Fake Revolutions: The debate is over; the revolutions are fake, the people behind them illegitimate.

By Tony Cartalucci – BLN Contributing Writer

The degenerate, profiteering liars that populate the Serbian based “CANVAS” organization maintain that while the US government had initially funded them as they overthrew the government of Serbia in 2000, currently the US government does not fund them – that they are privately funded. Unfortunately for these meddling interlopers, the US government itself is “privately owned” by many of the people who fund the organizations they claim as partners.

These partners include:

Albert Einstein Institution (foundation-funded including the corporate-lined Acra Foundation)

United States Institute for Peace (USIP) (funded through Congress)

Freedom House (Neo-Con infested)

International Republican Institute (IRI) (headed by warmonger John McCain)

New Tactics (Ford Foundation-funded, Soros-funded)

Humanity in Action (Ford Foundation-funded, US State Department-funded)

The organization is obviously sensitive about who it is seen dealing with, partnering with, and receiving money from. Knowledge of its true nature and purpose has systematically been lied about from its very inception. Foreign Policy reported that “Like the entire opposition to Milosevic, Otpor [now known as CANVAS] took money from the U.S. government, and lied about it. When the real story came out after Milosevic fell, many Otpor members quit, feeling betrayed.” As CANVAS was exposed for its more recent involvement in Egypt, they quickly changed their “Partnership” page to “External Links.” In a recent documentary, where CANVAS openly claims responsibility for training and guiding unrest across the planet, they reiterate that they are not funded by the US government. This is a dubious claim at best, considering who they associate with and how their “mission” dovetails with identical efforts by openly US-funded and sponsored organizations like Movements.org.

The documentary produced by Journeyman Pictures features CANVAS, its founder, and the story of how they have influenced “color revolutions” all over the globe. While the documentary is fairly objective about its particular subject matter, namely CANVAS’ role in the unrest, within a greater context and amidst overwhelming evidence there is no question at all whether or not these revolutions are entirely engineered and contrived.

The documentary concludes contemplating the future of Egypt and Tunisia and the changes that are to come. One Egyptian activist, Mohamed Adel of the April 6 Movement, while siting in front of a giant banner featuring the US-funded Otpor fist claims that the US is incapable of influencing millions of people – seemingly unaware of the mass manipulation and social engineering of America’s 300 million people, or the billions conned, duped, manipulated, and certainly “influenced” by the Fortune 500 globally on a daily basis. He claims that the Egyptian people want to be the masters of their own destiny, ironically, even as a US-funded logo looms over his shoulder and even after he himself trained in Serbia at the US-founded CANVAS and his own April 6 Movement attended a US State Department-sponsored confab in NYC in 2008 to train for a revolution now admittedly engineered from abroad and led by Mohamed ElBaradei, a listed member on the US corporate-funded International Crisis Group.

The documentary claims that Tunisians are busy enjoying their new “freedoms,” showing footage of people talking on phones and conversing in public. Unfortunately, freedom is not talking, nor is it even casting a vote in an election. Freedom is being the undisputed master of your own destiny, being independent both politically and economically. However, with the nationalistic regimes deposed and the “economic liberation” underway in the US State Department’s newly despoiled lands, rules, regulations, decrees and laws will be imposed upon these “free nations” by self-proclaimed international arbiters, corporate-funded policy think-tanks, and contrived, illegitimate “international” courts – all entirely offshore and removed from any sense of accountability to the people they lord over, including the Tunisians and Egyptians.

As the global corporate-financier elite and their tangled web of NGOs, civil society organizations, and their international military machines stall in Libya and Syria, they still are staging and moving against other sovereign nations with their social engineering “color revolutions.” The list is extensive, including Belarus, Venezuela, Iran, Thailand, China, Myanmar, and even Pakistan.

Know these charlatans and know their game, as they are far from through. And while their dark deeds are done in far flung distant lands, the empowerment and hubris they reap from afar will soon enough be brought home to bear. Threats to target Texas with a “no-fly zone” after an attempt to usurp the TSA’s authority already echos the madness being exercised in war-ravaged Libya. Libya’s battle and the dangerous precedent a victory there for the globalists would set is already hitting home.

