MUBARAK NOT STEPPING DOWN. I swear I heard a roar of anger from 80 Million Egyptians resoundng in Jerusalem after the long awaited speech of Hosni Mubarak. 80 Million people that were hoping to become the ‘ONLY DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST’ ….. but they will have to wait a bit longer. It WILL happen and it will happen SOON…. but not tonight.

WL Central: Mubarak is Defiant
"I will not relent in punishing those responsible for the violence."
"The blood of those killed in the violence will not be wasted."
"I will not bow to outside pressure"
"I will remain in office until elections."

He plans on making reforms and is calling for amendments to six sections of the constitution. He will remain on as president but transfer his powers to his new vice president and longtime intelligence chief Omar Soleiman. He repeated many time that he would not bow to outside powers which sound like a direct response to earlier reports that US officials had told him to resign.

Raw Story: Mubarak says he will not resign until September

Egypt's military announced on national television that it stepped in to "safeguard the country" and assured protesters that President Hosni Mubarak will meet their demands in the strongest indication yet that the longtime leader has lost power. In Washington, the CIA chief said there was a "strong likelihood" Mubarak will step down Thursday. State TV said Mubarak will speak to the nation Thursday night from his palace in Cairo. The military's dramatic announcement showed that the military was taking control after 17 days of protests demanding Mubarak's immediate ouster spiraled out of control.

Al Jazeera: Hosni Mubarak 'may step down'
USA Today: Mubarak to address the nation amid resignation reports -Video
Deutsche Welle: Mubarak could relinquish power soon

Given the long-obvious fact that the Obama administration has been working to install Suleiman as interim leader as a (dubious) means of placating citizen anger, the above-referenced NYT article today offers a long and detailed profile of the new Egyptian "Vice President." Unfortunately, the paper of record wasn't able to find the space to inform its readers about Suleiman's decades-long history as America's personal abducter, detainer and torturer of the Egyptian people, nor his status as Israel's most favored heir to the Mubarak tyranny (though the article did vaguely and euphemistically acknowledge that "the United States has certainly had long ties with Mr. Suleiman" and that "for years he has been an important contact for the Central Intelligence Agency").

Stephen Soldz: The torture career of Egypt’s new Vice President
Patrick Martin/WSWS: Omar Suleiman—longtime collaborator with Israel and US
Xymphora: Omar Suleiman: a dark man haunted by lights

Tahrir pro-democracy protests are spreading throughout Egypt. Meanwhile, Egypt's vice president Omar Suleiman is threatening to end the demonstrations by force under the dark of night.

PressTV: Egypt revolution enters 17th day
PressTV: Middle East on brink of grand transformation
WSWS: Obama’s cold-blooded defense of Egyptian regime

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared in court Monday for a showdown with Swedish authorities to fight an extradition bid over sex crimes allegations. Assange, wearing a blue suit, was flanked by two prison guards as the hearing opened at Belmarsh Magistrates' Court. Celebrity supporters Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger, and politician Tony Benn also attended. Assange is accused of sexual misconduct by two women he met during a visit to Stockholm last year. Defense lawyers will argue that he should not be extradited because he has not been charged with a crime, because of flaws in Swedish prosecutors' case — and because a ticket to Sweden could eventually land him in Guantanamo Bay or on U.S. death row. American officials are trying to build a criminal case against the secret–spilling site, which has angered Washington by publishing a trove of leaked diplomatic cables and secret U.S. military files. Assange's lawyers claim the Swedish prosecution is linked to the leaks and politically motivated.

M & C: Assange hearing in London adjourned, to resume Friday
OneIndia: Decision on Assange''s extradition expected on Friday
Times of Malta: No need to extradite Assange, court told
HuffPo: The [US] Government's Case Against Julian Assange Is Falling Apart

The Telegraph: Egyptian 'torturers' trained by FBI

"The US provided officers from the Egyptian secret police with training at the FBI, despite allegations that they routinely tortured detainees and suppressed political opposition."

The London and Toronto stock markets made waves in the financial world Wednesday when they announced their trans-Atlantic merger. However, they were quickly outdone by Deutsche Börse and NYSE Euronext's proposed fusion. Investors were left with bated breath Wednesday after Deutsche Börse and NYSE Euronext said they were in "advanced discussions" to merge into the world's biggest stock exchange operater by revenues and profits. The revelation from Germany's stock exchange and its prospective partner came hot on the heels of an announcement from the London and Toronto stock exchanges that they would merge. The fusion is expected to create one of the world's largest trading platforms, which will dominate the raw materials and energy sectors.

عربية بوكس بتدهس الثوار السلميين بالمحله 28 يناير جمعه الغضب

You Tube: Egyptian, murdered in cold bloodاشجع شاب مصرى تم قتله من الشرطه المصريه

A blindfolded Robert Tait could only listen as fellow captives were electrocuted and beaten by Mubarak's security services. The sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electrocuting device sounded like an angry rattlesnake as it passed within inches of my face. Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor. A hail of vicious punches and kicks rained down on the prone bodies next to me, creating loud thumps. The torturers screamed abuse all around me. Only later were their chilling words translated to me by an Arabic-speaking colleague: "In this hotel, there are only two items on the menu for those who don't behave – electrocution and rape." Cuffed and blindfolded, like my fellow detainees, I lay transfixed. My palms sweated and my heart raced. I felt myself shaking. Would it be my turn next? Or would my outsider status, conferred by holding a British passport, save me? I suspected – hoped – that it would be the latter and, thankfully, it was. But I could never be sure.

