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29 January, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Beirut: This observer tends to get a haircut about every four months whether I need it or not. But this morning I got more than a trim from my Hezbollah friend and barber, Abass, named after Abass ibn Ali, the brother of Hussein, both martyrs and heroes of the epic 680 a.d. internecine Muslim battle at Karbala in present day Iraq. The Battle of Karbala, for Hezbollah members and Shia Muslims generally, symbolizes the triumph of good over evil and the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for justice and the greater good of one’s family, community or “Ummah.” The reason for mentioning this is that my barber was ecstatic and claims his party has just experienced a “Karbala moment!”

When I mentioned that his statement could be taken different ways, since all the resistance fighters were killed at Karbala, Abass continued:

“Well, what I mean is that we in Hezbollah are pretty well known for kicking and keeping the Zionists out of Lebanon but our Party also seems to be catching on how to work in Lebanese and regional politics. And our people will benefit as we create social programs and honest government for the first time in Lebanese history. Do you agree that we are beginning to play the Lebanese political game pretty well?”

I do agree.

With a speed that surprised many here, and with equally surprising cross-sectarian acquiescence this morning, Hezbollah and its allies constitutionally toppled Hariri’s government, constitutionally imposed new consultations to form a new government, and constitutionally transformed a minority into a majority and vice versa.

Hezbollah is known for studying political subjects very carefully and being quite flexible when events warrant. Two weeks ago when the Party of God pulled 11 MPs from the pro-US Saad Hariri government, it was thinking about nominating former PM Omar Karami to replace Hariri. The two time former Prime Minister, Karami, is strongly pro-Syrian, supports the Resistance and Hezbollah keeping its weapons. He also has zero use for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon that will likely indict a minimum of four Hezbollah officials. Now in his eighties, Karami is still fairly spry and may have assumed the post, if Hezbollah formally offered. In fact he might have thought the job was his but in the midst of fast moving events, Hezbollah decided to opt for nominating Nigib Mikati an American educated, Sunni billionaire who made lots of money in telecommunications and a lot more when a South African firm bought his company. Moreover, Sayyed Nasrallah said in his last speech that Omar Karami was the favored candidate, but the latter did not offer to take the job due to his old age. So the best thing to do was thought to be to talk to Mikati, as he is known to be a centrist and that his candidacy would have a less negative impact on the Hariri camp. Mikati is not close to Hezbollah and certainly has never been an ally.

In fact, Hezbollah, the Saudis, Europeans, and increasingly the Americans support Mikati as a World Bank type technocrat along the lines of former Lebanese PM Fuad Siniora or Salam Fayyad in Palestine but who can hopefully, not just ignore, but help clean up the governments rampant corruption. Hezbollah’s nominee Mikati is known as a pro western moderate who was elected to Parliament in 2009 on the US backed Hariri ticket. The US would publically endorse him except for the fact that Hezbollah nominated him with Iranian, Syrian and Saudi backing. This hostile reactive US stance may change because Washington will find it difficult to boycott Mikati since the Europeans are endorsing him. Also, the negative international reaction to the Hariri camp violence on 1/27/11 in Tripoli and Beirut is awkward for the Obama administration to justify since the US has accused the Hezbollah led opposition of using “terrorist tactics” when some elements thought to be allied with the party engaged in similar street violence in the past. So the shoe is now on the other foot.

Some of the early winners and losers 48 hours following what the pro-US March 14 team and the US State Department are still calling “the coup”:

Saad Hariri and his US backed Future Movement: Both are big political losers this morning but Saad still has a couple of important options. For the past nearly two years Saad was told by the US Embassy that Washington wanted him to “hang tough” and refuse to compromise on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The US conceived and engineered the STL in the UN Security Council to get Syria out of Lebanon and Bashar Assad out of Damascus following the Valentine Day 2005 murder of PM Rafik Hariri and 22 others.

Saad obediently did as told and consequently lost his premiership. Hezbollah warned him several times that he would be out if he did not disavow the STL which Hezbollah views as nothing more than a US-Israeli bludgeon to try to destroy it. When the Hezbollah led opposition pulled down his government on January 12, 2011, Saad was ready to fight to keep his job. But his US and Saudi backers “stabbed Saad in the back as did some of his closest political and personal friends,” according to a Future Movement source.

