VOICE OF GLOBAL UMMAH
Volume 169, February 7, 2011
St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Editors: Mohamed & Rashida Ziauddin
In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent and the Most Merciful
Editorial:
St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Editors: Mohamed & Rashida Ziauddin
In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent and the Most Merciful
Editorial:
Current events in some of the Muslims countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen etc would be remembered in history of the Global Ummah as pivotal moments that brought out the best of the Ummah in their respective countries in terms of fighting against injustice and repression. We wanted to share with you interesting articles and photos on above countries.
TUNISIA
A Tunisian protester surrounded by barbed wire chants slogans by a police barricade near government offices in the Kasbah, the old city of Tunis, Tunisia. Police blocked several roads after a day of violent clashes Wednesday between demonstrators and security forces who fired tear gas and left several people injured. Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
A woman walks by a wall with graffiti that reads "long live freedom" in Tunis, Tunisia. Louafi Larbi/Reuters
Facebook and Arab Dignity
By ROGER COHEN
January 25, 2011
(condensed version)
January 25, 2011
(condensed version)
SIDI BOUZID, TUNISIA
This is where an Arab revolution began, in a hardscrabble stretch of nowhere. If the modern world is divided into dynamic hubs and a static periphery, Sidi Bouzid epitomizes the latter. The town never even appeared on the national weather forecast.
The spark was an altercation on Dec. 17, 2010. It involved a young fruit-and-vegetable peddler named Mohamed Bouazizi and a policewoman much older than him called Faida Hamdy. What exactly transpired between them — who slapped or spat at whom, which insults flew — has already entered the realm of revolutionary myth.
Soon after — this at least is undisputed — Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the modest governor’s building where protesters now gather around portraits of the martyr. Bouazizi would live another 18 days. By then, an Arab dictatorship with a 53-year pedigree was shuddering. Within another 10 days, it had fallen in perhaps the world’s first revolution without a leader.
Or rather, its leader was far away: Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. Its vehicle was the youth of Tunisia, able to use Facebook for instant communication and so cyber-inspire their parents.
Anders Colding-Jorgensen, a Danish psychologist, conducted an experiment in 2009 in which he implied that Copenhagen’s Stork Fountain was about to be demolished and started a Facebook group to save it. The threat was fictitious but the group soon had two new members joining every minute.
The Tunisian revolution was that experiment on steroids. Castro spent years preparing revolution in the Cuban interior, the Sierra Maestra; Facebook propelled insurrection from the interior to the Tunisian capital in 28 days. How could a spat over pears in Nowhereville turn into a national uprising? No Tunisian newspaper or TV network covered it. The West was busy with Christmas. Tunisia was the Arab world’s Luxembourg: Nothing ever happened. Some poor kid’s self-immolation could never break a wall of silence. Or so it seemed.
That day, Dec. 17, a dozen members of Bouazizi’s enraged family gathered outside the governor’s building. They shook the gates and demanded that the governor see them.
“Our family can accept anything but not humiliation,” Samia Bouazizi, the dead man’s sister, told me, sitting under a bare light bulb in a small house near a trough where sheep were feeding.
Humiliation is an important word in this story. It was the “hogra,” or contempt, of the dictator’s kleptocracy that would cyber-galvanize an Arab people. The protests soon swelled. Participants uploaded cellphone images onto Facebook pages. “My daughter, Ons, who’s 16, started showing me what was going on,” said Hichem Saad, a Tunis-based entrepreneur. Al-Jazeera, the Arab TV network, was alerted through Facebook.
Along the way, Bouazizi, who did not even have a high-school diploma, cyber-morphed into a frustrated university graduate: that resonated in a nation where many graduates are jobless. This myth went round the world. Information moving this fast is inspired, rather than bound, by facts. When Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the now ousted dictator, addressed the nation, as he would three times, Facebook-ferried fury was the response.
