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by WakeUpAndLive » Fri Jan 28, 2011 7:12 pm
23 wrote:While my ears listened to Mubarak on AJ, my eyes were skimming this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ising.html
by seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 28, 2011 7:29 pm
Egypt's Day of Reckoning: Mubarak Regime Could Collapse in the Face of Massive Protests
The corruption of government officials, the bulging prisons, the laughable elections, the whole vast, sclerotic edifice of power has at last brought Egyptians on to their streets.
January 28, 2011 |
A day of prayer or a day of rage? All Egypt was waiting for the Muslim Sabbath today – not to mention Egypt's fearful allies – as the country's ageing President clings to power after nights of violence that have shaken America's faith in the stability of the Mubarak regime.
Five men have so far been killed and almost 1,000 others have been imprisoned, police have beaten women and for the first time an office of the ruling National Democratic Party was set on fire. Rumours are as dangerous as tear gas here. A Cairo daily has been claiming that one of President Hosni Mubarak's top advisers has fled to London with 97 suitcases of cash, but other reports speak of an enraged President shouting at senior police officers for not dealing more harshly with demonstrators.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the opposition leader and Nobel prize-winning former UN official, flew back to Egypt last night but no one believes – except perhaps the Americans – that he can become a focus for the protest movements that have sprung up across the country.
Already there have been signs that those tired of Mubarak's corrupt and undemocratic rule have been trying to persuade the ill-paid policemen patrolling Cairo to join them. "Brothers! Brothers! How much do they pay you?" one of the crowds began shouting at the cops in Cairo. But no one is negotiating – there is nothing to negotiate except the departure of Mubarak, and the Egyptian government says and does nothing, which is pretty much what it has been doing for the past three decades.
People talk of revolution but there is no one to replace Mubarak's men – he never appointed a vice-president – and one Egyptian journalist yesterday told me he had even found some friends who feel sorry for the isolated, lonely President. Mubarak is 82 and even hinted he would stand for president again – to the outrage of millions of Egyptians.
The barren, horrible truth, however, is that save for its brutal police force and its ominously docile army – which, by the way, does not look favourably upon Mubarak's son Gamal – the government is powerless. This is revolution by Twitter and revolution by Facebook, and technology long ago took away the dismal rules of censorship.
Mubarak's men seem to have lost all sense of initiative. Their party newspapers are filled with self-delusion, pushing the massive demonstrations to the foot of front pages as if this will keep the crowds from the streets – as if, indeed, by belittling the story, the demonstrations never happened.
But you don't need to read the papers to see what has gone wrong. The filth and the slums, the open sewers and the corruption of every government official, the bulging prisons, the laughable elections, the whole vast, sclerotic edifice of power has at last brought Egyptians on to their streets.
Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, spotted something important at the recent summit of Arab leaders at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "Tunisia is not far from us," he said. "The Arab men are broken." But are they? One old friend told me a frightening story about a poor Egyptian who said he had no interest in moving the corrupt leadership from their desert gated communities. "At least we now know where they live," he said. There are more than 80 million people in Egypt, 30 per cent of them under 20. And they are no longer afraid.
And a kind of Egyptian nationalism – rather than Islamism – is making itself felt at the demonstrations. January 25 is National Police Day – to honour the police force who died fighting British troops in Ishmaelia – and the government clucked its tongue at the crowds, telling them they were disgracing their martyrs. No, shouted the crowds, those policemen who died at Ishmaelia were brave men, not represented by their descendants in uniform today.
This is not an unclever government, though. There is a kind of shrewdness in the gradual freeing of the press and television of this ramshackle pseudo-democracy. Egyptians had been given just enough air to breathe, to keep them quiet, to enjoy their docility in this vast farming land. Farmers are not revolutionaries, but when the millions thronged to the great cities, to the slums and collapsing houses and universities, which gave them degrees and no jobs, something must have happened.
"We are proud of the Tunisians – they have shown Egyptians how to have pride," another Egyptian colleague said yesterday. "They were inspiring but the regime here was smarter than Ben Ali in Tunisia. It provided a veneer of opposition by not arresting all the Muslim Brotherhood, then by telling the Americans that the great fear should be Islamism, that Mubarak was all that stood between them and 'terror' – a message the US has been in a mood to hear for the past 10 years."