I had "disappeared", along with countless Egyptians, inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat, President Hosni Mubarak's vast security-intelligence apparatus and an organisation headed, until recently, by his vice-president and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, the man trusted to negotiate an "orderly transition" to democratic rule.

The Guardian: Egypt's army 'involved in detentions and torture'

'Thousands' of protesters may have been tortured: report Egypt's secret police, long accused of torturing suspects and intimidating political opponents of President Hosni Mubarak, received training at the FBI's facility in Quantico, Virginia, even as US diplomats compiled allegations of brutality against them, according to US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks. One cable, dated November 2007 and published by the Telegraph, describes a meeting between the head of the SSIS, Egypt's secret police, and FBI deputy director John Pistole, in which the secret police chief praises Pistole for the "excellent and strong" cooperation between the two agencies. (Pistole has since been appointed head of the TSA.)

SSIS chief Abdul Rahman said the FBI's training sessions at Quantico were of "great benefit" to his agency. The cables did not address what sort of training Egyptian secret police received at Quantico, or how many officers were trained there. In another cable, dated October 2009, a US diplomat reported on allegations from "credible human rights lawyers" that the SSIS was behind the torture of terrorism suspects held in Egyptian jails.

The Independent: US envoy Frank Wisner's business link to Egypt Frank Wisner, President Barack Obama's envoy to Cairo who infuriated the White House this weekend by urging Hosni Mubarak to remain President of Egypt, works for a New York and Washington law firm which works for the dictator's own Egyptian government. [...] The US State Department and Mr Wisner himself have now both claimed that his remarks were made in a "personal capacity". But there is nothing "personal" about Mr Wisner's connections with the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises "the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government's behalf in Europe and the US".

New York Review of Books: Washington’s Secret History with the Muslim Brotherhood

Faced with a looming vote on a planned one-year extension of special powers authorized in the USA PATRIOT Act, the Obama White House did not object or propose reforms, as the president vowed to do as a candidate. The Obama administration instead asked Congress to grant those powers for an additional three years. As a US Senator and candidate for the presidency, Barack Obama never actually argued for a repeal of the Bush administration's security initiatives. Instead, he's consistently argued for enhanced judicial oversight and a pullback on the most extreme elements of the bill, such as the use of National Security Letters to search people's personal records without a court-issued warrant. While many in his own party opposed the PATRIOT Act outright, as president Obama has said repeatedly that the emergency measures remain a valuable tool for law enforcement engaged in "national security prerogatives".

Obama To Cut Energy Assistance For Poor; Kerry Urges Him To Reconsider.

Reports that President Barack Obama's upcoming budget will propose steep cuts in the government's energy assistance fund for low-income Americans ricocheted quickly on Capitol Hill Wednesday, spurring some intraparty squabbling.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) wrote a letter to Obama asking him not to drop funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) by about $3 billion.

"I understand that difficult cuts have to be made," the Massachusetts Democrat wrote. "But in the middle of a brutal, even historic, New England winter, home heating assistance is more critical than ever to the health and welfare of millions of Americans, especially senior citizens. I request that the administration preserve LIHEAP funding at least to the Fiscal Year 2010 funding at $5.1 billion when it submits its FY12 budget proposal to Congress."

The cuts, which were first reported by National Journal, appear to cut against the grain of previous administration policy. In 2010, Obama's omnibus budget resolution assigned roughly $5 billion in LIHEAP grants for 2011. The rationale was that at a time of acute economic crisis and rising commodity prices, a little federal assistance to those in need was politically defensible. [Photo: East River Runner]

National Journal: White House to Cut Energy Assistance for the Poor

With popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt spinning along, each with a certain amount of world-reshaping potential, there's been a lot of new attention focused on the role that WikiLeaks has played in these events. Ian Black, the Middle East editor of The Guardian, one of the key newspapers disseminating diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks' trove, told NPR last night that he didn't feel the leaked cables were the primary driver of these uprisings. Nevertheless, WikiLeaks seems to have helped to remove the people now demonstrating on the streets from their isolation by providing a "confirmation of what people in these countries know and feel intuitively," about the conditions under which they have lived.

London, Feb 10 (ANI): A beauty queen in the US has decided to sue pageant organisers after she lost her crown for failing to lose weight. Domonique Ramirez, 17, was not only told to "get off the tacos" by pageant officials, but was also accused of being late to events and poor behaviour, ultimately "tarnishing" the image of the role. Ramirez, who won the Miss San Antonio competition in April last year, says she is 5ft8in and a size 2 weighing 129lbs. Now she has obtained a temporary restraining order to stop organisers, Miss Bexar County Organization Inc, from promoting runner-up Ashley Dixon to the crown.

Daily Mail: Domonique-Ramirez-sues-lost-beauty-queen-crown-overweight.html'Get off the tacos': Beauty queen sues after she is stripped of her crown 'for becoming overweight'