Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators
By Michael Hastings
February 23, 2011 11:55 PM ET
--rollingstone.com--
The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on "hostile foreign groups." Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a "propaganda rider" that also prohibits such manipulation. "Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans," says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It’s what you learn on day one."

When Holmes and his four-man team arrived in Afghanistan in November 2009, their mission was to assess the effects of U.S. propaganda on the Taliban and the local Afghan population. But the following month, Holmes began receiving orders from Caldwell’s staff to direct his expertise on a new target: visiting Americans. At first, the orders were administered verbally. According to Holmes, who attended at least a dozen meetings with Caldwell to discuss the operation, the general wanted the IO unit to do the kind of seemingly innocuous work usually delegated to the two dozen members of his public affairs staff: compiling detailed profiles of the VIPs, including their voting records, their likes and dislikes, and their "hot-button issues." In one email to Holmes, Caldwell’s staff also wanted to know how to shape the general’s presentations to the visiting dignitaries, and how best to "refine our messaging."

Congressional delegations – known in military jargon as CODELs – are no strangers to spin. U.S. lawmakers routinely take trips to the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they receive carefully orchestrated briefings and visit local markets before posing for souvenir photos in helmets and flak jackets. Informally, the trips are a way for generals to lobby congressmen and provide first-hand updates on the war. But what Caldwell was looking for was more than the usual background briefings on senators. According to Holmes, the general wanted the IO team to provide a "deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds." The general’s chief of staff also asked Holmes how Caldwell could secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge. "How do we get these guys to give us more people?" he demanded. "What do I have to plant inside their heads?"

According to experts on intelligence policy, asking a psy-ops team to direct its expertise against visiting dignitaries would be like the president asking the CIA to put together background dossiers on congressional opponents. Holmes was even expected to sit in on Caldwell’s meetings with the senators and take notes, without divulging his background. "Putting your propaganda people in a room with senators doesn’t look good," says John Pike, a leading military analyst. "It doesn’t pass the smell test. Any decent propaganda operator would tell you that."

At a minimum, the use of the IO team against U.S. senators was a misuse of vital resources designed to combat the enemy; it cost American taxpayers roughly $6 million to deploy Holmes and his team in Afghanistan for a year. But Caldwell seemed more eager to advance his own career than to defeat the Taliban. "We called it Operation Fourth Star," says Holmes. "Caldwell seemed far more focused on the Americans and the funding stream than he was on the Afghans. We were there to teach and train the Afghans. But for the first four months it was all about the U.S. Later he even started talking about targeting the NATO populations." At one point, according to Holmes, Caldwell wanted to break up the IO team and give each general on his staff their own personal spokesperson with psy-ops training.

It wasn’t the first time that Caldwell had tried to tear down the wall that has historically separated public affairs and psy-ops – the distinction the military is supposed to maintain between "informing" and "influencing." After a stint as the top U.S. spokesperson in Iraq, the general pushed aggressively to expand the military’s use of information operations. During his time as a commander at Ft. Leavenworth, Caldwell argued for exploiting new technologies like blogging and Wikipedia – a move that would widen the military’s ability to influence the public, both foreign and domestic. According to sources close to the general, he also tried to rewrite the official doctrine on information operations, though that effort ultimately failed. (In recent months, the Pentagon has quietly dropped the nefarious-sounding moniker "psy-ops" in favor of the more neutral "MISO" – short for Military Information Support Operations.)

Under duress, Holmes and his team provided Caldwell with background assessments on the visiting senators, and helped prep the general for his high-profile encounters. But according to members of his unit, Holmes did his best to resist the orders. Holmes believed that using his team to target American civilians violated the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which was passed by Congress to prevent the State Department from using Soviet-style propaganda techniques on U.S. citizens. But when Holmes brought his concerns to Col. Gregory Breazile, the spokesperson for the Afghan training mission run by Caldwell, the discussion ended in a screaming match. "It’s not illegal if I say it isn’t!" Holmes recalls Breazile shouting.

In March 2010, Breazile issued a written order that "directly tasked" Holmes to conduct an IO campaign against "all DV visits" – short for "distinguished visitor." The team was also instructed to "prepare the context and develop the prep package for each visit." In case the order wasn’t clear enough, Breazile added that the new instructions were to "take priority over all other duties." Instead of fighting the Taliban, Holmes and his team were now responsible for using their training to win the hearts and minds of John McCain and Al Franken.

On March 23rd, Holmes emailed the JAG lawyer who handled information operations, saying that the order made him "nervous." The lawyer, Capt. John Scott, agreed with Holmes. "The short answer is that IO doesn’t do that," Scott replied in an email. "[Public affairs] works on the hearts and minds of our own citizens and IO works on the hearts and minds of the citizens of other nations. While the twain do occasionally intersect, such intersections, like violent contact during a soccer game, should be unintentional."

In another email, Scott advised Holmes to seek his own defense counsel. "Using IO to influence our own folks is a bad idea," the lawyer wrote, "and contrary to IO policy."

In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesman for Caldwell "categorically denies the assertion that the command used an Information Operations Cell to influence Distinguished Visitors." But after Scott offered his legal opinion, the order was rewritten to stipulate that the IO unit should only use publicly available records to create profiles of U.S. visitors. Based on the narrower definition of the order, Holmes and his team believed the incident was behind them.

