yes and president hosni mubarak has finally caved into pressure at home and abroad eventually stepping down after weeks of undress across the country his resignation is being welcomed by western powers led by big winds which have had the regime upload for decades with massive financial and political support. extradition hearing in the case the wiki leaks founder julian assange has been a jaunt for a fortnight in london is meant to buy stuff on sex offenders charges which were earlier trunk but which he says are politically motivated. and how it was sweden may be just a short stop her sunshade leaked cables uncovered an american adjourns of behind the slit issue while typing lol that's one way to allow washington to press

espionage charges on the whistleblower. as the headlines to our top story now as hosni mubarak finally steps down and the people of egypt have had this say there you are shot from our washington studios also next for the country. we've got. the biggest issues good voice ceased to face with the news makers. welcome the alona show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mersey are going to live in washington d.c. now the atmosphere and so here square has shifted from anger to joys president mubarak has officially stepped out just a day after he announced he was going to remain in office we're going to speak with

joel rubin about this abrupt change in our government and what's next for the country next we'll continue our coverage of the tech firms who have worked with the government to take down a wiki leaks is the perfect combination of government banks corporations all working together to subvert free speech stream hamesha will join me to discuss the issue then we've talked about it before but could the era of the dollar really be coming to an end the i.m.f. released a report yesterday saying that it's considering switching out the dollar as the world's reserve currency but if the dollars on the outs what's going to replace it well as business insiders joe weisenthal then we'll ask you if college is for everybody think about it times are tough unemployment is out of control and that's including those who have college degrees so could it be better for some to just bypass the college years and save a whole lot of money are going to speak to one person who is getting death threats for his supposedly controversial suggestion that everyone should go to college and it's friday which means that we're going to celebrate with

a little happy hour i'll be joined by lucy catherine of and jenny churchill to talk about the hottest conference in town see pack but we're saving that fun for the end of the show right now let's move on to our top story. after eighteen days of protests egypt's president hosni mubarak has finally. step down as morning reports are coming out the mubarak had left cairo for sharm el sheikh a seaside resort where his family has a residence then omar suleiman the vice president announced in a televised address and the president was waving his office that he had handed over all thore to the supreme council of the armed forces and the crowd roared in approval the military made an announcement that they would lift the thirty year emergency law but only as soon as the circumstances and and they guaranteed changes to the constitution as well as a green election so for now it seems like the people of egypt have gotten what they want but what comes next discussed with me is joel rubin blogger at democracy arsenal thought or joel thanks so much for being here for eighteen days revolution

wise is that good timing is that fast is that slow what do you say it's quicker than tunisia it's very quick especially compared to what people in to support it egypt does not move very quickly as a country this is fast. for the rest of us watching it when you know hosni mubarak made the speech last night when everyone expected him to announce that he was going to resign he didn't it was like oh my god how can you still not be getting the picture but it looks like finally it got through his head but what comes next because these protests are so far basically have only been unified by the fact that they don't like mubarak that they don't like his family they want this regime out but what's going to unite them now how we're going to keep them from being divided in transition peacefully that's a really good point that is the unifying to me it was now that he's gone but mix the military has to reach out as it said it would directly to the protesters to the leading political people in cairo and make sure that they have their agreement on

next steps there is a limited window an opportunity to get agreements that can explain to the egyptian people what this transition to democracy will look like if they do it great if they do there will be a lot of concern because the military may even have their act to. because you could say that a lot of the higher ups in the military were still supporting mubarak whereas you know we saw those in the lower ranks joining with the people so is there some you know shoveling within the military itself well it's very intriguing to watch who is in power right now the vice president saw him and he's gone. now running the country field marshal he's been the longtime defense minister he's number two on the head of the military both of these figures have been around for a long time the u.s. knows them well they are in firm control and with so with with mubarak gone the egyptian people are confident they have an armed force that they can trust the question now is will the trust be converted into action what do you do they really

