Run Like Hell

Back in my mis-spent youth, I studied Nuclear Engineering at Georgia Tech.  From that exposure to the nuclear industry, I have one piece of advice I've always given family and friends.  That is this .... if you hear even a rumor of a nuclear accident at a site or power plant that is upwind from you .... RUN LIKE HELL!

The track record of both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl is that the official announcements will always paint a rosy scenario.  They will always say that things aren't as bad as they appear.  And, governing officials will always be reluctant to order an official evacuation.  If nothing else, they will always be reluctant to 'create panic.'

To me, this means that the one thing you do not do is to sit calmly at home waiting for the tv or the radio to officially announce that the accident is bad and that you should be evacuating from your current position.   My advice to family and friends has always been that if you hear anything at all about a nuclear accident upwind of where you are, immediately leave and run like hell to someplace that is not downwind of whereever it is you are being reassured that everything is under control and that there is no need for panic.

Nothing I've seen or heard about Fukushima has changed that opinion.

I've been reminded lately of how much information is sometimes withheld from us.  Back in the early 80's, immediately after Three Mile Island on March 28, 1978, I was studying undergraduate nuclear engineering at Georgia Tech.  The school had a weekly seminar that was a mandatory attendance for students, where speakers talked about nuclear issues.  One day, and it must have been before 1983 when I dropped out of school, I remember speakers from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission coming to talk about Three Mile Island.  My memories are more than thirty years old, but I believe they probably ran through the timeline of events of what had happened.  This was also when they were starting to get back into the reactor site and seeing what they could find.

The one thing that sticks strongly in my memory was that they had started to stick cameras into the radioactive reactor vessel to see what it looked like after the accident.  Now, at the time, TMI was being presented as a relatively minor event where everything stayed pretty much under control and there was no real danger but some small amounts of radioactive gasses were vented to the atmosphere.  Which is still pretty much the official story today.

The pictures I remember seeing in this nuclear engineering seminar talk showed something very different.  Because, when they stuck a camera in to look at the core of TMI after the accident, they found an strikingly empty reactor vessel.  My memories are thirty years old, but I remember an empty vessel with just some struts and attachments still stuck to the sides.  But, everything else was gone ... melted away.  Until that picture came up on the screen, I had no idea that they had pretty much fully melted the core at TMI.

Spending much of my time inside a school of nuclear engineering at the time, I didn't really realize that this wasn't public knowledge until several years later when I saw the national network news breaking the story that pictures had been found that the core at TMI had suffered a meltdown.  That was one of my first concrete lessons in that the public is not told everything, or even what they need to know, about nuclear power.

Today, March 29, 2011, I went looking for those same pictures.  I went to google, and started searching both their web page searches and their image searches, and I haven't found those images yet.  I'd have it attached to this post if I had found it.  I did find a summary of a news article discussing the release of similar pictures in 1985.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-3677547.html

Article: TV images suggest a TMI core melt. (Three Mile Island reactor) Article from: Science News  Article date: March 9, 1985  Copyright

Related articles

New television pictures from inside the crippled Three Mile Island (TMI) reactor--the first ever taken from the bottom of its reactor vessel--suggest that fuel did melt in a 1979 accident there. The picturesindicate that a 3-foot-deep deposit of debris has accumulated beneath the reactor core. In contrast to a statement issued after the preceding video survey in July 1982 (SN: 7/31/82, p. 68), GPU Nuclear Corp. now says, "Apparently, some of the debris was once molten." GPU Nuclear, which is directing the cleanup of the TMI unit-2 reactor damaged in the accident, is a subsidiary of the Parsippany, N.J.-based General Public Utilities, the plant's operator.

But, a search for images doesn't turn up anything. Type "three mile island core meltdown" into Google's image search tool, and those dramatic images of a melted core that I saw in the early 80's don't appear. At least not on the hundred or so results on the first page returned. Lots of aerial photos of TMI that look like nuclear industry promotional pictures. But, nowhere do you see the dramatic pictures of the empty reactor vessel where the core had been melted away. Nor, do I find anything that looks like the images described in the article summary above. I've looked through two pages of Google image results, and not a sign of anything like this online. If anyone knows of where to find these post-accident images of the damage to the reactor core, I'd like to know about it.

Yesterday, I heard a nuclear activist say that most everything people have probably heard about Three Mile Island was a lie. This is just one small bit of confirmation of that. Even today, some 30 plus years later, there is still a reluctance to admit just how badly they melted down that reactor core at TMI.

Which brings me back to my first point. When it really counts, don't rely on the nuclear industry telling you the truth. If you hear even a rumor of a hint of a nuclear accident upwind of you, then run like freakin hell. The early announcements will always be overly optimistic if not outright lies. And its much better to be finding out about this from a hotel room somewhere outside of the radiation plume.

It also means, if you hear of any plans to BUILD a nuclear facility upwind of you, then get involved in fighting to stop it. That way, the day when you have to run like hell fleeing a nuclear accident never occurs.

Fallout

Rhenish Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Cologne has done some models of radiation fallout patterns coming from Fukushima. Those can be found here. Click on the pictures to see animations of the spread of the fallout.

According to these, surface level radiation reached the California coast north of LA today.

Lost in Translation

Was reading the latest IAEA report on the status of Fukushima.  Its amazing how calmly some of these official statements present things.  For instance, there are these little mentions of "INES Level 5".  What this means is a nuclear accident of roughly the same level as Three Mile Island.  Japaneese authorities have declared this for three reactors, plus a fourth reactor that they have at the level of a 'serious accident', ie INES 3.   Three Three Mile Islands concealed under notes about "INES Level 5".

But, what really caught my eye was the name of the Japaneese ministry that's in charge of all of this.  Its listed in this article as "Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)".

Did something get lost in translation? Or is the government ministry in charge of Sports and Culture really in charge of nuclear power as well in Japan?

I love Douglass Adams' writing.  He wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I'd highly recommend to anyone.  In one part, he talks about a doomed planet.  They make three giant spaceships to evacuate the planet. One has all the government and military leaders and their staffs and organizations assigned to it. The other is for the engineers and the scientists and the computer programmers and the managers who make things work.  The last is for the 'telephone cleaners' and interior decorators and the people who give poodles funny little hair cuts.

Since the last group was the least important to the day to day functioning of their world in the final days before worldwide catastrophe, the telephone cleaners and the people who give poodles funny little hair cuts took off first.

When they were gone, the engineers and scientists and leaders all discovered that with them gone, suddenly the world wasn't doomed any more.

It sounds like in Japan, they've done the opposite. They put the ministry in charge of Sports, Culture, and  Cute Little Haircuts for Poodles, in charge of the nation's nuclear power plants.