Three weeks after the exchange, however, Holmes learned that he was the subject of an investigation, called an AR 15-6. The investigation had been ordered by Col. Joe Buche, Caldwell’s chief of staff. The 22-page report, obtained by Rolling Stone, reads like something put together by Kenneth Starr. The investigator accuses Holmes of going off base in civilian clothes without permission, improperly using his position to start a private business, consuming alcohol, using Facebook too much, and having an "inappropriate" relationship with one of his subordinates, Maj. Laural Levine. The investigator also noted a joking comment that Holmes made on his Facebook wall, in response to a jibe about Afghan men wanting to hold his hand. "Hey! I’ve been here almost five months now!" Holmes wrote. "Gimmee a break a man has needs you know."

"LTC Holmes’ comments about his sexual needs," the report concluded, "are even more distasteful in light of his status as a married man."

Both Holmes and Levine maintain that there was nothing inappropriate about their relationship, and said they were waiting until after they left Afghanistan to start their own business. They and other members of the team also say that they had been given permission to go off post in civilian clothes. As for Facebook, Caldwell’s command had aggressively encouraged its officers to the use the site as part of a social-networking initiative – and Holmes ranked only 15th among the biggest users.

Nor was Holmes the only one who wrote silly things online. Col. Breazile’s Facebook page, for example, is spotted with similar kinds of nonsense, including multiple references to drinking alcohol, and a photo of a warning inside a Port-o-John mocking Afghans – "In case any of you forgot that you are supposed to sit on the toilet and not stand on it and squat. It’s a safety issue. We don’t want you to fall in or miss your target." Breazile now serves at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he works in the office dedicated to waging a global information war for the Pentagon.

Following the investigation, both Holmes and Levine were formally reprimanded. Holmes, believing that he was being targeted for questioning the legality of waging an IO campaign against U.S. visitors, complained to the Defense Department’s inspector general. Three months later, he was informed that he was not entitled to protection as a whistleblower, because the JAG lawyer he consulted was not "designated to receive such communications."

Levine, who has a spotless record and 19 service awards after 16 years in the military, including a tour of duty in Kuwait and Iraq, fears that she has become "the collateral damage" in the military’s effort to retaliate against Holmes. "It will probably end my career," she says. "My father was an officer, and I believed officers would never act like this. I was devastated. I’ve lost my faith in the military, and I couldn’t in good conscience recommend anyone joining right now."

After being reprimanded, Holmes and his team were essentially ignored for the rest of their tours in Afghanistan. But on June 15th, the entire Afghan training mission received a surprising memo from Col. Buche, Caldwell’s chief of staff. "Effective immediately," the memo read, "the engagement in information operations by personnel assigned to the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan is strictly prohibited." From now on, the memo added, the "information operation cell" would be referred to as the "Information Engagement cell." The IE’s mission? "This cell will engage in activities for the sole purpose of informing and educating U.S., Afghan and international audiences…." The memo declared, in short, that those who had trained in psy-ops and other forms of propaganda would now officially be working as public relations experts – targeting a worldwide audience.

As for the operation targeting U.S. senators, there is no way to tell what, if any, influence it had on American policy. What is clear is that in January 2011, Caldwell’s command asked the Obama administration for another $2 billion to train an additional 70,000 Afghan troops – an initiative that will already cost U.S. taxpayers more than $11 billion this year. Among the biggest boosters in Washington to give Caldwell the additional money? Sen. Carl Levin, one of the senators whom Holmes had been ordered to target.

Libyan invasion possibility
--arabnews.com--
“Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses ... and then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a congressional hearing.

(cont...)

China's Great Firewall Father Speaks Out
Global Times
February 18 2011
By Fang Yunyu The father of the Great Firewall of China (GFW) has signed up to six virtual private networks (VPNs) that he uses to access some of the websites he had originally helped block.

"I have six VPNs on my home computer," says Fang Binxing, 50, president of the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. "But I only try them to test which side wins: the GFW or the VPN.

"I'm not interested in reading messy information like some of that anti-government stuff."

There's a popular joke circulating the Chinese mainland about Mark Zuckerberg's surprise visit to Beijing around Christmas last year: The frustrated Facebook president is said to have pleaded with local Chinese entrepreneurs to show him how to beat the Great Firewall.

"Ever since I landed here in China I can't log onto my Facebook account!" he tells them.

The joke might not be real, but the Great Firewall of China is very much alive, blocking the world's most popular websites including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and WikiLeaks.

Fang's handiwork brought down on him an intense barrage of online criticism in December when he opened a microblog on Sina.com.

Within three hours, nearly 10,000 Web users left messages for the father of the Great Firewall. Few were complimentary.

Sacrifice for the country

As a self-described "scholar," Fang says he was only doing the right thing, and anyway, sticks and stones.

He confirms he was head designer for key parts of the Great Firewall reportedly launched in 1998 that came online about 2003.

Fang shut down his microblog account after a few days and has kept mum about the incident until now.

"I regard the dirty abuse as a sacrifice for my country," Fang says. "They can't get what they want so they need to blame someone emotionally: like if you fail to get a US visa and you slag off the US visa official afterwards."

This massive accumulation of sarcastic and ugly abuse of Fang all stemmed from his role in creating a technology that filters controversial keywords and blocks access to websites deemed sensitive.

Fang refuses to reveal how the Great Firewall works. Crossing hands over chest, he says, "It's confidential."

As to the future of his creation, that's not up to him, Fang says.

"My design was chosen in the end because my project was the most excellent," he says with a big, tight smile, then pauses. "The country urgently needed such a system at that time."

The year 1998 was a turning point for the development of the Internet in China, says Zhang Zhi'an, associate professor of the journalism school at Fudan University in Shanghai.

