It is spreading. This is is the biggest fear our leaders of our Corporatocracy have. Average Americans awakening!

In Madison, Wisconsin, crowds that police estimated at 25,000 engulfed the Capitol and its lawns yesterday during a third-straight day of protests as Democratic senators fled the legislative session. In Columbus, Ohio, about 3,800 state workers, teachers and other public employees came to the statehouse for a committee hearing. President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohioan, argued over whether the bills are “an assault on unions.” Ohio firefighters Dave Hefflinger and Jerry Greer said they were. They stood near hundreds of workers elbow-to-elbow in the statehouse atrium and listened to a Senate hearing through speakers. Chants of “Kill the bill” echoed.

FightBackNews: Wisconsin governor tries to strip state employees of union rights, workers fight back
Alternet: Wisconsin Is a Battleground Against the Billionaire Kochs' Plan to Break Labor's Back
Stephen Lendman: Egypt's Spirit Lands in Wisconsin

It appears that US dealings with the Palestinians have entered a new phase: Bullying. On Thursday, President Barack Obama telephoned Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to urge him to block a UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements. Obama pressed very hard during the 50 minute call, so hard that Abbas felt constrained to agree to take Obama’s request to the PLO executive committee (which, not surprisingly, agreed that Abbas should not accede to Obama’s request). But what a request it is!

For Palestinians, Israeli settlements are the very crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After all, it is the gobbling up of the land by settlements that is likely to prevent a Palestinian state from ever coming into being. [Zionist Land Grab -Map]

Asking the Palestinian leader to agree to oppose a resolution condemning them is like asking the Israeli prime minister to agree to drop Israel’s claim to the Israeli parts of Jerusalem. In fact, the mere US request for a 90-day settlement freeze (a request sweetened with an offer of $3.5bn in extra aid) outraged the Netanyahu government. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could not even bring himself to respond (probably figuring that he will get the extra money whenever he wants it anyway). The administration then acted as if it never made the request at all, so eager is it to not offend Netanyahu in any way.

The Obama administration told Arab governments Tuesday it will back a draft resolution saying the Security Council "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity," according to Foreign Policy magazine. But the US also intends to veto a stronger non-binding resolution by the 15-member body denouncing the Israeli settlements as "illegal." The new language was part of a compromise put forth by Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to the UN.

AWIP: Obama’s First UN Veto: US to Stop Security Council Calling Israeli Settlements ‘Illegal’

A US-led airstrike have killed at least 37 people and wounded several others in the troubled eastern Afghanistan amid growing discontent over such attacks. Local media reports say the deadly strike took place in Kunar Province on Friday. NATO has confirmed the incident, claiming that they were targeting “a prominent Taliban militant,” a Press TV correspondent reported. Several women and children were among those killed in the attack on Kunar province. Local residents say the airstrike targeted homes in the area and all those killed were civilians. NATO, however, claims that 30 militants died in the attack. Similar attacks have claimed the lives of hundreds of Afghan civilians over the past year. More than 2,400 civilians lost their lives in 2010 -- making it the deadliest year since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Troops and tanks lock down capital Manama after police attack peaceful demonstrators in pre-dawn assault, killing four. Troops and tanks have locked down the Bahraini capital of Manama on Thursday after riot police swinging clubs and firing tear gas smashed into demonstrators in a pre-dawn assault, killing at least four people. Hours after the attack on Manama's main Pearl Roundabout, the military announced a ban on gatherings, saying on state TV that it had "key parts" of the capital under its control. Khalid Al Khalifa, Bahrain's foreign minister, justified the crackdown as necessary because the demonstrators were "polarising the country" and pushing it to the "brink of the sectarian abyss". Speaking to reporters after meeting with his Gulf counterparts, he also said the violence was “regrettable”. Two people had died in police firing on the protesters prior to Thursday's deadly police raid. An Al Jazeera correspondent, who cannot be named for security reasons, said that hospitals are full of injured people after Wednesday night's police raid on the pro-reform demonstrators.

PressTV: UK accused of selling arms to Bahrain
PressTV: Army massacring Bahraini protesters
Raw Story: US reporter beaten covering Bahrain unrest

Millions of Egyptian demonstrators are holding a rally in the capital, Cairo, to demand the military hand over power to a civilian government. Some three million participants in the massive rally have gathered at Cairo's Liberation Square, which has been the epicenter of the Egyptian Revolution. Thousands more were expected to join the rally after the Friday Prayers. Also in Alexandria, large numbers of people are also celebrating the fall of Mubarak. US-backed President Hosni Mubarak stepped down last Friday after ruling Egypt for three decades. His resignation followed nearly three weeks of massive nationwide demonstrations against his regime. After Mubarak's ouster, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took over all his powers.