Ben Ali might have 1.5 million members in his puppet party; he soon faced two million Facebook users. By now Faida Hamdy, the policewoman, had slapped Bouazizi across the face. Perhaps she did. Her cousin told me he slapped her: more hurtling facts too good to check. Hisham Ben Khamsa, who organizes an American movie festival in Tunis, watched with his kids as Ben Ali made his last speech on Jan. 13.
Now, the strongman’s confrontational fury had gone. Like the shah of Iran in 1978 — too late — he had “understood.” He felt the people’s pain. Bread prices would come down. “He hadn’t understood a thing,” Ben Khamsa told me. “This was about dignity, not bread. His political autism was terminal. Everyone was live-commenting the speech on Facebook.” The next night, Ben Ali fled after 23 years in power, short of his predecessor’s 30 years. It’s said the average age of a Tunisian is one dictator and a half. That nightmare is over. Now the new youth minister, a 33-year-old former dissident blogger, tweets from cabinet meetings. Everyone is talking where everyone was silent. “Every Arab nation is waiting for its Bouazizi,” his sister told me.
Some observations: First, the old nostrum goes that it’s either dictators or Islamic fundamentalists in the Arab world because they’re the only organized forces. No, online communities can organize and bite. Second, those communities have no formal ideology but their struggle is to transform humiliation into self-esteem. Tunisia was a Facebook revolution. But I prefer a phrase I heard in Tunis: “The Dignity Revolution.”
EGYPT:
With the unruly sounds of protests in the background, the Egyptian man declared there were 50,000 demonstrators in the streets of Cairo.
“And the number is growing,” he said, raising his voice to be heard on the recording.
Unedited, raw, anonymous and emotional, Egyptian voices are trickling out through a new service that evades attempts by the authorities to suppress them by cutting Internet services.
There is still some cellphone service, so a new social-media link that marries Google, Twitter and SayNow, a voice-based social media platform, gives Egyptians three phone numbers to call and leave a message, which is then posted on the Internet as a recorded Twitter message. The messages are at twitter.com/speak2tweet and can also be heard by telephone.
The result is a story of a revolution unfolding in short bursts. Sometimes speaking for just several seconds, other times for more than a minute, the disembodied voices convey highly charged moments of excitement or calm declarations of what life is like in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, as it seeks to remove its leader.
The messages rolled out as Egyptians seemed to be approaching a crucial point, with hundreds of thousands of people crammed into central Cairo on Tuesday, as protests continued to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.
Protesters have sought to use social media like Facebook and Twitter to muster momentum for attendance at demonstrations, even as the Egyptian authorities have shut off Internet access.
“Urgent news,” one caller to speak2tweet said. “The police have changed to serve the people. We are very happy.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, the account had more than 8,000 followers. On Tuesday, the service started to identify the country from which each recorded message came. While most were from Egypt, they included calls from Germany and the United States in Arabic and English, and messages from Arabic speakers in the Netherlands and Turkey.
It was clear that support for the uprising in Egypt had crossed borders.
“I live in Jordan,” said one man, urging on the demonstrators in a crackly recording. “I want to congratulate Egyptians on their popular revolution.”
One man calling from the United States criticized what appeared to him to be the double standard of democracies that support a “dictator who ruled for 30 years.”
“If you don’t stand with the people who are looking for freedom, they are not going to believe any more of everything you say about democracy and freedom,” the man said.
Another man, speaking for several seconds, introduced himself as an Egyptian engineer named Wael. Without a trace of irony in a message that could potentially be heard by millions, he voiced dismay over cuts to the Internet.
But no Internet connection is needed for speak2tweet, and in Egypt there was some phone service. Vodafone was working for text and voice on Tuesday, while AT&T BlackBerry users said MobiNil was working. Callers in Egypt had three numbers to leave recorded messages, based in the United States at 1-650-419-4196, in Italy at (39-06) 6220-7294 and in Bahrain at (973) 1619-9855.
Then the service will instantly send the recorded call as a Twitter message using the hashtag #egypt. They are subject to international calling charges, but Google and SayNow, which announced last month that it had been acquired by Google, are also exploring the possibility of setting up a local phone number in Egypt, a person close to the project said Tuesday.