It was when portals Sina.com and Sohu.com first appeared and the number of Chinese mainland Web users hit 1 million. It was also when the government began paying serious attention to the Internet, he says.

"Building the Great Firewall was a natural reaction to something newborn and unknown," Zhang says.

Patient and rational

The father of the Great Firewall doesn't avoid defending the momentous Chinese mainland decision to monitor the flow of information on the Internet.

Such a firewall is a "common phenomenon around the world," he argues, and nor is China alone in monitoring and controlling the Internet.

"As far as I know, about 180 countries including South Korea and the US monitor the Internet as well."

He avoids all discussion of the relative quantity and qualities of overseas censorship when compared to his own unique creation.

Some foreign countries - even developed countries - ban access to websites when content violates their laws, such as neo-Nazi information blocked by Germany.

What irks many Chinese online users is simply being unable to access such apparently harmless fare as Facebook or YouTube.

Social networking tools are reportedly not just designed to entertain. Asked what would happen next after political upheavals rocked Tunisia and Egypt, Wael Ghonim, one of the individuals responsible for toppling the Mubarak regime replied, "Ask Facebook."

Fully aware of the political influence of the Internet, the US has stepped up its efforts to research online penetration tools and exert pressure on foreign governments such as China.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a speech on Tuesday that the US administration would spend $25 million this year helping online users get around such curbs as the Great Firewall of China to achieve "absolute freedom" of Internet information flow.

Asked to comment on Clinton's speech earlier this week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu Thursday repeated previous statements that online users in China enjoy freedom of speech "in accordance with the law."

"China objects to any country's interference with China's internal affairs under the banner of Internet freedom."

Everlasting war

Fudan University professor Zhang Zhian notes that during the last decade, China's Internet freedom has developed a lot in terms of Web user awareness and freedom of speech.

"The change has been huge," he says. "China's Internet is still in the process of development.

"We'll listen to foreign countries' opinions on the development of China's Internet, but we should have our own timetable.

"The process takes time and we should be patient and rational."

Fang concedes his Great Firewall doesn't do a great job of distinguishing between good and evil information. If a website contains sensitive words, the firewall often simply blocks everything "due to the limitations of the technology," he says, expecting it would become more sophisticated in the future.

"The firewall monitors them and blocks them all," he says. "It's like when passengers aren't allowed to take water aboard an airplane because our security gates aren't good enough to differentiate between water and nitroglycerin."

Before he speaks, the GFW's father always pauses a few seconds and then when he talks, adopts a measured tone and a considered pace.

Calls for a more open information flow represent a soft power threat to China from foreign forces, Fang asserts.

"Some countries hope North Korea will open up its Internet," he says. "But if it really did so, other countries would get the upper hand."

When US President Barack Obama visited Shanghai, he talked about the importance of a more open Internet with Chinese students.

Some analysts perceive freedom of speech as expanding on the Chinese mainland in recent years via the Internet, while others argue that the Great Firewall is as belligerent as ever.

With more than 450 million Internet users, China now has the largest national online population in the world.

It's an everlasting war between the GFW and VPNs, Fang says.

"So far, the GFW is lagging behind and still needs improvement," he says.

The situation is better described as traffic control, Fang says.

"Drivers just obey the rules and so citizens should just play with what they have."

(cont...)

Radiohead, Codex

Wisconsin governor urging others to take stands against unions
--Washington Post--
Wednesday, February 23, 2011; 9:37 PM
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose efforts to curtail the rights of public-employee unions have thrust him into the national spotlight, is pushing other new Republican governors to follow his lead.

He said he communicates regularly with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and has spoken with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. And Walker has suggested that his counterparts in Michigan and Florida seek to address their budget problems in part by demanding major concessions from public workers. (cont....)

Westboro Baptist Church targeted by Anonymous

Hacker group Anonymous appears to have singled out its next target - the controvesial anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church in the US.

An open letter, purporting to be from Anonymous, accused the church of bigotry and fanaticism.

It warned that Westboro's websites would be attacked if the congregation did not stop its public protests.

In a defiant response, the church said it would not be silenced, and urged Anonymous to "bring it".

Westboro Baptist Church has been widely condemned for its aggressive anti-gay campaigning.

A number of US states have passed legislation, banning Westboro's members from protesting close to military funerals.

The church's leader, pastor Fred Phelps, was banned from entering the UK by the Home Office in 2009.

Activist hackers

Anonymous is known for its "hacktivism", targeting individuals, companies and governments whose behavior it objects to.

The group recently crashed a number of Egyptian government websites, in support of the country's pro-democracy protests.

It also attacked several online companies that it believed had helped clamp down on Wikileaks' activity, including Paypal and Amazon.

Pastor Fred Phelps was banned from travelling to the UK in 2009.
Laying out its case against Westboro Baptist Church, the letter said: "We have always regarded you and your ilk as an assembly of graceless sociopaths and maniacal chauvinists & religious zealots, however benign, who act out for the sake of attention & in the name of religion".

Despite being posted on an Anonymous news site, there was some uncertainty surrounding the provenance of the letter.

Further messages on the same website questioned its authenticity.

The confusion is understandable, according to Graham Cluley from security firm Sophos.

"Anonymous is a headless organisation," he said.

Mr Cluley warned that its followers could potentially be led into mounting a major hack under false pretenses.

"There are dangers in future that someone may pose as Anonymous and say that they want an attack".

The Westboro Baptist Church issued a statement, branding Anonymous "a puddle of pimple-faced nerds".

