Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

[vanlose kid]

Violent protests break out in Libya
Clashes reported in eastern city of Benghazi as security forces and government supporters confront demonstrators.
Last Modified: 16 Feb 2011 07:59 GMT

Protesters have clashed with police and government supporters in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, reports say.

Demonstrators gathered in the early hours of Wednesday morning in front of police headquarters and chanted slogans against the "corrupt rulers of the country", Al Jazeera's sources said.

Police fired tear gas and violently dispersed protesters, the sources said without providing further details.

The online edition of Libya's privately-owned Quryna newspaper, which is based in Benghazi, said the protesters were armed with petrol bombs and threw stones.

According to a Libyan newspaper Gorina, 14 people were injured in the clashes.

In a telephone interview with Al Jazeera, Idris Al-Mesmari, a Libyan novelist and writer, said that security officials in civilian clothes came and dispersed protesters by using tear gas, batons and hot water.

Al-Mesmari was arrested hours after the interview, unconfirmed reports say.

'Day of rage' called

Anti-government protesters have also called on citizens to observe Thursday as a "Day of Rage". They are hoping to emulate recent popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia to end Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's 41-year-old rule.

The rare protests reportedly began after relatives of those killed in a prison massacre about 15 years ago took to streets. They were joined by scores of other supporters.

The relatives were said to have been angered by the detention of Fathi Terbil, human rights lawyer and official spokesman of the victims' families, who was arrested by the Libyan security forces, for no apparent reason.

However, Terbil was later released, according to reports.

Twelve-hundred prisoners were killed in the Abu Slim prison massacre on June 29, 1996, after they had objected to their inhumane conditions inside the prison.

Those killed were buried in the prison's courtyard and in mass graves in Tripoli. The families of the victims have been demanding that the culprits be punished.

Mohammed Maree, an Egyptian blogger, said "Gaddafi's regime has not listened to such pleas and continues to treat the Libyan people with lead and fire."

"This is why we announce our solidarity with the Libyan people and the families of the martyrs until the criminals are punished, starting with Muammer and his family."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/afric ... 22444.html

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[vanlose kid]

Protesters occupy Bahrain square
Anti-government protests continue in tiny kingdom, despite apology by king for the deaths of two demonstrators.
Last Modified: 16 Feb 2011 08:33 GMT

Anti-government protesters are continuing to occupy a square in Bahrain's capital, Manama, after two days of violent clashes left at least two demonstrators dead.

The protesters, pressing for a host of demands including political reforms and better human rights in the kingdom, are refusing to disperse, despite a rare apology from the king over the deaths in police firing.

An Al Jazeera correspondent in Bahrain, who cannot be named for his own safety, said that thousands of protesters were occupying a major landmark on Wednesday morning.

"They are well organised and say that they will make Manama's Pearl Roundabout Bahrain's version of Egypt's Tahrir Square."

He said that protesters were also holding a funeral procession for the man who was killed during Tuesday's protest.

"The funeral procession left from the hospital - there are no police in sight and they are clearly allowing this march to continue."

On Tuesday, Bahrain's ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa made a rare television appearance in which he expressed his condolences for "the deaths of two of our dear sons" and said a committee would investigate the killings.

"We will ask legislators to look into this issue and suggest needed laws to resolve it," he said, adding that peaceful protests were legal.

'Speech too late'

But Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Centre for Human rights, told Al Jazeera that the king's speech "was too late".

"People were expecting him to come out and meet the demands of the people - but he did not talk about how he will address the demands of the people.

"People don't want only an investigation about the two killings - they want change," he said.

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of the tiny kingdom since Monday, inspired by the recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

While one protester was killed on Monday, another died the next day when police opened fire at his funeral procession.

The second victim was identified as Fadhel Ali Almatrook and our correspondent said he seemed to have been shot at from very close range.

Our correspondent said that police took a very heavy-handed approach towards the protesters.

"Police fired on the protesters this [Tuesday] morning, but they showed very strong resistance," he said.

The US said it was "very concerned" by recent violence in protests in Bahrain, a close ally of Washington, and urged all sides to exercise restraint.

"The United States is very concerned by recent violence surrounding protests in Bahrain," PJ Crowley, the US state department spokesman, said in a statement. "We also call on all parties to exercise restraint and refrain from violence."

Angry opposition

Angered by the two deaths, al-Wefaq, Bahrain's main Shia Muslim opposition group, announced it was suspending its participation in parliament.

"This is the first step. We want to see dialogue," Ibrahim Mattar, an al-Wefaq parliamentarian, said. "In the coming days, we are either going to resign from the council or continue."

Al-Wefaq has a strong presence inside the parliament and within the Shia community.

The protesters say their main demand is the resignation of Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the prime minister, who has governed Bahrain since its independence in 1971.

An uncle of the king, he is seen as a symbol of the wealth of the ruling family.

The protesters say they are also demanding the release of political prisoners, which the government has promised, and the creation of a new constitution.

Shias, thought to be in the majority in Bahrain, are ruled by a Sunni royal family.

Poverty, high unemployment and alleged attempts by the state to grant citizenship to Sunni foreigners to change the demographic balance have intensified discontent among the Shias.

Around half of the kingdom's 1.3 million people are Bahraini, with the rest being foreign workers.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middl ... 25202.html

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[vanlose kid]

Egypt: Social Movements, The CIA And The Mossad

Written by: James Petras


The mass movements which forced the removal of Mubarak reveal both the strength and weaknesses of spontaneous uprisings. On the one hand, the social movements demonstrated their capacity to mobilize hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in a successful sustained struggle culminating in the overthrow of the dictator in a way that pre-existent opposition parties and personalities were unable or unwilling to do.

On the other hand, lacking any national political leadership, the movements were not able to take political power and realize their demands, allowing the Mubarak military high command to seize power and define the “post-Mubarak” process, ensuring the continuation of Egypt’s subordination to the US, the protection of the illicit wealth of the Mubarak clan ($70 billion), and the military elite’s numerous corporations and the protection of the upper class. The millions mobilized by the social movements to overthrow the dictatorship were effectively excluded by the new self-styled “revolutionary” military junta in defining the political institutions and policies, let along the socio-economic reforms needed to address their basic needs of the population (40% live on less than $2 USD a day, youth unemployment runs over 30%). Egypt, as in the case of the student and popular social movements against the dictatorships of South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines and Indonesia, demonstrate that the lack of a national political organization allows neo-liberal and conservative “opposition” personalities and parties to replace the regime. They proceed to set up an electoral regime which continues to serve imperial interests and to depend on and defend the existing state apparatus. In some cases they replace old crony capitalists with new ones. It is no accident that the mass media praise the ‘spontaneous’ nature of the struggles (not the socio-economic demands) and put a favorable spin on the role of military (slighting its 30 years as a bulwark of the dictatorship). The masses are praised for their “heroism”, the youth for their “idealism”, but are never proposed as central political actors in the new regime. Once the dictatorship fell, the military and the opposition electoralists “celebrated” the success of the revolution and moved swiftly to demobilize and dismantle the spontaneous movement, in order to make way for negotiations between the liberal electoral politicians, Washington and the ruling military elite.

