Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

[JackRiddler]

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Nuts. Look at the Alexandria results versus the others announced so far! (Must every revolution repeat this old story of the former elites mobilizing the peasantry against the urban radicals?!) Apparently they started with rural areas, not all Cairo is in and 1/3 at least remains to be counted, so there's a very slim hope still.

ON EDIT: I owe an apology to Egypt's country folk for not bringing up the additional obvious possibility that since the Mubarak party is still out there, and they've fixed elections, and the only other party they allowed to organize in relative freedom was the Brotherhood, which is now allied with them, this alliance may be engaging in fixing now -- and the place to do the worst fixing wouldn't be Alexandria or central Cairo, where the revolution was most at home and the people have eagle eyes, but spots like South Sinai, which came in 90 percent for Yes (although is also a big spot for the rich elites and the tourism industry, of course) and other southerly and desert precincts.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/8125/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt-referendum-results-update-Yes-vote-winning,-.aspx

Egypt referendum results update: 'Yes' vote winning, but uncertain 'No' in Alexandria

Ahram Online follows the results of yesterday's historic referendum on constitutional amendments as they come in from around the country

Ahram Online, Sunday 20 Mar 2011

18:16 A bolt comes in from Alexandria where two thirds of the votes have been counted, 65 per cent of which are against the amendments. The remaining uncounted votes are from the semi-rural Montazah district, according to a source in the judiciary.

A “No” or close vote in Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, would carry substantial significance, both in real and symbolic terms, since the coastal city has for years been the major base of the country's Islamist movement, which has come out in force in favour of the amendments. During yesterday's voting, some polling stations in the city were draped with banners telling people to vote for the amendments.

The arguments put forward by both the Muslim Brotherhood and the normally apolitical Salafists for voting "Yes" were one of the most disturbing aspects of the build up to yesterday's ballot.

17:50 Official results from Sohag are in and it's 79 per cent for amending the Constitution. Sohag was another governorate that needed an emergency shipment of judges flown in to monitor the voting.

17:26 In Monofiya, famous as the birth place of former president Hosni Mubarak, 91 per cent of voters used the chance of a fair ballot to approve the amendments.

16:23 There are conflicting reports about when the results will be announced. Sources we've spoken to at Ahram Online say 7pm while on Twitter, 5 is the time. The way the results are rolling, it's like wondering what time a sunrise is; either way, it will be day.

Here's another result: 80 per cent in Marsa Matrouh think the amendments are what Egypt needs.

16:18 Minya wants the Constitution to be amended. Seventy six per cent of voters there do anyway.

16:15 Official results this time from Qena where a resounding 71 per cent of votes were for the amendments. Polling stations in the governorate had to close yesterday due to a shortage of judges to supervise the voting. Doesn't seem to have affected their confidence in the army's judgement.

15:34 Gharbiya and Daqahliya voters found the amendments to their liking by margins of 78 and 80 per cent respectively.

15:28 According to a source, 65 per cent of voters in South Cairo agreed with the amendments.

15:16 In North Sinai, 85 per cent of votes were for the amendments. Suez's 79 per cent support, announced earlier today, is starting to seem a close call.

15:10 More governorates reporting support for those amendments to what had looked a dead Constitution. In Beheira, a massive 93 per cent of voters said "Yes" with "only" 87.9 per cent agreeing to them in Kafr El Shiekh.

In Luxor, a governorate familiar with ancient relics, 81.5 per cent of votes were for the amendments.

14:32 It seems that promising to reveal all the results "within hours" has put a stop to the unofficial results and judicial sources.

14:10 It now seems that the final results will be announced "within hours", according to state TV.

13:55 The Supreme Judicial Committee has announced that the vote counting process has been finalized in Cairo’s polling stations and across all governorates.

The final results are expected to be announced in a press conference at 2pm today. The announcement we have fails to point out where this press conference is.

13:41 Another judicial source, this time in the Sharqiya governorate, reveals that 85 per cent of votes were for the proposed constitutional amendments. It's heading in only one direction so far.

13:30 A judicial source has told Ahram Online that initial results show that the majority of residents in the Qalioubiya governorate voted “Yes” to the constitutional amendments. According to the source, it is expected that the final result will be 75 per cent votes for “Yes”.

13:24 Mohamed El Shamy, the head of the Hurghada Court, announced that 63.4 per cent of those who voted in the Red Sea governorate voted "Yes" and 36.6 per cent voted "No".

13:15 A judicial source in Al-Wadi Al-Gedid says that 37,200 of the governorate's voters voted in favor of the proposed constitutional amendments, with 3,686 voting “No”. Initial results also show that 90 per cent of the residents of Fayoum voted “Yes” to the constitutional amendments.

12:55 Initial results reveal that 70 per cent of voters in the governorate of Ismalia said “Yes” to the constitutional amendments. Ismalia has 727,198 eligible voters of the 40 million eligible voters across Egypt.

12:45 Initial results from the governorate of Assiut show that the majority of the residents approved the constitutional amendments. It is expected that the number of people who voted “Yes” made up 60 per cent. Assiut has 929,376 eligible voters

12:10 Unofficial results from Suez point to an overwhelming "Yes" with 134,864 votes against 36,211, a resounding 79 per cent approval for the proposed amendments. 231 votes were declared void.

12:00 The initial results of yesterday’s constitutional referendum show that at least 25 million Egyptians participated, according to Mohamed Ahmed Atia, the head of the Supreme Judicial Committee that supervised the voting process. The total number of Egyptians who were eligible to vote yesterday is 40 million, meaning that an estimated 62.5 per cent of the eligible voters actually voted. Atia mentioned the possibility that the referendum’s results will not be announced today due to the large number of voters.


Search Keywords:

A map of the 29 Governorates of Egypt is here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governorates_of_Egypt

(Cannot display here with labels.)

Remember that 95% of population is in the Nile Delta and Valley.

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[Peachtree Pam]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12801125


Egypt referendum strongly backs constitution changes



Egyptians have strongly backed constitutional changes that will allow the country to move quickly on to elections.

Official results show that 77% of voters in Saturday's referendum backed the changes.

Under former President Hosni Mubarak, elections were stage-managed affairs with pre-determined results and turnout was very low.

A parliamentary vote may now take place as early as September.

Mohammed Ahmed Attiyah, the head of the supreme judicial committee who supervised the vote, said 18.5 million people who voted supported the changes. Turnout was 41.2 % of the 45 million eligible voters.

The changes include:

• Reducing presidential terms from six years to four years and limiting the president to two terms

• Obliging the president to choose a deputy within 30 days of election

• Installing new criteria for presidential candidates, including a rule that they must be over 40 years old and not married to a non-Egyptian

The country's two main political groups, Mr Mubarak's National Democratic Party and the Muslim Brotherhood, backed the proposals.

But pro-democracy activists said the changes did not go far enough and wanted the constitution to be entirely rewritten before elections could be held.

Activists have argued that the established parties stand to gain the most from holding an election quickly.

For many people Saturday was the first time they had ever voted.

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[vanlose kid]

Yemen showdown looms as army loyalties divide
Defence minister vows to stand by president after 12 senior military commanders defect from regime

Tom Finn in Sana'a
The Guardian, Tuesday 22 March 2011
Article history


A military showdown is looming in Yemen after the defence minister announced that the army would defend the president against any "coup against democracy". His statement came hours after 12 military commanders, including a senior general, defected from the regime and promised to protect anti-government protesters in the capital, Sana'a.

"The armed forces will stay faithful to the oath they gave before God, the nation and political leadership under the brother president, Ali Abdullah Saleh," said Mohammed Nasser Ahmed, the defence minister. "We will not allow under any circumstances an attempt at a coup against democracy and constitutional legitimacy, or violation of the security of the nation and citizens."

Explosions and shooting heard briefly on Monday evening near a presidential compound in the eastern port of Mukalla added to the sense of tension, as did a raid on al-Jazeera's offices in Sana'a by gunmen who seized broadcasting equipment.

Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, suffered a significant blow when General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, his longtime confidant and head of the Yemeni army in the north-west, announced that he would support "the peaceful revolution" by sending soldiers under his command to protect the thousands gathered in the capital to demand that Saleh step down.

"According to what I'm feeling, and according to the feelings of my partner commanders and soldiers … I announce our support and our peaceful backing to the youth revolution," Ali Mohsen said.

Minutes after his defection, tanks belonging to the republican guards, an elite force led by Ahmed Ali, the president's son, rolled into the streets of Sana'a, setting the stage for a confrontation between defectors and loyalists.

Republican guard tanks took up strategic positions across the city, at Saleh's residence, the ministry of defence and at the central bank. Tanks of Ali Mohsen's 1st armoured division took up positions elsewhere in the city. Ali Mohsen's pledge opened the floodgates to a stream of other defections. Scores of ambassadors, regional governors, editors of government newspapers, prominent businessmen and senior members of the ruling party either quit or announced their allegiance to the protesters.

Within hours, seven Yemeni ambassadors – to Japan, Syria, the Czech Republic, Jordan, China, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – announced they were standing down.

"The regime is crumbling. There is very little support left for the president now," said Mohammed al-Naqeeb, head of the ruling party in Aden, who also resigned.

At first, protesters gathered at Sana'a University were unsure what to make of the general's pledge: many feared an increased military presence might mean further attacks.

But confusion soon gave way to jubilation as hundreds of soldiers from the 1st armoured division arrived on foot, greeted by protesters, who kissed them and hoisted them on to their shoulders.

The soldiers mingled with protesters as Ali Mohsen's men picked their way through the tent-filled streets, cheered on by young men waving placards carrying pictures of the general.

Soon a line of policemen, soldiers and businessmen had formed, each waiting their turn to step up on to a huge stage and announce their resignations to a roaring crowd of thousands.

"We've bought you a birthday present, Ali – it's a plane ticket to Saudi," shouted Haeman Saeed, a leading Yemeni businessman, after announcing his resignation from the ruling party.

"The army are with you," roared Abdallah al-Qahdi, a senior military general from Aden who was fired from his position last week for refusing to quell a peaceful demonstration.