Or maybe something just got lost in translation.
---------------------------------
Written by an engineer who's been trying desperately all his life to get over to the spaceship with the 'telephone cleaners' and artists and the people who give poodles funny little hair cuts, because that's where all my cool hippy friends are going to be.  And if I'm going to be locked into a spaceship, I'd much rather be with the people who give poodles funny looking hair cuts than stuck in a tin-can with either a bunch of brainiac programmers or a lot of wanna-be General Pattons.  I'll guarantee you that the lady who gives poodles funny little hair cuts throws much better parties.  :)

But, I that still doesn't mean I want her running the local nuclear reactor.  Then again, she'd probably have enough sense not to build the damn thing in the first place.

Arabs Challenge Israeli Hasbara

Arabs Challenge Israeli Hasbara By RAMZY BAROUD

Addressing the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem, Netanyahu labored desperately to link some imagined Iranian designs into the future of Egypt. "The leaders in the West and the leaders in Tehran do not want the same future for Egypt," he claimed, according to the Jewish Tribune (February 24).

"American and European leaders want an Egypt that is free, democratic, peaceful and prosperous…On the other hand, leaders in Tehran want to see an Egypt that is crushed by that same iron despotism that has crushed human rights in Iran for the last three decades," he said.

I guess the world has forgotten about simple logic. Or, at least Mr. Netanyahu apparently believes this is true.

The US and 'the west' has controlled Egypt since Jimmy Carter had his little get together at Camp David. From that time forward ...

1) Egypt has been the second largest recipient of US 'foreign aid', behind only Israel.
2) The Egyptian military stopped buying Soviet weapons of death and destruction, and instead started buying US and western weapons of death and destruction.
3) The CIA developed close ties to Egyptian 'intelligence' and 'internal security'. Beginning under Bill Clinton in the 90's, the US so trusted Egyptian intelligence that they became our torturer of choice. See the case from Italy about rendition, and the wikileaks cables for published details. The US wanted the fig leaf that said we didn't torture, so instead we shipped our desired victims over to the Egyptians and just watched and listened as they attached the electrodes and made the screaming begin.

The bottom line is that the US and European leaders have had a great deal to say about what has gone on in Egypt for the last 30 years, and certainly for the 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Union. We were giving massive aid to a struggling economy. Which means we had the leverage to get what we wanted whenever we wanted it. We were closely tied to the Egyptian military. Since they used our 'stuff', we had them by the short hairs if they ever tried to do something we didn't like. And, we were obviously closely tied to Egyptian intelligence and police.

From this situation, basic logic says that what you saw in Egypt under the end of the Mubarak regime was exactly what US and European leaders wanted to see in Egypt. A brutal dictatorship that was subservient to the US and friendly to Israel. Rigged 'Elections' where opponents were banned and the great leader gets 90% of the vote. Secret police and torture aimed at keeping the population under control.

The US had a great deal to say about what Egypt looked like for 30 years. To see what US and European leaders really want for Egypt, one only needs to look at the results of those 30 years.

Intelligence

Droning as Foreign Policy By SAUL LANDAU

The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) last year offered a “glimpse of the drone strikes based on actual interviews with civilian victims of the strikes.”

One North Waziristan civilian victim “recounted how his home had been visited by Taliban fighters asking for lunch. He said he had agreed out of fear of refusing them. The very next day, he recalled, the house was destroyed by a missile from a drone, killing his only son.” (Gareth Porter Al Jazeera Nov 3, 2010)

Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation estimated between 1,109 and 1,734 people had died from drone hits in Pakistan from early 2008 to November 2010.

The dead supposedly included “66 leading officials in al-Qaeda or other anti-US groups.” The US military identified other bodies as those of "militants." (Porter)

UN rules forbid one state using force against another state or non-state group without consent of the other state; or without Security Council authorization; or in self-defense, but Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal maven, claimed drone attacks are self-defense, and killings as part of armed conflict. So what that Pakistan has not agreed! Or war rules ban attacks on civilians or civilian objects!

The recent wave of uprisings in Arab countries has been a complete surprise to western 'intelligence'. Just like the fall of the Berlin Wall was a complete surprise. And of course, its our wonderful western intelligence agencies that told us how they were so convinced that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction that we had to go start a war immediately just to defend ourselves.

Now, these same 'experts' are in charge of picking the targets for assassinations. And not the quiet sort of assassinations where an agent just touches a person passing on the street and kills them with some secret drug that looks like a heart attack. No, these are the sorts of assassinations where we aim a six foot long, 100 lb Hellfire missile and blow up entire buildings.

This is of course presented to the American people and to the world as our 'intelligence experts' carefully picking and verifying targets and only killing awful people who need to be killed.

Here's what you need to remember every time you hear this line of bull ... its the same experts and the same agencies who swore up and down that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. These are the same 'experts' who couldn't look at an Arab world full of US backed dicatators who persued US-backed policies that their people didn't like, and couldn't even guess that maybe the people might revolt against these dictators.  Who could have guessed that the Egyptians wouldn't like a government that constantly supported Israel over the Palestinians?

The people who couldn't see the fall of the Soviet Union coming are now in charge of picking the targets for murderous missile strikes. No real surprise, because the Democrats and Republicans have unanimously agreed that the guy to run all of this from the Defense Department is the same guy who back in the 80's was in charge of telling us how powerful and evil the Soviet Union was,  and how if we didn't spend hundreds of billions defending ourselves from them then we'd all be doomed. Nothing like a massive intelligence failure on your resume to seal your path to high office in Washington.  Because a massive intelligence failure means that you are good at telling the lies that more powerful people want to hear.

So, with these experts picking the targets for where we fire our 100 lb high explosive missiles from our drones, how many times do you think they've been wrong? How many innocent people have been killed in these missile strikes? And, remember, even when they are 'right', we take out whole buildings worth of anyone who happens to be near our target with 'collateral damage'.


How many innocent people have we killed?

And, we wonder why that whole part of the world is revolting against us?

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March 11 ....
Was re-reading this.  Note the 24 hour turn around time.  We fired the drone's missile at the house 24 hours after the 'Taliban' had eaten their lunch and marched on.  The sad part is that someone in the chain of command of ordering that missile strike knew this.  By the time the authority to murder had come down the line, someone knew that this was ridiculous and that the Taliban had long since finished their lunch and continued on their journey.

And they fired the missile anyways.  Knowing it wouldn't kill 'Taliban'.  But knowing it would destroy someone's home, and likely kill any family members left inside.  This was a terror attack.  The target wasn't the Taliban soldiers who they think were there.  The target was to sow fear in everyone in the area by killing anyone who even gives them lunch.  The target wasn't a neat assassination of people who might kill others.  The target was the cold-blooded murder of civilians to create fear.

This was a terror attack.  Orwell would be so proud that we routinely call the innocent civilians killed in our terror attacks the 'terrorists'.

How the world works

How the World Works
via YouTube
Narated by John Perkins, Economic Hit Man author

Common Sense

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

-- Thomas Paine, "Common Sense", Philadelphia, Feb. 14, 1776.

