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30 January, 2011

Gilad.co.uk

In his latest Newsweek article Stephen Kinzer wonders who America is betting on to counter the popular rising forces in the Middle East : “The same friends it has been betting on for decades” he answers. “Mubarak’s pharaonic regime in Egypt, Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, the Saudi monarchy, and increasingly radical politicians in Israel. It is no wonder that Iran’s power is rising as the American-imposed order begins to crumble,” he concludes.

Kinzer explains America’s stance succinctly and accurately : “The U.S. keeps Mubarak in power – it gave his regime $1.5 billion in aid last year -mainly because he supports America’s pro-Israel policies, especially by helping Israel maintain its stranglehold on Gaza. It supports Abbas for the same reason; Abbas is seen as willing to compromise with Israel and is, therefore, a desirable negotiating partner….. American support for Mubarak and Abbas continues, although neither man is in power with any figment of legality; Mubarak brazenly stage-manages elections, and Abbas has ruled by decree since his term of office expired in 2009.”

In the light of Kinzer’s statement, the following questions surely need answering — Why does America support those regimes, whose leaders’ dictates, ideologies and methods of ruling are totally and openly incongruous with America’s alleged value system? And If America is genuinely concerned with the so-called ‘rise of Islam’, why then, did it eradicate Saddam Hussein’s distinctly secular regime? And if America is, as it claims, enthusiastic about encouraging ‘non radicalised’ secular Arabs, why is it constantly seeking conflict with Bashir Asad, leader of another secular stronghold? And If America does indeed champion democracy, why does it support the Saudi regime, Mubarak and Abbas? Why does it not seek friendship with the democratically elected Hamas?

In short American policy seems to be a total mess — unless one is willing to openly admit that there is a clear coherent thread running through American foreign policy : it simply serves Israel’s interests.

For decades American foreign policy has been dictated by Zionist forces within their administration. For decades, America has been exhausting its resources to chase the enemies of the Jewish state. It even sends its young boys and girls to fight and die in Zionist wars. The second Iraq War was obviously such a war. It is becoming clear that America’s decision makers have sacrificed the interests of the American people.

We learned yesterday that the Jewish Lobby in America shamelessly slammed Republican Senator and Tea Party representative Rand Paul for suggesting that the “United States should halt all foreign aid including its financial aid to Israel”. Even the alleged ‘peace seeking’ J Street was quick to attack the patriotic senator. And clearly they didn’t mince their words : “Senator Paul’s proposal would undermine the decades-long bipartisan consensus on U.S. support for Israel. Any erosion of support should concern Israel’s friends on both sides of the political aisle, and we call in particular on leaders and donors in Senator Paul’s party to repudiate his comments and ensure that American leadership around the world is not threatened by this irresponsible proposal,” the statement issued by J Street read.

National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) President and CEO David Harris repeated the same line of thought saying that “Paul’s suggestion is negligent, shortsighted, and just plain wrong….Senator Paul’s statement is yet another illustration of how the Republican Party continues to grow increasingly out of touch with the values of the vast majority of the American Jewish community.”

But NJDC’s spokesman David Harris must have failed to grasp that the patriotic senator Paul is actually concerned with the interest of America, rather than the tribally orientated ‘values of the vast majority of the American Jews’, because Senator Rand Paul obviously points at a clear conflict between American interests and the foreign interests promoted by the Jewish lobby.

In his Newsweek article, Kinzer astutely points out that America needs “new approaches and new partners. Listening more closely to Turkey, the closest U.S. ally in the Muslim Middle East, would be a good start. A wise second step would be a reversal of policy toward Iran, from confrontation to a genuine search for compromise.”

But, It is clear beyond doubt here that America will not be able to integrate Kinzer’s very reasonable suggestions into its foreign policy unless it first liberates itself from the grip of the Jewish Lobby. And It has been proven that it is not easy for our greed-driven politicians to emancipate themselves voluntarily from the Lobby. As we read above, the ‘liberal’ J Street group have called upon donors to cut off the very life supply of Senator Rand Paul. And The Jewish Lobby in America would do the same to every American politician who dared to break the links.

However, in the wake of the current financial turmoil, I am convinced that more and more Americans are beginning to identify the root cause at the bottom of their flawed foreign policy. By the time this happens, America may well be liberated.

And here is my musical take on the subject. Liberating the American People (2006)

Tuesday 01 February 2011

, The New York Times News Service | Report

Amman, Jordan – King Abdullah II of Jordan fired his government in a surprise move on Tuesday, in the face of a wave of demands of public accountability sweeping the Arab world and bringing throngs of demonstrators to the streets of Egypt.

The Jordanian news agency Petra announced that after recent protests in Jordan itself, the king had dismissed Prime Minister Samir Rifai and replaced him with Marouf al-Bakhit, a former general and ambassador to Israel and Turkey. He is widely viewed as clean of corruption.

The official announcement said Mr. Bakhit would have the task of “taking practical, swift and tangible steps to launch a real political reform process, in line with the king’s version of comprehensive reform, modernization and development.” It added that the king asked Mr. Bakhit and the new cabinet to “bolster democracy” and proceed “with nation building that opens the scope for broad accomplishment to all dear sons of our country and secure them the safe and dignified life they deserve.”

Meanwhile, around the region, tremors from Egypt’s huge demonstrations could be felt from Yemen — where the government, fearing new protests, has offered concessions to the opposition — to Syria — where calls for “a day of rage” on Friday are spreading on Facebook, which is banned in the country, and Twitter, The Associated Press reported.

Tunisia, the country that set off the regional unrest after protests toppled the government, was forced to use the army to calm fears of chaos as gangs rampaged through schools in the capital, Tunis, and a synagogue was set on fire in the southern city of Gabes, according to wire reports. A United Nations mission sent to Tunis to investigate the violence reported that at least 219 people were killed and 510 injured in the unrest, the Associated Press said.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority announced that it would hold local elections, postponed last year, “as soon as possible.” The Palestinian cabinet, led by Prime Minister Salman Fayyad, said in a statement that elections would take place simultaneously in the West Bank and in Gaza, and that the government would set a date at its next meeting. But it was not clear whether its rival Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, would cooperate.

The authority blamed Hamas for upsetting planned local elections last July, but critics of the authority said that the reason for the cancellation was disarray within Fatah, the faction that dominates in the West Bank.

Jordan is a highly literate and largely stable country, with well-developed security and intelligence operations. But it has a fundamental vulnerability in the large number of Palestinians here. Refugees arrived in large numbers from the West Bank and Jerusalem after the war in 1967, and more arrived from Kuwait after President Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded that country in 1990. They and their descendants make up more than half the country’s population of six million.

Recent demonstrations in Jordan were the first serious challenge to the decade-old rule of King Abdullah, a crucial American ally in the region who is contending with his country’s worst economic crisis in years.

Last Friday, thousands took to the streets in the capital, Amman, as well as several other cities shouting, “We want change.” Because direct criticism of the king is banned, the focus has been on his government. Banners decried high food and fuel prices and demanded the resignation of the prime minister, appointed by the king.

