US State Department cables released on Monday by the Telegraph (London) and WikiLeaks reveal that, in September 2009, in response to a perceived insult to President Muammar al-Qadhafi from the Canadian government, the Libyan National Oil Company threatened to nationalize the local assets of Petro-Canada, then a Canadian Crown corporation. The cables tie the diplomatic row to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon's threat to give al-Qadhafi a "public tongue-lashing" over his reception of Abdel Bassett al-Megrahi, whose conviction in the case of the Pan Am 103/Lockerbie bombing and recent release from prison had both been controversial.

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The US ambassador notes the general concerns that Libya's successive threats to Petro-Can had raised in the international community:

Rached Ghannouchi, head of the Islamist party Ennahda, returned to Tunisia after 22 years in exile. In a celebration of their newly won freedom, thousands of supporters welcomed him at Tunis Airport on Sunday. Ennahnda has said it intends to take part in Tunisia's post-revolution elections but Ghannouchi told reporters that fears that compare him to the father of Iran's Islamic Revolution were wrong. He said he is much more moderate in his views “Some Western media portray me like (Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini, but that’s not me.”

UPDATE:
9:30pm Cairo - Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has just given a speech in which he vowed not to run for president in the fall but would not step down until them. He said protests are "manipulated by political forces" in his TV address. Initial reaction from the estimated two million people still protesting in central Cairo is that he has to go now.

6:00pm Cairo - Tweets and news reports we are seeing as the Sun sets in Cairo indicated that the Million Man March has been an overwhelming success. Araby tweets "2 Million in Alexandria. Almost 3 Million in Cairo. Around half a Million Suez. It's happening."

People on Tahrir Square in Cairo where Al Jazeera is reporting 2 million people have gathered are saying that they aren't leaving until Hosni Mubarak does. People are standing shoulder to shoulder in the famed Tahrir Square, the atmosphere is lively but peaceful as protesters wave signs a loft and chant slogans demanding that Mubarak go. Someone even hung an effigy of Mubarak from a street sign. The army has placed barbed wire around Mubarak's residence and they have been checking protesters for weapons as they entered the square but they have done nothing to stop the march.

Since 1981, President Hosni Mubarak had legally affected a 30 year-old state of emergency to avoid appointing a vice president. His unwillingness and distrust of sharing power, may be due in part to his experience as vice president during Sadat’s assassination.

Egyptian Succession Rumors

Like an Egyptian version of an Elizabethan engagement, rumors of vice presidential appointments, were evident as far back as 2005. U.S. State Department Cable 05CAIRO04534 cites Omar Suleiman, the former intelligence chief and recently appointed vice president, as the most likely heir apparent. (See WL Central's coverage of Oman Suleiman.)

As WL Central reported yesterday, protesters in Sudan were beaten by riot police as they tried to leave their universities to demonstrate. Today the facebook page for the January 30 demonstration contains a red script proclaiming a martyr. "Al-Gorashy was a martyr for us. And you are our martyr now, Mohammed Abdulrahman", it says, in reference to a student who died this morning in Omdurman hospital after being beaten by the police yesterday.

Al Jazeera reports"Medical sources confirmed to us that the student died yesterday from his injuries inflicted by security forces," said Yasir Arman, the top official in the north of south Sudan's main party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). Arman condemned the use of force and said the students were trying to hold peaceful demonstrations.

US state cable 08CAIRO2572 from December, 2008 details the experiences of an April 6 activist who attended the December 3-5 "Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, and met with US government officials, on Capitol Hill, and with think tanks. "He alleged that several opposition parties and movements have accepted an unwritten plan for democratic transition by 2011; we are doubtful of this claim. ... April 6's stated goal of replacing the current regime with a parliamentary democracy prior to the 2011 presidential elections is highly unrealistic, and is not supported by the mainstream opposition."

In February, 2010, the Amir of Qatar discussed Syrian relationships with Senator John Kerry. Syrian President Bashar al-Asad, who is currently facing a potential revolution in his country, discusses U.S.-Syrian relations with six US senators in US state cable 10DAMASCUS8 from January, 2010. In the cable he stresses the absence of trust Syria has for the US and the need for the US to take steps to establish trust. The US senators request that Syria "demonstrate goodwill" by gestures such as interceding for them with Iran and reopening an international school which had been shut in 2008 in response to a U.S. military attack on Syrian soil which had killed seven innocent civilians.

The Guardian: UK firm's partner 'wanted Peru to curb priests in mine conflict areas'

"BHP Billiton associate urged removal of teachers and clergy, according to leaked US embassy cables.

A mining company in Peru part-owned by a British FTSE 100 company agitated for the removal of teachers and Catholic bishops to new posts away from "conflictive mining communities", according to a leaked US cable obtained via WikiLeaks."

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El País: Estados Unidos dibuja un panorama desolador de la sanidad en Cuba (The United States presents a devastating landscape of the Cuban public health system)

"Los mejores hospitales solo están al alcance de los extranjeros y de la élite política, según los despachos desde La Habana. (The best hospitals can only be reached by foreigners and the political elite, according with the [American] offices in Havana.)"

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El País: Mubarak agitaba ante EE UU el miedo al caos y al islamismo para negarse al cambio (Mubarak talked in front of the United States his fear to chaos and islamism as an excuse to refuse change)

"'Presión no, pero estamos dispuestos a ser persuadidos', le dijo a un senador. ('There's no presure, but we could be persuaded', he said to an [American] senator.)"

Read more (Spanish)

Reuters reports that the defense for former Liberian President Charles Taylor, on trial for war crimes, have won the right to use U.S. state cables leaked by Wikileaks in his defense. Taylor is facing charges of instigating murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers during wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone which killed a quarter of a million people. He has denied all charges. The court ruled in favor of a defense motion seeking to re-open its case for the "limited purpose" of admitting into evidence two U.S. cables.

Cable 09MONROVIA188 from 2009-03-10 warns "Should Taylor be acquitted in The Hague or given a light sentence, his return to Liberia could tip the balance in a fragile peace. The international community must consider steps should Taylor not be sent to prison for a long time. We should look at the possibility of trying Taylor in the United States. ... All legal options should be studied to ensure that Taylor cannot return to destabilize Liberia. Building a case in the United States against Taylor for financial crimes such as wire fraud would probably be the best route. There may be other options, such as applying the new law criminalizing the use of child soldiers or terrorism statutes.

Cable 09THEHAGUE247 from 2009-04-15 indicates "Court employees have intimated that the Trial Chamber could work more expeditiously. ... Moreover, contacts in Prosecution and Registry speculate that Justice Sebutinde may have a timing agenda. They think she, as the only African judge, wants to hold the gavel as presiding judge when the Trial Chamber announces the Taylor judgment. Reportedly, her next stint as presiding judge begins in January."

It is morning again in Cairo as I post this. The curfew ended at 8:00am and the people of Egypt enter the seventh day of their history making struggle. A famous poem by the early 20th century Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi, "To the Tyrants of the World" [hear it on NPR] has become a rallying cry in both Tunisia and Egypt.

Millions of Egyptians were in violation of the government curfew again last night after a sixth day in which people have taken to the the streets to demand regime change. What started with tens of thousand of demonstrators only a few days ago in three major cities has now developed to the point where the majority of the people of Egypt from virtually all walks of life are demanding the removal of Hosni Mubarak and all his cronies from power.

This morning the Egyptian army is erecting barricades in central Cairo as the government vows to enforce the curfew which it has moved forward three hours to 3:00pm today. Today also the unions are calling for a general strike throughout Egypt and on Tuesday the April 6 Youth Movement has called for a demonstration of a million Egyptians in Cairo.

El País: Zelaya logró que Chávez y Castro firmaran una propuesta sin saber que era de EE UU (Zelaya influenced Chávez and Castro into signing a proposal without letting them know it was an American one)

"Según los cables del Departamento de Estado, Chávez reclamó a Honduras que dejara de considerar a las FARC como un grupo terrorista. (According with the cables of the American State Department, Chávez demanded to Honduras to stop calling FARC a terrorist group.)"

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El País: EE UU retrata al presidente yemení totalmente alejado de la realidad (The United States says the Yemeni president is completely out of reality)

""Si le digo que el país tiene problemas, se enfada", confesó un parlamentario. ("If I tell him the country has problems, he gets upset", confessed a diplomat.)"

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Facebook pages are calling for a Syrian Day of Rage on February 5, demanding an improvement in living standards, respect for human rights, freedom of speech for all Syrian citizens, and greater influence for Syrian youth.