Killing people who oppose the government

Report: Libya air force bombs protesters heading for army base from Haaretz,

Libyan military aircraft fired live ammunition at crowds of anti-government protesters in Tripoli, Al Jazeera television reported on Monday, quoting witnesses for its information.

"What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead," Adel Mohamed Saleh said.

Governor: NATO Offensive Killed 64 Civilians in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province from antiwar.com

A four day NATO offensive in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province has left at least 64 innocent civilians dead and several others wounded, according to both the provincial governor and the provincial police chief.

Gen. Ziayi, the police chief, said that of the slain, 15 were men, 20 women and 29 were children. The governor later confirmed the overall total but reported only 26 children, with 16 men and 22 women.

The public health director for Kunar says that eight civilians are still being treated for major injuries sustained in the offensive, including four children. He also said that officials have called on the Red Cross to investigate the attacks.

Seven Killed in US Drone Strike Against South Waziristan from antiwar.com

A US Predator drone fired three missiles at a house in a tiny village of South Waziristan this evening, killing at least seven people whom officials described as “suspects.”

Families Mourn Those Who Died During Protests from WSJ

An estimated 300 people were killed during the 18 days of turmoil. Most died on the night of Jan. 28—when Hadir was killed—and the next day, largely from police gunfire, according to human-rights groups and witnesses.

The Egyptian health minister said Monday the government would identify those killed, distinguishing between "martyrs"—or innocent victims—and "thugs"—such as hired troublemakers. Families of the martyrs would be compensated, he said, adding that the number of martyrs is likely above 300.

Bahrain: terror as protesters shot. Live updates from Guardian(UK)

Bahrain: Five people are believed to have been killed and scores injured after Bahraini security forces raided peaceful protests in Pearl roundabout in the early hours of Thursday morning. Pictures have emerged showing brutal injuries sustained by protesters and, in one case, a young child. Riot police also targeted doctors and medics, while ambulances were prevented from reaching Pearl roundabout to collect the wounded.

One World. One Pain

Time to Topple Corporate Dictators

Normally, I only excerpt other pieces, and provide a link to the full piece. But, what Mr. Nader is saying now is too important to rely on people following a link .... so , here it is in its entirety.

In the Public Interest
Time to Topple Corporate Dictators
By Ralph Nader
2-18-11

The 18 day non-violent Egyptian protests for freedom raise the question: is America next? Were Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine around, they would likely say “what are we waiting for?” They would be appalled by the concentration of economic and political power in such a few hands. Remember how often these two men warned about concentrated power.

Our Declaration of Independence (1776) listed grievances against King George III. A good number of them could have been made against “King” George W. Bush who not only brushed aside Congressional War-making authority under the Constitution but plunged the nation through lies into extended illegal wars which he conducted in violation of international law. Even conservative legal scholars such as Republicans Bruce Fein and former Judge Andrew Napolitano believe he and Dick Cheney still should be prosecuted for war and other related crimes. The conservative American Bar Association sent George W. Bush three “white papers” in 2005-2006 that documented his distinct violations of the Constitution he had sworn to uphold.

Here at home, the political system is a two-party dictatorship whose gerrymandering results in most electoral districts being one-party fiefdoms. The two Parties block the freedom of third parties and independent candidates to have equal access to the ballots and to the debates. Another barrier to competitive democratic elections is big money, largely commercial in source, which marinates most politicians in cowardliness and sinecurism.

Our legislative and executive branches, at the federal and state levels, can fairly be called corporate regimes. This is corporatism where government is controlled by private economic power. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called this grip “fascism” in a formal message to Congress in 1938.

Corporatism shuts out the people and opens governmental largesse paid for by taxpayers to insatiable corporations.

Notice how each decade the bailouts, subsidies, hand-outs, giveaways, and tax escapes for big business grow larger. The word “trillions” is increasingly used, as in the magnitude of the rescue by Washington of the Wall Street crooks and speculators who looted the peoples’ pensions and savings.

It is not as if these giant companies demonstrate any gratitude to the people who save them again and again. Instead, U.S. companies are fast quitting the country in which they were chartered and prospered. These corporations, which were built on the backs of American workers, are shipping millions of jobs and whole industries to repressive foreign regimes abroad, such as China.

Over 70 percent of Americans in a September 2000 Business Week poll said corporations had “too much control over their lives.” It’s gotten worse with the last decade’s corporate corruption and crime wave.

Wal-Mart imports over $20 billion a year in products from sweatshops in China. About a million Wal-Mart workers make under $10.50 per hour before deductions—many in the $8 an hour range. While Wal-Mart’s CEO makes about $11,000 a hour plus benefits and perks.

This scenario has metastasized through the economy. One in three workers in the U.S. makes Wal-Mart level wages. Fifty million people have no health insurance and every year about 45,000 die because they cannot afford diagnosis or treatment. Child poverty is climbing as household income falls. Unemployment and underemployment are near 20% levels. The federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation since 1968, would be $10.00 per hour now. Instead, it is $7.25.

Yet one percent of the richest Americans have financial wealth equivalent to the bottom ninety-five percent of the people. Corporate profits and compensation of corporate bosses are at record levels. While companies, excluding financial firms, are sitting on two trillion dollars in cash.

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Sorry to interrupt Mr. Nader, But the richest one percent are also those who almost entirely fund political campaigns in this country. From opensecrets.org

Total US Population (estimate) = 296,410,404
Pct of US adult population giving $200 = 0.36%
Pct of US female adult population giving $200 = 0.19%
Pct of US male adult population giving $200 = 0.46%
Pct of US adult population giving $2,400 = 0.06%

Now that you can connect the dots between who pays for the campaigns and who's getting all the benefits, ie, the same people, back to Mr. Nader ....
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On February 7, President Obama showed us where the power is by walking across LaFayette Park from the White House to the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Before a large audience of CEOs, he pleaded for them to invest more in jobs in America. Imagine, CEOs of pampered, privileged mega-companies often on welfare and in trouble with the law sitting there while the President curtsied.

With Bill Clinton in the Nineties, corporate lobbies tightened their grip on our country by greasing through Congress both NAFTA and the World Trade Organization agreements that subordinated our sovereignty and workers to the global government of corporations.

All this adds to the growing sense of powerlessness by the citizenry. They experience hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and many more injuries every year in the workplace, the environment, and the marketplace. Massive budgets and technologies do not go to reduce these costly casualties, instead they go to the big business of exaggerated security threats.

While the ObamaBush deficit-financed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been destroying those nations, our public works here, such as mass transit, schools and clincs crumble for lack of repairs. Foreclosures keep rising.

The debt servitude of consumers is stripping them of control of their own money as fine print contracts, credit ratings and credit scores tighten the noose on family budgets.

