Not too hopeful for this case. The government owns the streets and can decide how they are used. Solution: Privatize the Roads!
Social Media
JIDF’s twitter: I urge all supporters to go to reddit.com and register many accounts, learn the system, etc. We’re gonna have some fun w/ Jew haters
The reddit community picked up on this. Here is their discussion.
GOP senator favors cutting US aid to Israel
Tea party-backed Republican Sen. Rand Paul favors cutting U.S. aid to Israel as part of a deficit-driven effort to slash government spending by $500 billion this year, drawing criticism from Democrats and Republicans who argue the U.S. must be unwavering in its support for the longtime Mideast ally. 
(Read more from washingtonpost.com)
See also: U.S. Democrats and pro-Israel lobbies slam Republican Senator’s call to halt Israel aid
When Money Dies — The Nightmare of 1923 and Its Cause
For a detailed account of the descent of an entire country into despair and barbarism read Adam Fergusson’s When Money Dies: The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar Germany.
First published in 1975, republished in 2010, and made available through the Mises Institute, When Money Dies should dispel the notion that the rule of men is superior to the rule of law. Why “the rule of law”? Because it was the violation of the rule of law by governments themselves that supplanted the peaceful, liberal order of a gold-based international monetary system with one in which central banks, at governments’ behest, could print fiduciary media without limit.
The full implication of this change was seen in Weimar Germany, the German people’s first experiment with representative democracy, where civilized society fell victim to the evils of the monetary printing press. For all practical purposes, the German mark was not worth the paper upon which it was printed. Eventually the Reichsbank issued the largest denomination note ever printed in the history of the world, a one-hundred-trillion-mark note, which no one would accept for payment. Be very careful if you believe that it can’t happen today. (Read more from mises.org)
SA: America’s Egypt Problem
Ron Paul on Egypt Upheaval
Israel urges world to curb criticism of Egypt’s Mubarak
Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries over the weekend to curb their criticism of President Hosni Mubarak to preserve stability in the region.
Jerusalem seeks to convince its allies that it is in the West’s interest to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime. (Read more from haaretz.com)
Peter Schiff on lying economic statistic
* Government prevents credit card companies from raising rates, so they now have higher starting rates. Very typical of government regulation.
Chicago Police: Tape Us, Get Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison
Illinois is one of the states with the toughest laws against audiotaping a conversation between you and another party without their knowledge. The law [text] states that you can face up to 15 years in prison for committing the offense.
Christopher Drew, a 60-year-old artist and teacher living in Chicago, is facing the charge after audio taping a conversation he had with the police. In an interview with The New York Times, he remarks on his potential 15 years of hard prison time, “That’s one step below attempted murder.”
He adds, “Before they arrested me for it. I didn’t even know there was a law about eavesdropping. I wasn’t trying to sue anybody. I just wanted somebody to know what had happened to me.”
He is not alone. Other Chicago residents, including Tiawanda Moore, a 20-year-old former stripper, face similar charges. They all have one thing in common — their charges follow audio taping conversations with police. The law is seldom applied in other situations – in fact, most don’t even know it exists. The law even makes it a lesser offense to tape a civilian once (a Class 4 felony) or twice (a Class 3 felony), versus taping a law enforcement officer (a Class 1 felony).
Ms. Moore’s story is among the most alarming. She is being charged with the Class 1 felony of eavesdropping using a digital device after recording on her Blackberry a conversation she had with two internal affairs officers. The conversation occurred during her attempt to report a separate police officer for sexual harassment. Now she’s set for a February 7 trial in Cook County Criminal Court and may spend more than a decade in prison.
Contrast this state of affairs with the fact that Chicago police officers have one of the most stained reputations for police brutality. According to a 2007 CNN report, 10,000 complaints — many of them involving brutality and assault — were filed between 2002 and 2004. (Read more from www.dailytech.com)
Former Israeli Ambasador to Cairo: “Egypt is still not capable of democracy”, regime should continue “at any cost”
Shaked considers the West’s demands for more openness and democracy in Egypt to be a fatal mistake. “It is an illusion to believe that the dictator Mubarak could be replaced by a democracy,” he says. “Egypt is still not capable of democracy,” he adds, pointing out that the illiteracy rate is over 20 percent, to give just one example. The Muslim Brotherhood is the only real alternative, he opines, which would have devastating consequences for the West. “They will not change their anti-Western attitude when they come to power. That has not happened (with Islamist movements) anywhere: neither in Sudan, Iran nor Afghanistan.”
Ultimately the choice is between a pro- or an anti-Western dictatorship, says Shaked. “It is in our interest that someone from Mubarak’s inner circle takes over his legacy, at any cost.” In the process, it is not possible to rule out massive bloodshed in the short term, he says. “It would not be the first time that riots in Egypt were brutally crushed.” (Read more from spiegel.de)
Egyptian Protest Highlights
Pay attention the protester at 0:45 and his wholly secular message, contrary to CNN’s Muslim Brotherhood spin.
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Great photo collections here and here. Also, this video of protesters crossing a bridge and cops giving way before them demonstrates the scope of these protests.
There’s a good protest timeline on Al Jazeera, which is usually better than CNN.
