Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[Jahn]

Outrage on media in Kairo.

more than 50 independent journalists has been assaulted, arrested or in this Swedish case stabbed!

It is said that people in the mob get 100 Egypt dollars (less than USD 15) for attacking any journalists. There have even been attacks within the hotels and in the hotel lobbies (which tells that security agency is involved) on media and human right activists from the West (such as Amnesty International).

Swedish TV-journalist at the National televison seriously hurt. This guy is experienced and has been in the most dangerous zones before. Still he got prey to the Mubarak mob.

http://www.swedishwire.com/component/content/article/2:politics/8388:swedish-reporter-seriously-injured-in-cairo-riots

I can tell that Bert S.  got stabbed in the stomach and in the back along with heavy violence toward his head. Bert is now at a hospital wher two Swedish policemen guard him and Swedish doctors assist in his treatment.

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/02/anderson-cooper-among-many-journalists-attacked-in-cairo/

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Weatherwatch

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2011/feb/08/weatherwatch-weekly-roundup

Severe tropical cyclone Yasi struck the north-east coast of Queensland last Wednesday. Yasi was the most powerful cyclone to hit the east coast of Australia since 1918, and it made landfall at Mission Beach as a category 5 storm with wind gusts of 180mph, cutting power to over 180,000 properties and destroying homes.

Agriculture suffered major losses, as the storm wiped out 90% of Australia's banana crop and caused an estimated A$500m (£315m) of damage to the sugar industry. The total losses from Yasi are expected to reach A$3.5bn (£2.2bn).

Also last Wednesday, the US battled against a historic winter storm that spanned 2,000 miles. The storm, said to be the worst in decades, brought blizzard conditions, ice storms and snow accumulations up to 60cm deep to more than half the US, crushing buildings, cutting power to over 375,000 customers and causing travel chaos, with over 14,000 flight cancellations. Chicago measured 51cm of snow, the city's third largest fall on record, forcing schools to close for the first time in 12 years. Twelve deaths have been blamed on the storm.

Flash floods and landslides hit Jolo and other southern regions of the Philippines on Thursday night, after five days of torrential rains, which also spawned two tornadoes. A state of calamity was declared in the town, where 20 people were killed and 3,000 families were displaced.

[Builder]

The truth behind India's nuclear renaissance

Jaitapur's French-built nuclear plant is a disaster in waiting, jeopardising biodiversity and local livelihoods

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/08/india-jaitapur-nuclear-disaster-biodiversity

The global "nuclear renaissance" touted a decade ago has not materialised. The US's nuclear industry remains starved of new reactor orders since 1973, and western Europe's first reactor after Chernobyl (1986) is in serious trouble in Finland – 42 months behind schedule, 90% over budget, and in bitter litigation. But India is forging ahead to create an artificial nuclear renaissance by quadrupling its nuclear capacity by 2020 and then tripling it by 2030 by pumping billions into reactor imports from France, Russia and America, and further subsidising the domestic Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL).

The first victim of this will be an extraordinarily precious ecosystem in the Konkan region of the mountain range that runs along India's west coast. This is one of the world's biodiversity "hotspots" and home to 6,000 species of flowering plants, mammals, birds and amphibians, including 325 threatened ones. It is the source of two major rivers. Botanists say it's India's richest area for endemic plants. With its magical combination of virgin rainforests, mountains and sea, it puts Goa in the shade.

NPCIL is planning to install six 1,650-MW reactors here, at Jaitapur in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district, based on the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) design of the French company Areva – the very same that's in trouble in Finland. The government has forcibly acquired 2,300 acres under a colonial law, ignoring protests. As construction begins, mountains will be flattened, trees uprooted, harbours razed, and a flourishing farming, horticultural and fisheries economy destroyed, jeopardising 40,000 people's survival.

To rationalise this ecocide, the government declared the area "barren". This is a horrendous lie, says India's best-known ecologist Madhav Gadgil, who heads the environment ministry's expert panel on its ecology. As I discovered during a visit to Jaitapur, there's hardly a patch of land that's not green with paddy, legumes, cashew, pineapple and coconut. So rich are its fisheries that they pay workers three times the statutory minimum wage, a rarity in India.

Jaitapur's villagers are literate. They know about Chernobyl, radiation, and the nuclear waste problem. They have seen films on injuries inflicted on villagers like them by Indian uranium mines and reactors – including cancers, congenital deformities and involuntary abortions. They don't want the Jaitapur plant. Of the 2,275 families whose land was forcibly acquired, 95% have refused to collect compensation, including one job per family. The offer provokes derision, as does Indo-French "co-operation". When Nicolas Sarkozy visited India to sell EPRs, Jaitapur saw the biggest demonstration against him.

The EPR safety design hasn't been approved by nuclear regulators anywhere. Finnish, British and French regulators have raised 3,000 safety issues including control, emergency-cooling and safe shutdown systems. A French government-appointed expert has recommended modifications to overcome the EPR's problems. Modifications will raise its cost beyond €5.7bn. Its unit generation costs will be three times higher than those for wind or coal. India had a nightmarish experience with Enron, which built a white elephant power plant near Jaitapur, nearly bankrupting Maharashtra's electricity board.

Jaitapur's people are more concerned about being treated as sub-humans by the state, which has unleashed savage repression, including hundreds of arrests, illegal detentions and orders prohibiting peaceful assemblies. Eminent citizens keen to express solidarity with protesters were banned, including a former supreme court judge, the Communist party's secretary and a former Navy chief. Gadgil too was prevented. A former high court judge was detained illegally for five days. Worse, a Maharashtra minister recently threatened that "outsiders" who visit Jaitapur wouldn't be "allowed to come out" (alive).

This hasn't broken the people's resolve or resistance. They have launched their own forms of Gandhian non-cooperation and civil disobedience. Elected councillors from 10 villages have resigned. People boycotted a 18 January public hearing in Mumbai convened to clear "misconceptions" about nuclear power. They refused to hoist the national flag, as is traditionally done, on Republic Day (26 January). They have decided not to sell food to officials. When teachers were ordered to teach pupils about the safety of nuclear reactors, parents withdrew children from school for a week.

The peaceful campaign, with all its moral courage, hasn't moved the government. It accepted an extraordinarily sloppy environmental assessment report on Jaitapur, which doesn't consider biodiversity and nuclear safety, or even mention radioactive waste. It subverted the law on environment-related public hearings. It cleared the project six days before Sarkozy's visit.

Why the haste? India's nuclear establishment has persistently missed targets and delivered a fraction of the promised electricity – under 3% – with dubious safety. It was in dire straits till it conducted nuclear explosions in 1998, which raised its status within India's national-chauvinist elite – and its budget. The major powers have "normalised" India's nuclear weapons through special exceptions in global nuclear commerce rules. France used these to drive a bargain for cash-strapped Areva. Its counterpart is the disaster-in-waiting called Jaitapur.

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Assange Probe Hits Snag
Inquiry Suggests WikiLeaks Founder Didn't Induce Soldier to Leak Documents
By JULIAN E. BARNES And EVAN PEREZ

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703313304576132543747598766.html?KEYWORDS=assange

U.S. investigators have been unable to uncover evidence that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange induced an Army private to leak government documents to his website, according to officials familiar with the matter.

New findings suggest Pfc. Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst accused of handing over the data to the WikiLeaks website, initiated the theft himself, officials said. That contrasts with the initial portrait provided by Defense Department officials of a young man taken advantage of by Mr. Assange.

Further denting the push by some government officials to prosecute Mr. Assange, the probes have found little to link the two men, though others affiliated with WikiLeaks have been tied to Pfc. Manning, officials said.

For the U.S. to bring its preferred case against Mr. Assange of inducing the leak, it would have to show that the WikiLeaks founder specifically encouraged Mr. Manning to hand over the documents, which included thousands of State Department cables, as well as low-level intelligence reports on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and Justice Department lawyers continue to gather evidence for a possible conspiracy charge against Mr. Assange, but that's a harder case to make, government officials said. Such a charge would be based on contacts, which are more evident, between Pfc. Manning and lower-level WikiLeaks activists, and on Mr. Assange's leadership of the group, these officials said.

Attorneys for Mr. Assange and Pfc. Manning, who is being held in a military brig in Virginia, didn't return calls seeking comment Tuesday. Mr. Assange has denied he had any contact with Pfc. Manning, whose lawyers have never commented on the accusations against him.

Failing to prosecute Mr. Assange, who has been portrayed as the chief instigator of the leaks, would be a setback to U.S. officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder, who have been vocal in asserting that the publication of the documents was a crime that should be prosecuted. The State Department cables, in particular, embarrassed U.S. diplomats and could expose their contacts to reprisals.

Mr. Assange is currently facing extradition proceedings in the U.K. on a request from Sweden, which is investigating sexual-assault allegations against him. In a second day of testimony Tuesday, lawyers sparred over who was more uncooperative—Mr. Assange or the Swedish prosecutor pursuing him.

Lawyers for Mr. Assange argued he shouldn't be extradited because he tried multiple times to meet with Swedish prosecutors after they opened the investigation on Sept. 1, and before Mr. Assange left Sweden on Sept. 27.

A lawyer representing Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny said it was Ms. Ny who tried repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, to schedule an interrogation with Mr. Assange, who at one point went missing for about a week, unreachable even by his own lawyers.

Leonard Weinglass, a U.S. civil-rights lawyer who is working on Mr. Assange's defense, said his attorneys believed the U.S. government would attempt to have Mr. Assange extradited to the U.S.

In Washington, military officials have been examining how the data was stolen and how the theft could have been prevented. Army investigators now believe Pfc. Manning decided to steal the documents and give them to WikiLeaks on his own, out of his own malice toward the military or the government, according to a senior U.S. official.

The results of the Army inquiry were briefed for Army Secretary John McHugh last week, officials said. The findings of that probe contrast with the initial portrayal by some government officials of Pfc. Manning as a confused young person who was taken advantage of by Mr. Assange.

Pfc. Manning worked in intelligence operations in Baghdad and was assigned the task of examining intelligence relevant to Iraq. Defense officials said Pfc. Manning used his security clearance instead to tap into classified government documents around the world.

The military has charged Pfc. Manning in connection with two leaks—a State Department cable on the Icelandic banking crisis and a video showing a U.S. military helicopter firing on a group of people in Baghdad. He hasn't been charged in connection with the leaks of thousands of State Department and intelligence documents. Defense officials say they believe he was responsible for them.

After joining the Army, Pfc. Manning had a series of disciplinary problems, including fighting with other soldiers. Those conflicts fueled Pfc. Manning's anger toward the military, said the senior official, but investigators believe his antipathy to the government began earlier.

Early in the probe, Justice Department officials concluded they wouldn't treat WikiLeaks as a journalistic enterprise, which makes it easier for federal investigators to seek subpoenas of records related to WikiLeaks leaders and associates.

Federal authorities have used a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., to gather evidence, including gaining a judge's December order to Twitter Inc. for records related to Mr. Assange and Pfc. Manning, and several WikiLeaks volunteers.

[Michael]

Just listening to Mubarak - he's not going! Incredible. What are the people going to do?

He's still sticking to his September timeline. I expect some nasty results.

[Michael]

Oh boy, what a tale of tricks this is turning out to be!

I'll just give you the simplistic overview:

Raymond Davis, a private security contractor "on the rolls of the US diplomatic mission in Pakistan" shot dead two men while a US diplomatic car ran over and killed another while racing to the rescue of Davis. Bald facts.

Davis is claiming self-defence against intended robbery. Pakistan police have said he shot them in cold blood.

'Meanwhile, Shumaila Kanwal, the wife of one of alleged robbers/spies died under mysterious circumstances in a Pakistani hospital after consuming poison, but not before she met journalists and issued a revenge call, demanding "blood for blood'.'

Behind the scenes:

Washington has been trying to pressurise Pakistan over the Nov 2008 Mumbai attacks - a US court is trying to summon top ISI officials in connection with the attacks (ISI is the Pak intelligence agency).

It now turns out that the dead Pak men were ISI agents. "Matters have been complicated by new disclosures that the two were ISI agents assigned to tail Davis and the subsequent suicide by the widow of one of the men demanding rough justice for Davis, just as it seemed the Pakistani government was inclined to release him under US pressure."

"Washington has remained mum on the details of the murky episode, except to indicate that it regards Davis as such a prized assets that it is willing to go to any extent to extricate him. "

US has cut all diplomatic contact with Pakistan, demanding that Davis and his colleague be released under diplomatic immunity.

US congressmen (from the Republicans) have told Pakistan leaders there will be no money to Pak in the upcoming US Budget if these men are not released.

US needs Pak to transport resources to Afghanistan. Pak desperately need US money to survive.

What happens next?

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Pakistan has revealed that the arrested empolyee of the US consulate made phone calls to Waziristan, contacted rebels there, and that Pakistan would not release him.

It might well be that he works for the CIA (CIA has used previously Blackwater/Xe Services) to capture various Al-Qaedistas/insurgents.

A couple of days ago I talked to one Pakistani who said that 'they look at the affair that has cost three human lives with utmost seriousness'.

Considering that by the end of 2010 Pakistan seriously began flexing its muscles with regard to the power-sharing in Afghanistan between Western-backed Karzai and Pakistani-backed insurgents, it is likely that Pakistan is sending a message to the US. That message sounds to me like this: 'We are the kingmakers in Afghanistan, and if you don't want to piss off 170 million Pakistanis and get Taliban back by 2015, rein in your dogs of war!'

[Nichi]

Muburak changed his mind and resigned!
Isn't that just amazing and astounding?

[Jahn]

Muburak changed his mind and resigned!
Isn't that just amazing and astounding?

Great News indeed!

Some headline also said that his billions of money abroad was freezed. Uncertain of course how much he have "saved" but he got assets in real estate too. And then we talk about assets in millions and millions of dollars, flats in London and elsewhere.

http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/10/6025656-mubarak-could-leave-with-2-billion

It is always the same with these dictators but in a sense of personal power one must give them some kind of credit. Though one should perhaps realize when the time has come. Mubarak was more stubborn than the most to resign.

[Michael]

I couldn't keep watching it last night - had to go off for my meditation. And this morning it's all happened! The Egyptians are going berserk in the streets with ecstatic joy.

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...was probably the simplest of tasks Egypt has been facing. Paradoxically, to implement the necessary changes and satisfy the desire of Egyptians for better life, is a much more daunting task. So many things must be changed...including the mentality of very many Egyptians who took to the streets.

Nevertheless, it is a party time now.

[Michael]

...was probably the simplest of tasks Egypt has been facing. Paradoxically, to implement the necessary changes and satisfy the desire of Egyptians for better life, is a much more daunting task. So many things must be changed...including the mentality of very many Egyptians who took to the streets.

you're not wrong there Gunga Din

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Here is the original post about Wikileaks: http://restlesssoma.com.au/soma/index.php?topic=460.msg70152#msg70152

Interesting article about 'potent democratic youth movement in Arab states'
Interesting article about 'potent democratic youth movement in Arab states'

[Michael]

It's spreading - Yemen is into it's fifth day of protest, Iran and Bahrain are erupting. Many other Arab states are bubbling.

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How Egypt shut down the Internet