Apparently courage is contagious, and Northern African regimes plan to stop the spread in its tracks:

Riot police have been deployed in the centre of the Algerian capital, Algiers, ahead of a planned anti-government rally. The government has banned the protest, but opposition and rights groups say they intend to go ahead with the march.

Algeria - like other countries in the region - has recently witnessed demonstrations for greater freedoms.

On Friday, police stopped people from gathering to celebrate the fall of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak. The BBC's Chloe Arnold in Algiers say the authorities want to avert any popular uprising similar to those in Tunisia and Egypt.

"We are ready for the march," Mohsen Belabes, a spokesman for the small Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) opposition party, said.

And in Yemen:

(Sanaa) - Hundreds of men armed with knives, sticks, and assault rifles attacked anti-government protesters in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, as Yemeni security forces stood by, Human Rights Watch said today. Within an hour, the 1,000-plus protesters had been pushed from the square and at least 10 had been detained by security forces, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch witnessed at least 10 army trucks carrying men in civilian clothing to Sanaa's Tahrir Square, where a crowd of around 1,000 Yemenis had been demonstrating in support of the historic changes in Egypt and against the Yemeni government. Hundreds of men, their arrival coordinated by uniformed security agents, attacked the anti-government protesters with knives and sticks, prompting the majority to flee.

Here's a video that's a mash-up of reactions from USA soccer fans from around the country watching Landon Donovan's incredible winning goal against Algeria that put the USA into the knock out round of the World Cup. Today's game is going to be very tough because Ghana is a very young and athletic team and they'll have the entire stadium supporting them, but the USA isn't over matched in this game like they were against England.

Raf Naboa y Rivera writes:

Should the U.S. give up an early goal against the Black Stars, as they did in playing England and Slovenia, it'll be phenomenally difficult for them to tally an equalizer. Should the U.S. score once or twice early on, Ghana will be hard-pressed to draw even, thanks to their lack of scoring punch. And that's really the key to the game. I'll say it again - the U.S. has to do two things here:

1. Capitalize on early goal scoring chances. This is absolutely imperative. We can kvetch and moan about getting robbed of goals by the officials, but the fact remains that we wasted about seven different chances on Wednesday. At the minimum, we should've beaten Algeria 3-0 or 4-0, instead of 1-0 on a gasper.

2. Avoid defensive lapses. The U.S. cannot afford a repeat of what happened against England and Slovenia. Depleted as the Ghanian offense is, it's still blindingly fast, aggressive, and strong. That includes play in the penalty area. I fully expect Ghana to try to draw a penalty kick, so the U.S. will have to be more disciplined than usual in order to avoid this.

As wonderful as it would be to see the lone African team make a deep run, I think Ghana are too offensively deficient. As long as the U.S. scores early, or even first, and as long as they avoid defensive mistakes, they'll win.

Since the team is pretty much cut off from everything in South Africa, Youtube and Facebook is how Landon and the team realized how much passion the US had behind the team since soccer isn't a very popular sport nationally. That's pretty cool.

Donoho, a 21-year-old Purdue University senior and avid fan of the men’s national team, collected a montage of clips of USA fans celebrating Donovan’s injury-time winner against Algeria and assembled them into a catchy package, which he put on YouTube.

It didn’t take long for the images to be passed through to the USA’s training camp near Pretoria and onto the laptop of Donovan himself. For all of the praise and plaudits the goal-scoring star received after his moment of glory, it was seeing the reaction sparked by his calm strike into the bottom corner of the Algerian net that touched him the most.

“Not sure if you guys saw this but it brings tears to my eyes every time,” Donovan wrote on his Facebook account, while linking to Donoho’s video. “Thank you all so much … we can do it.”

I'm hoping for at least one more win, but the USA did what they were supposed to do at this point. If you're not into the World Cup just move on to another post. This only happens once every four years and it's fun watching the sport that the entire world is engaged in.

We have a live chat set for 11am PST today as Blue America welcomes Tarryl Clark, a new challenger we endorsed to take on the half-insane Michele Bachmann. I'm sure you'll want to meet her and support her.

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The USA gets a stunning goal by Landon Donovan to defeat Algeria in extended play and the USA wins their group for the first time since 1930. They get to move on to the knock out stage and play the home town favorite, Ghana. They were a minute away from packing their bags and going home. Talk about ups and downs. The USA dominated on their chances, but kept falling short and I thought they were done. And then suddenly goalie Tim Howard looks like Drew Brees and hits Donovan on a long pass. LD makes a mad dash, passes to Jozy Altidore, who spots Dempsey down the middle, the goalie makes the save and Landon cleaned up the rebound beautifully. The refs almost destroyed our chances of moving on by disallowing another goal that should have counted early on in the game, but the USA came away with a goal in the 91st minute mark to go undefeated in their group.

