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The first quarter of the second decade of the 21st century is witnessing the dawn of the Age of Aquarius. By unfolding right in the midst of the Aquarius period, the 11th star of the Zodiac, in the year 2011, these tumultuous and unprecedented events assume an even greater surreal significance.

In 2008, the U.S. elected its first African-American president who campaigned largely on the basis of a revolutionary slogan “change you can believe in”. Three years later, it is the Arab street that is demanding change it can believe in, an evolution-cum-revolution which will have sweeping and far-reaching ramifications for Egypt, Israel, the Middle East, the United States and relations between Islam and the West. With a new world order emerging, geopolitics is set to become indisputably the dominant determinant of the future of travel & tourism, outstripping economic crisis, natural disasters and environmental issues.

Not a single commentator has noted the fact that the stand-off in Tahrir square in effect is a proxy war between the people of Egypt on the one hand and the U.S.-Israeli axis on the other. If the Egyptian people lose, the defeat will be more humiliating than their military defeat by Israel  in the June 1967 six-day war. If the U.S.-Israeli axis loses, it’s entire game-plan for reshaping the Middle East on its terms could come undone.

While the two sides go eyeball-to-eyeball in this high-stakes battle, one noteworthy side-effect is that the image of all the protagonists is set to suffer. This outcome is fraught with danger but also creates opportunities for positive change within the travel & tourism industry. The following analysis is designed to set the ball rolling for the discussion that lies ahead.

Egypt

Egypt’s tourism image and global standing has clearly been affected. The global media, bloggers, social network sites and airwaves are humming with stories of intimidation and heavy-handedness, including harassment of journalists. Millions of dollars of tourism advertising and marketing efforts have gone down the drain. As tourism will have to be a factor in Egypt’s post-crisis recovery plans, it faces a two-pronged test. While the cost of rebuilding the image will certainly be steep, an even more important challenge will be identifying the focus of the message to be delivered.

In the West and the U.S., attempts are being made to blacken Egypt’s image further by making it look like a return of the Muslim Brotherhood will usher in a fundamentalist regime. Although that is speculative conjecture, it is becoming entrenched in the minds of Western consumers, and will need to be addressed.

At the same time, Islam is the dominant religion of Egypt. With its 1.2 billion followers across the world, mainly in Asia, the Islamic world will remain a major future source of tourism, trade and cultural contacts. When this is all over, Egypt could well see an outpouring of support from Muslims wanting to show solidarity with their fellow Muslims.

Hence, Egypt will face the dilemma of trying to downplay its Islamic heritage on one side while embracing and espousing the world’s Muslims on the other.

However, Egypt cannot rebuild travel & tourism without rebuilding its entire political and economic systems. This is where the slogan “Where It All Begins” can take on new meaning, provided those who have benefitted from the old order choose to make way gracefully for the new.

The need and demand for this change was exemplified in an interview panel on the Al Jazeera TV channel on 8 February. Asked about Egypt’s future economic prospects, an Egyptian banker based in Saudi Arabia said Cairo would have no choice except to mobilize investments, issue bonds and if necessary turn for help to the IMF and World Bank. In response, an Egyptian economics professor scoffed at that view, saying it would effectively be a return to “business as usual” and the very “crony capitalism” that has spawned the rampant corruption in the country.

Indirectly calling for change the Egyptians can believe in, the professor said an entirely new system would be needed to make better use of domestic financial resources and more equitably spread economic gain nationwide. He noted that wherever the IMF had come in to “help”, it had only made things worse. Getting rid of a repressive and coercive political system would be the first step towards making that change, the professor said.

All that is going to be a tall-order, with no quick fixes.

The Arab World

Leaders in the Arab world now know for sure that their self-perceived image amongst their peoples could well be a mirage. Creating personality cults, dispensing large development budgets, having huge internal security apparatus and being surrounded by a coterie of cronies is no guarantee of their continued stay in power. The Arab street is tired of having its intelligence insulted. While the people want bread on the table, they also need basic human rights, justice, peace, opportunities for growth and an end to cronyism, corruption and nepotism, as clearly cited by the Egyptian professor in the comments above.

While some Arab leaders such as the King of Jordan and the President of Yemen appear to have recognized the growing backlash and publicly moved to deflect it, many of them now no doubt realise that being seen as a “crony” of the U.S. government is not good for their public image either. They will also be judged by their so far complete failure to earn a just and peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue, which is seared into the Arab psyche. In the last year alone, eight South American countries have announced their recognition of Palestine as a state. Why the Palestinians themselves do not declare statehood, and push for global recognition, defies explanation. Do Arab leaders think the “street” will not hold them accountable?

The United States

Trying to improve America’s image in the Islamic world has been a major policy plank of the Obama Administration. Indeed, Mr Obama chose Cairo to make his grandiose June 4, 2009 speech to the Islamic world, in which he promised a “new beginning” in bilateral relations. In a widely-applauded gesture to the Islamic world, he declared additional construction of Israeli settlements as being unacceptable. He said: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.” Since then, however, not only has Israel built more settlements but the U.S. has been totally impotent in stopping it. Does Mr Obama think the Arab street fails to notice?

As the world’s pre-eminent but entirely unelected global power, America’s image has been subjected to much scrutiny. In the Egyptian scenario, American policy flip-flops and double–talk are attracting even more derision. Social media and mass-audience TV networks like Al Jazeera and Russian TV are having a field day trashing the claims about the U.S. wanting to promote “freedom and democracy” even as it desperately tries to engineer an “orderly transition” that yields a successor acceptable to Israel.

Perhaps the most important game-changer will be the fact that the “American street” is realising the price it is paying for its government’s global blunders. A raft of commentary has emerged questioning the wisdom of U.S. policy in the Middle East. A more open and public debate has begun. In a commentary in the Christian Science Monitor, Graham Fuller, a former CIA station chief in Kabul, chides the U.S. government thus: “America cannot go on riding the tiger forever in the Middle East. We cannot expect to have “pro-American” forces in power in the Middle East when the publics don’t like our policies. We cannot continue our endless interventions – out of fear that some states might emerge as anti-American. The world is sick of such meddling. We have to deal with the causes of why populations have become anti-American.” See full text of his commentary here.

The process of change will also have significant implications for private U.S. corporations whose activities are closely linked to the interests of the U.S. government. Many U.S. companies are owned by people known to be ardent Zionists, supporters of Israel and financiers of the American political establishment. As many of these companies are expanding their presence in the Arab and Islamic worlds, their activities are bound to come under scrutiny, especially in the wake of the WikiLeaks fiasco when prominent U.S. brands such as Visa and MasterCard came under fire for serving U.S. foreign policy interests by cutting finances to WikiLeaks. Neither of those companies ever responded to requests for comment.

The U.S. will also need to address concerns that its political establishment is working to demonise Islam. This month, the Chair of the Committee on Homeland Security, Congressman Peter King is scheduled to hold hearings on ‘Radicalization’ in the American Muslim Community. The Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) which works to defend Muslim interests in the U.S., is tracking this. A joint letter by a group of 51 U.S. community, interfaith and civil rights groups has expressed “strong objections” over the context, tone and approach of the hearings.