Meanwhile, both Saudi Arabia and the Obama Administration realized that Saad could not secure the 65 votes from Parliament (they were right; he got just 60) so they decided to let Syria name the non-ideologue, Nigab Mikati, a personal friend of President Bashar Assad. Omar Karami may have been the first choice but he too was dropped because he also could not get 65 votes and had a checkered past including being too cozy with Syria. The US and the KSA decided better to let Syria back into the Lebanese Government than risk Iran taking complete control.

Saad Hariri reportedly feels betrayed by his fellow Sunni billionaire alliance member Mikati, who he got elected MP in 2009 on his personal ticket. But in reality Mikati’s 87% election results showed that his candidacy helped Hariri’s candidates because Mikati’s name was on the ballot as part of the Hariri list. Nevertheless, their meeting yesterday morning lasted about 6 minutes and was stone cold. The Hariri TV channels including Future TV chose to publish just 30 seconds of the encounter. When Hariri left the meeting and was asked by a journalist if he would join the Mikati government he said “Lashou.” ( meaning: “For what?, or what’s the use?” ).

Just hours later, the March 14 alliance informed Makati that it would not participate in his government. But both may still. The Saudi’s are already encouraging Saad to swallow his pride and cooperate with the next government. Eventually the Americans will likely also after they get over their shock and sour grapes and Jeffrey Feltman talks with the French and some Europeans leaders this weekend.

This morning, Saad is said to be still inconsolable by yesterday afternoon’s private session with the US Ambassador, the motherly Maury Connelly, and repeated this morning that he will not join a government “appointed by Hezbollah.” But his March 14 movement leadership is qualifying his rejection and strongly pressing PM designate Makati to put in writing for all to see a commitment that his government will not under any circumstances accept the three Hezbollah no’s. They are: no STL funding, no STL Lebanese judges working at the STL, and no Lebanese government cooperation with the STL including scrapping the Lebanese-UN Memorandum of Understanding pledging cooperation on such matter as arresting and extraditing those soon to be named by the STL.

March 14, including their leader Hariri, is still insisting on their price for participation, which is that the new government support the STL and that the Lebanese government control Hezbollah’s arms. They will lose on both demands as Hezbollah will not budge on either. Yet, discussions are being held on how to resolve these issues and, unlikely as it may appear at the moment, solutions may be found to dissolve these ‘red lines’.

If Saad stays out of the Mikati government, he will champion the STL but he will lose more March 14th support because some of his closest team members are said to be planning to jump ship and to put politics about their claimed principles in order to grab some well-paid Cabinet chairs. March 14, via Fuad Sinoria, their Parliamentary leader is making lots of noise about Hezbollah weapons but it’s largely as a bargaining chip ploy to get good cabinet posts when the time is right.

This current March14, playing hard to get stance, suits US diplomat Jeffrey Feltman, one of the architects of the 2005 “Cedar Revolution” and who is currently on his 62nd trip to the region to assure anyone listening that he and the US government “respects the sovereignty, freedom, and independence” of Lebanon, whatever any of those words mean anymore, given US actions in the region. In Paris yesterday, Feltman repeated that there persists mutual French-U.S. concern on how the Hariri cabinet was “toppled under threat and intimidation” and he emphasized the need for the US and its allies to press for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1701 (disarm Hezbollah) and 1757 (indict and convict Hezbollah).

Jeff could be forgiven for feeling a little bit like Saeb Erekat when on 10/21/09 the soon to be ex-PA “peace negotiator” complained to George Mitchell that, “The region is slipping away like sand through our hands.” Feltman, not for the first time, is under great pressure from Washington and Tel Aviv to “do something!”

Rampant rumors circulating here include one that the US Embassy could be closed if, as expected, the US and Israel launch the expected massive international defamation and vilification campaign in the coming weeks timed to drive home the expected STL indictments that Washington believes will include key Hezbollah officials.

Hezbollah has the most direct control over the government of Lebanon including the Parliament, the next 30 seat Cabinet, and the government bureaucracy. Contrary to US-Israel claims the party is not thrilled with having the chance to run the government. Hezbollah sees itself as a resistance movement first, last, and always and many in the party do not relish its “pure mandate” being sullied or getting sidetracked by running Lebanon’s really complicated government.