Half of democracy is showing up. Too many Americans, despairingly, are not “showing up” at the polls, at rallies, marches, courtrooms or city council meetings. If “we the people” want to reassert our proper constitutional sovereignty over our country—we can start by amassing ourselves in public squares and around the giant buildings of our rulers.

In a country that has so many problems it doesn’t deserve and so many solutions that it doesn’t apply; all things are possible when people begin looking at themselves for the necessary power to produce a just society.

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ITS TIME TO ORGANIZE!
RIGHT NOW. WHEREEVER YOU LIVE.
ORGANIZE!

Ever wonder why the left is so divided ... Cointelpro goes private

How big business subverts democracy from the Guardian (UK)

But last week's spectacular series of leaks, counter-leaks and counter-counter-leaks revealed (and continues revealing) a disdain for free speech that shocked even us. It turns out that a consortium of private "cyber-security" firms were developing a $2m proposal to use a variety of sophisticated disinformation techniques to destroy the reputations of Chamber opponents, including public-interest, consumer-advocate and worker-rights groups such as US Chamber Watch and Change to Win. (The same firm was reportedly also proposing, in a presentation for Bank of America, a plot to destroy WikiLeaks, and to "neutralise" constitutional scholar Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com.)

and then ....

More specifically, the firm proposed to (according to a leaked document) "create a false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information, and monitor to see if US Chamber Watch acquires it". To help make this happen, they'd "create a fake insider persona and generate communications" with Change to Win, a labour group the firm theorised might be allied to Chamber Watch. Maybe they'd even "create two fake insider personas, using one as leverage to discredit the other while confirming the legitimacy of the second". But it didn't stop there: the security firms proposed passing off the faked documents they'd created as the fabrication of Change to Win.

We wish we could credit these jokesters with some originality – especially given the fees they were planning to charge – but there's actually nothing new here. These dirty tricks are straight out of the playbook of COINTELPRO, the FBI's notorious 1960s programme of psychological warfare that, among other things, planted false reports and forged letters to destroy reputations. Lately, COINTELPRO tactics have been making a comeback on the right, inspiring a whole new generation of "dirty tricks" operators, along with their patrons in the rightwing media and their sponsors in Congress. But it isn't just "gross and offensive" kids (Andrew Breitbart's words) who are taking up old rightwing techniques. It's actually a very big business.

Two things to note, and one thing to take away from this.

Note 1 .... This is not published in an American newspaper. That's neither a surprise nor a coincidence. And what it should tell any thinking person is to not to give a single dime to an American paper until they do start to run stories like this. They used to. But not any more. Which is why I don't waste my time reading anything but the latest Nuggets score ... and even when it comes to sports, the local paper sucks. If I listened to those idiots, I'd be surprised Carmelo wasn't traded to New Jersey months ago.

Note 2 .... You will see no government prosecution of these activities. All of this is occurring with the blessing of the US government. This is of course because almost every Congressperson, Senator and even the President is bought by the same people this 'security firm' is pitching their services to. Most of the employees of such a firm were trained by your US tax dollars, and the US government, nor any state attorney general, seems to have any problems with them spying on private citizens and subverting American democracy.

And, what to take away from this. DON'T STOP ORGANIZING. You will of course run into forged documents and smear campaigns and subversive 'volunteers' who always seem to cause more trouble and fights than provide any help. If for instance, the local Green Party has people who want to start fights with anyone who tries to be active, and then spends most of their time trying to figure out which Democrats to endorse, then you've probably found them. Don't worry about it. Just go around them.

Take note of the people who are on your side. Take note of the people who help you out. Then stick with those people. When you get someone who's always causing trouble, just try to ignore them. Slide them out of the loop, and work with the people who actually help.

But, no matter what. Don't stop organizing. Don't get frustrated when your efforts are thwarted by the millions of dollars available from corporate America and from the corporate political parties. Just note who your real friends are, and move on. And keep on organizing. That's the key. Never stop organizing.

COINTELPRO has never gone away. Its just been privatized. That's ok, as long as we realize what's really going on when some agent provocateur seems to scuttle a bunch of hard organizing work with these sorts of dirty tricks. Just notice who were your friends, just notice who was being useful and helpful, and stick with them no matter what forged documents come up nor what the spies within will try to do to separate you. Stick with the people who help. Ignore, and move past, the people who don't.

Getting Weirder All the Time

OK, after seeing that its the Republicans, and especially the Tea Party Republicans who are trying to oppose our massive defense spending (see last post), now comes the latest installment of the World Keeps Getting Weirder.

Republican oppositon to Patriot Act increases, Democrat opposition decreases

In an interesting twist following Congress' historical failure to renew the Patriot Act last week, Democrats are migrating to the bill while Republican opposition is gaining. Opposition to the bill by Republicans has nearly tripled since last year's vote.

So, lets see what's going on.

We know voting Democrat didn't repeal the Patriot Act. The Democrats have had the majority of both the House and the Senate since 2006, yet never pushed such a bill. And, now, its a Democrat President and the Democrat in Congress who seem to want to see the Patriot Act extended.

Meanwhile, its the Republicans, and especially the newly elected Tea Party Republicans, who are keeping President Obama and the Democrats in Congress from extending Dubya's Patriot Act.

Would seem to be a surprise, unless you remember almost every Democrat voted for the original Patriot Act, with Sen. Feingold being the noticeable exception.

Gee, one would almost think that to end the war, or to get rid of anti-American "Patriot Act", the thing to do would be to vote Tea Party. The answer sure as heck wasn't to vote Democrat.

Except, this is an old an familiar pattern. The party in power alway favors things like expansive powers to spy on and arrest the citizens of the free and democratic country. The party out of power is always aghast at these awful acts of tyranny. Back when the original Patriot Act was passed, it was proposed and backed by the Republicans, while the Democrats cried about how awful it was. Now, with the Democrats in power, its the Democrats who support it, and its the Republicans who cry about tyranny.

Unfortunately, this is only because the Republicans aren't in control of the executive branch. Let the Tea Party get elected to real power in the executive branch, and they'll become big fans of reading everyone's email, just like Obama is now, just like Dubya was before him.

That's been American politics since Ronald Reagan. Each party howls in opposition when not in power. Each party continues exactly the same when in power. No matter who is in power, the Patriot Act remains.

It does however get hilariously funny watching the people switch roles and script books after an election. So, suddenly its the partisans who think Dubya was a fantastic President who now work against renewing Dubya's Patriot Act because its now Obama, who promised to at least refine if not repeal the Patriot Act, who now is the biggest pusher to have it renewed.

Warning, watching American politics can cause naseau from the rapid switching of positions. If it makes you sick, you have two choices. Turn off and watch American Idol. Or, don't vote for the politicians who always have money, but who switch positions on a dime because they have no ideals. Somebody keeps electing these people.

A World Turned Upside Down.