There are various clues that the authorities in Cairo realised something was afoot. Several Egyptians have told me that on 24 January, security men were taking down pictures of Gamal Mubarak from the slums – lest they provoke the crowds. But the vast number of arrests, the police street beatings – of women as well as men – and the near-collapse of the Egyptian stock market bear the marks of panic rather than cunning.
And one of the problems has been created by the regime itself; it has systematically got rid of anyone with charisma, thrown them out of the country, politically emasculating any real opposition by imprisoning many of them. The Americans and the EU are telling the regime to listen to the people – but who are these people, who are their leaders? This is not an Islamic uprising – though it could become one – but, save for the usual talk of Muslim Brotherhood participation in the demonstrations, it is just one mass of Egyptians stifled by decades of failure and humiliation.
But all the Americans seem able to offer Mubarak is a suggestion of reforms – something Egyptians have heard many times before. It's not the first time that violence has come to Egypt's streets, of course. In 1977, there were mass food riots – I was in Cairo at the time and there were many angry, starving people – but the Sadat government managed to control the people by lowering food prices and by imprisonment and torture. There have been police mutinies before – one ruthlessly suppressed by Mubarak himself. But this is something new.
Interestingly, there seems no animosity towards foreigners. Many journalists have been protected by the crowds and – despite America's lamentable support for the Middle East's dictators – there has not so far been a single US flag burned. That shows you what's new. Perhaps a people have grown up – only to discover that their ageing government are all children.
Internet and text messages fail in 'facebook revolution'
Egyptian authorities last night disrupted internet services and mobile-phone text messaging in efforts to stop protesters keeping in touch on social networking sites. The measure was taken as members of an elite counter-terrorism police unit were ordered to take up positions in key locations around Cairo in preparation for a wave of mass rallies today.
Among the places where they are stationed is Tahrir Square, where one of the biggest demonstrations took place. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networking sites have played a vital role in Egypt's protest movement, just as they did in Tunisia, enabling demonstrators to keep in touch and to organise rallies.
Who could succeed Hosni Mubarak?
Gamal Mubarak
Protesters on the streets of Egypt aren't just rallying against the 30-year-reign of President Hosni Mubarak, they are also taking aim at his son Gamal Mubarak, 47, an urbane former investment banker who has scaled the political ladder, prompting speculation that he is being groomed for his father's post.
The youngest son of Mr Mubarak and his half-Welsh wife, Suzanne, Gamal was educated at the elite American University in Cairo, going on to work for the Bank of America.
He entered politics about a decade ago, quickly moving up to become head of the political secretariat of his father's National Democratic Party (NDP). He was heavily involved in the economic liberalisation of Egypt, which pleased investors but provoked the ire of protesters, who blame the policies for lining the pockets of the rich while the poor suffered.
Although he has always denied having an eye on his father's throne, a mysterious campaign sprung up last year, with posters plastered across Cairo calling for Gamal to stand for president in elections scheduled for later this year. His 82-year-old father has not yet declared his candidacy.
Certainly the protesters appeared unhappy with the chosen son, chanting "Gamal, tell your father Egyptians hate you" and tearing up his picture.
Mohamed ElBaradei
Protests in Egypt today will be different from the others that have swept the Middle East in recent weeks in one important way. Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), landed at Cairo airport last night to lead rallies against Hosni Mubarak's rule.
The 68-year-old was born in the Egyptian capital, from where he launched a legal career. He joined the IAEA in the 1980s, becoming head of the UN body in 1997.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq thrust Mr ElBaradei into the public consciousness. He demurred on the US rationale for attacking Saddam Hussein, describing the war as "a glaring example of how, in many cases, the use of force exacerbates the problem rather than solving it". The award, jointly with the IAEA, of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize further rankled with the Bush administration.
He has long been urged to challenge the 82-year-old President, but hitherto has bided his time, insisting first on electoral reform, but his participation in today's protests indicate he is ready. Recent speeches, including recently at Harvard, when he joked that he was "looking for a job" have done nothing to dissuade his supporters, but at 68 his presidency would surely be only a short-term fix to Egypt's problems.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 28, 2011 7:32 pm
WATCH: Journalist Arrested and Beaten Alongside Protesters in Egypt, Secretly Records Ordeal
Guardian reporter Jack Shenker was arrested and beaten by plainclothes police on Tuesday night and shoved into a truck with dozens of other people.