The joint letter said: “These hearings will almost certainly increase widespread suspicion and mistrust of the American Muslim community and stoke anti-Muslim sentiment. During 2010, we saw an increase in anti-Muslim hatred in public discourse, as well as hate crimes and violence targeting American Muslims, and those perceived to be Muslim, including vandalism and arson of mosques, physical attacks, bullying of children in schools, and attempted murder. No American should live in fear for his or her safety, and Congress should not help create a climate where it is acceptable to target a particular faith community for discrimination, harassment, and violence …

If the American political, business and public leadership thinks these hearings will help improve the image of the U.S. in the Arab and Islamic worlds, it had better think again.

Israel

The winds of change eventually will have a ripple effect on Israel, which has sought to brand itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. The Egyptians, too, want democracy. However, the Israeli government is now publicly declaring its preference for the kind of democratically-elected government it would like to see in Egypt. That is only further underscoring the view that Hosni Mubarak’s preferred “heir apparent” is also an American-Israeli protege.

Indeed, Israel will be the country most likely to be held accountable – in ways it may not have bargained for. Many Israeli companies are known to be profiting handsomely from selling security equipment worldwide. These security companies gain unprecedented access to data about global travellers, but operate totally devoid of any check-and-balance mechanisms and accountability in relation to what they do with the data. Furthermore, dozens of dual-passport holding Israelis are working in many Islamic countries, gathering intelligence and attempting to influence policies designed to serve Israeli interests. All these facts will emerge into the public domain.

Most important, Israel will come under pressure to do what it has avoided doing all along – ending its occupation of Palestine. When the American street begins to calculate its return on investment for the dollars expended on maintaining the status quo, it may finally demand change it can believe in. Israeli leaders have also been at the vanguard of some very public calls for military action against Iran. If and when another conflict breaks out in the Gulf, the Israelis will not be able to avoid accountability for the results. At that point, the “image” of Israel will matter little to anyone.

Relations Between Islam and the West

Already one of the pressing issues of the 21st century, it is affecting both the image and perceptions the two peoples have of each other. Contributory factors include the demonisation of Islam in many sections of the western media as well as recent statements by European leaders. A case in point is the speech at the Munich Security Conference by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron which focused almost entirely on the need to address “Islamic extremism”, echoing similar comments by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a speech in Potsdam last October.

The extensive social, economic, cultural, financial and, perhaps most important, demographic linkages between Western societies and the Muslim world means that frayed relations are not an option. However, bilateral relations will have to recalibrated on the basis of both mutual respect as well as mutual recognition of the mistakes and shortcomings on both sides.

The West will have to acknowledge the root-causes of its poor image across much of the Islamic street. It will have to recount the history of its colonial era – by the French, Dutch and British across large swathes of Africa and Asia, including many Islamic countries – and learn from its mistakes. Most important it will need to introspect on why the colonial era ended, and the implications of repeating those mistakes in the new era of a rising Arab and Islamic worlds.

In turn, the Arab and Muslim worlds have much to learn from the West in terms of respect for basic freedoms, justice, and human rights. There is no denying that many Muslims get far better treated as immigrants in the West than they get treated at home by their own peoples and governments. It is because many Islamic governments have tried to suppress both human rights and human freedoms that the present backlash against them is under way. Living in denial about this is also no longer an option.

Conclusion

In November 2010, the World Travel Market in London, ended with yet another prescient comment of surreal importance – “Mistakes Were Made.” As the Age of Aquarius dawns, with its endless cycle of twist-in-the-tale events, the travel & tourism industry will need to get a better grip on how it stands to be affected by the many mistakes made by both external and internal actors, and the consequences of those mistakes on industry jobs and livelihoods.

This global power shift from West to East has gained a huge impetus in these first two months of the second decade of the 21st century. With political and economic risk assessments set to become even more critical factors in the development process, the travel & tourism sector has a golden opportunity to position itself as a crucial part of the solution. People worldwide want change they can believe in, the same change that Mr Obama offered to the American people. For the travel & tourism industry, this crisis is just waiting to be turned into an opportunity. With the UNWTO’s Andorra’s summit and the ITB Berlin 2011 just a few weeks away, the travel & tourism industry should be the first to grasp it.

February 11, 2011

National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition

The Egyptian people have done it. A revolution from below, developed without a fully prepared plan and without a formal leadership, has succeeded in forcing the ouster of Mubarak. Even though it was a genuinely spontaneous uprising, the people developed leadership and organization in the course of the struggle itself.

This great uprising by the people of Egypt has shaken the existing global order of imperialism. After all of their sacrifice, millions of Egyptians today are celebrating. All great revolutions become a festival of those who have endured oppression. Each participant knows that the revolution is the deepest expression of the power of the people.

Yesterday, Mubarak defiantly insisted that he would not leave, which the people had expected when they gathered in the hundreds of thousands.

Today, Egypt erupted. Protesters in the North Sinai town of El-Arish exchanged gunfire with police and hurled Molotov cocktails at police stations. (AFP, Feb. 11)

“Downtown, more than 10,000 tore apart military barricades in front of the towering State Television and Radio building, a pro-Mubarak bastion that has aired constant commentary supporting him and dismissing the protests. They swarmed on the Nile River corniche at the foot of the building, beating drums and chanting, ‘Leave! Leave! Leave!’ They blocked employees from entering, vowing to silence the broadcast. Soldiers in tanks in front of the building did nothing to stop them, though state TV continued to air.” (AP, Feb. 11)

The steadfast determination of the youth-led uprising coupled with the dramatic entrance of the Egyptian working class into the mass movement radically changed the relationship of forces.

Imperialist hypocrisy, fear

Having armed and financed the Mubarak dictatorship’s 30-year-long war against the Egyptian people, the U.S. government abruptly shifted its position in a last-minute effort to prevent U.S. imperialist interests in Egypt going down with Mubarak’s doomed ship.

As the regime seemed to be crumbling in the face of the uprising and the mass strike wave, Obama appeared on national television yesterday to announce that the U.S. government saluted the youth-led uprising.

For 18 days, Mubarak’s police and thugs murdered, beat, arrested and tortured thousands of valiant and peaceful protesters—and during that entire time, the U.S. government refused to cut its massive financing of the regime.

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused to call for Mubarak to step down immediately. The senior U.S. civilian officials and the Pentagon’s top command stayed in constant contact with their agent Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s vice president, and their other agents in the senior leadership of Egypt’s military.

For now, the Egyptian military has assumed the power in Egypt. This is the preferred plan of the U.S. government. The continued presence of Mubarak was accelerating the militancy and radicalism of the uprising. Suddenly, as a consequence of the entrance of the people in a genuine uprising, Mubarak turned into a liability rather than a valued asset.

The main goal of the U.S. government now will be to find a way to sustain the authority of the Egyptian military high command, which has functioned as a client for the past 30 years.

It is too early to know how the ouster of Mubarak will impact the overall struggle in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

A great victory has been secured. But the institutions of the dictatorship remain and behind them stand the Pentagon and the CIA. Undoubtedly, a new stage in the struggle will quickly unfold. The opening of political space for revolutionary and working-class forces to organize is of monumental importance.

The Israeli Zionist regime is deeply alarmed by the prospect of the end of the dictatorship. Although the Israeli regime pretends to be the great champion of “democracy,” the reality is that it fears the development of a genuine people’s government in Egypt, the largest Arab country that possesses the largest army in the Arab World.

The 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, which followed the Camp David Summit Accord, is in fact a complete misnomer. The treaty gave the Israeli military a green light to wage war against other Arab peoples free from the threat of interference from the Egyptian military. In fact, this treaty sidelined the largest Arab army from engaging in any opposition to Israeli war plans against Lebanon, Syria, other Arab countries and especially the besieged Palestinian people. In exchange for the agreement, the United States provides nearly $2 billion to Egypt—most of it military aid—each year.

Youth, workers made the revolution

The young people of Egypt and the mass of the working class have, through their own efforts, changed the political equation.

All revolutions reveal as a dominant and characteristic feature the extraordinary intervention of the masses of people into the historical process. In normal times, it is politicians, heads of state, military leaders, the media, religious figures—all the representatives of the old order—who conduct the business of society, while the masses of people are excluded from the political arena.

By their direct intervention in the historical process through the medium of revolution, however, the people create the foundation for a new social and political regime.

We in the United States and everywhere stand in solidarity with the Egyptian people in the moment of their victory, as we do with the Tunisian people and all those struggling against other U.S.-backed dictatorships across the Middle East. This still unfolding revolution will serve as a school for revolution and social change throughout the globe.

11 February, 2011

Countercurrents.org

“Simhasan Khali Karo, Janta aati hai”

(Vacate the throne, the people are coming)

–Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’, Hindi poet

News has just come of Hosni Mubarak’s resignation.

The people of Egypt have just raised a political monument that will rank alongside their mightiest stone and mortar wonders of antiquity. They have shown the world a model exercise of peaceful, determined, and dignified people-power.

Three hundred or more are said to have died in the struggle of the last eighteen days. All of them were protesters, not one a representative of the hated regime. They met assaults by horse and camel borne thugs with even more resolve, thousands more pouring into Tahrir Square in response.

Instead of the suicide bombers for which the region has become renowned, this movement began with a single suicide. Instead of firebombing a building full of people, it began with a man (in Tunisia) setting fire to himself. Instead of clamoring for loaves and fishes, they stood firm on freedom, demanding nothing short of the dictator’s exit. The npeople of Egypt have exploded something far bigger than an atom bomb — the myth that the Arab and .Islamic worlds are unsuited for satyagraha.

“Nonviolence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering. It does not mean meek submission to the will of the evildoer, but it means the pitting of one’s whole soul against the will of the tyrant. Working under this law of our being, it is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honour, his religion, his soul and lay the foundation for that empire’s fall or regeneration”, wrote Gandhi. .

The Egyptian people have enacted a revolution that would have made Gandhi proud. But their victory is all their own. Many challenges lie ahead of them. But today the sun is shining. Gloriously.

Niranjan Ramakrishnan, an Egyptian for the day today, can be reached at njn_2003@yahoo.com

11 February, 2011

Countercurrents.org

‘Unprecedented’ no doubt is the right word to describe the events. On January 25th, a small band of perhaps two hundred protesters gathered on Tahreer square in the centre of Cairo, Egypt’s capital. They shouted slogans calling on Egyptians to emulated their Tunesian brothers and sisters, who had just shrugged off the joke of their own dictator Ben Ali. As the protesters moved forward and crossed the bridge across the Nile river, breaking the police barricades, the number of demonstrators rapidly multiplied into tens of thousands. Many of them had responded to the call which before the start of the Tahreer action had been launched on the social medium facebook. And ever since then Egypt has been in upheaval. Whereas for several decades, the country’s despotic ruler Hosni Mubarak had succeeded largely in keeping the lid on public protests, – suddenly people threw off all their fears. Tahreer square has repeatedly been the scene of million-strong rallies, demanding that Mubarak step down. And although there was a tense moment, when paramilitary groups, thugs on camels and armed civilians mobilized by the regime swept down on opponents in Cairo centre, – Egypt’s protestors have refused to budge. Instead they set up a permanent camp on the square, which is spontaneously being supplied with food. Doctors have formed a mobile hospital for the treatment of wounded activists. And whereas Mubarak’s regime has feverishly tried to disrupt news reporting by Al Jazeera and other international media, – foreign journalists have enthusiastically carried the news of the people’s revolt all over the world.

Further, while the Egyptian people are evoking solidarity everywhere, – the West’s policymakers and even the country’s own opposition parties have completely been taken by surprise. For years, the West has tolerated and patronized Mubarak’s dictatorship, arguing that his regime is a bulwark against the threat posed by Muslim fundamentalists. However, the Egyptian people’s revolt was neither prepared, nor is it being led by the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s main Islamist organization. Its leaders have as much been taken by surprise as policymakers in Brussels and Washington, and its support base to all accounts is limited, to less than a fifth of the Egyptian population. In fact, although opposition political parties have been invited to negotiate a transition by Mubarak’s regime, none of them is in charge of the revolt. As the example of the internet action mentioned above already indicates, it is a new generation, of young Egyptians, who have taken centre stage. This was well symbolized, when the google manager who launched the face book action towards January 25 was given a heroic welcome by hundreds of thousands on Tahreer square, after his release from jail a few days back. As of today, February the 11th, protestors not just in Cairo, but in other Egyptian cities too continue to hold the streets. When Mubarak failed to announce his departure during his televised address to the nation yesterday, thousands waved with their shoes in utter contempt!

The revolt is unprecedented indeed, but it would be wrong to expect easy victories. In a move that pleased his Western allies, Mubarak about two weeks ago gave up his post as president of the ruling party. Yet the entire state apparatus of repression is still intact, including the powerful army, notorious intelligence services and the groups of hired musclemen. No single fact illustrates this better than Mubarak’s appointment of Suleiman as vice-president. The moment Suleiman was put in charge, stories started circulating on internet regarding the man’s exceptional reputation. In the one published by Jadalliya (8/2), Suleiman is described as the CIA’s man in Cairo. Ever since 1993 and right until January the 29th last, he has headed the Egypt’s General Intelligence Services. And while showing great loyalty to Mubarak and to the West, he personally tortured detainees, including people arrested under the US’s infamous ‘rendition program’. Under the given scheme, the US for years has kidnapped people suspected of being terrorists, and secretly detained them in third countries without bars on inhuman tortures. In fact, Suleiman is identified as the man who personally devised the rendition program! Moreover, he is reported to have maintained a hotline towards the Israeli government, at the expense of the Palestinian people. The survival of the Palestinians living in the neighboring territory, the Gaza strip, is largely dependent on a tunnel system, through which supplies reach Palestinians from Egypt. Yet Suleiman has assured the Israeli government that a cross border action into Egypt by Israeli army units aimed at destroying the Palestinian tunnels is possible.

Again, it would be wrong to be over-enthusiastic about the role of the Egyptian army. True, the army generals have refused to openly interfere on the side of the Mubarak regime, and have stayed ‘neutral’ so far. And yes, this has helped ensure that the number of protestors who have been killed by bullets of the regime is relatively limited. Yet will the Egyptian officers continue to stand by, if fundamental American and Western interests are threatened by the revolt? Historically, the Egyptian army can proud itself on having espoused Arab nationalism. Yet throughout the last thirty years, ever since Mubarak rose to power, Egypt’s armed forces have heavily benefited from US support. The accumulated figure for supplies of fighter planes, missiles, tanks and other American military hardware is a thick 60 Billion US Dollars. All the five giant monopoly corporations which dominate the US military sector have received orders from, or are engaged in co-production scheme with, Egypt. Lockheed Martin has built 240 F-16 fighters, and is building another 20 right now. General Dynamics is prime contractor for 1200 Abrams battle tanks. And whereas other Middle Eastern dictatorships, such as Saudi Arabia, need to buy all the weaponry they order from the US, – Egypt’s regime has annually been receiving an average of 1.3 Billion Dollars as military aid. Nor is US sympathy restricted to arms’ supplies alone. In Egypt’s desert, the US and the Egyptian armies bi-annually hold joint exercises, in which a reported 25 thousand American soldiers take part. Hence, it would be a bit naive to presume the Egyptian army has overnight become a pro-people’s force.