Get old enough in this surrealistic world, and eventually it seems as if everything gets turned on its head. After all, its the Democrats who pretend to be anti-war, and to be the party one would expect to try to cut defense spending.

Yet, it appears that if you are a voter who wanted to see defense spending cut, the correct answer was really to support the Tea Party.

Tea Party declares war on military spending

If Republican icon Donald Rumsfeld is booed at CPAC, even the sacred cow of the defence budget could come under the knife

Wow, so its the conservative Tea Party types who boo Donald Rumsfeld. The Democrats would not do that. The Democrats would greet Mr. Rumsfeld with respectful applause. Then run to the floor of the Congress to vote for higher and higher defense spending ... just like they've done every session since taking control of the Congress in 2006.

No, its the Tea Party, the people who the left derides as right-wing crazies, who boo Donald Rumsfeld and then appear to be serious about acting to cut back on our ridiculous 'defense' spending where we spend more than the rest of the world combined.

Who'd have see that coming?

Well, I guess I was part-ways there. I'd been saying for years that a vote for the Democrats was a vote for more war and more and more money wasted on 'defense'. That much was obvious from their actions. All one had to do was to watch war funding bills and bigger and bigger defense budgets go sailing through the Congress that the Democrats have controlled since 2006 to understand that much.

But, who'd have thought that the correct answer to finally get a Congress that would start to make even minimal cuts to this bloated defense budget was to vote TEA PARTY?

Later this year, we'll probably get to see a fight between the House on one side, and Obama and the Democratic Senate on the other side. Because it appears that it will be the House, where the Tea Party has influence, that might act to cut defense spending. While it will be the Democrat controlled Senate and the Obama White House who will continue their fight of the last four years to spend more and more and more and more on the military.

Want to know the effect of this on our society? Try looking for a civil engineering job. The only ones that exist are military contractors. That's a direct result of Democratic policy of raising the defense budget at the expense of the health of our economy. When all the money goes to 'defense', then that's where all the jobs will be. We're not building anything at home right now, but you can go be a defense contractor in Afghanistan.

It also means we'll have lots of big tanks and fast bomber jets, but less money spent on stuff like new schools, new hospitals, and rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of the nation. The next time a bridge falls down and kills people in an American city, or the next time a levee fails and an American city gets flooded, then go find a few of those multi-tens-of-million-dollar fighter-bomber jets and pat them. Because that'll be what we bought instead of spending the money to repair that bridge or that levee.

And now, it looks like the best hope of those who want to see this change is to support the frackin Tea Party. Especially since the anti-war left was revealed to be largely a fraud when they quit the fight the day this officially became the Democrat's wars. When there is absolutely nothing from the anti-war left in trying to really challenge these wars and these defense budgets by trying to get some power in the Congress, I guess the Tea Party might indeed be the best bet in the vacuum that leaves.

If you are on the left and you don't like me saying that it seems the best way to cut back on our bloated defense spending is to vote Tea Party, then maybe the dang left needs to get off its rear and start running some anti-war, anti-defense spending candidates of their own. Of course, to do that, they'd have to challenge the Democrats. The left seems incapable of doing that. Which means that for now, its the left and the Democrats who support higher defense spending, while its the Tea Party that's trying to reign that in even by just a little bit.

This world is getting crazier by the day.

Protesters face year in jail - in Los Angeles, not Egypt

Protesters face year in jail - in Los Angeles, not Egypt

LA Times = Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich is throwing the book at dozens of people arrested during recent political demonstrations — a major shift in city policy that has him pressing for jail time in types of cases that previous prosecutors had treated as infractions. Some of the activists arrested, including eight college students and one military veteran who took part in a Westwood rally last year in support of the DREAM Act, face up to one year in county jail.

In 2009, under Trutanich's predecessor, Rocky Delgadillo, all but one of 12 students arrested at a protest over fee hikes at UCLA were offered plea deals that reduced their charges to an infraction with a $100 fine. "Our policy was that this is an exercise of 1st Amendment rights, and if this was your first time, you would get a hearing," said Delgadillo, who said his policy was based on the belief that a protester demonstrating for a political cause is different from a typical criminal.

Of course, what you notice is that you never hear the opposite story. You never hear of American police and American prosecutors acting with more tolerance and restraint, especially towards those evil terrorists who dare to think that all this talk about freedom and democracy means that they are free to try to speak their minds and tell their supposedly democratic government what they want.

Egypt Trades Torture Supervisor for ‘Mubarak’s Poodle’

Egypt Trades Torture Supervisor for ‘Mubarak’s Poodle’ from Antiwar.com

The surprise ouster of long-time Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak today came with an additional shock, that Vice President Omar Suleiman, the unsavory torturemaster of the Mubarak regime who Western officials appeared to have hand-picked as his successor, got brushed aside.

While the details of exactly how it happened are unclear, Mubarak’s ouster led to all power being turned over to the military, making 75 year old Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi the new de facto head of state.

Gee, I guess nobody likes a torturer. Not even his fellow members of government. Or, perhaps they feared and disliked the torturer more than the rest.

Still, its not exactly the 4th of July for Egypt. Not when a dictator is replaced by military rule. That still ain't exactly democracy. Now, like all militaries in such a familiar situation, I'm sure we'll here lots of talk of free and fair elections to be held some day. The trick of course is how long is it until that day, and just exactly how free and fair are the elections.

But, its always fascinating to see how things work in the sphere of influence of this great arsenal of democracy that is America. America, that great land of freedom, seemed quite happy with a dicator in power for 30 some odd years. And now, surprise, surprise, when the actual people about whom we mouth such words of freedom decide that they actually want some freedom and not dictators for life and CIA trained torturers, what they really get is rule by a military that has close ties and gets a big chunk of its funding from the USA.

So, now "Mubarak's poodle" has replaced the dictator for life. Its a sign of how bad things have been in Egypt that this is apparently greeted with some relief by the people there.

Egypt’s military, of course, though not as rife with torture as the police, has a shady reputation itself, and its dominance over the entire nation’s economy hardly makes it an ideal instrument of reform. Still, locals seem quite hopeful at the moment, and so long as he isn’t Mubarak or Suleiman, there seems to be almost universal consensus that he will be an improvement.

It ain't over yet.

“Citizens, in these difficult circumstances that our country is going through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to relinquish the office of the presidency and has instructed the Supreme Council of the armed forces to take over the affairs of the country.”

- Mubarak resignation text

So, an American backed dictator has resigned. By American tradition in its sphere of influence, its the dictator's spy chief with his close ties to the CIA that takes over from the 'President'. From the Austrailian ...

FORMER Guantanamo detainee Mamdouh Habib says he was tortured by Egyptian Vice-President Omar Suleiman, who is seen as a possible successor to embattled President Hosni Mubarak.