January 27, 2011 |
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, but we’re going now to Egypt, where running battles between police and anti-government protesters continued into the early hours of Thursday morning. Protesters defied a government ban on gatherings of any kind and a huge police presence to take to the streets for a second day in the largest demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak in three decades, since he took office.
On Wednesday, protesters faced tear gas, water cannon, beatings from the heavy police presence on the streets of Cairo. Witnesses said that live ammunition was also fired into the air. Up to 1,200 people were arrested, including a number of journalists. Six people have reportedly been killed since Tuesday.
Elsewhere in the country, about 1,000 people gathered outside the morgue in Suez to protest against the death of one of three protesters who died in clashes on Tuesday. Protesters threw petrol bombs at a government building, setting parts of it on fire.
The unprecedented popular demonstrations have been inspired by the recent uprising in Tunisia. Protesters have vowed to stay on the streets until the government falls. Organizers are promising to hold the biggest demonstrations yet on Friday after weekly prayers. They’ve been using social networking sites to call for fresh demonstrations, but both Facebook and Twitter have been periodically blocked inside Egypt.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the U.N. nuclear agency and Nobel Peace laureate, is expected to return to Egypt from Vienna today to join the demonstrations.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not criticize the Egyptian government, saying only the country was stable and Egyptians have the right to protest, while urging all parties to avoid violence.
SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: As we monitor this situation carefully, we call on all parties to exercise restraint and refrain from violence. We support the universal rights of the Egyptian people, including the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly, and we urge the Egyptian authorities not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications, including on social media sites. We believe strongly that the Egyptian government has an important opportunity at this moment in time to implement political, economic and social reforms to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.
AMY GOODMAN: Among the journalists who were detained in Egypt was Guardian reporter Jack Shenker. He was arrested and beaten by plainclothes police on Tuesday night and shoved into a truck with dozens of other people. He managed to keep his dictaphone with him and recorded what was happening as the truck carried them outside of Cairo. The dramatic audio was posted on the Guardian website. This is some of what he described.
JACK SHENKER: So, we’re in the back of a central security truck after being severely beaten and herded into a sort of holding pen in downtown Cairo and then transferred us onto the truck and a few more beatings. And we’re now being driven out to the desert. And the police have been incredibly violent with all of us in the truck. And we’re herded in here. There must between 30 and 40 people in a very confined space.
The truck is spinning around corners, throwing us side by side, and people are drenched in sweat and they’re falling all over. It’s completely pitch black in here. We just have the lights of the orange street lamps outside shining through the very thick grates, and they’re illuminating people with blood on their faces, bruises all over them. Some people are curled up in the corner praying. Others are desperately trying to use cell phones.
All of us, including me, had our cell phones removed, but some of them obviously had more than one, and that got missed by the police. But most of the phones aren’t working, and there’s a desperate struggle for the ones that are, for people to phone loved ones and tell them that they’re being taken away.
People are suggesting that there could be a number of outcomes, that they could be taking us away to torture and question us over the burning of a police truck, which is what was going on when I was grabbed by state security. I was just about 20 meters from it, and they stormed unexpectedly and took everybody around it. Or they may have had orders to release us, in which case the standard thing for the police to do is to take us right out dozens of miles into the desert, extort us all the money we’re worth, and then leave us by the side of the road with no phones, no money and several dozen miles outside of the city. So, we’re waiting to see what’s happening.
And despite the fact that we’ve all been arrested and beaten, there’s still a huge amount of excitement over what we’ve seen today in the protests in South Tahrir. So, we’ll see how this plays out.
People are banging on the—we’ve come to a stop, and people were banging again and again on the walls, protest. And the truck is now doing quick spurts forward and stopping to throw us all around. And people are saying now we will definitely get beaten. It’s all very confusing. And we still have several injured people in here losing blood.
People are banging and screaming to be let out. There is a young man who has completely collapsed. He seems to be—he seems to be struggling for breath. And it actually looks very serious. He’s looking desperately ill. He’s collapsed on the bench. People are around him trying to give him air. They’re taking off his shirt in an attempt to, I think, make sure that he can breathe OK. And meanwhile, people on the other side of this truck are screaming out the windows, saying, "We have an injured person, a dying person in here. We need help!" And yet, still, we’re still locked inside, and nothing is happening.