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Will The Day Of Rage In Saudi Arabia On March 11 Send The Price Of Oil Into Unprecedented Territory?

Source: The Economic Collapse

The price of oil is shaping up to be the number one economic story of 2011, and right now the eyes of the investing world are closely watching the developing situation in Saudi Arabia.  All of the other recent Middle East revolutions have been organized on the Internet, and now all over Facebook and Twitter there are calls for a “Day of Rage” in Saudi Arabia on March 11.  The Saudi monarchy is attempting to head off any protests by promising to give $37 billion in “benefits” to the people and by publicly proclaiming that all political demonstrations are specifically banned.  In addition, the Saudi government is stationing thousands of security forces at various potential “hot spots” around the country.  So far similar measures have not done much to quell unrest in other nations in the Middle East, but Saudi Arabia will be a true test of the revolutionary fervor that is sweeping the region.  The Saudis have a long history of brutally repressing their own people.  They simply do not mess around.  So a revolution in Saudi Arabia will not be nearly as “easy” as it was in Tunisia, Egypt or Libya.  However, if a revolution does sweep across Saudi Arabia, it is going to send the price of oil into unprecedented territory.  Saudi Arabia is the number one exporter of oil in the world, and if their oil fields get shut down even for a little while it is going to have a dramatic effect on the global economy.  With the world already on the verge of a major sovereign debt crisis, the last thing it needs is for the price of oil to start soaring into the stratosphere.

Right now the investing world is not sure what to think about all of this, and financial markets do not like uncertainty.  One piece of really bad news could send markets all over the globe crashing down.

Speculation in oil futures is absolutely rampant.  A recent report on CNNnoted the following….

The speculative fervor is so remarkable that the big trading firms now have nearly twice as many long contracts open as they did in 2008, when oil spiked to $147 in the summer, a development that either foreshadowed or caused the global economic meltdown, depending on how you look at it.

In particular, the number of investors that are betting that a revolution in Saudi Arabia is going to send the price of oil up to $200 a barrel has exploded in recent days.

$200 a barrel?

Are people actually betting that is going to happen?

The all-time record is only $147 a barrel.  Just a few months ago it was absolutely unthinkable to most economists that we could potentially see $200 oil in 2011.

But it would be a mistake to assume that a full-blown revolution is guaranteed to break out in Saudi Arabia.  Remember, this is a nation that has a very, very long history of denying even the most basic freedoms to the people.

For example, in Saudi Arabia the practice of any religion other than Islam is strictly forbidden.  By law, citizens of Saudi Arabia are not permitted to change religion.  Even foreign visitors are forbidden to openly practice any other religion.  It is a whole different world.  You cannot go to the store and buy a Bible in Saudi Arabia.  In fact, if you try to pass out Bibles in Saudi Arabia you will be thrown into prison.

Beheadings and other brutal public executions still happen in Saudi Arabia to this day.

So if you plan of being a revolutionary in Saudi Arabia you had better put your big boy pants on, because the Saudis play hardball.

Much of the rest of the globe is desperately hoping that a revolution does not happen in Saudi Arabia because the global economic situation is precarious at best.

 

In Europe, if the price of oil causes a significant economic slowdown right now it could have global implications.  Moody’s Investors Service just slashed Greece’s debt rating three levels all the way down to B1.  But Greece is far from alone.  Several European governments are finding it much more expensive to finance their debts these days.  We are right on the edge of a major European sovereign debt crisis and the chaos in the Middle East could potentially be just the thing to spark a panic.

The United States could feel a rise in the price of oil even more than Europe because the U.S. economy is so spread out and it is so dependent on products from overseas.

Did you know that in 1960 only 8 percent of the things Americans bought were made overseas but that today 60 percent of the things Americans buy are made overseas?

It’s true.

