The kid on the left holds a sign saying "Go!, I want to get back to my classes." The one on the right is in Hebrew, Arabic and texting. It says "Go, in the language of your Beloved."
My favorite comment today from Cairo was by blogger Sarah Habas:
It's not Facebook, or Twitter, or the Muslim Brotherhood, or the middle class, or Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the CIA, Mossad, Saudi, the PA, Timbuktu OR the illuminati! Read the signs - aren't there enough? This uprising has one single goal - the removal of Mubarak and his regime, and nothing less than that. Mubarak himself says he's "fed up" with being president. One of many running jokes on the streets here in Cairo suggests that any day now he might just self-immolate in protest! Perhaps we could all calm down and review the symptoms before, next thing we know, the Haitians are being accused of financially backing this uprising!
This is beginning to look like the most momentous political upheaval since the road from Poland's Solidarity movement and Helsinki Watch led to Boris Yeltsin on that tank turret outside of the Russian parliament building.
Omar Suleiman, the guy assigned by Israel and the USA to derail the ongoing peoples' uprising in Egypt, has been described as an unsavory character in The New Yorker and in other reliable press sources.
Here's the best description I've yet read of Omar Suleiman at work. It is by Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib, who was illegally detained, moved around, tortured and maligned - courtesy or the CIA - for several years, and is now a free man. I've highlighted some of the references to Omar Suleiman, a man who has been praised by President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and our Vice President, Joe (Mubarek isn't a dictator) Biden, as well as most other players in the Egyptian scenario, including the Saudi and Israeli governments:
pp.112-115:
The guard quickly told me that the very big boss was coming to talk to me, and that I must be well behaved and co-operate. Everyone was nervous. I have since found out that the boss was Omar Suleiman, head of all Egyptian security. He was known for personally supervising the interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects and sending reports to the CIA. In the beginning, he was often present during my interrogations. He must have thought that he had a big fish when I was sent to him by the Americans and Australians.
I was sitting in a chair, hooded, with my hands handcuffed behind my back. He came up to me. His voice was deep and rough. He spoke to me in Egyptian and English. He said, “Listen, you don’t know who I am, but I am the one who has your life in his hands. Every single person in this building has his life in my hands. I just make the decision.”
I said, “I hope your decision is that you make me die straight away.”
“No, I don’t want you to die now. I want you to die slowly.” He went on, “I can’t stay with you; my time is too valuable to stay here. You only have me to save you. I’m your saviour. You have to tell me everything, if you want to be saved. What do you say?”
“I have nothing to tell you.”
“You think I can’t destroy you just like that?” He clapped his hands together.
“I don’t know”. I was feeling confused. Everything was unreal.
“If God came down and tried to take you by the hand, I would not let him. You are under my control. Let me show you something that will convince you.”
The guard then guided me out of the room and through an area where I could see, from below the blindfold, the trunks of palm trees. We then went through another door back inside, and descended some steps. We entered a room. They sat me down.
“Now you are going to tell me that you planned a terrorist attack”, Suleiman persisted.
“I haven’t planned any attacks.”
“I give you my word that you will be a rich man if you tell me you have been planning attacks.
Don’t you trust me?” he asked.
“I don’t trust anyone”, I replied.
Immediately he slapped me hard across the face and knocked off the blindfold; I clearly saw his face.
“That’s it. That’s it. I don’t want to see this man again until he co-operates and tells me he’s been planning a terrorist attack! he yelled at the others in the room, then stormed out.
The guard came up to me, upset that I hadn’t co-operated.
I said to him, “You have to let me go soon; it’s nearly 48 hours.”
He looked at me, surprised, and asked, “How long do you think you’ve been here?”
“A day”, I replied.
“Man, you’ve been here for more than a week.”
They then took me to another room, where they tortured me relentlessly, stripping me naked and applying electric shocks everywhere on my body. The next thing I remember was seeing the general again. He came into the room with a man from Turkistan; he was a big man but was stooped over, because his hands were chained to the shackles of his feet, preventing him from standing upright.