They’re screaming now, "A man is dying! A man is dying!" And the door has been forced open. And there was a surge forward to get out of the door, but now people are holding back so that the man who is suffering desperately from a diabetes coma can get through. But the police are at the door. They’re not letting people out. In fact, they’re beating people.
The door is open. People are being hauled out by police, beaten. Someone next to me is collapsing from the heat and beating. And meanwhile, the whole truck is being rocked and shaken. It’s completely disorientating and very confusing and quite a bit intimidating. The whole truck is swaying from side to side. People are screaming outside. It’s very unclear what the situation is.
And now, suddenly, suddenly the police seem to have fallen back, and we’re charging out of the truck. The man who has fallen into the diabetes coma has been carried out. And now we are all—we are all now following. There’s a push and a crush to go through this incredibly narrow one-man doorway. And now we are physically forcing our way out. We are physically forcing our way out. So we’ve burst out of the truck, past the police lines.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Guardian reporter Jack Shenker speaking on Tuesday night in Cairo. We go to break, and when we come back, he will join us on the phone from Egypt.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Guardian reporter Jack Shenker, who is with us on the telephone from Cairo.
We have just listened to very dramatic reporting, Jack, of your time Tuesday night when you were thrown into a van, not knowing where you would be, with scores of other people. Describe what happened after that and then, in these next few days, what has been taking place in the streets of Cairo.
JACK SHENKER: Hi, Amy.
Well, it was certainly a very dramatic—dramatic scene. After we were hauled into the truck, we were taken right out into the desert, and there was a lot of confusion, and everybody was very disorientated. And as you heard in the audio report, we also had a lot of injured people, people losing blood, and one man who had passed out into a diabetic coma. We actually managed to force our way out of the truck and escape into the street in the end. One of the people with us in the truck was the son of a very prominent political dissident here, and his relatives had shown up, and they helped secure our release. After that, we had to make our way back into the city. The police had already taken and have still got our wallets and mobiles, so we were obviously quite hampered in terms of being able to move around. But the important thing, I think, although it was a horrifying experience for me, was that this is very much not an exception but a rule when it comes to the way in which the Mubarak security apparatus is dealing with members of this uprising.
The kind of scenes we saw on Tuesday and again yesterday are really, really unprecedented. I’ve covered Cairo for The Guardian for a few years now, and I’ve been on dozens of protests, where you just see the same old faces, maybe 100 or 200 people, surrounded by twice as many riot police. And even though there’s a lot of latent hostility to the Mubarak regime among members of the Egyptian population, many people feel too intimidated, too scared to come out and confront the regime directly. And they also have too much to lose. You know, people—unemployment is very high. Prices are very high. People’s standard of living is—has taken a real battering. And people don’t want to risk what they’ve got for them and their families by going out and confronting the regime. That’s really been the status quo for the past few years. And yet, what we’ve seen on Tuesday and Wednesday is that that fear barrier seems to have been broken. I’ve spoken to so many people who—including people in the truck with me the other night, who are lawyers and bank analysts and software engineers. These are sort of middle-class people who are generally enjoying quite a comfortable standard of living; they’re not on the poverty line. They’ve got a lot to lose, and yet they’re still being motivated to come out, to be beaten, to be hit by water cannons, to be carried off into the desert. And that’s really a remarkable change from what we’ve seen over the past few years.
So I think the next few days are going to be very interesting. There are big protests planned for tomorrow. Today is slightly a lull in the storm, although there’s a lot of violence still going on in Suez, which is a big city to the east of Cairo. In the capital itself, though, today has been a bit quieter. Activists are preparing for tomorrow. After the afternoon prayers, there’s going to be a really big surge, and people are going to try and retake the streets and reoccupy the central square, which holds so much symbolic significance for the protesters, because they really—you know, Egyptians haven’t been in control of their own streets for decades now. The emergency law prohibits people organizing and rallying. And the fact that they took control of the central square on Tuesday has really emboldened people, and people obviously feel inspired by Tunisia, as well. So I think the next couple of days are going to be very, very interesting.
AMY GOODMAN: Jack Shenker, has there been much discussion of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace laureate, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, for a while talked about as a presidential candidate, returning today from Vienna to Egypt to join in these massive protests?
JACK SHENKER: Yes. Well, perceptions of ElBaradei are quite mixed. As you probably know, when he arrived back in Egypt after a long absence early last year in 2010, he brought with him a huge wave of optimism. Here was an establishment figurehead who had the kind of credibility of being part of the Egyptian elite, and yet who was standing up and having the courage to stand up and point out all of the political and social and economic grievances which have been ailing Egyptians for so many decades. And there was a real feeling that momentum was going to build behind him and that he could put a lot of sustained pressure on the Mubarak regime.
In recent months, that has faded somewhat. There have been criticisms, rightly or wrongly, that ElBaradei has spent too much time out of the country, he hasn’t spent enough time on the streets with Egyptian protesters, where he could offer them protection through his fame. And there was a criticism, as well, because his initial response to these protests was quite lukewarm. He said that he didn’t want to see a Tunisia-style explosion on the streets of Cairo, and he would rather use existing avenues, including a petition, which he’s been—he’s collected almost one million signatures, for political reform. And obviously that doesn’t feel radical enough for a lot of the people who have been brought down to the streets in recent days.
Since the uprising began on Tuesday, he’s become a lot more vocal. And as you say, he’s flying back from Vienna. And from the activists I’ve spoken to, opinion is split between those who are angry at him and think that he’s trying to jump on the bandwagon much too late and sort of crash the party, as it were, and—but there’s also those who believe that actually his presence on the streets, if indeed he does come down to the streets, would be incredibly helpful, because he is a man with international recognition, he’s feted by Western capitals, including London and Washington, and quite simply, if he’s standing in the middle of Tahrir Square—that’s the central square in Cairo, which was occupied by demonstrators on Tuesday—then the police are going to have to think very, very hard about firing tear gas, firing water cannons, and pelting protesters with rocks, which is what happened on Tuesday. So, there’s a feeling that he could offer protesters a measure of protection, but also anger that he hasn’t been more involved and more vocal about what’s going on in the last few days.
AMY GOODMAN: Jack Shenker, has the president, has Hosni Mubarak, issued any statement? And also, what about the police crackdown on the streets?
JACK SHENKER: Well, President Mubarak has stayed uncharacteristically silent, and that’s become a real talking point in the last few days. There’s a feeling that he doesn’t want to bestow any kind of—any kind of legitimacy or credibility on the uprisings going on by stooping to discuss it. He’s trying to sort of stay above the fray, even though it’s very clear that, not just this government regime, but him personally, he is a personal target of many of the protesters. And, you know, what started as a demand for—specific demands—the resignation of the interior minister, an increase in the minimum wage, political reform—that has now changed. And I have spoken to dozens and dozens of protesters, all of whom say nothing less than President Mubarak standing down and leaving the country will be acceptable for them.
Whilst talking on the phone to you, actually, I’ve just been contacted by the Ministry of Information here, who say that the ruling NDP party are about to have a press conference around the corner, where Safwat El-Sherif, who’s a senior member of the ruling party, will be addressing reporters about the protests. So, that could be our first full official statement on what’s happening from the government. But we still haven’t heard anything from Mubarak himself.
As for the police crackdown on the streets, the last tally that I had was that between 800 and 900 protesters have been arrested. To be honest, it’s likely that the figure is much higher, because many people, as we were when we were taken away—we weren’t registered or processed. We were just beaten up and herded into a van and driven off. There was no formal, you know, registration or compiling of lists. So the official figure stands at close to 900. I’m sure that that will increase as the day goes on. And several hundred of those will—are being taken to a prosecutor’s office in Cairo today for the first stage of their interrogations. And there’s a big push by activists today to get lawyers down to them to help them through that.
But very much, security remains very high on the streets. There is an absolutely massive police presence on pretty much every street corner in downtown Cairo, both uniformed riot police and plain-clothed state security officers. And small groups of people, especially young men, are being targeted. People are being snatched off the streets. If it looks like they might be protesters, if it looks like they might be political activists, they are being targeted by the state security services to try and avoid anybody being in groups coalescing and rallies spontaneously breaking out. So, yeah, I imagine things will only intensify over the night. And certainly tomorrow afternoon, we’re going to see a very, very big presence of both protesters and police on the streets.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Jack Shenker, where is the Muslim Brotherhood in all of this, the largest opposition group to President Mubarak?
