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.
The army has vowed it will not use force against the protesters, who have called a massive march on Tuesday.
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?"
‘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.
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.
New secular regime in Egypt not expected to harm exports to Israel, but Islamic coup may create economic mayhem
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.
Here is some great information BYPASSING THE CORPORATE MEDIA.
Clearly the whole point of shutting down all internet in Egypt was to prevent this sort of information from getting around, so please share widely.
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.
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.
God's most moral army strikes again.
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.
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.
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.
A massive winter storm forecast for February 2 is set to affect more than 100 million people, weather experts have predicted.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Marti Oakley, Contributing Writer Activist Post
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. ”
Ben Grub and Asher Moses The Age
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...
Kevin Hassett Bloomberg Opinion
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.” ...
Salma Abdelaziz
CNN While discontent, resentment and nationalism continue to fuel demonstrations, one vital staple is in short supply: food...
SARTRE, Contributing Writer Activist Post
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.
Jim Kirwan
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.
The Canadian Zionism Question is: Why?
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.
(original content)
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.
This is a great video. Put your head set on and sit back? in your chair.
You’re standing at the walls of Jericho.
CosmosPrivateer 10 hours ago
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.
Jerusalem seeks to convince its allies that it is in the West's interest to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime.
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.
Jewish settlers killing a Palestinian Teenager in the Village of Arak Burin
All News and commentary taken from, Mike Rivero's whatreallyhappened.com.
