...mean­while in Libya, rumors of Marines on Malta ready to re-invade to estab­lish some min­i­mum order are being hotly denied.

And a report is out about the epic bat­tle between British spe­cial forces and Libyan farm­ers last year:

In a report broad­cast last night, Mark Urban, Newsnight’s Diplo­matic Edi­tor, revealed that British spe­cial forces inter­ven­tion began as early as Feb­ru­ary 2011. Libyan rebels had set up in Beng­hazi, and as the con­flict became more heated, the British Gov­ern­ment decided to send a res­cue mis­sion to South­ern Libya.

On Feb­ru­ary 27, a ‘cou­ple of dozen’ SBS marines car­ried out three flights to res­cue one hun­dred and fifty for­eign oil work­ers (twenty British) from Zil­lah, Libya. The spe­cial forces team then flew the for­eign oil work­ers to Val­letta, Malta.

By late Feb­ru­ary the British Gov­ern­ment had decided to back the National Tran­si­tion Coun­cil (NTC) and over­throw Muam­mar Gaddafi.

The next stage of British spe­cial forces involve­ment in Libya would involve the highly secre­tive ‘E-Squadron’. A unit jointly made up of the SAS, SBS with close links with Mi6. By early march six spe­cial forces oper­a­tives and two Mi6 agents trav­elled to Beng­hazi to meet rebel leaders.

The mis­sion failed. The so-called ‘Diplo­matic team’ was con­tained by Libyan farm­ers. After this pub­lic embar­rass­ment, spe­cial forces were not involved in Libya for months.

Inter­est­ing arti­cle, but I have to say that a more accu­rate view of why things went ter­ri­bly wrong, is not that the Repub­li­can fac­tion of the CIA sup­pos­edly ‘started’ it; the fact is, Dave, I was watch­ing this event from the very moment it began to develop and the GOP was very, very, opposed to our involve­ment in Libya and the Arab Spring. It’s quite obvi­ous that they wouldn’t have started a movement(they may be evil, but they’re smart) which very well could have threat­ened their allies in the Mideast, includ­ing the MB(and given that one of these sources came from Wik­ileaks, I have even more doubts. I strongly sus­pect this came from the Assange/Jermas fac­tion, prob­a­bly to try to throw peo­ple off from the real story. They have def­i­nitely pulled shenani­gans like this before)

That said, how­ever, there are some pretty strong indi­ca­tions that I’ve seen that the move­ment was instead manip­u­lated and hijacked by these same forces, espe­cially the Mus­lim Brotherhood(this makes a lot more sense when you really think about it. Mubarak was pretty close to the U.S. right-wing as well as that of the Israelis.)

The good news, how­ever, is that a few of the pro­test­ers have woken up and real­ized that they’ve been played for fools and are start­ing to rise up against the crim­i­nal M.B. as well. Let’s hope that con­tin­ues to grow.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/19/us-egypt-radioactive-idUSTRE80I1SW20120119

Radioac­tive mate­r­ial said stolen from Egypt­ian plant
CAIRO | Thu Jan 19, 2012 1:10pm EST

(Reuters) — Radioac­tive mate­r­ial has been stolen from a nuclear power sta­tion on Egypt’s Mediter­ranean coast that was the scene of vio­lent protests last week, the state-run al-Ahram news­pa­per reported on Thursday.

A safe con­tain­ing radioac­tive mate­r­ial at the Dabaa nuclear power plant, which is still under con­struc­tion, was seized while another also con­tain­ing radioac­tive mate­r­ial was bro­ken open and part of its con­tents taken, the news­pa­per said.

In Vienna, an offi­cial of the U.N. nuclear agency described the items miss­ing as “low-level radioac­tive sources” which had been taken from a lab­o­ra­tory at the con­struc­tion site. He could not give any details on the nature of the stolen items.

“We are in touch with the Egypt­ian author­i­ties,” the offi­cial from the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency said.