Hezbollah will now push its clean government and anti-corruption agenda and get it enacted into law but the party is quite content to leave it to others to work constantly with all those self-absorbed sects and their leaders. To a large extent, it will operate through MPs who are not Hezbollah party members. It intends to immediately begin work on improving the big Four issues that all Lebanese urgently want addressed: water, electricity, pollution, traffic among others including the environment and jobs creation. Hezbollah wants to be seen as serving the people while it builds its resistance movement. It is preparing to unveil its domestic legislative agenda which will include most of the ten ‘good government’ initiatives that its ally Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri delivered to Mikati yesterday.

Hezbollah’s 12-member bloc told the new Prime Minster that it favored a government of “national partnership,” according to its head MP Mohammad Raad who advised the media: “Hezbollah did not set pre-conditions [on Mikati] and we won’t accept such a thing. We did not ask for specific portfolios and we await the formation process.”

Iran benefited with important political gains as it continues to rise and move in the region in the direction of Palestine. The United States’ hegemony continues to recede in the region and is increasingly viewed, post Palestine Papers, as the enemy of Arabs and Muslim. Its pariah status grows because Washington continues to prop up, fund and arm the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon can is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

30 January, 2011

The Independent

Robert Fisk joins protesters atop a Cairo tank as the army shows signs of backing the people against Mubarak’s regime

The Egyptian tanks, the delirious protesters sitting atop them, the flags, the 40,000 protesters weeping and crying and cheering in Freedom Square and praying around them, the Muslim Brotherhood official sitting amid the tank passengers. Should this be compared to the liberation of Bucharest? Climbing on to an American-made battle tank myself, I could only remember those wonderful films of the liberation of Paris. A few hundred meters away, Hosni Mubarak’s black-uniformed security police were still firing at demonstrators near the interior ministry. It was a wild, historical victory celebration, Mubarak’s own tanks freeing his capital from his own dictatorship.

In the pantomime world of Mubarak himself – and of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Washington – the man who still claims to be president of Egypt swore in the most preposterous choice of vice-president in an attempt to soften the fury of the protesters – Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s chief negotiator with Israel and his senior intelligence officer, a 75-year-old with years of visits to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and four heart attacks to his credit. How this elderly apparatchik might be expected to deal with the anger and joy of liberation of 80 million Egyptians is beyond imagination. When I told the demonstrators on the tank around me the news of Suleiman’s appointment, they burst into laughter.

Their crews, in battledress and smiling and in some cases clapping their hands, made no attempt to wipe off the graffiti that the crowds had spray-painted on their tanks. “Mubarak Out – Get Out”, and “Your regime is over, Mubarak” have now been plastered on almost every Egyptian tank on the streets of Cairo. On one of the tanks circling Freedom Square was a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Beltagi. Earlier, I had walked beside a convoy of tanks near the suburb of Garden City as crowds scrambled on to the machines to hand oranges to the crews, applauding them as Egyptian patriots. However crazed Mubarak’s choice of vice-president and his gradual appointment of a powerless new government of cronies, the streets of Cairo proved what the United States and EU leaders have simply failed to grasp. It is over.

Mubarak’s feeble attempts to claim that he must end violence on behalf of the Egyptian people – when his own security police have been responsible for most of the cruelty of the past five days – has elicited even further fury from those who have spent 30 years under his sometimes vicious dictatorship. For there are growing suspicions that much of the looting and arson was carried out by plainclothes cops – including the murder of 11 men in a rural village in the past 24 hours – in an attempt to destroy the integrity of the protesters campaigning to throw Mubarak out of power. The destruction of a number of communications centers by masked men – which must have been co-ordinated by some form of institution – has also raised suspicions that the plainclothes thugs who beat many of the demonstrators were to blame.

But the torching of police stations across Cairo and in Alexandria and Suez and other cities was obviously not carried out by plainclothes cops. Late on Friday, driving to Cairo 40 miles down the Alexandria highway, crowds of young men had lit fires across the highway and, when cars slowed down, demanded hundreds of dollars in cash. Yesterday morning, armed men were stealing cars from their owners in the center of Cairo.