On Saturday there was a sit-in of about 400 people in front of the prime minister’s office calling for his resignation. He has been criticized for what is seen as a lack of accountability.

In recent months, journalists, former generals and students have attacked corruption, lower subsidies and lack of democracy in Jordan, especially recent reductions in freedom of expression. The marchers have been a mix of Islamists, trade unionists and leftists. To counter the criticism, the king recently announced an increase in civil service pay and $125 million in subsidies for basic goods and fuel.

After Tuesday’s announcement of a new prime minister, reactions among protest leaders were cautiously positive.

Nahed Hattar, a leftist activist, said in a telephone interview that he considered the change a good move but that he wanted to see the government program before rendering judgment.

Ali Habashneh, a retired general who had participated in public protests, said the appointment was “wise,” adding, “He is the right man to lead the country at this time.”

The new prime minister, Mr. Bakhit, served briefly in the post once before in 2006 after Amman hotels were attacked by terrorists. He is close to the king and has been closely involved in the peace treaty with Israel.

While King Abdullah has detractors in Jordan, there seems at the moment to be little push to end the monarchy. The pressure has been focused on economic issues and government accountability.

Ranya Kadri reported from Amman, Jordan, and Ethan Bronner from Ramallah, West Bank. Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem and J. David Goodman from New York.

 Jerusalem Post 02/01/2011

Friday morning, in an east Jerusalem hotel, at a strategic thinking session of Israelis and Palestinians, my attention is divided between a fascinating discussion of local developments and the 20+ “tweets” I am receiving every minute from Egyptians and Egyptian news services about the emerging reality of a new Middle East. I am captured by a strong sense that history is being made as the Egyptian masses leave the mosques after noontime prayers to overturn the regime of Hosni Mubarak and change the face of Egypt and the region.

My heart is with the Egyptian people facing an autocratic regime, whose leaders have denied them basic freedoms and pillaged the wealth of Egypt, transferring much of it to bank accounts abroad and living in palaces overlooking the Nile while millions of citizens live on less than $2 a day.

At the same time, like all Israelis, I feel fear and concern – what will be the future of the peace between our countries? Even though the peace has been cold, it has been stable and has removed existential threats.

I have been in Egypt dozens of times. I have walked the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, where the main demonstrations are taking place. I have never felt threatened or afraid to travel in that country. I have many Egyptian friends from academia, government and the security forces. These people have always demonstrated loyalty to and admiration for the Mubarak regime. In past visits to Cairo, I did witness a few demonstrations against Israel, but they were small – less than 100 people.

But it is quite clear that peace between the Egyptian and Israeli people never emerged. The masses in Egypt hate Israel, and identify strongly with its enemies. But this too is a relatively new phenomenon, deeply influenced by Al-Jazeera and other Arab media, with their pro-Islamic, pro- Hamas positions.

In the minds of the common Egyptian, Israel is a great enemy which continues to deny their Palestinian brothers and sisters their dignity and freedom, threatens the Aksa Mosque, passes racist legislation and, together with the United States, controls the wealth of the world.

Inspired by the people of Tunisia, the Egyptian masses took to the streets. The Mubarak regime has greatly improved the macroeconomic situation, but while the GDP grows steadily, the poor masses become even poorer, while the rich gain more wealth.

The great challenge to any regime in Egypt is simply to feed its people. Every year, 1.2 million are born, and this is by far Egypt’s biggest problem. In the West (Israel included) feeding family members requires about 15 percent of a family’s income. In Egypt it is above 50%, wages are much lower, and the food markets are much sparser than anything we know.

The people are hungry, angry and fed up with corruption and nepotism, and they’ve said “enough.”

THE MUBARAK regime is finished. Maybe it won’t fall today or in the weeks to come, but the Egypt of today is already no longer the Egypt of yesterday. The appointment of Omar Suleiman as vice president, and even a new prime minister and a new government will not meet the demands of the people. The masses have not been led by a single figure or movement; the Mubarak regime “successfully” decimated all legitimate democratic opposition over the years. The only real organized opposition working on the sidelines of the law is the Muslim Brotherhood.

But in the mid 2000s the Kifayeh (enough) movement emerged – a coalition of democracy advocates, unionists, students and others demanding democratic reform. Kifayeh captured the attention of the world because it was a non- Islamic democratic reform movement willing to take on the regime and demand a place at the table.

But the Mubarak regime acted swiftly, and managed to crush Kifayeh’s popular support. Likewise, the Ghad (tomorrow) movement led by democratic reformer Ayman Nour. This liberal democracy party was attacked by the Mubarak regime, which arrested Nour on false changes and managed through the falsification of election results to render the party powerless.

There are additional civil society groups which have worked in the shadows of Egyptian society and which will now struggle to take the main stage, such as the April 6 coalition from 2009.

There is Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who has taken center stage in his calls for Mubarak to step down, and has volunteered to head an interim government.

CAN A non-Islamic fundamentalist Egypt emerge from the current revolution? Will the new Egypt honor the peace treaty with Israel? Will the revolution spread to other Middle East countries? What impact will the Egyptian developments have on the Palestinian arena? These are the main questions. No one knows the answers. But the “insights” provided by mainstream Israeli analysts and experts are all bleak and full of fear.

The Israeli mind-set can only see the passing of the Mubarak regime as a tragedy and a victory for the dark forces of radical Islam. They tell us that the Arab masses can’t understand democracy. They inform us that Arab countries must have strong leaders because Arabs understand only power and force. They tell us US President Barack Obama is weak because instead of standing behind “his” dictator, he voices support for the masses’ calls for reform and democracy, and by doing so is undermining the stability of the region.

Perhaps there is another valid perspective – one that doesn’t view the Middle East only in terms of a clash of civilizations but rather in human terms. One that realizes hungry people, denied their basic human rights, will always, under the right circumstances, rise up against corrupt leaders.

There is a legitimate view which understands that those dictators, and people who support them, will always be the enemy of the people living under their harsh regimes.

Yes, Israel is a democracy, but we too have 1.2 million Palestinian citizens living with discrimination, and we control another almost 2.5 million living under our military occupation, who are also denied basic freedoms. These people pose a great risk to our stability and existence.

The lessons we learn from Tunisia and Egypt should not be the need to apply more military might to crush the weak, but the need to understand that the human security they are craving will not be buried or defeated by “loyalty laws,” or by investigating and even prosecuting human rights and peace organizations.

The future of Israel is not linked to the corrupt, nondemocratic regimes which we prefer to call “moderate” Arab states, but to the masses of people who are willing to take to the streets to demand their rights. When we understand that correctly, we will make peace with Palestine, we will have real democracy and we will be a lot more secure.

(The writer is co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (www.ipcri.org) and is founding the Center for Israeli Progress )

 | Monday 07 February 2011

Through his stubbornness Hosni Mubarak has managed to transform himself from a 30-year-old “loyal ally” into an 82-year-old liability. Almost all dictators cling to power as long as they can. They get use to being the boss and it becomes a way of life for them. Mubarak is no different. But clearly the love of power is not all that is going on with him.