“Like many people, we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground,” said a joint statement posted Monday by Ujjwal Singh, the co-founder of SayNow, and AbdelKarim Mardini, Google’s product manager for the Middle East and North Africa.
“Over the weekend, we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service — the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection,” the statement said.
“We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there.”
Global Research, February 2, 2011
Now with a revolution against Mubarak by two million Egyptians, all bets are off about who will replace him and whether the successor government will be friendly to the United States.
Mubarak’s “whole system is corrupt,” said Hesham Korayem, an Egyptian who taught at City University of New York and provides frequent commentary on Egyptian and Saudi television.
He told me there is virtually no middle class in Egypt, only the extremely rich (about 20 to 25 percent of the population) and the extremely poor (75 percent).
The parliament has no input into what Mubarak does with the money the United States gives him, $300 million of which comes to the dictator in cash each year.
Torture is commonplace in Egypt, according to Korayem. Indeed, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief whom Mubarak just named Vice-President, was the lynchpin for Egyptian torture when the CIA sent prisoners to Egypt in its extraordinary rendition program. Stephen Grey noted in Ghost Plane, “[I]n secret, men like Omar Suleiman, the country’s most powerful spy and secret politician, did our work, the sort of work that Western countries have no appetite to do ourselves.”
In her chapter in the newly published book, “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse,” Jane Mayer cites Egypt as the most common destination for suspects rendered by the United States.
“The largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel,” Mayer writes, “Egypt was a key strategic ally, and its secret police force, the Mukhabarat, had a reputation for brutality.” She describes the rendering of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi to Egypt, where he was tortured and made a false confession that Colin Powell cited as he importuned the Security Council to approve the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Al-Libi later recanted his confession.
The State Department’s 2002 report on Egypt noted that detainees were “stripped and blindfolded; suspended from a ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor; beaten with fists, metal rods, or other objects; doused with hot or cold water; flogged on the back; burned with cigarettes; and subjected to electrical shocks. Some victims . . . [were] forced to strip and threatened with rape.”
In 2005, the United Nations Committee Against Torture found that “Egypt resorted to consistent and widespread use of torture against detainees” and “the risk of such treatment was particularly high in the case of detainees held for political and security reasons.”
About a year ago, an Italian judge convicted 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel of arranging the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003, then flying him to Egypt where he was tortured.
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr told Human Rights Watch he was “hung up like a slaughtered sheep and given electrical shocks” in Egypt. “I was brutally tortured and I could hear the screams of others who were tortured too,” he added.
A former CIA agent observed, “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.”
So what will happen next in Egypt?
Scott MacLeod, Time magazine’s Middle East correspondent from 1995 to 2010, wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Korayem concurs. He says the Brotherhood, which has formally renounced terrorism and violence, is more educated and peaceful now. The Brotherhood provides social and economic programs that augment public services in Egypt.
Indeed, the Brotherhood supports Mohamed ElBaradei to negotiate with the Egyptian government. ElBaradei, the former U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency chief and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, recently returned to Egypt to stand with the protesters. He told Fareed Zakaria that the Brotherhood favors a secular state, and “has nothing to do with the Iranian movement, has nothing to do with extremism as we have seen it in Afghanistan and other places.”
We are seeing those consequences in the streets of Egypt and the likelihood of similar developments in Jordan, Yemen, and other Middle Eastern countries. Until the U.S. government stops uncritically supporting tyrants, torturers, and oppressors, we can expect the people to rise up and overthrow them.
The sleeping Egyptian giant has finally awoken.
The Arab world’s most populous nation—85 million strong—has been in political hibernation for 30 long years.
The deep slumber is now over. The reign of Hosni Mubarak will end, sooner or later, as a rejuvenated population sheds apathy’s blanket.
After Israel , Egypt is the second-largest recipient of United States foreign aid. Other than what was embezzled, the $1.5 billion in annual assistance has been spent entirely on the military and bolstering Mubarak’s internal security apparatus. It ultimately ensured the Camp David state remained complaint with the diktats coming out of Tel Aviv and Washington.