It called the threat a "bad miscalculation", and appeared to goad Anonymous to action, with the phrase "bring it!".

The church's website, godhatesfags.com was unavailable.

Two Libyan pilots defect, say ordered to bomb protesters
1:54pm EST --Reuters--

BY Christopher Scicluna, Diana Abdallah

VALLETTA - Two Libyan Air Force fighter pilots defected on Monday and flew their jets to Malta where they told authorities they had been ordered to bomb protesters, Maltese government officials said.

They said the two pilots, both colonels, took off from a base near Tripoli. One of them has requested political asylum.

Adele, Rolling In The Deep

Lupe Fiasco, Muhammad Walks

JP Morgan Making a Fortune Off of American Poverty
By Mary Bottari, Bankster USA
--alternet.org--Earnings and bonus reports are rolling in and the big, bailed-out banks are back in the black. In 2010, total compensation and benefits at publicly traded Wall Street banks and securities firms hit a record of $135 billion -- up almost six percent from 2009 according to the Wall Street Journal. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon may take home the biggest bonus check, an eye-popping $17 million.

While the Wall Street economy is booming, the real economy is in a dead stall. Only 36,000 jobs were created in January 2011. A roundup of recent headlines shines a light on how big banks like JPMorgan Chase make their big bucks.

No Saving Private Ryan

U.S. foreclosure filings are projected to reach 9 million in 2011. An increasing number of the foreclosed are U.S. service members even though they have access to special protections and programs. USA Today reports that foreclosure filings near military bases jumped 32 percent since 2008. More than 20,000 veterans, reservists and active-duty troops lost the homes to foreclosure in 2010, the highest number since 2003. This report comes hard on the heels of an NBC expose showing that JPMorgan Chase illegally overcharged 4,000 active service members for their mortgages improperly foreclosing on a number of them.

Diane Thompson from the National Consumer Law Center points out that big banks and mortgage service firms have perverse financial incentives that spur them to foreclose. “The servicer’s expenses, other than the financing costs associated with advances, will be paid first out of the proceeds of a foreclosure. . . Whether and when costs are recovered in a modification is more uncertain.”

In other words, big banks and mortgage firms are rushing to kick American families to the curb to pocket more fees. Thanks for the service boys!

Profiting on Poverty

In these hard times, some 43 million American families rely on food stamps. To the surprise of many, JPMorgan Chase is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. The bank is contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

The firm is paid per customer. This means that when the number of food stamp recipients goes up, so do JPMorgan profits. Talk about perverse incentives. JPMorgan is taking its responsibility to keep the U.S. unemployment rate high by offshoring the servicing of many of these contracts to India, according to ABC News.

Michael Snyder of the Seeking Alpha blog put it best: “There are just some things that are a little too creepy to be outsourced to private corporations.“

Aiding and Abetting Bernie Madoff

According to documents in a lawsuit made public Thursday, senior executives at JPMorgan Chase expressed doubts about Bernie Madoff’s miraculous investment returns more than 18 months before Madoff's Ponzi scheme collapsed, but continued to serve as his primary bank and failed to report him to federal authorities.

The lawsuit was filed against JPMorgan and other firms by the bankruptcy trustee gathering assets for Madoff’s victims. The suit alleges that JPMorgan allowed Madoff to move billions of dollars of investors’ cash in and out of his bank accounts right until the day of his arrest even though there were an abundance of red flags.

The bank “had only to glance at the bizarre activity” in the Madoff accounts “to realize that Madoff was not operating a legitimate business,” the trustee asserts. The unusual activity should have tripped the banks anti-money laundering software. The suit also alleges J.P. Morgan was creating products to leverage off of this relationship with Madoff. JP Morgan denies any wrongdoing.

Covering Up Fraud at Bear Sterns

Another lawsuit filed in 2008 by mortgage insurer Ambac Assurance Corp against Bear Stearns and JPMorgan was recently unsealed. A trove of documents reviewed by Atlantic Monthly suggest that Bear Stern executives cheated clients out of billions by double dipping on securities sales they knew to be flawed. In a stack of damning emails, Bear Sterns top executives crow over selling investors a "sack of shit.

The lawsuit also alleges a cover up by JPMorgan Chase (which bought Bear in 2008). Ambac recently won a court order to add misrepresentation claims against JPMorgan to its suit, which can double or triple lawsuit award. JPMorgan, of course, denies any wrongdoing.

"Not Fair," says Dimon

At last week's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jamie Dimon lambasted the media and politicians for portraying all bankers as greedy evil-doers. “I just think this constant refrain [of] ‘bankers, bankers, bankers,’ -- it’s just a really unproductive and unfair way of treating people. It’s not fair to lump all banks together,” he steamed. Don't worry Jamie, you are on a level all of your own.

* * * * *

Learn more about JPMorgan Chase and its role in the financial crisis at Sourcewatch.org.


Mary Bottari is the Director of the Center for Media and Democracy’s Real Economy Project and editor of the www.BanksterUSA.org site for bank busting activists.

Reagan's Attack on America: The First Anti-American President
--ThinkProgressive--

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to choose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendancy.

Surge of immigrants from India baffles border officials in Texas
Thousands from India have entered Texas illegally from Mexico in the last year. Most are Sikhs who claim religious persecution at home.
--latimes.com--
February 06, 2011|By Richard Marosi and Andrew Becker
Reporting from Harlingen, Texas — Thousands of immigrants from India have crossed into the United States illegally at the southern tip of Texas in the last year, part of a mysterious and rapidly growing human-smuggling pipeline that is backing up court dockets, filling detention centers and triggering investigations.