Mr. Mubarak suffers from the same syndrome as did Louis XVI just prior to the French Revolution. Louis lived in the royal complex of Versailles. He rarely visited Paris, which was just 25 miles away, and knew almost nothing of the daily lives of his non-noble subjects. Like Louis, Hosni, too, lives in isolation from the people who go about their business beyond the walls of his presidential palace. Thus, when Mubarak says he loves Egypt and will never run away from his country, he is talking about a place as distant from that of the ordinary citizen as the moon.

A sure sign of this disconnect came with the February 3 report of an interview he gave with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour. According to the correspondent, Mubarak said he was “fed up with being president and would like to leave office now, but cannot, he says, for fear that the country would sink into chaos.” This is surely a sign that the Egypt he knows is not the Egypt commonly recognized by his people or the rest of the world. From outside the presidential palace, it is starkly clear that a sort of popular chaos is what already besets Egypt and the only way to calm it is for Mubarak to leave office and probably the country as well. The vast majority of Egyptians can see that this is so. President Obama can see this is so and has probably emphasized the fact to Mubarak. Even the King of Saudi Arabia can see what is happening and has offered Mubarak asylum in his country. So, why can’t Hosni Mubarak see it?

Along with the isolation that rulers and especially dictators experience, comes the phenomenon of “groupthink.” In his book “Victims of Groupthink” (Houghton Mifflin, 1972), Irving L. Janis shows how governing political elites create self-reinforcing, decision-making circles. In other words, in the last 30 years, Mubarak has surrounded himself with like-minded advisers and aides. These are people who have a vested interest in his regime. They constantly reinforce his worldview and second his decisions. There are no devil’s advocates here. Being a military dictator also probably drives the groupthink outlook. Generals give orders; they do not normally take them. And, all too often, it is the orders given that are meant to shape reality and not the other way around. It is assumed that whatever deviation there is between the two can be swept away by force.

Up till now, this has been the Egyptian dictator’s expectation. His choice of vice president, Omar Suleiman, is a product of Mubarak’s artificial groupthink world and, no doubt, selected to keep that world intact. Therefore, Suleiman’s initial impulse was to reflect his master’s preferences. Days and days of demonstrations by tens of thousands of Egyptians demanding Mubarak’s immediate departure were deemed impractical and disrespectful of a man who has so long “served his country.” But Suleiman, until recently head of the regime’s intelligence services, now appears to have his doubts. Making reality match Mubarak’s fantasy will almost certainly require such force as to guarantee the radicalization of the protest movement.

Most of the conservative talking heads both in the US and in Israel fear the potential of an Iranian-style outcome for Egypt. That is why everyone from Glenn Beck to Benjamin Netanyahu have called on Mubarak to get tough lest we end up with ayatollahs on the Nile. But Egypt is not like Iran, neither the Iran of 1979 nor 2011. There is no rational reason to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood will suddenly turn into the Sunni version of a Republican Guard. However, if the Egyptian government does “get tough” and ends up applying force, there is yet another scenario that presents itself and that is the recent history of Algeria. Back in 1991-1992, the Algerian military crushed the country’s Islamic political movement, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), just at the moment when it had won democratically conducted, national elections. A military dictatorship was established ,which proceeded to arrest or kill all the moderate FIS leaders (those who had “worked within the system”), thus opening up the movement to much more violent factions. Indeed, these factions were ready to be as violent as was the country’s military. The result was decades of vicious civil war.

One assumes that Suleiman knows of the Algerian experience, and one assumes that someone from the State Department has filled in Barack Obama. Maybe they are both hoping that all the Egyptian protesters will just get tired and go home now that negotiations are said to be underway. This is unlikely to happen. With thousands of protesters still in the streets the opposition is most likely telling Suleiman that their reality is much more real than that of his dictator boss. If Suleiman is wise, he will get the message and make it crystal clear to Mubarak that he has quite suddenly become a liability his nation can no longer afford. For unless Mubarak can shake off the groupthink, Egypt risks spelling liability,
A-l-g-e-r-i-a. Now that will be chaos for you.

02 February, 2011

The Cutting Edge

The toppling of dictator Ben Ali in Tunisia in the wake of mass protests and bloody street clashes has been widely recognized as signifying a major transformation in the future of politics and geopolitics for the major countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). There is little doubt that the Tunisian experience triggered the escalation of unprecedented protests in Egypt against the Mubarak regime. The question on every media pundit’s lips is, “Will events in Tunisia and Egypt have a domino effect throughout the Arab world?’

The potential fall of Hosni Mubarak is serious stuff. As The Economist points out, Egypt is “the most populous country in the Arab world”, viewed by the U.S., Britain and West as “a strategic pivot” and a “a vital ally” in the “War on Terror’. No wonder then that activists across the world are holding their breath in anticipation that one of the world’s most notorious dictators, and one of the West’s most favoured client-regimes, might be overthrown.

What is happening in Tunisia and Egypt, however, is only a manifestation of a deeper convergence of fundamental structural crises which are truly global in scale. The eruption of social and political unrest has followed the impact of deepening economic turbulence across the region, due to the inflationary impact of rocketing fuel and food prices. As of mid-January, even before Ben Ali had fled Tunis, riots were breaking out in Algeria, Morocco, Yemen and Jordan — the key grievances? Rampant unemployment, unaffordable food and consumer goods, endemic poverty, lack of basic services, and political repression.

Global Food Crisis: 2011

In many of these countries, certainly in both Tunisia and Egypt, tensions have simmered for years. The trigger, it seems, came in the form of food shortages caused by the record high global prices reported by the FAO in December 2010. The return of high food prices two to three years after the 2008 global food crisis should not be a surprise. For most of the preceding decade, world grain consumption exceeded production – correlating with agricultural land productivity declining almost by half from 1990-2007, compared to 1950-1990.

This year, global food supply chains were again “stretched to the limit” following poor harvests in Canada, Russia and Ukraine; hotter, drier weather in South America cutting soybean production; flooding in Australia, wiping out its wheat crops; not to mention the colder, stormier, snowier winters experienced in the northern hemisphere, damaging harvests.

Climate Change

So much of the current supply shortages have been inflicted by increasingly erratic weather events and natural disasters, which climate scientists have long warned are symptomatic of anthropogenic global warming. Droughts exacerbated by global warming in key food-basket regions have already led to a 10-20 per cent drop in rice yields over the last decade. By mid-century, world crop yields could fall as much as 20-40 per cent due to climate change alone.

But climate change is likely to do more than generate droughts in some regions. It is also linked to the prospect of colder weather in the eastern US, east Asia and northern Europe — as the rate of Arctic summer sea-ice is accelerating, leading to intensifying warming, the change in atmospheric pressure pushes cold Arctic air to the south. Similarly, even the floods in Australia could be linked to climate change. Scientists agree they were caused by a particularly strong El-Nino/La-Nina oscillation in the Tropical Pacific ocean-atmospheric system. But Michael McPhaden, co-author of a recent scientific study on the issue, suggests that recently stronger El-Ninos are “plausibly the result of global warming.”

