Syria 1st-Hand: Life with Assad's Alawites (Rosen)

A Pro-Assad Demonstration in AleppoI told the sheikh that the opposition said Alawites controlled the regime. "This is rejected," he said. "It's for justifying the attack against the regime." He listed ministers, governors, and director-generals and insisted very few were Alawites and most were Sunni.

"Our president is Alawite and we suffer from this," he said. "There are four million Alawites," he claimed with some exaggeration. "We don't have even one per cent of the positions in the government." He and his guests said they believed Syria was being pressured so it would make a deal with Israel.

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Iran Analysis: Sometimes A Plot is a Drug Deal Gone Wrong (Porter)

Sketch of Manssor Arbabsiar at Court HearingIn the [US] complaint, the closest to a semblance of evidence that Arbabsiar sought help during that first meeting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is the allegation, attributed to the DEA informant, that Arbabsiar said he was "interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia". 

Among the "other things" was almost certainly a deal on heroin controlled by officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a "federal law enforcement official", wrote that Arbabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who "controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium".

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Iran Analysis: Sometimes A Plot is Just A Plot (Dreyfuss)

Manssor ArbabsiarAs strange as it may seem, it's entirely possible that the witting participants in a plan that, had it taken place, could have triggered an all-out U.S. attack on Iran's military facilities and nuclear research installations didn't rank very high. That, in part, might explain the staggeringly inept nature of the plot, which involved easily traced transfers of large sums of money to unvetted bank accounts, clumsily disguised, barely coded conversations over open phone lines, and the plotters' reliance on a bungling, pot-smoking Iranian-American businessman with a criminal record. Still, when drugs, guns, and money are involved, participants are not usually members of Mensa. In particular, there have been media reports that Shahlai, Arbabsiar's cousin, was something of a drug-running gangster himself, which could explain why he gravitated to a plan intended to contract the attack on al-Jubeir with Los Zetas, a vastly powerful Mexican mafia organization.

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Occupy Wall Street: LiveStream of Today's Demonstration and Developments

See also Occupy Wall Street (and Beyond): 1st-Hand Reports from Occupy London March
A Unifying Statement from Occupy Wall Street?
Occupy Wall Street: The Victory at Liberty Park on Friday Morning
Occupy Wall Street (and Beyond) Analysis: The Tea Party Is Outraged, Mocking...and Worried

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Occupy Wall Street (and Beyond): 1st-Hand Reports from Occupy London March

An EA correspondent is in the Occupy London march today. His messages are reprinted here without any editing:

1450 GMT: Tents now going up here. Occupystpauls it is. For now. Can't see the cops having it.

1324 GMT: Assange [Julian Assange of WikiLeaks] just showed up. Massive massive cheers.

1319 GMT: First instance of people's microphone.  

Police shut access to 3 of 4 entrances to St Paul's churchyard. People gathering both sides of two of those police lines. Especially the side where access is blocked to the main crowd in St Paul's churchyard

Still a standoff and quiet, but crowd numbers are growing slowly. 

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Syria, Bahrain (and Beyond) LiveBlog: The Crackdown Expands

1811 GMT: The claim made in the title of the video: "Syrian actor Jalal Al Taweel leads protest during martyr Ibrahim Shayban's funeral." Ibrahim Shayban was a 10-year old boy who was reportedly killed yesterday in Midan, Damascus.

1745 GMT: Claimed footage of Bahraini police beating a protester in Nuwaidrat after arresting him on Friday:

1735 GMT: Footage of the clashes in the Yemeni capital Sana'a, in which at least 12 protesters were killed by regime forces:

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A Unifying Statement from Occupy Wall Street?

Many have tried, all have failed, but is this finally the unifying statement behind which Occupy Wall Street Movement will line up?

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The Latest from Iran (15 October): Cutting Through The Noise

Ali Motahari1810 GMT: Economy (Mismanagement) Watch. MP Musalreza Sarvati has claimed that Parliament is ignoring the Ahmadinejad Administration's $15 billion shortfall in the approvied budget. Sarvati also asserted that the administration has withdrawn $4.5 billion from the Central Ban, without depositing a compensating amount into the Treasury.

1805 GMT: The House Arrests. The three children of detained Mir Hossein Mousavi have met with Fatemeh Karroubi, who has also been under house arrest for eight months.

Mousavi's children said they have been denied phone contact with parents, whom they have not seen them in five weeks.

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Iran Analysis: Duelling Propaganda Banjos Play Over Backroom Manoeuvres

David Ignatius of The Washington PostThe Iranians, of course, have their own machinery to churn out the line that the so-called Plot is an American attempt to divert attention from its internal problems, including the challenge of Occupy Wall Street, while the US Government has Eli Lake at Newsweek and David Ignatius of The Washington Post as its messenger boys.

All this is loud enough to drown out other developments. One of those is the fencing to take advantage of The Plot while avoiding an escalation to conflict beyond the political battle.

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Egypt Special: Dramatic Footage from the Maspero Attacks

On Sunday, at least 24 people were killed in the Maspero district of Cairo as Coptic Christians protested their inadequate protection by the Egyptian government. The military says that they were attacked by protesters, and the protesters say that they were attacked by other civilans, the media, and the military.

We supply the videos here for your viewing. Judge them for yourself.

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