While the White House may tolerate or even promote social movements in ousting (“sacrificing”) dictatorships, they have every intention in preserving the state. In the case of Egypt the main strategic ally of US imperialism was not Mubarak, it is the military, with whom Washington was in constant collaboration before, during and after the ouster of Mubarak, ensuring that the “transition” to democracy (sic) guarantees the continued subordination of Egypt to US and Israeli Middle East policy and interests.

The Arab revolt demonstrates once again several strategic failures in the much vaunted secret police, special forces and intelligence agencies of the US and Israeli state apparatus none of which anticipated, let along intervened, to preclude successful mobilization and influence their government’s policy toward the client rulers under attack.

The image which most writers, academics and journalists project of the invincibility of the Israeli Mossad and of the omnipotent CIA have been severely tested by their admitted failure to recognize the scope, depth and intensity of the multi-million member movement to oust the Mubarak dictatorship. The Mossad, pride and joy of Hollywood producers, presented as a ‘model of efficiency’ by their organized Zionist colleagues, were not able to detect the growth of a mass movement in a country right next door. The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was shocked (and dismayed) by the precarious situation of Mubarak and the collapse of his most prominent Arab client – because of Mossad’s faulty intelligence. Likewise, Washington was totally unprepared by the 27 US intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, with their hundreds of thousands of paid operatives and multi-billion dollar budgets, of the forthcoming massive popular uprisings and emerging movements.

Several theoretical observations are in order. The notion that highly repressive rulers receiving billions of dollars of US military aid and with close to a million police, military and paramilitary forces are the best guarantors of imperial hegemony has been demonstrated to be false. The assumption that large scale, long term links with such dictatorial rulers, safeguards US imperial interests has been disproven.

Israeli arrogance and presumption of Jewish organizational, strategic and political superiority over “the Arabs”, has been severely deflated. The Israeli state, its experts, undercover operatives and Ivy League academics were blind to the unfolding realities, ignorant of the depth of disaffection and impotent to prevent the mass opposition to their most valued client. Israel’s publicists in the US, who scarcely resist the opportunity to promote the “brilliance” of Israel’s security forces, whether it’s assassinating an Arab leader in Lebanon or Dubai, or bombing a military facility in Syria, were temporarily speechless.

The fall of Mubarak and the possible emergence of an independent and democratic government would mean that Israel could lose its major ‘cop on the beat’. A democratic public will not cooperate with Israel in maintaining the blockade of Gaza – starving Palestinians to break their will to resist. Israel will not be able to count on a democratic government, to back its violent land seizures in the West Bank and its stooge Palestinian regime. Nor can the US count on a democratic Egypt to back its intrigues in Lebanon, its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its sanctions against Iran. Moreover, the Egyptian uprising has served as an example for popular movements against other US client dictatorships in Jordan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. For all these reasons, Washington backed the military takeover in order to shape a political transition according to its liking and imperial interests.

The weakening of the principle pillar of US imperial and Israeli colonial power in North Africa and the Middle East reveals the essential role of imperial collaborator regimes. The dictatorial character of these regimes is a direct result of the role they play in upholding imperial interests. And the major military aid packages which corrupt and enrich the ruling elites are the rewards for being willing collaborators of imperial and colonial states. Given the strategic importance of the Egyptian dictatorship, how do we explain the failure of the US and Israeli intelligence agencies to anticipate the uprisings?

Both the CIA and the Mossad worked closely with the Egyptian intelligence agencies and relied on them for their information, confiding in their self-serving reports that “everything was under control”: the opposition parties were weak, decimated by repression ad infiltration, their militants languishing in jail, or suffering fatal “heart attacks” because of harsh “interrogation techniques”. The elections were rigged to elect US and Israeli clients – no democratic surprises in the immediate or medium term horizon.

Egyptian intelligence agencies are trained and financed by Israeli and US operatives and are amenable to pursuing their masters will. They were so compliant in turning in reports which pleased their mentors, that they ignored any accounts of growing popular unrest or of internet agitation. The CIA and Mossad were so embedded in Mubarak’s vast security apparatus that they were incapable of securing any other information from the grassroots, decentralized, burgeoning movements which were independent of the “controlled” traditional electoral opposition.

When the extra-parliamentary mass movements burst forward, the Mossad and the CIA counted on the Mubarak state apparatus to take control via the typical carrot and stick operation: transient token concessions and calling out the army, police and death squads. As the movement grew from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, to millions, the Mossad and leading US Congressional backers of Israel urged Mubarak to “hold on”. The CIA was reduced to presenting the White House with political profiles of reliable military officials and pliable “transitional” political personages, willing to follow in Mubarak’s footsteps. Once again the CIA and Mossad demonstrated their dependence on the Mubarak apparatus for intelligence of who might be a “viable” (pro-US/Israel) alternative, ignoring the elementary demands of the masses. The attempt to co-opt the old guard electoralist Muslim Brotherhood via negotiations with Vice-President Suleiman failed, in part because the Brotherhood was not in control of the movement and because Israel and their US backers objected. Moreover, the youth wing of the Brotherhood pressured them to withdraw from the negotiations.

The intelligence failure complicated Washington and Tel Aviv’s efforts to sacrifice the dictatorial regime to save the state: the CIA ad MOSSAD did not develop ties to any of the new emerging leaders. The Israeli’s could not find any ‘new face’ with a popular following willing to serve as a crass collaborator to colonial oppression. The CIA had been entirely engaged in using the Egyptian secret police for torturing terror suspects (“exceptional rendition”) and in policing neighboring Arab countries. As a result both Washington and Israel looked to and promoted the military takeover to preempt further radicalization.

Ultimately the failure of the CIA and MOSSAD to detect and prevent the rise of the popular democratic movement reveals the precarious bases of imperial and colonial power. Over the long-run it is not arms, billions of dollars, secret police and torture chambers that decide history. Democratic revolutions occur when the vast majority of a people arise and say “enough”, take the streets, paralyze the economy, dismantle the authoritarian state and demand freedom and democratic institutions without imperial tutelage and colonial subservience.

http://www.eurasiareview.com/opinion/op ... -16022011/

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[vanlose kid]

Egyptian army hijacking revolution, activists fear
Military ruling council begins to roll out reform plans while civilian groups struggle to form united front

Jack Shenker in Cairo
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 February 2011 16.28 GMT

Egypt's revolution is in danger of being hijacked by the army, key political activists have warned, as concrete details of the country's democratic transition period were revealed for the first time.

Judge Tarek al-Beshry, a moderate Islamic thinker, announced that he had been selected by the military to head a constitutional reform panel. Its proposals will be put to a national referendum in two months' time. The formation of the panel comes after high-ranking army officers met with selected youth activists on Sunday and promised them that the process of transferring power to a civilian government is now under way.

But the Guardian has learned that despite public pronouncements of faith in the military's intentions, elements of Egypt's fractured political opposition are deeply concerned about the army's unilateral declarations of reform and the apparent unwillingness of senior officers to open up sustained and transparent negotiations with those who helped organise the revolution.