Qahdi said many regime insiders had been waiting for someone like Ali Mohsen to lead the way. He expected most of the army to have defected by nightfall.

But for the time being, the outcome remained unclear. Analysts said there may soon be a violent clash within the military between those who have defected and the significant portions of the army still under the president's control.

Abdul Irayani, a Yemeni political analyst, said: "Unfortunately, the president and his sons still have control over powerful sections of the military, including the republican guard and the air force.

"We are all praying that Saleh leaves quickly and quietly to prevent the situation deteriorating rapidly."

Others suggest that the resignations may have been negotiated behind the scenes. "I believe this is a step towards a transitional military government in Yemen," said Abdullah al-Faqih, a professor at Sana'a University.

The army split followed Saleh's decision to sack his entire government after tens of thousands of mourners flooded the streets of the Yemeni capital on Sunday for a mass funeral for the 52 protesters killed in a sniper attack by loyalists on Friday.

The president asked the cabinet to serve as a caretaker government until he forms a new administration.

Piling further pressure on Saleh, the country's most powerful tribal confederation also called on him to step down.

Ali Mohsen is between 50 and 60 years old, and is generally perceived to be the second most powerful man in Yemen.

Most reports indicate he is the cousin of Saleh's two half-brothers, although there is much confusion on this matter, with some claims that he is himself a half-brother to Saleh.

Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar's name is mentioned in hushed tones among most Yemenis, and he rarely appears in public. Those who know him say he is charming and gregarious. But as commander of the north-east region and the 1st armoured division, Ali Mohsen acted as Saleh's iron fist.

The area he controls includes the governorates of Sa'ada, Hodeidah, Hajja, Amran, and Mahwit, and he is more powerful than any governor.

Ali Mohsen was instrumental in the north's victory in the 1994 civil war and in crushing the recent Sa'ada uprising. It is estimated that he controls more than half of all military resources and assets.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... efs-defect

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[American Dream]

Cross-posting on the Misogyny Thread:

http://valtinsblog.blogspot.com/2011/03 ... s-for.html

The "New" Egypt: "Virginity Tests" for Protesters


While I've little time to blog today, this particular story seemed especially worthy of promotion. Amnesty International has sent the following mailing to its supporters (emphasis in original):

The Egyptian military may have just hit a disturbing, new low: at least 18 women who were arrested during a peaceful protest in Tahrir Square on March 9 said they were forced to take "virginity tests".

Those women were threatened with charges of prostitution if they "failed" the tests. One woman, who said she was a virgin but whose test supposedly proved otherwise, was beaten and given electric shocks.

Journalist William Fisher at The Public Record rightly notes, "I know this sounds like something out of Torquemada in the 15th Century or Mengele in the 20th. But it’s neither. It’s post-Mubarak Egypt in the second decade of the 21st Century."

Twenty-year-old Salwa Hosseini told Amnesty International that after she was arrested and taken to a military prison in Heikstep, she was made, with the other women, to take off all her clothes to be searched by a female prison guard, in a room with two open doors and a window. During the strip search, Hosseini said male soldiers were looking into the room and taking pictures of the naked women.

The women were then subjected to ‘virginity tests’ in a different room by a man in a white coat....

According to information received by Amnesty International, one woman who said she was a virgin but whose test supposedly proved otherwise was beaten and given electric shocks.

‘Virginity tests’ are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced.

Amnesty International is asking people to write to Hillary Clinton to get her "to use her influence to demand immediate action." I am less sanguine that she will either a) do that, or b) really give a damn.

Those who thought the "revolution" was over don't understand that it's hardly begun, and can easily be derailed onto the same old paths. The military in Egypt is not to be trusted, and those who think it will reform that country are terribly mistaken. What will it take to end illusions in such ideas?

[JackRiddler]

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Outlines of Imperial Counter-Attack & Egyptian Counter-Revolution (Grab-Bag)

Tunisia and Egypt were inspiring explosions and set off an Arab-wide intifada. Revolution for democracy was never going to be easy, of course. On the imperial side, the rebel failure in Libya offered the opportunity for military intervention, with Gaddafi repurposed from an important ally against terror into the New Saddam.

A strategy has formed of trying to set up pliant new soft regimes in the autocracies, while allowing the oil kingdoms free rein to preserve themselves with all the brutality that requires. The flip side of the Libya coin is the Saudi intervention in Bahrain.

The US rhetoric targets Syria instead of Yemen. Israel lurks in the back as a wild-card that may engage in sudden aggression in Gaza, Lebanon, or even Syria. The threat alone is a powerful chaos factor.

In Egypt, the Brotherhood, the Army and the Mubarak rump party have formed a loose alliance and the referendum results show just that the revolutionaries still face an uphill battle. Nevertheless, the referendum was an early and mixed sign. Can a popular secular front for change form in time for the elections?

Baradei to his credit is talking of taking on the class problem and a tough response to possible Israeli aggression. He's said some dangerous things. Meanwhile, the only other candidate I am the least familiar with in the Egyptian presidential race so far is Moussa. Does he have the support of the ancien factions?

Pepe Escobar occasionally is just right, and this has got to be the most important article of late I've read:

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MD02Ak01.html

Apr 2, 2011

Exposed: The US-Saudi Libya deal

By Pepe Escobar

You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighbor in exchange for a "yes" vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya - the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, "This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner."

As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to "seduce" three other members to get the vote.

Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.

Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.

Profiteers rejoice

Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a "conspiracy", as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud - saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P - "responsibility to protect" does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new - oily - human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.

Whatever they say won't alter the facts on the ground - the graphic results of the US-Saudi dirty dancing. Asia Times Online has already reported on who profits from the foreign intervention in Libya (see There's no business like war business, March 30). Players include the Pentagon (via Africom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Arab League's Moussa, and Qatar.

Why do these lists so often give the Europeans a pass? I think France, Italy and UK were the central and indispensable force driving for the Libya campaign, and that preventing refugee flows is as much an issue to them as reestablishing stable oil supply.

Add to the list the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, assorted weapons contractors, and the usual neo-liberal suspects eager to privatize everything in sight in the new Libya - even the water. And we're not even talking about the Western vultures hovering over the Libyan oil and gas industry.

Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that's just a "kinetic military action".

There's been wide speculation in both the US and across the Middle East that considering the military stalemate - and short of the "coalition of the willing" bombing the Gaddafi family to oblivion - Washington, London and Paris might settle for the control of eastern Libya; a northern African version of an oil-rich Gulf Emirate. Gaddafi would be left with a starving North Korea-style Tripolitania.

But considering the latest high-value defections from the regime, plus the desired endgame ("Gaddafi must go", in President Obama's own words), Washington, London, Paris and Riyadh won't settle for nothing but the whole kebab. Including a strategic base for both Africom and NATO.

Round up the unusual suspects

One of the side effects of the dirty US-Saudi deal is that the White House is doing all it can to make sure the Bahrain drama is buried by US media. BBC America news anchor Katty Kay at least had the decency to stress, "they would like that one [Bahrain] to go away because there's no real upside for them in supporting the rebellion by the Shi'ites."

For his part the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, showed up on al-Jazeera and said that action was needed because the Libyan people were attacked by Gaddafi. The otherwise excellent al-Jazeera journalists could have politely asked the emir whether he would send his Mirages to protect the people of Palestine from Israel, or his neighbors in Bahrain from Saudi Arabia.

The al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain is essentially a bunch of Sunni settlers who took over 230 years ago. For a great deal of the 20th century they were obliging slaves of the British empire. Modern Bahrain does not live under the specter of a push from Iran; that's an al-Khalifa (and House of Saud) myth.

Bahrainis, historically, have always rejected being part of a sort of Shi'ite nation led by Iran. The protests come a long way, and are part of a true national movement - way beyond sectarianism. No wonder the slogan in the iconic Pearl roundabout - smashed by the fearful al-Khalifa police state - was "neither Sunni nor Shi'ite; Bahraini".

What the protesters wanted was essentially a constitutional monarchy; a legitimate parliament; free and fair elections; and no more corruption. What they got instead was "bullet-friendly Bahrain" replacing "business-friendly Bahrain", and an invasion sponsored by the House of Saud.

And the repression goes on - invisible to US corporate media. Tweeters scream that everybody and his neighbor are being arrested. According to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, over 400 people are either missing or in custody, some of them "arrested at checkpoints controlled by thugs brought in from other Arab and Asian countries - they wear black masks in the streets." Even blogger Mahmood Al Yousif was arrested at 3 am, leading to fears that the same will happen to any Bahraini who has blogged, tweeted, or posted Facebook messages in favor of reform.

Globocop is on a roll

Odyssey Dawn is now over. Enter Unified Protector - led by Canadian Charles Bouchard. Translation: the Pentagon (as in Africom) transfers the "kinetic military action " to itself (as in NATO, which is nothing but the Pentagon ruling over Europe). Africom and NATO are now one.

The NATO show will include air and cruise missile strikes; a naval blockade of Libya; and shady, unspecified ground operations to help the "rebels". Hardcore helicopter gunship raids a la AfPak - with attached "collateral damage" - should be expected.

A curious development is already visible. NATO is deliberately allowing Gaddafi forces to advance along the Mediterranean coast and repel the "rebels". There have been no surgical air strikes for quite a while.

The objective is possibly to extract political and economic concessions from the defector and Libyan exile-infested Interim National Council (INC) - a dodgy cast of characters including former Justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, US-educated former secretary of planning Mahmoud Jibril, and former Virginia resident, new "military commander" and CIA asset Khalifa Hifter.

Do they call it INC so that Americans recognize it, and can recycle their scorecards from Iraq?

The laudable, indigenous February 17 Youth movement - which was in the forefront of the Benghazi uprising - has been completely sidelined.

This is NATO's first African war, as Afghanistan is NATO's first Central/South Asian war. Now firmly configured as the UN's weaponized arm, Globocop NATO is on a roll implementing its "strategic concept" approved at the Lisbon summit last November (see Welcome to NATOstan, Asia Times Online, November 20, 2010).