Energy Depletion

The global food situation has been compounded by the over-dependence of industrial agriculture on fossil fuels, consuming ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every one calorie of food energy produced. The problem is that global conventional oil production has most likely already peaked, having been on an undulating plateau since 2005 — and forecast to steadily and inexorably decline, leading to higher prices. Although oil prices dropped after the 2008 crash due to recession, the resuscitation of economic activity has pushed up demand, leading fuel prices to creep back up to $95 a barrel.

The fuel price hikes, combining with the predatory activities of financial speculators trying to rake-in profits by investing in the commodity markets, have underpinned worldwide inflation. Just as in 2008, the worst effected have been the poorer populations of the South. Thus, the eruption of political unrest in Egypt and elsewhere cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the context of accelerating ecological, energy and economic crises — inherently interconnected problems which are symptomatic of an Empire in overstretch, a global political economy in breach of the natural limits of its environment.

Post-Peak Egypt

Indeed, Egypt is particularly vulnerable. Its oil production peaked in 1996, and since then has declined by around 26 per cent. Since the 1960s, Egypt has moved from complete food self-sufficiency to excessive dependence on imports, subsidized by oil revenues. But as Egypt’s oil revenues have steadily declined due to increasing domestic consumption of steadily declining oil, so have food subsidies, leading to surging food prices. Simultaneously, Egypt’s debt levels are horrendous — about 80.5 per cent of its GDP, far higher than most other countries in the region. Inequality is also high, intensifying over the last decade in the wake of neoliberal “structural adjustment’ reforms — widely implemented throughout the region since the 1980s with debilitating effects, including contraction of social welfare, reduction of wages, and lack of infrastructure investment. Consequently, today forty per cent of Egyptians live below the UN poverty line of less than 2 dollars a day.

Due to such vulnerabilities, Egypt, as with many of the MENA countries, now lies on the fault-lines of the convergence of global ecological, energy and economic crises — and thus, on the frontlines of deepening global system failure. The Empire is uncrumbling. The guarded official statements put out by the Obama administration only illustrate the disingenuous impotence of the U.S. position.

Imperial Surrogate

While Vice-President Joe Biden insisted that Mubarak is not a dictator, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama lamely condemned “violence” and voiced moral support for the right to protest. The slightly muted response is understandable. For the last 30 years, the U.S. has supported Mubarak’s brutal reign with economic and military assistance — currently providing $1.3 billion a year in Foreign Military Financing (FMF). The U.S. Congressional Research Service reports that additionally:

“Egypt benefits from certain aid provisions that are available to only a few other countries. Since 2000, Egypt’s FMF funds have been deposited in an interest bearing account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and have remained there until they are obligated… Egypt is allowed to set aside FMF funds for current year payments only, rather than set aside the full amount needed to meet the full cost of multi-year purchases. Cash flow financing allows Egypt to negotiate major arms purchases with U.S. defense suppliers.”

The U.S. also happens to be Egypt’s largest bilateral trading partner. It is “one of the largest single markets worldwide for American wheat and corn and is a significant importer of other agricultural commodities, machinery, and equipment.” The U.S. is also the second largest foreign investor in the country, “primarily in the oil and gas sector.”

Perhaps Biden’s denial of Mubarak’s dictatorial qualities are not that difficult to understand. Since the assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981, Egypt has officially been in a continuous “state of emergency,” which under a 1958 law permits Mubarak to oversee measures unnervingly similar to the USA Patriot Act — indefinite detention; torture; secret courts; special authority for police interventions; complete absence of privacy; and so on, ad nauseum. Not to mention the fact that inequality in the U.S. is actually higher than in Egypt.

Friends of the Family

Yet ultimately, the U.S. administration cannot absolve itself. Successive State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Egypt, while still conservative, catalogue the litany of routine police-state repression inflicted on the civilian population over the last decade by Mubarak’s security forces. When asked about the shocking findings of the 2009 report, Clinton herself downplayed the implications, describing Mubarak and his wife as “friends of my family.” So it is not that we do not know. It is that we did not care until the terror became so unbearable, that it exploded onto the streets of Cairo.

Egypt is central among a network of repressive Arab regimes which the British and Americans have actively supported since the early twentieth century to sustain control of cheap oil “at all costs”, as Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd noted in 1956, as well as to protect Israel. Declassified British Foreign Office files reviewed by historian Mark Curtis show that the Gulf sheikhdoms were largely created by Britain to “retain our influence,” while police and military assistance would help “counter hostile influence and propaganda within the countries themselves” — particularly from “ultra-nationalist maladies”. The real danger, warned the Foreign Office in 1957, was of dictators “losing their authority to reformist or revolutionary movements which might reject the connexion with the United Kingdom.”

Protracted Collapse

No wonder then that the chief fear of Western intelligence agencies and corporate risk consultants is not that mass resistance might fail to generate vibrant and viable democracies, but simply the prospect of a regional “contagion” that could destabilize “Saudi oil fields.” Such conventional analyses, of course, entirely miss the point: The American Empire, and the global political economy it has spawned, is unravelling — not because of some far-flung external danger, but under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It is unsustainable — already in overshoot of the earth’s natural systems, exhausting its own resource base, alienating the vast majority of the human and planetary population.

The solution in Tunisia, in Egypt, in the entire Middle East, and beyond, does not lay merely in aspirations for democracy. Hope can only spring from a fundamental re-evaluation of the entire structure of our civilization in its current form. If we do not use the opportunities presented by these crises to push for fundamental structural change, then the “contagion” will engulf us all.

Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in London. He is author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), which inspired the forthcoming documentary film, The Crisis of Civilization (2011).

Author’s Website: www.nafeez.blogspot.com

Author’s Bio: Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the author of ‘A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization’ [Pluto Press (UK) and Palgrave Macmillan (USA)]. Nafeez is a bestselling author and international security analyst specialising in the study of mass violence. He is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in London, and has taught international relations, contemporary history, empire and globalization at Department of International Relations, Sussex University School of Global Studies, and Brunel University’s Politics & History Unit. Nafeez’s research on international terrorism has been used by the 9/11 Commission; the US Army Air University’s “Causes of War’ collection (2007); the UK Ministry of Defence’s Joint Services Command & Staff College Research Guide on Counter-Terrorism and the GWOT (2008); Chatham House’s Middle East Programme; among others. He testified in US Congress about his research on al-Qaeda in 2005, advised the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 2009, and also gave evidence before and advised the UK Parliamentary Inquiry into the government’s ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ programme. His other books are The London Bombings (2006); The War on Truth (2005); Behind the War on Terror (2003) and The War on Freedom (2002). The latter was a finalist for the Naples Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award, in 2003.

02 February, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Recently a number of huge public commemorations have taken place in Hong Kong. Thousands of Chinese have participated to honor and commemorate the poet, the Member of Parliament and the democracy activist Szeto Wah who died on January 2, 2011. A large number of Chinese dissidents have been trying to go to Hong Kong to attend the commemoration. But sadly, many have been rejected in the airport, as a direct consequence of China’s growing influence in Hong Kong, despite of China’s promise of regional autonomy.