Mr Habib last night told The Weekend Australian it would be a disgrace if Mr Suleiman became leader of Egypt given his personal role in overseeing the torture of terror suspects in the 1990s.

"This guy is an agent for the United States and the CIA. If Australia supports Suleiman, they are supporting torture and crime," Mr Habib said.

Yep, the perfect American friend. Both Mr. Suleiman, and the Australian government who's been a steady backer and supporter for American torture and crime.

"I was sitting in a chair, hooded, with my hands handcuffed behind my back. He came up to me. His voice was deep and rough. He spoke to me in Egyptian and English," Mr Habib writes. "He said, 'Listen, you don't know who I am, but I am the one who has your life in his hands'."

Mr Habib writes that Mr Suleiman had told him that he wanted him to die a slow death: "No, I don't want you to die now. I want you to die slowly. I can't stay with you; my time is too valuable to stay here. You only have me to save you. I'm your saviour. You have to tell me everything if you want to be saved. What do you say?"

When Mr Habib said he had nothing to tell him, he says Mr Suleiman had said: "You think I can't destroy you just like that?"

Sure, Thomas Jefferson would have just loved this guy.

They had taken Mr Habib to another room and then Mr Suleiman had said: "Now you are going to tell me that you planned a terrorist attack. I give you my word you will be a rich man if you tell me you have been planning attacks. Don't you trust me?"

Mr Habib had replied that he did not trust anyone.

"Immediately he slapped me hard across the face and knocked off the blindfold; I clearly saw his face," Mr Habib writes.

Mr Habib alleges Mr Suleiman said: "That's it. That's it. I don't want to see this man again until he co-operates and tells me he's been planning a terrorist attack."

And gee, you wonder where all these phony terror alerts that never mean anything come from? They come from the Suleiman's of the world, working under orders to find more terrorist confessions.

We've become the Spanish Inquisition. Wouldn't Thomas Jefferson be so proud of us. This 'our guy' in Egypt. When our dictators finally get toppled by popular resistence, the first thing that happens is that the CIA's best friend in the country gets named its new ruler.

In the mid-1990s, Suleiman worked closely with the Clinton administration in devising and implementing its rendition program; back then, rendition involved kidnapping suspected terrorists and transferring them to a third country for trial. In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer describes how the rendition program began:

"Each rendition was authorised at the very top levels of both governments [the US and Egypt] ... The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly with top [CIA] officials. [Former US Ambassador to Egypt Edward] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as 'very bright, very realistic', adding that he was cognisant that there was a downside to 'some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way'. (p. 113).

"Technically, US law required the CIA to seek 'assurances' from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk], who helped set up the practise of rendition, later testified, even if such 'assurances' were written in indelible ink, 'they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit'."

-- Suleiman: The CIA's man in Cairo

Yep, that's change we can believe in. And, oh, by the way, those 'Clinton-era' torture policies described above is what Barrack Obama reinstated as his torture policy when he reversed the Bush era executive orders. The above describes torture under Obama as well.

The US is now mouthing support for elections. While at the same time already starting to claim that a government that includes the popular Muslim Brotherhood is unacceptable. For now, those words are mainly coming from the pro-Israel sections of Congress, which of course is almost all of the Congress. But just watch, very quickly that little caveat will quickly become US policy.

We support elections in Egypt. As long as the 'right' people win. The US has always supported elections in Egypt. Even when 99% of the people were voting for Mubarak, he was the 'right' guy in the eyes of the US and Israel. So, the US always supported his 'elections' in Egypt. Now, the US is supporting new 'elections' in Egypt, so long as they are supervised by the Egyptian Army with its close ties to the US military, and by the CIA's torturer in Cairo.

But, right now, the real power in Egypt is the people in the streets. They've discovered what the rest of the world seems to forget, most of the time. That, when the people go into the streets in their masses. When the people start to speak with unity, no government, no army, no dark spies and their evil torture chambers can hold them back. The American-backed Mubarak dictatorship has killed over 300 of its citizens in trying to stem this flood of popular opinion. But, even murder hasn't stopped this wave.

And, that power in the streets won't be happy with the US's rent-a-torturer in Egypt being named their new friend who's going to lead them to democracy. At least that's the feeling I get from the other side of the world. We shall see, but this doesn't look like its over yet. As much as the US might now plead for 'stability' and 'order', the people have Egypt have re-discovered Thomas Jefferson's truth ... that power resides with the people. And that it will be they the people who will decide what happens next in Egypt.

It ain't over yet.

english.aljazeera.net is a source for continuous reporting on events in Egypt.

Surprise?

If you get your news from CNN, then the Egyptian uprising is a total surprise.

However, if you've used the link on the left to go to the Socialist Worker website, you'd have found this story six months ago.

Beginning of the end? by Mostafa Omar. Published on Socialistworker.org, June 6, 2010. Part 3 of a series.

THE COMBINATION of rising strike levels, increased workers' militancy and popular enthusiasm generated by Mohamed ElBaradei's campaign for democracy has begun to change the political equation in Egypt. This is also altering a class balance that has been intact more or less for at least 35 years--since the defeat of the last round of workers' struggles in the mid 1970s.

and ...

A number of international factors are also adding to the state of instability in the country and helping to fuel additional fronts for struggle against the regime.

The most important factor in this regard is Israel's continued attacks on the Palestinian people. Egyptian society in general has swung in support of the Palestinians in the last 10 years since the beginning of the second Intifada. The years 2000, 2002, 2006 and 2009 witnessed mass demonstrations to support Palestinians.

In recent months, thousands of college students and workers have protested Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to expand settlements in East Jerusalem and also denounced Egypt's complicity in the three-year-old siege of Gaza. Muslim Brotherhood students have called on the government to open the border for jihadists to go fight in Gaza.

Plus, millions continue to feel bitterness and humiliation over the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its continued occupation there and in Afghanistan.

Mubarak, who is an ally of both Israel and the U.S., is increasingly viewed by many as, at best, a helpless buffoon in the face of the forces of empire, and, at worst, a conniving and willing collaborator.

The key is to realize that you are better informed if you use parental blocking features to block CNN, MSNBC, FAUX and all the other corporate 'news' channels from your tv. Keep this out of your house. It may seem contrary, but you'll find you are better informed.

Egypt - "It is over"

From "Death Throws of a Dictator", by Robert Fisk, Independent

Their crews, in battledress and smiling and in some cases clapping their hands, made no attempt to wipe off the graffiti that the crowds had spray-painted on their tanks. "Mubarak Out – Get Out", and "Your regime is over, Mubarak" have now been plastered on almost every Egyptian tank on the streets of Cairo. On one of the tanks circling Freedom Square was a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Beltagi. Earlier, I had walked beside a convoy of tanks near the suburb of Garden City as crowds scrambled on to the machines to hand oranges to the crews, applauding them as Egyptian patriots. However crazed Mubarak's choice of vice-president and his gradual appointment of a powerless new government of cronies, the streets of Cairo proved what the United States and EU leaders have simply failed to grasp. It is over.