Indeed, as a result of peace treaties with its eastern and southern neighbors, Israel has had a free hand in continuing the repression and subjugation of Palestinians.
Take, for example, the crippling, inhumane siege imposed on Gaza . Even the most basic good and supplies were prevented from entering the tiny enclave. (This was the price Palestinians paid for holding democratic elections, which Hamas handily won.) Egypt, to no one’s surprise, enforced all embargo restrictions asked of it.
When Israel launched a vicious military campaign upon Gaza ’s destitute population in December 2008, Egypt again became a willing accomplice. Many will contend Mubarak was complicit in those war crimes. By keeping the Rafah border crossing closed, he prevented the evacuation of both malnourished and maimed from a war zone.
Although Egyptians may have quietly seethed at this, it does not compare to the anger and resentment built up over decades of corruption and abuse. The people have grown weary of Emergency Law, implemented and maintained since Anwar Sadat’s 1981 assassination, that prohibits all forms of free speech, expression and assembly. It allows for the indefinite detention of any person without charge. Arrested civilians are then put on trial in front of closed military tribunals. The regime is also notorious for turning a blind eye to routine police brutality and torture.
Because he assumed his son Gamal would succeed him, Mubarak also never appointed a vice-president, in violation of Egypt ’s constitution. That was until a few days ago when intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was hastily promoted to the job. Gamal has since fled to London .
In Tuesday’s protests, the scope of which was unprecedented in the history of modern Egypt , the world’s eyes were fixed on downtown Cairo ’s Tahrir Square . The hundreds of thousands gathered not only called for Mubarak’s ouster, but demanded he be put on trial. His hanging effigy conveyed to viewers that Egyptians will not be satisfied with a token cabinet reshuffle.
“ Cairo today is all of Egypt ,” said one. “I want my son to have a better life and not suffer as much as I did ... I want to feel like I chose my president.”
Feeling the pressure, Jordan’s monarch King Abdullah II fired his cabinet as demonstrations in Amman continued. The Palestinian Authority under the discredited president Mahmoud Abbas vowed to hold municipal elections in the West Bank . Bahrain is ripe with discontent, to say the least. The same is true for Yemen, where President Ali Abdullah Saleh—who has ruled for 32-years—now says he won’t run for another term. Tunisians have already taken matters into their own hands.
Despite the best efforts of Mubarak, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel, the sleeping giant has awoken. And the mass protests we are witnessing in Egypt today ... that is merely a yawn.
Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.
During Friday prayers in Tehrir Square, prayers are raised to those who lost their lives to the violence. Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor
Feb 7, 2011
www.nytimes.com
By Reuel Mauel Marc Gerecht
(condensed version)
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Middle Eastern specialist in the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Wave: Man, God and the Ballot Box in the Middle East.”
In the Western study of medieval Islamic history, the institution of iqta — land grants from the sovereign to his soldiers — once loomed large, because scholars searched for reasons behind the Muslim failure to develop feudalism, and with it the contractual relationships that eventually led to constitutional government. But looking for parallels between the West and Islam — especially the classical Islamic heartland from North Africa to Iran — has always been politically a sad endeavor, since the region seemed so resistant to the ideas and institutions that made representative government possible.
The secular intellectuals in exile, however, more forcefully embraced the democratic cause — their newspapers, books, magazines, Web sites and, increasingly, appearances on Al Jazeera — delivered their views back home. Intellectuals of such diverse viewpoints as Kanan Makiya, Edward Said, Saad Eddin Ibrahim and Burhan Ghalioun opened up an ever-increasing liberal, democratic space in foreign and Arabic publications. Yes, some mixed their message of liberty with other “Arab” priorities: anti-Zionism, anti-Americanism and anti-imperialism. But their support of democracy was clear, and became more acute after the 9/11 attacks.
Shariah law increasingly embraced the convulsive idea that only elected political leadership was legitimate. Islam puts extraordinary emphasis upon the idea of justice — the earthbound quid pro quo that a man can expect in a righteous life.
Democracy for the faithful has become a means for society to affirm its most cherished Islamic values.