have an armed forces they can trust are they do they still feel that they have an armed force that is armed by the u.s. who gives them you know one point three billion dollars a year and who will still have perhaps foreign interests over those things are just people that's right and that is something that could come back to haunt them but in the immediate term the army has been seen as a sort of protector of the people in their early days if you're a member of the violence on the street when the police did not protect the people the army moved in the people got on the tapes there were lots of celebrations hugs and flowers it is a revered institution so it does have a lot of positive will pent up it is a source of pride for the people how would you describe the way this entire situation is played out and looks for the us i mean we were completely taken by surprise not only by tunisia but also by egypt especially on one hand that really tells you that our intelligence gathering services don't really seem to be doing

all that well it's certainly demonstrates that we don't know about the arab world as well as we should and certainly yesterday when cia director panetta testified that mubarak would be gone that evening it didn't look very good when mubarak came out with the opposite message so yes there's a lot of a. lessons learned here but what we do see is that in terms of crisis management this white house came out with an a plus watch the situation it understood what its message was early on and it stuck to it and that they understand what their message presently on because i've been completely i feel like they've been so lost in their message and nobody else out there knew exactly what they were going well that's because they were walking a fine line you see they were not saying in a concrete way mubarak go tomorrow since the first day they were saying we want to process we want to move to democracy the key thing is we want no violence now as the process of for the easy life think obviously nobody wants any violence everybody wants peace but you know what did they have to pick

a side early on or are they supposed to just keep you know staying on the fence like you said i think that as they got closer and as the protests began to swell and certainly yesterday when it was perceived that mubarak rebuffed united states president obama wrote his statement it was extremely strong saying this is not an acceptable outcome nonetheless as you point out in the last week or so there has been some confusion where is the state department in terms of their messaging do they fully support moving mubarak out or not those questions came out but each time the president would come out and push it he would be on message about we need to see change and needs to happen now now suddenly we hear the name george bush a lot again george w. bush of course and his freedom agenda and everyone now is debating whether he was right or whether he was wrong what's your take on well george w. bush did not invent the freedom agenda in fact george w. bush the reformers in these countries many of them went underground after the iraq

war started they became associated with democracy and democracy for a time was a bad word in the arab world it should never be a bad word we should be proud of democracy but the reformers were afraid and there were instances as well where they would come out into the streets in particular in cairo in two thousand and five. and the bush administration turned its back to the many democracy activists got sent to prison so while the vision yes democracy nearby world they did talk about they did not create it and certainly when it came to implementation there's nothing on the record that looks like what just happened today do you think that what did happen today also kind of proves that we don't necessarily need to interfere and start preemptive wars and go into other countries that if the people really want it they will find tomography on their own that's the real lesson here is that we need to support the people and you don't support the people by starting wars that kill the people alternately to create democracy though it does require active engagement it requires an open hand in america that listens

and works with these people and that's what president obama extended in june of two thousand and nine in the speech in cairo and he has been out there talking about the need to repair our relationship with the muslim world and i think that that did have an impact on the behavior especially of the youth all definitely have to keep following it and see how things develop in egypt who knows it could be months it could be years before the situation really become stable but of course watching who is going to be extending extending which hand will also be very interesting thanks so much for being here. now yesterday we told you about the master plan by tech firms to take a week you'll be able to talk to firedoglake. about their smear campaign and how it seems that the government isn't back and it's and we discussed it before but is there a chance that the dollar could be switched out for an international reserve business insider weisenthal one join me after the break to discuss the possible replacement for the.

reason you believe. some. of you. harbored. discovery.

yesterday we told you about a campaign to attack wiki leaks and its supporters that was leaked thanks to the end attacks of anonymous on the firm h.b. gary federal now this is the computer security firm from which aaron barr a top executive had bragged to the financial times of infiltrating finding the key leaders of the group anonymous you know as if the fact that there are no leaders in anonymous should have been a tip off to begin with the computer security firm was then hacked and fifty thousand emails were posted online now within those e-mails was a report prepared by h.p. kerry in conjunction with two other firms pelletier and miracle technologies on how to take wiki leaks out not only to the plan include planting fake documents and cyber attacks but also pinpointing journalists like glenn greenwald as targets and it turns out that this report was a proposal for bank of america who is shaking in their boots over

a possible wiki leaks dump about them who then hired outside firm hunton or williams to find security firms to help them who apparently got a recommendation from the u.s. justice department on working with guns and williams it may sound really technical and confusing but one thing here seems very clear the corporations are. working to take wiki leaks out and that the government seems to be approving of it here to discuss it with me is jane hamsher of firedoglake dot com jane thanks so much for being here thank you know it's really a very complicated web and you said you've been poring through these documents they just came out two days ago but it's fifteen thousand e-mails there's so much information but do you agree with me here that there is this basic assertion that we see these security firms working with banks working with law firms you know the government seems to be totally approving of all this action i don't think it's that they were approving i think they're actually suggesting it what they are has a million attorneys so the last thing they need is another attorney in the mix but turning was there to make sure that all the communication one would guess between

all of these entities doing this quasi legal stuff which they all admitted was very risky would be protected by attorney client privilege and not subject to discovery in a lawsuit so it was very calculated they knew they seem to have known what they were doing here well you say quasi legal is it even quantify and legal or is it just straight up illegal what they're doing they're talking about planting documents or talking about supposed cyber attacks and then of course this very bizarre wording when it comes to attacking you know taking people out like lame greenwald or other journalists well what they have what this guy did was create aliases on social networking sites that he would build up and he would engage people as those aliases pretending to be a variety of people talking to each other talking to people to try and sort out who was who in the wiki leaks organization but they were also planning to use them against people like glenn like david house bradley manning's friend who's written before was also in the document in order to discredit them and the theory was that

if they that they were professionals who would stop defending wiki leaks if it started to affect their ability to you know do what they do so basically just smear them so hard that they would stop that it's absurd to me to even hear that what kind of implications do you think. it has for for free speech in this country for people that are trying to put the truth out there well the chamber of commerce was also trying to do with him gave them for a similar in a similar situation with regard to a site called the u.s. chamber watch they wanted to you know find the people who were behind bad they were looking into who their family was who their kids were you know who their friends were and were trying to associate them with people that they thought were dangerous and extreme in order to you know dirty them up in public and it was it's a skunkworks operation so essentially we should also realize here that that doesn't mean that this is you know just one operation we should think that perhaps this kind of stuff happens all the time with the chamber was doing it too well yes

exactly and what was happening here at the chamber effort and the bank of america effort seemed to have been part of the same plan called they were calling team feminists which was huntin and williams ability to sort of outsource this stuff to these three tech firms on behalf of different corporations now there's no evidence that any of those contracts was ever executed but booz allen who is another big firm in town evidently did do is doing something on wiki leaks and one bar of h.b. gary started looking into who the anonymous people were and financial times started covering it booz allen contacted them and said well maybe you can help us with our wiki leaks program and met with them and so you know it does seem to be something that is very common among the d.c. firms that are you know revolving door firms in and out of the government and you've been looking through some of these e-mails of these documents do we have any idea what kind of money is involved here how much these people are being paid these

security firms how much they're getting to consult even though they themselves are getting hacked they will do the funny thing was that this the security firm who just had fifty five thousand dollars fifty five thousand e-mails put online i believe that the three companies together wanted two million dollars a month for what they do i think they were finally settling. i think the one on two hundred thousand dollars a month for a six. month test period but i'm not even sure that that was executed somehow i have a feeling that they're not going to get as many contracts as they used to after this entire story where they had. ten million dollars in federal contracts last year these guys work for the government on a regular basis now you know i was looking at something that john cole of saying today and he essentially said that this is a class war that's going on this is the bankers the corporations the government all working together to subvert the will of the people do you agree with that assertion with that smile and the reason that they can do it is because there are people who will join in those efforts to smear people and ironic that john cole would make

that note and you know and sort of jump on those they're very good at manipulating them and getting them worked up and crazy over things like you know glenn greenwald wiki leaks whatever and that's what they're taking advantage of so i think that if people are worried about class warfare they should also worry about their participation in it because it's not it doesn't come out in the form of elites it by the time it actually presents itself it will look like a grassroots effort now within this power point there were some things that i personally thought were a little comical they had a picture of a bunker in sweden i don't know how the picture is going to help anybody they had some very painfully basic information on julian a sign that you would have assumed these people are they knew if they just read a newspaper but they also stated that without the support of people like glenn greenwald then we would fold that's true i think would be very difficult for wiki leaks to sustain the on slot that they're under right now i mean one of the things that we worked with with glenn last year was exposing the fact that all of the charges that were being made about a songes association with bradley manning rested with

a guy named adrian lamo who was not a credible character and after hammering hammering hammering for the release of all of the chat logs between him and bradley manning wired magazine who had who had possession of them finally admitted that there was nothing in them that had any association with. you know between bradley manning and julian a songe and subsequent to that the justice department admitted that they didn't have a case against julian assange for espionage for colluding with bradley manning so you know it's a matter of the people who are out there following the story not the one that is being force fed to them by the government through channels who are actually looking at what's really happening and making it very difficult for them to smear julius anjan other people that are in danger so i would agree not so much that glenn greenwald is you know julia songes lifeline so much as he's one of the people who is really out there trying to figure out what really went on and has a lot of credibility and it's keeping you know the government bank of america everybody else from successfully being able to get well which is very important

because they're clearly doing everything within their power to try to smear sancerre bradley manning to build criminal cases against them did you ever think that when we first popped up a couple of years ago even if we talk about april of last year when they released the collateral damage video and there was barely any media attention to it that you know it would be the best the debate that it is now the government assault on it as well well i'm going to tell you i've been looking at these documents for the past couple of days and they are mind blowing it's like a map to all of the skunk works operations all of this like espionage that's going on behind the scenes names dates contracts i mean we you know we suspected this stuff was happening but we never had the proof before it's amazing it will revolutionize what we do and i guess it really proves that they're scared thank you so much for joining us thanks for having me. now we first told you about that we can make smear campaign we spoke about how the failed efforts by the tech firms to smear wiki leaks backfired tenfold and now we have new information about those tech

firms which we just discussed because it appears they've been working hard to target more than just the whistleblower web site turns out that the u.s. chamber of commerce was also hoping that those firms would work to take out threats from progressives and leverages unions one probably thinks hackers are not. it's leaked e-mails from c.e.o. aaron barr they are unveiled age for record fro of information but this explanation to get a little bit tricky so listen closely back in november a law firm that represents the u.s. chamber of commerce hired private tech firms h.p. gary barracuda technologies and pelletier to come up with tactics to damage progressive groups now this trifecta of firms came to be known as team famous and their methods of taking down the progressives included an entrapment project here's their game plan looked like first team that was thought of creating a false document highlighting something very basic like financial information that when they sent that fake information to progressive groups and think tanks the team would then publicly expose that document saying that it contained no information to

undermine the progressives really sneaky right but they also had a second plan to specifically target the group change when the tech firms that legitimately wanted to create a fake insider persona to start talking to the group get some insider communication going to that plan isn't going to be going anywhere thanks to the have to fix activists now between their smear tactics against wiki leaks and progressive groups the tech firms are going to earn quite a pretty penny for their efforts according to think progress team them and hope to get two hundred thousand dollars for the initial research and charge up to two million for a larger campaign against the progressive movement so i'm sorry to say that they are not going to be getting all that money after all but as the details on teams that as smear campaign continue to leak out i think the one thing here is very clear these guys really really really suck at strategizing. now sure we've heard rumors of a desire to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency but could it happen

sooner than we think according to dominic strauss kahn the managing director of the i.m.f. the number one problem with the international monetary system that must be corrected if we want to avoid another meltdown is volatility and the number one provider of that market volatility is yours truly be all. mighty dollar managed by the almighty ben bernanke so yesterday the i.m.f. issued a report considering special drawing rights or s.t.r. as a possible replacement for the dollar which could help stabilize the global financial system according to that so what do we say could that idea actually work when joining me from our studio in new york is joe weisenthal deputy editor of the business insider joe thanks so much for joining us now let's start with what an s.d.r. even is i'm sure that i could give a really poor explanation here but i'm going to let you have a go ahead and let you give your very educated one. i mean it's really not very complicated basically it represents