The US of course, is on the wrong side of history. The great progressive, Hillary, is desperately trying to support and prop up the US' dictator.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes clear in TV interviews Sunday that the United States is not demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down. She also backs away from earlier threats to pull Egypt's billions of dollars in aid.

Hillary says she wants democracy, but she also wants the dictator, who would massively lose any fair election, and who's only in office because of rigged elections, to stay in power. Hillary's idea of 'democracy' is to have the military step forward. Interesting how the US' idea of democracy always involves armies and 'democracy' at the point of a gun.

"We are urging the Mubarak government, which is still in power; we are urging the military, which is a very respected institution, to do what is necessary to facilitate that kind of orderly transition."

Notice of course that the one thing Hillary does not call for in her idea of a 'democracy' is free and fair elections. This is the lady that apparently a major part of the Democratic party's supporters view as a great 'progressive'.  And as usual, the policies she supports are severely reactionary.  Such as favoring a military coup ("what is necessary") in a country, but not supporting free and fair elections.  The nice thing about the name of the Democratic party is that the word 'deluded' has such a nice alliterate ring to it ... as in "deluded Democrats", who apparently view Hillary and Obama as 'progressive'.  If supporting military coups over free elections is 'progressive', then I don't want to be a 'progressive'.

Meanwhile, if you go to CNN, you don't see anything like Mr. Fisk's excellent reporting. However, if you read CNN's "latest developments" page, and read between the lines in the way that citizens of the Soviet Union learned how to do, what you see is many stories of Americans fleeing Egypt on the last planes out. Of course, CNN's "latest developments" won't tell you why. The obvious fact that an American dictatorship is collapsing can not be mentioned. Instead, the story carries the obligatory CNN quote from the Israelis about what is happening in Egypt. That's "news" according to American corporate TV ... whatever the Israelis say. Along with cheering for the army to come in and shut down democracy.

But, what you won't get from the network of CNN reporters, who apparently are stationed at every Israeli government building, is the reporting from the street that says the Army is already changing sides and supporting the people instead of their dictator. For that, you need the wonderful Mr. Fisk.


Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has been blocked in Egypt. Just like it is in almost all of the US. And, soon, the US Congress will consider Sen. Lieberman's bill to give US Presidents a "Mubarak Kill Switch" to shut down the internet should democracy ever start to erupt at home. Until that happens, you can watch coverage of events in Egypt at english.aljazeera.net.

Of course, a wise man, who's birthday we now kinda-sorta honor with a national holiday (if you can get off work that day), once tried to warn us about being constantly on the wrong side.  Obviously, in 43 years, we've failed to listen.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, April 4th, 1967, Riverside Church, NY city.

Mr. Obama copies Rev. King's speaking rhythms, and likes to claim connections to the Rev. King. But surely, if the occupant of the White House was a successor to Dr. King, then we would see America on the 'right' side of a revolution for the first time in a very long time.   No matter the shade of skin pigments on the surface of Mr. Obama, within he's a strong supporter of a "thing-oriented society".  His actions show this time after time, no matter what words he speaks.  The skin coloration of American presidents may have changed.  But, we are still on the wrong side.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."  We've gone from five years to five decades after JFK, but those words still haunt us.

Sometimes you see yourself

The Guardian (UK) is also reviewing and publishing some of the WikiLeaks cables that relate to Egypt. They of course show total private US support for the dictatorship.

But, what struck me was this fragment of a cable about police brutality.

"Under Hosni Mubarak's presidency there had been "no serious effort to transform the police from an instrument of regime power into a public service institution", it said. The police's ubiquitous use of force had pervaded Egyptian culture to such an extent that one popular TV soap opera recently featured a police detective hero who beat up suspects to collect evidence"

That of course is standard fare on American TV. Our TV channels are full of 'detective heroes' who 'beat up suspects' to collect evidence. Heck, I wonder if by mistake someone at the embassy was just seeing a re-run of American tv cop shows on Egyptian TV?

So, what does that say about the way the police 'ubiquitous use of force' has pervaded American culture? What was notable about Egyptian TV in an embassy report, is commonplace here.

The old saying about a frog in a pot of boiling water comes to mind.   You know, the one about how it doesn't notice if the heat is increased slowly. What about police violence in the US? Our TV certainly shows signs of a 'ubiquitous use of force'. A scan of any local paper seems to reveal story after story.  In Denver, it appears that the cops practice for American Gladiator by beating up citizens.


The frog doesn't realize he's in a pot of boiling water. Are we similarly incapable of recognizing that we live with a violent police? Just how hot has the water gotten, around us poor American frogs?

Try typing 'police beat' and the name of an American city into Google, and watch the hits fly.  Here's a sample of what you get for Denver.

And, could you tell the one photo of the Egyptian police from the other photos of the Denver police?

How quickly they fall.

Hard to tell what's going on in Egypt, but there are increasing signs that this government might fall. Most telling are the mentions in the Guardian Breaking News blog (see link in post below) that the police and military are siding with their fellow people against the dictator.

2.32pm: Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, gives this detailed account of how protesters overwhelmed police in Alexandria today.

After prayers, the protesters came out of a mosque and started shouting slogans. They were saying "peaceful, peaceful" and raising their hands. They were immediately attacked by police in an armoured car firing teargas. Fierce clashes started then, with exchanges of rock throwing. About 200 police faced about 1,000 protesters. The clashes lasted for nearly two hours. Then a much larger crowd of protesters came from another direction. They were packed in four blocks deep. Police tried to hold them back with teargas and rubber bullets, but they were finally overwhelmed.

Then the police just gave up, at about the time of afternoon prayers. Protesters gave water to police and talked to them. It was was all peaceful. Hundreds of protesters were praying in the street.

Now walking down to downtown Alexandria, the whole road is packed as far as we can see, people shouting slogans against [Hosni] Mubarak and his son Gamal. Asking others to join them. It is a very festive atmosphere. Women in veils, old men, children, I even saw a blind man being led. And there are no police anywhere.

There is one lesson that activists should learn from all of this. A country can look stable, or at least repressed. The discontent bubbles beneath the surface when the state police kick in the doors of any dissidents. But, the discontent is still there. And, when the people sense that there is a real chance for real change, they will pour out into the streets in their millions.

The key is not to make the mistake of thinking that the lack of signs of public protest, which are repressed by raids and arrests by the state police forces, represent the lack of discontent amongst the population. The discontent is just hidden when state censorship and state police raids on dissidents keep it from being public. But it doesn't mean its not there.

The fall of the Soviet Union surprised everyone with the speed with which it progressed. Now we are seeing again how quickly can change as the pro-American dictatorships across the Arab world are starting to collapse as the people realize that change might actually be possible.