"We need the army to recognise that this is a revolution, and they can't implement all these changes on their own," said Alaa Abd El Fattah, a prominent youth activist. "The military are the custodians of this particular stage in the process, and we're fine with that, but it has to be temporary.

"To work out what comes next there has to be a real civilian cabinet, of our own choosing, one that has some sort of public consensus behind it - not just unilateral communiques from army officers."

There is consternation that the army is taking such a hard line on the country's burgeoning wave of strikes, which has seen workers seeking not just to improve their economic conditions, but also to purge institutions of bosses they accuse of being corrupt and closely aligned to the old regime.

"These protests aren't just wage-specific," said Abd El Fattah. "They're also about people at ground level wanting to continue the work of the revolution, pushing out regime cronies and reclaiming institutions like the professional syndicates and university departments that have long been commandeered by the state."

The ruling military council has called on "noble Egyptians" to end all strikes immediately.

Egypt's post-Mubarak political landscape has grown increasingly confused in the past few days, as the largely discredited formal opposition parties of the old era seek to reposition themselves as populist movements. Meanwhile younger, online-based groups are trying to capitalise on their momentum by forming their own political vehicles, and the previously outlawed Muslim Brotherhood has announced that it will form a legal political party.

After decades of stagnation, the country's political spectrum is desperately trying to catch up with the largely leaderless events of the past few weeks and accommodate the millions of Egyptians politicised by Mubarak's fall. "The current 'opposition' does not represent a fraction of those who participated in this revolution and engaged with Tahrir and other protest sites," said Abd El Fattah. But with a myriad of short-lived alliances and counter-alliances developing among opposition forces in recent days, uncertainty about the country's political future still prevails.

"Despite various attempts to form a united front, there's nothing of the kind at this point - just a lot of division," said Shadi Hamid, an Egypt expert at the Brookings Doha Centre. "You've got numerous groups, numerous coalitions, and everyone is meeting with everyone else. There's a sense of organisational chaos. Everyone wants a piece of the revolution."

This week a number of formal opposition parties, including the liberal Wafd party and the leftist Tagammu party, came together with members of the Muslim Brotherhood and a wide range of youth movements to try and elect a steering committee that could speak with a unified voice to the army commanders and negotiate the formation of a transitional government and presidential council.

Yet those plans have been overtaken by the speed of the military's own independent proclamations on reform, raising fears that civilian voices are being shut out of the transitional process.

Some senior figures inside the coalition believe the army is deliberately holding high-profile meetings with individuals such as Google executive Wael Ghonim and the 6 April youth movement founder Ahmed Maher in an effort to appear receptive to alternative views, but without developing any sustainable mechanism through which non-military forces can play a genuine role in political reform.

"The military are talking to one or two 'faces of the revolution' that have no actual negotiating experience and have not been mandated by anyone to speak on the people's behalf," claimed one person involved with the new coalition. "It's all very well for them to be apparently implementing our demands, but why are we being given no say in the process?

"They are talking about constitutional amendments, but most people here want a completely new constitution that limits the power of the presidency. They are talking about elections in a few months, and yet our political culture is still full of division and corruption.

"Many of us are now realising that a very well thought-out plan is unfolding step by step from the military, who of course have done very well out of the political and economic status quo. These guys are expert strategic planners after all, and with the help of some elements of the old regime and some small elements of the co-opted opposition, they're trying to develop a system that looks vaguely democratic but in reality just entrenches their own privileges."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/fe ... ution-fear

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[AlicetheKurious]

The Mossad, via George Friedman, wants you to know:

For all the chatter about the Egyptian people demanding democracy, the fact is that hardly anyone participated in the demonstrations, relative to the number of Egyptians there are, and no one really knows how the Egyptian people would vote on this issue.

People still take STRATFOR's 'analysis' seriously? As they say, "garbage in, garbage out". Al Jazeera explained precisely how they arrived at the figures in Tahrir Square alone, using a satellite image of the square and the streets leading to it, most of which were packed on the afternoon of Friday January 28 (the crowds doubled and spread throughout the downtown area by Thursday February 10), and calculating one person per square meter (if I remember correctly). Based on those calculations, on January 28 there were 1.5 million demonstrators in Tahrir Square alone, not counting the hundreds of thousands Al Jazeera filmed lining up on the surrounding bridges and trying to reach the square. There were large additional demonstrations in neighborhoods like Shubra and Mohandessin and Giza.

In Alexandria, again on Friday January 28, there were around 1 million demonstrators; in Mahalla, there were 150,000; tens of thousands of demonstrators came out respectively in Port Said, Ismailia, Suez, Aswan, in Beheira Province, in Luxor, in Marsa Matrouh, and many other towns and regions including North Sinai and Kharga in the New Valley (Wadi Gedeed). All in all, there were an estimated 8-10 million demonstrators (9.4 - 11% of Egypt's total population) in the streets of Egypt on Friday, January 28. Remember that these demonstrators came out knowing that it was very dangerous to do so, and despite all roads leading into Cairo and Alexandria and other major cities being physically blocked by tanks and soldiers with orders not to let anybody through. But according to Friedman, this was unnecessary as "hardly anyone" wanted to go there anyway...

Did Friedman explain how he arrived at his claim that "it never got to be more than 300,000 people or so in Tahrir Square"? I didn't think so.

The numbers were even bigger around a week later. But according to Friedman, "hardly anyone participated in the demonstrations". He could give Mubarak lessons in denial.

More from Friedman:

The demonstrators never called for the downfall of the regime. They demanded that Mubarak step aside.

What part of "El shaab/youreed/eskat al nizam!" ("The people/want/the regime to fall!") does Friedman not understand? I was muttering it in my sleep, it was so pervasive, from the very first day (I posted a Youtube video of the January 25th demonstrators chanting it in Tahrir Square, as the tear gas filled the air). Indeed, it was the dominant chant all over Egypt (and is now being picked up in different countries throughout the region). Friedman must think his readers are really, really stupid and/or ignorant. And maybe he's right, if they're still getting their 'analysis' from outfits like STRATFOR.

Clearly, Friedman is desperate to convince his readers that what happened (and is happening) in Egypt is not at all what it looks and feels and sounds like, nor is it what Egyptians who lived it know it is, but a staged coup by the military to "save the regime", as he puts it. I guess that makes perfect sense if you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

As for the Lara Logan story, I don't what the truth of that is; there are too few details to determine its credibility. If true, it would represent the first such incident I'm aware of, not only in the media but in real life, and an incredible coincidence that the victim happened to be a prominent American network reporter.

One thing I do know: the Egyptian Revolution took everybody by surprise and events unfolded far too quickly for the usual zionist media filter to kick in with its standard portrayal of Egyptians and other Arabs as dumb, brutish untermenschen. In a truly unprecedented lapse, Americans were provided with a unique opportunity to view Arab people as human, even admirable and worthy of respect. How outrageous is that? The Masters of Discourse have now had time to get back on track, so expect a lot more of this and other kinds of stories.