So what would happen if the cost of transporting all of those products suddenly doubled?  All of the products we buy must be transported somehow, and a rise in transportation costs will be passed on to U.S. consumers.

But the truth is that the pain is already here.  Already, millions of American families are starting to feel some very real financial pain from the chaos in the Middle East.

From February 18th to March 4th, the average price of gasoline in the United States rose 33 cents.  That was the biggest two week increase ever recorded.

Ouch.

The rise in the price of oil has some broader economic implications as well.

The more the price of oil goes up the bigger our trade deficit is going become.  As the trade deficit gets bigger, that means that more money is going out of the country and less money is going to support American businesses and American workers.  When American workers lose jobs, that means that they aren’t producing wealth anymore and they aren’t paying taxes anymore.  Instead, they become a drain on the system as they start receiving government handouts.

When millions of Americans go from being productive, taxpaying workers to unemployed welfare cases it causes our federal budget deficit to become even larger.

Most Americans do not understand how connected our trade deficit and our federal budget deficit really are.  One feeds right into the other.

Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve seems to think that the solution to any economic problem these days is to print more money.

According to Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, if the price of oil goes up high enough, it could force the Federal Reserve to do even more quantitative easing.

Really?

One of the reasons why the price of oil and other commodities has been going up over the last six months is because of all of this reckless money printing.

Now Lockhart is saying that because of the oil price increases they may have to do more money printing?

How bizarre is that?

Unfortunately, several other top Fed officials have dropped hints about a possible “QE3” lately.  It just seems like the insanity never stops.

Let us hope that the Fed does not go there because the U.S. dollar is falling apart fast enough already.

In any event, the rest of 2011 is certainly going to be very interesting to watch.

Even if a revolution does not happen in Saudi Arabia, the price of oil will most likely continue to slowly move higher just as it has been doing for months.

But if a full-blown revolution does happen in Saudi Arabia, it could literally change the global economy almost overnight.  The entire world financial system would be thrown into a state of chaos.

Oil is the lifeblood of the world economy.  Without a continuous supply of very inexpensive oil, life as we know it would dramatically change.  Most of us just assumed that we would always live in a world where we would always have an endless supply of very cheap oil.

Well, the times they are a changing.

You had better buckle up because it is going to be a bumpy ride.

Two U.S. Warships, 1200 Marines Sent to Libyan Coast

By JULIAN E. BARNES in Washington, MARGARET COKER in Tripoli and CHARLES LEVINSON in Benghazi, Libya

A ragtag army of opponents to Col. Moammar Gadhafi began moving west toward Tripoli from the east and the U.S. ordered two warships to the Mediterranean Sea, as the prospect of an extended war loomed over Libya.

A convoy of armed youth, including what appeared to be rebel military forces, was seen heading Tuesday night toward the pro-Gadhafi stronghold city of Sirte, witnesses said. The forces were viewed passing westward through Ajdabiya, a city about 75 miles from the opposition stronghold of Benghazi, said four residents, including a volunteer rebel soldier and an official on the city’s local leadership council. It was unclear how many rebels were on the move.

Also Tuesday, the U.S. ordered two warships and 1200 Marines to the waters off of Libya, but a top Obama administration official stopped short of saying the forces would intervene in the clashes that have consumed the country following anti-Gadhafi protests here in recent weeks.

At a Pentagon briefing, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced he had ordered to the Mediterranean the USS Ponce and the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious-assault ship that typically carries infantrymen and troop-transport helicopters. Those ships currently have 800 marines, in addition to 400 U.S.-based Marines who will be airlifted to meet the ships. He said the ships would be ready to perform evacuations and humanitarian relief.

Mr. Gates wouldn’t specify the other military options he has offered President Barack Obama. But he sounded a note of caution about sending U.S. assets into Libya. “We have to think about the use of the U.S. military in another country in the Middle East,” Mr. Gates said. “We are sensitive about all these things.”