Gaddafi's Libya must be taken out so the Mediterranean - the mare nostrum of ancient Rome - becomes a NATO lake. Libya is the only nation in northern Africa not subordinated to Africom or Centcom or any one of the myriad NATO "partnerships". The other non-NATO-related African nations are Eritrea, Sawahiri Arab Democratic Republic, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Moreover, two members of NATO's "Istanbul Cooperation Initiative" - Qatar and the United Arab Emirates - are now fighting alongside Africom/NATO for the fist time. Translation: NATO and Persian Gulf partners are fighting a war in Africa. Europe? That's too provincial. Globocop is the way to go.

According to the Obama administration's own official doublespeak, dictators who are eligible for "US outreach" - such as in Bahrain and Yemen - may relax, and get away with virtually anything. As for those eligible for "regime alteration", from Africa to the Middle East and Asia, watch out. Globocop NATO is coming to get you. With or without dirty deals.


Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/world ... nted=print
Archived here with link as fair-use copy for non-commercial educational purposes in ongoing 9,000-page discussion.


March 24, 2011
Islamist Group Is Rising Force in a New Egypt
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.

It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment.

As the best organized and most extensive opposition movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to have an edge in the contest for influence. But what surprises many is its link to a military that vilified it.

“There is evidence the Brotherhood struck some kind of a deal with the military early on,” said Elijah Zarwan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “It makes sense if you are the military — you want stability and people off the street. The Brotherhood is one address where you can go to get 100,000 people off the street.”

There is a battle consuming Egypt about the direction of its revolution, and the military council that is now running the country is sending contradictory signals. On Wednesday, the council endorsed a plan to outlaw demonstrations and sit-ins. Then, a few hours later, the public prosecutor announced that the former interior minister and other security officials would be charged in the killings of hundreds during the protests.

Egyptians are searching for signs of clarity in such declarations, hoping to discern the direction of a state led by a secretive military council brought to power by a revolution based on demands for democracy, rule of law and an end to corruption.

“We are all worried,” said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is also regarded warily by some religious Egyptians, who see it as an elitist, secret society. These suspicions have created potential opportunities for other parties.

About six groups from the ultraconservative Salafist school of Islam have also emerged in the era after President Hosni Mubarak’s removal, as well as a party called Al Wassat, intended as a more liberal alternative to the Brotherhood.

In the early stages of the revolution, the Brotherhood was reluctant to join the call for demonstrations. It jumped in only after it was clear that the protest movement had gained traction. Throughout, the Brotherhood kept a low profile, part of a survival instinct honed during decades of repression by the state.

The question at the time was whether the Brotherhood would move to take charge with its superior organizational structure. It now appears that it has.

“The Brotherhood didn’t want this revolution; it has never been a revolutionary movement,” said Mr. Zarwan of the International Crisis Group. “Now it has happened; they participated cautiously, and they realize they can set their sights higher.”

But in these early stages, there is growing evidence of the Brotherhood’s rise and the overpowering force of Islam.

When the new prime minister, Essam Sharaf, addressed the crowd in Tahrir Square this month, Mohamed el-Beltagi, a prominent Brotherhood member, stood by his side. A Brotherhood member was also appointed to the committee that drafted amendments to the Constitution.

But the most obvious and consequential example was the recent referendum on the amendments, in the nation’s first post-Mubarak balloting. The amendments essentially call for speeding up the election process so that parliamentary contests can be held before September, followed soon after by a presidential race. That expedited calendar is seen as giving an advantage to the Brotherhood and to the remnants of Mr. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, which have established national networks. The next Parliament will oversee drafting a new constitution.

Before the vote, Essam el-Erian, a Brotherhood leader and spokesman, appeared on a popular television show, “The Reality,” arguing for the government’s position in favor of the proposal. With a record turnout, the vote was hailed as a success. But the “yes” campaign was based largely on a religious appeal: voters were warned that if they did not approve the amendments, Egypt would become a secular state.

“The problem is that our country will be without a religion,” read a flier distributed in Cairo by a group calling itself the Egyptian Revolution Society. “This means that the call to the prayer will not be heard anymore like in the case of Switzerland, women will be banned from wearing the hijab like in the case of France,” it said, referring to the Muslim head scarf. “And there will be laws that allow men to get married to men and women to get married to women like in the case of America.”

A banner hung by the Muslim Brotherhood in a square in Alexandria instructed voters that it was their “religious duty” to vote “yes” on the amendments.

In the end, 77.2 percent of those who voted said yes.

This is not to say that the Brotherhood is intent on establishing an Islamic state. From the first days of the protests, Brotherhood leaders proclaimed their dedication to religious tolerance and a democratic and pluralist form of government. They said they would not offer a candidate for president, that they would contest only a bit more than a third of the total seats in Parliament, and that Coptic Christians and women would be welcomed into the political party affiliated with the movement.

None of that has changed, Mr. Erian, the spokesman, said in an interview. “We are keen to spread our ideas and our values,” he said. “We are not keen for power.”

He would not comment on whether the Brotherhood had an arrangement with the military, but he said the will of the people to shift toward Islam spoke for itself and was a sign of Egypt’s emerging democratic values. “Don’t trust the intellectuals, liberals and secularists,” Mr. Erian said. “They are a minor group crying all the time. If they don’t work hard, they have no future.”

But the more secular forces say that what they need is time.

“I worry about going too fast towards elections, that the parties are still weak,” said Nabil Ahmed Helmy, former dean of the Zagazig law school and a member of the National Council for Human Rights. “The only thing left right now is the Muslim Brotherhood. I do think that people are trying to take over the revolution.”

Egypt is still a work in progress. Ola Shahba, 32, a member of a group in the youth coalition behind the protests, said, “After the results of the referendum, we need to be humble.”

The coalition and others have said they see the overwhelming approval of the amendments and the rise of the Brotherhood as worrisome, and as evidence that more liberal forces need to organize in a more effective outreach campaign, and fast.

“Freedom is nice; so is democracy,” said Rifaat Abdul Massih, 39, a construction worker. “But I’m a Christian, and we are a bit worried about the future. I voted ‘no’ to give more time to the secular parties. I don’t want to have the Muslim Brotherhood here right away.”


Nadim Audi contributed reporting.

http://counterpunch.org/amin03252011.html

Weekend Edition
March 25 - 27, 2011

The Double Standard Trap
The Clash of Principles and Interests in the Arab Revolutions

By ESAM AL-AMIN


“To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.”
--Confucius


On February 15, 1991, then-President George H. W. Bush announced to the Iraqi people and the world in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, "There is another way for the bloodshed to stop. And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside."

Nudged by the American president, several uprisings broke out within a few days in the Shi’a-dominated southern Iraq. But they were ruthlessly crushed by the defeated regime of Saddam Hussein. Not only did the American-led coalition stand idly by while tens of thousands of Iraqis were massacred during the unrest, but nearly two million Iraqis ended up in Iran as refugees after fleeing for their lives.

None other than Dick Cheney, the Secretary of Defense at the time, explained the reason the U.S. abandoned the Iraqis when he said, “It would be very difficult for us to hold the coalition together for any particular course of action dealing with internal Iraqi politics.”

Translation: Our Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Gulf countries strongly objected for fear of empowering the Iraqi Shiites.

It took the U.S. and its mainly NATO allies less than seven months to reverse Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait. But the U.S. did not hide the reason behind its unprecedented worldwide campaign. Jim Baker, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, said in his testimony before Congress that the U.S. mobilization was about “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs,” a euphemism for the US and British corporations that would control the flow of oil and its forty percent reserves in that region, and by extension, the global economy.

Sadly Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo did not have much oil, so in the 1990s the administration of Bill Clinton basically ignored these simmering crises. Within the span of three months in 1994, over 800,000 people were massacred in Rwanda while the world watched the ongoing genocide.

Years later, encouraged by the do-gooders, slam-dunkers, and cake-walkers, George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 under the false pretense of eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction, later modified to spreading “democracy and freedom.” But his real aim was to impose American hegemony and control over this strategic region with potential military bases and oil deals.

However, his gross miscalculation resulted in a fractured Iraq and the colossal failure of American objectives with a cost of at least two trillion dollars, tens of thousands of casualties, and millions of refugees, all while enhancing Iran’s strategic position.

The only consistent policy by Western powers across these examples has been their sheer inconsistency. There can be no doubt that such policies are guided not by the West’s declared values and principles, but by cold and calculated interests, even when they conflict with its most basic and cherished moral standards.

The ongoing Libyan campaign is no different. Libya, with its small population of 6 million, is the largest oil producer in Africa, with proven reserves of over 42 billion barrels (more than twice as those in the U.S.) and 1.5 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. As far as its sulfur content, Libyan oil is the cleanest in the world as well as the cheapest to extract at $1 per barrel. With Libya’s proximity to Europe, its oil and gas are the cheapest to transport.

Shortly after the Feb. 17 peaceful revolution by the Libyan people protesting Muammar Gaddafi’s forty-one year tyrannical reign, Western countries led by the U.S, France, and Britain condemned Gaddafi and his assaults on his people. Within days, several UN resolutions were passed, freezing the accounts of the Libyan dictator, his sons and close associates, imposing a no-fly zone, and authorizing other military measures for the declared protection of civilians.

Meanwhile, the same countries outraged by Gaddafi’s behavior looked the other way as the Bahraini army, aided by military units from Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf countries, cracked down on thousands of peaceful demonstrators in the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain, causing dozens of casualties. The protestors were calling for democracy and freedom from the 230-year dictatorship of the Al-Khalifa family.

Similarly, hundreds of thousands of people across Yemen have been demonstrating continuously during their seven-week struggle for freedom and democracy. However, the crackdown by Yemen’s thirty-two year old regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh against this peaceful revolution was met in the West with a muted or weak response.