Re: Petras. I'm so disappointed in him. He's not wrong about the military top ranks, nor about the weak "opposition parties" that were bred by the regime like chickens in a farmyard. The biggest change of this revolution, whose impact will only really be measurable months or even years from now, is this: Egyptians have taken ownership of their country, and it feels great. Never again will they let anybody rule them from the top down; it is they who will impose their will from the bottom up, and there's nothing anybody can do to stop them. As for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, what they want is simply not the issue and even they know that.

Because I usually like him, I wish Petras knew it as well, but it's irrelevant, anyway.

[AlicetheKurious]

Hmm.. The natives are rising up in Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, now Bahrain...

[JackRiddler]

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Members of the constitutional revision committee appointed. Don't have time, not sure right away how to find out more about who these people really are in their Egyptian roles.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/world ... nted=print

February 15, 2011

In Egypt, a Panel of Jurists Is Given the Task of Revising the Country’s Constitution

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and KAREEM FAHIM


CAIRO — The military officers governing Egypt on Tuesday convened a panel of jurists, including an outspoken Muslim Brotherhood politician, to revise the country’s Constitution in the first tangible evidence of a commitment to move the country toward democracy after President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster.

In an incongruous scene — unimaginable just one month ago — Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the defense minister acting as chief of state, appointed a panel of eight experts led by a retired judge known as a leading critic of the Mubarak government.

Though the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which seized power with Mr. Mubarak’s exit, has repeatedly pledged to uphold the goals of the Egyptian revolution, many in the opposition have questioned the army’s willingness to submit for the first time to a civilian democracy after six decades of military-backed strongmen.

On Tuesday, however, several opposition figures said they felt heartened.

“The move to appoint the panel is the first concrete thing the army has done since taking over,” said Hossam Bahgat, a prominent civil rights lawyer and Mubarak critic. “We have only had communiqués. We have been analyzing the rhetoric. But now is the first concrete move, and there is nothing about it that concerns us.”

The biggest surprise was the inclusion of Sobhi Saleh, an Alexandria appeals lawyer and former member of Parliament who is a prominent figure of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Mubarak government repeatedly portrayed Mr. Saleh as extremist. Mr. Saleh has espoused some views many here might consider excessive, like advocating a ban on public kissing in most places, and he was released from an Egyptian intelligence prison recently.

“I am very happy because Tantawi told us to try to finish as soon as we can,” Mr. Saleh said in an interview. “He said, ‘We want to hand over the power because we are military people and we have no political aspirations.’ ” His colleagues on the panel called Mr. Saleh an impartial jurist. “Sobhi Saleh is a real legal expert,” said Hassan el-Badrawi, a judge on the panel. “This is proof we are not excluding anybody.”

The chief of the panel is Tareq el-Bishri, a retired senior judge, prominent intellectual and author of a book-length critique of the Mubarak government titled “Egypt: Between Disobedience and Decay.” Mr. Bishri leaned left in his youth and later gravitated toward a moderate brand of Islamism, making him a bridge figure between the two wings of the Egyptian opposition. And he later became a legal adviser to a major opposition movement, Kefaya, or Enough.

As a jurist, Mr. Bishri is specifically known for his opposition to prosecutions outside civilian courts as well as for his arguments of a balance of power between government institutions — ideas alien to Mubarak government. In revising the Constitution, “he has a list of things he already wants to do,” said Prof. Ellis Goldberg of the University of Washington, a political scientist who is studying Mr. Bishri’s work.

At least one other member of the panel, Maher Samy Youssef, another judge, is a Coptic Christian, a group that makes up about 10 percent of the population and is Egypt’s principal minority. The other panel members are considered independents without known political affiliations, including another judge, Hatem Bagatou, and three law professors, Mohamed Hassanein Abdel-Al, Mahmoud Atef el-Banna and Mohamed Bahey Abou Younis. “The committee is technical and very balanced,” Mr. Saleh said. “It has no political color, except me because I was a member of Parliament.”

Members of the coalition of youth groups who led the revolution also expressed satisfaction. Walid Rachid, a member of the secular April 6 Youth Movement, said some members were initially concerned about the panel chief’s Islamist leanings but were ultimately satisfied by his reputation for independence. “We think he is fair, and he will do something better for our country,” Mr. Rachid said, noting that the military planned to submit the amendments to an up-or-down referendum in any case.

Islam Lotfi, a lawyer and member of the Muslim Brotherhood Youth who was also among the organizers of the revolution, said the coalition of young leaders had encouraged the military leaders to quickly pass a package of essential amendments to the Egyptian Constitution so that the country could hold credible elections. Then a new Parliament might reopen the question of a broader overhaul.

“When we have a good Parliament, they should revisit the Constitution but it is wise not to let a new Constitution come out during a military period,” Mr. Lotfi said. “It would be somehow fascist.”

While encouraged by the military’s action, Mr. Bahgat also spoke of larger battles looming. “There are people calling for an immediate shift from a presidential system to a parliamentary democracy, to make sure any new president doesn’t become an autocrat,” he said. He added that there were still reasons for concern about the army’s intentions, saying there was a “lack of clarity” about the number of detainees the military might be holding and the conditions under which they are being held.

The military has urged the panel to complete its work in just 10 days, a timetable many considered implausible for a complete overhaul. But members of the panel said they were already quickly moving toward a package of smaller changes that might facilitate fair elections and make it easier for a future Parliament to further amend the text.

“Hopefully you are going to hear good news in three to four days,” said Mr. Badrawi. “Our impression is that they have a real desire to transfer power at the nearest possible time to a civil authority.”

The amendments under discussion would also eliminate the president’s authority over constitutional amendments, open up eligibility to form parties or run for office, limit the maximum term that elected officials can serve, establish independent judicial oversight of elections and abolish the emergency law enabling arrest and detention without charges.

As the country struggles to get back on its feet, the central bank said banks would remain closed for the rest of the week here, Wednesday and Thursday.

As Egyptians celebrated the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday on Tuesday, many of the protests that have clogged the streets in recent days abated. A banner still hanging from a lamppost on Tahrir Square carried a grievance from the past, or a warning for the future. “The corrupt regime will not fix what it ruined,” it said.

Nearby, in front of the state television building, young people continued their unrelenting beautification campaign, collecting garbage in bags and painting fences.

In the face of the country’s mounting economic woes, not many people expressed much concern about the constitutional panel. “I don’t care about the Constitution,” said Ibrahim Mounir, an army veteran, mentioning housing woes and the problem of marrying off his son.


Mona El-Naggar and Dawlat Magdy contributed reporting.


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 15, 2011
An earlier version of this article misspelled Hassanein Abdel Al's given name as Hassaneim.

[compared2what?]

Hmm.. The natives are rising up in Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, now Bahrain...

Shh. Don't jinx it!

Although I should also say, on a more adult note: Honestly, I really have been silently hoping for that. Because, among other things, it would sure take care of those pesky economic veiled threats concerns that one's regularly been hearing expressed here and there over the last little while.

But....I don't know. It would be of such geopolitical enormity, I can't imagine that there wouldn't be an exponentially more violent response than there yet has been nearby. And if it happened before there was enough regional unity elsewhere for there to be something approximating powers that were equal to containing and/or forestalling such an eventuality....Well. Again, I don't know.

