Overnight mass protests popped up in the streets of Cairo involv­ing hun­dreds, pos­si­bly thou­sands, who took over a cen­tral square of the cap­i­talto demon­strate against strong­man Egypt­ian ruler Abdel Fatah al-​Sisi.

Like the prior so-​called ‘Arab Spring’ protests which rocked Egypt­ian streets start­ing in 2010 through 2011, which began the chain of tumul­tuous events which ended in Sisi’s tak­ing power via coup d’état top­pling the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, Fri­day night’s spon­ta­neous demon­stra­tions, which also hit the port cities of Alexan­dria and Suez, were the result of coor­di­nated online organizing.

Abdel Moniem square in Cairo Egypt… pic​.twit​ter​.com/​2​D​P​z​V​b​Q​R​6​p

— Bessma Momani (@b_momani) Sep­tem­ber 20, 2019

Videos showed pro­test­ers angrily chant­ing anti-​Sisi slo­gans demand­ing that he leave office, and in some cases destroy­ing posters and images bear­ing his face. Demon­stra­tions also report­edly occurred in the smaller cities and towns Dami­etta, Daman­hour and Mahalla.

Pro-​government tele­vi­sion broad­casts had dis­missed the siz­able demon­stra­tions, news of which quickly went viral, as minus­cule and the may­hem of small groups of youths.

Other pro-​government media reports said the scene around Tahrir Square, site of the first Arab Spring mass protests, was quiet; how­ever, inter­na­tional cor­re­spon­dents cited up to “thou­sands” gath­ered there.

#Egypt: Demon­stra­tion in front of the jour­nal­ists union in down­town, Cairo, chant­ing “#Sisi Must Leave.” https://t.co/mqkdxzGG1b

— Mohamed Soli­man (@soliman91) Sep­tem­ber 21, 2019

The pro­test­ers’ mes­sage was chiefly focused on anti-​corruption, accord­ing to inter­na­tional reports, and is an incred­i­bly risky endeavor in Sisi’s Egypt — given the de facto state of mar­tial law that existsand police heavy handed tac­tics which include impris­on­ing jour­nal­ists, and wide­spread reports of torture.

More from Egypt tonight, because, wow. This is Mahalla which you could argue is where the Arab Spring really began, on April 6, 2008. pic​.twit​ter​.com/​n​5​J​R​q​Z​r​Z​g​e

— Liz Sly (@LizSly) Sep­tem­ber 20, 2019

Lim­ited clashes with police were reported late Fri­day, with secu­rity ser­vices deploy­ing tear gas and pos­si­bly other riot con­trol measures.

You real­ize what it means to protest against Sisi? It could rot­ting in jail, being killed and/​or your fam­ily going through var­i­ous forms of hell pic​.twit​ter​.com/​c​p​n​z​i​G​4​c​0​p

— Has­san Has­san (@hxhassan) Sep­tem­ber 20, 2019

As The Guardian reports, cit­ing close to 60 arrests overnight:

Secu­rity forces moved to dis­perse the small and scat­tered crowds in Cairo late on Fri­day using tear­gas but many young peo­ple stayed on the streets in the cen­tre of the cap­i­tal, shout­ing “leave, Sisi”, Reuters reporters at the scene said.

At least 55 peo­ple were arrested on the charge of demon­strat­ing with­out per­mis­sion, accord­ing to one local media out­let cit­ing Egypt’s Min­istry of the Inte­rior. The Cairo-​based Egypt­ian Cen­tre for Eco­nomic and Social Rights recorded 36 arrests in Cairo and out­side of the cap­i­tal. The num­ber of those arrested is expected to rise.

UPDATE: protests have now spread to all major cities in #Egypt call­ing for the removal of Pres­i­dent Abdel Fat­tah el-​Sisi. Here’s a thread on what we know so far. #ميدان_​التحرير pic​.twit​ter​.com/​P​R​G​c​w​5​X​A​a​v

— Mohamed Has­san (@MHassan_1) Sep­tem­ber 20, 2019

Despite those tak­ing to the streets poten­tially fac­ing imme­di­ate arrests, Friday’s demon­stra­tions were impres­sive enough in size to likely con­tinue through the week­end, and could get fiercer as they gain in momentum.

No mat­ter how large such anti-​Sisi street demon­stra­tions might become, they are unlikely to gain much sup­port or acknowl­edge­ment out of the White House, given Egypt’s mil­i­tary ‘deep state’ has for decades since the 1979 Egypt-​Israel peace treaty was signed just after the Camp David Accords, been bought and paid for by Amer­i­can for­eign aid.

Trump’s recent out­burst at the G7 sum­mit in France might also be an indi­ca­tor of where things stand: he report­edly called out “Where’s my favorite dic­ta­tor!” while ref­er­enc­ing the Egypt­ian president.