“This guy is no use to us anymore. This is what is going to happen to you. We’ve had him for one hour, and this is what happens.”
Suddenly, a guy they called Hamish, which means snake, came at the poor man from behind and gave him a terrible karate kick that sent him crashing across the room. A guard went over to shake him, but he didn’t respond. Turning to the general, the guard said, “Basha, I think he’s dead.”
“Throw him away then. Let the dogs have him.”
They dragged the dead man out.
“What do you think of that?” asked the general, staring into my face.
“At least he can rest now”, I replied.
Then they brought another man in. This man, I think, was from Europe – his exclamations of pain didn’t sound like those of someone from the Middle East. He was in a terrible state. The guard came in with a machine and started to wire up the guy to it. They told the poor man that they were going to give him a full electric shock, measuring ten on the scale. Before they even turned the machine on, the man started to gasp and then slumped in the chair.
I think he died of a heart attack.
The general said that there was one more person I had to see. “This person will make you see that we can keep you here for as long as we want, all of your life, if we choose.”
There was a window in the room, covered by a curtain. The general drew back a curtain, and I saw the top half of a very sick, thin man. He was sitting on a chair on the other side of the glass, facing me.
“You know this guy?” the general asked.
“No”, I replied.
“That’s strange – he’s your friend from Australia.”
I looked again, and was horrified to see that it was Mohammed Abbas, a man I had known in Australia who had worked for Telstra [Australian telecommunications company]. He had travelled to Egypt in 1999, and had never been seen again.
“He is going to be your neighbour for the rest of your life.”
It was then that I knew I was in Egypt, without a doubt. They then took Abbas away and closed the curtain.
p.118:
After the first interrogation with Suleiman, I believed the Egyptians weren’t interested in where I had been; they only wanted me to confess to being a terrorist and having plotted terrorist attacks so they could sell the information to the United States and Australia. I decided then that I wouldn’t answer questions or explain anything; but, as a consequence, I was badly tortured in Egypt.
p.133:
The Egyptians didn’t like Maha [Habib’s wife] at all. One day, I overheard Omar Suleiman saying to someone, “I would love to bring Maha here.” I have no idea when this was but the memory of these few words is very vivid in my mind. Fortunately, though, Suleiman could never have gotten hold of Maha, because she is Lebanese born and an Australian citizen. Suleiman, before my release from Egypt, often threatened that he would get me back if I ever said anything bad about Egypt.
That's the guy running Egypt right now, folks
image - Tzipi "I am against law – international law in particular"Livni and Omar "I would love to bring Maha here" Suleiman
John Hoover's Volcano Woman, in the lobby of Anchorage's Egan Center is one of our state's chief public art icons. When I first saw it late in the last century, it brought tears to my eyes. For joy. What richness of history and legend in those tied images, incanting inwardly.
In 1984 Hoover received a commission for what would become his favorite public art installation. Volcano Woman consists of thirteen figures and the central figure of Volcano Woman is surrounded by eight female figures (guardian spirits) forming an outer circle, and four cormorants making up an inner circle. Cormorants are diving sea birds, whose ability to both fly in the air and move underwater accounts for their appearance in shamanic contexts in Northwest and Alaskan cultures, as shamans often seek the guidance of creatures that can move from one environment to another. Hoover is pleased with the way this sculpture fills a seating area in the building and the complexity of the interaction of the forms.