JACK SHENKER: Well, the Muslim Brotherhood has had quite a schizophrenic attitude toward these protests. They initially said they weren’t going to participate in them. This was the previous week before they started. Their Guidance Council announced that they would be having nothing to do with them, which provoked the anger of some of their younger members. There’s a real split within the Muslim Brotherhood between the older, more conservative members of the group, who believe that the Muslim Brotherhood is better off concentrating on social work and evangelism and strengthening the Islamic nature of Egyptian society and steering clear of politics, and they are very much at odds with a much younger generation of Muslim Brotherhood activists who want to confront the regime and who want to form alliances with liberals and secular activists and Coptic Christian groups, as well, to challenge the regime together. And after the Guidance Council said they wouldn’t be participating in the protests, they then had to issue a U-turn of sorts, which said that younger members or all Muslim Brotherhood member were welcome to participate in a personal capacity and that they would be doing some—they would be symbolically supporting the protests.
Now that things have really taken off, and, you know, we’ve seen this uprising in the streets, I think they’re reassessing their strategy. And they remain—despite the fact that the Western media often exaggerates their influence, they do remain the largest organized opposition force in Egypt and certainly the most—the organization with the most capability to bring large numbers of people onto the street. So, their response in the next few days is definitely going to be crucial to all of this. But to be honest, even if they don’t get involved on a formal level, I think there’s now so much energy and so much momentum behind what’s going on that I don’t think it will make much difference. I think that we’ll still see a lot of people on the streets tomorrow. And whatever happens over the next few days and the next few weeks, I think a really crucial fear barrier has been crossed in Egypt, and that’s going to have major consequences further down the line.
AMY GOODMAN: Jack Shenker, I want to thank you very much for joining us from Cairo, and I am glad you’re safe.
WikiLeaks Cables Show Close US Relationship With Egyptian President
US embassy cable predicted Hosni Mubarak, if still alive in 2011, would run again for presidency 'and, inevitably, win'
by Luke Harding
Secret US embassy cables sent from Cairo in the past two years reveal that the Obama administration wanted to maintain a close political and military relationship with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, who is now facing a popular uprising.
Hosni Mubarak and Barack Obama at the White House in 2009. (Photograph: Jim Young/Reuters)A frank briefing note in May 2009 ahead of Mubarak's trip to Washington, leaked by WikiLeaks, reported that the Egyptian president had a dismal opinion of Obama's predecessor, George Bush.
"The Egyptians want the visit to demonstrate that Egypt remains America's 'indispensable Arab ally', and that bilateral tensions have abated. President Mubarak is the proud leader of a proud nation ... Mubarak is 81 years old and in reasonably good health; his most notable problem is a hearing deficit in his left ear. He responds well to respect for Egypt and for his position, but is not swayed by personal flattery," the cable said.
"Mubarak peppers his observations with anecdotes that demonstrate both his long experience and his sense of humor ... During his 28-year tenure, he survived at least three assassination attempts, maintained peace with Israel, weathered two wars in Iraq and post-2003 regional instability, intermittent economic downturns, and a manageable but chronic internal terrorist threat.
"He is a tried and true realist, innately cautious and conservative, and has little time for idealistic goals. Mubarak viewed President Bush as naive, controlled by subordinates, and totally unprepared for dealing with post-Saddam Iraq, especially the rise of Iran's regional influence."
It predicted that if Mubarak were still alive for Egypt's next presidential election in 2011, "it is likely he will run again and, inevitably, win". The most likely contender to succeed him was his son Gamal, the cable suggested.
Another cable, dated 23 February 2009, described a meeting between Gamal and the maverick US senator Joe Lieberman. Lieberman is said to have listened as the president's son expounded on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Iran's growing regional influence and how Saddam Hussein – for all his flaws – was a bulwark against Iranian ambitions.
Another cable, from March 2009, shows the US's astonishingly intimate military relationship with Egypt. Washington provides Cairo $1.3bn annually in foreign military finance (FMF) to purchase US weapons and defence equipment, and the cable said. "President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance programme as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the $1.3bn in annual FMF as 'untouchable compensation' for making and maintaining peace with Israel.