*Besides of Szeto Wah’s regional influence, his work has also influenced European art- and grassroot movements. As President of ‘Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China’ Szeto Wah received the Danish artist Jens Galschiot’s 8 meter tall sculpture ‘The Pillar of Shame’, which was placed in Hong Kong in 1997 as a permanent memorial to the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing 1989. Today the sculpture has also become a symbol of the Chinese threat to freedom of speech and human rights in Hong Kong, after China’s takeover of Hong Kong in 1997.

*The erection of the sculpture has caused so much anger in Beijing, that the Danish artist has been black listed in China and has several times been rejected entrance into Hong Kong despite of the agreement on visa free travel for Europeans. For this reason Jens Galschiot cannot participate in the commemoration of Szeto Wah. Being a brilliant poet

* Szeto Wah was the one who gave Chinese names to both ‘The Pillar of Shame’ and its creator Jens Galschiot.

*On the funeral day on January 29th, Jens Galschiot and his son Lasse Galschiot declare:

”We had the honor of working with Szeto Wah on several occasions. We experienced his skills as he mastered the symbolic language and used creativity to generate debate and interest in the fight for a more humanistic society.

-For example he knew how to use western art, in shape of ‘The Pillar of Shame’. Thereby internationalizing the struggle for a democratic Hong Kong, and maintain that Beijing does not have the right to restrict freedom of expression in Hong Kong. In 2008 we were denied entrance into Hong Kong, as we were taking part in the art happening ‘TheColorOrange’ which would focus on the human rights situation during the Olympics in China in 2008. But Szeto Wah was able to turn defeat into victory as he and other democracy advocates painted ‘The Pillar of Shame’ orange themselves – thereby bringing attention to the lack of freedom of speech in the country.

-We will remember Szeto Wah as a friend and a comrade in the struggle for a more humanistic world.

-The fight is far from won. But all sorts of advocates for a more humane world will commemorate Szeto Wah with honor and respect. And his visions and use of symbolic language will be an eternal source of inspiration for us to continue the fight.”

-Szeto Wah’s memorial will be a source of inspiration for future generations of democracy activists.

-*Jens Galschiot, sculptor Denmark and  Lasse Galschiot Markus, organizer and communications officer

*Contact/info/photos on Jens Galschiot: www.aidoh.dk , phone +45 6618 4058, aidoh@aidoh.dk and

Lasse Galschiot Markus +45 6170 3083

*We have collected a large number of links and photos about Szeto Wah at: http://www.aidoh.dk/Szeto

*Info: About the art happening TheColorOrange carried out in connection to the Olympics in Beijing, http://www.thecolororange.net/uk/

*Info: About the sculpture The Pillar of Shame,  http://www.aidoh.dk/HK-Pillar

*Info: AboutThe Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China      http://www.alliance.org.hk/english/index.html

*Info: About the Tiananmen massacre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989

*Info and documentation: About the Tiananmen massacre: http://www.aidoh.dk/4June89

02 February, 2011

Uruknet.info

The worms of the earth are finally turning across the Middle East and while the outcome of events within Tunisia, Jordan and Egypt have yet to be determined, the roots of these protests and revolutions lie in one common factor, which is the shared experiences of millions of people in an already turbulent region.

A joint study by the Arab League and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) indicated that in most Arab countries young people constitute 50 per cent of the unemployed – the highest rate in the world, while official figures place unemployment in the Arab world at 15 per cent but many economists believe the real rate is far higher than government statistics suggest.

According to the same report, rates of poverty remain high – “reaching up to 40 per cent on average, which means that nearly 140 million Arabs continue to live under the poverty line”, with worse news being, the region seeing no decrease in rates of poverty in the last 20 years.

While Arab countries like Jordan have been working to create an open-market economy that would see a greater flow of foreign capital into a resource-barren country, already dependent on U.S. aid, the foreign debt is estimated at around $15 billion, about double the amount reported three years ago, while the economy saw a record deficit of $2 billion this year, with inflation rising to 6.1 percent just last month alone.

Like in Egypt and Tunisia, in Jordan rampant unemployment and poverty is estimated between 12 and 25 percent, with local residents complaining that “The government buys cars and spends lavishly on its parties and travel, while many Jordanians are jobless or can barely put food on their tables to feed their hungry children,” said one civil servant and father of three, who earns $395 a month.

It was not until the global economic crisis that the Arab world started to witness the recovery of popular opposition – first materialising in Egypt in 2007 and 2008, where strikes and protests were the first indications of a return to organised protests against political repression and poverty inducing policies.

These movements, while in the past have either gained concessions or been unsuccessful, they did lay the foundations which brought the students and workers together to challenge the apathy and disdain of the ruling elites.

According to Firas Al-Atraqchi, a lecturer at the American University in Cairo, “In an unprecedented show of civil disobedience and open revolt, young Egyptians have clearly and forcibly delivered a message that is still resonating in the Middle East and North Africa: Authoritarian rule in the region is over”.

The protesters have been dismantling archaic forms of government, in which the ruler is considered beyond reproach and where economic policies are determined by his self-preserving allies. They are demanding equality in the distribution of wealth, an end to state corruption, greater employment opportunities and a curb to rampant inflation.

Yet when street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi poured flammable liquid over his body and set himself on fire in Tunisia, his act of protest cemented a revolt that would ultimately end President Ben Ali’s 23-year-rule and send the region into flames.

Bouazizi was only 10 years old when he became the main provider for his family, selling fresh produce in the local market. He stayed in high school long enough to sit his baccalaureate exam, but did not graduate. He never attended university, contrary to what many news organisations have reported but as his mother stated to Al-Jazeera; “He didn’t expect to study, because we didn’t have the money”.

He later applied to join the army but was refused, as were other successive job applications and with his family dependant on him, there were few other options than to continue working at the market and nearly everyday, he was bullied by local police officers, “Since he was a child, they were mistreating him”, even claimed one close friend.

Apparently the abuse took many forms, mostly petty bureaucratic bullying that millions of Arabs know all too well, with incidents including Police confiscating his produce, fines for running a stall without a permit and even six months before his death, police fined him 400 dinars ($280) – the equivalent of two months earnings.

So while people may debate the rights and wrongs of what is taking place on their TV screens, the sound of the young angry Arabs who are leading this regional revolution, conjures up in my mind one poem by Maya Angelou, who wrote:

“Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.”

Hussein Al-alak is a journalist, campaigner and chairman of Iraq Solidarity UK.

03 January, 2011

Democracynow.org

In recent weeks, popular uprisings in the Arab world have led to the ouster of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the imminent end of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, a new Jordanian government, and a pledge by Yemen’s longtime dictator to leave office at the end of his term. We speak to MIT Professor Noam Chomsky about what this means for the future of the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in the region. When asked about President Obama’s remarks last night on Mubarak, Chomsky said: “Obama very carefully didn’t say anything… He’s doing what U.S. leaders regularly do. As I said, there is a playbook: whenever a favored dictator is in trouble, try to sustain him, hold on; if at some point it becomes impossible, switch sides.” We continued the interview with Chomsky for 50 minutes after the live show. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: For analysis of the Egyptian uprising and its implications for the Middle East and beyond, we’re joined now by the world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred books, including his latest, Hopes and Prospects.