Volcano Woman, in Northwest Coast culture, is the protector of the forest. People must respect Volcano Woman, as she protects all wild creatures as her children. Volcano Woman is volatile, vengeful, and violent at times. According to Lydia T. Black, a scholar of Aleut art and culture, only one Aleut story of Volcano Woman has been documented in writing, and no images of Volcano Woman exist from ancient times. Rather, Volcano Woman was described through oral traditions, from generation to generation. Hoover's depiction of Volcano Woman, however, combines the Aleut text (referred to by Black) and versions of the story from oral traditions with his own imagination. The story of Volcano Woman seeks to explain how the Aleutian Islands of Alaska were populated. Hoover recounted the story in this way:
Volcanoes were being formed in the Aleutians and the volcanoes formed islands. A flock of cormorants went by one volcano and a beautiful woman emerged, the Volcano Woman. So they all stopped and changed into human form and mated with her and then changed back into cormorants. But they flew their babies all over the islands, and, in this way, the islands became populated.
Hoover believes that his is the first visual interpretation of the Volcano Woman story by an artist. Each of the three separate, but interrelated, circular elements is a different color, which Hoover says reflect natural earth tones: grays, greens, and reds. The simple, plain carving on the backsides of the figures is consistent with the Northwest Coast tradition, which usually left the backs of totem poles, mortuary poles, and other ceremonial sculptures unadorned.
To carve the sculpture, Hoover selected a single three-hundred-year-old cedar log and had it planed into boards of varying thicknesses, as required for each element of the composition. Saws were used to take the boards down to their rough shapes, and then they were sculpted by hand with a series of woodcarving gouges. Hoover worked for six months in his Grapeview studio carving the legend into life, before it was installed at the William A. Egan Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage. Of his public commissions Hoover said with a wink, "No one has gotten mad at my public art yet. Even the naked ones like Volcano Woman. Maybe I'm not provocative enough."
Since encountering Volcano Woman, I've been tied to the legend in music. I'm about to go back there.
In 1992 I wrote Volcano Woman as the final movement to my electronic music ballet for robots, Robot Gagaku. In that movement, Volcano Woman is reawakened by robotic machines from another planet, who have been called down to a dead earth at some time tens of thousands of years in the future, to help reintroduce organic life to an earth killed off by human greed and miscalculation.
Volcano Woman II, will attempt to directly address John Hoover's rendition of the Aleut myth. This new version is scored for trumpet, French horn, trombone and piano. It will premiere as the final movement of a set of four pieces, titled Aleutian Sketches. Linn Weeda, Cheryl Pierce, Christopher Sweeney and Dean Epperson will introduce the work in Unalaska on May 13th.
In the spring of 1974, when my fishing partner KC Condon and I prepared our gillnetter-seiner, Swanee, for our first Copper River salmon opener, I asked Ralph Peterson, the guy who sold us the boat, about fishing the area between Egg Island Channel and Kokenhenik Bar. Ralph said, "Watch Johnnie Hoover. Don't "seagull" (follow too closely) him. He knows what he's doing.
That summer, fishing the Copper River Flats, the Bering River Flats and Esther Island, KC and I watched John Hoover a lot. We learned as much from him about the art of gillnetting as we did from anyone. As I look up from my studio computer and MIDI keybard, writing Volcano Woman II, at the images on the studio wall of Hoover's marvelous work, I'm still learning from this sage elder.
Thanks, John!
image of John Hoover's Volcano Woman by Philip Munger
Steve Aufrecht recorded Gen. Gamble's apology this evening. Gamble is apologizing for the high-handed, lame, sleazy, unprofessional and anti-democratic way his BFF Gen. Tom Case was appointed as the new Chancellor at UAA last week.
Professor Aufrecht has posted it at WhatDoIKnow? Steve has followed this story closely, and his articles on it are perhaps the most important written yet by an Alaska blogger in 2011.
Palin 2012 Website Closing & Will Endorse Ron Paul We originally grabbed the www.palin4pres2012.com a few minutes into Sarah Palin’s excellent speech in 2008 at the GOP national convention. She obviously believes in limited government, is unquestionably the best GOP speaker since Ronald Reagan and the Republican establishment hates her guts. This was reason enough for us to create the website pending other likely candidates for the GOP nomination in 2012 including Ron Paul.
