WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN By Mr. Fish
Monday 31 January 2011
WHAT CORRUPTION AND FORCE HAVE WROUGHT IN EGYPT
WHAT CORRUPTION AND FORCE HAVE WROUGHT IN EGYPT
Posted on Jan 30, 2011
By Chris Hedges
The uprising in Egypt, although united around the nearly universal desire to rid the country of the military dictator Hosni Mubarak, also presages the inevitable shift within the Arab world away from secular regimes toward an embrace of Islamic rule. Don’t be fooled by the glib sloganeering about democracy or the facile reporting by Western reporters—few of whom speak Arabic or have experience in the region. Egyptians are not Americans. They have their own culture, their own sets of grievances and their own history. And it is not ours. They want, as we do, to have a say in their own governance, but that say will include widespread support—especially among Egypt’s poor, who make up more than half the country and live on about two dollars a day—for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties. Any real opening of the political system in the Arab world’s most populated nation will see an empowering of these Islamic movements. And any attempt to close the system further—say a replacement of Mubarak with another military dictator—will ensure a deeper radicalization in Egypt and the wider Arab world.
The only way opposition to the U.S.-backed regime of Mubarak could be expressed for the past three decades was through Islamic movements, from the Muslim Brotherhood to more radical Islamic groups, some of which embrace violence. And any replacement of Mubarak (which now seems almost certain) while it may initially be dominated by moderate, secular leaders will, once elections are held and popular will is expressed, have an Islamic coloring. A new government, to maintain credibility with the Egyptian population, will have to more actively defy demands from Washington and be more openly antagonistic to Israel. What is happening in Egypt, like what happened in Tunisia, tightens the noose that will—unless Israel and Washington radically change their policies toward the Palestinians and the Muslim world—threaten to strangle the Jewish state as well as dramatically curtail American influence in the Middle East.
The failure of the United States to halt the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel has consequences. The failure to acknowledge the collective humiliation and anger felt by most Arabs because of the presence of U.S. troops on Muslim soil, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in the staging bases set up in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, has consequences. The failure to denounce the repression, including the widespread use of torture, censorship and rigged elections, wielded by our allies against their citizens in the Middle East has consequences. We are soaked with the stench of these regimes. Mubarak, who reportedly is suffering from cancer, is seen as our puppet, a man who betrayed his own people and the Palestinians for money and power.
The Muslim world does not see us as we see ourselves. Muslims are aware, while we are not, that we have murdered tens of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have terrorized families, villages and nations. We enable and defend the Israeli war crimes carried out against Palestinians and the Lebanese—indeed we give the Israelis the weapons and military aid to carry out the slaughter. We dismiss the thousands of dead as “collateral damage.” And when those who are fighting against occupation kill us or Israelis we condemn them, regardless of context, as terrorists. Our hypocrisy is recognized on the Arab street. Most Arabs see bloody and disturbing images every day from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, images that are censored on our television screens. They have grown sick of us. They have grown sick of the Arab regimes that pay lip service to the suffering of Palestinians but do nothing to intervene. They have grown sick of being ruled by tyrants who are funded and supported by Washington. Arabs understand that we, like the Israelis, primarily speak to the Muslim world in the crude language of power and violence. And because of our entrancement with our own power and ability to project force, we are woefully out of touch. Israeli and American intelligence services did not foresee the popular uprising in Tunisia or Egypt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Israel’s new intelligence chief, told Knesset members last Tuesday that “there is no concern at the moment about the stability of the Egyptian government.” Tuesday, it turned out, was the day hundreds of thousands of Egyptians poured into the streets to begin their nationwide protests.
What is happening in Egypt will damage and perhaps unravel the fragile peace treaty between Egypt and Jordan with Israel. It is likely to end Washington’s alliance with these Arab intelligence services, including the use of prisons to torture those we have disappeared into our vast network of black sites. The economic ties between Israel and these Arab countries will suffer. The current antagonism between Cairo and the Hamas government in Gaza will be replaced by more overt cooperation. The Egyptian government’s collaboration with Israel, which includes demolishing tunnels into Gaza, the sharing of intelligence and the passage of Israeli warship and submarines through the Suez Canal, will be in serious jeopardy. Any government—even a transition government that is headed by a pro-Western secularist such as Mohamed ElBaradei—will have to make these changes in the relationship with Israel and Washington if it wants to have any credibility and support. We are seeing the rise of a new Middle East, one that will not be as pliable to Washington or as cowed by Israel.
The secular Arab regimes, backed by the United States, are discredited and moribund. The lofty promise of a pan-Arab union, championed by the Egyptian leader Gamal Abd-al-Nasser and the original Baathists, has become a farce. Nasser’s defiance of Washington and the Western powers has been replaced by client states. The secular Arab regimes from Morocco to Yemen, for all their ties with the West, have not provided freedom, dignity, opportunity or prosperity for their people. They have failed as spectacularly as the secular Palestinian resistance movement led by Yasser Arafat. And Arabs, frustrated and enduring mounting poverty, are ready for something new. Radical Islamist groups such as the Palestinian Hamas, the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon and the jihadists fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are the new heroes, especially for the young who make up most of the Arab world. And many of those who admire these radicals are not observant Muslims. They support the Islamists because they fight back. Communism as an ideological force never took root in the Muslim world because it clashed with the tenets of Islam. The championing of the free market in countries such as Egypt has done nothing to ameliorate crushing poverty. Its only visible result has been to enrich the elite, including Mubarak’s son and designated heir, Gamal. Islamic revolutionary movements, because of these failures, are very attractive. And this is why Mubarak forbids the use of the slogan “Islam is the solution” and bans the Muslim Brotherhood. These secular Arab regimes hate and fear Hamas and the Islamic radicals as deeply as the Israelis do. And this hatred only adds to their luster.
The decision to withdraw the police from Egyptian cities and turn security over to the army means that Mubarak and his handlers in Washington face a grim choice. Either the army, as in Tunisia, refuses to interfere with the protests, meaning the removal of Mubarak, or it tries to quell the protests with force, a move that would leave hundreds if not thousands dead and wounded. The fraternization between the soldiers and the crowds, along with the presence of tanks adorned with graffiti such as “Mubarak will fall,” does not bode well for Washington, Israel and the Egyptian regime. The army has not been immune to the creeping Islamization of Egypt—where bars, nightclubs and even belly dancing have been banished to the hotels catering to Western tourists. I attended a reception for middle-ranking army officers in Cairo in the 1990s when I was based there for The New York Times and every one of the officers’ wives had a head covering. Mubarak will soon become history. So, I expect, will neighboring secular Arab regimes. The rise of powerful Islamic parties appears inevitable. It appears inevitable not because of the Quran or a backward tradition, but because we and Israel believed we could bend the aspirations of the Arab world to our will through corruption and force.
Chris Hedges, who speaks Arabic and spent seven years in the Middle East, was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. He is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and a regular columnist for Truthdig. His newest book is “Death of the Liberal Class.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/what_corruption_and_force_have_wrought_in_egypt_20110130/
Posted on Jan 30, 2011
By Chris Hedges
The uprising in Egypt, although united around the nearly universal desire to rid the country of the military dictator Hosni Mubarak, also presages the inevitable shift within the Arab world away from secular regimes toward an embrace of Islamic rule. Don’t be fooled by the glib sloganeering about democracy or the facile reporting by Western reporters—few of whom speak Arabic or have experience in the region. Egyptians are not Americans. They have their own culture, their own sets of grievances and their own history. And it is not ours. They want, as we do, to have a say in their own governance, but that say will include widespread support—especially among Egypt’s poor, who make up more than half the country and live on about two dollars a day—for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties. Any real opening of the political system in the Arab world’s most populated nation will see an empowering of these Islamic movements. And any attempt to close the system further—say a replacement of Mubarak with another military dictator—will ensure a deeper radicalization in Egypt and the wider Arab world.
The only way opposition to the U.S.-backed regime of Mubarak could be expressed for the past three decades was through Islamic movements, from the Muslim Brotherhood to more radical Islamic groups, some of which embrace violence. And any replacement of Mubarak (which now seems almost certain) while it may initially be dominated by moderate, secular leaders will, once elections are held and popular will is expressed, have an Islamic coloring. A new government, to maintain credibility with the Egyptian population, will have to more actively defy demands from Washington and be more openly antagonistic to Israel. What is happening in Egypt, like what happened in Tunisia, tightens the noose that will—unless Israel and Washington radically change their policies toward the Palestinians and the Muslim world—threaten to strangle the Jewish state as well as dramatically curtail American influence in the Middle East.
The failure of the United States to halt the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel has consequences. The failure to acknowledge the collective humiliation and anger felt by most Arabs because of the presence of U.S. troops on Muslim soil, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in the staging bases set up in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, has consequences. The failure to denounce the repression, including the widespread use of torture, censorship and rigged elections, wielded by our allies against their citizens in the Middle East has consequences. We are soaked with the stench of these regimes. Mubarak, who reportedly is suffering from cancer, is seen as our puppet, a man who betrayed his own people and the Palestinians for money and power.
The Muslim world does not see us as we see ourselves. Muslims are aware, while we are not, that we have murdered tens of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have terrorized families, villages and nations. We enable and defend the Israeli war crimes carried out against Palestinians and the Lebanese—indeed we give the Israelis the weapons and military aid to carry out the slaughter. We dismiss the thousands of dead as “collateral damage.” And when those who are fighting against occupation kill us or Israelis we condemn them, regardless of context, as terrorists. Our hypocrisy is recognized on the Arab street. Most Arabs see bloody and disturbing images every day from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, images that are censored on our television screens. They have grown sick of us. They have grown sick of the Arab regimes that pay lip service to the suffering of Palestinians but do nothing to intervene. They have grown sick of being ruled by tyrants who are funded and supported by Washington. Arabs understand that we, like the Israelis, primarily speak to the Muslim world in the crude language of power and violence. And because of our entrancement with our own power and ability to project force, we are woefully out of touch. Israeli and American intelligence services did not foresee the popular uprising in Tunisia or Egypt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Israel’s new intelligence chief, told Knesset members last Tuesday that “there is no concern at the moment about the stability of the Egyptian government.” Tuesday, it turned out, was the day hundreds of thousands of Egyptians poured into the streets to begin their nationwide protests.
What is happening in Egypt will damage and perhaps unravel the fragile peace treaty between Egypt and Jordan with Israel. It is likely to end Washington’s alliance with these Arab intelligence services, including the use of prisons to torture those we have disappeared into our vast network of black sites. The economic ties between Israel and these Arab countries will suffer. The current antagonism between Cairo and the Hamas government in Gaza will be replaced by more overt cooperation. The Egyptian government’s collaboration with Israel, which includes demolishing tunnels into Gaza, the sharing of intelligence and the passage of Israeli warship and submarines through the Suez Canal, will be in serious jeopardy. Any government—even a transition government that is headed by a pro-Western secularist such as Mohamed ElBaradei—will have to make these changes in the relationship with Israel and Washington if it wants to have any credibility and support. We are seeing the rise of a new Middle East, one that will not be as pliable to Washington or as cowed by Israel.
The secular Arab regimes, backed by the United States, are discredited and moribund. The lofty promise of a pan-Arab union, championed by the Egyptian leader Gamal Abd-al-Nasser and the original Baathists, has become a farce. Nasser’s defiance of Washington and the Western powers has been replaced by client states. The secular Arab regimes from Morocco to Yemen, for all their ties with the West, have not provided freedom, dignity, opportunity or prosperity for their people. They have failed as spectacularly as the secular Palestinian resistance movement led by Yasser Arafat. And Arabs, frustrated and enduring mounting poverty, are ready for something new. Radical Islamist groups such as the Palestinian Hamas, the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon and the jihadists fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are the new heroes, especially for the young who make up most of the Arab world. And many of those who admire these radicals are not observant Muslims. They support the Islamists because they fight back. Communism as an ideological force never took root in the Muslim world because it clashed with the tenets of Islam. The championing of the free market in countries such as Egypt has done nothing to ameliorate crushing poverty. Its only visible result has been to enrich the elite, including Mubarak’s son and designated heir, Gamal. Islamic revolutionary movements, because of these failures, are very attractive. And this is why Mubarak forbids the use of the slogan “Islam is the solution” and bans the Muslim Brotherhood. These secular Arab regimes hate and fear Hamas and the Islamic radicals as deeply as the Israelis do. And this hatred only adds to their luster.
The decision to withdraw the police from Egyptian cities and turn security over to the army means that Mubarak and his handlers in Washington face a grim choice. Either the army, as in Tunisia, refuses to interfere with the protests, meaning the removal of Mubarak, or it tries to quell the protests with force, a move that would leave hundreds if not thousands dead and wounded. The fraternization between the soldiers and the crowds, along with the presence of tanks adorned with graffiti such as “Mubarak will fall,” does not bode well for Washington, Israel and the Egyptian regime. The army has not been immune to the creeping Islamization of Egypt—where bars, nightclubs and even belly dancing have been banished to the hotels catering to Western tourists. I attended a reception for middle-ranking army officers in Cairo in the 1990s when I was based there for The New York Times and every one of the officers’ wives had a head covering. Mubarak will soon become history. So, I expect, will neighboring secular Arab regimes. The rise of powerful Islamic parties appears inevitable. It appears inevitable not because of the Quran or a backward tradition, but because we and Israel believed we could bend the aspirations of the Arab world to our will through corruption and force.
Chris Hedges, who speaks Arabic and spent seven years in the Middle East, was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. He is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and a regular columnist for Truthdig. His newest book is “Death of the Liberal Class.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/what_corruption_and_force_have_wrought_in_egypt_20110130/
THE EGYPTIAN PROTESTERS
Truthdigger of the Week
TRUTHDIGGERS OF THE WEEK: THE EGYPTIAN PROTESTERS
Posted on Jan 27, 2011
Every week (from now on), Truthdig recognizes an individual or group of people who spoke truth to power, blew the whistle or stood up in the face of injustice. You can see past winners here, and make your own nomination for our next awardee here.
This week we acknowledge the thousands who have been marching against tyranny since Tuesday. At least seven people are dead and as many as 1,000 have been arrested since Egyptians began to rise up in the 30th year of President Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorial rule.
SeemaZ, who nominated the protesters for Truthdiggers of the Week, wrote, “These young people absolutely deserve to be recognized for standing up to a ruthless dictator and for literally putting their lives on the line for basic freedoms that all people deserve.” Hear hear.
Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer adds this thought: “Egyptian totalitarianism has been supported by U.S. foreign policy ever since the dictator of that country broke with the old Soviet Union. For young people in Egypt to rise up against one of the world’s most entrenched authoritarian regimes, vicious in its repressive techniques, not only shows great courage, but is the most promising sign for profound change in the Middle East in decades.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdiggers_of_the_week_the_egyptian_protesters_20110127/
TRUTHDIGGERS OF THE WEEK: THE EGYPTIAN PROTESTERS
Posted on Jan 27, 2011
Every week (from now on), Truthdig recognizes an individual or group of people who spoke truth to power, blew the whistle or stood up in the face of injustice. You can see past winners here, and make your own nomination for our next awardee here.
This week we acknowledge the thousands who have been marching against tyranny since Tuesday. At least seven people are dead and as many as 1,000 have been arrested since Egyptians began to rise up in the 30th year of President Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorial rule.
SeemaZ, who nominated the protesters for Truthdiggers of the Week, wrote, “These young people absolutely deserve to be recognized for standing up to a ruthless dictator and for literally putting their lives on the line for basic freedoms that all people deserve.” Hear hear.
Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer adds this thought: “Egyptian totalitarianism has been supported by U.S. foreign policy ever since the dictator of that country broke with the old Soviet Union. For young people in Egypt to rise up against one of the world’s most entrenched authoritarian regimes, vicious in its repressive techniques, not only shows great courage, but is the most promising sign for profound change in the Middle East in decades.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdiggers_of_the_week_the_egyptian_protesters_20110127/
THIS REVOLUTION IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY AL-JAZEERA
THIS REVOLUTION IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY AL-JAZEERA
LIVE FROM THE STREETS
By CHARLES R. LARSON
January 31, 2011
This past Saturday, when I managed to pull myself away from Al Jazeera for a half an hour so I could run an errand, I discovered that the TV at the dry-cleaning store was on the same station. No Muslims work there and, although the TV is usually on, this was the first time I had paid any attention to the TV set. Maybe it had always been on Al Jazeera and I simply hadn't noticed.
During the Bush years, Al Jazeera was vilified as biased in favor of the Arab world. I never heard the Bush administration criticizing American TV networks for favoring the United States. It wasn't until three years ago that Al Jazeera began broadcasting in English from its offices in Fairfax, Virginia, not far from where I live. I watched the station sporadically until a year ago when I went to a local Midas automobile repair shop and discovered—early in the morning when I dropped off my car—that the channel in the lobby was set on Al Jazeera. When I picked up my car in the afternoon, it was the same. I asked the manager if there were any Muslims working for him and he said no, but his more revealing answer came when I asked why his lobby television was set on Al Jazeera.
"It's the only channel that gives you the real news." His response led me to conclude that if middle America had figured this out, something interesting was happening.
I increased my own viewing of Al Jazeera and realized that, yes, the manager at Midas was right. Sometimes events unfolding in the United States received better coverage and analysis on Al Jazeera than on American network and cable channels. That was particularly true during the run-up to the 2010 mid-term elections.
Where would we be today without Al Jazeera as events in the Middle East continue to unfold so rapidly—events as momentous as the fall of the Berlin Wall—that many of us find ourselves glued to our TVs? CNN's coverage is interrupted ad nauseam for commercials that often string half a dozen mindless advertisements together. FOX "news" continues its infantile coverage of non-events as if nothing of significance ever happens outside the United States.
That leaves Al Jazeera, first chronicling the remarkable events as they occurred in Tunisia and now Egypt. Though their bureau in Cairo has been closed down by the Egyptian government, live feeds of voices from phone lines continue non-stop. Maybe Americans will not only learn something about a part of the world about which we are so woefully ignorant. Perhaps we will also begin to realize that while media organizations are generally faithful to their geographical and cultural places of origins, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are distorting information.
The on-going revolution in the Middle East will be brought to you by Al Jazeera, God willing.
Charles R. Larson is Professor of Literature at American University, in Washington, D.C.
http://www.counterpunch.org/larson01312011.html
LIVE FROM THE STREETS
By CHARLES R. LARSON
January 31, 2011
This past Saturday, when I managed to pull myself away from Al Jazeera for a half an hour so I could run an errand, I discovered that the TV at the dry-cleaning store was on the same station. No Muslims work there and, although the TV is usually on, this was the first time I had paid any attention to the TV set. Maybe it had always been on Al Jazeera and I simply hadn't noticed.