The immigrants, mostly young men from poor villages, say they are fleeing religious and political persecution. More than 1,600 Indians have been caught since the influx began here early last year, while an undetermined number, perhaps thousands, are believed to have sneaked through undetected, according to U.S. border authorities.


Hundreds have been released on their own recognizance or after posting bond. They catch buses or go to local Indian-run motels before flying north for the final leg of their months-long journeys.

"It was long … dangerous, very dangerous," said one young man wearing a turban outside the bus station in the Rio Grande Valley town of Harlingen.

The Indian migration in some ways mirrors the journeys of previous waves of immigrants from far-flung places, such as China and Brazil, who have illegally crossed the U.S. border here. But the suddenness and still-undetermined cause of the Indian migration baffles many border authorities and judges.

The trend has caught the attention of anti-terrorism officials because of the pipeline's efficiency in delivering to America's doorstep large numbers of people from a troubled region. Authorities interview the immigrants, most of whom arrive with no documents, to ensure that people from neighboring Pakistan or Middle Eastern countries are not slipping through.

There is no evidence that terrorists are using the smuggling pipeline, FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials said.

The influx shows signs of accelerating: About 650 Indians were arrested in southern Texas in the last three months of 2010 alone. Indians are now the largest group of immigrants other than Latin Americans being caught at the Southwest border.

The migration is the "most significant" human-smuggling trend being tracked by U.S. authorities, said Kumar Kibble, deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. In 2009, the Border Patrol arrested only 99 Indians along the entire Southwest border.

"It's a dramatic increase," Kibble said. "We do want to monitor these pipelines and shut them down because it is a vulnerability. They could either knowingly or unknowingly smuggle people into the U.S. that pose a national security threat."

Most of the immigrants say they are from the Punjab or Gujarat states. They are largely Sikhs who say they face religious persecution, or members of the Bharatiya Janata Party who say they are targeted for beatings by members of the National Congress Party.

But analysts and human rights monitors say political conditions in India don't explain the migration. There is no evidence of the kind of persecution that would prompt a mass exodus, they say, and Sikhs haven't been targets since the 1980s. The prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, is a Sikh.

"There is no reason to believe these claims have any truth to them," said Sumit Ganguly, a political science professor and director of the India Studies Program at Indiana University.

Some authorities think the immigrants are simply seeking economic opportunities and are willing to pay $12,000 to $20,000 to groups that smuggle them to staging grounds in northern Mexico. Kibble said smugglers may have shifted to the Southwest after ICE dismantled visa fraud rings that brought Indians to the Northeast.

Many Indians begin their journey by flying from Mumbai to Dubai, then to South American countries such as Ecuador or Venezuela, according to authorities and immigration attorneys. Guatemala has emerged as the key transit hub into Mexico, they said. The roundabout journeys are necessary because Mexico requires visas for Indians.

They sneak across the dangerous Guatemala-Mexico border and take buses or private vehicles to the closest U.S.-Mexico border. Mexican organized crime groups are suspected of being involved either in running the operations or in charging groups tolls to pass through their territory.

The Indians usually wade across the Rio Grande, and then are shuttled from stash houses to transportation rings that take them north. David Aguilar, deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, said he believed a high percentage were caught as soon as they crossed the river.

"We very intensely interview, look at their backgrounds, check them against any watch list," Aguilar said, adding that although India is not considered a "special interest" source country for terrorists, the undocumented immigrants are scrutinized as if it were.

The detainees eventually claim asylum. In January, immigration court calendars at the area's two main detention facilities were full of the common Indian surnames Patel and Singh, and attorneys and judges struggled to keep up. Some attorneys had failed to file the necessary forms; interpreters were not always available. Judge Keith Hunsucker said more immigration judges would soon be assigned to handle the increased workload.

Many detained immigrants clear the first hurdle toward a full asylum hearing by convincing asylum officers they have a "credible fear" of persecution if they return to India. They can then post a bond and move anywhere in the United States as long as they agree to appear for their next court date.

Not all show up, however. "That's why I won't take their cases anymore," said Cathy Potter, a local immigration attorney who helped about 20 Indians get freed on bond last year. "It undermines my credibility. I don't want anything to do with this."

It is not clear how many Indians have been granted asylum or deported; immigration officials did not fulfill requests for that information. Judges and attorneys appear to be toughening up, however. Bond amounts have risen sharply in recent months, and attorneys say asylum claims are increasingly being rejected.

Judge William Peterson raised doubts during a recent hearing when a 27-year-old Punjabi woman said she had been beaten and raped, her sari ripped off by several attackers. The petite woman, her long hair in a ponytail, said she was targeted because her husband was a driver for National Congress Party officials.

"I haven't heard you tell me anything that you did on behalf of the party that would irritate these people," Peterson said at the hearing held by video conference.

"We used to give help to the poor. They did not like that," she said. Peterson rejected her claim for a finding of "credible fear," deeming her story inconsistent with statements she had made to an asylum officer. "They're going to kill me. They're going to rape me," she pleaded, wiping away a tear.

But hundreds of immigrants have persuaded asylum officers and judges to grant credible-fear findings, clearing the way for bond hearings.

Hunsucker, an immigration judge at the Port Isabel Detention Center near Brownsville, set bond amounts ranging from $15,000 to $40,000 for 10 Indians one recent morning.