My name is Ron Holland, I’m a conservative/libertarian political and financial writer and I have owned and run the Sarah Palin for President in 2012 website. We have decided to close the website and endorse Congressman Ron Paul for President in 2012 because of his unique support for a balanced foreign policy, sound money and limiting the power of the Federal Reserve.
It is clear looking at Washington’s ongoing neocon foreign policy failures in the Middle East that America can’t afford more of the same after 2012. Paul is best qualified to campaign and educate the US electorate about a balanced alternative to the past 30 years of neocon mistakes. Frankly during the last two years, we have become increasingly concerned about Sarah Palin’s continued dependence on neocon foreign policy advisors and their failing missions of costly military invasions and occupations especially in the Middle East. The long-term strategy of President Clinton, Bush and Obama of empire building and meddling in the affairs of other nations has turned much of the world against the United States. Now we are seeing oil resources and threatened in the Mideast in reaction to our invasions, drone attacks and support of foreign authoritarian regimes. We fear Egypt is just the first of many empire dominos to fall in the region.
Freedom and a return to a limited government republic at home can no more survive the financial costs and actions of the Washington Empire abroad than could the old empires of Rome and Great Britain. Palin’s neocon foreign policy views abroad and lack of understanding of Austrian and free-market economic solutions at home are needed today when a global run on the dollar and our treasury obligations threatens. We must endorse a potential candidate who understands the threat to our future prosperity by the Federal Reserve, Wall Street bailouts and will stand up against the political establishments of both political parties
In summary, Sarah we love your conservative views but America must return now to the non-interventionist foreign policy of George Washington, the limited government ideals of Thomas Jefferson and the economics of Ludwig von Mises. Otherwise our nation and empire will soon find itself drowned by currency collapse, a run on our treasury obligation and surrounded by enemies.
We want to say thanks to the thousands of Palin supporters who have contacted our website over the last 2 ½ years and you can reach her PAC at http://www.sarahpac.com but as we stated at the bottom of the website:
“Note this website is an independent effort to change the direction of the GOP from the "business as usual" Republican establishment to the Tea Party movement representing the alternative social conservative views of Sarah Palin and the pro-liberty positions of Ron Paul. We believe the aggressive foreign policy actions of the Neocons threaten the future of the US economy and our remaining freedoms in the USA. We are in no way affiliated with either candidate at the present time.”
I believe the growing threats to our liberties, wealth and economic future is so critical from our foreign policy, the Federal Reserve, the national debt and the dollar that America needs a real choice outside from the political establishment in either party and specifically the neo-conservatives and for this reason, we endorse Ron Paul for President in 2012.
I pray he decides to run and urge our readers to attend the coming CPAC convention and vote for Paul in their very important presidential poll.
Take a look at the following websites for more information on Ron Paul:
www.lewrockwell.com w ww.ronpaul.com www.dailypaul.com www.campaignforliberty.com
Today in early 2011, it is far too late for politics as usual in either political party and we need to make a real change to preserve our freedoms, way of life and opportunity for future prosperity.
