The best coverage of the uprising in Egypt is from the Al Jazeera news network which is heavily censored in the U.S. by media corporations like the cable and satellite providers.
You can follow the events with a live updating news page and a live 24-hour video feed.
In a stunning rebuke to the ongoing U.S. policy of ‘useful dialog’ with the Arab world’s collection of brutal, murdering dictators, the people of Egypt are staging one of the great revolutions in history by occupying the streets of Egypt’s major cities and burning the headquarters of the brutal and thuggish regime that has held power there for over 30 years. It is very likely that this ongoing revolution is as significant an event as the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. All dictators and the people attached to them, whether they be Arab or otherwise, sign their own death warrants as soon as they take power, giving the people an undeniable right to eliminate them by any means necessary. The current U.S. administration shows itself to be woefully out of step with events as it insists that protesters chart a course for the future through dialog with Mubarak! Mubarak is as dead as King Tut’s mummy. I suspect that most of the people in Egypt recognize that President Obama has been secretly complicit in the activities of dictator Mubarak and his torture facilities. As buildings burn in Cairo, so does U.S. policy toward the brutal, barbaric, and inhuman torturers who lead most of the Arab world. The sad truth of the matter is that in the U.S. we have a president who completely and unreservedly supports a criminal dictator. Shame on the U.S. Go Egypt!
I can’t believe that I’m posting a video interview with Ron Paul about the ongoing horror show coming out of the TSA and the Obama administration. But the simple fact of the matter is that it really doesn’t matter who is attacking the President and the TSA for blatantly unconstitutional molestation and physical abuse of air passengers across the United States. It doesn’t matter if it’s Republicans or Tea Party dopes. The only thing that matters is that a free people with some hope of maintaining a democracy MUST stop a government that thinks it can go inside peoples’ clothes and touch their bodies in the name of very questionable security.
The Obama administration’s TSA must be stopped no matter what. It is an absolute imperative that they not be allowed to molest men, women or children who are simply exercising their right to travel freely. So I find myself fully in the camp of a political party that I normally want nothing to do with. When it comes to stopping the TSA and protecting the civil rights of people in this country it makes no difference who is leading the fight. It think this cause does in fact join Republicans with liberals. It’s one of the few things we can agree on.
The TSA has expressed concern about verbal and physical abuse being directed at its employees. They hope that passengers can understand the difference between the TSA employees and the officials making the policies. Except that the person you have to defend yourself from is the one standing in front of you trying to put his or her hand into your pants. You must defend yourself against that person. The policymakers will get the message and act eventually. But in the airport you must defend yourself against the person actually committing the assault.
Cartoonist Robert Crumb gets interviewed by a Los Angeles Times writer and talks about his living in France and his hatred for the pervasive corporate mono-culture that Americans seem unaware of. He can’t stand it and chooses to live outside of it.
Really good perspective.
In a culture where you’ve got a Supreme Court actually giving corporate entities the rights of individual human beings, you’ve got total corporate control of every single living man, woman and child. You can see this complete robotic control on very prominent and horrific display in the current president of the United States. He a corporate hologram who moves only when commanded to by his boardroom overseers. The entire country is oriented around cop/lawyer shows on television which are specifically designed to make you feel close and personal with the state/corporate stooges who work for police departments and gleefully lay disadvantaged people out on their faces on subway platforms and slaughter them with bullets fired straight into their backs from six inches away. ‘The Mentalist’ is probably the supreme example of this attempt to make the corporate/police control mechanism seem odd and quirky and just a little cutely but intelligently eccentric. ‘Medium’ is another. The individual with oddball abilities or perceptions is entirely consumed and controlled by the state apparatus. All cop shows are meant to make as many viewers as possible feel completely comfortable being visited by and talking to the police. That is the entire truth of American television. It’s message is simply this: when we come knocking, open the door.
That is the true subtext of every single show ever produced by American broadcasting companies.
R. Crumb is totally right.
President Barack Obama has failed to uphold the primary duty of the President of the United States, which is to protect it from physical harm. This president has inexplicably ignored his responsibilities and has turned over a planetary mega-disaster to the foreign oil company that caused the disaster. The total reliance upon a company that has proven itself incapable of planning for problems with underwater oil wells is an abdication of responsibility, a total loss of control and a political nightmare that will effectively end the Obama presidency. If you are a Democrat, as I am, you had better watch the video below. When James Carville, one of the great Democrats and political strategists of the 20th century screams at you this way, with this much anger and this much disbelief, you are a lame-duck president. Doesn’t matter how well you smile. Watch:
Carville is on the money. Obama should have immediately recognized that this hole in the Gulf is a very bad Chernobyl-level disaster that is going to wipe out the southern coast of the United States and possibly kill most life in the Gulf of Mexico. He should have set up an emergency command center in Louisiana at which he was present and he should have put the military at the site of the disaster so that they could use cameras and submarines to keep an eye on what British Petroleum was doing at the well head. There is no reason to believe what BP is telling the U.S. government. There is no reason to believe that they are actually trying a ‘top-kill’ procedure. There is no visual evidence of this and the U.S. military would be able to verify or refute the company’s claims.
The BP oil spill is a Chernobyl-level disaster. It is ongoing and will kill enormous stretches of coastline and turn large portions of the Gulf into dead zones. It will also kill human beings. BP is putting people out into poisonous waters without any Hazmat breathing gear. Those people are starting to get sick already. The poisons can destroy brain tissue and apparently damage lungs.
Fisherman hired to help clean up are getting sick from chemicals at oil spill:
President Obama has failed to put sufficient resources along the coasts to help with cleanup. Instead, he maneuvers politically by sending 1,200 National Guard troops to help ‘protect’ the border in Arizona when everyone knows that those troops cannot do anything at all but stand around and drink coffee. It is not legal for them to arrest anyone crossing the border and they are not authorized to do so. But they could certainly help down in Louisiana with oil.
Obama has decided to visit the area on Friday. So he can have a look. Why doesn’t he put his head into the thick sloppy goop that will be surrounding his boat. When he comes up he’ll be a well-oiled president machine.
This is a very weak president. He does not have the ability to move quickly – in real time – during an extended crisis. It is appalling that he has not been able to overcome his inertia over the course of an entire month of unfolding disaster. If I were an enemy of the United States, I would be paying very close attention to what is going on here and make my move right about now. Like North Korea.
What we find out later about this oil spill will make today’s anger seem mild. Never again will I be misled by a politician who paints himself as a hero to the people. Never. We were all so excited about having a woman candidate in the primaries and a black candidate in the presidential election. But those things really aren’t important enough. We feel proud for electing the nation’s first black president but look what it got us. It got us a corporate middle manager who gives billions to Wall Street friends, turns healthcare reform into a windfall for the insurance companies, continues two useless and expensive wars, continues to hold people in prisons without charges, and cannot figure out how to take control during a horrendous man-made disaster.