In the case of Bahrain, where the fifth fleet of the U.S. navy is stationed, strategic and military calculations have evidently trumped any moral obligation to support the people’s call for democracy and freedom from dictatorship and repression. Likewise the incessant cooperation of Saleh’s regime with the U.S. in the so-called war on terrorism against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula outweighed any consideration for the Yemeni people’s right to live in a free and democratic society.

If the imposition of the no-fly zone against the tyranny of the Libyan regime was based on moral grounds, then the same consideration should have also been applied to the Israeli planes freely roaming the skies of Gaza and wreaking havoc. On the same day that NATO planes were protecting Libyan civilians from Gaddafi’s terror, American-made Israeli planes were openly terrorizing Gazan Palestinians, killing eight, including one elderly man who had just finished praying at a mosque, and three children playing soccer.

The following day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had it backwards when she condemned the four ineffective crude rockets that were fired from Gaza in retaliation for the unprovoked Israeli air attack, causing no Israeli casualties, while excusing the earlier Israeli raid killing innocent Palestinian civilians.

On March 17, the U.S. lauded the UN Security Council resolution on Libya that passed with 10 votes (and 5 abstentions) arguing for a world consensus in stopping the carnage against the Libyan civilians. But just a month earlier, on Feb. 18, the U.S. cast the sole negative vote in the UN—defying the world consensus of 14 votes—against the end of the illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. In effect, the U.S. vetoed its own declared policy of the illegality of Israeli settlements for purely domestic political reasons without any regard for moral norms or international law.

But the moral dilemma of applying double standards is not just the dominion of the West. For example, Al-Jazeera, the popular Arab news network, has played a key role in covering the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. However, its coverage of the significant demonstrations in Bahrain was weak, while its reporting on demonstrations in Saudi Arabia was almost non-existent. Meanwhile, the mass demonstrations of thousands of people in sixty cities across Morocco on March 20 were totally ignored by the celebrated network. Clearly political, not technical, grounds were behind its vast coverage in some countries and a lack thereof in others.

On March 19, Hasan Nasrallah, the Lebanese leader of Hezbollah, after praising the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, correctly criticized Arab civil society institutions, political movements, media outlets, intellectuals, and other elites for not lending genuine support –unlike for other revolutions -- to their fellow demonstrators for democracy and freedom in Bahrain. He rhetorically asked whether sectarianism was the real reason behind the lack of support for the Bahraini revolution because most of its demonstrators were Shiite.

But Nasrallah himself did not utter a word about the thousands of protesters in neighboring Syria who are equally yearning for the same rights and freedoms as their brethren in Bahrain. If Bahrainis paid with their blood in Pearl Roundabout and the streets of Manama, dozens of Syrians have also been killed and injured by the Syrian security forces in the Omari mosque in Dara’a and other cities.

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, which has been in control of Gaza since 2007, were not only silent about the Mubarak regime as it cracked down against the millions of Egyptians protesting in the streets, but it even prevented any demonstrations by other Gazans who wanted to show solidarity with the Egyptian protesters. Apparently Hamas’s excuse was that it did not want to antagonize the former regime, which colluded with Israel in imposing the four-year old crippling sanctions against Gaza, and could have made life even harder for them had they shown any support for the Egyptian revolution.

Throughout these conflicts, there are politicians and leaders who have been consistent in their policy and positions. For instance, Representatives Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Ron Paul (R-TX) equally objected to the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Libya and have been consistent in their positions regarding how and when American military power should be employed. Similarly, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader oppose American intervention on principle. However, many other politicians lack the moral standard to advocate consistent policy.

For example, former House speaker Newt Gingrich disparaged President Barack Obama on March 7 for not imposing the no-fly zone and taking out Gaddafi sooner, when he said on Fox News, “All we have to do is suppress his air force, which we could do in minutes.” By the time Obama signed onto the UN resolution to do just that Gingrich did not miss a beat criticizing Obama for getting involved in another foreign war, when he told NBC’s Today show on March 23, “I would not have intervened. I would not have used American and European forces.”

What is needed is the formation of a consistent paradigm for when the international community or regional powers must intervene to save innocent lives against the transgression and violence of military dictatorships or invasions, whether in Libya, Bosnia, Rwanda, the Kurdish areas, Darfur, or Palestine. In essence, the paradigm should be based on the moral imperative of helping and protecting all innocent civilians who call for help after being unjustly attacked by ruthless dictators or aggressors, by supporting their just cause and lending them material support, short of military occupation or economic exploitation.

Such standard must be adopted irrespective of whether the perpetrators are friends or foes of the U.S. or other international powers. Nations and movements can certainly exercise their option whether or not to get involved. But let there be no confusion as to what is right, just, and appropriate.

Abraham Lincoln once observed that, “Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.” But he stood firmly against slavery on moral grounds even though the cost to his country was significantly high. Common humanity dictates that moral values must trump any narrow or short-term interests. Saving human lives should always take precedent over economic interests. Taking a firm stand against occupation and oppression cannot be sacrificed at the altar of immediate political electoral gains.

In the words of Albert Einstein, a great leader or individual should not aim to be “a man of success” but rather “try to become a man of value.” Equally, nations as well as individuals should be judged on moral grounds by their consistent adherence to their stated values and principles irrespective of other considerations- not some of the time or under certain circumstances, but all the time and under all circumstances.


Esam Al-Amin can be reached at alamin1919@gmail.com

[JackRiddler]

.

Egypt News:

Renewed "Save the Revolution" Rally in Tahrir
http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/ ... .html#more

Friday, April 1, 2011
Save the revolution Friday

Today is the Save the revolution Friday ,we are returning back to the square and it feels great.
It feels that we are returning a place for weeks ago we considered as our home outside home.
I am currently in my way there,insh Allah I will meet friends there.
The turnout according to twitter is high. Families are in their way to the square.
There are confirmed protests in Alexandria and Suez. Protesters began to arrive to the square since last night in thousands.
According to eye witnesses MB are not participating.Presidential candidates Hisham El-Bastawisi and Hamdeen Sabhi are going to participate.There is a rally from Cairo University heading to Tahrir. There was a rally in Gamat Al Doul as well. There was nothing in Egyptian Tv about the protest till I have left

Updated at 8:46 PM
And I went to Tahrir square with a doubt and I returned with a renewed faith in the Egyptian people. There were not millions of Egypt in the square today but there were thousands and thousands who came in this very hot day in Cairo to the square.
I saw families from all background again in the square , some of them are new comers to square and there were some old faces that saw my face and thought that they saw me before. There were no army units nor police units , instead the youth are and were back in charge. The checkpoints were set at the entrance , men inspecting men and looking to their IDs and ladies inspecting the ladies' bags and their ids. The people were there as well the street vendors with so called revolution souvenirs from revolution T-shirts and flags. There were also a lot of snacks and beverages vendors , it was extremely hot day that reminded the Egyptians with the summer.
I saw mothers of martyrs again in the square , I saw the posters of martyrs back. The flags of not only Egypt but also Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Palestine , Libya , Tunisia and even Japan were there. There was a group of Egyptians from Sinai locals at the square. I met American socialist with a group of her friends coming with books about socialism and the danger of imperialism. I saw former Al Jazeera Cairo bureau chief Hussein Abdel Ghanay speaking with people about media. New parties found a good place today to promote their programs , Dr. Ehab El-Kharat of the Egyptian socialist democratic party was there along some members of his party talking with people and distributing flyers.
I could not hear the speakers at the internal radio stations , there were about 4 radio podium nor did I film a lot of footage like I did in the past ¨I know that I have uploaded just few of them¨
There were debates between people and each other. I notice at that Abad El-Rahman mosque hot debates between liberals and conservative about the meanings of Secularism and religious state...etc. Nevertheless I saw in my way out a group of conservative girls who most of them wear Naqab were chanting revolutionary slogans.There were no Muslim brotherhood members or Salafists in the square as far as I have seen.
People are so concerned about the future of the country. They do not want the merry trio "Azmi , Sharif and Sorror" to be punished , they want Hosni Mubarak to be punished. In clear message they are sending to the AFC , either us or the Mubaraks. They do not laws that limit freedoms like the infamous protests and strikes laws. They want Egypt's money back , our money and assets as people of Egypt that have been stolen all those years. They want to purify the media and liberate. They want to purify the universities.
There were other demands who differed according to the groups there like for instance one group wants to cancel the labour and farmers quota in the parliament while others wanted it...etc.
It was good to back indeed. Right now there are still people who are staying at the square , I do not know if they are going to sleep or not.
I am full of promise , I am full of hope again
Wait for the photos and videos.

Soccer Hooligans Riot or Chaos by Mubarak Thugs?
http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/ ... .html#more

Monday, April 4, 2011
A late apology

First of all this post is a late apology to all our dear Tunisian and Algerian brothers for what happened last Saturday in Cairo Stadium. I will not be claiming anything if I say that I apology on behalf of millions of Egyptians because in many Egyptians share my anger. If we should say anything to Tunisia , it should be Thank you for inspiration and giving huge confidence to the Egyptians that they can do it as well.

Second of all I thank PM Essam Sharaf and our FM Nabil Al –Araby for their quick action when they officially apologized to Tunisia and Algeria. It is enough to that Nabil Al-Araby called his Tunisian counterpart in his way to a TV show when he knew about the attack to apologize without even waiting orders from above. This swift action gives more confidence to both men especially Al-Araby whom I owe a post for his interview.

Some claim that the attack was a deliberate act while others claim it was a hooliganism attack that went too long. Despite I hate the counter revolution on everything and despite I know some of our hooligans have got a problem but there is something fishy. At 10 AM the stadium manager reported that there were 2 thousand thugs have entered the stadium with light weapons !!! He technically did nothing when he should cancel the game. Of course you must know the Cairo stadium manager was among the bodyguards of Gamal and Alaa Mubarak !! There was small number of police forces unlike any other match in a strange way !! For God sake I once saw CSF on horses preparing for some game between Zamalak and some other team in the early morning at the stadium just before the revolution !!! These 13 emergency yellow gates to the field which were opened at the same time in less than 3 minutes when they should not be opened !!?

There is a lot of questions in this attack that makes it unusual hooliganism case.

I am afraid this is just another episode in the TV series “Me or Chaos” we are currently witnessing. The first episode is the lack of security while the second episode is the return of the religious radicalization represented in Salafists and the third episode is that night of Stadium.We understand these tricks.

I do not know why the AFC does not impose the new thuggery law against those thugs who attacked the stadium as well as those called Salafists who are burning down shrines.

Postponing the league championship is so much needed , already we need the people to focus on things that really matter , yes football is a big industry but this industry needs to be purified from the old regime followers and they are so many starting from the football federation members.

I have not been able to blog recently because I have underwent a LASIK operation Saturday morning , I only logged to twitter couple of times in the past 48 hours breaking the doctor’s orders. I know I still can’t blog as before because my eyes need to rest more but I felt this post is so much needed.

Baradei on Israel (2 subtly different versions)
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=30851

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 39,00.html

ElBaradei: We'll fight back if Israel attacks Gaza

In interview with Arab newspaper, former IAEA chief says if elected as Egypt's next president he will open Rafah crossing in case of an Israeli attack
Ynet
Published: 04.04.11, 14:15 / Israel News

Former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who had previously announced his intetions to run for the presidency of Egypt, said Monday that “if Israel attacked Gaza we would declare war against the Zionist regime."

New Government
Egypt: Israel must pay us back for gas / Doron Peskin
Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi to demand that Jewish state pay price differences for reduced gas exported during Mubarak era
Full Story

In an interview with the Al-Watan newspaper he said: "In case of any future Israeli attack on Gaza - as the next president of Egypt – I will open the Rafah border crossing and will consider different ways to implement the joint Arab defense agreement."

He also stated that "Israel controls Palestinian soil" adding that that "there has been no tangible breakthrough in reconciliation process because of the imbalance of power in the region - a situation that creates a kind of one way peace."

Discussing his agenda for Egypt, ElBaradei said that distribution of income between the different classes in Egypt would be his most important priority if he were to win the upcoming elections.

ELBaradei's main competition is Arab League Secretary General and former Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa. Last month he discussed Egypt's relationship with Israel. "During my term in office the foreign ministry was subject to unfavorable policies from Israel with regards to the peace agreement," Said Moussa who served as foreign minister 1991-2001," he said.

"We thought the peace process was like a waterwheel – endlessly turning around and around without reaching a defined point. My opinion was that we needed to be honest with the Israelis, taking determined measures within the framework of the foreign ministry's operations. Maybe this led to a lack of agreement on all Israel related issues."

http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/elbaradei-says-if-israel-attacks-gaza-egypt-will-counterattack-website/

ElBaradei says if Israel attacks Gaza Egypt will counterattack: website

April 4, 2011 by occupiedpalestine

Tehran Times International Desk | April 4, 2011

TEHRAN – Mohamed ElBaradei, former IAEA chief and potential presidential candidate in Egypt’s upcoming elections, has stated that if Israel attacked Gaza again Egypt would not be a silent spectator and could make a counterattack, a website reported.

“If Israel attacked Gaza we would declare war against the Zionist regime,” former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was quoted as saying by the Donya Al-Watan website, who interviewed ElBaradei on Thursday.

“In case of any future Israeli attack on Gaza, he (ElBaradei) — as the next president of Egypt — will open Rafah border crossing and will consider different ways to implement the joint Arab defense agreement," ElBaradei said.

Why not opening Rafah regardless?

“Israel controls the Palestinian soil and there has been no tangible breakthrough in the process of reconciliation because of the imbalance of power in the region and the situation there is a kind of one way peace,” he added.

On commenting about his agenda for the Egypt, the future presidential candidate said the distribution of income between different classes in Egypt as his most important priority in case he takes the power.

Increasing productivity, creating new industrial units with the aim of increasing foreign exports and the increase of funding in the scientific knowledge, research and education programs, ElBaradei named his other top priorities.

Photo: Mohamed ElBaradei, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency

New FM Statement on Israel
http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/ ... .html#more

Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Nabil El Araby : Our relations with Israel Should be Normal

El-Araby at Tahrir
"Source unknown"

Our new FM Nabil El Araby has spent less than a month or two months and yet I think he could fix a lot of damage caused by the Mubarak regime when it comes to our foreign policies.

The man has got a lot of files and a lot of challenges starting from the treatment of Egyptians at their embassies abroad to the biggest challenges of all times : The river Nile water share.

Since the appointment of Al Araby and Israeli media seems to be hostile towards the man who attended and participated at the peace negotiations at Camp David in a strange way even without waiting to see his policies. Of course the fact that he widely and openly criticized the war on Gaza makes him unwelcomed personality to Israel !! Added to that his warning to Israel from any military operation against Gaza and his historical statement that Iran is not an enemy state made them hate him more and more unreasonably !!

Anyhow here is the interview with Mona El-Shazly on Dream TV last “ Dream TV should add English Dubbing to important interviews like that one”

First of all I love that photo of him , Amr Moussa , Mohamed ElBaradei and Nabil Fahmy at the UN which was included at introductory report. I really love it

Second to the things that really matters :
- The minister made it clear that Egypt will not violate the Camp David peace accords , already the armed forces council made it clear.
- The minister made it clear that the only change will take place in our relation with Israel that Egypt will treat it according to Camp David accords . We will have a normal relation with Israel not ‘a special relation’ as before in Time of Mubarak. I do not know why Israel is angry of being treated normally !!? Already this special status made more people angry from Israel and Mubarak.
- The minister hinted that the exported gas prices to Israel will be reviewed.
- He also spoke about the Peace accords and explained important articles about the Egyptian army’s existence at Sinai. He elaborated about two important articles or rights for Egypt we did not use yet : 1)
- We can have a real UN peacekeeper forces not MFO as the Arab states are no longer standing against Egypt. 2) The existence of Egyptian forces. As a realistic man he said that Israel can approve on the first but will reject the second immediately.
- He hinted that there was that article Egypt has not used against Israel all that time for unknown reason regarding compensations. It turned out that Israel should compensate for us for things like stealing our oil during its occupation to Sinai or stealing ancient Egyptian artifacts or destroying the turquoise mines or even better and better the murder of POWs. He only mentioned the oil case but I remember that one of the Sadats clan bringing up this article when the Egyptian POWs brought up.
- He is totally against Mubarak’s policy in Gaza and he wants to end it.
- He slammed the Madrid peace conference as it overshadowed the important 242 resolution, he also slammed that term of land for peace despite it is based upon 242 resolution.
- The minister made it clear that Iran is not an enemy country , it is an important country in the region which should cooperate with. Already we have diplomatic representation in Tehran and in Cairo. Already El-Araby played a role in restoring back our relations.
- There is nothing bad that Turkey and Iran are trying playing a greater role than they used to play in the past.
- There is a problem indeed when it comes to the treatment of Egyptians at our embassies abroad , also the level and number of representation. The level of representation problem was shown clearly in Libya , an embassy and consulate only serving more than one million Egypt. He did not speak about Libya thought as it should.
- We are going back to Africa and the visit to Sudan whether the North or the South was very promising. North and South Sudan are with in the same boat when it comes to the Nile water share.
- He called the young diplomats to serve in hot and important countries like Sudan.

The interview was too short , there were many questions that should be asked still this can be the interview that introduces Nabil El Araby to millions of Egyptians. I hope that his perspective about that real national security council to be considered now or at least in the future.

The fact that he was chosen to head the ministry of foreign affairs makes more optimistic about the future comparing to the damage Mubarak and his men had shamefully made all those years in our regional and foreign policies.

I hope that he has a plan about the allegations of using Egyptians as human shields in Libya as they are his responsibility along with the armed forces council. Turkey sent a ship protected by Turkish air forces to Miisurata , we can do the same thing , we can send those scary F16 Mubarak threatened us with accompanied with one of our ships to evacuate those thousands stuck there.

[JackRiddler]

A week old, wonder how this is going:

http://english.ahram.org.eg/~/NewsConte ... rom-f.aspx

Egypt Youth Coalition and El-Baradei missing from first National Dialogue

Sherif Tarek, Thursday 31 Mar 2011




National Dialogue meetings will establish criteria and regularise future meetings, but how useful is that if key players are not invited?



Discussions over the measures and objectives of the National Dialogue are to resume ‎on Sunday, yet obvious key players, such as the Youth Coalition and presidential hopeful, El-Baradei are blaringly absent.

The National Dialogue’s criteria and organisation of future meetings should be finalised by the end ‎of a series of preliminary meetings that will see at least 164 public figures convene on a ‎regular basis until 10 April. ‎

The first meeting was held yesterday and was attended by Arab ‎League Secretary General ‎Amr Moussa, Deputy ‎Prime Minister and chairperson Yehia Al-‎Gamal and Orascom ‎Telecom Executive Chairman Naguib Sawiris, ‎among other ‎dignitaries and ministers. ‎
‎‎
The Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution took no part in the session and are expected to explain ‎later in a press conference why they were not in attendance at the pivotal first meeting.‎

Presidential hopeful, Mohamed El-Baradei, was also blaringly absent from the meeting. ‎

Four more meetings are scheduled for Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and the following Sunday.‎

Prime Minister Essam Sharaf addressed the participants, stressing the ‎‎importance of the National Dialogue and the ‎contribution of all participants.‎

‎“The door is open for all patriotic entities that are making the Egyptian dream,” said ‎‎former ‎Minister of Transportation Sharaf, whose statement comes in slight contrast to the fact that various important political movements were not invited.‎

Several figures spoke later to further define the purposes of the National Dialogue.‎

A number of participants later sounded disgruntlement with lack of ‎organisation of the ‎first meeting. ‎

The National Dialogue is meant to facilitate communication between political parties, individuals and the ‎government, allowing a platform through which they can express their perspectives and goals. ‎

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/8980.aspx

[JackRiddler]

http://counterpunch.org/lee04052011.html

April 5, 2011
A Genuine Tragedy Unfolds
Bahrain and Saudi Arabia's Rulers Goose-Step to the Brink of the Abyss

By PETER LEE


While we are diverted by the opera-bouffe spectacle of the civil war in Libya’s desert, a genuine tragedy—and potential geopolitical trainwreck—is unfolding in Bahrain.

Those plucky demonstrators we saw occupying the Pearl Square roundabout in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, have been swept away by government security forces—together with the 300 foot monument at the roundabout, which came to symbolize the aspirations of the protesters and was therefore demolished by the government in a representative display of heavy-handedness.

The Bahraini government received an important assist from Saudi Arabia, which dispatched troops and tanks under a mutual security pact of the Gulf Co-Operation Council called Peninsula Shield.

The government has gone to great and dangerous lengths to paint the democratic aspirations of the peaceful, largely Shi’a demonstrators for democracy as a sectarian assault on the emirate backed by that Gulf boogeyman, Iran.

The repression has turned into an operation of conspicuous bigotry, brutality, and mendacity that does not bode well for the future of the emirate, political liberalization inside Saudi Arabia, or peaceful coexistence between Iran and the Gulf states.

In recent days, Bahrain has used live ammunition—shotguns—against demonstrators and blanketed Manama with checkpoints, some manned by personnel masked with sinister black balaclavas. After a group of Shia legislators resigned in protest, the government officially accepted their resignations—so they could strip the legislators of their immunity and render them liable to criminal charges. Main opposition newspaper—shut down. Only hospital in Manama—occupied by security forces so that wounded demonstrators can be apprehended, abused, and/or disappeared.

In classic doublespeak, the government declared that the hospital had been “liberated”. “Liberating” the hospital apparently involved beating at least one male nurse senseless in the parking lot.

Beneath it all, a dangerous undercurrent of government fear and rage.

It looks like the Bahrain and Saudi security forces are utterly out of their depth. Their state of reference is pursuing and suppressing terrorists. By treating these peaceful, non-sectarian demonstrators as sectarian terrorists, they seem to be sowing the seeds of the emirate’s eventual destruction.

The expected outcome of systematic government-directed hatred would be ethnic cleansing, but there’s one problem with that. Shi’a are not a marginalized and easily purged minority; they are the majority, accounting for about 70 per cent of the native population. The Sunni—who dominate the island in cooperation with their Saudi allies—are the minority. If one counts the large army of foreign workers in the emirate, the Sunni bosses account for less than 10 per cent of the population.

No wonder the Sunni emir felt he needed some Saudi muscle.

The prognosis seems to be embittered Shi’a majority and paranoid Sunni rulers in Bahrain. Even under ordinary circumstances, Shi’a are inclined to a lively sense of grievance concerning historical and current Sunni persecution, raising the prospect of security problems for Saudi Arabia in handling its own Shi’a minority (about 15 per cent) even after the stompings and beatings quiet things in Manama.

The big story in the Gulf appears to be that many of the governments, with weak to non-existent popular bases, vulnerability to democratic agitation, an inability to accommodate dissent (unless “accommodation” means bouncing a nightstick off somebody’s head and hauling them away), and an uncertain though increasingly optimistic sense of where the Obama administration stands on the whole "democratic values vs. strategic interests" conundrum, are panicking and in need of a scapegoat to justify heavy-handed security measures that will otherwise alienate significant (ironically, significant moderate) sections of their populace.

The spooked regimes are justifying their disproportionate reaction by claiming the demonstrations are part of a seditious scheme sponsored by Iran and Hezbollah. A war of words has already broken out between Iran and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia over the issue. Turning the Gulf states’ rhetoric against them, Iran declared that Bahrain has forfeited its legitimacy, implying that Iran can do an R2P (“right to protect”) intervention on behalf of the embattled Shi’a of Bahrain like the humanitarian intervention the Gulf Co-operation Council incited in Libya.

The clownish nature of reporting on Bahrain was revealed when a leader declared he wanted the emirate to solve its problems without outside interference, Iranian or Saudi. This was of course headlined in the Saudi-owned al Arabiya as Bahrain’s Shiite opposition asks Iran not to meddle.

The seemingly suicidal line of framing the issue as Iran-fueled sectarian jealousy instead of legitimate democratic agitation was carried on in the article by a Bahraini official:

"We want to affirm to the world that we don't have a problem between the government and the opposition ... There is a clear sectarian problem in Bahrain. There is division within society," Sheikh Khaled said.

Don’t forget Kuwait, which is about to execute two Iranians and a Kuwaiti for spying, is expelling three Iranian diplomats from Kuwait, and has withdrawn its ambassador from Tehran.

An informative article on the Kuwait affair in Arab Times quotes an analyst in Dubai as saying that “the Kuwaiti government was ‘under huge pressure from Sunni MPs ... and the media to take action, not to let this go without proving their displeasure.’”

An April 8 article in Arab Times, Persian Conspiracy seen to target GCC countries, gives another hint of where things are going, along the line of runaway paranoia, scaremongering, and propaganda overreach, courtesy of that ubiquitous government mouthpiece, "Sources say":

“KUWAIT CITY, April 3: The Iranian plan includes dangerous plots against the Gulf nations, not just Bahrain. Kuwait, in particular, is one of the targets and the spy network is only a tip of the iceberg, because the main objective is for the Iranian Naval Forces to invade some islands in the country and other Gulf nations under the pretext of protecting Shiites in Bahrain, say security sources in the Gulf.

“Sources disclosed the Bahraini and Kuwaiti foreign ministers revealed the conspiracy uncovered by the security departments in both countries in the recently-concluded meeting of the GCC foreign ministers in Riyadh. After hearing the report, the GCC foreign ministers presented recommendations, which will be implemented soon, because the GCC nations are keen on revealing the truth to the international community.

“Sources said the implementation of the Iranian plan started several months ago, claiming the chaos and conflicts in Bahrain are just the beginning of an attempt to disrupt peace in the Kingdom. Sources revealed the initial plan was for the unrest to continue for two to three weeks in order to give the Iranian, other Arab and international satellite stations enough time to extensively cover the massacre of Shiites in the country.”

Consider that plot to have the international media to "extensively cover the massacre of Shiites" pretty much foiled.

One doesn’t hear much about the brutal suppression of dissent in Bahrain in the Western media.

Ssome say the Libyan adventure was part of a plan to distract the West with a lovely little war against a crazy dictator so the journos wouldn’t be out covering the over-the-top suppression of a bona fide democracy movement by Saudi Arabia’s BFF (and host to Commander, United States Naval Forces Central Command (COMUSNAVCENT) / United States Fifth Fleet and 1500 US personnel) Bahrain.

Credit where credit is due: Newsmax, which often traffics in eye-rolling right-wing paranoia, had a good article on Bahrain by Ken Timmerman. When Newsmax has to carry the load for American news organizations, you know the situation is pretty grim.

Iran’s PressTV has tried to make Bahrain their CNN/Al Jazeera moment.

There is a sizable void to fill, since CNN has reported very little on Bahrain (four of their correspondents were detained and released only after signing "an undertaking not to exceed the limits of their mission"--they ostensibly entered Bahrain to report on "social media" but instead tried to report on the disturbances).

I didn't find any signs that the U.S. State Department stood up for America's press freedom agenda in this particular case.

Al Jazeera, owned by Qatar, has no interest in airing the dirty and/or bloody linen of the emir next door.

Bahraini hospitality toward news-gatherers of the Persian menace obviously has its limits.

Press TV's most recent report featured its Bahrain correspondent, Aris Roussinos, pushing a luggage cart through Heathrow Airport while giving an informative and thoughtful interview on the kinds of things that the Bahrain government was apparently not at all keen on him seeing as he spent a week in Bahrain evading the authorities and observing the crackdown.

If freedom-loving consumers of global media find Iranian reporting intolerable, however, here’s a 17-minute clip from an Australian investigative show called Dateline. It features nervy reporting by reporter Yaara Bou Melhem from inside Bahrain, and a stark picture of the hidden war that we’re not supposed to see.

The report can be viewed in its entirety at Dateline's website.

The reporting is deliberately low-key, a welcome contrast to the hyperventilating outrage needed to keep the humanitarian intervention balloon inflated in Libya (or the anti-Iranian jihad barreling along in the Gulf states, for that matter).

In one sequence, a Human Rights Watch representative directs the reporter’s attention to a crime scene that has come to symbolize the worst excesses of Bahrain’s riot police: the place where a young man, Hani Jumah, was beaten. Apparently, he was not a demonstrator; he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time as riot police swept the area. The camera pans on the bloodstained floor of a deserted construction site as the HRW staffer relates with forensic detachment: “We found fragments of his kneecap...we also found one of his teeth.” And you’re left to wonder: how does someone get beaten so severely a piece of his kneecap is dislodged from his body? The young man was taken to the hospital for treatment, then got disappeared from the hospital. His family was summoned to retrieve his body four days later.

I originally found the Dateline clip on the Facebook page of Bahrain’s leading human rights activist, Nabeel Rajab. He’s featured in the report, describing how 25 masked security personnel paid him a night visit to object to his activities with a three-hour session of interrogation and verbal and physical abuse.

A consistent theme is the persistent efforts of the regime and its personnel to characterize opposition as “sectarian”. One wounded protester described being beaten in the hospital (before he was transported to a police station for further beatings) and being told that he had ruined the country and would be “sent back to Iran.”

Najeeb’s site is mostly in Arabic. But if you open Google translator in a separate tab, you can cut and paste the text and a surprisingly good English translation floats onto the screen like a message from another world—which, if you think in terms of the media blackout in Bahrain, is exactly where it’s coming from.


Peter Lee is a business man who has spent thirty years observing, analyzing, and writing on Asian affairs. Lee can be reached at peterrlee-2000@yahoo.

[vanlose kid]

Facebook bans pages calling for Palestinian uprising

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (photo) shut down pages on his social network that were calling for an uprising in Palestine to begin on May 15, the date marked by Palestinians as the Nakba.

Since the 6th of March, several Facebook pages have called for a third intifada. They garnered up to half a million supporters.

