WikiLeak about Omar Soliman

S E C R E T TEL AVIV 001984 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/29/2018 TAGS: PREL PGOV PTER EG KPAL IR IS SUBJECT: DEFENSE MINISTER BARAK'S DISCUSSIONS IN EGYPT FOCUS ON SHALIT, TAHDIYA, ANTI-SMUGGLING, AND IRAN

¶5. (S) In terms of atmospherics, Hacham said the Israeli delegation was "shocked" by Mubarak's aged appearance and slurred speech. Hacham was full of praise for Soliman, however, and noted that a "hot line" set up between the MOD and Egyptian General Intelligence Service is now in daily use. Hacham said he sometimes speaks to Soliman's deputy Mohammed Ibrahim several times a day. Hacham noted that the Israelis believe Soliman is likely to serve as at least an interim President if Mubarak dies or is incapacitated. (Note: We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman.)  Cable Viewer

More about Soliman here and on Wikipedia

And see The Torture Career of Egypt’s New Soon-to-be-Ex Vice President

Hosni Mubarak resigns as president

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, has resigned from his post, handing over power to the armed forces.

Omar Suleiman, the vice-president, announced in a televised address that the president was "waiving" his office, and had handed over authority to the Supreme Council of the armed forces.

Suleiman's short statement was received with a roar of approval and by celebratory chanting and flag-waving from a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Cairo's Tahrir Square, as well by pro-democracy campaigners who attended protests across the country on Friday.

The crowd in Tahrir chanted "We have brought down the regime",  while many were seen crying, cheering and embracing one another.

Al Jazeera

Russian Police

Clashes between South Sudan army & rebels kill 105

Clashes between rebels and south Sudanese troops in troubled Jonglei state have killed 105 people, a southern army spokesman said on Friday, a dramatic jump from an earlier death toll of 16. "On the side of the military that includes the SPLA, the police and the prison services, 20 were killed in Fangak town, while 30 of Athor's men were killed," said Philip Aguer.

He was referring to renegade southern general George Athor whose supporters launched a spate of attacks on troops of the south's Sudan People's Liberation Army on Wednesday, shattering a "permanent ceasefire" they signed just last month. Al Arabiya

Fox News "was a Stalin-esque Mouthpiece for Bush"

A former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.  

“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”

And that’s the word from inside Fox News.

Full story at AlterNet and Media Matters

'Farewell Friday'

Pro-democracy activists in the Egyptian capital marched on the presidential palace and state television buildings, while many also gathered at Liberation Square, on Friday, the 18th consecutive day of protests.

At the state television building, thousands have blocked people from entering or leaving, accusing the broadcaster of supporting the current government and of not truthfully reporting on protests.

Al Jazeera

Egypt's President Mubarak Leaves Cairo Amid Massive Protests

George Bush Can't Travel Overseas for Fear of Arrest and Prosecution

As the news broke on Saturday that former President George W. Bush had abruptly cancelled his scheduled appearance this week in Geneva to avoid the risk of arrest on a torture complaint, my first thought was — how humiliating, not only for Bush but, by extension, for all Americans.

However, those who might have expected Bush to be down in the mouth and sulk about the embarrassment were disabused of that notion as the TV cameras caught him and Condoleezza Rice -- his former national security adviser and Secretary of State -- in seats of honor at Sunday’s Super Bowl in Dallas.

Doomed to become America’s first better-stay-at-home former president, Bush could still take consolation in getting scarce tickets to big sports events – he also attended high-profile Texas Rangers baseball games last year – and he can expect to hear some folks cheer for him, so long as he stays in Texas.

More on AlterNet

Syria: 'A kingdom of silence'

Despite a wave of protests spreading across the Middle East, so far the revolutionary spirit has failed to reach Syria.

Authoritarian rule, corruption and economic hardship are characteristics Syria share with both Egypt and Tunisia. However, analysts say that in addition to the repressive state apparatus, factors such as a relatively popular president and religious diversity make an uprising in the country unlikely.

Online activists have been urging Syrians to take to the streets but the calls for a "Syrian revolution" last weekend only resulted in some unconfirmed reports of small demonstrations in the mainly Kurdish northeast. "First of all, I'd argue that people in Syria are a lot more afraid of the government and the security forces than they were in Egypt," Nadim Houry, a Human Rights Watch researcher based in Lebanon, says.

"The groups who have mobilised in the past in Syria for any kind of popular protest have paid a very heavy price - Kurds back in 2004 when they had their uprising in Qamishli and Islamists in the early 1980s, notably in Hama." The so-called Hama massacre, in which the Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in 1982 in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood, is believed to have killed about 20,000 people.