Most said they had relatives or friends in the U.S. willing to sponsor them, though the judge raised concerns about some. In one case, a young man said his sponsor was his cousin, a woman. But the faxed identification document of the cousin showed a picture of a man with a beard. The bond was set at $15,000.

Once released, the immigrants are transported to the Greyhound bus station in downtown Harlingen. One recent evening, 10 Indians crowded around pay telephones and the bus counter, struggling with limited English skills to arrange travel.

One young man paid for a $204, two-day bus ride to New York City. When the clerk asked his name, he handed over his detention center ID wristband.

A young man wearing a turban asked the clerk for information on the next bus to Indiana. He spoke broken English and later tried to provide details about his journey, but other immigrants nudged him to keep quiet. The trip was worth it, he said, adding, "I'm happy, because it's safe" in the U.S.

Outside, motel operators offered to shuttle the men to their nearby quarters. Shoving matches between motel operators have broken out in recent weeks as they compete to fill their $44-per-night rooms with immigrants.

The Indians are largely unseen in the towns along the Rio Grande Valley, where they disappear into detention centers, stash houses or motel rooms. Some Sikhs have been confronted by locals alarmed by the sight of people wearing turbans, motel workers say.

Federal agents investigating human-smuggling rings have visited at least one motel, America's Best Value Inn in Raymondville, workers said. General Manager Kevin Patel denied any wrongdoing.

He houses about 20 Indians per week, he said, shuttling them to and from the bus station and printing out airline boarding passes. He serves them meals in his motel apartment, often the first Indian food they've had in months, he said.

One recent guest, Bharat Panchal, 37, said he was released from detention in late January after friends posted his $20,000 bond. India had become dangerous, he said, because of political unrest in his home state of Gujarat. He was flying later that day to Los Angeles to live with a friend, he said.

Patel said the sudden appearance of Indian immigrants in southern Texas baffled him.

"When they first showed up, I scratched my head a little bit," Patel said. But he has opened his doors and makes the immigrants feel at home.

"They need a place to stay," he said. "They need food. They speak my language, so of course, as a human being, I can help them out."

richard.marosi@latimes.com

abecker@cironline.org

This report is published in cooperation with the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, where Becker is a staff reporter.

‘Hacktivists’ retaliate against security expert
By Joseph Menn in San Francisco
February 7 2011 22:53
--ft.com--The cyber-activist group Anonymous reacted quickly over the weekend to infiltration by a US security analyst, hacking into his personal online accounts and computers and distributing thousands of e-mails and other documents.

The attack embarrassed researcher Aaron Barr, head of HBGary Federal, a contractor for US intelligence and other government agencies, while demonstrating that Anonymous has considerable technical abilities.

Members of Anonymous – that last year marshalled attacks which crashed the websites of MasterCard, PayPal and other businesses that had broken ties with whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks – said they hacked into the company to read the documentation behind Mr Barr’s claim, first reported in the Financial Times, that he could identify most of the group’s top leaders.

In statements posted to the web, the activists ridiculed his methods and conclusions, maintained that they are part of a broad movement without established leaders, and claimed that, in spite of his comments to the contrary, Mr Barr had hoped to sell his findings to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Mr Barr denied the allegation on Monday, saying that Anonymous misinterpreted a pitch to sell the agency software tools. He said he had received death threats but that his customers were being supportive.

Other security experts said they were alarmed by the hacking attack on HBGary Federal and a part-owner, HB Gary Inc., which employed a combination of tactics, including tricking an administrator into sending a new password.

The incident “makes me want to change all my PWs [passwords] and re-evaluate my processes”, Jeremiah Grossman, founder of WhiteHat Security, wrote on Twitter. “Do not poke the bear.”

Penny Leavy, HB Gary Inc. president, said the data disclosure would cost the two companies millions of dollars and that it would work with the authorities to catch those responsible.

“They have committed a crime against our company and, unfortunately, we are legally bound,” she said. “I wish it had been handled differently.”

Mr Barr again said on Monday that he did not intend to publish the names of Anonymous leaders, adding that his research, to be presented later this month at a security conference in San Francisco, was part of a study on how social networking sites make it easier for hackers to penetrate secretive organisations.

In the Anonymous case, he matched Facebook log-in times with the times when group members signed in to Anonymous’s internet relay chat groups. At a nuclear plant and a US military outfit, he used LinkedIn, Classmates and Facebook to assume identities and build trust before inducing targets to click on internet links that could have infected their machines with spy software.

Anonymous has been under pressure from a co-ordinated international law enforcement effort that has included five arrests in the UK and 40 court-authorised searches in the US. But it continues to organise what it sees as legitimate protests, including attacks on Egyptian government websites, and has now signalled that it is more than willing to take the fight elsewhere.

the sacred role of the jester: revealing the truth of the old ways by treating them as irreverently as the gods do, the jester treats nothing as sacred and so points out the sacredness of everything


Heyoka- contraries, often speaking and walking backwards. They acted in ridiculous, obscene, and comical ways, especially during sacred ceremonies. They were thought to be fearless and painless, and often dressed in a bizarre and ludicrous manner, wearing conical hats, red paint, a bladder over the head (to simulate baldness), and bark earrings. The heyoka's "anti-natural" nature was thought to be shamanistic in origin

Cops vs. cameras: filming cops illegal
By Tim Elfrink
published: January 27, 2011
--miaminewtimes--
When Robert Hammonds and a friend, Brent Bredwell, finished filming a DJ show at Jazid in South Beach, it was around 3 a.m. on a Sunday in September. A few minutes later, after they jumped into a car and headed down Washington Avenue, a drunk-looking driver swerved across traffic and cut them off.

