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So far, no condemnation or concern about international law has been heard from the White House.

As many of you will remember, I wrote a lot of posts here at FDL about the war in Iraq before I got ill and had to take a break. While writing less, I am still on the various “progressive” emails lists where “activists” talk about issues like the war and the traffic in recent days shook me up.

The first was an email inviting activists to join one group in an informal cocktail hour to “celebrate” the end of the war. I found myself sitting and shaking at the thought. What celebrate? How many years and we … celebrate?

Over the last few days protests have been growing in Egypt in response to the continuing control of the government by Mubarak era military forces.

Only eight days away from parliamentary elections which activists believe are being subverted by the military to protect their continued control, activists are back in Tahrir, Alexandria and Suez demanding democratic control of the Egyptian government.

This year’s event took place directly across the street from Occupy San Francisco – and from the welcome by BSR’s head, Aaron Cramer – through the passionate call to action of Al Gore and finally to the insights of Civicus’ Ingrid Srinath – the presence of Occupy was a constant message and the attendees were listening carefully.

Sign up to join Tar Sands Action – and Jane and Scarecrow – stand against the Keystone XL Pipeline and for the planet.

Updating news of the one boat of the Flotilla II that has managed to head for Gaza with expected arrival overnight. Reports of a French Navy vessel in the area raise question of whether France will protect its citizen’s ship or bow to Israeli blockade? Haaretz reporter Amira Hass amongst those on board along with an Al Jazeera crew. Share the news as it happens with us.

Eight ships have been gathered in Greek ports preparing to sail to Gaza carrying humanitarian supplies and, in the case of the American ship, letters. Two have been sabotaged – the Irish and Swedish ships – and two have now been seized by Greece upon making attempts to leave port.

Today Bahrain began a “trial” for 21 opposition leaders, seven of them to be tried in absentia. The trial was suddenly announced on Saturday following public attention on Friday – including an urgent appeal by Amnesty International – when word spread that human rights leader Abdulhadi Alkhawaja had been taken from jail to a hospital for surgery for injuries caused by torture. (Alkhawaja is known to many FDL readers as the father of @angryarabiya)

One of the tradeoffs made by the US administrations to gain support for entering into Free Trade Agreements is that these agreements impose certain standards on the parties – to protect the environment, human rights and union rights.

So what will the Obama administration do when the terms of one of those agreements are blatantly violated?

Nadia Idle and Alex Nunns’ new book, Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s Revolution As It Unfolded, provides us all with an important first hand view of this movement as it blossomed in Egypt from January 25th through February 12. Using – with permission –running accounts from twitter, the authors are able to trace the movement in the streets in the words of key activists who were there, organizing, strategizing, being surprised by successes and beaten by Mubarak’s thugs.