I post this article as an example of classic disinfo. Most of what's in here is more an attack on Iran then an article about the CFR being displeased.
The dictator of Tunisia was overthrown in less than one month after being in power for 23 years. There is no question about how opponents of his regime were able to topple it. Two words describe it: Facebook, Twitter. These two social networking sites enabled protesters to take to the streets, organize the opposition, recruit new protesters, and overcome the police force and the military.
You would think that after all the time that has passed since Israel declared itself to be a state among the community of nations; that by now, it would be at least an accepted fact in the world. However you would not be correct. Israel is a place that has yet to finish claiming, what 'it' sees as its own border-rights; see the map above.
Why has Zio-zeal become English Canada’s new political religion? If Canada is Israel’s friend why doesn’t Canada help Israel abandon violence as its main diplomatic tool and facilitate Israel’s integration into the community of nations that denounce violence and racism? Why doesn’t Canada help Israel and its people? How do English Canada politicians benefit from being subservient to US geopolitical doctrine? Or how would they suffer from not trading away Canada’s sovereignty; and how are most Quebec politicians immune? Would it be so difficult for English Canada politicians to not so enthusiastically kiss the ass of the Middle East tyrant? And not adopt unanimous parliamentary resolutions to suppress criticism of Israel on university campuses? And not spend valuable parliamentary resources “investigating” imagined new anti-Semitism in Canada?
January 27, 2011 03:21AMT The Dutch parliament yesterday placed the Royal Dutch Shell before the mirror in a groundbreaking act of scrutiny over the severe environmental and social footprint of the oil giant on the Niger Delta.
Shell may be the only one being grilled but that does not by any means suggest that the likes of Chevron, Exxon, ENI and Total are not mired in the serial abuses in the region. The spotlight at The Hague needs to be replicated in Washington, Rome, Paris, Oslo, and elsewhere.
The Dutch parliament’s action is very significant and illustrates how lawmakers should keep their ears open to the cries of the peoples they represent. It should send a signal to their counterparts in Nigeria who prefer to keep a blind eye to the destructive extractive practices going on in the country.
The National Inflation Association believes that the United States has a college education bubble that is set to burst beginning in mid-2011. This bursting bubble will have effects that are even more far-reaching than the bursting of the Real Estate bubble in 2006. College education could possibly be the largest scam in U.S. history.
As Congress Poses and Postures over raising the Debt Ceiling, Look at Where the Defense Budget is being spent at Taxpayer’s Expense
The Obama administration said today if Congress refuses to raise the U.S. Debt Ceiling in time, then bond investors will flee U.S. debt and create a larger meltdown than the last one. I have no doubt that a complicit and compliant Congress will bow to Obama’s demands and raise the Debt Ceiling;
The looting of Cairo’s world-famous Egyptian Museum over the weekend seems to have engendered the desired news headlines.
‘Looters smash ancient treasures’, ‘Looters decapitate mummies’, ‘Looters rip off heads of artifacts’ etc., read a rash of headlines, following the apparent breaking into the country’s national museum, which is said to house the world’s biggest of Pharaonic antiquities.
However, it has since emerged, although with much less headline coverage, that some of the would-be looters apprehended by protesters outside the museum were identified as working for the state’s interior ministry.
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s interest in a stable Middle East is arguably greater than that of the United States—after all this is Iran’s neighborhood. For Iran to grow and prosper, it needs secure borders and stable neighbors. A poor and unstable Afghanistan, for example, inhibits trade and, potentially, increases the flow of refugees and narcotics into the northeastern part of Iran.
The government approved on Sunday a proposal declaring pirate radio a threat that constitutes "aerial terror" and endangers the peace and security of passengers flying over Israeli skies.
The approval of the proposal, initiated by Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, means that the government will increase its activities against illegal broadcasting. For the first time, a pirate radio offense will be termed an "economic crime," and will be enforced as such.
Nomi Prins - former managing director of Goldman Sachs and head of the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London - notes that the Egyptian people are rebelling against being pillaged by giant, international banks and their own government as much as anything else.
The Federal Reserve has not been alone in killing the American Dream. Politicians since 1913 have done their part in suffocating the dream. The tax code consisted of 400 pages in 1913 and tax rates ranged from 1% to 7%. In less than a century politicians of both parties have carved out 70,000 pages of payoffs, entitlements, and bribes for their contributors and constituents. Tax rates now range from 10% to 35%. Those 70,000 pages of rules, regulations and tax breaks do not benefit the average middle class American. They benefit those who had the money and power to buy off a Congressman.
January 28, 2011 US Empire on Haiti: dictatorship and genocide Nil Nikandrov - Almost right after the earthquake Pentagon brought its contingent on Haiti: the 82nd airborne division, the marine infantry and engineering units. Pentagon took control over the remaining components of the infrastructure, the US flight operations officers took control over the airport of Port-au-Prince. As a consequence there was a discrimination of flights with humanitarian cargos from “populist countries”, ...On Haiti the US is using all means - surveillance, provocations, threats – in order to get rid of those who supplied energy resources to Haiti, helped it to improve the health care services and fight illiteracy long before the disaster.
