© Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images
Protesters pray during 'day of departure' demonstrations to force President Hosni Mubarak to resign
Protesters pray during 'day of departure' demonstrations to force President Hosni Mubarak to resign
Puppet Masters
© unknown
Hosni Mubarak's thugs and death squad invading a peaceful protest.
Hosni Mubarak's thugs and death squad invading a peaceful protest.
The document landed today morning in my inbox. It was sent to me by an Egyptian source, it reveals that the Egyptian Interior Ministry has implemented a plan to create chaos and looting, violence and terror in response to the angry demonstrations since last Friday, and the days after, which seek the end of the Mubarak regime, (and now also seek the execution of Mubarak after he refused to leave his position in peace and his regime perpetrated bloody crimes and massacres against the opposition demos). The document shows part of a plan which targets the nation, attempts to instill fear in the demonstrators and force them to end their demos.
The document was issued by the Office of the Egyptian Interior Minister and states that the plan detailed is based on the deployment of criminal elements in the middle of demonstrators, to foment chaos in conjunction with the deliberate withdrawal of the police and security forces from the streets of all cities.
The document reveals that among the activities of the plan is the intensive spreading of rumors through the Egyptian media (official TV, radio, news), like the use of screaming and wailing of female elements of the security forces, showing them asking for help because of looting and the decline of security.
© AFP
US officials are discussing a plan with Egyptian officials that would see Mubarak quit immediately and hand over power to a transitional government run by Vice President Omar Suleiman, the New York Times reported Thursday.
Even though Mr. Mubarak has balked, so far, at leaving now, officials from both governments are continuing talks about a plan in which, Mr. Suleiman, backed by Sami Enan, chief of the Egyptian armed forces, and Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, the Defense Minister, would immediately begin a process of constitutional reform.As spy chief, Suleiman reportedly embraced the CIA's controversial "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terror suspects snatched by the Americans were taken to Egypt and other countries without legal proceedings and subjected to interrogations.
The proposal also calls for the transitional government to invite members from a broad range of opposition groups, including the banned Muslim Brotherhood, to begin work to open up the country's electoral system in an effort to bring about free and fair elections in September, the officials said.
© badjonni / Flickr Creative Commons
Interior Department regulators acted with "determined disregard" by lifting and reinstituting a series of policy changes that restricted offshore drilling, following the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, U.S. District Judge, Martin Feldman of New Orleans ruled yesterday.
"Each step the government took following the court's imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance," Feldman said in the ruling.
"Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium, and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government's contempt," Feldman said.
President Barack Obama's administration first halted offshore exploration in waters deeper than 500 feet in May, after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off the Louisiana coast led to a subsea blowout of a BP Plc well that spewed more than 4.1 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
© The Canadian Press / Darren Calabrese
A real estate agent puts up a "sold" sign in front of a house in Toronto Tuesday, April 20, 2010. Canadian homes could lose as much as a quarter of their value over time once interest rates start rising, says a new report.
A real estate agent puts up a "sold" sign in front of a house in Toronto Tuesday, April 20, 2010. Canadian homes could lose as much as a quarter of their value over time once interest rates start rising, says a new report.
Capital Economics calculates Canadian home prices could fall by about 25 per cent - and even as much as 35 per cent - over the next three years once the Bank of Canada begins tightening monetary policy.
Most economists expect the central bank will begin doing just that in late spring or early summer, with the trendsetting rate rising from the current one per cent to over two per cent by the end of the year.
And the Bank of Canada is expected to keep hiking the policy rate next year until it returns to normal levels - about 3.5 per cent - by the end of 2012.
That would have profound implications both for home values and the economy, says David Madani, Canadian chief economist of Capital Economics.
"Even small rises in official interest rates have been shown to have a big effect on homeowner confidence in other countries under similar circumstances," Madani said Thursday.
"If the Bank of Canada does resume its monetary tightening this year, this could easily prove to be a tipping point for a house price collapse."
© Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images
A sketch of Hosni Mubarak and the words '30 years of devastation and treason'
A sketch of Hosni Mubarak and the words '30 years of devastation and treason'
The United States and Israel were caught off-guard by the size and ferocity of the demonstrations in Egypt, but they have since regained their balance and caught up to events. The two allies have settled on a strategy to preserve the Mubarak dictatorship (in some form) and assure that US-Israel regional hegemony will not be challenged. Thus, the Obama administration will continue to offer lip-service to democracy and human rights, while behind-the-scenes operatives coordinate efforts with Mubarak to maintain Washington's stranglehold on power in Cairo.
The first step in this process is to quash the rebellion with force.
Yesterday, after promising he would not use violence against the protesters, Mubarak deployed his goons to Tahrir Square where they attacked the the assembly with batons, rocks, and clubs. Men on horseback and camels charged into the crowd sending droves of protesters fleeing in panic. Al Jazeera reported that hundreds of people were injured in the melee. It's clear that the so-called "Mubarak supporters" were not civilians at all, but members of the feared Egyptian security forces in disguise. The Obama administration is aware of the clashes but has refused to condemn the perpetrators.
© Computer World
Since 9/11, the government and law enforcement increased the use and collection of biometric identification in the name of security to identify terrorists or criminals. Yet civil liberty advocates worry about the increased use of biometric recognition as well as the storage and management of government databases. However, biometric recognition technologies continue to emerge.
According to Wikipedia, uniquely identifying a person via biometric characteristics can be physiological like fingerprints, facial recognition, DNA, palm prints, iris or retina recognition, and odor/scents; or behavioral like voice or gait recognition. Biometric technology has been around for a long time, but here's a look at some current and future uses.
This video of the Egypt Police hit and run has been posted on Al-Jazeera's website and on YouTube.
On March 8, 1971, a group calling itself The Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into the FBI office in Media, PA and emptied its filing cabinets of documents. What they found should have shocked the country. The stolen FBI files revealed a series of covert programs called COINTELPROS, short for counter intelligence programs, carried out by the FBI against groups and individuals it considered subversive. Take note that these 'subversive' groups and individuals were not foreign groups. The FBI was waging a counter intelligence war against the American people and the very basis of their democratic system of government.
Perhaps this revelation would have had a more profound effect if it weren't for the fact that the world was turning upside-down at the time. Everything was changing, and much of the change was simply too much for many people to handle. 1971 was only two years after the first moon landing and the concert in Woodstock, NY billed as "3 days of peace and music," and only three years after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy - the end of a long stream of assassinations of civil rights leaders and activists that began with his brother John and included Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
