Thousands of supporters of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood have defied a government-imposed crackdown to march through Cairo and Alexandria following Friday prayers.

In Cairo, Islamist supporters marched towards the site of sit-ins that had been broken up with tremendous force by the military in August. Army vehicles fired live rounds in the direction of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, who had been pushed away from the city's Tahrir Square by security forces, a witness told Reuters. At least one Muslim Brotherhood supporter was reportedly shot dead in the clashes.

Onlookers joined soldiers in their assault, throwing rocks at the demonstrators who then threw them back. Muslim Brotherhood supporters chanted slogans calling for the downfall of the military chief General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Riot police had earlier fired teargas to push back the march.

Capitol hill shooting: family criticises police deadly force - video

(The Guardian) - The sisters of Miriam Carey say the family is 'confused' after the 34-year-old was shot dead by police near the White House. Carey, who was reportedly suffering from depression, was in the car with her one-year-old daughter when she tried to cross a barrier at Capitol Hill.

White House and DC police tight-lipped over handling of fatal car chase

Police and the Obama administration remained tight-lipped on Friday over the handling of a car chase in Washington DC that ended when officers shot dead an unarmed woman in front of her one-year-old daughter. Officials from the agencies involved in the incident declined to provide any explanation of their officers' actions, beyond praising them in glowing terms.

Officers from the secret service and Capitol police attempted to detain Miriam Carey, 34, after her car tried to breach a perimeter barrier close to the White House. Video footage showed police appearing to corner her car before Carey managed to get away. Police gave chase and shot her dead around 1.7 miles from where the incident began. Carey's daughter was in the car at the time.

The White House refused to comment on the police's response to the incident. Spokesman Jay Carney refused to answer when asked how the secret service had handled the situation. Calls to the secret service's public information officer went unreturned.

NYC sisters of woman killed by police in DC following chase question use of deadly force

○ Was the Use of Deadly Force Justified in Thursday's Capitol Hill Shooting?

See earlier comment - In Loving Memory - RIP Miriam Carey.

Amnesia and Gaza Genocide

The President has options to defeat the debt ceiling without doing the "Great Betrayal." (AKA The Grand Bargain)  

1. A selective default strategy by the Executive, prioritizing not paying for things that Congress needed, and perhaps not paying debt to the Fed when it falls due and working with the Fed to get the $2.05 Trillion in bonds that it was holding canceled;

2. An exploding option involving selling a 90-day option to the Fed for purchasing some Federal property for $ 2 Trillion. Then when Congress lifts the debt ceiling, the Treasury could buy back the option for one dollar, or the Fed could simply let the option expire;

3. Using the authority of a 1996 law to mint proof platinum coins with arbitrary face values in the trillions of dollars to fill the Treasury General Account (TGA) with enough money to cease issuing debt instruments, and even enough to pay off the existing debt; and

4. Using the authority of the 14th Amendment to keep issuing debt in defiance of the debt ceiling, while declaring that the debt ceiling legislation was unconstitutional because it violated the 14th Amendment in the context of Congressional appropriations passed after the debt ceiling mandating deficit spending.

5. Beowulf has offered yet a fifth option for getting around the debt ceiling by issuing consols. Consols are debt instruments that pay a fixed rate on interest in perpetuity, but never promise principal repayment at a maturity date. The debt ceiling law is written in such a way that what counts against the ceiling is the principal repayment guaranteed by the instrument. Since consols provide no principal repayment, one can have unlimited consol issuance without increasing the debt-subject-to-the-limit.

The interview with Netanyahu wasn't really in Persian. Most of it was simultaneously translated in subtitles. In fact, Netanyahu said about two words in the Iranian's language: "harf-e pootch," which can loosely be translated as "nonsense," and "Sadeh-lowh" - "sucker."

According to one of the announcements made by the prime minister's bureau, some 12 million Iranians watch BBC Persian every week. Netanyahu's words were received loud and clear on the other end, although instead of eliciting positive reactions they spurred antagonism and fury, especially among Iran's liberal youth who voted for Iranian President Hassan Rohani en masse in the last election.

The young Iranians were not angry over Netanyahu's strange choice of Persian expressions, rather a single sentence that he uttered in English: "If the people of Iran were free they could wear jeans and listen to Western music."

Over the past 24 hours, dozens of young Iranians responded to Netanyahu with a "jeans protest" - tweeting pictures of themselves in jeans. Some of them mocked Israel's intelligence agencies, saying they were so busy with the surveillance of the Iranian nuclear program that they neglected to update Netanyahu on fashion trends in Tehran.