a basket of currencies from all of the earth from various i.m.f. members so if you had an s.d.r. special drawing right that would entitle you to x. amount of dollars in x. amount of your certain chinese do a and b. and stuff like that i think it's not really an accurate characterization and to call it a currency it's not you know it's it gives you right to a currency there's a right to money but in and so you can't really be thought of as a replacement for the dollar what you mentioned in order for this to even work the way i thought i.m.f. wants it to the yuan the bric countries would also have to become a part of s d r's because at the moment they're not so you know how long until that kind of a plan could really take hold. you mean that there is a problem where you have to have all these different currency you know for it to be any kind of a global currency you have to have all these different participants in it and i don't really see that happening i mean you know you will have good to some extent

as these economies get bigger and they allow their currencies to float more you know there will be play a role in international commerce and all this stuff that being said look what happened with the euro and we can learn a lot of lessons right from there the desire to get involved in currency unions and these kind of common currency should really be diminished after seeing the experience that they've had well i was wondering about that because you know the i.m.f. here claims that really this would stabilize the global system but would anybody be willing to give the i.m.f. that much power that much centralized power and we see a lot of political opposition here. well that's actually a really good point look there are a lot of flaws with the u.s. economic system right now and the amount of debt we have and concerns about the fed but over you know however you know hundreds of years the u.s. has established some credibility as a stable government and a government that people around the world trust where would the i.m.f.

draw it trust from it doesn't so as you say this idea it could establish itself as a centralized authority for global currency comes out of nowhere you can just get better over the overnight or get that with a handshake agreement that has to be built up over time but at the same time isn't some trust within the dollar waning are people starting to think that perhaps ben bernanke he has a little bit too much power over the global economy and he's the chairman of the federal reserve of the united states you know domestic national economy of the u.s. that really comes first in his mind. that is definitely an issue end it may be the case where the dollar the dollars roll as the global currency or the global reserve currency diminishes and that might actually be fun look oh china can do trade with brazil and their own currency and trade with russia and that could go somewhere and it doesn't necessarily mean the u.s. is doomed to that the dollars are going to be worth as much as toilet paper

a good example is the japanese yen that's not a global reserve currency it's a global currency it's used all around the world in various transactions but it's not considered to be the global currency and yet it's perfectly fine and the yen has been strong for a long time so it's certainly conceivable that over time the u.s. dollar will recede no longer be considered the one currency would be ok and in fact ben bernanke gave a speech last year were they hinted that that would be a good thing that it would be good for the u.s. to have more flexibility and not. be so tied to the rest of the world with its currency it could go and it wouldn't be that big of a deal what's interesting is there is a. different takes on there you know some would say this would be a good thing for the u.s. because they'd have more flexibility others would argue it at the moment the us has a little bit too much flexibility as the world's reserve currency because it brings in so much investment we get to keep funding our debt that if someone else was the reserve currency then perhaps you know there would be a lot more external pressure there for for our economy and that would make us you

know be a little more responsible what do you say that. there is something to that perhaps is that the the fact we have this global reserve currency allows us to spend without discipline i had some to think that's a little overstated. as i said you know there are other countries that don't have global reserve currencies that have you know the u.k. is a debt level that's similar to ours australia has a debt level that's similar to ours japan has a debt level that's higher than ours their government so the connection between debt and the cost of funding and the strength of the currency it's very clear it's not as clean as people would like to believe and we could. no longer were the dominant world currency it wouldn't necessarily mean that cheap funding for the us ok joe really quick last but they're also thinking that perhaps things like oil or gold could also be coming in as ours because then you know if the dollar loses goes down in value we want to see spikes in oil prices but he said

that. you know there's huge assumes even crazier to me though even the world bank. said something about their last years saying oh we should benchmark all currencies to gold those are very gold and oil are incredibly volatile look you could have a situation in egypt and gold could spike ten percent a day or more you shut down the suez canal who knows what's going to happen there's nothing inherently less volatile about those assets in fact i think they're more volatile than the u.s. dollar so i think that is a pipe dream to think that that would solve some kind of problem. all right joe well thanks so much for joining us we'll see if this does remain just a pipe dream but a lot of people are definitely talking about it and we're going to take a break and we'll be back soon.