Here’s the extended Cenk interview… Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Chemical weapon use in Syria ‘could have been an Israeli false flag operation’

As Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah clearly points out in that Al Jazeera interview, it was truly a hollow victory for the Palestinians.

Here’s the list or the latest civil liberties stories. Protests and civil disobedience against the Obama administration’s “Secure Communities” program have taken place all over the country, while protests and violence continue in the UK. Plus updates in wikileaks and much more.

Electronic Frontier Foundation has a report on the terms of service Wall Street Journal and al Jazeera offer leakers using their WikiLeaks competitor sites. I had already heard that WSJ offered almost no technical security (which EFF describes), but it turns out neither offer much in the way of confidentiality guarantees.

According to information at the Reprieve web site, “Chadian citizen, Mohammed el Gharani was the youngest prisoner in Guantánamo Bay, arrested when he was just 14. In January 2009, a federal judge ordered his release and he was returned to Chad in June 2009.”

After his release, Gharani told the Miami Herald that after Barack Obama became president, his treatment did not get any better, including being beaten by a rubber baton and tear-gassed. During the years of his detention, he was subjected to solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, stress positions, and suspension from his wrists at least 30 times.

I’ve heard the American media described accurately at a bunch of 7 year-olds at a youth soccer game. There’s nothing strategic about the game; all the kids chase the soccer ball in a pack. I thought of that when I read a story about enduring sickness in the Gulf of Mexico. It didn’t come from ABC, or NBC, or CBS, or Fox News, or CNN, or any local outlet. It came from Al Jazeera.

This is what we do, human beings, we look around our own lives and we talk about what’s going on. It’s the only way we do this, the only way we really connect. And as a reporter sometimes your job is to point the camera at something somebody else doesn’t want it pointed at, and tell everyone you can as much as you can about what’s going on. And that job is dangerous, and it’s scary, and it’s necessary as blood.

The world that anti-journalism conservatives, the ones who rant about the “lamestream media” and chat and wave their fists at reporters, envision? That world, in which “enemy journalists” publishing stuff they don’t like and stuff that contradicts their worldview are harassed out of business, beaten, even killed? It’s happening now in Egypt. I hope they’re watching. I hope they’re paying attention.

And I hope, though I have no reason on earth to believe they’ll ever think this hard, that they’re wondering if this is really so very funny after all.

Tensions are mounting in Egypt:

About two hours before this post’s publication, six of Al Jazeera’s journalists in Egypt were apparently taken into custody by the Egyptian military, their equipment confiscated. Al Jazeera’s broadcast programming are still connected to several members of their team in Cairo, but they are not giving their names for security reasons. Al Jazeera now reports that their team members have been released but that their ability to report has been hampered by the loss of their equipment.

“Tyrant-for-Life” Mubarak is hard on the press…but not as hard as the Bush Administration who went out for blood.

This won’t be a big sweeping post about events unfolding in Egypt; it’ll be just enough to help you catch up this morning.

Rumors began after 1:00 a.m. EST that Hosni Mubarak had already fled to Sharm el-Sheikh in the Sinai Peninsula; rumors followed shortly thereafter that the Egyptian Army had moved into Sharm el-Sheikh as well. Such a move without the express consent of Israel would be a breach of the Camp David accords.