The Brotherhood is trying to come to terms with the idea of hurriya, “freedom.” In the past, for the Muslim devout, hurriya had denoted the freedom of a believer to worship God; for the Arab nationalist, the word was the battle cry against European imperialism. Today, in Egypt and elsewhere, hurriya cannot be understood without reference to free men and women voting. The Brothers are trying to figure out how to integrate two civilizations and thereby revive their own. This evolution isn’t pretty. But it is real.
For the Egyptian people, the Brothers are not an enigma — they have been around since 1928. Unlike the revolutionary mullahs of Iran, who wrote books that almost no one outside the clergy read, the Brotherhood has spread its word to the Egyptian public for decades.
It’s also important that Egyptian Muslims are Sunnis. Unlike Iran’s Shiites, whose history revolves around charismatic men, Egyptians have no Ayatollah Khomeini. The Brotherhood is an organization of laymen. It has always had a tense relationship with Al Azhar, the great Sunni seminary of Cairo.
Although Hosni Mubarak has done his best to suck the life out of Egyptian society, the shadows of once great parties, like the Wafds of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and nearly forgotten forces like the Liberal Constitutionalist Party will try to resurrect themselves in fairly short order. Ayman Nour and his liberal Ghad Party are already established..
Protesters get the latest news at a makeshift newsstand in Tehrir Square. Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor
How Democracy Became Halal
Feb 7, 2011
www.nytimes.com
By Reuel Mauel Marc Gerecht
(condensed version)
In the Western study of medieval Islamic history, the institution of iqta — land grants from the sovereign to his soldiers — once loomed large, because scholars searched for reasons behind the Muslim failure to develop feudalism, and with it the contractual relationships that eventually led to constitutional government. But looking for parallels between the West and Islam — especially the classical Islamic heartland from North Africa to Iran — has always been politically a sad endeavor, since the region seemed so resistant to the ideas and institutions that made representative government possible.
The secular intellectuals in exile, however, more forcefully embraced the democratic cause — their newspapers, books, magazines, Web sites and, increasingly, appearances on Al Jazeera — delivered their views back home. Intellectuals of such diverse viewpoints as Kanan Makiya, Edward Said, Saad Eddin Ibrahim and Burhan Ghalioun opened up an ever-increasing liberal, democratic space in foreign and Arabic publications. Yes, some mixed their message of liberty with other “Arab” priorities: anti-Zionism, anti-Americanism and anti-imperialism. But their support of democracy was clear, and became more acute after the 9/11 attacks.
Shariah law increasingly embraced the convulsive idea that only elected political leadership was legitimate. Islam puts extraordinary emphasis upon the idea of justice — the earthbound quid pro quo that a man can expect in a righteous life.
Democracy for the faithful has become a means for society to affirm its most cherished Islamic values.
The Brotherhood is trying to come to terms with the idea of hurriya, “freedom.” In the past, for the Muslim devout, hurriya had denoted the freedom of a believer to worship God; for the Arab nationalist, the word was the battle cry against European imperialism. Today, in Egypt and elsewhere, hurriya cannot be understood without reference to free men and women voting. The Brothers are trying to figure out how to integrate two civilizations and thereby revive their own. This evolution isn’t pretty. But it is real.
For the Egyptian people, the Brothers are not an enigma — they have been around since 1928. Unlike the revolutionary mullahs of Iran, who wrote books that almost no one outside the clergy read, the Brotherhood has spread its word to the Egyptian public for decades.
It’s also important that Egyptian Muslims are Sunnis. Unlike Iran’s Shiites, whose history revolves around charismatic men, Egyptians have no Ayatollah Khomeini. The Brotherhood is an organization of laymen. It has always had a tense relationship with Al Azhar, the great Sunni seminary of Cairo.
Although Hosni Mubarak has done his best to suck the life out of Egyptian society, the shadows of once great parties, like the Wafds of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and nearly forgotten forces like the Liberal Constitutionalist Party will try to resurrect themselves in fairly short order. Ayman Nour and his liberal Ghad Party are already established..