Nevertheless, the significance of the Egyptian revolt extends well beyond the borders of Egypt, towards the whole of the Middle East. Surely, though Egypt has become the epicenter, events did not start in Cairo, but in Tunesia, when the people of Tunis in January last forced dictator Ben Ali to flee. Nor is resistance limited to these two countries alone. Mass protests by people disgruntled about state repression, unemployment and high food prices have also taken place elsewhere, notably in Algeria, Yemen and Jordania. And although the outcome is uncertain, US and European interests may yet be affected by ongoing events. For decades discontent has been simmering throughout the Middle East, over the US’s unreserved support for Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine, and over its intimate connections with repressive Arab regimes. When the oil exporting countries of the region in 1973 for once stood up against the West, and OPEC took control over the international price of oil, US functionaries devised a new trading scheme. Under this system, oil rich countries were encouraged to buy US armaments in exchange for their increased oil wealth. The trading system created havoc in the region, as millions of Arabs were slaughtered in international and fratricidal wars. The Egyptian people and people in other Middle Eastern states know they are not just up against Mubarak, or against domestic dictatorships. Hence, it is quite well possible that today’s revolt in the Arab world will mark an important chapter in the demise of US hegemony.

10 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org

It’s failed and all because of Islamic terrorism. Soon after British Prime Minister David Cameron pronounced the defeat of multiculturalism, it was but a matter of time before commentators would go on their ‘let’s separate the wheat from the chaff’ binge.

Douglas Murray is director of the Center for Social Cohesion in London. In his opinion piece in Wall Street Journal he expresses views that are antithetical to the idea of cohesiveness. Drawing thin lines, he is in fact creating walls. He does make a distinction between multiculturalism and pluralism and multiracialism. It is curious, though, that he imagines the hotchpotch idea of one cannot subsume the other. Racists are agitating against another culture as much as they are against a race, for a race brings with it specific cultural values and history.

He states rather audaciously, “State-sponsored multiculturalism treated European countries like hostelries. It judged that the state should not ‘impose’ rules and values on newcomers. Rather, it should bend over backwards to accommodate the demands of immigrants. The resultant policy was that states treated and judged people by the criteria of whatever ‘community’ they found themselves born into.”

This is a complete whitewash job. No state ever sponsors multiculturalism; even sanctified universities like Oxford and Cambridge have their pecking orders and their syllabi that demarcate South Asian and African studies. One might consider this as intellectual ghettoisation. The state may not impose values on ‘newcomers’ simply because it is ignorant about them. What values are inculcated in the indigenous population across the board? Are not criminal laws applicable to everyone, and quite often more stringently against the outsiders? If bending over backwards means that the state permits certain dress codes or social habits, then this is a pluralistic idea. It can be evident even among Britons themselves who are not a uniform herd relishing shepherd’s pie.

The example Murray cites of the state’s ‘benevolence’ is facile and reveals extreme prejudice: “In Britain, for instance, this meant that if you were a white English girl born into a white English family and your family decided to marry you against your will to a randy old pervert, the state would intervene. But if you had the misfortune to be born into an ‘Asian-background’ family and the same happened, then the state would look the other way.”

These are such stereotypes, to begin with. There have been cases of women of Asian background that have got a good deal of prominence. How many English girls are forced to marry against their will? What about the old perverts who commit incest or the ageing playboys? How often has the state intervened to prevent teen pregnancies and date rape? The suggestion that being from an Asian background is a misfortune is a patronising stance. The state can intervene if it becomes an issue that requires legal intervention. An adult woman can file a complaint. There are many voluntary organisations that provide a support system.

Perhaps Mr. Murray has heard about Jack Straw. Although he was concerned about “Pakistani heritage men” who targeted white girls because they thought they were “easy meat”, he did also concede that “overwhelmingly the sex offenders’ wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders”.

But this is not on the plate. It is Mr Cameron’s Eureka moment that has to be bared and Murray is on a roll: “In his speech in Munich, Mr. Cameron rightly focused on the problem of home-grown Islamic extremism. He stressed several preliminary steps—among them that groups whose values are opposed to those of the state will no longer be bestowed with taxpayer money. It is a symptom of how low we have sunk that ceasing to fund our societies’ opponents would constitute an improvement.”

This is dictatorial in the extreme. How will the state trace the roots of this home-grown Islamic terrorism? Bradford? Birmingham? What values does the state have? A state does not possess values. It has laws, it has a manifesto and it has political parties and a Parliament. Values are cultural and personal. Terrorism is not a value. It is an act of crime, wherever it comes from and in whatever form. A coloniser nation should know that better than anyone else. Tax-payer money is for the express purpose of supporting citizens irrespective of their beliefs, unless the Constitution of the state makes it clear that it will exclude certain ‘values’. A Muslim doctor, engineer, teacher or even a preacher has the right to the facilities offered if s/he is contributing to that society and not causing damage; merely dissenting against the Establishment ideologically does not qualify. It would be reasonable to assume that Scotland Yard is sharp enough to comb out the home-grown terrorists. Or is that impossible to manage and poor British tax-payers are now sponsoring those who bomb their subways even as their families back home are being bombed on an almost daily basis by the superbowl superpowers?

But, Mr. Cameron’s is not the final policy. Mr Murray has more to say: “The fact is that Britain, Germany, Holland and many other European countries have nurtured more than one generation of citizens who seem to feel no loyalty toward their country and who, on the contrary, often seem to despise it. The first step forward is that from school-age upward our societies must reassert a shared national narrative—including a common national culture. Some years ago the German Muslim writer Bassam Tibi coined the term “Leitkultur”—core culture—to describe this. It is the most decent and properly liberal antidote to multiculturalism. It concedes that in societies that have had high immigration there are all sorts of different cultures—which will only work together if they are united by a common theme.”

It is generous that a Muslim writer has been quoted. ‘Core culture’ is part of daily living. You may adhere to it, but is that indicative of loyalty? What about Britons who have emigrated? Do they carry their core culture or their other specific culture and do they follow this practice in their new country? Would they be deemed disloyal to the English idea? How many westerners become part of the national narrative of the nations they migrate to?

It might be prudent to ask whether the Welsh and the Scots believe in a standard British culture and how it can be defined as a paradigm for patriotism.

Murray’s subversive views are not designed for this audience. He has a clear blueprint of his targets: “The Muslim communities that Mr. Cameron focused on will not reform themselves. So the British government will have to shut down and prosecute terrorist and extremist organizations, including some ‘charities’. There are groups that are banned in the U.S. but can and do still operate with charitable status in the U.K. Clerics and other individuals who come from abroad to preach hate and division should be deported.”

I agree in the main about hate-mongers and charities that may indulge in non-charitable activities, but there is the danger of using the ruse of terrorism to decimate groups that are not involved in any such activity. If this becomes government policy, then who is to stop ‘concerned’ citizens from exposing and acting upon their biases openly? It is good to know that clerics may be deported. How does one deport a head of government who indulges in hate-mongering?

This is not the failure of multiculturalism but the success of the fear of any ‘other’.

Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based author-columnist. She can be reached at http://farzana-versey.blogspot.com/

10 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org

If law school enrollment today is made up largely of the white and the wealthy, it is because the American Bar Association, the chief accreditor of the nation’s law schools, has designed the rules that produce this outcome. It’s not that minorities and students from low-income households don’t want to attend law school; it’s that they are being priced out by soaring tuition costs, up 267 percent since 1990, and shut out by the culturally biased Law School Admissions Test(LSAT).

Only 3.9% of the nation’s one million lawyers are Black, only 3.3% are Hispanic, and whites of modest means likely are underrepresented as well. How many families can afford to pay $100,000 to $150,000 to put a child through three years of law school? At present, law school enrollment is just 6.6% for African-Americans and 5.7% for Hispanics.

The ABA is aware of this. Five years ago, then-president William Paul decried the alarming lack of “minority representation in the legal profession.” And the ABA’s own Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Legal Profession has since reaffirmed his view. New York Law School professor Elizabeth Chambliss, author of the Commission’s report, described law as “one of the least racially integrated professions in the United States …” She called the LSAT “one of the main barriers to increasing diversity among law students.” Yet ABA insists that the 200 law schools it accredits administer the LSAT, and for ABA schools it often is the main determinant of admission and is always one of the two main determinants.

What the ABA continues to be about is lining the pockets of law professors, some of whom earn as much as $300,000 or more a year, often for teaching very few hours. Renowned Federal Judge Richard Posner thinks the ABA conducts itself like a “medieval guild” in behalf of its members. George Leef, vice president for research at The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, Raleigh, N.C., believes the ABA’s aim is to keep legal fees high by restricting the overall number of attorneys. Leef, a Juris Doctor from Duke University School of Law, says that because of the “connivance” between state bodies and the American Bar Association, “law school costs much more than it needs to. If we allowed a free market in legal education, the cost of preparing for a legal career would fall dramatically.” Leef adds, “The ABA’s accrediting body, the Council of the Section of Legal Education, has established standards that are designed to keep law school very costly and very restrictive.”

As President Saul Levmore and Vice President David Van Zandt of the American Law Deans Association (ALDA) stated: “The ABA continues to impose requirements on the law schools it accredits that are not only extraneous to the process of assuring the quality of legal education, but also that improperly intrude on institutional autonomy in seeking to dictate terms and conditions of employment.” Levmore is dean of the University of Chicago Law School. Van Zandt is dean of Northwestern University Law School.

ALDA’s “improperly intrude” depiction is an understatement. In 1995, the Justice Department formally charged the ABA with fixing law professors’ salaries, among other Sherman Anti-Trust Act violations. Justice asserted the ABA acted to further “the self-interest of professors instead of improving education.” In 1996 the ABA entered into a consent judgment agreeing to reform its practices and to stop dictating a number of dubious, costly and illegal regulations to schools. Yet, in 2006, the Justice Department charged the ABA with violating provisions of the decree and called for it to take remedial action as well as to pay Justice $185,000 for its enforcement troubles.

The ABA shackles law school deans by imposing accreditation rules on them that focus on “inputs” — the ABA’s idea of the kind of plant, policy, and personnel a law school should have. These rules do not focus on what students learn or if they are learning what they need to know to practice law, i.e., the “outcomes.” The ABA input rules demand hiring of very large and expensive full-time faculty with light teaching loads; they place de facto limits on hiring of less expensive adjunct professors from the ranks of expert lawyers and judges who could contribute their expertise; they demand the building of $70- and $80 million palaces; they require stocking of large, multi-million dollar hard copy libraries even though nearly all needed legal materials may be found on line or obtained on CD-ROMs; and they require applicants to post high LSAT scores.

If many of the ABA’s costly rules are in writing, the ABA has other, unwritten policies that make the published rules even more daunting. The existence of these subterranean codes was brought to light in 2006 at a Federal Department of Education hearing in Washington on renewing for five years the ABA’s federally-approved accreditation status. A classic example of the ABA’s secret rules is that, although ABA guidelines do not specify that the LSAT is obligatory, in practice the ABA secretly requires law schools to use the test and has never accredited a law school that did not use it. By discouraging law schools from accepting applicants who score below a particular score, the ABA screens out large numbers of low-income whites, Hispanics, and African-Americans — graduates of poorer quality high schools and colleges than those attended by the children of the rich.

Writing in the Journal of Legal Education, Emory law professor George B. Shepherd notes if the ABA lowered its LSAT score accreditation cutoff just slightly, it “would allow the creation of more than 40 new 600-student majority-black law schools. Eliminating the LSAT cutoff altogether would permit more than 80, an average of one or two per state.” “The ABA ’s accreditation standards and the way the ABA applies them have had the same impact on blacks as (former Governor) George Wallace standing with policemen at the school house door in Alabama , blocking blacks from entering,” he wrote.

No other professional accrediting body uses input rules as does ABA: not in medicine, not in dentistry, nowhere. But in the world of legal education, a law school that finds better, less expensive ways to teach effectively is not allowed to exist in almost any state. The private initiative of such schools is deliberately choked off by the controlling ABA accreditors, each a hand-picked employee of or friend to the ABA schools toeing the ABA line. Even many state-supported law schools must charge $15,000 to $30,000 or more in tuition to survive. The ABA’s input-based policies begun in the 1970s are driving law school tuition and fees far ahead of inflation. During the 1990s, tuition, room and board at undergraduate institutions increased by 58%, but comparable law school costs jumped 88%. Today, more law schools are punching through the $40,000 tuition barrier and the $50,000-a-year law school appears only a few years away.

Among the big winners of the ABA accreditation game have been ABA officials themselves. The ABA in the past has encouraged fledgling law schools seeking its imprimatur to hire ABA officials, or current accrediting committee members, as deans at handsome salaries. In 1994, at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law, Ft. Worth, only 53% of graduates passed the Texas bar on their first attempt compared with 74% for the state overall. The ABA said the school suffered from a number of gross deficiencies. Happily for TW, these supposedly vanished less than a month after the school hired as dean Frank Walwer from the ABA’s Accreditation Committee. A mere 27 days after he was hired the law school got ABA accreditation! What’s more, although the ABA’s written policy forbids a school to delay students’ graduation until after it is accredited, the ABA ignored this requirement for Dean Walwer to allow TW’s graduates to take the Texas bar.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune of February 15, 2004, Ameet Sachdev, reported, “The coziness between the ABA and law schools, though, troubles some educators and others involved in accreditation. They question whether such hiring is at odds with the ABA’s ethics policy and contend such arrangements raise the appearance of a conflict of interest.” He quoted Gary Palm, a Chicago lawyer who had served on the ABA’s governing body overseeing accreditation as saying, “I think it’s wrong that people in leadership in the accreditation process end up back at law schools doing business before the accreditation council . . . .”

The ABA has prevailed upon Supreme Courts and Legislatures in 45 states to keep students from non-ABA law schools even from taking State bar exams. This restraint of trade funnels students into schools belonging to the ABA guild. Graduates of non-ABA law schools are denied even the opportunity to sit for a bar exam at all in most states or are not permitted take a state’s bar exam until three, five or ten years of practice elsewhere (in the minority of states that do let them take bar exams ultimately). One wonders how the United States ever produced lawyers such as Abraham Lincoln and Clarence Darrow in the years prior to 1921, before the ABA undertook its campaign to “upgrade” the profession.

There are several impartial educational accrediting bodies that can also bestow accreditation on law schools. One of these, the New England Association of Schools & Colleges, accredits Massachusetts School of Law at Andover (MSL). With no vested interest in enriching law school professors, such bodies have, in fact, established rational standards applicable to law schools, focusing on the quality of the education. More of these general bodies would flourish except that they have been discouraged because the Federal Department of Education has made ABA its sole federally-recognized, accreditor. This controversial arrangement, though, may change since, at its December, 2006, review, DOE rejected the ABA’s request for a five-year renewal of recognition, granting the ABA just 18 months to get its act together owing to DOE’s dissatisfaction with the ABA’s performance.

The ABA likes to say only schools it accredits can provide a quality education, yet student teams from MSL swept all four top spots in the Black Law Students Association Northeast Regional trial competition last February, finishing ahead of prominent schools such as Harvard University Law School, St. John’s University Law School and Syracuse University School of Law, and MSL then placed third nationally in the finals at Detroit. MSL, which was in the eastern region of the American Constitutional Society’s appellate competition in Washington, had the highest scoring brief of 31 teams in the east region, and its brief was scored higher than the best western region brief, submitted by a team from the prominent University of Michigan Law School. Staffed only by a small core of full-time professors and relying largely on adjunct instructor-lawyers that teach in their specialties as well as sitting judges, MSL can educate a student for a tuition of $14,490, a sum less than half of what ABA-accredited New England law schools charge.

The key to providing a quality legal education that is affordable to ordinary citizens is to once again allow the sunlight of free market competition to shine through law school windows. Schools must be allowed to take steps to reduce their costs and focus on student performance outcomes. Deans must be allowed the autonomy to run their own schools without ABA meddling. The Department of Education must drop the ABA as the federally approved national accreditor of law schools and make room for objective educational bodies. State Supreme Courts must open bar examinations to all applicants. And if the courts do not allow competition, State representatives need to legislate to make the courts respect free market principles. Again, to quote Shepherd, “A law school that is good enough to receive accreditation in one state should be good enough in all states.”

The ABA claims that unless law schools follow its pricey rules, students won’t get a good education. That’s bunk. Price and quality are not synonymous, as shown by medical care. The ABA has misused the absolute power granted it by our government and has beguiled state supreme courts to accept its dictates in determining who can sit for the bar. It deliberately causes to remain largely unserved by the nation’s law schools people from working-class backgrounds, immigrants, and minorities. America urgently needs new law schools that will serve the American working-class and minorities so that their voice may be heard. Nothing less than the substance of our democracy is at stake.

Lawrence Velvel is dean and cofounder of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover; Michael Coyne is associate dean; Sherwood Ross is a media consultant to academic institutions. Reach Dean Velvel at velvel@mslaw.edu; Sherwood Ross at sherwoodross10@gmail.com

10 February, 2010

Countercurrents.org

“Just listen to that roar,” urged a CNN correspondent in Egypt, as thousands of Egyptian protesters charged, fists pumped, against hundreds of armed Egyptian security forces. What a roar it was, indeed. The protests have shown the world that Arabs are capable of much more than merely being pitiable statistics of unemployment and illiteracy, or powerless subjects of ‘moderate’ but ‘strong’ leaders (an acronym for friendly dictators).

The times are changing, and British MP George Galloway’s comment about the Arab lion roaring again seems truer by the day. The Egyptians have revolted in style, and their revolution will go down in history books with such adjectives as “great”, “noble” and “historic”.

Truth be told, Arabs have had their fair share of conjured ‘revolutions’. Arab regimes have always been generous in how they ascribed the loaded term to their military coups or other stunts designed to impress or intimidate the masses. Any modern history of the Arab world will reveal an abundant use of the term ‘thawra’ – revolution. The label has been useful, for those who dared criticize a regime, or demanded basic rights (such as food) could then be dubbed enemies of whatever make-belief revolution the men in power championed. Innumerable Arab political prisoners were designated ‘a’da’ al-thawra’ – enemies of the revolution – and they paid a heavy price for their ‘crimes’. In Egypt alone, rough estimates put the current number of political prisoners (from different ideological backgrounds) at 20,000. The figure must be much larger now that the new enemies of the revolution – i.e. most of the Egyptian population – have dared demand freedoms, rights, democracy, and the biggest taboo of all: social justice.

If there is any revolution deserving of the name, it is this one. Thanks to Egypt, people the world over have been forced to re-think their previous idea of “Arabs”. Even many of us who insisted that the future of the Middle East could only be decided by the people themselves had eventually started to lose hope. We were told our words were redundant, sentimental, and, at best, an opportunity for poetic reflection, but not realpolitik. Now we know we have been right all along. Egypt is the clearest possible manifestation of the truth of people shaping their own history – not just in the Middle East, but anywhere.

The spontaneous popular revolution in Egypt was a most befitting uplift to the collective humiliation that Arabs have felt for so many years, but even more acutely since the US invasion and utter violation of Iraq.

“It became almost a burden being an Arab”, a caller told Al Jazeera. Looking “Middle Eastern” became sufficient grounds for suspicion in international airports. It was not considered entirely racist to ask such questions as “Are Arabs capable of achieving democracy?” In fact, heated media discussions emanated from the type of questions that pondered what Arabs were – or rather, were not capable of achieving. Every war against the Arabs was done in the name of “bringing” something to people who seemed impeded by their own collective failures. In one of my first political science classes at the University of Washington, years ago, the professor told us that we would be “examining the Middle East, which consists of strong governments and weak peoples.” With the exception of Israel, of course.

The media has long repeated the mantra that Israel is the Middle East’s only democracy. Combined with serious doubts regarding the Arabs’ readiness for democracy, the conclusion offered is: Israel carries similar values to the US, the West, the First World, the civilized hemisphere, and the Arabs epitomize all the ailments of the world. It matters little that Arab regimes were made ‘powerful’ by the backing of their western benefactors, or that oppression – in the name of fighting the enemies of peace and progress – was urged, financed and orchestrated with western interests in mind. The fact that the bullets and canister teargas that killed and wounded numerous Egyptians had the following words inscribed on it in Arabic: ‘suni’a fi al-wilayat al-mutahida al-amrikyia’ – Made in the United States – was also deemed entirely irrelevant to any discussion on how and why Egyptians were being suppressed or why the Arab Lion must never find its roar.

“The much-feted Mossad was taken by surprise,” wrote Uri Avnery. The CIA was too, although US lawmakers are trying to determine “whether the CIA and other spy agencies failed to give President Obama adequate warning of the unfolding crisis in Egypt” (as reported by Greg Miller in the Washington Post, February 4). Senator Dianne Feinstein who heads the Intelligence Committee, accused the intelligence community of ‘lacking” performance. The CIA should have monitored Facebook more closely, she suggested.

But there can be no telling when a nation revolts. Most of the chanting multitudes have no Facebook accounts. They don’t tweet either. In Tahrir Square, a man with a moustache, dark skin and handsome features carried a cardboard sign on which he had written, rather hurriedly: “I want to eat. My monthly salary is 267 (Egyptian) pounds – approx $45 – and I have four children.”