Libya’s opposition is increasingly seeking U.S. military support to push out Col. Gadhafi. Libyan dissidents held meetings with the State Department in Washington this week in which they called for greater logistical support from U.S. and NATO forces, and possibly targeted military strikes on against Col. Gadhafi’s air force, tanks and troops.

“We’re worried this conflict could drag on,” said Ali Rishi, among the dissidents who met with the State Department this week. “We don’t want Gadhafi to feel he can survive.”

A senior State Department official confirmed the U.S. has met with a variety of Libyan opposition figures this week but wouldn’t discuss the details. “There were a variety of views expressed,” he said.

The U.S. has said it wouldn’t rule out any steps to ensure Col. Gadhafi exits power, as the White House and international community continue to exert pressure. The United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday suspended Libya from the U.N. Human Rights Council over the violent crackdown on protesters.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress that Libya risks falling into “civil war” unless the international community offers a more coordinated response to the bloodshed there. “In the years ahead, Libya could become a peaceful democracy, or it could face protracted civil war, or it could descend into chaos,” she said.

Some U.S. officials don’t believe conflict will be protracted. They say Col. Gadhafi’s fate is less likely to be settled by a clash on the battlefield than it is by the loyalty of the elite units defending Tripoli. If commanders from those units begin defecting, some U.S. officials believe members of the Libyan dictator’s inner circle will move against him.

One senior U.S. official said as the rebellion spreads, an assassination attempt on Col. Gadhafi “seems more plausible.” The official added: “The best outcome for those Libyan leaders who are defecting will be [to put] two bullets into the heads of Gadhafi and his son.”

For now, the elite brigades remain “the most enthusiastically loyal” to the dictator, and neither officials in Washington nor witnesses in Libya have seen defections from the elite units, a military official in Washington said.

Inside Libya, battle lines have hardened.

Col. Gadhafi’s main support resides in the western part of the country, and he retained a strong grip on Tripoli, Sabha and Sirte, his hometown. Forces loyal to Col. Gadhafi have attempted to block the advance of rebel forces based in the eastern stronghold of Benghazi, and on Sunday retook the tiny coastal town of Ras Lanuf with a handful of troops and scarcely a bullet fired, say rebel commanders.

There are, in essence, two Libyan rebellions. A rebel army has risen up in the east, led by a provisional government in Benghazi. Independent uprisings have occurred in western towns—including Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, which lies 130 miles east of Tripoli, and Al-Zawiya, 30 miles to the capital’s west.

In Zawiya, rebels controlled the center of the city Tuesday, while pro-government forces held the outskirts. Witnesses said pro-government forces have moved their checkpoints closer to central Al-Zawiya, increasing their control over several neighborhoods.

Libya’s deputy foreign minister, Khalid Kaid, denied reports that the government had attacked Al-Zawiya’s central square. He said talks between the government and major tribal leaders would start Wednesday in Tripoli and that the government wasn’t planning any major military offensives while the talks were under way. It wasn’t clear who was taking part in talks.

On Tuesday night, a convoy of pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns rolled out of Benghazi, horns honking. Soldiers yelled, “To Tripoli! To Tripoli!”

But the army’s battle readiness is unclear. It is being cobbled together from defectors from Col. Gadhafi’s army, most of whose soldiers were undertrained and poorly equipped, and from volunteers with some army training in a country where all men are compelled to serve.

Rebel commanders pledged to move on Tripoli repeatedly in recent days, but until the convoy was seen passing through Ajdabiya no substantive force appeared to have deployed west. A municipal official in Benghazi said earlier Tuesday that hundreds of young pro-democracy rebels set off in a convoy of their own headed toward the capital after they declared they were fed up with the military’s slowness to move themselves. The municipal official said rebel military units were deployed to help protect the youth convoy, not as part of a broader offensive.

Col. Gadhafi’s core support remains the elite security brigades, designed to guard against a coup by army conscripts, U.S. officials said. One of Mr. Gadhafi’s sons, Khamis, leads the 32nd Brigade, which is Tripoli’s main defense.