Protesters get the latest news at a makeshift newsstand in Tehrir Square. Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor
New Service Lets Voices From Egypt Be Heard
CHRISTINE HAUSER
February 1, 2011
With the unruly sounds of protests in the background, the Egyptian man declared there were 50,000 demonstrators in the streets of Cairo.
“And the number is growing,” he said, raising his voice to be heard on the recording.
Unedited, raw, anonymous and emotional, Egyptian voices are trickling out through a new service that evades attempts by the authorities to suppress them by cutting Internet services.
There is still some cellphone service, so a new social-media link that marries Google, Twitter and SayNow, a voice-based social media platform, gives Egyptians three phone numbers to call and leave a message, which is then posted on the Internet as a recorded Twitter message. The messages are at twitter.com/speak2tweet and can also be heard by telephone.
The result is a story of a revolution unfolding in short bursts. Sometimes speaking for just several seconds, other times for more than a minute, the disembodied voices convey highly charged moments of excitement or calm declarations of what life is like in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, as it seeks to remove its leader.
The messages rolled out as Egyptians seemed to be approaching a crucial point, with hundreds of thousands of people crammed into central Cairo on Tuesday, as protests continued to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.
Protesters have sought to use social media like Facebook and Twitter to muster momentum for attendance at demonstrations, even as the Egyptian authorities have shut off Internet access.
“Urgent news,” one caller to speak2tweet said. “The police have changed to serve the people. We are very happy.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, the account had more than 8,000 followers. On Tuesday, the service started to identify the country from which each recorded message came. While most were from Egypt, they included calls from Germany and the United States in Arabic and English, and messages from Arabic speakers in the Netherlands and Turkey.
It was clear that support for the uprising in Egypt had crossed borders.
“I live in Jordan,” said one man, urging on the demonstrators in a crackly recording. “I want to congratulate Egyptians on their popular revolution.”
One man calling from the United States criticized what appeared to him to be the double standard of democracies that support a “dictator who ruled for 30 years.”
“If you don’t stand with the people who are looking for freedom, they are not going to believe any more of everything you say about democracy and freedom,” the man said.
Another man, speaking for several seconds, introduced himself as an Egyptian engineer named Wael. Without a trace of irony in a message that could potentially be heard by millions, he voiced dismay over cuts to the Internet.
But no Internet connection is needed for speak2tweet, and in Egypt there was some phone service. Vodafone was working for text and voice on Tuesday, while AT&T BlackBerry users said MobiNil was working. Callers in Egypt had three numbers to leave recorded messages, based in the United States at 1-650-419-4196, in Italy at (39-06) 6220-7294 and in Bahrain at (973) 1619-9855.
Then the service will instantly send the recorded call as a Twitter message using the hashtag #egypt. They are subject to international calling charges, but Google and SayNow, which announced last month that it had been acquired by Google, are also exploring the possibility of setting up a local phone number in Egypt, a person close to the project said Tuesday.
“Like many people, we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground,” said a joint statement posted Monday by Ujjwal Singh, the co-founder of SayNow, and AbdelKarim Mardini, Google’s product manager for the Middle East and North Africa.
“Over the weekend, we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service — the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection,” the statement said.
“We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there.”
U.S. Chickens Come Home to Roost in Egypt
Global Research E-Newsletter
www.globalresearch.ca)
By Prof Marjorie Cohn
(condensed version)
Global Research E-Newsletter
www.globalresearch.ca)
By Prof Marjorie Cohn
(condensed version)
(Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and Deputy Secretary General of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her anthology, “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse,” was just published by NYU Press).
Global Research, February 2, 2011
Now with a revolution against Mubarak by two million Egyptians, all bets are off about who will replace him and whether the successor government will be friendly to the United States.
Mubarak’s “whole system is corrupt,” said Hesham Korayem, an Egyptian who taught at City University of New York and provides frequent commentary on Egyptian and Saudi television.
He told me there is virtually no middle class in Egypt, only the extremely rich (about 20 to 25 percent of the population) and the extremely poor (75 percent).