"The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the US military enjoys priority access to the Suez canal and Egyptian airspace."
by 8bitagent » Fri Jan 28, 2011 7:39 pm
by seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 28, 2011 7:41 pm
by lupercal » Fri Jan 28, 2011 8:04 pm
WakeUpAndLive wrote:23 wrote:While my ears listened to Mubarak on AJ, my eyes were skimming this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ising.html
More and more I wonder if the PTB want this civil unrest to spread worldwide, helping distract from something bigger.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 28, 2011 8:04 pm
by Joe Hillshoist » Fri Jan 28, 2011 8:05 pm
Of course, food inflation is not a problem on its own. It is the combustible mixture of poverty, high unemployment, economic disparity and rising living costs that has turned the region into a powder keg.
Arab Labor Organization (ALO) figures show that Arab countries have among the highest unemployment rates in the world -- an average of 14.5 percent in fiscal year 2007/08 compared with the international average of 5.7 percent. The rates may even be higher if one accepts unofficial estimates.
According to national figures, more than 20 percent of Egyptians live on less than two dollars per day, the UN-recognized poverty threshold. In Algeria, about 23 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, while in Morocco it is 14.3 percent, in Tunisia it is 12.8 percent, and in Yemen the rate exceeds 45 percent.
by Searcher08 » Fri Jan 28, 2011 8:45 pm
by Searcher08 » Fri Jan 28, 2011 8:49 pm
by anothershamus » Fri Jan 28, 2011 9:30 pm
by IanEye » Fri Jan 28, 2011 9:39 pm
Jeff wrote:
by anothershamus » Fri Jan 28, 2011 9:58 pm
IanEye wrote:yeah, Jeff called that dance over in the Lounge, cleverly enough!
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=380138#p380138
if they move too quick - ohh aaayy ooohh - they're fallin' down - like a domino...
Brzezinski’s Feared “Global Awakening” Has Arrived
Monumental worldwide rallying cry for freedom threatens to derail new world order agenda
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, January 28, 2011
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s much feared “global political awakening” is in full swing. Revolts in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and other countries represent a truly monumental worldwide rallying cry for freedom that threatens to immeasurably damage the agenda for one world government, but only if the successful revolutionaries can prevent themselves from being co-opted by a paranoid and desperate global elite.
During a Council on Foreign Relations speech in Montreal last year, co-founder with David Rockefeller of the Trilateral Commission and regular Bilderberg attendee Zbigniew Brzezinski warned of a “global political awakening,” mainly comprising of younger people in developing states, that threatened to topple the existing international order.
Reading the full extent of Brzezinski’s words in light of the global revolts that we now see spreading like wildfire across the planet provides an astounding insight into how crucially important the outcome of this phase of modern history will be to the future geopolitical course of the world, and in turn the survival and growth of human freedom in general.
For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive… The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination… The worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening… That awakening is socially massive and politically radicalizing… The nearly universal access to radio, television and increasingly the Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions and envy that can be galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or religious passions. These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America still perches…
The youth of the Third World are particularly restless and resentful. The demographic revolution they embody is thus a political time-bomb, as well… Their potential revolutionary spearhead is likely to emerge from among the scores of millions of students concentrated in the often intellectually dubious “tertiary level” educational institutions of developing countries. Depending on the definition of the tertiary educational level, there are currently worldwide between 80 and 130 million “college” students. Typically originating from the socially insecure lower middle class and inflamed by a sense of social outrage, these millions of students are revolutionaries-in-waiting, already semi-mobilized in large congregations, connected by the Internet and pre-positioned for a replay on a larger scale of what transpired years earlier in Mexico City or in Tiananmen Square. Their physical energy and emotional frustration is just waiting to be triggered by a cause, or a faith, or a hatred…
[The] major world powers, new and old, also face a novel reality: while the lethality of their military might is greater than ever, their capacity to impose control over the politically awakened masses of the world is at a historic low. To put it bluntly: in earlier times, it was easier to control one million people than to physically kill one million people; today, it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million people.
It is important to stress that Brzezinski was not lauding the onset of this “global political awakening,” he was decrying it. As one of the of the chief architects of the “existing global hierarchy” to which he makes reference, Brzezinski himself is under direct threat, as is the continuing ability of the global elite in general to control world affairs.
Brzezinski laments the fact that the Internet has made it almost impossible for the global elite to control the political environment, to control the thoughts and behavior of one million people, which is precisely why Egypt moved to shut down the world wide web yesterday in a desperate bid to prevent activists from organizing against the state.
As is routine whenever riots and revolutions suddenly appear as if out of nowhere, history warns us to not take what we see at face value, and to recall the numerous contrived “color revolutions” that have served little purpose other than to allow the IMF/World Bank global elite to overthrow a rogue power and seize the country via the backdoor through puppet regimes it subsequently installs.
However, the domino-like effect of the global revolution that has accelerated in recent weeks seems to be born out of a genuine, grass roots, organic yearning for real freedom, and an end to dictatorial regimes that the United States and the banking elite have helped to prop up.
The global revolt spreading across the Middle East and North Africa, having already touched Europe with the riots and strikes in Italy, France, Greece and the United Kingdom last year, is characterized as a backlash against dictatorship, police brutality, and political repression. These factors have been seething undercurrents of resentment for years, but only thanks to greater education and easier access to information and the ability to organize through the Internet has a new generation of activists finally said enough is enough. Spiraling food prices, fuel inflation, lower wages and high unemployment have also played a central role.
As Andrew Gavin Marshall writes in his excellent article, Are We Witnessing the Start of a Global Revolution?, “We must not cast aside these protests and uprisings as being instigated by the West, but rather that they emerged organically, and the West is subsequently attempting to co-opt and control the emerging movements.”
In the case of Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia, all three regimes have enjoyed the multi-decade support of the US military-industrial complex. All three were fully compliant vassal states for the new world order. There was no need for contrived or staged “color revolutions” to be prompted by the global elite in these countries.
Indeed, the die was cast when the Obama administration expressed its support for 30 year dictator Hosni Mubarak in the form of a PBS interview yesterday when Vice-President Joe Biden implied that the protesters demands were illegitimate.
“The reflex action of the imperial powers is to further arm and support the oppressive regimes, as well as the potential to organize a destabilization through covert operations or open warfare (as is being done in Yemen),” writes Marshall. “The alternative is to undertake a strategy of “democratization” in which Western NGOs, aid agencies and civil society organizations establish strong contacts and relationships with the domestic civil society in these regions and nations. The objective of this strategy is to organize, fund and help direct the domestic civil society to produce a democratic system made in the image of the West, and thus maintain continuity in the international hierarchy. Essentially, the project of “democratization” implies creating the outward visible constructs of a democratic state (multi-party elections, active civil society, “independent” media, etc) and yet maintain continuity in subservience to the World Bank, IMF, multinational corporations and Western powers.”
Remember – any country that retains its own sovereignty, acts primarily in its own interests and attempts to build itself up as a strong, prosperous, and culturally strong state is an enemy to the globalists. The international hierarchy demands compliance, dependence, weakness and a dilution of heritage and culture in order for every nation to be enveloped within the sphere of global government control.
Make no mistake about it, we are seeing a global revolution, the age of rage is falling upon us like dominoes reaching to every corner of the planet. Whether or not the outcome will topple the current global hierarchy, as Zbigniew Brzezinski fears, remains to be seen, but it will surely depend upon who controls the new governments that will replace the ousted rulers – the people who started the process of change, or the World Bank, IMF, NGO’s and the rest of the global elite who are desperate to save their world government agenda from being derailed.
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
by 82_28 » Sat Jan 29, 2011 12:12 am
jingofever wrote:LINK
Today, Internet users from Cairo to Calcutta are either without the Web or their service is operating at a fraction of its normal capacity. The culprit? A ship off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, dragged its anchor and snagged two major underwater telecommunications cables. Unfortunately for Internet addicts in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan, and India, the SeaMeWe-4 and FLAG Europe-Asia cables, which carry the majority of Internet service between Western Europe and the Middle East and South Asia, were the ones cut.
Some time ago I read an article where an American military officer wished that he had someone in every country who knew where the cables were, so in the event of a whim, the country could be plunged into communications darkness.
by Simulist » Sat Jan 29, 2011 2:29 am
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