During the Bush years, Al Jazeera was vilified as biased in favor of the Arab world. I never heard the Bush administration criticizing American TV networks for favoring the United States. It wasn't until three years ago that Al Jazeera began broadcasting in English from its offices in Fairfax, Virginia, not far from where I live. I watched the station sporadically until a year ago when I went to a local Midas automobile repair shop and discovered—early in the morning when I dropped off my car—that the channel in the lobby was set on Al Jazeera. When I picked up my car in the afternoon, it was the same. I asked the manager if there were any Muslims working for him and he said no, but his more revealing answer came when I asked why his lobby television was set on Al Jazeera.
"It's the only channel that gives you the real news." His response led me to conclude that if middle America had figured this out, something interesting was happening.
I increased my own viewing of Al Jazeera and realized that, yes, the manager at Midas was right. Sometimes events unfolding in the United States received better coverage and analysis on Al Jazeera than on American network and cable channels. That was particularly true during the run-up to the 2010 mid-term elections.
Where would we be today without Al Jazeera as events in the Middle East continue to unfold so rapidly—events as momentous as the fall of the Berlin Wall—that many of us find ourselves glued to our TVs? CNN's coverage is interrupted ad nauseam for commercials that often string half a dozen mindless advertisements together. FOX "news" continues its infantile coverage of non-events as if nothing of significance ever happens outside the United States.
That leaves Al Jazeera, first chronicling the remarkable events as they occurred in Tunisia and now Egypt. Though their bureau in Cairo has been closed down by the Egyptian government, live feeds of voices from phone lines continue non-stop. Maybe Americans will not only learn something about a part of the world about which we are so woefully ignorant. Perhaps we will also begin to realize that while media organizations are generally faithful to their geographical and cultural places of origins, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are distorting information.
The on-going revolution in the Middle East will be brought to you by Al Jazeera, God willing.
Charles R. Larson is Professor of Literature at American University, in Washington, D.C.
http://www.counterpunch.org/larson01312011.html
TUNISIA, THEN EGYPT WHY NOW?
TUNISIA, THEN EGYPT WHY NOW?
By LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
January 31, 2011
If the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt tell us anything it is that predicting the beginning of mass unrest is very difficult. Indeed, it is probably easier to predict the stock market. What one can do, however, is describe conditions that are likely to create a context conducive to such unrest. What might those be?
First and foremost are poor economic conditions that are believed unnecessary by a suffering population. In our day and age this condition is easy to meet. There are many areas of the world where economies are stagnant, held hostage by international organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, unable to feed usually growing populations, and most importantly, unable to employ a growing percentage of their adult population, including highly educated middle class individuals. And, in age of worldwide instant communication, no one really believes that such conditions are the way things have to be. Muhammad Bouazizi, the young man who, through an act of self-immolation, sparked the revolt that brought down Tunisia's dictator, was responding to years of economic frustration.
Police and/or military repression is the second condition that increases the probability, at least in the long run, of resistance and revolt. In a country where unemployment is high, the army and the police become primary employers. But, those so employed are separated out from the rest of the population as an arm of a government that is unpopular. They often act with impunity. That is they are above the law and not its servants. If their salaries are sub-standard or they are not well supervised the police may well turn criminal. And their usual crime is extortion. Muhammad Bouazizi committed suicide after police took away his only source of living. They confiscated his street stall in part because he could not afford to pay off those in authority.
Thus, rampant corruption is a third ingredient often found in societies that are vulnerable to popular revolution. When questioned about employment possibilities, a young man from Bouazizi's town, Sidi Bouzid, responded, "Why don't I have a job? Because I would have to pay people connected to the president's family to receive one. They take everything from us, and give us nothing."
Egypt too reflects this mix, though in different ways than does Tunisia. In Egypt unemployment is very high, particularly among the young and college graduates. Having a highly educated labor force that is chronically unemployed or under employed is always a dangerous mix. Repression is also high in what amounts to a police state with rigged elections and torture chambers in the basements of local jails. Corruption is pervasive in Egypt. Everyone knows that those close to the dictator control the economy. You want something done, you have to cut them in.
While the three conditions listed above might be necessary to the eventual outbreak of mass unrest, at least in the non-Western world, they are not sufficient. Zine Ben Ali was Tunisia's dictator for 23 years. Hosni Mubarak has "led" Egypt for 30 years. Conditions in both countries have been ripe for a popular uprising for much of that time. So what is the missing ingredient? It is probably not one thing, but rather a chain of things. Here is the surmise put forth by my wife, the anthropologist Janet Amighi:
A. The default positions among the population of these dictatorships are fear and passivity.
B. Then something particularly outrageous (Bouaziz's public suicide) or inspiring (successful revolt in Tunisia) occurs.
C. This event is enough to overcome the fear and passivity of a small number of people who publically protest.
D. For whatever reason they are not immediately suppressed and this encourages others to take the chance of coming into the streets.
E. At this point the authorities have a choice. You either come down very hard on the protestors, which usually includes shooting many of them down, or you positively respond to their demands. Or sometimes the authorities are so stunned and uncertain they just do nothing. In 1989 in China the government choose to shoot the people in Tianamen Square. In Tunisia and also in Iran of the Shah, and now in Egypt too, the government hesitated or, as seems likely in the case of Tunisia, the army refused to shoot down the citizenry.
F. Whatever the reason, hesitation on the part of the government that goes on long enough changes the default norms. Passivity and fear ebb and all the discontent and hatred that has built up over the decades comes pouring out. At that point the days of most dictatorial regimes are numbered.
For a very long time now the U.S. has put its money on the dictators. Washington has bought both them and their armies so as to have the leverage to economically exploit their countries and dictate their foreign policies. We officially call this arrangement "stability." It works most of the time because most people are in fact passive and fearful. Yet, at the same time the U.S. government has presented itself as the champion of democracy. This is mostly for domestic American consumption, but it does make it difficult for Washington to turn around and advocate the slaughter of protestors in those rare moments when such a choice presents itself.
However, that does not mean there are not those among us who have not and would not again do just that or worse. Henry Kissinger and his Chilean friend Augusto Pinochet come to mind.. More recently there are the neo-conservatives. As far as I am concerned, Jimmy Carter did the right thing by advising the Shah of Iran not to slaughter those he had so long oppressed. And, just so, Barack Obama has (at least so far) done the right thing by advising Hosni Mubarak and his generals not to slaughter the people of Egypt. However, there is little doubt that Mubarak would have gotten a very different message from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the entire gang that ran the U.S.A. only a few years ago.
* * *
The future outcomes of these popular revolts are also difficult to predict. Unless the protesting elements have strong organization and a clear notion of how they want their future to look, these things can peter out as quickly as they erupt. Then the names of the dictators may change, but the repressive game stays approximately the same. That is also something Washington calls "stability"or, in the present case of Egypt, an "orderly transition." Then again, once there is turmoil all manner of possible outcomes are possible. In Tunisia the dictator is gone and, right now, the country is calm as a new government is formed. In Egypt things are much more uncertain. It seems to me that the U.S. is presently backing Omar Suleiman, Mubarak's newly named vice president. Suleiman was the head of the Egyptian Intelligence Services and is identified with policies of cooperation with Israel, particular when it comes to Gaza. He can be relied upon to be Washington's man in Cairo. Yet the likelihood of the Egyptian people swapping Mubarak for Suleiman is highly unlikely. There is also the fact that the Muslim Brothers, who have kept a low profile so far, can put half a million additional protesting Egyptians in the streets within hours with little regard to the fact that this would certainly upset Secretary of State Clinton. They have expressed their willingness to cooperate with Mohammed El Baradei, someone much more acceptable to the general population than Suleiman.
So you see, once the genie is out of the bottle so to speak, unless you, the government and its foreign supporters, are willing to kill a lot of people, you really can't control the outcome. As in Tunisia, the Egyptian army has so far decided not to murder its own people. Therefore, we don't really know how this is all going to play out in the land of the Nile.
Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA.
http://www.counterpunch.org/davidson01312011.html
By LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
January 31, 2011
If the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt tell us anything it is that predicting the beginning of mass unrest is very difficult. Indeed, it is probably easier to predict the stock market. What one can do, however, is describe conditions that are likely to create a context conducive to such unrest. What might those be?
First and foremost are poor economic conditions that are believed unnecessary by a suffering population. In our day and age this condition is easy to meet. There are many areas of the world where economies are stagnant, held hostage by international organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, unable to feed usually growing populations, and most importantly, unable to employ a growing percentage of their adult population, including highly educated middle class individuals. And, in age of worldwide instant communication, no one really believes that such conditions are the way things have to be. Muhammad Bouazizi, the young man who, through an act of self-immolation, sparked the revolt that brought down Tunisia's dictator, was responding to years of economic frustration.
Police and/or military repression is the second condition that increases the probability, at least in the long run, of resistance and revolt. In a country where unemployment is high, the army and the police become primary employers. But, those so employed are separated out from the rest of the population as an arm of a government that is unpopular. They often act with impunity. That is they are above the law and not its servants. If their salaries are sub-standard or they are not well supervised the police may well turn criminal. And their usual crime is extortion. Muhammad Bouazizi committed suicide after police took away his only source of living. They confiscated his street stall in part because he could not afford to pay off those in authority.
Thus, rampant corruption is a third ingredient often found in societies that are vulnerable to popular revolution. When questioned about employment possibilities, a young man from Bouazizi's town, Sidi Bouzid, responded, "Why don't I have a job? Because I would have to pay people connected to the president's family to receive one. They take everything from us, and give us nothing."
Egypt too reflects this mix, though in different ways than does Tunisia. In Egypt unemployment is very high, particularly among the young and college graduates. Having a highly educated labor force that is chronically unemployed or under employed is always a dangerous mix. Repression is also high in what amounts to a police state with rigged elections and torture chambers in the basements of local jails. Corruption is pervasive in Egypt. Everyone knows that those close to the dictator control the economy. You want something done, you have to cut them in.
While the three conditions listed above might be necessary to the eventual outbreak of mass unrest, at least in the non-Western world, they are not sufficient. Zine Ben Ali was Tunisia's dictator for 23 years. Hosni Mubarak has "led" Egypt for 30 years. Conditions in both countries have been ripe for a popular uprising for much of that time. So what is the missing ingredient? It is probably not one thing, but rather a chain of things. Here is the surmise put forth by my wife, the anthropologist Janet Amighi:
A. The default positions among the population of these dictatorships are fear and passivity.
B. Then something particularly outrageous (Bouaziz's public suicide) or inspiring (successful revolt in Tunisia) occurs.
C. This event is enough to overcome the fear and passivity of a small number of people who publically protest.
D. For whatever reason they are not immediately suppressed and this encourages others to take the chance of coming into the streets.
E. At this point the authorities have a choice. You either come down very hard on the protestors, which usually includes shooting many of them down, or you positively respond to their demands. Or sometimes the authorities are so stunned and uncertain they just do nothing. In 1989 in China the government choose to shoot the people in Tianamen Square. In Tunisia and also in Iran of the Shah, and now in Egypt too, the government hesitated or, as seems likely in the case of Tunisia, the army refused to shoot down the citizenry.
F. Whatever the reason, hesitation on the part of the government that goes on long enough changes the default norms. Passivity and fear ebb and all the discontent and hatred that has built up over the decades comes pouring out. At that point the days of most dictatorial regimes are numbered.
For a very long time now the U.S. has put its money on the dictators. Washington has bought both them and their armies so as to have the leverage to economically exploit their countries and dictate their foreign policies. We officially call this arrangement "stability." It works most of the time because most people are in fact passive and fearful. Yet, at the same time the U.S. government has presented itself as the champion of democracy. This is mostly for domestic American consumption, but it does make it difficult for Washington to turn around and advocate the slaughter of protestors in those rare moments when such a choice presents itself.
However, that does not mean there are not those among us who have not and would not again do just that or worse. Henry Kissinger and his Chilean friend Augusto Pinochet come to mind.. More recently there are the neo-conservatives. As far as I am concerned, Jimmy Carter did the right thing by advising the Shah of Iran not to slaughter those he had so long oppressed. And, just so, Barack Obama has (at least so far) done the right thing by advising Hosni Mubarak and his generals not to slaughter the people of Egypt. However, there is little doubt that Mubarak would have gotten a very different message from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the entire gang that ran the U.S.A. only a few years ago.
* * *
The future outcomes of these popular revolts are also difficult to predict. Unless the protesting elements have strong organization and a clear notion of how they want their future to look, these things can peter out as quickly as they erupt. Then the names of the dictators may change, but the repressive game stays approximately the same. That is also something Washington calls "stability"or, in the present case of Egypt, an "orderly transition." Then again, once there is turmoil all manner of possible outcomes are possible. In Tunisia the dictator is gone and, right now, the country is calm as a new government is formed. In Egypt things are much more uncertain. It seems to me that the U.S. is presently backing Omar Suleiman, Mubarak's newly named vice president. Suleiman was the head of the Egyptian Intelligence Services and is identified with policies of cooperation with Israel, particular when it comes to Gaza. He can be relied upon to be Washington's man in Cairo. Yet the likelihood of the Egyptian people swapping Mubarak for Suleiman is highly unlikely. There is also the fact that the Muslim Brothers, who have kept a low profile so far, can put half a million additional protesting Egyptians in the streets within hours with little regard to the fact that this would certainly upset Secretary of State Clinton. They have expressed their willingness to cooperate with Mohammed El Baradei, someone much more acceptable to the general population than Suleiman.
So you see, once the genie is out of the bottle so to speak, unless you, the government and its foreign supporters, are willing to kill a lot of people, you really can't control the outcome. As in Tunisia, the Egyptian army has so far decided not to murder its own people. Therefore, we don't really know how this is all going to play out in the land of the Nile.
Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA.
http://www.counterpunch.org/davidson01312011.html
DID OBAMA'S PROMISE TRIGGER THE ARAB REVOLT?
FADED HOPES
DID OBAMA'S PROMISE TRIGGER THE ARAB REVOLT?
By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY
January 31, 2011
During his brilliantly run campaign of 2008, Barack Obama electrified the world with vague promises of change in foreign policy as well as domestic policy. (My take on his campaign strategy can be found here.) Two and a half years later, those promises are ashes. Nowhere is that clearer in foreign policy than in the Arab world.
In contrast to the euphoria surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Arab Revolt of 2011 leaves one with a disquieting sense that we may be standing on the wrong side of history. People power and the promise of democracy worked spectacularly well for the United States when the tyrants in Eastern Europe collapsed twenty years ago, but I think it may be working against us in the Arab world of 2011.
Clearly, the explosion of people power in Tunisia and Egypt caught the U.S. flat footed, and to date, has triggered only embarrassingly incoherent responses by our political leadership. If you doubt this, I urge you to watch this video of Shihab Rattansi's interview of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley on Al Jazeera, or read this report describing Obama's empty platitudes on about the crisis in Egypt.
The revolt shows signs of spreading. America's "friends" in Tunisia and Lebanon have already fallen to democratic pressures; as I write this, Hosni Mubarak teeters on the brink of collapse in Egypt, and there is potential for a collapse in Yemen as well as in the Palestinian Authority.
Are we witnessing a chain reaction, where each collapse begets more collapses? Will the Arab revolt spread to Jordan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere, or will it peter out?
Of course, no one can reliably predict how an ongoing interplay of chance with necessity will unfold over the coming days and months. But a question's unanswerability does not mean one should not think about it's ramifications.
Many of the problems are the same from country to country: grossly unequal distributions of income and conspicuous consumption by rich elites; masses of undereducated poor; high unemployment, especially among the young (including college graduates); rising food prices; corrupt autocracy, official nepotism etc. The forces for a spreading revolt are in place across the region and will not go away, even if tyrants like Mubarak manage to retain their grips on power in the short term.
Mr. Obama did not create the forces driving the Arab revolt. Indeed, the seeds were planted long ago, when myopic cold-war foreign policies began to oppose the democratic/nationalist aspirations of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt in the early 1950s, and when we began to prop up reactionary regimes in the oil states, while winking at Israel's illegal colonization schemes after the 1967 War.
But I do not think President Obama is blameless.
Obama did surprisingly little to fulfill the hopes and dreams he unleashed worldwide during the election of 2008. Moreover, he deliberately magnified them in the Arab world with his 2009 Cairo speech. But coupled with his continuation of America's cynical policies to prop up tyrannical Arab regimes, and particularly his spectacular failure to rein in the illegal Israeli settlements in the so-called Arab-Israeli Peace Process in 2010, Mr. Obama may have inadvertently exacerbated the explosive combination of frustrated expectations and business-as-usual that pressurized the current eruption of resentment, anger, and alienation among the Arab people in 2011.
It is difficult today to appreciate the expectations he unleashed. I witnessed firsthand how his promises of change pumped up Europeans, Turks, and Arabs during 2008.
I am retired and have been living with my wife Alison on a sailboat in the Mediterranean for nine months out of each year, since we crossed the Atlantic in 2005. (FYI, this is a link to her travelblog of our adventures.) During the summer and fall of 2008, we cruised the coasts of southern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. We spent time in harbours and took inland tours, including a side trip into southern Jordan.
I try to chat up our many European sailor friends as well as locals I meet to learn about their conditions, lives, politics, culture, etc. Just about every one I talk to is an 'average joe,' living somewhere along the lower two-thirds of the food chain. Conversations may be in pidgin and sign language, but I generally connect. Despite this microscopic point of view, I am confident Obama's promise electrified people in Europe, Turkey, and the Arab world during his 2008 campaign.
In fact, the impression he created boggled my mind. Once in a small shop in Syria, for example, a man of about 20, asked me in French, Syria's second language, if I was French or English. I responded, pointing to my chest, saying slowly, 'Aameerikaa.' He broke into a huge grin, put his arm around me, and started chanting 'Obama, Obama, Obama,' while pumping a 'thumbs up' with his other hand, ending with a 'high five.'. While this was an extreme example of the attitude, it was also typical in one sense: as soon as you said you were from the U.S., Europeans, Turks, or Arabs would start talking enthusiastically about Obama.
To be sure, I am only one guy, but I can say without exaggeration, this kind of enthusiasm was exhibited by at least ninety per cent of the people I saw (Israel excepted). Europeans, Turks, and Arabs really wanted Obama to win the election. More importantly, they were excited about the prospect of America moving onto a positive trajectory.
That enthusiasm is now a faded memory, but the frustration between the rising expectations he triggered and a stagnant reality is not.
Consider how far those hopes have fallen: Israel just humiliated President Obama by scuppering his belated attempts to revive the peace process (which even included an offer to buy off the Israelis with 20 more Joint Strike Fighters in return for a settlement freeze of only 90 days). Coming after his 2009 Cairo speech, the humiliation by the Israelis demonstrated either his helplessness or hypocrisy to the Arab world. The publication of the Palestinian Papers delegitimized Mahmoud Abbas and other leaders of the Palestinian Authority by revealing them to be Quislings and the peace process sponsored by the United States to be a fraud. The message could not be clearer: If Arab people want change, they must do it themselves.
So, while Obama did not create the inequalities at the root of discord, I think his empty rhetoric sharply widened the expectation-reality gap that is fueling the Arab Revolt of 2011. (For the record, Obama's candidacy and election made me feel proud to be an American and he is the only politician my wife and I have ever given money to.)
Franklin “Chuck” Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon.
http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney01312011.html
DID OBAMA'S PROMISE TRIGGER THE ARAB REVOLT?
By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY
January 31, 2011
During his brilliantly run campaign of 2008, Barack Obama electrified the world with vague promises of change in foreign policy as well as domestic policy. (My take on his campaign strategy can be found here.) Two and a half years later, those promises are ashes. Nowhere is that clearer in foreign policy than in the Arab world.
In contrast to the euphoria surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Arab Revolt of 2011 leaves one with a disquieting sense that we may be standing on the wrong side of history. People power and the promise of democracy worked spectacularly well for the United States when the tyrants in Eastern Europe collapsed twenty years ago, but I think it may be working against us in the Arab world of 2011.
Clearly, the explosion of people power in Tunisia and Egypt caught the U.S. flat footed, and to date, has triggered only embarrassingly incoherent responses by our political leadership. If you doubt this, I urge you to watch this video of Shihab Rattansi's interview of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley on Al Jazeera, or read this report describing Obama's empty platitudes on about the crisis in Egypt.
The revolt shows signs of spreading. America's "friends" in Tunisia and Lebanon have already fallen to democratic pressures; as I write this, Hosni Mubarak teeters on the brink of collapse in Egypt, and there is potential for a collapse in Yemen as well as in the Palestinian Authority.
Are we witnessing a chain reaction, where each collapse begets more collapses? Will the Arab revolt spread to Jordan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, or elsewhere, or will it peter out?
Of course, no one can reliably predict how an ongoing interplay of chance with necessity will unfold over the coming days and months. But a question's unanswerability does not mean one should not think about it's ramifications.
Many of the problems are the same from country to country: grossly unequal distributions of income and conspicuous consumption by rich elites; masses of undereducated poor; high unemployment, especially among the young (including college graduates); rising food prices; corrupt autocracy, official nepotism etc. The forces for a spreading revolt are in place across the region and will not go away, even if tyrants like Mubarak manage to retain their grips on power in the short term.
Mr. Obama did not create the forces driving the Arab revolt. Indeed, the seeds were planted long ago, when myopic cold-war foreign policies began to oppose the democratic/nationalist aspirations of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt in the early 1950s, and when we began to prop up reactionary regimes in the oil states, while winking at Israel's illegal colonization schemes after the 1967 War.
But I do not think President Obama is blameless.
Obama did surprisingly little to fulfill the hopes and dreams he unleashed worldwide during the election of 2008. Moreover, he deliberately magnified them in the Arab world with his 2009 Cairo speech. But coupled with his continuation of America's cynical policies to prop up tyrannical Arab regimes, and particularly his spectacular failure to rein in the illegal Israeli settlements in the so-called Arab-Israeli Peace Process in 2010, Mr. Obama may have inadvertently exacerbated the explosive combination of frustrated expectations and business-as-usual that pressurized the current eruption of resentment, anger, and alienation among the Arab people in 2011.
It is difficult today to appreciate the expectations he unleashed. I witnessed firsthand how his promises of change pumped up Europeans, Turks, and Arabs during 2008.
I am retired and have been living with my wife Alison on a sailboat in the Mediterranean for nine months out of each year, since we crossed the Atlantic in 2005. (FYI, this is a link to her travelblog of our adventures.) During the summer and fall of 2008, we cruised the coasts of southern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. We spent time in harbours and took inland tours, including a side trip into southern Jordan.
I try to chat up our many European sailor friends as well as locals I meet to learn about their conditions, lives, politics, culture, etc. Just about every one I talk to is an 'average joe,' living somewhere along the lower two-thirds of the food chain. Conversations may be in pidgin and sign language, but I generally connect. Despite this microscopic point of view, I am confident Obama's promise electrified people in Europe, Turkey, and the Arab world during his 2008 campaign.
In fact, the impression he created boggled my mind. Once in a small shop in Syria, for example, a man of about 20, asked me in French, Syria's second language, if I was French or English. I responded, pointing to my chest, saying slowly, 'Aameerikaa.' He broke into a huge grin, put his arm around me, and started chanting 'Obama, Obama, Obama,' while pumping a 'thumbs up' with his other hand, ending with a 'high five.'. While this was an extreme example of the attitude, it was also typical in one sense: as soon as you said you were from the U.S., Europeans, Turks, or Arabs would start talking enthusiastically about Obama.
To be sure, I am only one guy, but I can say without exaggeration, this kind of enthusiasm was exhibited by at least ninety per cent of the people I saw (Israel excepted). Europeans, Turks, and Arabs really wanted Obama to win the election. More importantly, they were excited about the prospect of America moving onto a positive trajectory.
That enthusiasm is now a faded memory, but the frustration between the rising expectations he triggered and a stagnant reality is not.
Consider how far those hopes have fallen: Israel just humiliated President Obama by scuppering his belated attempts to revive the peace process (which even included an offer to buy off the Israelis with 20 more Joint Strike Fighters in return for a settlement freeze of only 90 days). Coming after his 2009 Cairo speech, the humiliation by the Israelis demonstrated either his helplessness or hypocrisy to the Arab world. The publication of the Palestinian Papers delegitimized Mahmoud Abbas and other leaders of the Palestinian Authority by revealing them to be Quislings and the peace process sponsored by the United States to be a fraud. The message could not be clearer: If Arab people want change, they must do it themselves.
So, while Obama did not create the inequalities at the root of discord, I think his empty rhetoric sharply widened the expectation-reality gap that is fueling the Arab Revolt of 2011. (For the record, Obama's candidacy and election made me feel proud to be an American and he is the only politician my wife and I have ever given money to.)
Franklin “Chuck” Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon.
http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney01312011.html
AMERICAN CONFUSION
AMERICAN CONFUSION
A STRATEGIC CROSSROADS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
By NICOLA NASSER
January 31, 2011
The Arab world is the beating heart of the overwhelmingly Muslim Middle East, and the Arab masses are angrily moving for a change in the status quo, practically dictated by the military, economic or political hegemony of the United States, which in turn is whipped by the regional power of the Israeli U.S. strategic ally. But any change in the regional status quo would place the Middle East at a strategic crossroads that is not expected to be viewed tolerantly by the U.S. – Israeli alliance, a fact which expectedly would warn of a fierce struggle to come. Despite the U.S. rhetorical defense of the "universal rights" in the region, it is still premature to conclude that this hegemonic alliance will allow the Arab move for change to run its course, judging by the historic experiences of the last century as well as by the containment tactics the United States is now adopting to defuse whatever strategic changes might be created by the revolting Arab masses.
The U.S. war on terror has preoccupied U.S. decision makers and embroiled regional rulers in their preoccupation to overlook the tinderbox of the double digit unemployment rate among Arab youth, double and in some cases triple the world average, according to the most conservative estimates, which under the U.S. – supported authoritarian regimes has been a ticking time bomb for too long. Now, the "demographic tsunami to the south of the Mediterranean," as described by Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, has overtaken the west, but in particular the U.S. – Israeli alliance, by surprise, sending shock waves across the Middle East, shaking the pillars of what this alliance has taken for granted as a guaranteed geopolitical stability reinforced by the Israeli 34 – year old military occupation of the Palestinian territories, the Syrian Golan Hights and parts of southern Lebanon and the U.S. invasion then the ongoing occupation of Iraq. But "the Arab world's Berlin moment" has come and the U.S. – supported "authoritarian wall has fallen," professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics, Fawaz Gerges, told Reuters.
Unlike in Tunisia, the U.S. regional strategy cannot afford a strategic change of regime in a pivotal regional country like Egypt. U.S. senior officials' appeals for President Hosni Mubarak to respect the "universal rights" of the Egyptian people and their right in "peaceful" protests, for reforms that should be "immediately" undertaken by the ruling regime, and their calls for "restraint" and non-violence by both the regime and protesters are all smoke-screening the fact that the United States is siding with what President Barak Obama hailed as "an ally of ours on a lot of critical issues" and his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, described as "a strong ally" - - which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wishfully described his government as "stable" on Wednesday, despite the roaring demands on the streets for its change - - at least because "a more representative government drawn from the diversity of Egypt's political opposition will be much more inclined to criticize American and Israeli policies," according to Bruce Riedel, a former long-time CIA officer and a senior fellow of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, on January 29.
The U.S. posturing as neutral, "not taking sides," could appease and mislead American public opinion, but to Arab and especially to Egyptian public opinion even neutrality is viewed as hostile and condemned in the region as a double standard when compared with the U.S. siding with similar moves for change elsewhere in the world, let alone that this neutrality contradicts the western highly valued democratic values at home.
On Friday night, Obama called for "a meaningful dialogue between the (Egyptian) government and its citizens," who insist on staying on the streets until the regime, and not only its government, is changed and Mubarak leaves. On January 28, Vice President Joe Biden told PBS NewsHour that Mubarak should not step down. When asked whether time had come for Mubarak to go, he said: "No. I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move – to be more responsive to some .. of the needs of the people out there." Nothing would be more clear – cut, but nothing would be more counterproductive to both Egyptian and American interests on the background of footages on the screens of satellite TV stations showing protesters condemning Mubarak as a "U.S. agent" or showing live bullets or "made in U.S.A." tear gas canisters, reported by ABC News, which were used against them.
It seems the en masse Arab popular protests in Egypt that no party in the opposition could claim to be the leader are confusing the senior officials of the Obama administration who "have no idea of exactly who these street protesters are, whether the protesters are simply a mob force incapable of organized political action and rule, or if more sinister groups hover in the shadows, waiting to grab power and turn Egypt into an anti-Western, anti-Israeli bastion." in the words of the U.S. commentator Lesli e H. Gelb, the former New York Times columnist and senior government official.
The U.S. confusion is illustrated by the stark contradiction between the realities on the ground in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen and, for instance, what the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey Filtman, told Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy: "What happened in Tunisia strikes me as uniquely Tunisian. That the events that took place here over the past few weeks derive from particularly Tunisian grievances, from Tunisian circumstances by the Tunisian people." How farthest cut off from reality a senior U.S. official could be! "The White House will have to be forgiven for not knowing whether to ride the tiger or help put him back in a cage," Gelb wrote.
White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, said the U.S., in view of the protests, will "review" its two – billion annual assistance to Egypt. This "threat" is understood among Arab and Egyptian audiences as targeted not against Mubarak to pressure him on reforms, but against whatever anti – U.S regime might succeed him.
Arab en masse protests, especially in Egypt, are cornering the United States in a bind, tortured between maintaining "an ally" and respecting his people's "universal rights" in expressing their "legitimate grievances," according to Obama. What message would the United States be sending to the majority of Arab allied or friendly rulers if it opts to dump the most prominent among them? Would AIPAC and other American Jewish and Zionist lobbyists allow their government to facilitate the ousting of the 30 –year old guarantor of the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel? It's almost a forgone conclusion that Obama's decision is already made to once again give priority to the stability of U.S. "vital interests" in Middle East while in public giving lip service to Americans' most cherished democratic values.
This translates into a naïve American recipe for preserving the status quo by some cosmetic reforms. But "Those who stick to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries' problems for a little while, but not forever," Clinton warned in Qatar on January 13, otherwise, she added, the foundations of their rule will be "sinking into the sand," but she did not announce the fears of her country that the pillars of the U.S. hegemony would be then crumbling too, anti – Americanism exacerbated and in turn fueling the only alternative to democracy in the Arab Middle East, i.e. terrorism. Egyptian former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, whom some of the protesters have chosen to head a delegation to represent them on Sunday and who is seen as a potential presidential challenger to Mubarak, warned in Newsweek before his return to Egypt last week, that it was too late to believe reforms were still possible under the 82- year-old Mubarak, who has held "imperial power" for three decades and presides over a legislature that is a "mockery."
Similarly, Israel was taken by surprise. On Tuesday, January 25, the Egyptian popular tsunami flooded the streets of Cairo on the Police Day. The coincidence was highly symbolic. The U.S. – supported police state was unable to honor its police and within a few days police simply "disappeared," army was called in to protect vital state and public property while protection of private property and safety was left to the "popular committees," which sprang up of nowhere. On the same day, the new chief of the Israeli Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, was telling the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the Egyptian President's rule was not under threat, his regime was stable and Mubarak was able to rein in the protests. In no time Kochavi was proven wrong. Ordering his government's spokepersons to shut up on Egypt and, like Obama, holding urgent and high level meetings with his senior security and intelligence officials, Israeli Prime Minister sent a clear and brief message on January 30: Israel will "ensure" that peace with Egypt "will continue to exist."
The Egyptian shock waves have already hit Israel and the Israeli possible reactions are potentially the most dangerous. "An Egyptian government that is less cooperative with Israel .. could make Israel more prone to unpredictable unilateral actions, creating greater instability throughout the region," warned Jonathan Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Israeli mainstream media is already crying wolf. "If Mubarak is toppled then Israel will be totally isolated in the region," said Alon Liel, a former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and a former ambassador to Turkey. "Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast," a story in Haaretz was headlined. Similarly, "Israel left all alone," Itamar Eichner headlined his column in the Yadioth Ahronot online. The Egypt – Gaza Strip borders is now under Israeli spotlight. The Egyptian army which was called into cities west of the Suez Canal could not deploy in Sinai east of it, especially on those borders, restricted by none other than the peace treaty with Israel; the Egyptian security vacuum in the last few days was no evident more than in Sinai. The statement by the Hamas government on January 29 that the borders between Egypt and the Israeli besieged Gaza Strip, already declared an "enemy entity" by Israel, were unilaterally and "fully under control" was not good news in Tel Aviv. Hence the Israeli media reports about a possible Israeli reoccupation of the Gaza – Egypt borders.
On the surface, the Arab world representing the status quo is no less confused and undecided; its heart is with the Egyptian regime, but, like its U.S. ally, it has to speak with tongues. Example: "The Saudi government and people stands with the Egyptian government and people," the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted Saudi King Abdullah as telling President Mubarak in a phone call; earlier the king told U.S. President Obama there should be no bargaining about Egypt's stability and the security of its people, according to SPA. In view of the U.S., Arab and Israeli thinly veiled determination to save the moment in Egypt, it was a forgone conclusion that Mubarak will cling to power, thus setting the stage either for a long battle of instability with his own people that for sure will deplete the country's meager resources or cutting this battle short by a bloody crackdown that would make the repression which created the present people's uprising look like a mercy.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nasser01312011.html
A STRATEGIC CROSSROADS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
By NICOLA NASSER
January 31, 2011
The Arab world is the beating heart of the overwhelmingly Muslim Middle East, and the Arab masses are angrily moving for a change in the status quo, practically dictated by the military, economic or political hegemony of the United States, which in turn is whipped by the regional power of the Israeli U.S. strategic ally. But any change in the regional status quo would place the Middle East at a strategic crossroads that is not expected to be viewed tolerantly by the U.S. – Israeli alliance, a fact which expectedly would warn of a fierce struggle to come. Despite the U.S. rhetorical defense of the "universal rights" in the region, it is still premature to conclude that this hegemonic alliance will allow the Arab move for change to run its course, judging by the historic experiences of the last century as well as by the containment tactics the United States is now adopting to defuse whatever strategic changes might be created by the revolting Arab masses.
The U.S. war on terror has preoccupied U.S. decision makers and embroiled regional rulers in their preoccupation to overlook the tinderbox of the double digit unemployment rate among Arab youth, double and in some cases triple the world average, according to the most conservative estimates, which under the U.S. – supported authoritarian regimes has been a ticking time bomb for too long. Now, the "demographic tsunami to the south of the Mediterranean," as described by Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, has overtaken the west, but in particular the U.S. – Israeli alliance, by surprise, sending shock waves across the Middle East, shaking the pillars of what this alliance has taken for granted as a guaranteed geopolitical stability reinforced by the Israeli 34 – year old military occupation of the Palestinian territories, the Syrian Golan Hights and parts of southern Lebanon and the U.S. invasion then the ongoing occupation of Iraq. But "the Arab world's Berlin moment" has come and the U.S. – supported "authoritarian wall has fallen," professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics, Fawaz Gerges, told Reuters.
Unlike in Tunisia, the U.S. regional strategy cannot afford a strategic change of regime in a pivotal regional country like Egypt. U.S. senior officials' appeals for President Hosni Mubarak to respect the "universal rights" of the Egyptian people and their right in "peaceful" protests, for reforms that should be "immediately" undertaken by the ruling regime, and their calls for "restraint" and non-violence by both the regime and protesters are all smoke-screening the fact that the United States is siding with what President Barak Obama hailed as "an ally of ours on a lot of critical issues" and his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, described as "a strong ally" - - which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wishfully described his government as "stable" on Wednesday, despite the roaring demands on the streets for its change - - at least because "a more representative government drawn from the diversity of Egypt's political opposition will be much more inclined to criticize American and Israeli policies," according to Bruce Riedel, a former long-time CIA officer and a senior fellow of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, on January 29.
The U.S. posturing as neutral, "not taking sides," could appease and mislead American public opinion, but to Arab and especially to Egyptian public opinion even neutrality is viewed as hostile and condemned in the region as a double standard when compared with the U.S. siding with similar moves for change elsewhere in the world, let alone that this neutrality contradicts the western highly valued democratic values at home.
On Friday night, Obama called for "a meaningful dialogue between the (Egyptian) government and its citizens," who insist on staying on the streets until the regime, and not only its government, is changed and Mubarak leaves. On January 28, Vice President Joe Biden told PBS NewsHour that Mubarak should not step down. When asked whether time had come for Mubarak to go, he said: "No. I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move – to be more responsive to some .. of the needs of the people out there." Nothing would be more clear – cut, but nothing would be more counterproductive to both Egyptian and American interests on the background of footages on the screens of satellite TV stations showing protesters condemning Mubarak as a "U.S. agent" or showing live bullets or "made in U.S.A." tear gas canisters, reported by ABC News, which were used against them.
It seems the en masse Arab popular protests in Egypt that no party in the opposition could claim to be the leader are confusing the senior officials of the Obama administration who "have no idea of exactly who these street protesters are, whether the protesters are simply a mob force incapable of organized political action and rule, or if more sinister groups hover in the shadows, waiting to grab power and turn Egypt into an anti-Western, anti-Israeli bastion." in the words of the U.S. commentator Lesli e H. Gelb, the former New York Times columnist and senior government official.
The U.S. confusion is illustrated by the stark contradiction between the realities on the ground in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen and, for instance, what the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Jeffrey Filtman, told Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy: "What happened in Tunisia strikes me as uniquely Tunisian. That the events that took place here over the past few weeks derive from particularly Tunisian grievances, from Tunisian circumstances by the Tunisian people." How farthest cut off from reality a senior U.S. official could be! "The White House will have to be forgiven for not knowing whether to ride the tiger or help put him back in a cage," Gelb wrote.
White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, said the U.S., in view of the protests, will "review" its two – billion annual assistance to Egypt. This "threat" is understood among Arab and Egyptian audiences as targeted not against Mubarak to pressure him on reforms, but against whatever anti – U.S regime might succeed him.
Arab en masse protests, especially in Egypt, are cornering the United States in a bind, tortured between maintaining "an ally" and respecting his people's "universal rights" in expressing their "legitimate grievances," according to Obama. What message would the United States be sending to the majority of Arab allied or friendly rulers if it opts to dump the most prominent among them? Would AIPAC and other American Jewish and Zionist lobbyists allow their government to facilitate the ousting of the 30 –year old guarantor of the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel? It's almost a forgone conclusion that Obama's decision is already made to once again give priority to the stability of U.S. "vital interests" in Middle East while in public giving lip service to Americans' most cherished democratic values.
This translates into a naïve American recipe for preserving the status quo by some cosmetic reforms. But "Those who stick to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries' problems for a little while, but not forever," Clinton warned in Qatar on January 13, otherwise, she added, the foundations of their rule will be "sinking into the sand," but she did not announce the fears of her country that the pillars of the U.S. hegemony would be then crumbling too, anti – Americanism exacerbated and in turn fueling the only alternative to democracy in the Arab Middle East, i.e. terrorism. Egyptian former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, whom some of the protesters have chosen to head a delegation to represent them on Sunday and who is seen as a potential presidential challenger to Mubarak, warned in Newsweek before his return to Egypt last week, that it was too late to believe reforms were still possible under the 82- year-old Mubarak, who has held "imperial power" for three decades and presides over a legislature that is a "mockery."
Similarly, Israel was taken by surprise. On Tuesday, January 25, the Egyptian popular tsunami flooded the streets of Cairo on the Police Day. The coincidence was highly symbolic. The U.S. – supported police state was unable to honor its police and within a few days police simply "disappeared," army was called in to protect vital state and public property while protection of private property and safety was left to the "popular committees," which sprang up of nowhere. On the same day, the new chief of the Israeli Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, was telling the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the Egyptian President's rule was not under threat, his regime was stable and Mubarak was able to rein in the protests. In no time Kochavi was proven wrong. Ordering his government's spokepersons to shut up on Egypt and, like Obama, holding urgent and high level meetings with his senior security and intelligence officials, Israeli Prime Minister sent a clear and brief message on January 30: Israel will "ensure" that peace with Egypt "will continue to exist."
The Egyptian shock waves have already hit Israel and the Israeli possible reactions are potentially the most dangerous. "An Egyptian government that is less cooperative with Israel .. could make Israel more prone to unpredictable unilateral actions, creating greater instability throughout the region," warned Jonathan Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Israeli mainstream media is already crying wolf. "If Mubarak is toppled then Israel will be totally isolated in the region," said Alon Liel, a former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and a former ambassador to Turkey. "Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast," a story in Haaretz was headlined. Similarly, "Israel left all alone," Itamar Eichner headlined his column in the Yadioth Ahronot online. The Egypt – Gaza Strip borders is now under Israeli spotlight. The Egyptian army which was called into cities west of the Suez Canal could not deploy in Sinai east of it, especially on those borders, restricted by none other than the peace treaty with Israel; the Egyptian security vacuum in the last few days was no evident more than in Sinai. The statement by the Hamas government on January 29 that the borders between Egypt and the Israeli besieged Gaza Strip, already declared an "enemy entity" by Israel, were unilaterally and "fully under control" was not good news in Tel Aviv. Hence the Israeli media reports about a possible Israeli reoccupation of the Gaza – Egypt borders.
On the surface, the Arab world representing the status quo is no less confused and undecided; its heart is with the Egyptian regime, but, like its U.S. ally, it has to speak with tongues. Example: "The Saudi government and people stands with the Egyptian government and people," the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted Saudi King Abdullah as telling President Mubarak in a phone call; earlier the king told U.S. President Obama there should be no bargaining about Egypt's stability and the security of its people, according to SPA. In view of the U.S., Arab and Israeli thinly veiled determination to save the moment in Egypt, it was a forgone conclusion that Mubarak will cling to power, thus setting the stage either for a long battle of instability with his own people that for sure will deplete the country's meager resources or cutting this battle short by a bloody crackdown that would make the repression which created the present people's uprising look like a mercy.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nasser01312011.html
IS THE GAME REALLY OVER FOR MUBARAK?
IS THE GAME REALLY OVER FOR MUBARAK?
THE POINT OF NO RETURN
By RON JACOBS
January 31, 2011
As I write this on January 31, 2011, Al-Jazeera English is ireporting that six of its reporters have been arrested by the Egyptian military. Meanwhile there has been ongoing speculation as to whether or not the Egyptian military will support the ongoing protests against the Mubarak regime. The live video feed via internet is broadcasting protests across the nation. The protests are growing in front of the camera's eye.
The old Mubarak cabinet has been dismissed and a new one is being assembled. A tighter curfew has gone into effect across the nation. Yet everyone is ignoring it. Furthermore, calls for a general strike are growing; the opposition has issued a call for a "mega-protest" on Tuesday and the major Islamist opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood has called for a peaceful transfer of power.
Someone who might be among Washington's favorite men in the opposition, Mohammed El-Baradei, is supposedly under house arrest, but has appeared in Tahrir Square and called for Mubarak to step down. Others are calling for a trial of Mubarak and his government. Apparently, no protesters were killed by the security police yesterday, although over 150 have been killed since Friday. Some officers have met with Mubarak, while the military rank and file remain non-committal. Major clerics are reminding their faithful that the shedding of blood is prohibited under Islam. As I watch the video, a noticeable difference between yesterday and today's crowd and protests earlier in the week is the growing presence of women.
According to a report published by Reuters on July 13, 2009, 77 million of the 80 million Egyptians live on less than $1 a day. Around 30% of the workforce is unemployed, 7% of children miss schools because of poverty. There are over 100,000 homeless youth. Egypt’s official foreign debt is around 12 billion dollars, yet several of Mubarak’s corrupt ruling elites have stolen almost half this amount from Egyptian banks.
These facts, along with the record of abuse by police forces defy Washington's statement that it is "not too late" for the Mubarak regime to reform itself and become a democratic government. This statement is comparable to the Carter administration's support of the Shah of Iran in 1978 and 1979 while street protests that eventually included close to 10% of the Iranian population rocked the nation.
Although there are a number of major differences between the Iranian revolution and the current situation in Egypt--with the primary one possibly being the national differences--the fact is that popular uprisings are exactly that no matter where they occur. That being said, and with the understanding that all sides in Egypt are aware of history, if the process underway continues, two things to watch out for are the response to the general strike call, the Tuesday protest call and whether or not Mubarak is able to woo any leading elements of the opposition into his sphere. If the response to the general strike and Tuesday protest call is massive, than one can expect to see Mubarak either forcefully crack down on the protests (if he can find any security units to go along with him) or perhaps even invite someone like El-Baradei into his government. Of course, if the latter occurs, El Baradei runs the risk of losing whatever support he has amongst the protesters. If that happens (and using the Iranian experience as a template), then the way for more religious elements opens wider.
If El-Baradei and other more moderate elements refuse to accept any offers of reconciliation from Mubarak, then it would seem the only means that would remain for Mubarak would be resignation or repression. His appointment of the current head of Egyptian intelligence to the vice presidency seems to indicate he may very well choose the latter. While official appointments with little meaning are being made by Mubarak, thugs from his ruling party have been captured by Cairo residents breaking into homes and shops in that city's wealthier sections. In response, Egyptians citizens have begun to set up neighborhood watch committees.
One of the Egyptian movement groups not talked about very much in the west is Kefaya or the Egyptian Movement for Change. This group, which was announced in 2004, is a network of (mostly youthful) opposition groups and individuals from across the ideological spectrum with the primary goal of ending the Mubarak family rule. Its role in the current rebellion is publicly unannounced, but the fact that the protests seems to have begun in the universities and amongst Egyptian youth tends to encourage the supposition that Kefaya was instrumental in organizing them. Given the recent rebellions and revolutions across the Arab world, perhaps the synthesis represented by this movement is the wave of an Arab future.
If so, then the regimes in Yemen, Jordan and other Arab nations would be smart to initiate reforms sooner rather than later. That is, unless it is already too late. As for Palestine, its administrative forces should pay close attention. Not only might they lose whatever authority they have left among the Palestinians, but the fact of an Arab world composed of popular governments has got to be one that Israel fears. After all, it is the US-sponsored regimes like Mubarak's that have been essential to Tel Aviv projecting its expansionist policies across the region. For Mahmoud Abbas to express his support for Mubarak while the streets of Egypt are filled with protesters demanding his resignation is extremely shortsighted. Furthermore, it looks like a political calculation Abbas and the Palestinian Authority can ill afford to make given the recent Wikileaks cable releases revealing the PA's willingness to concede to Israeli demands many Palestinians consider at best anathema to Palestinian national interests.
Ignoring governments for the moment, what do these protests mean for people around the world? As virtually any earthling knows, the past decade has seen an increase in economic disparity and political repression in almost every nation. From New York to Cairo; from Beijing to Buenos Aires, the neoliberal world order (or monopoly capitalism's latest phase) is feeling the effects of its greedy attempts to privatize the very basics of human survival. The legal and illegal corruption these attempts and the poverty they have spawned have been felt the deepest in nations like Tunisia and Egypt. Despotic government officials, their national and international business partners and the security forces that protect them have robbed and brutalized whole societies.
All the while, those governments in the global north and west that have backed this phenomenon have in turn removed freedoms and economic security from large swaths of their own populations. Consequently, many nations have seen popular uprisings against these governmental actions, especially from their student and working class elements. But only two populations have reached the point of no return to the past: Tunisia and Egypt. Their example serves as a beacon.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press.
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs01312011.html
THE POINT OF NO RETURN
By RON JACOBS
January 31, 2011
As I write this on January 31, 2011, Al-Jazeera English is ireporting that six of its reporters have been arrested by the Egyptian military. Meanwhile there has been ongoing speculation as to whether or not the Egyptian military will support the ongoing protests against the Mubarak regime. The live video feed via internet is broadcasting protests across the nation. The protests are growing in front of the camera's eye.
The old Mubarak cabinet has been dismissed and a new one is being assembled. A tighter curfew has gone into effect across the nation. Yet everyone is ignoring it. Furthermore, calls for a general strike are growing; the opposition has issued a call for a "mega-protest" on Tuesday and the major Islamist opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood has called for a peaceful transfer of power.
Someone who might be among Washington's favorite men in the opposition, Mohammed El-Baradei, is supposedly under house arrest, but has appeared in Tahrir Square and called for Mubarak to step down. Others are calling for a trial of Mubarak and his government. Apparently, no protesters were killed by the security police yesterday, although over 150 have been killed since Friday. Some officers have met with Mubarak, while the military rank and file remain non-committal. Major clerics are reminding their faithful that the shedding of blood is prohibited under Islam. As I watch the video, a noticeable difference between yesterday and today's crowd and protests earlier in the week is the growing presence of women.
According to a report published by Reuters on July 13, 2009, 77 million of the 80 million Egyptians live on less than $1 a day. Around 30% of the workforce is unemployed, 7% of children miss schools because of poverty. There are over 100,000 homeless youth. Egypt’s official foreign debt is around 12 billion dollars, yet several of Mubarak’s corrupt ruling elites have stolen almost half this amount from Egyptian banks.
These facts, along with the record of abuse by police forces defy Washington's statement that it is "not too late" for the Mubarak regime to reform itself and become a democratic government. This statement is comparable to the Carter administration's support of the Shah of Iran in 1978 and 1979 while street protests that eventually included close to 10% of the Iranian population rocked the nation.
Although there are a number of major differences between the Iranian revolution and the current situation in Egypt--with the primary one possibly being the national differences--the fact is that popular uprisings are exactly that no matter where they occur. That being said, and with the understanding that all sides in Egypt are aware of history, if the process underway continues, two things to watch out for are the response to the general strike call, the Tuesday protest call and whether or not Mubarak is able to woo any leading elements of the opposition into his sphere. If the response to the general strike and Tuesday protest call is massive, than one can expect to see Mubarak either forcefully crack down on the protests (if he can find any security units to go along with him) or perhaps even invite someone like El-Baradei into his government. Of course, if the latter occurs, El Baradei runs the risk of losing whatever support he has amongst the protesters. If that happens (and using the Iranian experience as a template), then the way for more religious elements opens wider.
If El-Baradei and other more moderate elements refuse to accept any offers of reconciliation from Mubarak, then it would seem the only means that would remain for Mubarak would be resignation or repression. His appointment of the current head of Egyptian intelligence to the vice presidency seems to indicate he may very well choose the latter. While official appointments with little meaning are being made by Mubarak, thugs from his ruling party have been captured by Cairo residents breaking into homes and shops in that city's wealthier sections. In response, Egyptians citizens have begun to set up neighborhood watch committees.
One of the Egyptian movement groups not talked about very much in the west is Kefaya or the Egyptian Movement for Change. This group, which was announced in 2004, is a network of (mostly youthful) opposition groups and individuals from across the ideological spectrum with the primary goal of ending the Mubarak family rule. Its role in the current rebellion is publicly unannounced, but the fact that the protests seems to have begun in the universities and amongst Egyptian youth tends to encourage the supposition that Kefaya was instrumental in organizing them. Given the recent rebellions and revolutions across the Arab world, perhaps the synthesis represented by this movement is the wave of an Arab future.
If so, then the regimes in Yemen, Jordan and other Arab nations would be smart to initiate reforms sooner rather than later. That is, unless it is already too late. As for Palestine, its administrative forces should pay close attention. Not only might they lose whatever authority they have left among the Palestinians, but the fact of an Arab world composed of popular governments has got to be one that Israel fears. After all, it is the US-sponsored regimes like Mubarak's that have been essential to Tel Aviv projecting its expansionist policies across the region. For Mahmoud Abbas to express his support for Mubarak while the streets of Egypt are filled with protesters demanding his resignation is extremely shortsighted. Furthermore, it looks like a political calculation Abbas and the Palestinian Authority can ill afford to make given the recent Wikileaks cable releases revealing the PA's willingness to concede to Israeli demands many Palestinians consider at best anathema to Palestinian national interests.
Ignoring governments for the moment, what do these protests mean for people around the world? As virtually any earthling knows, the past decade has seen an increase in economic disparity and political repression in almost every nation. From New York to Cairo; from Beijing to Buenos Aires, the neoliberal world order (or monopoly capitalism's latest phase) is feeling the effects of its greedy attempts to privatize the very basics of human survival. The legal and illegal corruption these attempts and the poverty they have spawned have been felt the deepest in nations like Tunisia and Egypt. Despotic government officials, their national and international business partners and the security forces that protect them have robbed and brutalized whole societies.
All the while, those governments in the global north and west that have backed this phenomenon have in turn removed freedoms and economic security from large swaths of their own populations. Consequently, many nations have seen popular uprisings against these governmental actions, especially from their student and working class elements. But only two populations have reached the point of no return to the past: Tunisia and Egypt. Their example serves as a beacon.
Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press.
http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs01312011.html
THE NEW ARAB REVOLTS
THE NEW ARAB REVOLTS
AN INTERVIEW WITH VIJAY PRASHAD
By POTHIK GHOSH
January 31, 2011
Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009.
Pothik Ghosh (PG): In what sense can the recent events in the Arab World be called revolutions? How are they different from the colour revolutions of the past two decades?
Vijay Prashad (VP): All revolutions are not identical. The colour revolutions in Eastern Europe had a different tempo. They were also of a different class character. They were also along the grain of US imperialism, even though the people were acting not for US but for their own specific class and national interests. I have in mind the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. Otpor in the Ukraine, among others, was well lubricated by George Soros's Open Society and the US government's National Democratic Institute. Russian money also swept in on both sides of the ledger. These Eastern European revolutions were mainly political battles in regions of the world still unsettled by the traumatic transition from state socialism to predatory capitalism.
The Arab revolt that we now witness is something akin to a "1968" for the Arab World. Sixty per cent of the Arab population is under 30 (70 per cent in Egypt). Their slogans are about dignity and employment. The resource curse brought wealth to a small population of their societies, but little economic development. Social development came to some parts of the Arab world: Tunisia's literacy rate is 75 per cent, Egypt's is just over 70 per cent, Libya almost 90 per cent. The educated lower-middle-class and middle-class youth have not been able to find jobs. The concatenation of humiliations revolts these young people: no job, no respect from an authoritarian state, and then to top it off the general malaise of being a second-class citizen on the world stage - second to the US-Israel and so on - was overwhelming. The chants on the streets are about this combination of dignity, justice and jobs.
PG: Does the so-called Jasmine Revolution have in it to transform the preponderant character of the politico-ideological topography of oppositional politics - from Islamist identitarianism to an organic variant of working-class politics - in West Asia and the Maghreb? Under what circumstances can this series of general strikes, which seem to be spreading like a brushfire through the region, morph into a constellation of counter-power? Or, would that in your eyes merely be a vicarious desire of Leftists from outside the region?
VP: I fear that we are being vicarious. The youth, the working class, the middle class have opened up the tempo of struggle. The direction it will take is not clear. I am given over to analogies when I see revolutions, largely because the events of change are so contingent.
It is in the melee that spontaneity and structure jostle. The organised working class is weaker than the organised theocratic bloc, at least in Egypt. Social change of a progressive type has come to the Arab lands largely through the Colonels. Workers' struggles have not reached fruition in any country. In Iraq, where the workers movement was advanced in the 1950s, it was preempted by the military - and then they made a tacit alliance.
One cannot say what is going to happen with certainty. The Mexican Revolution opened up in 1911, but didn't settle into the PRI regime till the writing of the 1917 constitution and the elevation of Carranza to the presidency in 1920 or perhaps Cardenas in 1934. I find many parallels between Mexico and Egypt. In both, the Left was not sufficiently developed. Perils of the Right always lingered. If the Pharonic state withers, as Porfirio Diaz's state did, the peasants and the working class might move beyond spontaneity and come forward with some more structure. Spontaneity is fine, but if power is not seized effectively, counter-revolution will rise forth effectively and securely.
PG: What are, in your opinion, the perils if such a transformation fails to occur? Will not such a failure lead to an inevitable consolidation of the global neoliberal conjuncture, which manifests itself in West Asia as fascistic Islamism on one hand and authoritarianism on the other?
VP: If such a transformation fails, which god willing it won't, then we are in for at least three options: (1) the military, under Egyptian ruling class and US pressure, will take control. This is off the cards in Tunisia for now, mainly because the second option presented itself; (2) elements of the ruling coalition are able to dissipate the crowds through a series of hasty concessions, notably the removal of the face of the autocracy (Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia). If Mubarak leaves and the reins of the Mubarakian state are handed over to the safe-keeping of one of his many bloodsoaked henchman such as Omar Suleiman…. Mubarak tried this with Ahmed Shafik, but he could as well have gone to Tantawi….all generals who are close to Mubarak and seen as safe by the ruling bloc. We shall wait to see who all among the elite will start to distance themselves from Mubarak, and try to reach out to the streets for credibility. As a last-ditch effort, the Shah of Iran put Shapour Bakhtiar as PM. That didn't work. Then the revolt spread further. If that does not work, then, (3) the US embassy will send a message to Mohamed El-Baradei, giving him their green light. El-Baradei is seen by the Muslim Brotherhood as a credible candidate. Speaking to the crowds on January 30 he said that in a few days the matter will be settled. Does this mean that he will be the new state leader, with the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and certainly with sections of Mubarak's clique? Will this be sufficient for the crowds? They might have to live with it. El-Baradei is a maverick, having irritated Washington at the IAEA over Iran. He will not be a pushover. On the other hand, he will probably carry on the economic policy of Mubarak. His entire agenda was for political reforms. This is along the grain of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment part 2, viz., the same old privatisation agenda alongside "good governance". El-Baradei wanted good governance in Egypt. The streets want more. It will be a truce for the moment, or as Chavez said, "por ahora".
PG: The Radical Islamists, their near-complete domination of the oppositional/dissident politico-ideological space in the region notwithstanding, have failed to rise up to the occasion as an effective organisational force - one especially has the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt in mind. What do you think is the reason?
VP: The Muslim Brotherhood is on the streets. It has set its own ideology to mute. That is very clear. Its spokesperson Gamel Nasser has said that they are only a small part of the protests, and that the protest is about Egypt not Islam. This is very clever. It is similar to what the mullahs said in Iran during the protests of 1978 and 1979. They waited in the wings for the "multitude" to overthrow the Shah, and then they descended. Would the MB do that? If one says this is simply the people's revolt and not that of any organised force, it's, of course, true. But it is inadequate. The 'people' can be mobilised, can act; but can the 'people' govern without mediation, without some structure. This is where the structured elements come into play. If there is no alternative that forms, then the Muslim Brotherhood will take power. That the Muslim Brotherhood wants to stand behind El-Baradei means they don't want to immediately antagonise the US. That will come later.
PG: What does the emergence of characters like El-Baradei signify? Are they really the "political face" of the resistance as the global media seems to be projecting?
VP: El-Baradei comes with credibility. He served in the Nasserite ministry of external affairs in the 1960s. He then served in the foreign ministry under Ismail Fahmi. One forgets how impressive Fahmi was. He resigned from Sadat's cabinet when the Egyptian leader went to Jerusalem. Fahmi was a Nasserite. For one year, El-Baradei served with Boutros Boutros Ghali at the foreign ministry. That was the start of this relationship. Both fled for the UN bureaucracy. Boutros Ghali was more pliant than Fahmi. I think El-Baradei is more along Fahmi's lines. At the IAEA he did not bend to the US pressure. Given that he spent the worst years of Mubarak's rule outside Cairo gives him credibility. A man of his class would have been coopted into the Mubarak rule. Only an outsider like him can be both of the ruling bloc (in terms of class position and instinct) and outside the ruling apparatus (i. e. of Mubarak's cabinet circle). It is a point of great privilege.
With the MB careful not to act in its own face, and the 'people' without easy ways to spot leaders, and with Ayman Nour not in the best of health, it is credible that El-Baradei takes on the mantle.
PG: Is the disappearance of working-class and other avowedly Left-democratic political organisations, which had a very strong presence in that part of the world till a few decades ago, merely the result of their brutal suppression by various authoritarian regimes (such as Saddam Hussein's in Iraq, Hafez Assad's in Syria and Nasser's and Mubarak's in Egypt) and/or their systematic physical decimation by Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood? Or, does it also have to do with certain inherent politico-theoretical weaknesses of those groups? Has not the fatal flaw of left/ communist/ socialist forces in the Islamic, particularly the Arab, world been their unwillingness, or inability, to grasp and pose the universal question of the "self-emancipation of the working class" in the determinateness of their specific culture and historicity?
VP: Don't underestimate the repression. In Egypt, the 2006 budget for internal security was $1.5 billion. There are 1.5 million police officers, four times more than army personnel. I am told that there is now about 1 police officer per 37 people. This is extreme. The subvention that comes from the US of $1.3 billion helps fund this monstrosity.
The high point of the Egyptian working class was in 1977. This was the bread uprising. It was trounced. Sadat then went to the IMF with a cat's smile. He inaugurated the infitah. He covered the books by three means: the infitah allowed for some export-oriented production, the religious cover (al-rais al-mou'min) allowed him to try and undercut the Brotherhood, and seek some funds from the Saudis, and the bursary from the US for the deal he cut with Israel. This provided the means to enhance the security apparatus and further crush the workers' movements.
Was there even space or time to think about creative ways to pose the self-emancipation question? Were there intellectuals who were doing this? Are we in Ajami's Dream Palace of the Arabs, worrying about the decline of the questions? Recall that in March 1954 the major Wafd and Communist unions made a pact with the Nasserite regime; for concessions it would support the new dispensation. That struck down its independence. The unions put themselves in the service of the Nation over their Class. In the long run, this was a fatal error. But the organised working class was small (as Workers on the Nile shows, most workers were in the "informal" sector). The best that the CP and the Wafd could do in the new circumstances was to argue that the working class plays a central role in the national movement. Nasser and his Revolutionary Command Council, on the other hand, heard this but did not buy it. They saw the military as the agent of history. It was their prejudice.
Pothik Ghosh writes for Radical Notes, where this interview originally appeared.
http://www.counterpunch.org/ghosh01312011.html
AN INTERVIEW WITH VIJAY PRASHAD
By POTHIK GHOSH
January 31, 2011
Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009.
Pothik Ghosh (PG): In what sense can the recent events in the Arab World be called revolutions? How are they different from the colour revolutions of the past two decades?
Vijay Prashad (VP): All revolutions are not identical. The colour revolutions in Eastern Europe had a different tempo. They were also of a different class character. They were also along the grain of US imperialism, even though the people were acting not for US but for their own specific class and national interests. I have in mind the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. Otpor in the Ukraine, among others, was well lubricated by George Soros's Open Society and the US government's National Democratic Institute. Russian money also swept in on both sides of the ledger. These Eastern European revolutions were mainly political battles in regions of the world still unsettled by the traumatic transition from state socialism to predatory capitalism.
The Arab revolt that we now witness is something akin to a "1968" for the Arab World. Sixty per cent of the Arab population is under 30 (70 per cent in Egypt). Their slogans are about dignity and employment. The resource curse brought wealth to a small population of their societies, but little economic development. Social development came to some parts of the Arab world: Tunisia's literacy rate is 75 per cent, Egypt's is just over 70 per cent, Libya almost 90 per cent. The educated lower-middle-class and middle-class youth have not been able to find jobs. The concatenation of humiliations revolts these young people: no job, no respect from an authoritarian state, and then to top it off the general malaise of being a second-class citizen on the world stage - second to the US-Israel and so on - was overwhelming. The chants on the streets are about this combination of dignity, justice and jobs.
PG: Does the so-called Jasmine Revolution have in it to transform the preponderant character of the politico-ideological topography of oppositional politics - from Islamist identitarianism to an organic variant of working-class politics - in West Asia and the Maghreb? Under what circumstances can this series of general strikes, which seem to be spreading like a brushfire through the region, morph into a constellation of counter-power? Or, would that in your eyes merely be a vicarious desire of Leftists from outside the region?
VP: I fear that we are being vicarious. The youth, the working class, the middle class have opened up the tempo of struggle. The direction it will take is not clear. I am given over to analogies when I see revolutions, largely because the events of change are so contingent.
It is in the melee that spontaneity and structure jostle. The organised working class is weaker than the organised theocratic bloc, at least in Egypt. Social change of a progressive type has come to the Arab lands largely through the Colonels. Workers' struggles have not reached fruition in any country. In Iraq, where the workers movement was advanced in the 1950s, it was preempted by the military - and then they made a tacit alliance.
One cannot say what is going to happen with certainty. The Mexican Revolution opened up in 1911, but didn't settle into the PRI regime till the writing of the 1917 constitution and the elevation of Carranza to the presidency in 1920 or perhaps Cardenas in 1934. I find many parallels between Mexico and Egypt. In both, the Left was not sufficiently developed. Perils of the Right always lingered. If the Pharonic state withers, as Porfirio Diaz's state did, the peasants and the working class might move beyond spontaneity and come forward with some more structure. Spontaneity is fine, but if power is not seized effectively, counter-revolution will rise forth effectively and securely.
PG: What are, in your opinion, the perils if such a transformation fails to occur? Will not such a failure lead to an inevitable consolidation of the global neoliberal conjuncture, which manifests itself in West Asia as fascistic Islamism on one hand and authoritarianism on the other?
VP: If such a transformation fails, which god willing it won't, then we are in for at least three options: (1) the military, under Egyptian ruling class and US pressure, will take control. This is off the cards in Tunisia for now, mainly because the second option presented itself; (2) elements of the ruling coalition are able to dissipate the crowds through a series of hasty concessions, notably the removal of the face of the autocracy (Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia). If Mubarak leaves and the reins of the Mubarakian state are handed over to the safe-keeping of one of his many bloodsoaked henchman such as Omar Suleiman…. Mubarak tried this with Ahmed Shafik, but he could as well have gone to Tantawi….all generals who are close to Mubarak and seen as safe by the ruling bloc. We shall wait to see who all among the elite will start to distance themselves from Mubarak, and try to reach out to the streets for credibility. As a last-ditch effort, the Shah of Iran put Shapour Bakhtiar as PM. That didn't work. Then the revolt spread further. If that does not work, then, (3) the US embassy will send a message to Mohamed El-Baradei, giving him their green light. El-Baradei is seen by the Muslim Brotherhood as a credible candidate. Speaking to the crowds on January 30 he said that in a few days the matter will be settled. Does this mean that he will be the new state leader, with the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and certainly with sections of Mubarak's clique? Will this be sufficient for the crowds? They might have to live with it. El-Baradei is a maverick, having irritated Washington at the IAEA over Iran. He will not be a pushover. On the other hand, he will probably carry on the economic policy of Mubarak. His entire agenda was for political reforms. This is along the grain of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment part 2, viz., the same old privatisation agenda alongside "good governance". El-Baradei wanted good governance in Egypt. The streets want more. It will be a truce for the moment, or as Chavez said, "por ahora".
PG: The Radical Islamists, their near-complete domination of the oppositional/dissident politico-ideological space in the region notwithstanding, have failed to rise up to the occasion as an effective organisational force - one especially has the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt in mind. What do you think is the reason?
VP: The Muslim Brotherhood is on the streets. It has set its own ideology to mute. That is very clear. Its spokesperson Gamel Nasser has said that they are only a small part of the protests, and that the protest is about Egypt not Islam. This is very clever. It is similar to what the mullahs said in Iran during the protests of 1978 and 1979. They waited in the wings for the "multitude" to overthrow the Shah, and then they descended. Would the MB do that? If one says this is simply the people's revolt and not that of any organised force, it's, of course, true. But it is inadequate. The 'people' can be mobilised, can act; but can the 'people' govern without mediation, without some structure. This is where the structured elements come into play. If there is no alternative that forms, then the Muslim Brotherhood will take power. That the Muslim Brotherhood wants to stand behind El-Baradei means they don't want to immediately antagonise the US. That will come later.
PG: What does the emergence of characters like El-Baradei signify? Are they really the "political face" of the resistance as the global media seems to be projecting?
VP: El-Baradei comes with credibility. He served in the Nasserite ministry of external affairs in the 1960s. He then served in the foreign ministry under Ismail Fahmi. One forgets how impressive Fahmi was. He resigned from Sadat's cabinet when the Egyptian leader went to Jerusalem. Fahmi was a Nasserite. For one year, El-Baradei served with Boutros Boutros Ghali at the foreign ministry. That was the start of this relationship. Both fled for the UN bureaucracy. Boutros Ghali was more pliant than Fahmi. I think El-Baradei is more along Fahmi's lines. At the IAEA he did not bend to the US pressure. Given that he spent the worst years of Mubarak's rule outside Cairo gives him credibility. A man of his class would have been coopted into the Mubarak rule. Only an outsider like him can be both of the ruling bloc (in terms of class position and instinct) and outside the ruling apparatus (i. e. of Mubarak's cabinet circle). It is a point of great privilege.
With the MB careful not to act in its own face, and the 'people' without easy ways to spot leaders, and with Ayman Nour not in the best of health, it is credible that El-Baradei takes on the mantle.
PG: Is the disappearance of working-class and other avowedly Left-democratic political organisations, which had a very strong presence in that part of the world till a few decades ago, merely the result of their brutal suppression by various authoritarian regimes (such as Saddam Hussein's in Iraq, Hafez Assad's in Syria and Nasser's and Mubarak's in Egypt) and/or their systematic physical decimation by Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood? Or, does it also have to do with certain inherent politico-theoretical weaknesses of those groups? Has not the fatal flaw of left/ communist/ socialist forces in the Islamic, particularly the Arab, world been their unwillingness, or inability, to grasp and pose the universal question of the "self-emancipation of the working class" in the determinateness of their specific culture and historicity?
VP: Don't underestimate the repression. In Egypt, the 2006 budget for internal security was $1.5 billion. There are 1.5 million police officers, four times more than army personnel. I am told that there is now about 1 police officer per 37 people. This is extreme. The subvention that comes from the US of $1.3 billion helps fund this monstrosity.
The high point of the Egyptian working class was in 1977. This was the bread uprising. It was trounced. Sadat then went to the IMF with a cat's smile. He inaugurated the infitah. He covered the books by three means: the infitah allowed for some export-oriented production, the religious cover (al-rais al-mou'min) allowed him to try and undercut the Brotherhood, and seek some funds from the Saudis, and the bursary from the US for the deal he cut with Israel. This provided the means to enhance the security apparatus and further crush the workers' movements.
Was there even space or time to think about creative ways to pose the self-emancipation question? Were there intellectuals who were doing this? Are we in Ajami's Dream Palace of the Arabs, worrying about the decline of the questions? Recall that in March 1954 the major Wafd and Communist unions made a pact with the Nasserite regime; for concessions it would support the new dispensation. That struck down its independence. The unions put themselves in the service of the Nation over their Class. In the long run, this was a fatal error. But the organised working class was small (as Workers on the Nile shows, most workers were in the "informal" sector). The best that the CP and the Wafd could do in the new circumstances was to argue that the working class plays a central role in the national movement. Nasser and his Revolutionary Command Council, on the other hand, heard this but did not buy it. They saw the military as the agent of history. It was their prejudice.
Pothik Ghosh writes for Radical Notes, where this interview originally appeared.
http://www.counterpunch.org/ghosh01312011.html
REBELLING AGAINST THE SHAM DEMOCRACIES OF THE MIDDLE EAST
REBELLING AGAINST THE SHAM DEMOCRACIES OF THE MIDDLE EAST
WHEN THE ARAB STREET ENFORCES THE CONSTITUTION
By LIAQUAT ALI KHAN
January 31, 2011
The peoples’ revolution is brewing in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt. These nations, unlike the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, have established state constitutions that promise a democratic form of government and espouse the principle of popular sovereignty. Article 3 of the Tunisia Constitution declares that “The sovereignty belongs to the Tunisian People who exercise it in conformity with the Constitution.”Article 4 of the Yemen Constitution declares that “Power rests with the people who are the source of all powers.” Article 3 of the Egypt Constitution proclaims that “Sovereignty is for the people alone who are the source of authority.” Invoking these constitutional provisions, the people of Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt have resolved to enforce their democratic rights and liberties.
In blatant violation of national constitutions, President Zain El-Abidine Ben Ali ruled Tunisia for twenty four years (1987-2011), President Ali Abdul Saleh of Yemen has been in power for over twenty years (1990-2011), and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has occupied the highest state office for thirty years (1981-2011). The people have finally elected to recall these irremovable Presidents by resorting to street power, the ultimate expression of sovereignty against tyranny. The reasoning of the peoples’ revolution is no other but the one that has inspired other revolutions: “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce (the people) under absolute despotism, it is (the people’s) right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” The peoples of Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt can no longer tolerate sham democracies.
Sham Democracies
It is commonplace in North Africa and the Middle East to establish irremovable autocracies through the medium of sham democracy. Over the decades, sham periodic elections have been held in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt to elect parliaments and presidents. However, the same ruling party returns to power and the same President wins an overwhelming majority of popular vote. The periodic democratic ritual is staged to delude the people and the world that the governments in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt are anchored in the will of the people. Nothing is farther from the truth.
In October 2009, Tunisia held sham presidential and parliamentary elections. The Constitutional Democratic Rally, the ruling party that has governed Tunisia since its independence from France in 1956, received nearly 85% of the popular vote. To conceal electoral fraud, the ruling party refused international monitoring of the elections. In Egypt, the National Democratic Party has retained power since its creation in 1978. In the most recent sham elections held in 2010, the National Democratic Party won 81% of the seats in the national legislature. Opposition parties that could have challenged the ruling party were banned and their leaders arrested. Yemen is essentially a one party state. The next parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in April, 2011. It remains to be seen whether the Yeminis would allow the General People’s Congress, the ruling party, to return to power.
Even sham democracies are tolerable if rulers are competent and just. But sham democracies are doubly unbearable if the people face unremitting economic hardships. Hope is at the lowest ebb when protesters wave baguette as the symbol of revolution. In Tunisia, President Ben Ali and his family exploited state power to amass huge amount of personal wealth. Corruption at the top trickled down to the bottom. Tunisian protests began the day a farmer set himself on fire when the police, in order to extort money, impounded his vegetable and fruit stand. Yemen, the poorest country in the region, has made little economic progress under President Saleh’s incompetent administration. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak has run the state as a personal fiefdom. The members of the ruling party are blissful and affluent whereas millions of ordinary people live in shanties. Economic hardships are further aggravated when omnipresent security forces resort to cruelty, torture, and inhumane treatment.
United States Support
It is unclear how the United States would react to the peoples’ revolution in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt. While the Obama administration has expressed lukewarm support for Tunisians after Ben Ali’s departure, no real support is offered to the peoples of Yemen and Egypt. If history is any guide, the U.S. would give public lectures on the people’s right to peaceful protest but secretly support the suppression of revolts in Yemen and Egypt. As usual, concrete U.S. interests will trump the peoples’ right to institute representative governments. The U.S. would support President Saleh for his commitment to physically eradicate al-Qaeda, which is taking root in Yemen. Likewise, the U.S. would support President Mubarak for his commitment to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious political party that opposes U.S. policies in the Middle East. The despots have memorized the logic of American self-interest.
By betting on the discredited Presidents of Yemen and Egypt, however, the U.S. will choose the wrong side of the inevitable revolution. The revolution for genuine democracy, even if brutally suppressed, is unlikely to fade away. The people seem determined to enforce the national constitutions that promise free and fair elections, freedom of speech, the right to vote, and the right to remove a ruling party that no longer serves their social and economic needs. In his 2009 speech in Cairo, President Obama rejected the notion of pawning other nations for securing American interests. He said, “For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.” Now is the time for President Obama to support the peoples of Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt in their sovereign struggle to self-enforce the democratic constitutions that have yet to deliver genuine democracy.
Liaquat Ali Khan is professor of Law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas and the author of A Theory of Universal Democracy (2006).
http://www.counterpunch.org/khan01312011.html
WHEN THE ARAB STREET ENFORCES THE CONSTITUTION
By LIAQUAT ALI KHAN
January 31, 2011
The peoples’ revolution is brewing in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt. These nations, unlike the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, have established state constitutions that promise a democratic form of government and espouse the principle of popular sovereignty. Article 3 of the Tunisia Constitution declares that “The sovereignty belongs to the Tunisian People who exercise it in conformity with the Constitution.”Article 4 of the Yemen Constitution declares that “Power rests with the people who are the source of all powers.” Article 3 of the Egypt Constitution proclaims that “Sovereignty is for the people alone who are the source of authority.” Invoking these constitutional provisions, the people of Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt have resolved to enforce their democratic rights and liberties.
In blatant violation of national constitutions, President Zain El-Abidine Ben Ali ruled Tunisia for twenty four years (1987-2011), President Ali Abdul Saleh of Yemen has been in power for over twenty years (1990-2011), and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has occupied the highest state office for thirty years (1981-2011). The people have finally elected to recall these irremovable Presidents by resorting to street power, the ultimate expression of sovereignty against tyranny. The reasoning of the peoples’ revolution is no other but the one that has inspired other revolutions: “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce (the people) under absolute despotism, it is (the people’s) right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” The peoples of Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt can no longer tolerate sham democracies.
Sham Democracies
It is commonplace in North Africa and the Middle East to establish irremovable autocracies through the medium of sham democracy. Over the decades, sham periodic elections have been held in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt to elect parliaments and presidents. However, the same ruling party returns to power and the same President wins an overwhelming majority of popular vote. The periodic democratic ritual is staged to delude the people and the world that the governments in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt are anchored in the will of the people. Nothing is farther from the truth.
In October 2009, Tunisia held sham presidential and parliamentary elections. The Constitutional Democratic Rally, the ruling party that has governed Tunisia since its independence from France in 1956, received nearly 85% of the popular vote. To conceal electoral fraud, the ruling party refused international monitoring of the elections. In Egypt, the National Democratic Party has retained power since its creation in 1978. In the most recent sham elections held in 2010, the National Democratic Party won 81% of the seats in the national legislature. Opposition parties that could have challenged the ruling party were banned and their leaders arrested. Yemen is essentially a one party state. The next parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in April, 2011. It remains to be seen whether the Yeminis would allow the General People’s Congress, the ruling party, to return to power.
Even sham democracies are tolerable if rulers are competent and just. But sham democracies are doubly unbearable if the people face unremitting economic hardships. Hope is at the lowest ebb when protesters wave baguette as the symbol of revolution. In Tunisia, President Ben Ali and his family exploited state power to amass huge amount of personal wealth. Corruption at the top trickled down to the bottom. Tunisian protests began the day a farmer set himself on fire when the police, in order to extort money, impounded his vegetable and fruit stand. Yemen, the poorest country in the region, has made little economic progress under President Saleh’s incompetent administration. In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak has run the state as a personal fiefdom. The members of the ruling party are blissful and affluent whereas millions of ordinary people live in shanties. Economic hardships are further aggravated when omnipresent security forces resort to cruelty, torture, and inhumane treatment.
United States Support
It is unclear how the United States would react to the peoples’ revolution in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt. While the Obama administration has expressed lukewarm support for Tunisians after Ben Ali’s departure, no real support is offered to the peoples of Yemen and Egypt. If history is any guide, the U.S. would give public lectures on the people’s right to peaceful protest but secretly support the suppression of revolts in Yemen and Egypt. As usual, concrete U.S. interests will trump the peoples’ right to institute representative governments. The U.S. would support President Saleh for his commitment to physically eradicate al-Qaeda, which is taking root in Yemen. Likewise, the U.S. would support President Mubarak for his commitment to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious political party that opposes U.S. policies in the Middle East. The despots have memorized the logic of American self-interest.
By betting on the discredited Presidents of Yemen and Egypt, however, the U.S. will choose the wrong side of the inevitable revolution. The revolution for genuine democracy, even if brutally suppressed, is unlikely to fade away. The people seem determined to enforce the national constitutions that promise free and fair elections, freedom of speech, the right to vote, and the right to remove a ruling party that no longer serves their social and economic needs. In his 2009 speech in Cairo, President Obama rejected the notion of pawning other nations for securing American interests. He said, “For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.” Now is the time for President Obama to support the peoples of Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt in their sovereign struggle to self-enforce the democratic constitutions that have yet to deliver genuine democracy.
Liaquat Ali Khan is professor of Law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas and the author of A Theory of Universal Democracy (2006).
http://www.counterpunch.org/khan01312011.html
A WIKILEAK ON THE US AND AL- JAZEERA
A WIKILEAK ON THE US AND AL- JAZEERA
BLAMING AND (KILLING) THE MESSENGER
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
January 31, 2011
The United States has had it in for al-Jazeera at least since 2000, when the Qatar-based news network began reporting on Israel’s harsh treatment of Palestinians during the intifada and, a year later, covered the start of U.S. war-making in the Middle East, revealing to the Arab world a graphic picture of U.S. and Israeli brutality. During the Iraq war, U.S. planes bombed the al-Jazeera station in Baghdad and killed one of its correspondents, in what clearly appeared to be an attempt to silence the network. CounterPunch can show, through a Wikileaks-released cable from the U.S. embassy in Doha, Qatar, where al-Jazeera is based, that U.S. officials were still ragging the network in February 2009 in the wake of Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza, because, alone of news networks the world over, al-Jazeera had actually shown what was happening on the ground to Gazan civilians besieged by an unrelenting Israeli air, artillery, and ground attack.
The U.S. ambassador’s scolding of al-Jazeera is particularly relevant today in view of the network’s running coverage of the popular uprising in Egypt against U.S. ally Husni Mubarak. Mubarak himself has tried to shut down the network, and one can assume that U.S. officials, undecided just how to respond to this crisis and which side to support, are at least biting their fingernails over what to do about this latest instance of al-Jazeera’s honest reporting. There is no way to hide this uprising, even with press censorship, and U.S. networks are also reporting non-stop, but al-Jazeera is the network watched throughout the Arab world, and it is easy to imagine U.S. policymakers ruing the fact that it is once again exposing the U.S. alliance with dictatorships and oppression of Arabs.
Accordig to the cable from Doha, on February 10, 2009, three weeks after the Gaza assault ended, U.S. Ambassador Joseph Lebaron arranged a meeting with al-Jazeera’s director general, Wadah Khanfar, to express concern that the network’s reporting from Gaza was harming the U.S. image “in the Arab street.” Lebaron’s contorted reasoning went as follows: al-Jazeera’s coverage “took viewers’ emotions and then raised them to a higher level through its coverage.” Then Qatar’s ruling royal family, which provides funding to the network, would point to anger on the Arab street as “a call to action,” which Lebaron contended created a vicious circle leading to “more graphic coverage, more emotion, more demonstrations, and then more calls to action” -- as if the emotion-raising images from Gaza that started this circle revolving were somehow not real and not the basis of the story. There would obviously have been no emotion and no demonstrations if Israel had not launched the assault in the first place (using U.S. arms).
Lebaron simply did not like the fact that al-Jazeera had shown what was happening in Gaza. With jaw-dropping illogic, he complained that al-Jazeera provided no balance in its reporting because on one side it showed Israeli talking heads, while “on the other side of the scale, you are broadcasting graphic images of dead children and urban damage from modern warfare.” Lebaron was not convinced by Khanfar’s point that, even though al-Jazeera had attempted to provide both perspectives by running reports in every news bulletin from correspondents in Israel as well as in Gaza, it was still impossible to “balance” coverage because it was Gazans who were being killed and Israelis who were talking.
In answer to Lebaron’s argument about the vicious circle, Khanfar noted that demonstrations in other sizable Muslim countries such as Turkey and Indonesia had also been very large, despite the fact that there was not a big market for al-Jazeera in these countries. But Lebaron thought this argument “extraneous.”
It is of course in the nature of any war-making country to wish no one were looking over its shoulder reporting on the atrocities it and its allies are committing. U.S. policymakers and the U.S. media have long regarded al-Jazeera’s television coverage of Israeli and U.S. actions as “incitement” -- as if al-Jazeera rather than we and the Israelis were the perpetrator, as if al-Jazeera rather than U.S. and Israeli actions were the cause of anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment among Arabs. This cable is one of the most blatant examples of this effort to manage the news, avoid responsibility, and blame the messenger.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and the author of several books on the Palestinian situation, including Palestine in Pieces, co-authored with her late husband Bill Christison.
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison01312011.html
BLAMING AND (KILLING) THE MESSENGER
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
January 31, 2011
The United States has had it in for al-Jazeera at least since 2000, when the Qatar-based news network began reporting on Israel’s harsh treatment of Palestinians during the intifada and, a year later, covered the start of U.S. war-making in the Middle East, revealing to the Arab world a graphic picture of U.S. and Israeli brutality. During the Iraq war, U.S. planes bombed the al-Jazeera station in Baghdad and killed one of its correspondents, in what clearly appeared to be an attempt to silence the network. CounterPunch can show, through a Wikileaks-released cable from the U.S. embassy in Doha, Qatar, where al-Jazeera is based, that U.S. officials were still ragging the network in February 2009 in the wake of Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza, because, alone of news networks the world over, al-Jazeera had actually shown what was happening on the ground to Gazan civilians besieged by an unrelenting Israeli air, artillery, and ground attack.
The U.S. ambassador’s scolding of al-Jazeera is particularly relevant today in view of the network’s running coverage of the popular uprising in Egypt against U.S. ally Husni Mubarak. Mubarak himself has tried to shut down the network, and one can assume that U.S. officials, undecided just how to respond to this crisis and which side to support, are at least biting their fingernails over what to do about this latest instance of al-Jazeera’s honest reporting. There is no way to hide this uprising, even with press censorship, and U.S. networks are also reporting non-stop, but al-Jazeera is the network watched throughout the Arab world, and it is easy to imagine U.S. policymakers ruing the fact that it is once again exposing the U.S. alliance with dictatorships and oppression of Arabs.
Accordig to the cable from Doha, on February 10, 2009, three weeks after the Gaza assault ended, U.S. Ambassador Joseph Lebaron arranged a meeting with al-Jazeera’s director general, Wadah Khanfar, to express concern that the network’s reporting from Gaza was harming the U.S. image “in the Arab street.” Lebaron’s contorted reasoning went as follows: al-Jazeera’s coverage “took viewers’ emotions and then raised them to a higher level through its coverage.” Then Qatar’s ruling royal family, which provides funding to the network, would point to anger on the Arab street as “a call to action,” which Lebaron contended created a vicious circle leading to “more graphic coverage, more emotion, more demonstrations, and then more calls to action” -- as if the emotion-raising images from Gaza that started this circle revolving were somehow not real and not the basis of the story. There would obviously have been no emotion and no demonstrations if Israel had not launched the assault in the first place (using U.S. arms).
Lebaron simply did not like the fact that al-Jazeera had shown what was happening in Gaza. With jaw-dropping illogic, he complained that al-Jazeera provided no balance in its reporting because on one side it showed Israeli talking heads, while “on the other side of the scale, you are broadcasting graphic images of dead children and urban damage from modern warfare.” Lebaron was not convinced by Khanfar’s point that, even though al-Jazeera had attempted to provide both perspectives by running reports in every news bulletin from correspondents in Israel as well as in Gaza, it was still impossible to “balance” coverage because it was Gazans who were being killed and Israelis who were talking.
In answer to Lebaron’s argument about the vicious circle, Khanfar noted that demonstrations in other sizable Muslim countries such as Turkey and Indonesia had also been very large, despite the fact that there was not a big market for al-Jazeera in these countries. But Lebaron thought this argument “extraneous.”
It is of course in the nature of any war-making country to wish no one were looking over its shoulder reporting on the atrocities it and its allies are committing. U.S. policymakers and the U.S. media have long regarded al-Jazeera’s television coverage of Israeli and U.S. actions as “incitement” -- as if al-Jazeera rather than we and the Israelis were the perpetrator, as if al-Jazeera rather than U.S. and Israeli actions were the cause of anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment among Arabs. This cable is one of the most blatant examples of this effort to manage the news, avoid responsibility, and blame the messenger.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and the author of several books on the Palestinian situation, including Palestine in Pieces, co-authored with her late husband Bill Christison.
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison01312011.html
THE TORTURE CAREER OF EGYPT'S NEW VICE PRESIDENT
THE TORTURE CAREER OF EGYPT'S NEW VICE PRESIDENT
OMAR SULEIMAN AND THE RENDITION TO TORTURE
By STEPHEN SOLDZ
January 31, 2011
In response to the mass protests of recent days, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has appointed his first Vice President in his over 30 years rule, intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. When Suleiman was first announced, Aljazeera commentators were describing him as a "distinguished" and "respected " man. It turns out, however, that he is distinguished for, among other things, his central role in Egyptian torture and in the US rendition to torture program. Further, he is "respected" by US officials for his cooperation with their torture plans, among other initiatives.
Katherine Hawkins, an expert on the US's rendition to torture program, in an email, has sent some critical texts where Suleiman pops up. Thus, Jane Mayer, in The Dark Side, pointed to Suleiman's role in the rendition program:
Each rendition was authorized at the very top levels of both governments....The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly with top Agency officials. [Former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as "very bright, very realistic," adding that he was cognizant that there was a downside to "some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way" (pp. 113).
Stephen Grey, in Ghost Plane, his investigative work on the rendition program also points to Suleiman as central in the rendition program:
To negotiate these assurances [that the Egyptians wouldn't "torture" the prisoner delivered for torture] the CIA dealt principally in Egypt through Omar Suleiman, the chief of the Egyptian general intelligence service (EGIS) since 1993. It was he who arranged the meetings with the Egyptian interior ministry.... Suleiman, who understood English well, was an urbane and sophisticated man. Others told me that for years Suleiman was America's chief interlocutor with the Egyptian regime -- the main channel to President Hosni Mubarak himself, even on matters far removed from intelligence and security.
Suleiman's role, was also highlighted in a Wikileaks cable:
In the context of the close and sustained cooperation between the USG and GOE on counterterrorism, Post believes that the written GOE assurances regarding the return of three Egyptians detained at Guantanamo (reftel) represent the firm commitment of the GOE to adhere to the requested principles. These assurances were passed directly from Egyptian General Intelligence Service (EGIS) Chief Soliman through liaison channels -- the most effective communication path on this issue. General Soliman's word is the GOE's guarantee, and the GOE's track record of cooperation on CT issues lends further support to this assessment. End summary.
However, Suleiman wasn't just the go-to bureaucrat for when the Americans wanted to arrange a little torture. This "urbane and sophisticated man" apparently enjoyed a little rough stuff himself.
Shortly after 9/11, Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib was captured by Pakistani security forces and, under US pressure, torture by Pakistanis. He was then rendered (with an Australian diplomats watching) by CIA operatives to Egypt, a not uncommon practice. In Egypt, Habib merited Suleiman's personal attention. As related by Richard Neville, based on Habib's memoir:
Habib was interrogated by the country’s Intelligence Director, General Omar Suleiman.... Suleiman took a personal interest in anyone suspected of links with Al Qaeda. As Habib had visited Afghanistan shortly before 9/11, he was under suspicion. Habib was repeatedly zapped with high-voltage electricity, immersed in water up to his nostrils, beaten, his fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks.
That treatment wasn't enough for Suleiman, so:
To loosen Habib’s tongue, Suleiman ordered a guard to murder a gruesomely shackled Turkistan prisoner in front of Habib – and he did, with a vicious karate kick.
After Suleiman's men extracted Habib's confession, he was transferred back to US custody, where he eventually was imprisoned at Guantanamo. His "confession" was then used as evidence in his Guantanamo trial.
The Washington Post's intelligence correspondent Jeff Stein reported some additional details regarding Suleiman and his important role in the old Egypt the demonstrators are trying to leave behind:
“Suleiman is seen by some analysts as a possible successor to the president,” the Voice of American said Friday. “He earned international respect for his role as a mediator in Middle East affairs and for curbing Islamic extremism.”
An editorialist at Pakistan’s “International News” predicted Thursday that “Suleiman will probably scupper his boss’s plans [to install his son], even if the aspiring intelligence guru himself is as young as 75.”
Suleiman graduated from Egypt’s prestigious Military Academy but also received training in the Soviet Union. Under his guidance, Egyptian intelligence has worked hand-in-glove with the CIA’s counterterrorism programs, most notably in the 2003 rendition from Italy of an al-Qaeda suspect known as Abu Omar.
In 2009, Foreign Policy magazine ranked Suleiman as the Middle East's most powerful intelligence chief, ahead of Mossad chief Meir Dagan.
In an observation that may turn out to be ironic, the magazine wrote, "More than from any other single factor, Suleiman's influence stems from his unswerving loyalty to Mubarak."
If Suleiman succeeds Mubarak and retains power, we will likely be treated to plaudits for his distinguished credentials from government officials and US pundits. We should remember that what they really mean is his ability to brutalize and torture. As Stephen Grey puts it:
But in secret, men like Omar Suleiman, the country's most powerful spy and secret politician, did our work, the sort of work that Western countries have no appetite to do ourselves.
If Suleiman receives praise in the US, it will be because our leaders know that he's the sort of leader who can be counted on to do what it takes to restore order and ensure that Egypt remains friendly to US interests.
We sure hope that the Egyptian demonstrators reject the farce of Suleiman's appointment and push on to a complete change of regime. Otherwise the Egyptian torture chamber will undoubtedly return, as a new regime reestablishes "stability" and serves US interests.
Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He edits the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. Soldz is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations working to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations; he served as a psychological consultant on several Gutanamo trials. Currently Soldz is President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility [PsySR] and a Consultant to Physicians for Human Rights.
http://www.counterpunch.org/soldz01312011.html
OMAR SULEIMAN AND THE RENDITION TO TORTURE
By STEPHEN SOLDZ
January 31, 2011
In response to the mass protests of recent days, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has appointed his first Vice President in his over 30 years rule, intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. When Suleiman was first announced, Aljazeera commentators were describing him as a "distinguished" and "respected " man. It turns out, however, that he is distinguished for, among other things, his central role in Egyptian torture and in the US rendition to torture program. Further, he is "respected" by US officials for his cooperation with their torture plans, among other initiatives.
Katherine Hawkins, an expert on the US's rendition to torture program, in an email, has sent some critical texts where Suleiman pops up. Thus, Jane Mayer, in The Dark Side, pointed to Suleiman's role in the rendition program:
Each rendition was authorized at the very top levels of both governments....The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly with top Agency officials. [Former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as "very bright, very realistic," adding that he was cognizant that there was a downside to "some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way" (pp. 113).
Stephen Grey, in Ghost Plane, his investigative work on the rendition program also points to Suleiman as central in the rendition program:
To negotiate these assurances [that the Egyptians wouldn't "torture" the prisoner delivered for torture] the CIA dealt principally in Egypt through Omar Suleiman, the chief of the Egyptian general intelligence service (EGIS) since 1993. It was he who arranged the meetings with the Egyptian interior ministry.... Suleiman, who understood English well, was an urbane and sophisticated man. Others told me that for years Suleiman was America's chief interlocutor with the Egyptian regime -- the main channel to President Hosni Mubarak himself, even on matters far removed from intelligence and security.
Suleiman's role, was also highlighted in a Wikileaks cable:
In the context of the close and sustained cooperation between the USG and GOE on counterterrorism, Post believes that the written GOE assurances regarding the return of three Egyptians detained at Guantanamo (reftel) represent the firm commitment of the GOE to adhere to the requested principles. These assurances were passed directly from Egyptian General Intelligence Service (EGIS) Chief Soliman through liaison channels -- the most effective communication path on this issue. General Soliman's word is the GOE's guarantee, and the GOE's track record of cooperation on CT issues lends further support to this assessment. End summary.
However, Suleiman wasn't just the go-to bureaucrat for when the Americans wanted to arrange a little torture. This "urbane and sophisticated man" apparently enjoyed a little rough stuff himself.
Shortly after 9/11, Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib was captured by Pakistani security forces and, under US pressure, torture by Pakistanis. He was then rendered (with an Australian diplomats watching) by CIA operatives to Egypt, a not uncommon practice. In Egypt, Habib merited Suleiman's personal attention. As related by Richard Neville, based on Habib's memoir:
Habib was interrogated by the country’s Intelligence Director, General Omar Suleiman.... Suleiman took a personal interest in anyone suspected of links with Al Qaeda. As Habib had visited Afghanistan shortly before 9/11, he was under suspicion. Habib was repeatedly zapped with high-voltage electricity, immersed in water up to his nostrils, beaten, his fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks.
That treatment wasn't enough for Suleiman, so:
To loosen Habib’s tongue, Suleiman ordered a guard to murder a gruesomely shackled Turkistan prisoner in front of Habib – and he did, with a vicious karate kick.
After Suleiman's men extracted Habib's confession, he was transferred back to US custody, where he eventually was imprisoned at Guantanamo. His "confession" was then used as evidence in his Guantanamo trial.
The Washington Post's intelligence correspondent Jeff Stein reported some additional details regarding Suleiman and his important role in the old Egypt the demonstrators are trying to leave behind:
“Suleiman is seen by some analysts as a possible successor to the president,” the Voice of American said Friday. “He earned international respect for his role as a mediator in Middle East affairs and for curbing Islamic extremism.”
An editorialist at Pakistan’s “International News” predicted Thursday that “Suleiman will probably scupper his boss’s plans [to install his son], even if the aspiring intelligence guru himself is as young as 75.”
Suleiman graduated from Egypt’s prestigious Military Academy but also received training in the Soviet Union. Under his guidance, Egyptian intelligence has worked hand-in-glove with the CIA’s counterterrorism programs, most notably in the 2003 rendition from Italy of an al-Qaeda suspect known as Abu Omar.
In 2009, Foreign Policy magazine ranked Suleiman as the Middle East's most powerful intelligence chief, ahead of Mossad chief Meir Dagan.
In an observation that may turn out to be ironic, the magazine wrote, "More than from any other single factor, Suleiman's influence stems from his unswerving loyalty to Mubarak."
If Suleiman succeeds Mubarak and retains power, we will likely be treated to plaudits for his distinguished credentials from government officials and US pundits. We should remember that what they really mean is his ability to brutalize and torture. As Stephen Grey puts it:
But in secret, men like Omar Suleiman, the country's most powerful spy and secret politician, did our work, the sort of work that Western countries have no appetite to do ourselves.
If Suleiman receives praise in the US, it will be because our leaders know that he's the sort of leader who can be counted on to do what it takes to restore order and ensure that Egypt remains friendly to US interests.
We sure hope that the Egyptian demonstrators reject the farce of Suleiman's appointment and push on to a complete change of regime. Otherwise the Egyptian torture chamber will undoubtedly return, as a new regime reestablishes "stability" and serves US interests.
Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He edits the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. Soldz is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations working to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations; he served as a psychological consultant on several Gutanamo trials. Currently Soldz is President of Psychologists for Social Responsibility [PsySR] and a Consultant to Physicians for Human Rights.
http://www.counterpunch.org/soldz01312011.html
Saturday 29 January 2011
THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION
THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION A VERY FINE THING
By GARY LEUPP
Weekend Edition
January 28 - 30, 2011
January 28, 2011, Day of Rage.
I’m watching live coverage of the Egyptian revolution on Al-Jazeera TV. Cairo is swarming with hundreds of thousands, defying the curfew, hurling stones at the police. The images recall the Palestinian youth waging their Intifadas. The National Democratic Party headquarters is in flames. Downtown Suez has been taken over by the people, two police stations torched. The security forces are out in strength and shooting into crowds. But the people have lost their fear.
Reporters and commentators on Al-Jazeera and other channels have no choice but to note that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is widely hated, and that those in the street are seeking freedom from a dictatorship. But they also keep saying “The situation is getting worse.”
Worse?
I think of Mao Zedong’s response to critics of peasant rebellion in China in 1927. He noted that “even progressive people” saw uprisings as “terrible.” “But it’s not terrible,” he declared. “It is anything but ‘terrible.’ It’s fine!”
Watching the live coverage, I see the people of Egypt, fed up with their oppression, and inspired by the revolution in Tunisia, doing something very, very fine. It is inspiring. It is profoundly hopeful.
The Obama administration line (as summarized by Joe Biden, interviewed by Jim Lehrer on PBS), can be summarized as follows: Egyptians have the right to protest. Many are middle class folks, with legitimate concerns. But we should not refer to Mubarak as a dictator. It’s not time for him to go. He has been a key ally of the U.S. and Israel, in the “Middle East peace process” and the War on Terror. Egypt is dissimilar to Tunisia, and it would be “a stretch” to suggest that a trend is underway. The U.S. should encourage those protesting and Mubarak to talk. Everyone should avoid violence.
The mainstream infotainment media spin can be summarized like this: The “unrest” in Egypt puts the U.S. in a difficult position. On the one hand Mubarak has abetted U.S. “national interests” and been Israel’s only Arab ally. (These two are always assumed to be closely linked; the notion that an Arab leader is a friend of the U.S. to the extend that he kisses Israel’s ass is never questioned.) On the other hand, U.S. officials have been saying for years that the Middle East needs “democratic reform.”
This puts in the U.S. in bind, we are told. The U.S. confronts a “dilemma.” The talking heads depict the U.S. as somehow a victim in this situation. (Isn’t it terrible, they’re implying, that the Egyptian people by their militancy in favor of supposed U.S. ideals are trying to topple the USA’s best friend in the Arab world? What a headache to have to deal with!)
Seems to me however that this is another of those instances of chickens coming home to roost.
The U.S. has supported Mubarak primarily in appreciation for his stance towards Israel. (The mainstream media is referring to him as an “ally” of Israel.) It’s not really because he’s been a “partner in the peace process”---because there is no real peace process. Relentless Israeli settlement activity on Palestinian land supported by the Lobby in the U.S. has insured that.
Wikileaks documents indicate that Mubarak has been content for the “process” to lag indefinitely so that he could represent himself as the vital Arab middleman while enjoying two billion in U.S. military aid per year. But Palestinians hate him for cooperating with the demonization of democratically elected Hamas and the embargo imposed on Gaza. And Egyptians hate him for, among many other things, betraying their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
Rather, the U.S. has supported Mubarak because he’s provided an Arab fig leaf for the unequivocal support for Israel that the U.S. has provided for decades. U.S. diplomats have, as Wikileaks reveal, at times expressed concern that the dictator might be causing some problems by his “heavy-handed” treatment of dissidents. But this is not a matter of moral indignation, or concern about the lives of Egyptians. It’s nothing more than an expression of concern that his fascistic rule might jeopardize his ability to help U.S.-Israeli policy in the region and keep the Suez Canal open.
And now that brutal rule has caused an explosion. The reaction from U.S. officials and political commentators is, “We never expected this.”
Well surprise, surprise! (These folks were dumbfounded by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 as well. Don’t they understand that people eventually fight back?)
I think of that old Langston Hughes poem:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Egypt is exploding. The deferred dreams of the Arab world are exploding. And even the corporate media acknowledges that the people are jubilant (while warning that none of this might be in “our interest”). But for people with some basic morals, concerned about the happiness of humanity in general, is this not totally fine?
Al-Jazeera shows viewers how U.S. officials are changing the tone of their comments, backing off more and more each day from support of Mubarak. They’re reiterating with increasing emphasis that the demonstrators indeed have legitimacy. (Did these people they just figure this out?) What sheer opportunism!
Obama, always the centrist opportunist wanting to be everybody’s friend, wants to be the Egyptian people’s friend. He showed that in Cairo in 2009. In his celebrated speech to the Muslim world he on the one hand spouted platitudes about U.S. acceptance of Islam and on the other insulted everyone’s intelligence by calling the invasion of Afghanistan a “war of necessity.” He (accurately) described the vicious assault on Iraq as a “war of choice,” but said anything about how those responsible for such a crime ought to be punished. He does not support any investigation that would show how neocon Zionists in his predecessor’s administration faked a case for war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs.
His real message is: the U.S. can lie and kill, and then posture as the moral exemplar (maybe even apologizing slightly when crimes are embarrassingly exposed). Even so, the people of the world are supposed to understand that alignment with the U.S. is the best hope of their best hope.
And now Obama wants the best of both worlds: an ongoing engagement with Mubarak (if he survives), and a hand outstretched to the people of Egypt, tainted by so many other handshakes with so many dictators so far.
Demonstrators in Cairo note that tear gas canisters on the street are marked “Made in USA.” What should they to make of that? Who’s really encouraging their dreams? Who’s caused them to defer them, decade upon decade? It’s the same foe that has caused the deferment of dreams here in this country and around the world.
I learned to say shukran in Cairo. To my friends there now, engaged in this fine, fine battle, I say that now.
Shukran, shukran for inspiring the world, showing that another world might be possible.
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
By GARY LEUPP
Weekend Edition
January 28 - 30, 2011
January 28, 2011, Day of Rage.
I’m watching live coverage of the Egyptian revolution on Al-Jazeera TV. Cairo is swarming with hundreds of thousands, defying the curfew, hurling stones at the police. The images recall the Palestinian youth waging their Intifadas. The National Democratic Party headquarters is in flames. Downtown Suez has been taken over by the people, two police stations torched. The security forces are out in strength and shooting into crowds. But the people have lost their fear.
Reporters and commentators on Al-Jazeera and other channels have no choice but to note that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is widely hated, and that those in the street are seeking freedom from a dictatorship. But they also keep saying “The situation is getting worse.”
Worse?
I think of Mao Zedong’s response to critics of peasant rebellion in China in 1927. He noted that “even progressive people” saw uprisings as “terrible.” “But it’s not terrible,” he declared. “It is anything but ‘terrible.’ It’s fine!”
Watching the live coverage, I see the people of Egypt, fed up with their oppression, and inspired by the revolution in Tunisia, doing something very, very fine. It is inspiring. It is profoundly hopeful.
The Obama administration line (as summarized by Joe Biden, interviewed by Jim Lehrer on PBS), can be summarized as follows: Egyptians have the right to protest. Many are middle class folks, with legitimate concerns. But we should not refer to Mubarak as a dictator. It’s not time for him to go. He has been a key ally of the U.S. and Israel, in the “Middle East peace process” and the War on Terror. Egypt is dissimilar to Tunisia, and it would be “a stretch” to suggest that a trend is underway. The U.S. should encourage those protesting and Mubarak to talk. Everyone should avoid violence.
The mainstream infotainment media spin can be summarized like this: The “unrest” in Egypt puts the U.S. in a difficult position. On the one hand Mubarak has abetted U.S. “national interests” and been Israel’s only Arab ally. (These two are always assumed to be closely linked; the notion that an Arab leader is a friend of the U.S. to the extend that he kisses Israel’s ass is never questioned.) On the other hand, U.S. officials have been saying for years that the Middle East needs “democratic reform.”
This puts in the U.S. in bind, we are told. The U.S. confronts a “dilemma.” The talking heads depict the U.S. as somehow a victim in this situation. (Isn’t it terrible, they’re implying, that the Egyptian people by their militancy in favor of supposed U.S. ideals are trying to topple the USA’s best friend in the Arab world? What a headache to have to deal with!)
Seems to me however that this is another of those instances of chickens coming home to roost.
The U.S. has supported Mubarak primarily in appreciation for his stance towards Israel. (The mainstream media is referring to him as an “ally” of Israel.) It’s not really because he’s been a “partner in the peace process”---because there is no real peace process. Relentless Israeli settlement activity on Palestinian land supported by the Lobby in the U.S. has insured that.
Wikileaks documents indicate that Mubarak has been content for the “process” to lag indefinitely so that he could represent himself as the vital Arab middleman while enjoying two billion in U.S. military aid per year. But Palestinians hate him for cooperating with the demonization of democratically elected Hamas and the embargo imposed on Gaza. And Egyptians hate him for, among many other things, betraying their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
Rather, the U.S. has supported Mubarak because he’s provided an Arab fig leaf for the unequivocal support for Israel that the U.S. has provided for decades. U.S. diplomats have, as Wikileaks reveal, at times expressed concern that the dictator might be causing some problems by his “heavy-handed” treatment of dissidents. But this is not a matter of moral indignation, or concern about the lives of Egyptians. It’s nothing more than an expression of concern that his fascistic rule might jeopardize his ability to help U.S.-Israeli policy in the region and keep the Suez Canal open.
And now that brutal rule has caused an explosion. The reaction from U.S. officials and political commentators is, “We never expected this.”
Well surprise, surprise! (These folks were dumbfounded by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 as well. Don’t they understand that people eventually fight back?)
I think of that old Langston Hughes poem:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Egypt is exploding. The deferred dreams of the Arab world are exploding. And even the corporate media acknowledges that the people are jubilant (while warning that none of this might be in “our interest”). But for people with some basic morals, concerned about the happiness of humanity in general, is this not totally fine?
Al-Jazeera shows viewers how U.S. officials are changing the tone of their comments, backing off more and more each day from support of Mubarak. They’re reiterating with increasing emphasis that the demonstrators indeed have legitimacy. (Did these people they just figure this out?) What sheer opportunism!
Obama, always the centrist opportunist wanting to be everybody’s friend, wants to be the Egyptian people’s friend. He showed that in Cairo in 2009. In his celebrated speech to the Muslim world he on the one hand spouted platitudes about U.S. acceptance of Islam and on the other insulted everyone’s intelligence by calling the invasion of Afghanistan a “war of necessity.” He (accurately) described the vicious assault on Iraq as a “war of choice,” but said anything about how those responsible for such a crime ought to be punished. He does not support any investigation that would show how neocon Zionists in his predecessor’s administration faked a case for war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs.
His real message is: the U.S. can lie and kill, and then posture as the moral exemplar (maybe even apologizing slightly when crimes are embarrassingly exposed). Even so, the people of the world are supposed to understand that alignment with the U.S. is the best hope of their best hope.
And now Obama wants the best of both worlds: an ongoing engagement with Mubarak (if he survives), and a hand outstretched to the people of Egypt, tainted by so many other handshakes with so many dictators so far.
Demonstrators in Cairo note that tear gas canisters on the street are marked “Made in USA.” What should they to make of that? Who’s really encouraging their dreams? Who’s caused them to defer them, decade upon decade? It’s the same foe that has caused the deferment of dreams here in this country and around the world.
I learned to say shukran in Cairo. To my friends there now, engaged in this fine, fine battle, I say that now.
Shukran, shukran for inspiring the world, showing that another world might be possible.
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.
Friday 28 January 2011
THE MOROCCAN BACCALAUREATE ENGLISH EXAM
THE MOROCCAN BACCALAUREATE ENGLISH EXAM
In Morocco, each year thousands of young girls from poor families are sent to work in houses in the city. They are often ill-treated and exploited. No official numbers exist, but one non-governmental organisation called Dari has counted 23,000 child maids in Casablanca alone.
Halima is one of them. When she was 8 years old, her family sent her to Casablanca to work as a maid. Her father had some financial trouble, so he got in touch with an intermediary whose job was to find maids for rich families. The little girl agreed because she thought that she could be of some help to her parents. But being a maid was not what she really dreamed of. She worked all day long, slept in the kitchen, and was often beaten up by her host family. But she managed to escape from the house where she was working.
Later, someone found her in the street all in tears and helpless, and took her to Dari. Thanks to Dari, Halima now lives in a shelter for former child maids where she is learning cooking and hairdressing. "For the first time since I was 8,1 have finally found a place to rest," Halima said.
Dari's director says: "the majority of child maids come from the countryside where most families have little money and a lot of kids. If they send a girl away to work as a domestic, that means an important source of income and one less mouth to feed. The parents think that they are doing something nice for their daughters, saving them from the harsh conditions in the countryside, and hoping for a better future for them. But child maids often end up suffering twice: as kids and as adults. When they grow up, they are often exploited by crime gangs".
Dari's director further explains that their association works to educate poor parents about the reality of child maids and their exploitation. It also runs programmes to sensitise the wealthy families to the rights of their maids: fair treatment, good pay, and basic education.
This issue of child maids is now being addressed by many civil associations. The abuses are being exposed on TV, and more voices are heard against employing child maids, believing that all children should have the right to enjoy their childhood and get a proper education.
L COMPREHENSION
BASE ALL YOUR ANSWERS ON THE TEXT.
A. ARE THESE SENTENCES TRUE OR FALSE? JUSTIFY.
1. Halima started working as a maid at an early age.
2. Parents expect their daughters to have a better life in the city.
3. The abuses of child maids are completely ignored by the media now.
B. ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS.
1. Why did Halima accept to work as a maid? ,
2. How was Halima treated by her host family?
3. What rights should children have according to the media?
C. FILL IN THE CHART WITH THE RIGHT INFORMATION FROM THE TEXT.
People concerned Assistance given to them by Dari
Child maids give shelter to former child maids/
teach them cooking and hair dressing
Poor parents …………………………………………………………………………….
Wealthy families ……………………………………………………………………………..