It does seem like it at least couldn't hurt for all potentially affected parties to consider what they might have at risk and how best to safeguard it under the various not-good-case scenarios most reasonably likely to ensue if the PTB aren't willing to let SA go without a fight, though. Because I wouldn't expect them to be.

That's not intended as doom-saying, btw -- ie, I'm not concern-trolling. I'm actually concerned.
_______________

Also: Hey, don't forget Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, and Italy! And maybe Greece? I mean, the Mediterranean may not be the Persian Gulf, but it's not nothing, either.

[beeline]

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RNN | News
Breaking News || Bahrain | Confirmed | Thousands of Shiites flock to the Bahraini capital, "Manama" to protest against the killing of two people during the confrontations taking place in the country

[JackRiddler]

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Right or wrong, who can resist Castro talking about Egypt?

From http://www.counterpunch.org/castro02152011.html

February 15, 2011

Poverty, Food Prices and the Crisis of Imperialism
The Revolutionary Rebellion in Egypt

By FIDEL CASTRO


Several days ago I said that Mubarak’s fate was sealed and that not even Obama was able to save him.

The world knows about what is happening in the Middle East. News spreads at mind-boggling speed. Politicians barely have enough time to read the dispatches arriving hour after hour. Everyone is aware of the importance of what is happening over there.

After 18 days of tough struggle, the Egyptian people achieved an important objective: overthrowing the main United States ally in the heart of the Arab nations. Mubarak was oppressing and pillaging his own people, he was an enemy to the Palestinians and an accomplice of Israel, the sixth nuclear power on the planet, associated with the war-mongering NATO group.

The Armed Forces of Egypt, under the command of Gamal Abdel Nasser, had thrown overboard a submissive King and created a Republic which, with the support of the USSR, defended its Homeland from the Franco-British and Israeli invasion of 1956 and preserved its ownership of the Suez Canal and the independence of its ancient nation.

For that reason, Egypt had a high degree of prestige in the Third World. Nasser was well-known as one of the most outstanding leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, in whose creation he took part along with other well-known leaders of Asia, Africa and Oceania who were struggling for national liberation and for the political and economic independence of the former colonies.

Egypt always enjoyed the support and respect of that international organization which brings together more than one hundred countries. At this precise time, that sister country is chairing NAM for a corresponding three-year period; and the support of many of its members for the struggle its people are engaged in today is a given.

What was the significance of the Camp David Agreements, and why do the heroic Palestinian people so arduously defend their most essential rights?

At Camp David ―with the mediation of then-President of the United States Jimmy Carter―, Egyptian leader Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin signed the famous treaties between Egypt and Israel.

It is said that secret talks went on for 12 days and on September 17th of 1978 they signed two important treaties: one in reference to peace between Egypt and Israel; the other having to do with the creation of the autonomous territory in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank where, el-Sadat was thinking – and Israel was aware of and sharing the idea –the capital of the State of Palestine would be, and whose existence, as well as that of the State of Israel, was agreed to by the United Nations on November 29, 1947, in the British protectorate of Palestine.

At the end of arduous and complicated talks, Israel agreed to withdraw their troops from Egyptian territory in the Sinai, even though it categorically rejected Palestinian participation in those peace negotiations.

As a product of the first treaty, in the term of one year, Israel reinstated Sinai territory occupied during one of the Arab-Israeli wars back to Egypt.

By virtue of the second agreement, both parties committed to negotiate the creation of the autonomous regime in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The first of these included 5 640 square kilometres of territory and 2.1 million inhabitants; and the second one, 360 square kilometres and 1.5 million inhabitants.

The Arab countries were offended by that treaty where, in their opinion, Egypt had not defended with sufficient energy and resolution a Palestinian State whose right to exist had been the focal point of the battle fought for decades by the Arab States.

Their reactions reached such a level of indignation that many of them broke off their relations with Egypt. Thus, the United Nations Resolution of November 1947 was erased from the map. The autonomous body was never created and thus the Palestinians were deprived of their right to exist as an independent state; that is the origin of the never-ending tragedy they are living in and which should have been resolved more than three decades ago.

The Arab population of Palestine are victims of genocidal actions; their lands are confiscated or deprived of water supplies in the semi-desert areas and their homes are destroyed with heavy wrecking equipment. In the Gaza Strip a million and a half people are regularly being attacked with explosive projectiles, live phosphorus and booby-trap bombs. The Gaza Strip lands are being blockaded by land and by sea. Why are the Camp David agreements being talked about to such a degree while nobody mentions Palestine?

The United States is supplying the most modern and sophisticated weaponry to Israel to the tune of billions of dollars every year. Egypt, an Arab country, was turned into the second receiver of US weapons. To fight against whom? Another Arab country? Against the very Egyptian people?

When the population was asking for respect for their most basic rights and the resignation of a president whose policy consisted of exploiting and pillaging his own people, the repressive forces trained by the US did not hesitate for a second in shooting at them, killing hundreds and wounding thousands.

When the Egyptian people were awaiting explanations from the government of their own country, the answers were coming from senior officials of the United States intelligence or government bodies, without any respect for Egyptian officials.

Could it possibly be that the leaders of the United States and their intelligence agencies knew nothing at all about the colossal thefts perpetrated by the Mubarak government?

Before the people were to protest en masse from Tahrir Square, neither the government officials nor the United States intelligence bodies were uttering one single word about the privileges and outrageous thefts of billions of dollars.

It would be a mistake to imagine that the people’s revolutionary movement in Egypt theoretically obeys a reaction to violations on their most elementary rights. Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters. They do this when their legal and material rights are being mercilessly sacrificed to the insatiable demands of corrupt politicians and the national and international circles looting the country.

The poverty rate was now affecting the vast majority of a militant people, young and patriotic, with their dignity, culture and beliefs being trampled.

How was the unstoppable increase of food prices to be reconciled with the dozens of billions of dollars that were being attributed to President Mubarak and to the privileged sectors of the government and society?

It’s not enough now that we find out how much these come to; we must demand they be returned to the country.

Obama is being affected by the events in Egypt; he acts, or seems to act, as if he were the master of the planet. The Egyptian affair seems to be his business. He is constantly on the telephone, talking to the leaders of other countries.

The EFE Agency, for example, states: “…I spoke to the British Prime Minister David Cameron; King Abdala II of Jordan, and with the Turkish prime minister, the moderate Muslim Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”

“…the president of the United States assessed the ‘historical changes’ that the Egyptians have been promoting and he reaffirmed his admiration for their efforts …”.

The principal US news agency, AP, is broadcasting some reasoning that we should pay attention to:

“The US is asking Middle Eastern leaders leaning towards the West, who are friendly with Israel and willing to cooperate in the fight against Islamic extremism at the same time they are protecting human rights.”

“…Barack Obama has put forward a list of ideal requisites that are impossible to satisfy after the fall of two allies of Washington in Egypt and Tunisia in popular revolts that, according to experts, shall sweep the region.”

“There is no hope within this dream scenario and it’s very difficult for one to appear soon. Partially this is due to the fact that in the last 40 years, the US has sacrificed the noble ideals of human rights, that it so espouses, for stability, continuity and oil in one of the most volatile regions of the world.”