Al-Ahram said the gov­ern­ment has alerted secu­rity author­i­ties and asked that spe­cial­ized teams help in the search for the stolen material.

More than a dozen peo­ple were wounded last week when mil­i­tary police tried to dis­perse hun­dreds of Egypt­ian pro­test­ers demand­ing the relo­ca­tion of the Dabaa plant.

Plant staff have refused to go to the site because of the dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the secu­rity sit­u­a­tion there, al-Ahram said.

With the MB about to take con­trol after the his­toric protest started by an alliance of lib­eral youth groups, it’s worth look­ing back at the Egypt­ian MB’s state of affairs one year before the Jan­u­ary 25th protests that sparked the whole thing. Thing’s weren’t exactly look­ing up for the MB:

Is the Broth­er­hood Push­ing the Self-Destruct But­ton?
Amr Hamzawy The National, Jan­u­ary 18, 2010

...

Elec­tions for the movement’s lead­er­ship – the 16-member Guid­ance Office and the posi­tion of Gen­eral Guide – have demon­strated the extent of the Brotherhood’s trou­bles. The results illus­trate the pro­found impact of Egypt’s closed polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment, deep­en­ing inter­nal divi­sion and fur­ther entrench­ing the movement’s con­ser­v­a­tive leadership.

Since its strong show­ing in the 2005 par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, in which it won 20 per cent rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the People’s Assem­bly – the lower cham­ber of par­lia­ment – the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has been sub­jected to sus­tained repres­sion by the Mubarak regime. In an attempt to limit the Brotherhood’s polit­i­cal influ­ence, the gov­ern­ment has sys­tem­at­i­cally detained its mem­bers, con­demned the movement’s lead­ers and those who fund it to long peri­ods of impris­on­ment imposed by mil­i­tary tri­bunals, and manip­u­lated elec­toral pro­ce­dures and elec­tion results.

The gov­ern­ment has also intro­duced sev­eral con­sti­tu­tional and legal changes, which it admits are aimed at shrink­ing the space avail­able for the Brotherhood’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in pol­i­tics. Most sig­nif­i­cantly, reli­gious par­ties and polit­i­cal activ­i­ties were banned by a 2007 con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment, and con­sti­tu­tional arti­cles were changed to pave the way for a party-based elec­toral sys­tem. The con­se­quences of these changes have been severe for the Broth­er­hood; as a move­ment banned by law, it must either field elec­tion can­di­dates as indi­vid­u­als, or join forces with an exist­ing legal party.

The first major out­come of all this has been a grad­ual clos­ing off of the for­mal polit­i­cal sphere for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In spite of its sig­nif­i­cant rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the People’s Assem­bly and the solid appear­ance of its par­lia­men­tary bloc, the Broth­er­hood has become an iso­lated move­ment with lit­tle influ­ence on Egypt­ian pol­i­tics. In fact, almost no one in the Brotherhood’s lead­er­ship expects it to secure more than five per cent rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the new People’s Assem­bly that will be elected in the autumn.

The sec­ond major out­come has been a grow­ing recog­ni­tion by many in the Brotherhood’s lead­er­ship that the move­ment is under siege and will remain so indef­i­nitely. The dom­i­nant view has come to be that the Brotherhood’s pri­or­ity should there­fore be to sus­tain the movement’s organ­i­sa­tional sol­i­dar­ity in the face of regime repres­sion, rather than invest effort in futile polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion. In other words, the closed envi­ron­ment in which the Broth­er­hood has been oper­at­ing since 2005 offers no incen­tive for polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion, prompt­ing the move­ment to turn inward.

Under these con­di­tions, it comes as no sur­prise that the Brotherhood’s inter­nal dynam­ics have been shaped by diverg­ing posi­tions on the strate­gic value of polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion. The inclu­sion­ist wing of the Brotherhood’s lead­er­ship, which advo­cates par­tic­i­pa­tion, has inevitably lost sup­port and organ­i­sa­tional power over the past few years, while the iso­la­tion­ists have grown more influ­en­tial and now rep­re­sent a secure majority.