Facebook made the decision to pull at the request of the Israeli authorities.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article169258.html

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[JackRiddler]

That should put an end to the era in which revolutionaries imagine the uses of Facebook outweigh the risks -- and in the case of Egypt they obviously did! -- but it probably will require a few more lessons.

[AlicetheKurious]

Sorry I haven't had time to post recently, but a couple of days ago I did respond with an unusually long email to a friend's inquiry about what the situation is. It covers pretty much what I'd say in a post, so I hope nobody minds if I just cut-and-paste it here:

I'm glad you didn't ask me how optimistic I am a week ago or before! I was in the full throes of depression, sparked by the referendum on March 19. It was a blast of icy water that woke us up to reality after the euphoria of the revolution. Someone once said that revolutions are marathons, not sprints, and we're learning this the hard way.

On the bright side, the revolution succeeded in breaking down the infamous "barrier of fear" so that everything is now on the table and open to discussion and debate. Mubarak is no longer the dictator and many of his henchmen are under arrest and facing charges that could send them to prison for a long time. Overall, most of the media is freer than ever before; in fact, I'd say it's now freer than most media in the West. We have access to so much more information than we ever could have dreamed and no subject is really taboo (a refreshing change from all the "red lines" that could not even be approached, let alone crossed before).

More people than ever are becoming politically informed and engaged. Several very interesting new political parties are being formed, new newspapers and tv stations are being launched, and independent labor unions are sprouting like mushrooms all over Egypt.

For the first time in at least 3 decades, we have qualified government ministers and a popular will that share a genuine commitment to Egypt's economic and social development: studies detailing vital and innovative national projects are being taken out of the drawers where they'd been gathering dust, and the first concrete steps are being taken to begin implementing them.

That's the bright side, but unfortunately that's not the only side. Mubarak obviously did not rule alone. Over 30 years (actually far longer), Egypt was a true dictatorship, in which every single position of power or influence was occupied by individuals appointed on the basis of their corruptibility and loyalty to the regime. That includes not only the gang of billionaire businessmen/high-level government officials who went from rags to unimaginable wealth as they conspired with the Mubaraks to plunder Egypt's resources and assets, but also those who gave this plunder legal and legislative cover, those who controlled the media (state and private), academia, the military and of course, the obscenely bloated and multi-branched "internal security" apparatus that included a huge unofficial army of mercenary thugs and murderers culled from Egypt's worst prisons. It also includes regime agents and agents provocateurs embedded among religious, county and tribal groups.

None of these disappeared after February 11, when Mubarak was relieved of his duties. While a small number of Mubarak's cronies have been arrested, the vast majority are still free and busily plotting to turn back the clock. Furthermore, Egypt is de facto (although temporarily) under a military dictatorship, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which is headed by the Defense Minister who for decades has been one of Mubarak's closest friends and confidants, Field Marshall Hussein Tantawy. Even more ominously, Tantawy and the top military brass who currently rule Egypt by decree are financially 100% dependent on $1.25 billion in military "aid" that the US provides, and have accumulated fortunes of their own that certainly do not bear scrutiny. It's a safe bet that they take their orders directly from their US patrons, while giving lip-service to the revolution.

Thus public pressure to move the revolution forward has been met with counter-pressure from the other side. This counter-pressure has taken many forms. Mubarak's message before and during the revolution was "the choice is between me and chaos". Accordingly, his regime opened Egypt's maximum-security prisons on January 28th, at the same time as the police disappeared all over Egypt. Many of the thugs who were later captured by civilians described how they were released at gun-point and told by high-level police officers, "Get out there and do your worst: rob, kill, rape, whatever you want. Nobody will stop you, the country is yours."

It is estimated that there are thousands of the regime's mercenary thugs at large and still receiving orders from officials of Egypt's infamous State Security Forces, backed with the enormous financial resources of regime-linked billionaire businessmen.

Their job is to spread chaos and terror so that ordinary citizens will begin to hate the revolution and gladly give up any dreams of freedom in exchange for the "security" of a new dictatorship. To do this, they've been helped by regime agents within the state media (and even in some private media), whose job it is to whip up panic and hysteria by greatly exaggerating the level of violence and crime.

In fact, even with very little effective police, violent crime remains very low. The regime's thugs have been deployed against selected targets guaranteed to attract as much attention as possible, but day-to-day life for most citizens has changed very little. Almost all of it is media hype, combined with clearly well-organized attacks in which the armed forces appear to be complicit. Just to name two examples, a highly-publicized supposed "hit list" of prominent writers and journalists was released to the media, only a few days after progressive leader Mohamed al-Baradei was pelted with rocks when he and a group of 50 supporters went to vote in the referendum. Strangely, al-Baradei's visit to the polling station was announced well in advance, but there was inexplicably no sign of the military whose responsibility it was to provide security for all polling stations.

Only days before that, around 15 people were killed in violent clashes between mysterious thugs and a community of Christians living in the same area where el-Baradei was attacked. Eyewitnesses claimed that the military had supervised the entry of the thugs into the area and watched passively as people were shot and beaten and homes set on fire with molotov cocktails. The state media fanned the flames (pun intended) by falsely reporting that several mosques nearby had been set on fire by marauding Christians.

Similarly, a couple of days ago, there was a football match between Egypt and Tunisia. Cairo stadium was filled with banners proclaiming the solidarity and brotherhood between the two peoples, and the atmosphere was incredibly positive. Then, just as the game ended, a huge mob of armed men invaded the field and began to attack the players, then to vandalize the stadium itself. Six Egyptian players were badly injured and three from the Tunisian team, and the stadium suffered LE 50 million's worth of damage. It was horrible, like watching a nightmare unfold.

Only later, we found out that someone had filed a police report stating that at around 10 o'clock that morning, thousands of hardened-looking thugs armed with clubs and knives and even swords had broken into the stadium and nobody had tried to stop them. Nothing was done, even though the game began at 6 pm, so there was plenty of time to arrest them or get them out or even to cancel the game. Even more suspicious, the impenetrable metal gates that led from the spectator area to the field, were inexplicably opened just before the end of the game. These gates had never even been opened since they were installed, ever. Furthermore, even though the military were called in, and they surrounded the stadium with military police, they only arrested 17 out of the thousands of thugs.

That's just a small example of the kind of thing that's going on. The military has been very, very slow to take any action that curtails the power of the old regime, including against some of Mubarak's most powerful cronies and thugs, but has been utterly brutal in putting down demonstrations by unarmed students or workers or democracy activists. They've used beatings, electric cattle prods, live gunshots, summary military trials and even the so-called "virginity tests" that I'm sure you've heard of, against peaceful protesters, while invariably watching passively or quietly disappearing when the real thugs appear. All the while, they've been giving lip-service to the objectives of the revolution and claiming to be its biggest supporters.

They've released some of Egypt's most notorious criminals, including the fanatics who killed Sadat and other maniac Islamists under the pretext that they are releasing "political prisoners" while refusing to release hundreds of unarmed demonstrators who were arrested before and during the revolution, many of whom have utterly disappeared.

Besides the mercenary thugs that the regime regularly employed to terrorize opponents and ordinary citizens, the so-called Salafists, financed heavily by Saudi Arabia, have suddenly emerged to whip up fears of an Islamic takeover of Egypt. The Salafists under Mubarak scrupulously avoided politics, other than to issue to occasional fatwa against anybody who opposed him or his regime. They actually issued a fatwa at the beginning of the revolution claiming that to rise up against the government is haram and a sin against God and anybody who did so should be put to death. They reserved their most virulent verbal attacks and threats for Mohamed al-Baradei, oddly enough, just like the state-owned media under Mubarak.

Suddenly, the Salafists are claiming that the revolution was theirs all along, and that its goals are to establish an Islamic state in Egypt. They're organizing politically at the same time as they're spreading terror wherever they go. You look around and it's quite shocking how many of them there seem to be suddenly: men dressed like Pakistanis with long bushy beards and women covered head to toe in black with only their eyes peering out. (OK, they're not all salafists, and even within salafism there's a spectrum of views, including some who claim that an organized campaign is being waged to defame them using fake salafists).

Regardless, like the mercenary thugs, some people claiming to be salafists (but never caught or arrested for some reason) also engaged in high-profile violence: last week they attacked a Christian man in Upper Egypt and cut off his ear, which sent shock waves throughout the country. Two days ago they rampaged through a number of mosques in the Delta, smashing and burning them because they contained "infidel" shrines to Muslim saints. They've already proclaimed that all "moulids" (popular festivals for saints) are forbidden and those attending them will be attacked.

Oddly enough, the military has not seen fit to use its cattle prods on any of these people, nor even to arrest them under its rather harsh new anti-thuggery law. In fact, the guys who cut off the Christian man's ear were not even arrested: instead, a "reconciliation" was organized between Muslim and Christian religious authorities in the town, under the approving eye of the military(!!)

While more and more people are waking up to the fact that the military is not our friend, they are pinning their hopes on the fact that within 6 months the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will transfer power to an elected civilian parliament. So most of the progressive forces are mobilizing rather frenziedly to win as many seats as possible in the parliament, since it is this parliament that will be tasked with appointing a committee to make a new constitution and to make other decisions that will have a profound impact on Egypt's future direction.

Of course, the other side is organizing too, and they have lots of stolen money as well as powerful foreign backers and an established network all over Egypt, at all levels.

I guess by now you're guessing that my optimism has evaporated, which is not true at all. But the euphoria has definitely given way to a more realistic assessment of the situation, in which powerful forces are working very hard to undo the revolution. If this were the 1990s, I'd probably be booking plane tickets out of here. But it's not. The progressive forces in Egypt are so much bigger and stronger now than they were then, and it was they who carried out the revolution and believe me, they will not allow it to be hijacked. They also form a nation-wide network and have enormous, important resources that served the revolution well and will continue to do so. The people who managed to do the impossible and overthrow Mubarak have shown repeatedly that they will not rest until they've rooted out the system that kept him in power, no matter how well-entrenched it currently seems.