“‘Egypt will never be the same’, Obama said on Friday after praising the departure of Hosni Mubarak.”

“In the midst of their peaceful protests, Obama stated, the Egyptians ‘will change their country and the world’.

“Even as restlessness persists among the various Arab governments, the elite entrenched in Egypt and Tunisia has not shown signs of being willing to hand over the power or their vast economic influence that they have been holding.”

“The Obama government has insisted that the change should not be one of ‘personalities’. The US government set this position since President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunis in January, one day after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned the Arab rulers in a speech in Qatar that without reform the foundations of their countries ‘would sink in the sand’.”

People don’t appear to be very docile in Tahrir Square.

Europe Press recounts:

“Thousands of demonstrators have arrived in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of mobilizations that caused the resignation of the president of the country, Hosni Mubarak, to reinforce those continuing in that location, despite the efforts of the military police to remove them, according to information from the BBC.

“The BBC correspondent stationed in the downtown square of Cairo has assured us that the army is appearing to be indecisive in the face of the arrival of new demonstrators …”

“The ‘hard core’ […] is located on one of the corners of the square. […] they have decided to stay in Tahrir […] in order to make certain all their claims are being met.”

Despite what is happening in Egypt, one of the most serious problems being faced by imperialism at this time is the lack of grain.

The US uses an important part of the corn it grows and a large percentage of the soy harvest for the production of biofuels. As for Europe, it uses millions of hectares of land for that purpose.

On the other hand, as a consequence of the climate change originated basically by the developed and wealthy countries, a shortage of fresh water and foods compatible with population growth at a pace that would lead to 9 billion inhabitants in a mere 30 years is being created, without the United Nations and the most influential governments on the planet, after the disappointing meeting at Copenhagen and Cancun warning and informing the world about that situation.

We support the Egyptian people and their courageous struggle for their political rights and social justice.

We are not opposed to the people of Israel; we are against the genocide of the Palestinian people and we are for their right to an independent State.

We are not in favour of war, but in favour of peace among all the peoples.

..................................


Also:

Ralph Nader
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader02152011.html



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From http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad02152011.html

February 15, 2011

Two Types of Revolt
The Long Arab Revolution

By VIJAY PRASHAD

The Arab Revolt of 2011 is unabated. Protests continue in such unlikely places as Bahrain. On Valentine’s Day,

(which can anyone tell us if that means anything in the Arab world? regardless, let it slide as an easy mnemonic for the Western reader)

a protest march in Manama had no love for the al-Khalifah royals. It wanted to deliver its message. “Our demand is a constitution written by the people,” the protestors chanted. Opposition leader Abdul Wahab Hussain told the press, “The number of riot police is huge, but we have shown using violence against us only makes us stronger.” The police fired rubber bullets and dispersed the as yet small crowd. “This is just the beginning,” Hussain said after he had been beaten off the streets.

Such protests appear unlikely only because the wave of struggle that broke out in the late 1950s and peaked in the 1970s was crushed by the early 1980s. Encouraged by the overthrow of the monarch in Egypt by the coup led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, ordinary people across the Arab world wanted their own revolts. Iraq and Lebanon followed. On the peninsula, the people wanted what Fred Halliday called “Arabia without Sultans.” The People’s Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf emerged out of the Dhofar (Oman) struggle. It wished to take its local campaign to the entire peninsula. In Bahrain, its more timid branch was the Popular Front. It did not last long. With Nasserism in decline by the 1970s, the new momentum came to this Arabian republicanism from the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Islamic Front of the Liberation of Bahrain attempted a coup in 1981. They had the inspiration, but not the organization. This Arab archipelago could not go the way of Yemen, where a revolution allowed a Marxist organization to seize power in 1967.

Exertions by these revitalized forces in the 1990s was met with stiff resistance by the al-Khalifah regime. But the new ruler, Hamad (a graduate of Cambridge University), was smart. He knew a thing or two about hegemony. Not enough to smash the heads of the Islamists, he hastily called for an elected parliament, allowed women to vote, and released some political prisoners. It was enough to please Washington, and the oil companies. Nothing like stability that looks like democracy. The Egyptian virus of 2011, however, overcame the façade of democracy erected by Hamad. Protests are back.

The contagion is not only political. It is also, and perhaps decisively, economic. Bahrain relies upon oil for its wealth. Oil money spawned real estate speculation (the Dubai model). The beneficiaries of this process have been the royal family, and a crony clique. The vast mass, mainly Shi’a, are enraged that this wealth has had almost no social outlet. Afraid of the Shi’a population, the monarch imported 50,000 foreign workers to reconfigure the demographic landscape. This Bahranization policy was a smokescreen to pit the (local) labor against the (foreign) labor. It has not worked. To top it off, an outcome of the credit crunch since 2007 has been the Bahrain government’s proposal to cut subsidies of food and fuel. These have already been withdrawn because of popular anger. The youth in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen are kin to the young people in Britain, Ireland, France, Italy – all of whom have been on the streets against austerity. Young people are at the forefront of the revolts because they have the most to lose from the cuts, and from the policies that mortgage their futures. These are also, therefore, convulsions against the overpaid agents (bankers) of over-ground powers (the Davos elite and their institutions).

Meanwhile, the U. S. Fifth Fleet has a berth in Bahrain. Vice Admiral Mark Fox must be powering up the EA-6B Prowlers for emergency action.

Explanations for the Arab Revolt flounder. There are those who take refuge in the trans-historical, finding this an example of the striving for human dignity. The Arabs were angry. They would not take it anymore. This is all very good, but it is too general. Why did the protests happen now, why in this way, why these demands?

There are others who lurch in the other direction, away from the trans-historical to specific circumstance. They think that broad explanations are reductive, and so, they take refuge in the contingent: this event (the immolation) led to that event (the protest) led to another event (the occupation of Tahrir Square), and so to the grand event (Mubarak goes to the seaside). History becomes a series of events that measure up to shifts that have no bearing beyond the surface.

Such attempts to understand the Arab Revolt leads in two directions: they confuse these revolts for Revolution, and it tends to see them as the 2011 Revolution against the 1952 Revolution led by Nasser. Inspirational as these current revolts are, they are part of a long process in the Arab world that stretches back into the 19th century. That long process is the Arab Revolution, one that strives for a total transformation of the structures of domination that constrain Arab futures. One episode in that long Arab Revolution is Nasser’s revolt of 1952. It was defeated by the late 1960s, and it returned Egypt (and the Arab world) to its historical subordination. Another episode is the current wave. The long Arab Revolution poses two questions that remain unanswered. These should provide part of the scaffolding to understand what is afoot in the Arab lands. The first question is of its politics, and the second is of its economics.

Politics.

When will the Arab people rule themselves, and not be ruled by one-party dictators and monarchs who are beholden to bond markets and foreign capitals? Not long ago France’s Sarkozy and America’s Clinton offered praise for their “democratic” friends Ben Ali and Mubarak. To top the obscenity, Obama conferred with the Saudis on the democratic transition in Egypt, which is like asking a vegetarian how to cook prime rib.