Sean Pendergast has a good piece up about the game and American soccer in general.
Bill Clinton was at the game cheering on the Yanks too...That's all for now. Carry on and chat away on any topic you like...

And don't forget to buy this book.

This game will determine if we move on. There are a few ways for the USA to advance to the knock out round of sixteen, but the best thing that can happen is if the USA wins the game outright. Nadir Belhadj is the man to watch and will be Landon's toughest competition in the tournament at this point. They can't start out slow and give up an early goal as they usually do in the World Cup or Algeria will play defense the rest of the way.

One of the most important games in United States soccer history kicks off today. In one 90-minute outing, the Americans will either make years of build-up and hype worth it, or crumble under the weight of the nation’s expectations for yet another World Cup.

Anyway, let's go Landon Donovan and Co. The game is on ESPN at 6:30 am EST.

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After playing an awful first half, the USA stormed back early in the second with a great goal by Landon Donovan and later tied the game with a goal by Michael Bradley, the coach's son. The officiating was brutal throughout as every call went against the US including a yellow card against Findley which will knock him out of their next game against Algeria. As the game was winding down, the US scored what looked like the game winner by Edu, but for some inexplicable reason the official waved it off.

One man who's happy soccer isn't as much of a national passion in the United States than it is in, say, Colombia: Koman Coulibaly. The Mali referee called ... something on a late goal by Maurice Edu that would have given the Americans the win. It was a call that, to these eyes, was worse than anything Jim Joyce or (sigh, it's true) Don Denkinger ever did; coach Bob Bradley afterward confessed he had no idea what the call even was. We don't know either.
You don't want to blame the ref for a draw, particularly when the U.S. pretty clearly deserved to lose the way they played the first half. But after such a stirring comeback, after a thrilling, epic game ... well, as Joe Posnanski wrote in SI last week, in soccer, every goal is a kind of miracle. When you go through all the trouble of scoring one, of coming all the way back, only to have it disallowed for reasons that still nobody understand ... well, Koman Coulibaly is lucky you won't know his name the way you know Jim Joyce's.

Coach Bradley started the second half by making two key substitutes and it was coaching magic.

But U.S. coach Bob Bradley sent his most offensive lineup onto the pitch for the second half, moving stars Clint Dempsey and Landon Donovan up to the front line to mount an all-or-nothing attack that would likely determine his fate as the titular head of American soccer.

By the end of the game Mr. Bradley and Team U.S.A had lived to fight another day. Its 2-2 draw on clutch goals from Mr. Donovan and Michael Bradley, the coach's son, salvaged not only the legitimacy of U.S. soccer but its chances to advance.

The second half was as good as it gets. We'll take the draw, but should have had the win and three points. It'll come down to their last game against Algeria and chances are they need a win to get past group play.

Unbelievable. Someone whose job was to further the interests of the U.S. in Algeria really did a number on us instead:

The CIA's station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.

Officials say the 41-year old CIA officer, a convert to Islam, was ordered home by the U.S. Ambassador, David Pearce, in October after the women came forward with their rape allegations in September.

The discovery of more than a dozen videotapes showing the CIA officer engaged in sex acts with other women has led the Justice Department to broaden its investigation to include at least one other Arab country, Egypt, where the CIA officer had been posted earlier in his career, according to law enforcement officials.

PLEASE NOTE: C&L realizes that all of its readers wish to see justice in this and every situation involving wrongdoing. Remember that wishing physical harm on anyone when you leave a comment here is against the commenting policy and will be deleted. You folks know better. - Sitemonitor

ABC's The Blotter :

Respected Russian journalist Ivan Safronov, who reported on military affairs, mysteriously plunged to his death from the 5th floor of his apartment building Friday, making him the 14th journalist to die under questionable circumstances in Putin's Russia, according to statistics compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. [..]

Polikovskaya's killing, the 13th since Putin took office, led the Committee to Protect Journalists to declare Russia "the third deadliest country in the world for journalists" after Iraq and Algeria in their recent report, "Deadly News." All of the cases remain unsolved.

According to a report in this morning's Moscow Times, Safronov, who wrote for the Russian business newspaper "Kommersant," fell head first and fully clothed from a 5th floor window although he lived in an apartment on the 3rd floor of the building.

The Times reported the FSB -- the Federal Security Bureau, which is the successor agency to the KGB -- was unhappy with Safronov's reporting on sensitive weapons systems.

Safronov's death adds to the list of critics of the Putin regime and the FSB, who have died or been injured in strange circumstances in just the past six months

Investor's Business Daily thinks Putin couldn't be this thick, but even NewsMax (hardly a liberal publication) finds it hard to believe that all these people connected to critics of Putin's are meeting their end under strange circumstances.