Infinitely more terrible was the vandalism at the Egyptian National Museum. After police abandoned this greatest of ancient treasuries, looters broke into the red-painted building and smashed 4,000-year-old pharaonic statues, Egyptian mummies and magnificent wooden boats, originally carved – complete with their miniature crews – to accompany kings to their graves. Glass cases containing priceless figurines were bashed in, the black-painted soldiers inside pushed over. Again, it must be added that there were rumors before the discovery that police caused this vandalism before they fled the museum on Friday night. Ghastly shades of the Baghdad museum in 2003. It wasn’t as bad as that looting, but it was a most awful archeological disaster.

In my night journey from 6th October City to the capital, I had to slow down when darkened vehicles loomed out of the darkness. They were smashed, glass scattered across the road, slovenly policemen pointing rifles at my headlights. One jeep was half burned out. They were the wreckage of the anti-riot police force which the protesters forced out of Cairo on Friday. Those same demonstrators last night formed a massive circle around Freedom Square to pray, “Allah Alakbar” thundering into the night air over the city.

And there are also calls for revenge. An al-Jazeera television crew found 23 bodies in the Alexandria mortuary, apparently shot by the police. Several had horrifically mutilated faces. Eleven more bodies were discovered in a Cairo mortuary, relatives gathering around their bloody remains and screaming for retaliation against the police.

Cairo now changes from joy to sullen anger within minutes. Yesterday morning, I walked across the Nile river bridge to watch the ruins of Mubarak’s 15-story party headquarters burn. In front stood a vast poster advertising the benefits of the party – pictures of successful graduates, doctors and full employment, the promises which Mubarak’s party had failed to deliver in 30 years – outlined by the golden fires curling from the blackened windows of the party headquarters. Thousands of Egyptians stood on the river bridge and on the motorway flyovers to take pictures of the fiercely burning building – and of the middle-aged looters still stealing chairs and desks from inside.

Yet the moment a Danish television team arrived to film exactly the same scenes, they were berated by scores of people who said that they had no right to film the fires, insisting that Egyptians were proud people who would never steal or commit arson. This was to become a theme during the day: that reporters had no right to report anything about this “liberation” that might reflect badly upon it. Yet they were still remarkably friendly and – despite Obama’s pusillanimous statements on Friday night – there was not the slightest manifestation of hostility against the United States. “All we want – all – is Mubarak’s departure and new elections and our freedom and honor,” a 30-year-old psychiatrist told me. Behind her, crowds of young men were clearing up broken crash barriers and road intersection fences from the street – an ironic reflection on the well-known Cairo adage that Egyptians will never, ever clean their roads.

Mubarak’s allegation that these demonstrations and arson – this combination was a theme of his speech refusing to leave Egypt – were part of a “sinister plan” is clearly at the center of his claim to continued world recognition. Indeed, Obama’s own response – about the need for reforms and an end to such violence – was an exact copy of all the lies Mubarak has been using to defend his regime for three decades. It was deeply amusing to Egyptians that Obama – in Cairo itself, after his election – had urged Arabs to grasp freedom and democracy. These aspirations disappeared entirely when he gave his tacit if uncomfortable support to the Egyptian president on Friday. The problem is the usual one: the lines of power and the lines of morality in Washington fail to intersect when US presidents have to deal with the Middle East. Moral leadership in America ceases to exist when the Arab and Israeli worlds have to be confronted.

And the Egyptian army is, needless to say, part of this equation. It receives much of the $1.3bn of annual aid from Washington. The commander of that army, General Tantawi – who just happened to be in Washington when the police tried to crush the demonstrators – has always been a very close personal friend of Mubarak. Not a good omen, perhaps, for the immediate future.

So the “liberation” of Cairo – where, grimly, there came news last night of the looting of the Qasr al-Aini hospital – has yet to run its full course. The end may be clear. The tragedy is not over.

Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper. He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

30 January, 2011

The Electronic Intifada

We are in the middle of a political earthquake in the Arab world and the ground has still not stopped shaking. To make predictions when events are so fluid is risky, but there is no doubt that the uprising in Egypt — however it ends — will have a dramatic impact across the region and within Palestine.