The official position of the US Secretary of State is that countries around the world [not the US apparently but the world] should respect their citizens' rights to free speech, free expression and free assembly -- and that's precisely what Sec. Hillary Clinton said during a Tuesday speech at George Washington University.

Unfortunately, as she spoke, not 15 feet in front of her, a series of events unfolded that utterly undermined the message.

Former CIA agent Ray McGovern, an outspoken critic of US foreign policy, stood silently in the auditorium's center aisle, and turned his back on Clinton. For his symbolic and otherwise non-disruptive protest, he was quickly accosted by security agents. As they struggled to pull him out of the room, a CNN news camera caught the tail end of the ordeal.

"SO THIS IS AMERICA?!? This is America? Who are you?" the 71-year-old McGovern shouted as he was hauled away. He claims to have been "bloodied" and "bruised" (photo) by one man in uniform and an unnamed, plain-clothes security worker. Clinton [quietly gloated and] didn't even skip a beat.

Antiwar: Scott Horton Interviews Ray McGovern -AUDIO

A US judge has quashed a lawsuit by an American who said he was illegally detained and repeatedly tortured for three years in a US navy jail. Jose Padilla was seeking to sue current US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, for violating the constitution. He was jailed in 2007 for "terrorism-related offences". Judge Richard Gergel ruled that US laws did not offer clear guidelines on the detention of enemy combatants. Any trial, he wrote, would be "an international spectacle with Padilla, a convicted terrorist, summoning America's present and former leaders to a federal courthouse to answer his charges". 'Beneath the law': Padilla is serving a 17-year sentence at a maximum-security prison in the state of Colorado. He was taken into custody in Chicago in May 2002 after arriving at O'Hare International Airport from Pakistan via Switzerland. President Bush declared him an enemy combatant a month later, saying he possessed valuable intelligence about the personnel and activities of "al-Qaeda". Taken to a navy jail in South Carolina, he was held there for more than three years. His defence alleged that he was tortured by being kept in darkness and isolation, deprived of sleep and religious materials, and kept from family and lawyers. Legal critics say his case highlighted the Bush administration's aggressive moves to hold terrorism suspects for years without formal charges.

Ben Wizner, the litigation director at the American Civil Liberties Union, called Thursday's ruling "troubling".

"The court today held that Donald Rumsfeld is above the law and Jose Padilla is beneath it," he said in a statement. "But if the law does not protect Jose Padilla, it protects none of us, and the executive branch can simply label citizens enemies of the state and strip them of all rights, including the absolute right not to be tortured."

Anyone wanting to know a little more about Xi Jinping, the presumed successor to Chinese President Hu Jintao, should take a look at a couple of new articles. The first, a special report by Reuters, takes a look at some previously unreleased material from WikiLeaks. It’s unclear where exactly Reuters obtained the cables, with the article only stating that they came from a ‘third party.’ Wherever they’re from, though, they offer a fascinating look at the man who is set to lead China from next year.

Xi is apparently painted by US officials as an elitist ‘who believes that the offspring of Maoist revolutionaries are the rightful rulers of China.’ On the question of human rights, the cables apparently have little to say on Xi’s views, but they do note that his father was critical of the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protesters and also that the Dalai Lama apparently had ‘great affection’ for Xi’s father.

Online activist group Anonymous has uncovered a proposal by a consortium of private contractors to attack and discredit whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. Last week Anonymous volunteers broke into the servers of HB Gary Federal, a security company that sells investigative services to companies, and posted thousands of the firm's emails on to the internet. The attack was in revenge for claims by the company's chief executive Aaron Barr that he had successfully infiltrated the shadowy cyber protest network and discovered details of its leadership and structure. Hacktivists, journalists and bloggers have since pored over the emails and discovered what appears to be a proposal that was intended to be pitched to the Bank of America to sabotage WikiLeaks and discredit journalists who are sympathetic to the whistle-blowing website.

The PowerPoint presentation claims that a trio of internet security companies – HB Gary Federal, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies – are already prepared to attack WikiLeaks which is rumoured to be getting ready to release a cache of potentially embarrassing information on the Bank of America. The presentation, which has been seen by The Independent, recommends a multi-pronged assault on WikiLeaks including deliberately submitting false documents to the website to undermine its credibility, pioneering cyber attacks to expose who the leakers to WikiLeaks are and going after sympathetic journalists. One of those mentioned is Glenn Greenwald, a pro-WikiLeaks reporter in the US. Writing on Salon.com Greenwald stated that his initial reaction to was "to scoff at its absurdity".

Ed Brayton/Glenn Greenwald: Bank of America and Glenn Greenwald