The results of the inter­nal elec­tions last month reflected this chang­ing bal­ance of power. An influ­en­tial mod­er­ate, and arguably the Brotherhood’s most out­spo­ken defender of polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion, Abdul Munim Abul Fut­tuh, lost his posi­tion in the Guid­ance Office to oppo­nents whose pri­or­ity is the movement’s social and pros­e­lytis­ing efforts.

In addi­tion, Muham­mad Habib, the for­mer Vice Gen­eral Guide with a rep­u­ta­tion for build­ing con­sen­sus between inclu­sion­ists and iso­la­tion­ists, failed to keep his seat in the Guid­ance Office. Among the four newly elected mem­bers to the Office, only Issam al Iryan can be iden­ti­fied as an advo­cate for par­tic­i­pa­tion. And very few of the Office’s re-elected mem­bers, includ­ing the head of the Brotherhood’s par­lia­men­tary bloc, Muham­mad Saad al Katani, can be con­sid­ered pro-participation.

...

The Egypt­ian peo­ple have been stunned by the Brotherhood’s pub­lic dis­play of inter­nal rifts, a divi­sion played out mostly in the media. The Broth­er­hood is no longer the secre­tive move­ment it once was, reveal­ing lit­tle of its inter­nal affairs to out­siders. Recently, fig­ures such as Muham­mad Habib have accused other lead­ers of manip­u­lat­ing the elec­toral process for the Guid­ance Office. Indeed, sev­eral voices in the inclu­sion­ist group have openly dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­ity of the Brotherhood’s break-up.

...

Here’s another inter­est­ing MB fun-fact related to that the MB’s top leader, Mohammed Madhi Akef, who was step­ping down at that time. It turns out that he also played an impor­tant role in cre­at­ing the “Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety” (MAS) in 1993, an MB-umbrella group for the US. It sounds like the MAS was started in response to inter­nal group divi­sions over how much the group should oper­ate openly or in secret in the US. There are a num­ber of par­al­lels between the inter­nal debate back in the early 90’s then and the debate in the years lead­ing up to the Arab Spring:

A rare look at secre­tive Broth­er­hood in Amer­ica
Mus­lims divided on Broth­er­hood
A group aim­ing to cre­ate Islamic states world­wide has estab­lished roots here, in large part under the guid­ance of Egypt-born Ahmed Elkadi

By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Sam Roe and Lau­rie Cohen Tri­bune staff reporters

Sep­tem­ber 19, 2004

Over the last 40 years, small groups of devout Mus­lim men have gath­ered in homes in U.S. cities to pray, mem­o­rize the Koran and dis­cuss events of the day.

But they also addressed their ulti­mate goal, one so con­tro­ver­sial that it is a key rea­son they have oper­ated in secrecy: to cre­ate Mus­lim states over­seas and, they hope, some­day in Amer­ica as well.

These men are part of an under­ground U.S. chap­ter of the inter­na­tional Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the world’s most influ­en­tial Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ist group and an orga­ni­za­tion with a vio­lent past in the Mid­dle East. But fear­ing per­se­cu­tion, they rarely iden­tify them­selves as Broth­er­hood mem­bers and have oper­ated largely behind the scenes, unbe­known even to many Muslims.

Still, the U.S. Broth­er­hood has had a sig­nif­i­cant and ongo­ing impact on Islam in Amer­ica, help­ing estab­lish mosques, Islamic schools, sum­mer youth camps and promi­nent Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions. It is a major fac­tor, Islamic schol­ars say, in why many Mus­lim insti­tu­tions in the nation have become more con­ser­v­a­tive in recent decades.

Lead­ing the U.S. Broth­er­hood dur­ing much of this period was Ahmed Elkadi, an Egyptian-born sur­geon and a for­mer per­sonal physi­cian to Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal. He headed the group from 1984 to 1994 but abruptly lost his lead­er­ship posi­tion. Now he is dis­cussing his life and the U.S. Broth­er­hood for the first time.