Full article on Al Jazeera

Protests in Egypt continue

Egyptian anti-Mubarak protesters are seen next to Army tanks and armored vehicles near Tahrir square in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2011. Protesters appear to have settled in for a long standoff, turning Tahrir Square into a makeshift village with tens of thousands coming every day, with some sleeping in tents made of blankets and plastic sheeting. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

All Eyes photo blog

Live Feed from msnbc

Ill Treatment and Illegal Detention of Blind Activist Chen Guangcheng

The first news of blind human rights activist Chen Guancheng in five months, ChinaAid on Wednesday obtained an exclusive video showing the persecution he and his family are suffering at the hands of the Chinese government, which has put him under illegal house arrest since his release from prison.

ChinaAid founder and president Bob Fu, who is currently in D.C., immediately arranged to meet on Wednesday afternoon with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Michael Posner and two deputy secretaries of state to discuss ways to end the persecution of Chen and Christian human rights lawyer Fan Yafeng by the Chinese government in violation of its own laws and disregarding its pledges to the international community to improve its human rights record. More on CHINAaid

Wael Ghonim on Dream TV 2

Wael Ghonim, a Google manager who has become something of a hero among Egyptian protesters, said on Wednesday that it is "no longer the time to negotiate" with the government.

In an interview with CNN, Ghonim said, "We went on the streets on the 25th, and we wanted to negotiate. We wanted to talk to our government.... They decided to negotiate with us at night, with rubber bullets, with police sticks, with water hoses, with tear gas." (The Huffington Post)

UK School has 112 cameras ‘to spy on its own pupils’

A British school was slammed yesterday for having 112 CCTV cameras "spying on pupils". Governors spent £50,000 on the security monitors and pay £12,000 a year to operate them.

Furious parents and civil rights groups say the 24-hour CCTV is "totally over the top". But bosses at Stoke Park School and Community Technology College in Coventry insisted the cameras were needed to "keep pupils safe".

The school with 1,090 pupils aged 11-18 has 33 cameras on the exterior and 79 in the buildings and outside classes. Parent Dan Austin, 40, said: "It's ridiculous. It's like sending your kids to a high security prison."

More on The Sun

Iranian web programmer faces execution on porn charges

A 35-year-old Iranian web programmer is facing imminent execution in connection with developing and promoting porn websites, charges that his family insist are trumped up.

Saeed Malekpour, a permanent resident of Canada who was arrested in October 2008 after his arrival in Tehran, is convicted of designing and moderating adult content websites, acting against the national security, insulting and desecrating the principles of Islam, and agitating the public mind.

Speaking from Toronto, Malekpour's wife, Fatemeh Eftekhari, said her husband has been informed of the verdict and has been transferred to solitary confinement for the sentence to be administered if the supreme court sanctions it. She says her husband was a web programmer who had written photo uploading software that was used in a porn website without his knowledge.

Human rights groups have expressed alarm over a sharp increase in the use of capital punishment in Iran. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI), 121 people have been hanged between 20 December 2010 and 31 January this year. An ICHRI report published in mid-January said that Iran has hanged an average of one person every eight hours since the beginning of the new year.

Full article on The Guardian

Free Saeed Malekpour on Facebook - The Case of Saeed Malekpour: Web Developer Jailed Since 2008

Horses left to die of starvation in Egypt

Horses are left to die of starvation as the owners, who are tour guides, could not feed them due to lack of money in Nazlet Al-Saman, about 15 miles from Cairo, Egypt, February 8, 2011. The tourist business in Cairo and surrounding areas has suffered since the street protests against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak began two weeks ago, as tourists fled the country.

MSNBC

Julian Assange's accusers sent texts discussing revenge

Julian Assange's Swedish lawyer was shown scores of text messages sent by the two women who accuse him of rape and sexual assault, in which they speak of "revenge" and extracting money from him, an extradition hearing was told.

Björn Hurtig, who represents the WikiLeaks founder in Sweden, told Belmarsh magistrates court that he had been shown "about 100" messages sent between the women and their friends while supervised by a Swedish police officer, but had not been permitted to make notes or share the contents with his client.

"I consider this to be contrary to the rules of a fair trial," he said. A number of the messages "go against what the claimants have said", he told the court.

Sweden is seeking the WikiLeaks founder's extradition in relation to allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual molestation. He denies the accusations. One message referred to one of the women being "half asleep" while having sex with Assange, Hurtig said, as opposed to fully asleep. "That to my mind is the same as saying 'half awake'."

Read full article on The Guardian

Symbolism in Logos

Red Ice TV

Nina Explains

Nina, after seeing a picture of demonstrations in Egypt in the newspaper, discusses the situation with her Mama in Japanese, and then later describes The Situation in Egypt.

Evidence Of Free-Range Ducks Being Abused By Farm Workers

Secretly-filmed footage taken at Hall Farm in Hingham, Norfolk, UK, shows the birds being herded onto crates to be taken away for slaughter. But some workers are seen picking ducks up by their necks and swinging them before throwing them back into the flock.