There's definitely something in the air, and it helps that for every victory of the counter-revolution it is creating an even bigger backlash that is making people even more determined to keep mobilizing and fighting.

Sorry this has been so long, but even so, it only conveys a small part of the picture.

Bottom line: we're fine, our daily life is thoroughly normal, at this truly historic and fascinating time in Egypt's history.

Love,

XXX

On Edit: I was at a HUUUUGE demonstration in Tahrir Square today. No Muslim Brotherhood in sight (at least on the podium). Instead, the podium was filled with army officers and soldiers leading the chant: "The people/want/the Field Marshal to fall!" (It rhymes in Arabic). People were demanding that the Armed Forces Council be removed and replaced with a civilian presidential council unrelated to the Mubarak regime. There have been mounting rumors of a brewing rebellion within the army against the top military brass, and the military demonstrators' stunning and previously inconceivable display today would seem to substantiate these rumors. (Though there are doubts and suspicions about what's really going on). There should be photos by tomorrow.

[norton ash]

Thank you, Alice. Best wishes.

[vanlose kid]

...

On Edit: I was at a HUUUUGE demonstration in Tahrir Square today. No Muslim Brotherhood in sight (at least on the podium). Instead, the podium was filled with army officers and soldiers leading the chant: "The people/want/the Field Marshal to fall!" (It rhymes in Arabic). People were demanding that the Armed Forces Council be removed and replaced with a civilian presidential council unrelated to the Mubarak regime. There have been mounting rumors of a brewing rebellion within the army against the top military brass, and the military demonstrators' stunning and previously inconceivable display today would seem to substantiate these rumors. (Though there are doubts and suspicions about what's really going on). There should be photos by tomorrow.

hey Alice, thanks for the update. best of luck to you all.

have been following news of the demo on AJ, here are some vids:





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[vanlose kid]

That should put an end to the era in which revolutionaries imagine the uses of Facebook outweigh the risks -- and in the case of Egypt they obviously did! -- but it probably will require a few more lessons.

that will be decided on a case by case basis according to merit: i.e who's revolting where and for what, JR. you know that.



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[JackRiddler]

I Fell for Disinformation About Baradei!

The story about Baradei saying he would go to war with Israel if there was another attack on Gaza appears to be a fabrication! I saw it via RI, when hava1 posted the text from Ynet on the "Goldstone Report" thread.

Of course I would never allow Ynet to stand as the source for such a serious-sounding claim. After a search, I found the same story, published on the same day, in Tehran Times. (The link I quote from the "Occupied Palestine" blog, above, is a faithful copy-paste from the Tehran Times, here: http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=237890.)

So I figured if it's in the propaganda presses of both Israel and Iran, it must have happened. Very stupid of me.

The tip-off should have been that the reports say Baradei gave this interview to the "Arab newspaper" Al-Watan, without specifiying where this supposed newspaper is based. It turns out there are several. The other tip-off should be that the story is short and contains only snippet quotes. If there's no context, don't trust it.

In fact, Baradei had not given such an interview. The Al-Watan in question is a Palestinian blog in tabloid style. It was citing older statements he had made, and he had not said anything like the quote put out by Ynet.

Here is a full deconstruction from "The Middle Beast." Right now, this is the top hit if you google Baradei al-Watan, so there is hope for the Web.

http://gahgeer.blogspot.com/2011/04/on- ... on-on.html

Wednesday, 6 April 2011

On El Baradei's "war declaration" on Israel

I had an exchange of tweets with Jim Rissier (@jm111t), who believes that Egyptian presidential hopeful and former head of the IAEA Mohammed El Baradei wanted to declare war on Israel.

The background to the story is a report by the English-language website of Israeli Yidiot Aharonot daily (also known as Ynet). In the report, El Baradei was quoted as saying that he would wage a war against Israel in the event of an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip.

The allegation fuelled the fears of many, including Jim Rissier's, and also showed how pre-conceived prejudices can sometimes exacerbate a state of paranoia.

The story also showed Ynet's slipping standards, which failed to follow the most basic of journalism rules.

According to Ynet, El Baradei said: "If Israel attacked Gaza, we would declare war against the Zionist regime."

The Israeli paper said that it took the story from another Arab newspaper called Al-Watan.

These quotes have so far been used to tarnish El Baradei, a Nobel laureate, as
it made very quick resonance on the web, and "now there are 1,9 M references! http://bit.ly/gbkYRx", according to Rissier.

But let's go through the facts, not the incitement.

Al-Watan newspaper is a generic name of Arab newspapers, such as The Times or the Post in Europe and America. Several Arab papers under the same name are published in Syria, Saudi Arabi and Qatar.

However, none of them published such an article, according to their websites.

A further search on Google, shows that the original story came from a Palestinian source called Dunya al-Watan, which is not even a newspaper.

In the original story, available here in Arabic,
(http://www.alwatanvoice.com/arabic/news ... 72451.html)
there isn't a single mention of the word "Zionist", or a direct quote from El Baradei on the declaration of war against Israel.

The paper says: "If he wins the elections, he will discuss ways to activate the joint Arab defence treaty in case of a future attack on Gaza."

The story further adds quotes from El Baradei on his election platform and promises.

Dunya al-Watan, for the uninitiated, is a news website that thrives on strange news items and generates income from advertisements by Palestinian companies. Yes, a sort of a tabloid, but never a serious newspaper.

Look at few other headlines from this "news" source:
"Gaddafi sent to an oasis in the desert"
"Egyptian designer found dead in his apartment"
"Lebanese artist's travel to Egypt barred after her porn film"
Naturally, El Baradei's story was headlined: "El Baradei: We will declare war on Israel if Gaza is attacked."

In addition, the comments made by El Baradei are part of a one-hour interview on an Egyptian TV talk show, which can be viewed in full here.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlK89j7aGg4

As part of the interview, at 2200 through the video, El Baradei answers a question about his response to an attack on Gaza:

A: "If Israel attacks Gaza, it has to, well, at the same time I can't work alone. Where is the Arab world?"
Q: "Will you send your armed forces if you are a president to repel the attack on Gaza?"
A: "I have to think it through, I cant' tell you; I will see what the circumstances. There is a joint defence treaty; the Arab states that are fighting each other now must stand by each other."

Of course, among Rissier's 1.9 million references to this story on Google, none comes from any credible media source or publication - except Ynet.

But since Ynet has recently begun to read anyone's mind when it comes to Israel - see their coverage of Goldstone's alleged "retraction" - then this is not a surprise.

But sourcing a news story from a shady website without checking the original material is just a new low, Ynet.

Perhaps El Baradei should consider a libel action.

So much for my stupid strategy of believing something just because it's both in the Iranian and Israeli propaganda press. Everyone, 1.9 million google references, fell for this because Ynet ran it, and that includes the Iranians... and me. I wondered, I even said, "note the nuance difference" as I ran both articles, but still.

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


From the "Goldstone Report" thread, further comment:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4051939,00.html

lBaradei: We'll fight back if Israel attacks Gaza
In interview with Arab newspaper, former IAEA chief says if elected as Egypt's next president he will open Rafah crossing in case of an Israeli attack

...

In an interview with the Al-Watan newspaper he said...

Hava, this article is a crude disinfo plant. I'm willing to bet my right arm that El Baradei has never given any interview to "Al-Watan" (which one? the one run by students in Kuwait? The rather obscure newspaper from the tiny Sultanate of Oman? I had to Google "Al Watan" to find out if there even exists a newspaper called "Al-Watan"). The first clue is the lack of clarity about the newspaper and in which country it's published, only that it's "Arab". The second clue is that nobody who has any knowledge about El Baradei or who has watched his hours of live interviews could possibly believe that he would say anything vaguely resembling this quote. That is so outrageous it would be funny if it weren't scary that so many people are still willing to believe without question whatever whoppers are published in the Israeli press. What is it about El-Baradei that makes the Mubarak regime, the Saudi-backed Salafists and Israel all want to defame him so much?? Believe me, according to credible reports, the Israeli government is the only one making belligerent military threats at this time.

On the other hand, speaking of Kuwaiti newspapers, we recently had a minor scandal here, after a respected Egyptian newspaper, Al-Shorouk, claimed in its news summary that the German Der Spiegel had published an interview with Egypt's Defense Minister and Head of the Armed Forces Council, Field Marshall Tantawy. According to Al-Shorouk's brief, in the interview Tantawy made an explosive claim, that Saudi Arabia had threatened to withdraw all Saudi investments in Egypt and expel the millions of Egyptians living and working in Saudi Arabia if the Egyptian government prosecutes and tries Hosni Mubarak. After vainly searching the Der Spiegel website for the original interview, some Egyptian journalists contacted Al-Shorouk, only to find out that the info had been taken from the Kuwaiti Al-Anba newspaper. The puzzle of the missing interview caused quite a brouhaha in Egyptian internet circles, prompting the official spokesperson for Der Spiegel to call in to talk shows to categorically deny that Der Spiegel had conducted or published any such interview.

Why did the Kuwaiti newspaper publish a non-existent interview? How long would it have remained unquestioned if some careless or rookie employee at El-Shorouk hadn't reported it?

Bottom line: intelligence agencies, among others, plant disinfo in obscure or compromised newspapers in order to "launder" it so it can later be picked up and published elsewhere. The Mossad has a long history of doing just that: in fact, more commonly they publish some claim which is later reported by a reputable newspaper and then quotes are selectively taken from the reputable newspaper in order to get the Mossad's message out.

This goes something like this:

Ynet News: "Israeli intelligence sources insist that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program."

As-Safir: "According to the Israeli Ynet online newspaper, Israel claims that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program."

Jerusalem Post: "According to the Lebanese As-Safir, intelligence sources insist that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program."

New York Times: "Arab sources report intelligence claims that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program."

From there, it hits the agencies and is trumpeted all over the globe.

(I use this example because that's exactly what happened in the case of Syria's so-called "secret nuclear weapons program" a few years ago.)

Unless this "news" is corroborated (highly unlikely), it can safely be assumed to be false.