His story, com­bined with details from doc­u­ments and inter­views, offers an unprece­dented look at the Broth­er­hood in Amer­ica: how the group recruited mem­bers, how it cloaked itself in secrecy and how it alien­ated many mod­er­ate Muslims.

Indeed, because of its hard-line beliefs, the U.S. Broth­er­hood has been an increas­ingly divi­sive force within Islam in Amer­ica, fuel­ing the often bit­ter strug­gle between mod­er­ate and con­ser­v­a­tive Muslims.

Many Mus­lims believe that the Broth­er­hood is a noble inter­na­tional move­ment that sup­ports the true teach­ings of Islam and unwa­ver­ingly defends Mus­lims who have come under attack around the world, from Chechens to Pales­tini­ans to Iraqis. But oth­ers view it as an extreme orga­ni­za­tion that breeds intol­er­ance and militancy.

...

When Egypt impris­oned and exe­cuted some Mus­lim Broth­ers in the 1950s, many mem­bers fled the coun­try and helped spread the phi­los­o­phy through­out the Arab world. The group’s ide­o­log­i­cal voice became philoso­pher Sayyid Qutb, who abhorred West­ern val­ues and believed the Koran jus­ti­fied vio­lence to over­throw un-Islamic governments.

...

And while Broth­er­hood activ­i­ties vary from coun­try to coun­try, and chap­ters are offi­cially inde­pen­dent, inter­na­tional lead­ers in Egypt say that all chap­ters are united in their beliefs and that the Egypt­ian office gives them advice.

In recent months Akef, the inter­na­tional Broth­er­hood leader, repeat­edly has praised Pales­tin­ian and Iraqi sui­cide bombers, called for the destruc­tion of Israel and asserted that the United States has no proof that Al Qaeda was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Iman Elkadi’s father, Mah­moud Abu Saud, was par­tic­u­larly involved in the Brotherhood’s begin­nings in Egypt and remains well-known in the Arab world. An accom­plished econ­o­mist, he is widely regarded as a pio­neer in Islamic bank­ing, which requires that inter­est not be charged for loans.

He also was jailed repeat­edly for his Broth­er­hood activities.

...

A change of face

In recent years, the U.S. Broth­er­hood oper­ated under the name Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety, accord­ing to doc­u­ments and inter­views. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incor­po­rated in Illi­nois in 1993 after a con­tentious debate among Broth­er­hood mem­bers.

Some wanted the Broth­er­hood to remain under­ground, while oth­ers thought a more pub­lic face would make the group more influ­en­tial. Mem­bers from across the coun­try drove to regional meet­ing sites to dis­cuss the issue.

For­mer mem­ber Mustafa Saied recalls how he gath­ered with 40 oth­ers at a Days Inn on the Alabama-Tennessee bor­der. Many mem­bers, he says, pre­ferred secrecy, par­tic­u­larly in case U.S. author­i­ties cracked down on Hamas sup­port­ers, includ­ing many Broth­er­hood members.

“They were look­ing at dooms­day sce­nar­ios,” he says.

When the lead­ers voted, it was decided that Broth­er­hood mem­bers would call them­selves the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety, or MAS, accord­ing to doc­u­ments and interviews.

They agreed not to refer to them­selves as the Broth­er­hood but to be more pub­licly active. They even­tu­ally cre­ated a Web site and for the first time invited the pub­lic to some con­fer­ences, which also were used to raise money. The incor­po­ra­tion papers would list Elkadi–just months away from his ouster–as a director.

Elkadi and Mohammed Mahdi Akef, a Broth­er­hood leader in Egypt and now the inter­na­tional head, had pushed for more open­ness. In fact, Akef says he helped found MAS by lob­by­ing for the change dur­ing trips to the U.S.

“We have a reli­gion, mes­sage, morals and prin­ci­pals that we want to carry to the peo­ple as God ordered us,” he says. “So why should we work in secrecy?”

But U.S. mem­bers would remain guarded about their iden­tity and beliefs.

An undated inter­nal memo instructed MAS lead­ers on how to deal with inquiries about the new orga­ni­za­tion. If asked, “Are you the Mus­lim Broth­ers?” lead­ers should respond that they are an inde­pen­dent group called the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety. “It is a self-explanatory name that does not need fur­ther explanation.”

...

“Atlanta Jew­ish Times Edi­tor Apol­o­gizes For Obama Assassination-By-Mossad” by JTA 1/20/12

‘The owner of the Atlanta Jew­ish Times apol­o­gized for an opin­ion col­umn in which he counted Pres­i­dent Obama’s assas­si­na­tion as among Israel’s options in head­ing off a nuclear Iran....
...reac­tion from read­ers had been over­whelm­ingly negative.’

Attor­ney Gen­eral Yehuda Wein­stein instructed Israel Police on Tues­day to open a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion against a top Mus­lim cleric for incite­ment to vio­lence and racism.

Weinstein’s request came a few weeks after Jerusalem’s Mufti Mohammed Hus­sein quoted a reli­gious text that includes pas­sages about killing Jews dur­ing a speech at the 47th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of the Fatah move­ment in East Jerusalem.

Wein­stein stated that the inves­ti­ga­tion will also look into other state­ments the mufti has made about Jews in the past.

Excerpts from the cleric’s speech were posted on YouTube last week by Pales­tine Media Watch, an Israeli watch­dog group that tracks incite­ment. The com­ments drew angry reac­tions from Israelis Sunday.

“The hour of res­ur­rec­tion will not come until you fight the Jews,” Hus­sein told the gath­er­ing, cit­ing a hadith, or say­ing attrib­uted to the Prophet Muham­mad. “The Jews will hide behind stones and trees. But the trees and the stones will call: Oh Mus­lim, oh ser­vant of God, there is a Jew hid­ing behind me, so come and kill him.”

Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu con­demned the Mufti’s speech, call­ing it a “heinous offense that all nations of the world must condemn.”

Hus­sein, who is based in Jerusalem, said his com­ments were taken out of con­text. “I was speak­ing about the final signs of the day of res­ur­rec­tion,” Hus­sein said. “I did not incite, and I did not call for killing. We are not, at present, at the end of days.”

This story is by:
Tomer Zarchin

Con­sid­er­ing that the US NGOs prob­a­bly helped pro­pel the MB into power by work­ing with the youth move­ments to help start the “Arab Spring”, there’s a bit a of irony in this turn of events:

Egypt’s Broth­er­hood backs mil­i­tary in US dis­pute
2:46 p.m. Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 15, 2012

The Asso­ci­ated Press

CAIRO — Egypt’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood on Wednes­day threw its weight behind the country’s military-backed gov­ern­ment in an esca­lat­ing dis­pute with the U.S. over the fund­ing of pro-democracy groups.

Cairo claims that the groups are foment­ing protests against the country’s mil­i­tary rulers, and has referred 16 Amer­i­cans and 27 oth­ers to crim­i­nal court. Six Amer­i­cans are barred from leav­ing the country.

The dis­pute has shaken rela­tions between the two coun­tries, with U.S. offi­cials and leg­is­la­tors threat­en­ing to cut aid to Egypt — $1.3 bil­lion in mil­i­tary aid and $250 mil­lion in eco­nomic assis­tance — if the issue is not resolved.

On Wednes­day, the Broth­er­hood — whose polit­i­cal arm con­trols the largest bloc of seats in Egypt’s par­lia­ment — praised offi­cials car­ry­ing out the crack­down and said it sup­ported their “nation­al­ist position.”

The Broth­er­hood said it “rejects all forms of pres­sure the U.S. is exert­ing,” the state­ment pub­lished on the group’s web­site said.

The state­ment said the group “declares that it, and the Egypt­ian peo­ple, will not tol­er­ate any offi­cials if they decide to suc­cumb to the pres­sure or cover up the accu­sa­tions or inter­fere in the busi­ness of the judiciary.”

Egypt’s rul­ing mil­i­tary coun­cil has repeat­edly alluded to plots by for­eign pow­ers through­out the last year. Crit­ics see the alle­ga­tions as an attempt by the army to deflect atten­tion from what they regard as a botched tran­si­tion to democ­racy. The strongly-worded state­ment by the Broth­ers appears to be an attempt to out­bid the mil­i­tary position.

The state­ment comes a day after the state media pub­lished the four-month old tes­ti­mony of the Cab­i­net min­is­ter in charge of inter­na­tional coop­er­a­tion in which she lashed out at the mainly U.S. groups.

Min­is­ter Faiza Aboul Naga, a left­over from deposed Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak’s regime, accused them of using the for­eign funds to foment pro-democracy protests against the country’s mil­i­tary rulers, who took over after Mubarak was ousted in a pop­u­lar upris­ing a year ago.

The for­eign fund­ing affair has also been inter­preted by many among Egypt’s pro-democracy groups as part of a larger plan to neu­tral­ize rights groups and other civil soci­ety orga­ni­za­tion, who have long chal­lenged Mubarak and con­tinue to chal­lenge what they say are grave rights vio­la­tions by the mil­i­tary rulers.

Inves­tiga­tive judges have said a sec­ond phase of the probe is look­ing into Egypt­ian groups receiv­ing for­eign funds.

The Broth­er­hood, itself an unreg­is­tered group, had pre­vi­ously backed the military’s inves­ti­ga­tion of pro-democracy and human rights groups.

“Civil groups are as much a thorn in the side of any reli­gious group,” as they are of an author­i­tar­ian regime, said Negad Borai, a human rights lawyer.

....

@Terrafractyl: Well, as I’ve said before, it looks like the Arab Spring was actu­ally ini­tially mid-wived, as it were, by the ENEMIES of the Under­ground Reich & their allies, and that arti­cle you posted is actu­ally one more piece of the puzzle.

How­ever, though, this does not, of course, dis­credit the research done by Dave, your­self, and oth­ers includ­ing myself, that does indi­cate that the Arab Spring move­ment was indeed co-opted and hijacked by some of the very same forces that the creators(and their allies) were fight­ing against.

Frankly, though, I think the elite, the Under­ground Reich included, are get­ting very des­per­ate and will soon run out of move­ments to cor­rupt and hijack, as indi­cated by their mis­er­able fail­ure at attempt­ing to hijack OWS not long ago.

We are still win­ning, guys. It may be an uphill bat­tle still but it’s thanks to Dave and oth­ers that we CAN win this fight. =)
@Mike: Sad stuff.....I won­der if Stan­ton may have pos­si­bly been involved with some right­ist occult groups.......thanks for the info.

I found a video of Nasser, with French sub­ti­tles. In this extract, he tells to the crowd the high­lights of a meet­ing with the leader of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood for that era. Basi­cally, he says, “why should I impose the islamic veil on every women if, your­self, can’t impose it on your own daugh­ter (who doesn’t wear it)? The crowd laughed and cheered.

But what I find really inter­est­ing with this extract is the non-verbal and psy­cho­log­i­cal aspects of it. Look at the man. He seems relaxed, happy, with a sense of humour, at ease, etc. It is in total con­tra­dic­tion with the lead­ers of Arab coun­tries of today. Look at the dif­fer­en­tial in behav­ior, atti­tude, etc. What we would give to have lead­ers like that in the Mid­dle East, today!

I am afraid that we won’t see lead­ers like that for a while in that part of the world. I wanted to share it with you to illus­trate the shift and trans­for­ma­tion that have occured since a cou­ple of decades, and that we could label as a descent into fas­cism or a return to bar­barism. It is another case of an image worth a thou­sand words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=W99M1Po_VlE