Others want to breathe the air of freedom. Others still want justice. Dignity. Equality. Democracy. Hope. How can such values be measured, or safeguarded against?

There is a very popular word in Egypt – al-Sabr. It means patience. But noone could predict when the patience would run out. Arab and Egyptian intellectuals didn’t see it coming, and even the country’s opposition parties were caught by surprise. Everyone tried to catch up as millions -of long-oppressed Egyptians erupted in astounding unison: hurriya, hurriya, adalah igtimayyia – freedom, freedom, social justice.

Just when we were told that a religious strife was about to engulf Egypt, and that the people were subdued to the point that there was no hope, millions of brave Egyptians declared a revolution that brought Muslims and Christians together. The courage and the bravery they displayed is enough to restore our faith in the world – in the human race, and in ourselves. Those who are still wondering if Arabs are capable of this or that need not ponder anymore. Just listen to them roar, and you will find the answer.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on Amazon.com.

10 February, 2011

The Independent

So when the Arabs cry out for the very future that Obama outlined, we show them disrespect

There is nothing like an Arab revolution to show up the hypocrisy of your friends. Especially if that revolution is one of civility and humanism and powered by an overwhelming demand for the kind of democracy that we enjoy in Europe and America. The pussyfooting nonsense uttered by Obama and La Clinton these past two weeks is only part of the problem. From “stability” to “perfect storm” – Gone With the Wind might have recommended itself to the State Department if they really must pilfer Hollywood for their failure to adopt moral values in the Middle East – we’ve ended up with the presidential “now-means-yesterday”, and “orderly transition”, which translates: no violence while ex-air force General Mubarak is put out to graze so that ex-intelligence General Suleiman can take over the regime on behalf of America and Israel.

Fox News has already told its viewers in America that the Muslim Brotherhood – about the “softest” of Islamist groups in the Middle East – is behind the brave men and women who have dared to resist the state security police, while the mass of French “intellectuals” (the quotation marks are essential for poseurs like Bernard-Henri Lévy have turned, in Le Monde’s imperishable headline, into “the intelligentsia of silence”.

And we all know why. Alain Finkelstein talks about his “admiration” for the democrats but also the need for “vigilance” – and this is surely a low point for any ‘philosophe’ – “because today we know above all that we don’t know how everything is going to turn out.” This almost Rumsfeldian quotation is gilded by Lévy’s own preposterous line that “it is essential to take into account the complexity of the situation”. Oddly enough that is exactly what the Israelis always say when some misguided Westerner suggests that Israel should stop stealing Arab land in the West Bank for its colonists.

Indeed Israel’s own reaction to the momentous events in Egypt – that this might not be the time for democracy in Egypt (thus allowing it to keep the title of “the only democracy in the Middle East”) – has been as implausible as it has been self-defeating. Israel will be much safer surrounded by real democracies than by vicious dictators and autocratic kings. To his enormous credit, the French historian Daniel Lindenberg told the truth this week. “We must, alas, admit the reality: many intellectuals believe, deep down, that the Arab people are congenitally backward.”

There is nothing new in this. It applies to our subterranean feelings about the whole Muslim world. Chancellor Merkel of Germany announces that multiculturalism doesn’t work, and a pretender to the Bavarian royal family told me not so long ago that there were too many Turks in Germany because “they didn’t want to be part of German society”. Yet when Turkey itself – as near a perfect blend of Islam and democracy as you can find in the Middle East right now – asks to join the European Union and share our Western civilisation, we search desperately for any remedy, however racist, to prevent her membership.

In other words, we want them to be like us, providing they stay away. And then, when they prove they want to be like us but don’t want to invade Europe, we do our best to install another American-trained general to rule them. Just as Paul Wolfowitz reacted to the Turkish parliament’s refusal to allow US troops to invade Iraq from southern Turkey by asking if “the generals don’t have something to say about this”, we are now reduced to listening while US defence secretary Robert Gates fawns over the Egyptian army for their “restraint” – apparently failing to realise that it is the people of Egypt, the proponents of democracy, who should be praised for their restraint and non-violence, not a bunch of brigadiers.

So when the Arabs want dignity and self-respect, when they cry out for the very future which Obama outlined in his famous – now, I suppose, infamous – Cairo speech of June 2009, we show them disrespect and casuistry. Instead of welcoming democratic demands, we treat them as a disaster. It is an infinite relief to find serious American journalists like Roger Cohen going “behind the lines” on Tahrir Square to tell the unvarnished truth about this hypocrisy of ours. It is an unmitigated disgrace when their leaders speak. Macmillan threw aside colonial pretensions of African unpreparedness for democracy by talking of the “wind of change”. Now the wind of change is blowing across the Arab world. And we turn our backs upon it.

Friday, February 11, 2011; 4:00 PM

The protesters on the streets of Cairo who, in just 18 days, ended the three-decade rule of Hosni Mubarak were not merely demanding the end of an unjust, corrupt and oppressive regime. They did not merely decry privation, unemployment or the disdain with which their leaders treated them. They had long suffered such indignities. What they fought for was something more elusive and more visceral.

The Arab world is dead. Egypt’s revolution is trying to revive it.

From the 1950s onward, Arabs took pride in their anti-colonial struggle, in their leaders’ standing and in the sense that the Arab world stood for something, that it had a mission: to build independent nation-states and resist foreign domination.

In Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser presided over a ruinous economy and endured a humiliating defeat against Israel in 1967. Still, Cairo remained the heart of the larger Arab nation – the Arab public watched as Nasser railed against the West, defied his country’s former masters, nationalized the Suez Canal and taunted Israel. Meanwhile, Algeria wrested its independence from France and became the refuge of revolutionaries; Saudi Arabia led an oil embargo that shook the world economy; and Yasser Arafat gave Palestinians a voice and put their cause on the map.

Throughout, the Arab world suffered ignominious military and political setbacks, but it resisted. Some around the world may not have liked the sounds coming from Cairo, Algiers, Baghdad and Tripoli, but they took notice. There were defeats for the Arab world, but no surrender.

But that world passed, and Arab politics fell silent. Other than to wait and see what others might do, Arab regimes have no clear and effective approach toward any of the issues vital to their collective future, and what policies they do have contradict popular feeling. It is that indifference that condemned the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt to irrelevance.

Most governments in the region were resigned to or enabled the invasion of Iraq; since then, the Arab world has had virtually no impact on Iraq’s course. It has done little to achieve Palestinian aspirations besides backing a peace process in which it no longer believes. When Israel went to war with Hezbollah in 2006 and then with Hamas two years later, most Arab leaders privately cheered the Jewish state. And their position on Iran is unintelligible; they have delegated ultimate decision-making to the United States, which they encourage to toughen its stance but then warn about the consequences of such action.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia, pillars of the Arab order, are exhausted, bereft of a cause other than preventing their own decline. For Egypt, which stood tallest, the fall has been steepest. But long before Tahrir Square, Egypt forfeited any claim to Arab leadership. It has gone missing in Iraq, and its policy toward Iran remains restricted to protestations, accusations and insults. It has not prevailed in its rivalry with Syria and has lost its battle for influence in Lebanon. It has had no genuine impact on the Arab-Israeli peace process, was unable to reunify the Palestinian movement and was widely seen in the region as complicit in Israel’s siege on Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Riyadh has helplessly witnessed the gradual ascendancy of Iranian influence in Iraq and the wider region. It was humiliated in 2009 when it failed to crush rebels in Yemendespite formidable advantages in resources and military hardware. Its mediation attempts among Palestinians in 2007, and more recently in Lebanon, were brushed aside by local parties over which it once held considerable sway.