Noam, welcome to Democracy Now! Your analysis of what’s happening now in Egypt and what it means for the Middle East?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, first of all, what’s happening is absolutely spectacular. The courage and determination and commitment of the demonstrators is remarkable. And whatever happens, these are moments that won’t be forgotten and are sure to have long-term consequences, as the fact that they overwhelmed the police, took Tahrir Square, are staying there in the face of organized pro-Mubarak mobs, organized by the government to try to either drive them out or to set up a situation in which the army will claim to have to move in to restore order and then to maybe install some kind of military rule, whatever. It’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen. But the events have been truly spectacular. And, of course, it’s all over the Middle East. In Yemen, in Jordan, just about everywhere, there are the major consequences.

The United States, so far, is essentially following the usual playbook. I mean, there have been many times when some favored dictator has lost control or is in danger of losing control. There’s a kind of a standard routine—Marcos, Duvalier, Ceausescu, strongly supported by the United States and Britain, Suharto: keep supporting them as long as possible; then, when it becomes unsustainable—typically, say, if the army shifts sides—switch 180 degrees, claim to have been on the side of the people all along, erase the past, and then make whatever moves are possible to restore the old system under new names. That succeeds or fails depending on the circumstances.

And I presume that’s what’s happening now. They’re waiting to see whether Mubarak can hang on, as it appears he’s intending to do, and as long as he can, say, “Well, we have to support law and order, regular constitutional change,” and so on. If he cannot hang on, if the army, say, turns against him, then we’ll see the usual routine played out. Actually, the only leader who has been really forthright and is becoming the most—maybe already is—the most popular figure in the region is the Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan, who’s been very straight and outspoken.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam, I wanted to play for you what President Obama had to say yesterday.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We have spoken out on behalf of the need for change. After his speech tonight, I spoke directly to President Mubarak. He recognizes that the status quo is not sustainable and that a change must take place. Indeed, all of us who are privileged to serve in positions of political power do so at the will of our people. Through thousands of years, Egypt has known many moments of transformation. The voices of the Egyptian people tell us that this is one of those moments, this is one of those times. Now, it is not the role of any other country to determine Egypt’s leaders. Only the Egyptian people can do that. What is clear, and what I indicated tonight to President Mubarak, is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama speaking yesterday in the White House. Noam Chomsky, your response to what President Obama said, the disappointment of many that he didn’t demand that Mubarak leave immediately? More importantly, the role of the United States, why the U.S. would have any say here, when it comes to how much it has supported the regime?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, Obama very carefully didn’t say anything. Mubarak would agree that there should be an orderly transition, but to what? A new cabinet, some minor rearrangement of the constitutional order—it’s empty. So he’s doing what U.S. leaders regularly do. As I said, there is a playbook: whenever a favored dictator is in trouble, try to sustain him, hold on; if at some point it becomes impossible, switch sides.

The U.S. has an overwhelmingly powerful role there. Egypt is the second-largest recipient over a long period of U.S. military and economic aid. Israel is first. Obama himself has been highly supportive of Mubarak. It’s worth remembering that on his way to that famous speech in Cairo, which was supposed to be a conciliatory speech towards the Arab world, he was asked by the press—I think it was the BBC—whether he was going to say anything about what they called Mubarak’s authoritarian government. And Obama said, no, he wouldn’t. He said, “I don’t like to use labels for folks. Mubarak is a good man. He has done good things. He has maintained stability. We will continue to support him. He is a friend.” And so on. This is one of the most brutal dictators of the region, and how anyone could have taken Obama’s comments about human rights seriously after that is a bit of a mystery. But the support has been very powerful in diplomatic dimensions. Military—the planes flying over Tahrir Square are, of course, U.S. planes. The U.S. is the—has been the strongest, most solid, most important supporter of the regime. It’s not like Tunisia, where the main supporter was France. They’re the primary guilty party there. But in Egypt, it’s clearly the United States, and of course Israel. Israel is—of all the countries in the region, Israel, and I suppose Saudi Arabia, have been the most outspoken and supportive of the Mubarak regime. In fact, Israeli leaders were angry, at least expressed anger, that Obama hadn’t taken a stronger stand in support of their friend Mubarak.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what this means for the Middle East, Noam Chomsky. I mean, we’re talking about the massive protests that have taken place in Jordan, to the point where King Abdullah has now dismissed his cabinet, appointed a new prime minister. In Yemen there are major protests. There is a major protest called for Syria. What are the implications of this, the uprising from Tunisia to Egypt now?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, this is the most remarkable regional uprising that I can remember. I mean, it’s sometimes compared with Eastern Europe, but that’s not much of a comparison. For one thing, in this case, there’s no counterpart to Gorbachev among the—in the United States or other great powers supporting the dictatorships. That’s a huge difference. Another is that in the case of Eastern Europe, the United States and its allies followed the timeworn principle that democracy is fine, at least up to a point, if it accords with strategic and economic objectives, so therefore acceptable in enemy domains, but not in our own. That’s a well-established principle, and of course that sharply differentiates these two cases. In fact, about the only moderately reasonable comparison would be to Romania, where Ceausescu, the most vicious of the dictators of the region, was very strongly supported by the United States right up ’til the end. And then, when he—the last days, when he was overthrown and killed, the first Bush administration followed the usual rules: postured about being on the side of the people, opposed to dictatorship, tried to arrange for a continuation of close relations.

But this is completely different. Where it’s going to lead, nobody knows. I mean, the problems that the protesters are trying to address are extremely deep-seated, and they’re not going to be solved easily. There is a tremendous poverty, repression, a lack of not just democracy, but serious development. Egypt and other countries of the region have just been through a neoliberal period, which has led to growth on paper, but with the usual consequences: high concentration of extreme wealth and privilege, tremendous impoverishment and dismay for most of the population. And that’s not easily changed. We should also remember that, as far as the United States is concerned, what’s happening is a very old story. As far back as the 1950s, President Eisenhower was—

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds in the segment, Noam.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Pardon?

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds left in the segment.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Oh.

AMY GOODMAN: Make your point on Eisenhower.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, shall I go on?

AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds. If you could—we’ll save that for our web exclusive right afterwards. We’ve been speaking with Noam Chomsky. You can go to our website at democracynow.org, and we’ll play more of our interview with him tomorrow on Democracy Now

04 February, 2011

JuanCole.com

It should be remembered that Egypt’s elite of multi-millionaires has benefited enormously from its set of corrupt bargains with the US and Israel and from the maintenance of a martial law regime that deflects labor demands and pesky human rights critiques. It is no wonder that to defend his billions and those of his cronies, Hosni Mubarak was perfectly willing to order thousands of his security thugs into the Tahrir Square to beat up and expel the demonstrators, leaving 7 dead and over 800 wounded, 200 of them just on Thursday morning

Tahrir Square

It might seem surprising that Mubarak was so willing to defy the Obama administration’s clear hint that he sould quickly transition out of power. In fact, Mubarak’s slap in the face of President Obama will not be punished and it is nothing new. It shows again American toothlessness and weakness in the Middle East, and will encourage the enemies of the US to treat it with similar disdain.