Mohamed had a vegetable stand, this was his family's plight Ever since his father died on a construction site He was one of six siblings and now this would be his fate Working the streets of the city to put food on everybody's plate He couldn't afford the bribes the cops would make him pay So sometimes they'd knock his cart over and get him back that way Last December they smashed his scales to put him in his place And then for good measure a cop spat in Mohamed's face
He went to see the governor, maybe there was something he could do Word came from on high -- we don't talk to people like you Mohamed Bouazizi now was living on a wire He went and bought some paint thinner and he set himself on fire Word spread through the region and soon you'd hear the same Of proud and desperate people going up in flame Sometimes windows open, sometimes the floor, it creaks But no one knew what would happen in only a few weeks
When the dictator ran away
People tried to hold a march for the immolated dead Police met them there with truncheons and bullets to the head People headed to the capital, they would not be deterred Sometimes this is just what happens to a dream deferred The police kept up the attack -- thousands wounded, hundreds killed With blood the streets were covered, with gas the air was filled But the people held their ground -- Tunisia's daughters and their sons And one day the cops had had enough -- they just put down their guns
When the dictator ran away
Now someone had to deal with this rebellious riffraff So Ben Ali called a meeting of his chiefs of staff He said these terrorists have decided to go out on the attack It's time for you, the Army, to take our country back It's time for you, the Army, to go and make a stand Show these terrorists that we are in command It's time to gun these criminals down -- that's what he said, now go The general got his orders and the general said no
When the dictator ran away
Ben Ali got in a plane, tried to go to France But he was a hot potato so he did a little dance Ended up in Jidda to live there in exile While his fellow warlords shiver from the Tigris to the Nile All across Arabia you can hear them talk and sing Those who'd dare throw off their shackles, who would shout "let freedom ring" Where we'll be by next year is for anyone to say But many will recall where they were on the day
To do what it is supposed to do - contain toxic wastes that would destroy the habitat of the world's greatest Sockeye salmon fishery - it would have to last about ten times as long as the Great Pyramids have been in existence. How likely is it that the dam would last that long?
Mining has a poor environmental track record. For example, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency mining has contaminated portions of the headwaters of over 40 percent of watersheds in the western continental U.S., and reclamation of 500,000 abandoned mines in 32 states could cost tens of billions of dollars.[61]
A recent study of 25 modern large hard rock metal mines compared water quality outcomes with environmental impact statement (EIS) predictions from the permitting stage. 76 percent (19 mines) of the 25 mines exceeded water quality standards in releases to either surface or groundwater. In this study "exceeded water quality standard" does not necessarily mean that the mines failed to abide by their permits. When the 15 mines with high acid-drainage, high contaminant leaching potential, and proximity to ground water are considered separately, this number is 93% (14 mines).[62][63]
Anglo-American PLC is not a desirable corporate partner. A report commissioned by opponents of Pebble, criticizes Anglo American for community, worker safety, public health, and environmental problems at their mining operations in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mali, Ireland, and the United States(Nevada) and notes the difference between Anglo's stated corporate goals and their actual corporate performance.[64].
Earthquake hazards in the area are poorly known, and preliminary plans by the mining company do not prepare adequately for the potential risk.[65]
While yesterday's announcement that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will include scrutiny of the Pebble Project in its overall review of "the consequences of large-scale development projects" on the Bristol Bay watershed, is good news, we need to realize that the Obama administration's legacy on environmental review and performance in the face of environmental catastrophe is quite mixed, and not much better than that of his predecessor's administration.
Egypt is under martial law by Omar Suleiman, the man who ran the U.S. sponsored torture regime there under the approval of presidents Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama. Among the mixed signals since the butcher of Cairo's ascension to power, was Monday's release of Wael Ghonim, the young head of marketing in the Middle East for Google. Some are calling Ghonim the Egyptian Ghandi, a term he rejects.
Here are parts two and three of his interview early today on Egypt's DreamTV:
Apparently, this is the text of Palin's statement on Obama's response to Egypt in a radio segment done with David Brody yesterday:
It’s a difficult situation, this is that 3am White House phone call and it seems for many of us trying to get that information from our leader in the White House it it seems that that call went right to the answering machine. And nobody yet has, no body yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak and ...not real enthused about what it is that that’s being done on a national level and from D.C. in regards to understanding all the situation there in Egypt. And, in these areas that are so volatile right now because obviously it’s not just Egypt but the other countries too where we are seeing uprisings, we know that now more than ever, we need strength and sound mind there in the White House. We need to know what it is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with. And we do not have all that information yet.
Update - Monday 11:30 a.m: For those interested in knowing more about Dan Lacey, the artist whose image is featured here:
The kid on the left holds a sign saying "Go!, I want to get back to my classes." The one on the right is in Hebrew, Arabic and texting. It says "Go, in the language of your Beloved."