In 1953, the aged King Farouk set sail on his yacht, al-Mahrusa, guarded by the Egyptian navy, he waved to people who he considered his lesser: Nasser, son of a postman, and Sadat, son of a small farmer. Their Colonels’ Coup was intended to break Egypt away from monarchy and imperial domination. Nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy came alongside land reforms. But these were ill-conceived, and they were not able to throttle the power of the Egyptian bourgeoisie (whose habit for quick money continued, with three quarters of new investments going to inflate a real estate bubble). The economy was bled to support an enlarged military apparatus, largely to fight the U. S. backed armies of the Israelis. Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war led Nasser to resign on 10 June. Thousands of people took to the streets of Cairo, this time to ask Nasser to return to office, which he did, although much weakened.

(Just noting here that this pocket history should have worked in the 1956 attack on Egypt by UK, France, and Israel, in a high-level plan to seize the Suez canal, and the resulting moment of US-USSR alliance in putting that down; and the concurrent Aswan dam machinations that led to USSR financing of the High Dam starting in 1958; and the 1960s Egypt-Saudi conflict fought on the ground via sponsorship of the two sides in the Yemeni civil war...)

The democratic opening of 1952 was, however, unable to emerge. Military officers, however, progressive, are loath to hand over the reins of power. The security apparatus went after the Muslim Brotherhood certainly, but it was fiercest against the Communists. Nasser did not build up a strong, independent political culture. “His ‘socialism’,” as Stavrianos put it, “was socialism by presidential decree, implemented by the army and police. There was no initiative or participation at the grass-roots level.” For that reason, when Sadat moved the country to the Right in the 1970s there was barely any opposition to him. Nasserism after Nasser was as hollow as Perónism after Perón.

The current revolt is against the regime set up by Sadat and developed by Mubarak. It is a national security state that has no democratic pretensions. In 1977, Sadat identified Nasserism with “detention camps, custodianship and sequestration, a one-opinion, one-party system.”

That's just funny.

Sadat allowed three kinds of political forces to emerge, but then hastily defanged them (the leftist National Progressive Grouping Party), coopted them (the Arab Socialist Party, and the Socialist Liberal Party), or tolerated their existence (Muslim Brotherhood). Cleverly, Sadat put in place what he accused Nasser of building. It was under Sadat, and Mubarak (with Omar Suleiman in tow) that the detention camps and torture centers blossomed.

In Tahrir Square, 22 year old Ahmed Abdel Moneim said, “The French Revolution took a very long time so the people could eventually get their rights.” His struggle in 2010 is to repeal the national security state. That is the basic requirement, to return to the slogan of the French Revolution. The dynamic that Ahmed wants to be a part of is the dynamic of Nasserism, but this time it should be without the military. That is one lesson of history.

The other lesson comes to us from Nadine Naber, who reminds us that women formed a crucial part of this wave of revolt, as they did in the previous ones, and yet, when the revolt succeeds women are set aside, as secondary political actors. “What are the possibilities for a democratization of rights in Egypt,” Naber asks, “in which women’s participation, the rights of women, family law, and the right to organize, protest, and express freedom of speech remain central?” Naber repeats a question raised in 1957 by Karima El-Said, the deputy minister of education of the United Arab Republic (“In Afro-Asian countries where people are still suffering under the yoke of colonialism, women are actively participating in the struggle for complete national independence. They are convinced that this is the first step for their emancipation and will equip them to occupy their real place in society”). It is history’s second lesson, that the democracy that emerges be capacious.

Economics.

The second unanswered question of the long Arab Revolution is about bread and the dignity of work. When will the economies of the Arab region be able to sustain their populations rather than fatten the financial houses in the Atlantic world, and offer massive trust funds for the dictators and the monarchs? Cursed with oil, the Arab world has seen little economic diversification and almost no attempt to use the oil wealth to engender balanced social development for the people. Instead, the oil money sloshed North, to provide credit for overheated consumers in the United States and to provide banks with those vast funds that are otherwise not garnered by populations that have stopped saving (for a long while Americans saved 1 per cent of their paychecks, an understandable figure given the stagnation of wages since 1973). The oil money also went toward the real estate boom in the Gulf, and the baccarat tables and escort services of Monaco (the Las Vegas of Europe, which has another decrepit monarch, Albert II, at its head).

As part of Sadat’s de-Nasserization of Egypt, he opened the economy (infatah) to foreign capital. Nationalization and subsidies ended, and free enterprise zones were created by February 1974. Sadat wanted a “blood transfusion” for the Egyptian economy, and so the Atlantic banks began to draw pints of blood from the ailing Egyptian working class. They replaced it with liquor stores and nightclubs (the targets of the January 1977 riots in Cairo). Inequality flourished in Egypt, and neo-liberal policies produced an haute bourgeoisie with more investment in London than in Alexandria. By 2008, some 40 per cent of the population lived on under $2 a day. In October 2010, the courts directed the government to raise the minimum wage from $70 a month to $207 a month. Because Sadat and Mubarak eviscerated the attempt to create a diverse economy, Egypt now relies upon rent income for its survival (remittances from Egyptian workers, Suez Canal tolls, oil and gas exports, tourism revenues, and payment for privatization, among others). A substantial part of this rent was diverted by Mubarak to his coffers in the Swiss banks. There is no democracy for its economy. The tyrant here is not only Mubarak, but the IMF, the World Bank, the Banks, the Bond Markets, the Multi-National Corporations.

Labor strikes across Egypt, protests before the housing authority, protests at food stalls – this is the face of the ongoing revolt. The Egyptians seem clear that the departure of Mubarak means also the end to the neo-liberal dispensation that was set up in the 1970s. They want to expand the social wage, to better manage whatever rental wealth enters the country and to expand economic activity.

* * *

Over the past twenty years we’ve seen two types of revolts. The first, those in Eastern Europe for instance, were revolts against the suffocation of the late Soviet-era State. Indifferent to the tarnished promises of such socialism, the people sought refuge in the glamour of the market economy. It was a revolt for the market. Two decades later, the East European dreams have become a horrid nightmare.

The second, those in the Arab world today, but also the people’s revolt in the Philippines against Marcos and the people’s revolt in Indonesia against Suharto, were revolts against the market. These were revolts by masses of people who wanted an expansion of the social wage. They began with revolts against long-standing autocrats (Ben Ali, Mubarak, Marcos, Suharto) and cascaded into demands for a different social and economic order.

For the Arab lands, these events of 2011 are not the inauguration of a new history, but the continuation of an unfinished struggle that is a hundred years old. Some people already sink back into gloom, discounting the remarkable victory of ejecting Ben Ali and Mubarak. Such acts raise the confidence of the people and propel other struggles into motion. The old order might yet remain, but it knows that its time is on hand. In Gladiator (2000), the Germanic barbarians sever the head of a Roman soldier and toss it in front of the Roman battle lines. One of the Roman generals says, “People should know when they are conquered.” He meant the barbarians. The dictators of the Arab world, our barbarians, might yet throw some heads before the advance of the people. But they should know already that they are defeated. It is simply a matter of time: a hundred years, or ten.


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. The Swedish and French editions are just out. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu

Must take issue with Prashad's historian's lack of urgency at the end, or what seems like it. No one alive today will be alive in 100 years! The world situation and all the regional ones are a lot more pressing than this long historical perspective (or Prashad's apparent rendering of it) would suggest. The World Can't Wait, as the saying went...

.

[bks]

If it makes you feel a little better, Alice: that wasn't Petras who was writing about opposition parties and the military, that was somebody named Jack Shenker for the UK Guardian.

I think you would have found Petras' comments (in the post above the one quoting Sheker's article) more to your liking.

[DrVolin]

The numbers involved are not the issue. Whether three hundred thousand or three million, the number of participants in the demonstrations is an absolute lower limit for the number of people involved in the revolt. For every person in the squares and plazas, many were at home providing logistics and support. For every person in the squares, many were there in spirit and would have been pushed over the edge of overt participation by open repression.

In fact, it is precisely because of the broad based popular support of the rebellion that the military moved quickly and decisively to focus the anger on the pinpoint of Mubarak's personality, and then undermined the foundation of popular anger by removing him. A revolt originating more narrowly in a specfic demographic or political network would have been violently repressed without fear.

But it is to misread Friedman to say that he is pushing the Mossad line because he is giving a lower end estimate of numbers and because he is portraying the changes in Egypt as a slight adaptation of the status quo. If he really was passing on Israeli propaganda, as a good strategist, and he certainly is that, he would be claiming the Egyptian revolt as a great victory for people power and a radical change at all levels of the state. He would want you to think you are winning when he knows you are in fact losing.

I read his text as sympathetic to the protestors and their goals, somewhat cynical about their chances of success, and grudgingly admiring of the statecraft that made them irrelevant. I do think Friedman is intellectually dangerous, but in this case, I his analysis is right on the money. And I do mean money.

[JackRiddler]

.

New York tabloid front pages today:


For those who might not know, the NY Post is the original vehicle in Murdoch's Attack on America.

Also, to picture Lara Logan "moments before" the crime among a group of Egyptian protesters under the headline "ANIMALS" seems to indict the entire revolution—for today. Tomorrow "they" will be brave heroes again, depending on the rising and falling fortunes of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and given the Post's wont to keep itself in careful alignment with Benjamin Netanyahu. The photo shows generic faces of protestors, leaving open the question of whether any of these men were in the group that assaulted Logan. (And the inevitable question: Would the word "ANIMALS" have sprung to the minds of the Post's headline-writers if this had happened during the protests in Moldova, in which all of the participants were white?)

From http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/c ... vs-animals

I doubt there will be any further line shifts -- this fits in with how FOX has been playing the Egyptian revolution and how they're likely to play it henceforth. (In fact, I'm not sure, but I doubt the Post has had more than one other Egypt front page.)

.

[Nordic]

"Moments after this photo" ...??

Okay, then there should be photos of the assault. So where are they?

[vanlose kid]

..."El shaab/youreed/eskat al nizam!" ("The people/want/the regime to fall!") ...

'Day of rage' planned in Libya
Online activists have called for countrywide protests on Thursday, seeking an end to Muammar Gaddafi's long rule.
Last Modified: 17 Feb 2011 07:55 GMT

Protesters in Libya are set to take to the streets for a "day of rage," inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

Libya has been tightly controlled for over 40 years by Muammar Gaddafi, who is now Africa's longest-serving leader. And rights groups warned of a possible crackdown by security forces on Thursday's planned protests.

Thursday is the anniversary of clashes that took place on February 17, 2006, in the country's second largest city of Benghazi when security forces killed several protesters who were attacking the city's Italian consulate.

At least two people were killed in clashes between Libyan security forces and demonstrators on Wednesday, in the town of al-Baida, east of Benghazi.

The victims' names were: Khaled ElNaji Khanfar and Ahmad Shoushaniya.

Angry chants

Wednesday's deaths come as hundreds of protesters reportedly torched police outposts while chanting: "People want the end of the regime."[same chant, right?]

At least 38 people were also injured in the clashes, including 10 security officials.

"All the people of Baida are out on the streets," a 25-year-old Rabie al-Messrati, who said he had been arrested after spreading a call for protests on Facebook, said.

Violent protests were also reported earlier in the day in Benghazi.

In a telephone interview with Al Jazeera, Idris Al-Mesmari, a Libyan novelist and writer, said that security officials in civilian clothes came and dispersed protesters in Benghazi using tear gas, batons and hot water.

Al-Mesmari was arrested hours after the interview.

Late on Wednesday evening, it was impossible to contact witnesses in Benghazi because telephone connections to the city appeared to be out of order.

State media reported there were pro-Gaddafi protests too across the country, with people chanting "We sacrifice our blood and souls for you, our leader!" and "We are a generation built by Muammar and anyone who opposes it will be destroyed!"

As the wave of unrest spread south and westwards across the country, hundreds of people marched through the streets in the southern city of Zentan, 120km south of the capital Tripoli.

They set fire to security headquarters and a police station, then set up tents in the heart of the town.

Chants including "No God but Allah, Muammar is the enemy of Allah," can be heard on videos of demonstrations uploaded to YouTube.

Independent confirmation was not possible as Gaddafi's government keeps tight control over the movements of media personnel.

Online activism

In a country where public dissent is rare, plans for Thursday's protests were being circulated by anonymous activists on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

One Facebook group urging a "Day of Anger" in Libya, which had 4,400 members on Monday, saw that number more than double to 9,600 by Wednesday.

Social media sites were reportedly blocked for several hours through the afternoon, but access was restored in the evening.

Al Jazeera is understood to have been taken off the state-owned cable TV network, but is still reportedly available on satellite networks.

People posting messages on opposition site www.libya-watanona.com, which is based outside Libya, urged Libyans to protest.

"From every square in our beloved country, people should all come together in one city and one square to make this regime and its supporters afraid, and force them to run away because they are cowards," said a post on the website.

Also calling for reforms are some of Libya's eminent individuals. A group of prominent figures and members of human rights organisations have demanded the resignation of Gaddafi.

They said that the Libyans have the right to express themselves through peaceful demonstrations without any threat of harassment from the regime.

The demands came in a statement signed by 213 prominent Libyans from different segments of the society, including political activists, lawyers, students, and government officials.

Oil factor

Gaddafi says Libya does not need to import Western concepts of democracy because it is run on his system, known as the Third Universal Theory, under which citizens govern themselves through grassroots institutions called popular committees.

Rights group Amnesty International voiced concern about a new crackdown. "The Libyan authorities must allow peaceful protests, not try to stifle them with heavy-handed repression," it said in a statement.

Though some Libyans complain about unemployment, inequality and limits on political freedoms, analysts say that an Egypt-style revolt is unlikely because the government can use oil revenues to smooth over most social problems.

Libya accounts for about 2 per cent of the world's crude exports.

Companies including Shell, BP and Eni have invested billions of dollars in tapping its oil fields, home to the largest proven reserves in Africa.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/afric ... 19793.html

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