The tail has long wagged the dog in American Middle East policy. The rotten order of the modern Middle East has been based on wily local elites stealing their way to billions while they took all the aid they could from the United States, even as they bit the hand that fed them. First the justification was the putative threat of International Communism (which however actually only managed to gather up for itself the dust of Hadramawt in South Yemen and the mangy goats milling around broken-down Afghan villages). More recently the cover story has been the supposed threat of radical Islam, which is a tiny fringe phenomenon in most of the Middle East that in some large part was sowed by US support for the extremists in the Cold War as a foil to the phantom of International Communism. And then there is the set of myths around Israel, that it is necessary for the well-being of the world’s Jews, that it is an asset to US security, that it is a great ethical enterprise– all of which are patently false.

On such altars are the labor activists, youthful idealists, human rights workers, and democracy proponents in Egypt being sacrificed with the silver dagger of filthy lucre.

Mubarak is taking his cues for impudence from the far rightwing government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which began the Middle Eastern custom of humiliating President Barack Obama with impunity. Obama came into office pledging finally to move smartly to a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Netanyahu government did not have the slightest intention of allowing a Palestinian state to come into existence. Israel was founded on the primal sin of expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in what is now Israel, and then conniving at keeping them stateless, helpless and weak ever after. Those who fled the machine guns of the Irgun terrorist group to the West Bank and Gaza, where they dwelt in squalid refugee camps, were dismayed to see the Israelis come after them in 1967 and occupy them and further dispossess them. This slow genocide against a people that had been recognized as a Class A Mandate by the League of Nations and scheduled once upon a time for independent statehood is among the worst ongoing crimes of one people against another in the world. Many governments are greedy to rule over people reluctant to be so ruled. But no other government but Israel keeps millions of people stateless while stealing their land and resources or maintaining them in a state of economic blockade and food insecurity.

The Rotten Status Quo

The policy of the United States has been for the most part to accommodate this Israeli policy and to collaborate in the maltreatment of the Palestinians. Those states and groups that refuse to acquiesce in this egregious policy of epochal injustice are targeted by the US Congress for sanctions and branded terrorists and aggressors. As a sop to all the hundreds of millions of critics of the serial rape of the Palestinians, the US at most occasionally makes noises about achieving a “state” for them, which, however, would have no real sovereignty over its borders, its land, its air or its water. The price of such a eunuch state would be for the Palestinians to renounce their birthright and acquiesce in their expropriation and reduction to the flotsam of the earth.

And the Netanyahu government even disdained the tepid proposals of the Obama administration, for such an emasculated Palestinian “state”, which had to be willing to recognize Israel as a “Jewish” state, thus implicitly denaturalizing the 20% of the population that is Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

Because Israel’s enterprise in denying Palestinian statehood is so unnatural and so, at its fundament, immoral, it can only be pursued by the exercise of main force and by the infusion of billions of dollars a year into a poverty-stricken region. The US has in one way or another transferred over $100 billion to Israel so as to ensure it can remain a tenuous fortress on the edge of the Mediterranean, serving some US interests while keeping the millions of Palestinians in thrall.

US military aid to Israel allowed that country to prevail over Egypt in 1967 and 1973, and forced the Egyptian elite to seek an exit from ruinous wars. Anwar El Sadat decided ultimately to betray the hapless Palestinians and seek a separate peace. For removing all pressure on Israel by the biggest Arab nation with the best Arab military, Egypt has been rewarded with roughly $2 billion in US aid every year, not to mention favorable terms for importation of sophisticated weaponry and other perquisites. This move allowed the Israelis to invade and occupy part of Lebanon in 1982-2000, and then to launch massively destructive wars on virtually defenseless Lebanese and Gaza Palestinians more recently. Cairo under Mubarak is as opposed to Shiite Hizbullah in Lebanon and fundamentalist Hamas in Gaza as is Tel Aviv. The regime of Hosni Mubarak appears to have taken some sort of bribe to send substantial natural gas supplies to Israel at a deep discount. It has joined in the blockade against the civilians of Gaza. It acts as Israel’s handmaid in oppressing the Palestinians, and is bribed to do so by the US.

The US-backed military dictatorship in Egypt has become, amusingly enough, a Bonapartist state. It exercises power on behalf of both a state elite and a new wealthy business class, some members of which gained their wealth from government connections and corruption. The Egypt of the Separate Peace, the Egypt of tourism and joint military exercises with the United States, is also an Egypt ruled by the few for the benefit of the few.

The whole system is rotten, deeply dependent on exploiting the little people, on taking bribes from the sole superpower to pursue self-defeating or greedy policies virtually no one wants or would vote for in the region.

So the Palestinians objected to Obama’s plan to start back up direct negotiations with the Israelis in 2009, on the grounds that the Israelis were rapidly colonizing the Palestinian West Bank and were taking off the table the very territory over which negotiations were supposedly being conducted. Even the corrupt and timid Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as president has actually ended but who stayed on in the absence of new elections, demanded an end to new Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory (including lands unilaterally annexed to the Israeli district of Jerusalem in contravention of international law).

The Obama administration thought it had an agreement from Netanyahu to freeze settlements, and sent Joe Biden out to inaugurate the new peace promise. But when Biden came to Israel, he was humiliated by an Israeli announcement that it would build a new colony outside Jerusalem on land that Palestinians claimed. Then when the ‘settlement freeze’ in the West Bank proper came to an end during negotiations, Netanyahu announced that it would not be extended.

In other words, Netanyahu has since early 2009 taken billions in American money but told the US government to jump in a lake. The Obama administration did nothing, nothing whatsoever to punish this outrageous behavior.

So it can come as no surprise that Obama, Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been humiliated by Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. They told him to transition out of power. Instead, he on Wednesday and Thursday initiated the Massacre of Liberation Square, which has wounded nearly 1,000 people, most of them peaceful protesters.

Just as Netanyahu takes Washington’s billions but then pisses all over American policy objectives with regard to erecting a Palestinian State Lite, so Mubarak has stuffed tens of billions of dollars from Washington into his government’s pockets but has humiliated and endangered the United States.

When Netanyahu steals Palestinian property or deprives Gaza Palestinians of their livelihoods, and when Mubarak uses American military aid to crush a popular demonstration, they underline to the peoples of the Middle East that their corrupt and unacceptable situation is underwritten by Washington. That message generates fury at the United States.

As long as the president and the Congress are willing to lie down and serve as doormats for America’s supposed allies in the Middle East– out of a conviction of the usefulness of their clients and the inexpensiveness of putting them on retainer– there will be anti-Americanism and security threats that force us to subject ourselves to humiliating patdowns and scans at the airport and an erosion of our civil liberties every day. We are only one step away of being treated, with “protest zones” and “Patriot Acts” just as badly as the peaceful Egyptian protesters have been.

4 February, 2011

Countercurrents.org

It’s might be a special Middle East domino, pieces that fall one by one, all rigidly American and western allies, that have long been nurtured into a special relationship based on mutual interests. However, it might be too simplistic to believe that falls are inevitable but it is of no doubt, however, changes in the political map of the Middle East is imminent and 2011 could well be remembered as the year of winds of change.