D. COMPLETE THESE SENTENCES.
1. Because they are poor, parents in the countryside …………………………………………
2. When child maids get older, they are often ……………………………………………….
E. FIND IN THE TEXT WORDS THAT MEAN ALMOST THE SAME AS:
1. Run away (paragraph 2) ……………………………………………………………………..
2. Relax (paragraph 3) ………………………………………………………………………….
3. Severe (paragraph 4) ………………………………………………………………………….
F. WHAT DO THE UNDERLINED WORDS IN THE TEXT REFER TO? ( WORDS IN BOLD TYPE AND ITALICS )
1. Them: (paragraph 2)………………………………………………………
2. It: (paragraph 2)…………………………………………………………….
II- LANGUAGE
A. FILL IN EACH GAP WITH AN APPROPRIATE WORD FROM THE LIST.
formal / defend / achievement / prevent / agreement / global
1. We should do our best to …………………….people from employing children.
2. Many world leaders attended last year's conference on ……………………….warming.
3. Hind's parents are satisfied with her ……………………………at school.
B. REWRITE THE SENTENCES BEGINNING WITH THE WORDS GIVEN.
1. "I have already read that novel," Rebecca said.
Rebecca said………………………………………………………….
2. Mr Parker was poor; however, he managed to educate his kids well.
Despite…………………………………………………………………
3. Emma didn't save enough money; she couldn't buy a computer.
If Emma ……………………………………………………………….
4. The local council will build a new school in our area.
A new school …………………………………………………………….
C. PUT THE VERBS BETWEEN BRACKETS IN THE CORRECT TENSE.
In a press conference, the president of El Amal Association said: "Last October, we (start) …………….a project to fight illiteracy. We (work) ……………………..with the ministry of education on the same project since then. I guess, by the year 2016, we (achieve) ……………………..our goals."
D. MATCH EACH STATEMENT WITH ITS APPRORIATE FUNCTION.
1. "In my view, parents are too tolerant with their kids," Harry told his classmates.
2. Brain drain refers to the emigration of educated and skilled people.
3. Computers are used not only for learning but also for entertainment.
4. "Our team trained hard so as to be ready for the final match," the coach said.
FUNCTIONS
a. purpose
b. opinion
c. defining
d. addition
1……………………… 2…………………………. 3…………………………… 4………………………..
E. FILL IN EACH GAP WITH AN APPROPRIATE WORD FROM THE LIST.
place / care / taking / fun / solving
1. Some students have problems with note……… techniques.
2. Betty always takes ………..of her little sister when her mother is busy.
III- WRITING
Write an email to your friend telling him / her about what you do in your free time.
((Approximately 200 words)
TThese cues may help you:
- play computer game, watch TV, practise sports, - entertain/enjoy oneself
- listen to music, surf the Internet, etc... - get information(Internet)
- have a wonderful time with friends - gain experience
- relax / - keep fit/......
In Morocco, each year thousands of young girls from poor families are sent to work in houses in the city. They are often ill-treated and exploited. No official numbers exist, but one non-governmental organisation called Dari has counted 23,000 child maids in Casablanca alone.
Halima is one of them. When she was 8 years old, her family sent her to Casablanca to work as a maid. Her father had some financial trouble, so he got in touch with an intermediary whose job was to find maids for rich families. The little girl agreed because she thought that she could be of some help to her parents. But being a maid was not what she really dreamed of. She worked all day long, slept in the kitchen, and was often beaten up by her host family. But she managed to escape from the house where she was working.
Later, someone found her in the street all in tears and helpless, and took her to Dari. Thanks to Dari, Halima now lives in a shelter for former child maids where she is learning cooking and hairdressing. "For the first time since I was 8,1 have finally found a place to rest," Halima said.
Dari's director says: "the majority of child maids come from the countryside where most families have little money and a lot of kids. If they send a girl away to work as a domestic, that means an important source of income and one less mouth to feed. The parents think that they are doing something nice for their daughters, saving them from the harsh conditions in the countryside, and hoping for a better future for them. But child maids often end up suffering twice: as kids and as adults. When they grow up, they are often exploited by crime gangs".
Dari's director further explains that their association works to educate poor parents about the reality of child maids and their exploitation. It also runs programmes to sensitise the wealthy families to the rights of their maids: fair treatment, good pay, and basic education.
This issue of child maids is now being addressed by many civil associations. The abuses are being exposed on TV, and more voices are heard against employing child maids, believing that all children should have the right to enjoy their childhood and get a proper education.
L COMPREHENSION
BASE ALL YOUR ANSWERS ON THE TEXT.
A. ARE THESE SENTENCES TRUE OR FALSE? JUSTIFY.
1. Halima started working as a maid at an early age.
2. Parents expect their daughters to have a better life in the city.
3. The abuses of child maids are completely ignored by the media now.
B. ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS.
1. Why did Halima accept to work as a maid? ,
2. How was Halima treated by her host family?
3. What rights should children have according to the media?
C. FILL IN THE CHART WITH THE RIGHT INFORMATION FROM THE TEXT.
People concerned Assistance given to them by Dari
Child maids give shelter to former child maids/
teach them cooking and hair dressing
Poor parents …………………………………………………………………………….
Wealthy families ……………………………………………………………………………..
D. COMPLETE THESE SENTENCES.
1. Because they are poor, parents in the countryside …………………………………………
2. When child maids get older, they are often ……………………………………………….
E. FIND IN THE TEXT WORDS THAT MEAN ALMOST THE SAME AS:
1. Run away (paragraph 2) ……………………………………………………………………..
2. Relax (paragraph 3) ………………………………………………………………………….
3. Severe (paragraph 4) ………………………………………………………………………….
F. WHAT DO THE UNDERLINED WORDS IN THE TEXT REFER TO? ( WORDS IN BOLD TYPE AND ITALICS )
1. Them: (paragraph 2)………………………………………………………
2. It: (paragraph 2)…………………………………………………………….
II- LANGUAGE
A. FILL IN EACH GAP WITH AN APPROPRIATE WORD FROM THE LIST.
formal / defend / achievement / prevent / agreement / global
1. We should do our best to …………………….people from employing children.
2. Many world leaders attended last year's conference on ……………………….warming.
3. Hind's parents are satisfied with her ……………………………at school.
B. REWRITE THE SENTENCES BEGINNING WITH THE WORDS GIVEN.
1. "I have already read that novel," Rebecca said.
Rebecca said………………………………………………………….
2. Mr Parker was poor; however, he managed to educate his kids well.
Despite…………………………………………………………………
3. Emma didn't save enough money; she couldn't buy a computer.
If Emma ……………………………………………………………….
4. The local council will build a new school in our area.
A new school …………………………………………………………….
C. PUT THE VERBS BETWEEN BRACKETS IN THE CORRECT TENSE.
In a press conference, the president of El Amal Association said: "Last October, we (start) …………….a project to fight illiteracy. We (work) ……………………..with the ministry of education on the same project since then. I guess, by the year 2016, we (achieve) ……………………..our goals."
D. MATCH EACH STATEMENT WITH ITS APPRORIATE FUNCTION.
1. "In my view, parents are too tolerant with their kids," Harry told his classmates.
2. Brain drain refers to the emigration of educated and skilled people.
3. Computers are used not only for learning but also for entertainment.
4. "Our team trained hard so as to be ready for the final match," the coach said.
FUNCTIONS
a. purpose
b. opinion
c. defining
d. addition
1……………………… 2…………………………. 3…………………………… 4………………………..
E. FILL IN EACH GAP WITH AN APPROPRIATE WORD FROM THE LIST.
place / care / taking / fun / solving
1. Some students have problems with note……… techniques.
2. Betty always takes ………..of her little sister when her mother is busy.
III- WRITING
Write an email to your friend telling him / her about what you do in your free time.
((Approximately 200 words)
TThese cues may help you:
- play computer game, watch TV, practise sports, - entertain/enjoy oneself
- listen to music, surf the Internet, etc... - get information(Internet)
- have a wonderful time with friends - gain experience
- relax / - keep fit/......
THE MOROCCAN BACCALAUREATE ENGLISH EXAM
THE MOROCCAN BACCALAUREATE ENGLISH EXAM
Traditionally, the idea of a working woman was not accepted by many people; they saw it as a radical change in family life. The reasons were simple: a woman’s place is at home. Who is going to clean, cook, feed the kids and look after them?
Batool, a 29-year-old Kuwaiti pharmacist and mother of two children says: "I feel guilty." Now that my eldest daughter is going to school, I’m starting to have second thoughts about being a career woman." She says that when she was a kid, her mother would wake her up every morning for school. "She made us breakfast, me and five other siblings, whereas I find difficulty taking care of only two daughters," she added.
Like many other young Kuwaiti women, Batool finds it necessary to be taking a share in the household finances. "It’s not as easy as it used to be with my mother’s generation," explained Batool. "A woman now has to have her awn income, if not to support her family, then to satisfy her needs. Life is too expensive compared to twenty or thirty years ago." The number of working women in Kuwait is continuously increasing, with 42 paecent participating in the total of Kuwait’s working force, according to a recent study conducted by the Arab Planning Institute.
Reem, a student, says: "I’m studying hard to get a degree, have a good career and make a difference. Moreover, at this point in my life, I don’t want to have any kids. Maybe five years after my marriage, I will start to consider it. But I want to do my master’s degree abroad and I can’t do that unless I’m married; otherwise my dad won’t permit it."
Aisha, a 51-year-old mother, has been a housewife all her life. She says: "I got married when I was seventeen and didn't’ have time to finish high school. Most of my friends studied further. Some of them are successful in their careers."
Staving at home to take care of children or working to increase the family’s income is apparently a personal choice. "I believe that you can do well in what you believe in if you have your family supporting you," says Aisha. The debate over working women versus housewives is one that has been going on for generations. This is the issue that women around the world have to deal with. They are under the pressure of supporting a household with an additional income and the guilt of not being available for the kids. Finding the balance between both world sis what is expected of women, something that is not always feasible.
I- COMPREHENSION
BASE ALL YOUR ANSWERS ON THE TEXT
A/ WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WOULD BE THE BEST TITLE FOR THE PASSAGE?
TICK (√) THE APPROPRIATE ANSWER
The problem of illiterate women in Kuwait
The problem of working women in Kuwait
The problem of housewives in Kuwait
B/ ARE THESE SENTENCES TRUE OR FAKSE? JUSTIFY:
1. Reem will be able to study abroad if she gets married
…………………………………….………………………………
2. Aisha has never had a chance to work
…………………….………………………………………………
C/ ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS:
1. According to Batool, why is it important for a woman to have her own income?
…………………………………………………………………………
2. What is Reem doing for the moment?
…………………………………………………………………………….
3. According to the author, what is expected of working women?
…………………………………………………………………………
D/ COMPLETE THESE SENTENCES:
1. Unlike her mother, Batool finds it difficult to……………………………………….
2. The study by the Arab Planning Institute shows that …………………………………
E/ FIND IN THE TEXT WORDS THAT MEAN THE SAME AS:
1. Child (paragraph 2) : …………………………………
2. Allow (paragraph 4) : ……………………………….
3. Look after (paragraph 6): …………………………….
F/ WHAT DO THE UNDERLINED WORDS IN THE TEXT REFER TO? ( WORDS IN BOLD TYPE AND ITALICS )
1. It: (paragraph 1) …………………………..
2. She: (paragraph 2) ………………………..
3. Them: (paragraph 5) ………………………
II- LANGUAGE:
A/ FILL IN THE GAPS WITH THE APPROPRIATE COLLOCATIONS FROM THE LIST:
Film making / have access / take place / have fun / note taking / take care
Many people do not ………………………to the Internet in the countryside.
Listening and ……………………….are important skills to understand presentations at the university.
"Where will the next conference ……………………..? " the journalist asked.
B/ GIVE THE CORRECT FORL OF THE WORDS BETWEEN BRACKETS:
Parents often worry about their children’s (addict) ________________to computer games. They think that playing games for a long time can be (harm) ________________to their children’s health. They are also afraid of changes that might occur in their (behave) ________________
C/ PUT THE VERBS BETWEEN BRACKETS IN THE CORRECT TENSE:
Last Monday, while firemen (try)………………….to put out the fire in the forest, two helicopters (join) ………………them. Unfortunately. Most of the trees were destroyed. We hope that by the end of 2011, the local authorities (replant) ……………..………..the forest.
D/ FILL IN THE GAPS WITH THE APPROPRIATE WORDS FROM THE LIST:
Where / which / who / whom / whose
Many Moroccan immigrants ______________ live abroad would like to return to Morocco ______________ they can invest their money. They have promising projects ______________ will certainly help to improve the local economy.
E/ REWRITE THE SENTENCES BEGINNING WITH THE WORDS GIVEN.
1. "Won’t be able to attend the wedding party."
Kamal said …………………………………………………….
1. The association has funded many social projects.
Many social projects …………………………………………….
2. Mounir dropped out of school at an early age.
Mounir wishes ………………………………………….………….
F/ FILL IN THE BLANKS WITH THE APPROPRIATE WORDS OR EXPRESSIONS FROM THE LIST:
whereas / due to / as a result / despite / though / so as to
1. Jane was often absent from work; ……………., her director dismissed her.
2. I’ll try to find some time to see you this afternoon…………..I have so many things to do.
3. Thousands of people are driven out their homes………….civil wars maybe parts of the world.
III- WRITING
Young people often face various problems at home or at school. Write an e-mail to a friend telling him/her about a problem that you or one of your friends once had. (Approximately 250 words)
What was the problem? When was it?
Who was involved? (father, mother, teacher, headmaster, classmates etc)
Was the problem solved? How?
How did you or your friend feel?
Traditionally, the idea of a working woman was not accepted by many people; they saw it as a radical change in family life. The reasons were simple: a woman’s place is at home. Who is going to clean, cook, feed the kids and look after them?
Batool, a 29-year-old Kuwaiti pharmacist and mother of two children says: "I feel guilty." Now that my eldest daughter is going to school, I’m starting to have second thoughts about being a career woman." She says that when she was a kid, her mother would wake her up every morning for school. "She made us breakfast, me and five other siblings, whereas I find difficulty taking care of only two daughters," she added.
Like many other young Kuwaiti women, Batool finds it necessary to be taking a share in the household finances. "It’s not as easy as it used to be with my mother’s generation," explained Batool. "A woman now has to have her awn income, if not to support her family, then to satisfy her needs. Life is too expensive compared to twenty or thirty years ago." The number of working women in Kuwait is continuously increasing, with 42 paecent participating in the total of Kuwait’s working force, according to a recent study conducted by the Arab Planning Institute.
Reem, a student, says: "I’m studying hard to get a degree, have a good career and make a difference. Moreover, at this point in my life, I don’t want to have any kids. Maybe five years after my marriage, I will start to consider it. But I want to do my master’s degree abroad and I can’t do that unless I’m married; otherwise my dad won’t permit it."
Aisha, a 51-year-old mother, has been a housewife all her life. She says: "I got married when I was seventeen and didn't’ have time to finish high school. Most of my friends studied further. Some of them are successful in their careers."
Staving at home to take care of children or working to increase the family’s income is apparently a personal choice. "I believe that you can do well in what you believe in if you have your family supporting you," says Aisha. The debate over working women versus housewives is one that has been going on for generations. This is the issue that women around the world have to deal with. They are under the pressure of supporting a household with an additional income and the guilt of not being available for the kids. Finding the balance between both world sis what is expected of women, something that is not always feasible.
I- COMPREHENSION
BASE ALL YOUR ANSWERS ON THE TEXT
A/ WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WOULD BE THE BEST TITLE FOR THE PASSAGE?
TICK (√) THE APPROPRIATE ANSWER
The problem of illiterate women in Kuwait
The problem of working women in Kuwait
The problem of housewives in Kuwait
B/ ARE THESE SENTENCES TRUE OR FAKSE? JUSTIFY:
1. Reem will be able to study abroad if she gets married
…………………………………….………………………………
2. Aisha has never had a chance to work
…………………….………………………………………………
C/ ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS:
1. According to Batool, why is it important for a woman to have her own income?
…………………………………………………………………………
2. What is Reem doing for the moment?
…………………………………………………………………………….
3. According to the author, what is expected of working women?
…………………………………………………………………………
D/ COMPLETE THESE SENTENCES:
1. Unlike her mother, Batool finds it difficult to……………………………………….
2. The study by the Arab Planning Institute shows that …………………………………
E/ FIND IN THE TEXT WORDS THAT MEAN THE SAME AS:
1. Child (paragraph 2) : …………………………………
2. Allow (paragraph 4) : ……………………………….
3. Look after (paragraph 6): …………………………….
F/ WHAT DO THE UNDERLINED WORDS IN THE TEXT REFER TO? ( WORDS IN BOLD TYPE AND ITALICS )
1. It: (paragraph 1) …………………………..
2. She: (paragraph 2) ………………………..
3. Them: (paragraph 5) ………………………
II- LANGUAGE:
A/ FILL IN THE GAPS WITH THE APPROPRIATE COLLOCATIONS FROM THE LIST:
Film making / have access / take place / have fun / note taking / take care
Many people do not ………………………to the Internet in the countryside.
Listening and ……………………….are important skills to understand presentations at the university.
"Where will the next conference ……………………..? " the journalist asked.
B/ GIVE THE CORRECT FORL OF THE WORDS BETWEEN BRACKETS:
Parents often worry about their children’s (addict) ________________to computer games. They think that playing games for a long time can be (harm) ________________to their children’s health. They are also afraid of changes that might occur in their (behave) ________________
C/ PUT THE VERBS BETWEEN BRACKETS IN THE CORRECT TENSE:
Last Monday, while firemen (try)………………….to put out the fire in the forest, two helicopters (join) ………………them. Unfortunately. Most of the trees were destroyed. We hope that by the end of 2011, the local authorities (replant) ……………..………..the forest.
D/ FILL IN THE GAPS WITH THE APPROPRIATE WORDS FROM THE LIST:
Where / which / who / whom / whose
Many Moroccan immigrants ______________ live abroad would like to return to Morocco ______________ they can invest their money. They have promising projects ______________ will certainly help to improve the local economy.
E/ REWRITE THE SENTENCES BEGINNING WITH THE WORDS GIVEN.
1. "Won’t be able to attend the wedding party."
Kamal said …………………………………………………….
1. The association has funded many social projects.
Many social projects …………………………………………….
2. Mounir dropped out of school at an early age.
Mounir wishes ………………………………………….………….
F/ FILL IN THE BLANKS WITH THE APPROPRIATE WORDS OR EXPRESSIONS FROM THE LIST:
whereas / due to / as a result / despite / though / so as to
1. Jane was often absent from work; ……………., her director dismissed her.
2. I’ll try to find some time to see you this afternoon…………..I have so many things to do.
3. Thousands of people are driven out their homes………….civil wars maybe parts of the world.
III- WRITING
Young people often face various problems at home or at school. Write an e-mail to a friend telling him/her about a problem that you or one of your friends once had. (Approximately 250 words)
What was the problem? When was it?
Who was involved? (father, mother, teacher, headmaster, classmates etc)
Was the problem solved? How?
How did you or your friend feel?
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