As well as sick and injured birds, we also discovered dead birds left to rot among the flock. Those that had been removed were found decomposing in a skip instead of being safely put in bags to avoid contamination.

After viewing the footage, the RSPCA told Sky News the pictures were "absolutely shocking".

Sky News

US Seizes Websites for Merely LINKING to Copyrighted Material

Apparently the Department of Homeland Security is now authorized to rewrite and enforce copyright infringement laws.  In a stunning precedent, the recent round of domain seizures to shut down websites that allowed illegal streaming of the Super Bowl also included a few other websites that were seized simply for linking to infringing content.
Mike Masnick of TechDirt, who received and published a DHS seizure affidavit, had this to say in a must-read article:

...the affidavit itself is chock full of legal and technical errors, compounded by assertions-as-facts that seem to have little basis in reality. This is immensely troubling, especially given that the specific legal issues here are hardly settled law, and Homeland Security seems to be acting as if these cases are no brainers, allowing them to flat out seize domains, even when those websites have been declared perfectly legal in their home countries

More on Activist Post

WikiLeaks: Israel's secret hotline to the man tipped to replace Mubarak

Mr Suleiman, who is widely tipped to take over from Hosni Mubarak as president, was named as Israel's preferred candidate for the job after discussions with American officials in 2008.

As a key figure working for Middle East peace, he once suggested that Israeli troops would be "welcome" to invade Egypt to stop weapons being smuggled to Hamas terrorists in neighbouring Gaza.

The details, which emerged in secret files obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to The Daily Telegraph, come after Mr Suleiman began talks with opposition groups on the future for Egypt's government.

Full story on the Telegraph

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, a documentary which present a case for a needed transition out of the current socio-economic monetary paradigm which governs the entire world society.

This subject matter will transcend the issues of cultural relativism and traditional ideology and move to relate the core, empirical "life ground" attributes of human and social survival, extrapolating those immutable natural laws into a new sustainable social paradigm called a "Resource-Based Economy".

More info on zeitgeistmovingforward.com

Big screen presentation with subtitles (the small cc button on bottom right of the screen) here

Reagan Celebration Hides Brutal History

Wilkerson and Parry on Reagan centenary: Many of today's catastrophes traced to Reagan's Presidency

The Real News Network

David Cameron's Brownshirts

Of course, UK PM David Cameron is in charge of nothing, most likely not even the color of the tie he wears to a press conference, but it is in Cameron's name and his call for "muscular liberalism" that has given an already politicized gang of football hooligans the 'nod' of legitimacy they needed to move forward.

Generally content with stabbing each other and ransacking their own towns over a mere game, the football hooligans of Europe have had their color-coded differences set aside by a coordinated, government backed front to create division, fear and chaos in the streets of the Western world. It should be shocking to no one that the globalists' "Islamophobia" specialists are wholeheartedly behind the EDL.
The EDL's support has come primarily from the globalists' "Neocon" establishment. From shoe-shining, CPAC attending propagandists like David Horowitz (Frontpage Magazine), Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch), and Pam Geller (Atlas Shrugs), to their handlers John Bolton (CFR), Daniel Pipes (CFR), Frank Gaffney (PNAC), Newt Gingrich (CFR), and the Netherlands' Geert Wilders, they have all helped organize, report for, and support the continued efforts of the English Defence League and the myriad of identical organizations spreading throughout Europe and North America.

Full story at Activist Post

Japanese Dolphin bloodbath exposed

Fishermen use tarpaulins in a bid to cover up the slaughter of dolphins - as secret filming exposes their horrific killing methods.

Officials had claimed the mammals were destroyed humanely after 2009 Oscar-winning documentary The Cove told how 2,000 were killed every year in Taiji, Japan.

More (with video) on The Sun

Hitler aide Bormann ‘escaped to Latin America’

Top Nazi Martin Bormann, who German authorities say died in 1945, escaped Berlin and lived in Latin America disguised as a priest, a former Belgian collaborator said in an interview published Saturday.

Paul van Aerschodt, 88, who was sentenced to death in Belgium in 1946 but broke out of prison before his execution and now lives in Spain, told the Derniere Heure newspaper he had met Bormann four times in La Paz, Bolivia, around 1960.

"Bormann had come from Paraguay and was plotting with some 20 officers a coup to overthrow (dictator Juan) Peron in Argentina," van Aerschodt said. He claimed Bormann, who called himself Augustin von Lembach, passed himself off as a priest and celebrated masses, weddings and funerals and administered the last rites to the dying. "But he remained a fanatic," van Aerschodt said, adding that he had made the choice not to give Bormann away but did not know what became of him.

More on Raw Story

Also see Operation Paperclip, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II (1939–45).