The impending Sudanese split between north and south into two states is turning out to be miniscule compared to the regime removal in Tunisia of Zain Alabidine Ben Ali. Egypt is about to follow next in the domino game with the current regime facing increasing pressure to leave, with calls for President Husni Mubarak to abdicate from office.

The United States and Europe previously in disbelief, later apprehension are now in sober acceptance that their long-term ally Husni Mubarak is on shaky grounds and that his position as president is no longer tenable. As they did in the past, they don’t want to continue to back the wrong horse as they did with the Shah in Iran in the face of the mass demonstrations that finally lead to his downfall in 1978.

As repeated by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama himself there must be an “orderly transition” and the establishment of a real democratic system in Egypt and such must may be made “quickly” and not in September 2011, a reference to what Mubarak early said about not fighting presidential elections set for that month.

Everyone is bracing themselves for the second piece of the domino to fall and appear to be accepting it well in the light of the dramatic strategic changes that could follow in a post-Mubarak era.

Also, Obama is appearing to be giving up so quickly on an American erstwhile ally who has far outstayed his welcome in office in spite of the converging of interests over the decades since 1981 when Mubarak first took office.

The US president might be hoping that if he sides with the Egyptian people now, the United States can still salvage some of her relations in a post-Mubarak scenario, given her traditional social, political and economic relations with the regime. It is now time to switch sides.

In reality the Egyptian uprising so-called, crisis or revolution, is creating a global strategic situation with many of the world powers holding their breath and heart beats because of the far-reaching consequences a post-Mubarak Egypt would have on the political and security dimensions, alliances and blocs on the local, regional and international levels.

Locally nationalists, liberals, leftists and Islamists could be in line for the formation of the next government in Egypt under a post-Mubarak administration that would involve the first time free elections rather than fixtures, fixing, and manipulations of the system and ballot boxes. This would be in spite of the fact Americans, Europeans and Israelis are not making it a secret about fearing a government dominated by Islamists, which would certainly have an effect on the geo-strategic relations of the area.

But the revolution taking place, the protests, demonstrations and rallies, are being lead by young people, internet buffs, experts at online connectivity who have been quickly joined by the middle classes and professionals.

It is not being seen as an uprising lead by political parties and political movements those that have existed in one way or another under this regime like the Wafd and the Muslim Brotherhoods who have build a mass following despite being made illegal in the 1950s.

On the regional level, a new administration could very well alter the traditional regional alliances and interests. Egypt has long been seen within the Saudi Arabia-Jordan axis, and under a new government it might tilt towards Syria, that is if indeed rule there remains within the confines of the Baath political party. The coming period is fluid, murky, and probably very unstable where conjectural analysis is difficult to make.

What is being said is that the regime is fighting its last breath trying to make concessions, but trying to stay in power through extending its hands to the opposition. Mubarak, has for instance appointed a first ever first vice president in tough security chief Omar Sulieman to try and establish a dialogue with the opposition.

On the international level, and in a post-system change, there could certainly be more room for the return of Russia into the Middle East orbit, harking back to the old days of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s when the then Soviet Union had a strong presence in Egypt.

The Egyptian door could become more ajar to China as a new and potential ally, no doubt as a business and economic market, and even as a sphere of political influence. However, China is still not rocking the boat too much, trying to shield its own population from seeing the mass demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and other Egyptian cities lest their own would start demanding change.

Israel is worried because of the potential loss of a strategic partner in Husni Mubarak. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is in deep tension. As far as Israel is concerned, and despite the fact that there exists at best a frosty normalization between the two countries, Cairo is at present, neutralized through the peace treaty signed between the two countries in 1979. Under a new Egyptian domino fall, such cold relations could hot up again because Egyptians have never accepted normalization with Israel.

The rest of the Arab world is in a flux of excitement and trepidation, there is a new sense of political change from its western shores of Africa to the Arabian Gulf where everyone is watching, meditating, speculating whether a New Middle Eastern order is being built. To dampen the impact, Kuwait for instance recently paid each of its citizens, young and old, 1000 Kuwait Dinars (around $3000) in token of their appreciation to them in a farfetched scenario that Kuwaitis might rise against their political system.

But the people of Algeria, Jordan, Yemen and Syria have not been so lucky, taking the brunt of international hikes on their local economies, resulting in soaring prices, and high unemployment. Many have been lending muted support, even pleasure with many albeit outside the region asking which piece of the domino would fall next in the Middle East.

It is argued all of the initial four could be candidates for the next political upheaval and problems as they all experienced demonstrations and mass rallies in protest at raising food prices, and low wages in their home countries.

For some reason however, international commentators are putting their bets in Jordan to fall despite its globalized nature, political pluralism and parliamentary representation. The monarch, King Abdullah has finally heeded calls led by the opposition and the Islamic Action Front and removed Prime Minister Samir Al Rifai and his government.

However, the opposition, have stressed that their call for political reform does not, in no way, mean regime change as it is the case in Egypt. There demonstrations have started from the hundreds of thousands to around a million in one day, and with levels of violence coming from pro-Mubarak demonstrators who are feared to be government agents sent on the streets.

It is from seeing these demonstrators from afar that prompted Yemeni President to come on the scene and say he will not be re-standing in the next presidential elections in 2013. He would also suspend legislation that would make him president for life and he wouldn’t be grooming his son to take over, something which Mubarak was doing with his son Jamal from as early as 1999.

Judging from the level of demonstrations that have been taking place in Yemen almost on a daily basis—one estimated at 5000 in the capital Sanaa—and those in the country. Saleh may have offered his last statement as a token in hope the public would not step up pressure against him and back off from demand for his removal being openly made on the streets.

In between choosing Jordan and Yemen, it should be plain to see it is the latter that is expected as the next domino piece to fall because of level opposition the Yemeni president is facing internally, and from the Houthi sect in the north of the country. Their demands lie between a complete split from the Yemeni state to greater equality with their other Yemeni brethrens and the rest of the country.

For the United States, it’s simply a strategic equation. Although, and it is no doubt, Yemen has been important in fighting Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaada, and has strategic worth on the Red Sea, the priorities have always been to the geographical north. It is to Saudi Arabia and Jordan with the latter serving a very important part of the link and domino as bulwark against radicalism in the midst of Israel to the east, the Palestinians, Hizbollah and Syria further to the north as well as bloody, chaotic Iraq to the east.

Literally overnight, the Arab world has become nightmare scenario for the American administration, and that is maybe why they are paying particular attention to Jordan, a traditional all of the West and the United States, and who like Egypt, has been buttressed with much American aid.

And so, Jordan is definitely not a kingdom that is seen as an entity going to fall because of its geography, politics, stability and security, and the United States will make sure it will not fall or be nowhere near in falling because of the unique nature of its strategic role in the region.

As well, and on the contrary, if Egypt does fall, the United States would likely double its efforts to make sure Jordan will remain stable and secure. Any other way would mean American policy has failed miserably in the region and that would shatter the image of its hegemony in the global system, and give rise to the reemergence of multipolarity as opposed to its current unipolar dominance gained since the end of the Cold War and of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.