Elon Musk’s nerves were clearly rat­tled after the intro­duc­tion of the Porsche Tay­can, as we cov­ered about a week ago. Seem­ingly shook up by the pos­i­tive media cov­er­age that the Tay­can was get­ting, Musk quickly took to Twit­ter to announce that the Model S would be doing laps at the Nur­bur­gring, where the Tay­can recently set a record time of 7:42.

The results of this effort to pre­serve Musk’s ego went just about as ridicu­lously as you’d think.

First, the com­pany installed a Super­charger at the Nur­bur­gring that appeared to be hooked up to a diesel generator.

Then, with­out pro­vid­ing an offi­ciallap time, Tesla claimed in a Tweet that data indi­cated that their Model S couldrun a 7:20 and that it hoped to have another try when it comes back next month.

Data from our track tests indi­cates that Model S Plaid can achieve 7:20 at the Nür­bur­gring.

With some improve­ments, 7:05 may be pos­si­ble when Model S returns next month.

— Tesla (@Tesla) Sep­tem­ber 19, 2019

But did it run a 7:20 offi­cially? No. If you believe that, we’ve got some solar roof tiles to sell you.

As one astute Twit­ter user said:

Its a fck­ing lap time. Either you clock it or you dont. Top gear/​grand tour cars dont lap with “could be” lap time. Fck­ing fraud­sters. $TSLAQ

— Bub­ble Boy (@lazygetter) Sep­tem­ber 19, 2019

Auto­blog reported that the Model S had been “stripped of its inte­rior” and had “decid­edly non-​production aggres­sive body work, more power, and sticky Miche­lin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R com­pe­ti­tion tires.”

Then, to add insult to glo­ri­ous injury, video sur­faced of Tesla’s Model S, bro­ken down on the course.

And for the cherry on top, a fully func­tion­ing, non-​broken downPorsche Tay­can is seen lap­ping the Model S as it is towed off the course — twice.

Tay­can lit­er­ally lap­ping bro­ken down Model S$tsla pic​.twit​ter​.com/​e​L​X​9​W​R​Q​u​S​z

— EV Defender (@evdefender) Sep­tem­ber 19, 2019

I like how Tesla cov­ered the car so no one one can tell what kind of car it is, but why the sling, when they have a flatbed roller? Totally fucked the dri­ve­train so the Model S can’t roll?$TSLA $TSLAQ pic​.twit​ter​.com/​3​6​v​a​6​8​B​M​y​r

— pass­the­beano (@passthebeano) Sep­tem­ber 20, 2019

And while Tesla’s data maypoint to a mod­i­fied vehi­cle that couldbeat the Taycan’s time, it’s worth not­ing that Porsche didn’t even run its top-​end Turbo S at the course, but rather the slightly slower Turbomodel. Porsche also didn’t gut its vehi­cle before run­ning it.

Maybe we can com­pare times again between the Turbo S and the Model S — that is, if the Tesla can make it a lap around the track with­out break­ing down or exploding.

Authored by Paul Joseph Wat­son via Sum­mit News,

Despite west­ern­ers being lec­tured by cli­mate activists like Greta Thun­berg, a study has found that around 90 per cent of plas­tic waste pol­lut­ing earth’s oceans comes from Asia and Africa.

Dur­ing her U.S. tour, Thun­berg cited “hor­ri­fy­ing pic­tures of plas­tic in the oceans,” as one of the pri­mary rea­sons why Amer­i­cans should lis­ten to her.

How­ever, researchers at Germany’s Helmholtz Cen­tre for Envi­ron­men­tal Research dis­cov­ered that a small num­ber of rivers account for the vast major­ity of plas­tic pol­lu­tion and none of them are located in west­ern countries.

“The 10 top-​ranked rivers trans­port 88 – 95 per­cent of the global load into the sea,”Dr. Chris­t­ian Schmidt, a hydro­ge­ol­o­gist who led the study, told the Daily Mail.

“The rivers with the high­est esti­mated plas­tic loads are char­ac­ter­ized by high pop­u­la­tion – for instance the Yangtze with over half a bil­lion people.”

Out of the top ten rivers that pro­duce the most pol­lu­tion, eight are in Asia and two are in Africa. The Yangtze River in China and the Ganges River in India were respon­si­ble for the most plas­tic pollution.

While west­ern­ers are being told to alter their lifestyles and have fewer chil­dren to save the planet, vir­tu­ally noth­ing is being said about or to the peo­ple in the coun­tries respon­si­ble for the vast major­ity of pollution.

This is prob­a­bly one of the main rea­sons why many in the west remain skep­ti­cal about the true motives of the envi­ron­men­tal­ist movement.

As we reported ear­lier, only 38 per cent of Amer­i­cans believe global warm­ing is man made.

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