Bashar Assad has been the President of Syria since 2000, and before that his father held the post for three decades. Al Jazeera pointed out, Syria, as one of the primary thorns in the side of US influence in the region, is not Egypt or Tunisia. This president has his own facebook page, and his country has not been accused of being a puppet of the US.

"What happened in Tunisia and Egypt was not just about hunger, it was about national pride," said Mazen Bilal, the editor of Suria al-Ghad, a political news website familiar with government thinking.

"Syria is another story. Through all the problems it maintained its national stances and its sovereignty and so people are proud of their nation."

Crucially, as well, the government's reform of the economy is maintaining a system of support to alleviate the worst effects of poverty.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Wikileaks, not only for the exposure of the lies and deceptions of various world powers, not just for exposure of the inner workings and chicanery of state institutions and corporations, their hypocrisy and double dealings, but also for what follows in future: the advancement of human rights for all, and a major corollary of that, the increased potential for prosecution of those who have prima facie cases to answer for breaches of human rights.

Firstly some analogies with theoretical physics.

For theoretical physicists like Lawrence Krauss, (whose understandable scientific explanations of the universe leave this writer in awe), supernova are useful as standard candles …for which the intrinsic brightness, the absolute magnitude, is known. This allows the object's distance to be measured from its actual observed brightness, or apparent magnitude. With distance and the amount of spectrum “redshift” the expansion of the universe can be measured, and its present acceleration.

If I may draw an analogy, for those concerned about human rights, Wikileaks is akin to a supernova, it is our “standard candle,” so to speak. Not only is it an additional and great illumination for breaches of our measurable “universal” human rights but it has created a new standard for real journalism and in so doing has motivated the world in moral and legal outrage to a significantly higher plane. It has struck a chord with so many, in so many dimensions all over the world. It is difficult to quantify those dimensions, but the human rights aspect of it is not only real but palpable.

Sudanese protesting in Khartoum yesterday were attacked and arrested by hundreds of riot police as they chanted "We are ready to die for Sudan," and "Revolution, revolution until victory". The police surrounded the entrances of four universities in the capital, firing teargas and beating students at three of them.

Youth For Change had called for a demonstration on Sunday, January 30 from 11:00am - 2:00pm. Their facebook page attracted 16,864 followers to "Attending the Peace Process in Khartoum, Sudan" and said, "The people of Sudan will not remain silent any more. It is about time we demand our rights and take what's ours in a peaceful demonstration that will not involve any acts of sabotage. We will come out to protest the high cost of living, corruption, nepotism, unemployment and all the practices of the regime, including striking women... that are contrary to the most basic laws of Islam and humanity, and violate the rights of minorities. We will go out to prove to the whole world that the people... will not remain silent in the face of persistent injustice and humiliation.

But Al Jazeera reports

Pro-government newspapers carried front page warnings against protests which they said would cause chaos and turmoil.

The Sudan Vision daily's editorial blamed the opposition.

"Our message to those opposition dinosaurs is to unite their ideas and objectives for the benefit of the citizens if they are really looking for the welfare of the Sudanese people," it read.

The pro-democracy group Girifna ("We're fed up") said nine members were detained the night before the protest and opposition party officials listed almost 40 names of protesters arrested on Sunday. Five were injured, they added.

The Telegraph this evening ran a story on tomorrow's Wikileaks book by the Guardian editors David Leigh and Luke Harding - just one of several books in a publishing run by Wikileaks' media partners. Among the revelations forthcoming in that volume, we are told, is the rather stale information that Bradley Manning is alleged to be Wikileaks' anonymous source for Cablegate and the War Log releases.

The authors, David Leigh and Luke Harding, of The Guardian, name Specialist Bradley Manning, the soldier being held in a US military jail, as the alleged source of the information which was passed on to The Guardian by WikiLeaks.

While Rayner attempts to present this information as if some new information was being disclosed in the book, it appears, in fact, that we will learn nothing new from it. As the facts stand, Bradley Manning is still the "alleged" source of the information. He has not been convicted of the acts with which he is charged, and all of the evidence in favour of those charges yet available to the public is highly speculative.