The Arab Street

The most important story in the world seems to be the protests in Egypt and other countries. A dictator has already fallen in Tunisia.

For years, people have been wondering when this would happen. The attitudes and policies of governments like the one in Egypt have been so opposed to the beliefs of the people that this has always been like California's big-one. Everyone could always see the tensions that could lead to a break, the only thing everyone didn't know was when it would happen. We could just possibly be seeing that 'big-one' right now.

The Guardian (UK) has a breaking news page with the latest news from Egypt. Today is a key day, with the crowds in the mosques for Friday prayers. See Breaking News at ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/jan/28/egypt-protests-live-updates

The problem can be seen in the statements from Israel. They praise the Egyptian dictatorship, and say they expect the Egyptian police to bloodily put down the people in the street.

Former envoy Gideon Ben-Ami predicts events in Egypt will not follow the same trajectory as the recent popular uprising in Tunisia, where the longtime dictator was ousted and fled the country. Ben-Ami says the Egyptian security and intelligence services "know how to resolutely take care of things when they feel under an existential threat as they already have begun to do".

Given the tactics of Israeli security, such a statement sends shutters up one's spine.

On the other hand, the Guardian page is reporting the beginnings of Egyptian military units refusing to kill their fellow citizens to prop up a dictatorship. Never a good sign for those who keep their Swiss bank account numbers close at hand in case of a sudden need to flee.

11.14am:CloseLink to this update: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/jan/27/egypt-protests#block-22 @gamelaid, a lawyer and executive director for the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, has tweeted that some army units in Suez are refusing to support the crackdown against the people.
Live blog: Twitter

The orginal tweet was in Arabic, so apologies for the translation if it is not 100% correct:

URGENT Suez: reports that some army units refused to support the police to confront the demonstrators, and the acceptance of other units, and did not intervene until now

All in all, not a good week for pro-American dictators.

BTW, Egypt's dicatorship appears to have cut off the Internet in Egypt. In the great and free USA, Sen. Lieberman and Pres. Obama want the authority to do the same here whenever they declare the need. I guess they are jealous of Mubarak.

The rise and fall of political popularity

After the midterms, and with the beginnings of the new Congress, there are of course many musings about the rise of the Republicans and the fall of Obama. Or, as Obama and the Democrats seem to rebound while anointing themselves with the blood of their fallen Congresswoman from Arizona, there are more musings about these latest shifts. It was Alexander Cockburn over at Counterpunch.org that got me thinking about this with his recent column.

The Republicans have lost their ’mo, at least for a while. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations.

Meanwhile Obama is looking more chipper than he has in the whole of the last year, a unifier at last, acting presidential as he triangulates just as Bill did in 95 and the years thereafter. Clinton and Gore “reinvented government” and Obama vows to do away with irksome regulations (like storing long form birth certificates securely) that hold America back.

Yet, all of this misses the bigger picture.

Both of today's political parties run much better in the opposition. There's good reason for this. Both parties serve essentially the same class of society. That being the class that can afford to give the maximum amount to campaigns, or far more to parties or political committees or such. Both political parties run their successful campaigns based on the large amounts of money that they can get from this class of people. The winner of almost any election can be guessed on watching which party or candidate does a better job of getting the money from this class.

This means the party that takes power is committed to the interests of the very small group of people who can afford to give $4,000 or $10,000 or a whole lot more to campaigns. And the unspoken part of this is that when a party takes power, they are committed to working against the interests of most of the rest of America.

Thus, the party that is in power will always be unpopular. The party that is in power is deliberately shafting the majority of Americans to serve the interests of the small class that funds their campaigns. Therefore, the party that is in power is unpopular with the majority of Americans.

The party in power will support wars. The wars make huge amount of money for the suppliers of war material. The wars make huge amounts of money for the bankers who loan the money to fight the wars. Meanwhile, millions of Americans spend their life in military service, and we've managed to kill more Americans in their wars than Osama Bin Laden did on 9-11. With tens of thousands more maimed or psychologically damaged when the do come home.

We just saw the Democrats work on 'health care reform'. The one thing that was clear from day one is that the profits of the big health corporations were certain to be at least protected and more likely enlarged. Single payer, the popular choice of a majority of Americans, was ruled off the table from the beginning. A vague 'public option', almost certain to be underfunded by future Congresses, was tentatively proposed. It was also the first thing pulled out of the bill in a very strange debate where the Democrats constantly changed the bill to suit the big health corporations to get Republican votes that they never got anyways.

And of course, no matter which party is in power, whatever Wall Street asks for, Wall Street gets. Wall Street says they need hundreds of billions of our public money to stay solvent, the Congress races to see who can support the bill soonest. Wall Street just committed the greatest fraud in the history of man, stealing trillions of dollars of real estate equity worth from most Americans one solid investment, their home, and no one goes to jail. A sham reform bill passes, but the bill is such a loophole ridden sham that Wall Street cheered its passage.

No matter which party wins an election, these policies stay unchanged. And all of them are detrimental to the interests of most Americans. Most Americans don't want their children coming back from wars maimed or in body bags. Most Americans didn't want to be the mandated customers of the most hated corporations in America. Most Americans didn't pay their taxes wanting that money to be handed over to Wall Street bankers to make sure the bonus checks never even slowed down.

All of this is to the harm of ordinary Americans. And, ordinary Americans are aware of this. They know their lives seem to get harder every year. They don't like it when the only jobs for their kids are in the military. Which isn't a great surprise since that's the part of the budget that always goes up no matter who's in power. Ordinary Americans know their health insurance costs more and more, and they know how their claims are denied when they try to use it.

So, the party in power is always declining in popularity. Meanwhile, the party out of power basically lies to the people and pretends to be on their side. Thus, the party out of power will always rise in popularity.

Both of our political parties only find political traction when they are in the 'opposition'. This explains the Republicans rapid rebound from their total rejection by the voters in 2008. It also explains why President Obama is quickly acting as if he's now even more powerless than he claimed to be before. The Republicans control the House. The Democrats control the Senate and the White House. The worst that should play out for the Democrats is as grid-lock. But instead, we've seen Obama quickly claim that he's now out of power. Of course, he did this by surrendering to the Republican agenda by making sure that the Bush tax cuts for the rich stay in place, and that the Patriot Act gets extended even further. Of course, neither of those is a real surprise to the people who noticed that the Democrats mostly supported both of those measures with their votes while voice their pretended opposition to Bush.

At some point, you have to ignore the details of which horse is a nose ahead or a nose behind. Instead, you have to notice the course the horses are running. This course runs in a direction that benefits a few. And most of the rest of us pay the cost. We pay higher taxes, but get little or nothing back from the government in return. We pay more and more for 'health care', and have to fight more and more to get the health care we need. And the body bags and maimed young people keep coming home from our wars. The horses run this same course no matter which horse is in the lead.