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What do the protesters want? Don’t ask Biden.
The White House may stand behind the protesters in Tunisia, but demonstrators in Egypt haven’t gotten the presidential blessing. Appearing on PBS NewHour last night, gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden remarked that he doesn’t consider Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak a dictator—despite his 29-year rule—and isn’t sure what exactly protesters want.
(source)
I wonder how much of the US’s luke warm view of the protests has to do with the Israel Lobby. I can imagine them wanting a tyrant whom the US more or less controls over a popular movement.
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Obviously, government repression doesn’t like internet freedom of information. By the way:
Internet ‘kill switch’ bill will return
A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a “national cyberemergency,” and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year. . . . Portions of the Lieberman-Collins bill, which was not uniformly well-received when it became public in June 2010, became even more restrictive when a Senate committee approved a modified version on December 15. The full Senate did not act on the measure. (Read more from news.cnet.com)
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Riot control agents used against the Egyptian protests seem to be Made in the USA. Are you proud, chest-thumbing neo-cons? Wait, don’t answer that.
See Also:
The US government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to equip the Egyptian security forces with high-tech military hardware.
But unless things get really, really bad there, it’s unlikely that any big-ticket American military hardware will be used directly against the Egyptian demonstrators. A selection of Defense Department contracts dating to the mid-1990s reveals weapons sales to Egypt that include a Black Hawk helicopters (Sikorsky), a dizzying variety of missiles (Raytheon), Abrams tanks (General Dynamics), Humvees (AM General Corp.) and all manner of ammunition. . . .
Now, if through some incredible circumstance Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak decides to flee the country, Ã la Ben Ali, there’s a good chance his first-class flight would come courtesy of the American taxpayer.
Pentagon contracts show that the US government has spent at least $111,160,328 to purchase and maintain Mubarak’s fleet of nine Gulfstream business jets. (For those keeping score, Gulfstream is a subsidiary of General Dynamics.) (Read more from warisbusiness.com)
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Schiff, Southern Avenger on the State of the Union
* State of the Union will be known as delusional once the collapse comes.
* Congressional Budget Office upgrades this year’s deficit projection by $400 billion. (So much for Obama’s $100 million cut.)
* President’s central planning — education, high speed trains, etc. — is wasteful central planning. No one knows future.
* Fed voted unanimously to do more of the same: quantitative easing, 0% interest. Full steam ahead on financial suicide. Fed printing will soon eclipse tax revenue.
* Government panel on financial crises was a complete farce. Financial crises was used as excuse to grow government. Concluded housing bubble *not* caused by Freddie, Fanny, low interest, government forcing banks to make bad loans. Panel concluded instead it was a lack of regulation.
(Here the NY Times gives voice to the inquiries fraudulent findings.)
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Jack Hunter notes the response to the State of the Union, and the palpable shift of conservative rhetoric away from war and toward fiscal sanity:
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See also, Visualizing Obama’s Budget Cut:
“The president’s team is going to take 90 days to find some way to take this [1/4 of one penny], out of that [those thousands of pennies on right].”
I think an excellent start would be firing the team.
President’s Healthcare claims: “I would say false, more so than true”
* Chief Medicare Actuary on President’s health care claims: “I would say false, more so than true”
Krugman vs. Murphy
I wonder what Paul Krugman is thinking. In his latest attack on the Austrian school, Great Leaps Backward, he notes the rising tide of its popularity and describes it as a repudiation of 75 years of economic progress since the work of John Maynard Keynes.
Robert Murphy of the Mises Institute has been trying to shame Krugman into an economic debate by raising over $60,000 for charity should Krugman accept.
In this fantastic essay, Murphy rebuts Krugman’s latest assault. I highly recommend the essay, it includes the clearest explanation of Austrian Capital and Interest theories I’ve seen, followed by an exhaustive rebuttal.
America’s Middle Eastern Puppet Regimes Falling Like Dominoes
While some Americans assume this is a “Arab affair”, the fact is that Egypt’s president Mubarak is a yes-man to the U.S., and the fall of the Tunisian and now Egyptian leaders are really the ouster of U.S. puppet regimes in the Middle East.
. . .
Mainstream Islamist parties in the Mideast have nothing to do with al-Qaida (which barely exists any more) or anti-Western programs. Their primary concern is getting rid of the western-backed oligarchies that keep the Muslim world backwards and in thrall. Their platform is sharing resource wealth, social welfare, education, uprooting thieving oligarchies and fighting endemic corruption.
The big question now is will Tunisia’s dramatic events be a harbinger of other explosions across the volatile Arab world? All eyes are on Egypt, the home of a third of all Arabs. Egypt’s 83-year-old military ruler, Husni Mubarak, is a giant version of Tunisia’s Gen. Ben Ali.
Mubarak was engineered into power by the US after the killing of longtime CIA “asset” Anwar Sadat. Gen. Mubarak has ruled Egypt like a modern-day pharaoh ever since, crushing both violent extremist and legitimate political opposition. Mubarak’s rigged elections, winked at by Washington, are every bit as egregious as Tunisia’s.
So could the flames of Tunisia’s revolution spread to Egypt?
Today, we got the answer. (Read more from washingtonsblog.com)