Control of the elite brigades is concentrated at the top, and the Libyan military doesn’t allow lower-ranking officers to make decisions or take initiative. A retired Western military official familiar with the Libyan military command said if the top commanders of the elite brigades defect, the troops underneath them would likely crumble.

Western analysts put the strength of the security force—before the civil war —at between 10,000 and 12,000 men.

The brigades occupying Tripoli have at their command 54 Russian-made tanks and 24 heavy artillery pieces, according to the retired Western military official. Witnesses in Libya said the tanks have been positioned in recent days in a defensive cordon along the southeastern outskirts of the capital.

Unlike members of the regular conscript army, who earn $450 a month, the troops in the regime-protection brigades are well-paid and equipped with modern weaponry. The units have received training from former British officers and within the last three years Khamis Gadhafi completed a commander’s course in Russia, according to the retired Western official.

“The whole purpose of these forces has been to keep the leader in his capital,” he said. “That’s the design and the commanders are people considered the most likely to fulfill this plan.”

In addition to the elite brigades, paramilitary forces help secure the capital for Col. Gadhafi. A person familiar with the colonel’s inner circle said loyalists from the country’s revolutionary committees command many of these paramilitary forces. The committee leaders include business oligarchs who have been rewarded with lucrative state contracts as well as military political commissars.

Over the long term, the new sanctions imposed on Libya will make it difficult for Col. Gadhafi to resupply the elite units.

But current and former officials are skeptical the asset freezes and sanctions will have an immediate effect. Col. Gadhafi may be able to tap black-market sources for short-term armaments needs. Although much of his wealth overseas has been frozen, Col. Gadhafi has access to cash to pay for such purchases.

Col. Gadhafi also has long-time ties with rebels in neighboring Chad, who may be able to supply the Libyan government with arms, circumventing sanctions or a naval blockade. “With billions in cash, there is always somebody he can get something from,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

—Jay Solomon in Washington contributed to this article.

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Maddow falls for satirical story calling for Palin-led Egypt invasion

By Daniel Tencer
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 — 6:40 pm

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was red-faced Tuesday after it emerged she and her producers had fallen for a satirical article jokingly calling for a US invasion of Egypt led by Sarah Palin.

In her broadcast Monday night, Maddow reported on an article at ChristWire.org, a satirical site that has fooled reporters before.

The article, titled “As Egypt Descends in Chaos, Should Sarah Palin Support a US-Led Invasion?,” argued that “the escalating crisis in Egypt could become a defining moment for Sarah Palin.”

The piece argued: “Governor Palin needs to speak out publicly and forcibly for an American-led invasion to protect our interests in North Africa. … The Governor could become the center of [Egyptians'] rallying cries. Upon her direction, other Western nations are sure to join us.”

“To be clear, this is what these folks are asking Sarah Palin to do, this is not Palin’s own idea,” Maddow told her audience Monday night.

As bloggers raced to reveal Maddow’s blunder, the MSNBC anchor quickly acknowledged the mistake on her Twitter feed.

“The bad news about a free and open Internet? Sometimes you get had by brilliant satirists. Christwire: 1 TRMS: 0,” Maddow tweeted.

Christwire features a roster of satirical articles, some of which are more obviously phony than others. One article suggests that the Xbox Kinect may be a “terrorist training tool,” while another asks, “Why is pet turtle masturbation one of the Internet’s hottest new trends?”

Many commenters argued that Maddow’s mistake — though avoidable had producers simply done a Google search — was understandable because of the professional look of Christwire.

“If … you didn’t run a nationally viewed cable news show you’d be forgiven for mistaking this post as a straight up opinion piece from any number of right wing sites,” Glynnis MacNicol wrote at BusinessInsider.

Colby Hall at Mediaite suggests the problem may be deeper: American politics have become so absurd that it’s becoming more and more difficult to tell satire from reality, Hall suggested.