The distinction between reportage which mentions Manning as "Wikileaks' source" and that which mentions him as "Wikileaks' alleged source" is of some importance, since to the extent that newspapers - for whatever reason - elide this difference, public opinion might be swayed in such a way as to incriminate Manning, and to prejudice his trial. It is therefore important that media organizations treat the distinction with care.

Egyptian authorities have revoked Al Jazeera Network's licence to broadcast from Egypt.

The information minister [Anas al-Fikki] ordered ... suspension of operations of Al Jazeera, canceling of its licences and withdrawing accreditation to all its staff as of today," a statement on the official Mena news agency said on Sunday.

An Al Jazeera spokesman said that the company would continue its strong coverage regardless.

Prior to learning of the license revocation, Al Jazeera English correspondent Dan Nolan announced that there had been a series of threats from an unspecified source; eventually, the office received a visit from "plain clothes government security" officials ordering Al Jazeera out.

Gov’t agents say they’ve been watching our coverage but also listening to our phone calls.

Al Jazeera regards this latest act of censorship

Information technology as development has been central to Egyptian economic policy since 1999, when Mubarak appointed Ahmed Nazif, the recently resigned Prime Minister, to a newly created post, Minister for Communications and Information Technology.

As the former Minister of CIT, Nazif established Egypt's free internet connectivity plan and improved public access to computers (Source: Wikipedia). But, as Prime Minister, Nazif extended the application of Egypt's thirty-year old state of emergency law. The Overseas Press Club of America observes that notwithstanding remarks made by the regime that the law is "only to be invoked during proclamations of emergency," the fact is "authorities continue to use the emergency law to detain dissidents, including journalists and respected bloggers.”

Dr. Tarek Kamel was elevated to his current post as Egypt's Minister of CIT when Nazif, his former boss was appointed PM. Nazif in turn picked Kamel to replace him. (Source:Khaled Fatta)

Kamel, like Nazif believes that social and economic channels exists primarily to reinforce regime power. As a techno-bureaucrat, Kamel lobbies the Internet as the "backbone of social-economic development," but only when it pacifies public dissent and 'backbones' the regime. When public dissent threatens the status quo, the Internet gets turned off.

On January 27 tens of thousands of people in Yemen took to the streets calling for an end to the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president. Today, Al Jazeera reports dozens of activists clashing with government supporters in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. They chanted "Ali, leave leave" and "Tunisia left, Egypt after it and Yemen in the coming future" outside the Egyptian embassy.

Tawakel Karman, who heads the Yemeni activist group Women Journalists Without Chains, and is also a member of the opposition Islamist party al-Islah, was arrested last week and charged with organizing unlicensed demonstrations without permission. She had been involved in organizing a protest last week of around 2,500 demonstrators who chanted "Oh, Ali, join your friend Ben Ali", a message to the president of Yemen and in support of the departure of the president of Tunisia. Nearly half of Yemen's population lives on less than $2 a day. There is poor access to proper sanitation, less than a tenth of the roads are paved, and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes by conflict. The government is reported to be very corrupt.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced on Egyptian state television today that he has sworn in a new vice president, former Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman. US state cable 07CAIRO1417 states that according to Article 82 of Egypt's constitution, the vice president should assume presidential powers "if on account of any temporary obstacle the president is unable to carry out his duties."

So who is the new vice president who, in the seemingly imminent departure of President Mubarak may begin ruling Egypt? Jane Mayer asks the question in her article today in the New Yorker, and answers it with information from her book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. "Since 1993 Suleiman has headed the feared Egyptian general intelligence service. In that capacity, he was the C.I.A.’s point man in Egypt for renditions—the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances."

As anti-government protests persist and curfews continue to be violated by protesters, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced on Egyptian state television Saturday that he has sworn in a new vice president, former Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman; former Civil Aviation Minister Ahmed Shafik was sworn in as the new prime minister. Suleiman is the first vice president to be appointed since Mubarak assumed office. Shafik is a well-respected former Air Force officer.

Al Jazeera English Live reports that military commanders have been circulating Cairo today announcing over loudspeakers that Egyptian residents must take precautions to preserve their dignity and discourage violence and looting. Egyptian residents on the scene in Cairo report that they are feeling "unprotected" by the police, which appears to be a either too busy or unwilling to answer phone calls or make itself visible in various areas were looting and theft are taking place. A rumor is being widely circulated that the "police minister has left the country".