If the Mubarak regime falls, and is replaced by one less tied to Israel and the United States, Israel will be a big loser. As Aluf Benn commented in the Israeli daily Haaretz, “The fading power of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government leaves Israel in a state of strategic distress. Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East; last year, Israel saw its alliance with Turkey collapse” (“Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast,” 29 January 2011).

Indeed, Benn observes, “Israel is left with two strategic allies in the region: Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.” But what Benn does not say is that these two “allies” will not be immune either.

Over the past few weeks I was in Doha examining the Palestine Papers leaked to Al Jazeera. These documents underscore the extent to which the split between the US-backed Palestinian Authority in Ramallah headed by Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction, on the one hand, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, on the other — was a policy decision of regional powers: the United States, Egypt and Israel. This policy included Egypt’s strict enforcement of the siege of Gaza.

If the Mubarak regime goes, the United States will lose enormous leverage over the situation in Palestine, and Abbas’ PA will lose one of its main allies against Hamas.

Already discredited by the extent of its collaboration and capitulation exposed in the Palestine Papers, the PA will be weakened even further. With no credible “peace process” to justify its continued “security coordination” with Israel, or even its very existence, the countdown may well begin for the PA’s implosion. Even the US and EU support for the repressive PA police-state-in-the-making may no longer be politically tenable. Hamas may be the immediate beneficiary, but not necessarily in the long term. For the first time in years we are seeing broad mass movements that, while they include Islamists, are not necessarily dominated or controlled by them.

There is also a demonstration effect for Palestinians: the endurance of the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes has been based on the perception that they were strong, as well as their ability to terrorize parts of their populations and co-opt others. The relative ease with which Tunisians threw off their dictator, and the speed with which Egypt, and perhaps Yemen, seem to be going down the same road, may well send a message to Palestinians that neither Israel’s nor the PA’s security forces are as indomitable as they appear. Indeed, Israel’s “deterrence” already took a huge blow from its failure to defeat Hizballah in Lebanon in 2006, and Hamas in Gaza during the winter 2008-09 attacks.

As for Abbas’s PA, never has so much international donor money been spent on a security force with such poor results. The open secret is that without the Israeli military occupying the West Bank and besieging Gaza (with the Mubarak regime’s help), Abbas and his praetorian guard would have fallen long ago. Built on the foundations of a fraudulent peace process, the US, EU and Israel with the support of the decrepit Arab regimes now under threat by their own people, have constructed a Palestinian house of cards that is unlikely to remain standing much longer.

This time the message may be that the answer is not more military resistance but rather more people power and a stronger emphasis on popular protests. Today, Palestinians form at least half the population in historic Palestine — Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip combined. If they rose up collectively to demand equal rights, what could Israel do to stop them? Israel’s brutal violence and lethal force has not stopped regular demonstrations in West Bank villages including Bilin and Beit Ommar.

Israel must fear that if it responds to any broad uprising with brutality, its already precarious international support could start to evaporate as quickly as Mubarak’s. The Mubarak regime, it seems, is undergoing rapid “delegitimization.” Israeli leaders have made it clear that such an implosion of international support scares them more than any external military threat. With the power shifting to the Arab people and away from their regimes, Arab governments may not be able to remain as silent and complicit as they have for years as Israel oppresses Palestinians.

As for Jordan, change is already underway. I witnessed a protest of thousands of people in downtown Amman yesterday. These well-organized and peaceful protests, called for by a coalition of Islamist and leftist opposition parties, have been held now for weeks in cities around the country. The protesters are demanding the resignation of the government of Prime Minister Samir al-Rifai, dissolution of the parliament elected in what were widely seen as fraudulent elections in November, new free elections based on democratic laws, economic justice, an end to corruption and cancelation of the peace treaty with Israel. There were strong demonstrations of solidarity for the people of Egypt.

None of the parties at the demonstration called for the kind of revolutions that happened in Tunisia and Egypt to occur in Jordan, and there is no reason to believe such developments are imminent. But the slogans heard at the protests are unprecedented in their boldness and their direct challenge to authority. Any government that is more responsive to the wishes of the people will have to review its relationship with Israel and the United States.

Only one thing is certain today: whatever happens in the region, the people’s voices can no longer be ignored.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and is a contributor to The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (Nation Books).

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.