The saddest part of the original report is not necessarily that Maddow cited a joke website. Its that the joking and over-the-top rhetoric fit perfectly alongside the other hyperbolic examples provided, all of which were true! Yes Maddow’s producers erred here in not first fact checking (something with which we have taken issue before) but in this instance, the mistake seemed relatively small since it was just one overblown comment among many.

As John Hudson noted at the Atlantic, this isn’t the first time a major news organization has fallen for a ChristWire satire. Last summer, NBC News fell for a report that the Christian right was organizing a boycott of actor Bill Murray.

The Huffington Post reported a few months later on an article advising wives on how to tell if their husbands are secretly gay. “Homosexuality can pop up any time,” the article declared, adding that “over 2 million couples” are struggling with homosexuality in their marriages.

For its part, Christwire responded to the controversy over Maddow’s segment on Tuesday, but largely failed to acknowledge that the issue had to do with the site being satirical. In an act of presumably satirical selective reporting, the author stated that Maddow had referred to his article as being “spectacular.” Maddow had, in fact, described a producer’s discovery of the article as being a “spectacular” find.

The following video, which has been removed from MSNBC’s website, was posted to YouTube by user TysonBowersIII.

Anderson Cooper ‘punched in the head’ 10 times by pro-Mubarak thugs

By David Edwards
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 — 10:21 am

CNN’s Anderson Cooper said Wednesday that he and his crew were violently attacked by pro-Mubarak forces as they tried to make their way through the streets of Cairo.

“Anderson Cooper punched 10 times in the head as pro-Mubarak mob surrounds him and his crew at Cairo rally,” Maan News Agency’s George Hale tweeted.

Cooper described his ordeal on CNN’s American Morning.

“I just tried to make my way to Liberation Square and got as far as the Egyptian Museum and with my team: Marion Fox, my producer and Neil, my cameraman,” he began.

“One man grabbed Neil’s camera and started screaming, ‘no, no,’ trying to take the camera from him. We intervened peacefully, and literally that was the switch that ignited the crowd, and they just set upon us, punching us, kicking us,” Cooper continued.

“We had, I mean, literally a mob of people surround us just, you know, I got punched in the head probably a good ten times or so, and we literally ended up being turned around by the crowd, and we had tried to walk because we didn’t want to run because if we started to run, the crowd would, you know, sense fear and attack us even more,” he said.

“All of us are fine. My producer was roughed up, my female producer was roughed up by the crowd as well. They clearly do not want cameras present in the square and are incredibly hostile to any media.”

“Down in the crowd, can you even make out which side is which?” asked CNN host TJ Holmes. “Who is who? Who is coming after and attacking you guys you?”

“Well, it’s clear. I know exactly who is attacking us, it’s the pro mubarak forces, no doubt about it.”

Moments later, a female caller named Salma Eltarzi told Al Jazeera that pro-Mubarak forces were trying to enter Tahrir Square.

“Please do no call them protesters,” she pleaded. “Protesters do not come in government busses. They do not come armed.”

“People are leaving the women in the middle [of the square]. The men are going to the entrances to try to stop them from entering… People are beaten up. People are drowning in their blood,” she frantically reported.

This video is from CNN’s American Morning, broadcast Feb. 2, 2011.

This video is from Al Jazeera, broadcast Feb. 2, 2011.

This video is from The Associated Press, broadcast Feb. 2, 2011.

Mubarak’s new deputy linked to CIA rendition program

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, January 31st, 2011 — 9:20 pm

WASHINGTON — The man named by President Hosni Mubarak as his first ever deputy, Egyptian spy chief Omar Suleiman, reportedly orchestrated the brutal interrogation of terror suspects abducted by the CIA in a secret program condemned by rights groups.

His role in the controversial “war on terror” illustrates the ties that bind the United States and the Egyptian regime, as an unprecedented wave of protests against Mubarak’s rule presents Washington with a difficult dilemma.

With Mubarak in jeopardy, Suleiman was anointed vice president last week and is now offering wide ranging talks with the opposition in a bid to defuse the crisis.

Suleiman is a sophisticated operator who carried out sensitive truce negotiations with Israel and the Palestinians as well as talks among rival Palestinian factions, winning the praise of American diplomats.

For US intelligence officials, he has been a trusted partner willing to go after Islamist militants without hesitation, targeting homegrown radical groups Gamaa Islamiya and Jihad after they carried out a string of attacks on foreigners.

A product of the US-Egyptian relationship, Suleiman underwent training in the 1980s at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and Center at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

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.

He “was the CIA’s point man in Egypt for rendition,” Jane Mayer, author of “The Dark Side,” wrote on the New Yorker’s website.

After taking over as spy director, Suleiman oversaw an agreement with the United States in 1995 that allowed for suspected militants to be secretly transferred to Egypt for questioning, according to the book “Ghost Plane” by journalist Stephen Grey.

Human rights groups charge the detainees have often faced torture and mistreatment in Egypt and elsewhere, accusing the US government of violating its own legal obligations by handing over suspects to regimes known for abuse.

In the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the CIA relied on Suleiman to accept the transfer of a detainee known as Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, who US officials hoped could prove a link between Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

The suspect was bound and blindfolded and flown to Cairo, where the CIA believed their longtime ally Suleiman would ensure a successful interrogation, according to “The One Percent Doctrine” by author Ron Suskind.

A US Senate report in 2006 describes how the detainee was locked in a cage for hours and beaten, with Egyptian authorities pushing him to confirm alleged connections between Al-Qaeda and Saddam.

Libi eventually told his interrogators that the then Iraqi regime was moving to provide Al-Qaeda with biological and chemical weapons.

When the then US secretary of state Colin Powell made the case for war before the United Nations, he referred to details of Libi’s confession.

The detainee eventually recanted his account.

IMF, warning of war, Ready To Put Egypt Into Debt

Source: AFP

The International Monetary Fund stands ready to help riot-torn Egypt rebuild its economy, the IMF chief said Tuesday as he warned governments to tackle unemployment and income inequality or risk war.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn also said rising food prices could have “potentially devastating consequences” for poorer nations, and warned that Asia’s fast-growing economies faced a risk of a “hard landing”.

Overall, according to the IMF managing director, widening imbalances across and within countries were sparking tensions that threaten to derail the fragile global economic recovery — and could even spark armed conflict.

As Egyptian protesters gathered in their thousands demanding the departure of President Hosni Mubarak, Strauss-Kahn said: “The IMF is ready to help in defining the kind of economic policy that could be put in place.”

In a speech in Singapore, he said rampant unemployment and a growing income gap was a “strong undercurrent of the political turmoil in Tunisia and of rising social strains in other countries”.

Nationwide demonstrations last month led to the ouster of Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and massive street protests are raging in Egypt seeking an end to Mubarak’s more than 30-year rule.

“As tensions between countries increase, we could see rising protectionism — of trade and of finance,” Strauss-Kahn said.

“And as tensions within countries increase, we could see rising social and political instability within nations — even war.”

The IMF boss called anew on China to adjust its exchange rate in its own economic interest, but said he disagreed with critics in the United States and elsewhere who want a rapid revaluation to the yuan.

He said the US government itself should not have a problem financing its massive debt, and downplayed fears over Japan’s debts after a downgrade last week by Standard & Poor’s.

But for the global economy as a whole, Strauss-Kahn struck a worried tone.

“While the recovery is under way, it is not the recovery we wanted,” he said.

“It is a recovery beset by tensions and strains — which could even sow the seeds of the next crisis.”

He said the different pace of recovery between advanced and emerging economies was unbalanced and echoed the situation just before the global economic crisis struck in late 2008.

“While growth remains below potential in the advanced economies, emerging and developing economies are growing much faster — and some may soon be overheating,” he said.

Growth in economies with large trade surpluses like China and Germany is still being powered by exports, while expansion in deficit-stricken countries such as the United States is being driven by domestic demand, he noted.

“These global imbalances put the sustainability of the recovery at risk,” he said.