Hammonds leaned out the window and yelled "What the hell are you doing?" at the guy.

Next thing Hammonds and Bredwell knew, a beefy cop was pulling them over. Holding his Sig Sauer .40 caliber gun at his side, the officer angrily thrust his hand into the car through the driver-side window and waved his walkie-talkie.

"Are you a fucking idiot?" the cop screamed. "Doing that in front of me? Asshole!"

Hammonds, in the passenger seat, was discreetly filming the outburst. When reinforcements arrived to put Bredwell through sobriety tests, Hammonds kept taping and agitating. "Oh, it's martial law now!" he yelled.

Another officer gestured at Hammonds. "Take the camera," he said to a colleague. "It's evidence now. Take it."

On film, the frame shakes violently and Hammonds yells, "I do not release this camera!" But then an officer grabs it and shuts it off.

That confrontation, filmed in 2009, was the first of dozens that Hammonds and three friends caught on tape. They've paid dearly, spending thousands on legal fees and tickets, and sleeping multiple nights in county lockup. They've even seen their faces plastered on a warning flyer sent to departments around Miami-Dade County.

They're part of a simmering national fight between citizen journalists and police departments that believe subjects have no right to film them. The battle over whether cops can arrest you just for videotaping them is quickly becoming the most hotly contested corner of American civil liberties law.

"As more professionals and amateurs use equipment to record police activity, they're facing the ire of officers who just don't want to be recorded," says David Ardia, director of Harvard University's Citizen Media Law Project. "We need a clear answer from courts that this is legal, or else police officers' instincts will always be to snatch the camera."

It might seem like an open-and-shut argument — cops are public figures, after all, and they're operating in plain view on the street. But it isn't, at least in the dozen states, including Florida, that require both parties in any conversation to consent to audio recording.

Since video cameras also record voices, police argue, citizen journalists are breaking the law when they record cops without permission. Publishing cops' photos also jeapordizes their safety, says Detective Juan Sanchez, a spokesman for Miami Beach police.

Miami Police Department officers, meanwhile, say they only arrest camera-toting civilians like Hammonds when they harass cops and break the law. "When you go beyond filming to trying to piss off an officer, you're subject to arrest," says Delrish Moss, a department spokesman.

Police around the country agree with him. Last May, a man in Maryland named Anthony Graber posted a YouTube video made with a helmet camera. It showed a state trooper drawing a gun and threatening him during a traffic stop. A few days after the clip was posted, police raided Gruber's house and charged him with "illegal wiretapping."

In Massachusetts, courts have upheld several similar convictions, including one against Jeffrey Manzelli, a Cambridge sound engineer who recorded police at a public antiwar rally.

In South Florida, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the City of Boynton Beach this past June on behalf of a local woman named Sharron Tasha Ford. She had gone to a movie theater to pick up her son, a minor, whom police accused of trespassing. Ford said she had "a bad feeling" about the arrest, so she took a camera with her. When she refused to stop filming, she was arrested and charged under State Statute 934.03, the "two-party consent" recording law.

"It really is a perversion of this statute to try to apply it to filming or recording what public officials are doing in public," says Randall Marshall, legal director of ACLU Florida.

Hammonds and Bredwell didn't know about the legal infighting when they pulled out their camera on Washington Avenue 16 months ago. They just acted on instinct. "It's your responsibility as an American to monitor authority and to speak up when it's being abused," Hammonds says.

Hammonds is a 30-year-old Indianapolis native with shoulder-length hair, a goatee, and a perpetually aggrieved voice. He moved to Miami five years ago to study film at Miami International University. That's where he met Bredwell, a soft-spoken, six-foot three-inch filmmaker whose father is a cop in Fort Myers.

They never planned to become police agitators. But when Bredwell tried to retrieve his seized Sony camera the day after that first incident, he says Miami Beach police claimed not to have it in the evidence room.

A week later, the friends returned to police headquarters to try again. This time, they brought a full assortment of cameras and mics. They shot footage of the cops stonewalling Bredwell again. When officers noticed the cameras, they arrested Hammonds and charged him with obstruction of justice, loitering, and trespassing. He says an officer grabbed him by his hair in an interrogation room and then locked him in a sweltering van for two hours in 90-degree heat.

The day after Hammonds's arrest, Miami Beach police printed a flyer with mug shots of Hammonds, Bredwell, and a friend, Christian Torres. Headlined "FYI Officer Safety," it warned that the trio "were seen filming the Miami Beach Police Department" and were "extremely hostile" and "looking for a confrontation." Anyone who spotted them "should use extreme caution."

"They make us sound like terrorists for filming a protest," Hammonds complains.

Sanchez, the Miami Beach Police Department spokesman, says the trio acted suspiciously. "[They] were claiming they were filming in part for a documentary, [but] they had no credentials," Sanchez writes in an email statement. "Post 9/11, and in keeping with homeland security, the filming of any possible location which could be considered a target... arouses suspicion."

Either way, the flyer was effective, the friends believe. In the months that followed, the three — along with a fourth member of their crew, Klemote McClean — were pulled over and detained more than a dozen times.

The group filmed almost all of the confrontations. Though their cameras were repeatedly seized, they've gotten all equipment back save for one camera, which the Miami Beach police claim to have no record of.

They gave their group a name: Channel Six-Two, after the scruffy bayfront block of NE 62nd Street in Miami where all of them live. And they made a promise: to always keep their cameras on. The six hours of tape they've captured show how most officers react to a camera.

In one nighttime encounter, Hammonds films over a fence in front of his house, and a City of Miami cop notices. Torres had been pulled over while driving to a corner store called Mercy Supermarket.

"Who are you?" the cop demands.

"I own this house," Hammonds says.

"Shut it down. Shut it down!" the officer growls. When Hammonds tries to argue, the furious cop charges aggressively toward the fence.

Moss declined to comment on the incidents in the video, but said that in general Miami cops only arrest videotaping civilians if they interfere with police work.

"Some of what you see on this video is clearly attempts to incite police officers," he says.

On another night, Hammonds films at the corner store. A neighborhood officer has thrown Torres over a cop car and handcuffed him. (He was later charged with "resisting an officer without violence.")

A sergeant who arrives on the scene demands credentials. When Hammonds admits he doesn't have any, the officer grabs the camera and cuffs him.

"Why are you afraid of the truth being filmed if you're doing your job the right way?" Bredwell asks. "That's our feeling."

None of the charges against the Channel Six-Two crew have stuck. (Bredwell, who refused a Breathalyzer test that first night on Washington Avenue, accepted a deal to withhold adjudication on a DUI charge.)

That's not to say the group hasn't suffered for its work. Hammonds is unemployed and suspects his legal fights have handicapped his job search. Bredwell spent more than $7,000 on court battles. Hammonds's Jeep was repossessed last summer by a towing company when he couldn't afford the impound fees after getting pulled over for an expired tag and "insufficient tread."

But the friends still hope to have their revenge. Their weapon is a DVD, which they plan to sell on the streets and online by this summer. It's titled Man vs. Pig.

"We realize it's a controversial name, but unfortunately it's accurate for what we've seen on the streets in this city," Hammonds says. They've already started plastering Man vs. Pig stickers around South Beach and midtown and have drawn a couple thousand views on a YouTube trailer. The point of the film, which describes the friends' clashes with police because of videotaping, is simple, Hammonds says.

"We think every citizen should have a camera in their car," he says. "Every encounter with police officers — every one — should be filmed."

Houma Tribes in Louisiana Bayou Suffer from BP Spill
The Associated Press January 31, 2011, 3:31AM ET
MONTEGUT, La.

Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of BP's $20 billion oil spill compensation fund, says he wants to pay American Indians in coastal Louisiana who no longer can live off the land as they once had.

At a recent meeting with American-Indian tribes, Feinberg said claims should be paid to people who must now go to the store to buy what they once got from hunting or fishing.

There are about 20,000 American Indians in coastal Louisiana, and tribal leaders say they're worried members won't get compensated fairly. They're working with a New York City law firm to help tribal members in the claims process.

The spill has created uncertainty among American Indian communities, which were already battered by hurricanes and social changes.

The House GOP's Plan to Redefine Rape
nick baumann --motherjones--
Fri Jan. 28, 2011 3:00 AM PST
Rape is only really rape if it involves force. So says the new House Republican majority as it now moves to change abortion law.

For years, federal laws restricting the use of government funds to pay for abortions have included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. (Another exemption covers pregnancies that could endanger the life of the woman.) But the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," a bill with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has dubbed a top priority in the new Congress, contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to limit drastically the definition of rape and incest in these cases.

With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to "forcible rape." This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion. (Smith's spokesman did not respond to a call and an email requesting comment.)

Long Time Ago, Eek A Mouse

It began with Saddam, say Iraqis Sunday,
30 January 2011 02:37
-thepeninsulaqatar--

BAGHDAD: Iraqis yesterday welcomed the revolt in Egypt that threatens to topple President Hosni Mubarak, with some claiming the tremors shaking Arab rulers had begun with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

“Saddam was their teacher, and all of these dictators are his little pupils,” declared Hussein Mohammed, taking a break from loading boxes of imported toys into a truck.

“The dictator (Mubarak) must leave — all dictators must go,” the 55-year-old added, noting that he stayed up until 4.00am listening to the radio for news from Cairo.

“From Morocco to Saudi Arabia, we Arabs want all dictators out.”

Other Iraqis remained glued to their television sets throughout the day, with electronics store owner Maher Minjal tuning four televisions to different Arabic news channels reporting events in Egypt.

“The fuse was lit by Iraq, because we became the first Arab country to achieve democracy and get an elected government,” said Minjal, 28, from his store in Baghdad’s commercial Karrada district.

“If the regime in Egypt falls, all other Arab regimes will fall, because Egypt is the biggest and most powerful country in the Arab world.” Anti-regime riots that raged yesterday for a fifth straight day in Egypt, inspired by the overthrow of Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali earlier this month, have sent shockwaves across the region.

At least one Iraqi political analyst agreed with the assessment that Iraq had begun a process that seemed to be spreading across the Middle East.

“It is absolutely true that (former US president George W) Bush was right when he said that democracy in Iraq would sweep through the Arab world,” Baghdad-based analyst Ihsan
Al Shammari said.

“In fact, Iraq was the first democratic regime in the region, but we are different from Egypt and Tunisia in that we were changed by foreign forces (the US-led coalition) and they are being changed by popular uprisings.

Iraq’s Al Mashriq newspaper pejoratively referred to Mubarak as a “Pharaoh,” and said the day of reckoning had come for a leader who had been a friend to the enemies of Arabs, which it said were Israel and the United States. “The American ally and the friend of Israel has been ruling Egypt since 1981, but the ground is shaking beneath the feet of the Pharaoh,” the Arabic-language newspaper said in an editoria. AFP