The Arab leadership has proved passive and, when active, powerless. Where it once championed a string of lost causes – pan-Arab unity, defiance of the West, resistance to Israel – it now fights for nothing. There was more popular pride in yesterday’s setbacks than in today’s stupor.

Arab states suffer from a curse more debilitating than poverty or autocracy. They have become counterfeit, perceived by their own people as alien, pursuing policies hatched from afar. One cannot fully comprehend the actions of Egyptians, Tunisians, Jordanians and others without considering this deep-seated feeling that they have not been allowed to be themselves, that they have been robbed of their identities.

Taking to the streets is not a mere act of protest. It is an act of self-determination.

Where the United States and Europe have seen moderation and cooperation, the Arab public has sensed a loss of dignity and of the ability to make free decisions. True independence was traded in for Western military, financial and political support. That intimate relationship distorted Arab politics. Reliant on foreign nations’ largesse and accountable to their judgment, the narrow ruling class became more responsive to external demands than to domestic aspirations.

Alienated from their states, the people have in some cases searched elsewhere for guidance. Some have been drawn to groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, which have resisted and challenged the established order. Others look to non-Arab states, such as Turkey, which under its Islamist government has carved out a dynamic, independent role, or Iran, which flouts Western threats and edicts.

The breakdown of the Arab order has upended natural power relations. Traditional powers punch below their weight, and emerging ones, such as Qatar, punch above theirs. Al-Jazeera has emerged as a full-fledged political actor because it reflects and articulates popular sentiment. It has become the new Nasser. The leader of the Arab world is a television network.

Popular uprisings are the latest step in this process. They have been facilitated by a newfound fearlessness and feeling of empowerment – watching the U.S. military’s struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Israel’s inability to subdue Hezbollah and Hamas, Arab peoples are no longer afraid to confront their own regimes.

For the United States, the popular upheaval lays bare the fallacy of an approach that relies on Arab leaders who mimic the West’s deeds and parrot its words, and that only succeeds in discrediting the regimes without helping Washington. The more the United States gave to the Mubarak regime, the more it lost Egypt. Arab leaders have been put on notice: A warm relationship with the United States and a peace deal with Israel will not save you in your hour of need.

Injecting economic assistance into faltering regimes will not work. The grievance Arab peoples feel is not principally material, and one of its main targets is over-reliance on the outside. U.S. calls for reform will likewise fall flat. A messenger who has backed the status quo for decades is a poor voice for change. Attempts to pressure regimes can backfire, allowing rulers to depict protests as Western-inspired and opposition leaders as foreign stooges.

Some policymakers in Western capitals have convinced themselves that seizing the moment to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process will placate public opinion. This is to engage in both denial and wishful thinking. It ignores that Arabs have become estranged from current peace efforts; they believe that such endeavors reflect a foreign rather than a national agenda. And it presumes that a peace agreement acceptable to the West and to Arab leaders will be acceptable to the Arab public, when in truth, it is more likely to be seen as an unjust imposition and denounced as the liquidation of a cherished cause. A peace effort intended to salvage order will accelerate its demise.

The Arab world’s transition from old to new is rife with uncertainty about its pace and endpoint. When and where transitions take place, they will express a yearning for more assertiveness. Governments will have to change their spots; their publics will wish them to be more like Turkey and less like Egypt.

For decades, the Arab world has been drained of its sovereignty, its freedom, its pride. It has been drained of politics. Today marks politics’ revenge.

Hussein Agha, a senior associate member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, is a co-author of “A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine.” Robert Malley is the Middle East program director at the International Crisis Group and was special assistant to President Bill Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs.

| Tuesday 15 February 2011

Maybe it’s because I spent time working for the United Nations Development Program in the Philippines in the ‘90s — I was a bit surprised that few people have mentioned the parallel between the Egyptian uprising and the People Power Revolution in Manila, which took place in 1986.

There are striking similarities between the two revolutions: in both instances, people organized against a dictator who had been a longtime ally of the United States; in both instances, the popular uprising was sparked by the government’s perceived corruption, rather than any particular ideology. Also, it seems to me that the role Mohamed ElBaradei has been trying to play in Egypt is somewhat similar to the role Corazon Aquino played in the Philippines, as she led the opposition. The fact that this revolt is taking place in the Middle East makes it a lot more fraught, but the script seems similar.

Certainly, the Philippines didn’t turn into Sweden (so famous for being almost corruption-free) following the uprising. There was still plenty of corruption, and the democracy remained imperfect following the revolution — none of which changes the fact that getting rid of Ferdinand Marcos was a very good thing. Egypt won’t turn into Sweden either, but maybe, just maybe, something good is about to happen.

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That said, many people have pointed to the parallels between the situation in Egypt today and that in Indonesia in 1998, which ended Suharto’s dictatorship — I’ve done it myself. But there is a possibly important, or even revealing, difference between the uprisings in Indonesia and the Philippines and the uprising in Egypt. As the chart on this page shows, political crises followed drastic economic crises in both the Philippines and Indonesia — Mr. Marcos was caught up in the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, and Suharto was entangled in the Asian financial crisis in 1998. Egypt is not experiencing similar problems, which is not to say that economics had nothing to do with the revolt. Egypt has experienced decent growth in recent times — but the gains weren’t trickling down, and youth unemployment has been a huge problem. I suppose the moral of the story is that gross domestic product is never the whole story.

Backstory: Uprisings, Past and Present

The political uprising that erupted in January against President Hosni Mubarak and his government in Egypt bears some striking resemblances to other popular revolutions that unseated regimes that were once political allies of the United States.

And while the world waits to see how the crisis in Egypt will play out, political commentators have been looking to these historical precedents for clues.

In the Philippines in 1986, the People Power Revolution succeeded in overthrowing President Ferdinand E. Marcos, whose brutal and corrupt government had retained power for almost 25 years.

The movement was triggered by the 1983 assassination of Mr. Marcos’s political opponent, Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., after he returned to Manila from exile in the United States.

The overthrow of Mr. Marcos’s government was marked by peaceful demonstrations and nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, and in contrast to recent events in Cairo, news of the popular dissent spread via word of mouth and radio, rather than through social media.

Under intense pressure from the United States, Mr. Marcos eventually left the country and later died in Hawaii.

Following his departure, the Philippines chose its first democratically elected president in decades — Corazon C. Aquino, Mr. Aquino’s widow.

The collapse of the 32-year rule of the Indonesian dictator Suharto in 1998 also might offer insights. In 1998, as the Asian financial crisis ate away at the country’s prosperity, Suharto agreed to step down after hundreds of students were killed when protests against his regime turned violent.

Known for his ruthless and unscrupulous behavior as president, Suharto — whose opposition to both communism and Islamic extremism made him an ally of the United States — had previously managed to establish a viable economy and a strong military.

Egypt might be able to follow either course to political stability, some analysts believe.

Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed page and continues as a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. He was awarded the Nobel in economic science in 2008.

Mr Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes, including “The Return of Depression Economics” (2008) and “The Conscience of a Liberal” (2007).