For Asia in particular, Strauss-Kahn warned there were “risks of overheating and even a hard landing”, underscoring the dilemma for policymakers trying to keep a lid on inflation while fostering job-creating growth.

“Food prices are rising too… with potentially devastating consequences for low-income countries,” he added.

CNBC anchor implies US must support dictators to keep cheap oil flowing

By David Edwards and Stephen Webster
Friday, January 28th, 2011 — 9:40 am

CNBC contributor Erin Burnett said Friday that oil prices would skyrocket if countries in the Middle East broke out from under the rule of brutal dictators.

Appearing on a Friday broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Burnett said that the ongoing revolution in Egypt could threaten US interests in the region due to Egypt’s history as an ally on matters pertaining to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

She added that as one of the most developed economies in the Middle East, it was surprising to see many of the society’s wealthiest individuals supporting regime change. Tens of thousands of protesters across the country have taken to the streets the last few days, demanding President Mubarak resign.

“One more thing,” Burnett remarked. “If this spreads, the United States could take a huge hit because democracy in a place like Saudi Arabia, you’ve talked about who might come in power, what that means for oil prices. They’re going to go stratospheric.”

“There’s no doubt about it,’ MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said. “No doubt about it!”

While the White House has been unusually quiet on the situation in Egypt, President Barack Obama said yesterday that Egypt’s leaders must be more “responsive” to their people.

Vice President Joe Biden, during an appearance Thursday night on PBS, also claimed that President Mubarak was not a dictator and should not step down.

Mubarak has been in power for over three decades.

This video is from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, broadcast Jan. 28, 2011.

Watch this video on iPhone/iPad

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Wikileaks Leaked cables: Police brutality a ‘daily occurrence’ in Egyptian prisons

Leaked

diplomatic cables released by secrets outlet WikiLeaks show that Egyptian police regularly torture suspects due to “unrelenting pressure” from their superiors to solve criminal investigations.

The revealing documents were published amid mass protests in Egypt against President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year regime.

During the fierce protests, Egyptians targeted police stations, with one in Suez being ransacked mid-Friday. Protesters freed prisoners and destroyed vehicles in a direct challenge to the country’s ruling regime.

In one leaked cable, an Egyptian human rights activist, whose name was redacted by WikiLeaks, said the US government’s number one human rights priority in Egypt should be urging the government of Egypt to combat the use of torture by its police force.

Although Article 42 of Egypt’s constitution prohibits the infliction of “physical or moral harm” upon persons who have been arrested or detained, the human rights activist told US diplomats that police torture was pervasive. He blamed the Interior Ministry of Egypt for putting pressure on officers to extract confessions “by any means necessary.”

During murder investigations police regularly round up 40 to 50 suspects from a neighborhood and hang them by their arms until they obtain a confession from someone, according to the cable.

Another leaked cable notes that “credible human rights lawyers believe police brutality continues to be a pervasive, daily occurrence in [Egyptian] detention centers, and that [the State Security Investigative Service] has adapted to increased media and blogger focus on police brutality by hiding the abuse and pressuring victims not to bring cases.”

“[Non-governmental organizations] assess prison conditions to be poor, due to overcrowding and lack of medical care, food, clean water, and proper ventilation,” the cable continues.

When confronted about the human rights violations by Assistant Secretary Michael H. Posner in January of 2010, Interior Ministry State Security Director Rahman denied that any abuse occurred, saying that “in the past ten years” there has been “no abuse of prisoners at all.”

Rahman claimed that human rights organizations were dominated by “communists and extremists” that wanted to weaken the government of Egypt because it had distanced itself from the Soviet Union in the 1970′s.

A 2009 human rights report on Egypt published by the US State Department noted that police in Egypt used unwarranted lethal force and tortured prisoners during investigations. The report also said that police in Egypt arbitrarily arrested and detained individuals, sometimes for political purposes, and kept them imprisoned for long periods of time without a trial.

The Egyptian human rights activist described in the leaked cable said that the pervasive nature of torture began when police were fighting Islamic extremists in the 1990′s.

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