The parliament has no input into what Mubarak does with the money the United States gives him, $300 million of which comes to the dictator in cash each year.
Torture is commonplace in Egypt, according to Korayem. Indeed, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief whom Mubarak just named Vice-President, was the lynchpin for Egyptian torture when the CIA sent prisoners to Egypt in its extraordinary rendition program. Stephen Grey noted in Ghost Plane, “[I]n secret, men like Omar Suleiman, the country’s most powerful spy and secret politician, did our work, the sort of work that Western countries have no appetite to do ourselves.”
In her chapter in the newly published book, “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse,” Jane Mayer cites Egypt as the most common destination for suspects rendered by the United States.
“The largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel,” Mayer writes, “Egypt was a key strategic ally, and its secret police force, the Mukhabarat, had a reputation for brutality.” She describes the rendering of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi to Egypt, where he was tortured and made a false confession that Colin Powell cited as he importuned the Security Council to approve the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Al-Libi later recanted his confession.
The State Department’s 2002 report on Egypt noted that detainees were “stripped and blindfolded; suspended from a ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor; beaten with fists, metal rods, or other objects; doused with hot or cold water; flogged on the back; burned with cigarettes; and subjected to electrical shocks. Some victims . . . [were] forced to strip and threatened with rape.”
In 2005, the United Nations Committee Against Torture found that “Egypt resorted to consistent and widespread use of torture against detainees” and “the risk of such treatment was particularly high in the case of detainees held for political and security reasons.”
About a year ago, an Italian judge convicted 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel of arranging the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003, then flying him to Egypt where he was tortured.
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr told Human Rights Watch he was “hung up like a slaughtered sheep and given electrical shocks” in Egypt. “I was brutally tortured and I could hear the screams of others who were tortured too,” he added.
A former CIA agent observed, “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt.”
So what will happen next in Egypt?
Scott MacLeod, Time magazine’s Middle East correspondent from 1995 to 2010, wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Korayem concurs. He says the Brotherhood, which has formally renounced terrorism and violence, is more educated and peaceful now. The Brotherhood provides social and economic programs that augment public services in Egypt.
Indeed, the Brotherhood supports Mohamed ElBaradei to negotiate with the Egyptian government. ElBaradei, the former U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency chief and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, recently returned to Egypt to stand with the protesters. He told Fareed Zakaria that the Brotherhood favors a secular state, and “has nothing to do with the Iranian movement, has nothing to do with extremism as we have seen it in Afghanistan and other places.”
We are seeing those consequences in the streets of Egypt and the likelihood of similar developments in Jordan, Yemen, and other Middle Eastern countries. Until the U.S. government stops uncritically supporting tyrants, torturers, and oppressors, we can expect the people to rise up and overthrow them.
Egypt: A Sleeping Giant Awakens
By Rannie Amiri
www.globalresearch.ca
February 5, 2011
February 5, 2011
The sleeping Egyptian giant has finally awoken.
The Arab world’s most populous nation—85 million strong—has been in political hibernation for 30 long years.
The deep slumber is now over. The reign of Hosni Mubarak will end, sooner or later, as a rejuvenated population sheds apathy’s blanket.
After Israel , Egypt is the second-largest recipient of United States foreign aid. Other than what was embezzled, the $1.5 billion in annual assistance has been spent entirely on the military and bolstering Mubarak’s internal security apparatus. It ultimately ensured the Camp David state remained complaint with the diktats coming out of Tel Aviv and Washington.
Indeed, as a result of peace treaties with its eastern and southern neighbors, Israel has had a free hand in continuing the repression and subjugation of Palestinians.
Take, for example, the crippling, inhumane siege imposed on Gaza . Even the most basic good and supplies were prevented from entering the tiny enclave. (This was the price Palestinians paid for holding democratic elections, which Hamas handily won.) Egypt, to no one’s surprise, enforced all embargo restrictions asked of it.
When Israel launched a vicious military campaign upon Gaza ’s destitute population in December 2008, Egypt again became a willing accomplice. