This is not right. You are not alone. This must change. With these three phrases, the mighty are brought down and the lowly lifted up.

On this Thanksgiving Weekend, I am thankful for all who stand up to bullies.

Why did the Prime Mister forget about Egypt and the things he said to Hoser Mubarak? It sounds like someone needs to tell him the same things he told Hoser. Instead of fighting and stopping Twitter and instant messages, maybe he needs to do something to make a “future with greater rights”, because right now he only seems to be protecting the rights of the rich, not the rights of everyone.

It’s a big moment, not only because it ends the blockade on the Palestinian people. It’s a big moment for Egypt as well. This is a country just 3-4 months from revolution, and it’s their second major foreign policy decision. They brokered the deal between Fatah and Hamas, and now they’ve opened the border crossing.

The AP has a interesting–and interestingly timed–story on the help we’re giving Saudi Arabia to build a “facilities security force” to protect, among other things, its oil fields and planned civilian nuclear sites.

The report described the opening of prisons, clearly a high-level decision, as intentional, providing evidence in the form of video surveillance cameras showing security forces allowing prisoners to flee. It also documented security forces firing at protesters and running them over with vehicles.

All this talk about Hosni Mubarak’s looted billions must really piss off our other client rulers, the ones who have not yet set aside such rich stashes for their retirement.

But someone in Iraq has already made the move, disappearing $40 billion from Iraq’s development fund.

I don’t know exactly what tomorrow’s meet-and-greet format will be, so I’m not sure how many chances I’ll get to ask questions of the Senator. But if you had a chance to ask a question tomorrow, what would you ask? I’ll try to get the answers and bring them back in a MyFDL post later this week.

Thanks, the floor is yours.

Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak’s looted billions — indeed, his ability to loot billions as representatives of our government scoff at activists who call such looting illegal — plays a fundamental role in our house of cards economy. And, given that we reward obedient client dictators with permission to loot their country, it plays a fundamental role in American hegemony in this world.

Obviously the shutdown of the Internet or the threat to have the military fire on its own people didn’t save Egypt’s now-former president Hosni Mubarak. But they provide the building blocks for how other nations might handle this crisis, out of the watchful eye of the world. This could already be happening in Iran, or Libya, or Bahrain. Mubarak may not have saved his own autocracy, but he may end up saving others.

It seems to be a key intent of public admissions of our spying is to disclose to whom we were listening — Mubarak’s family (and presumably other top officials) — and why we shifted our normal focus away from counterterrorism targets — because of Egyptian security forces had used violence against protesters.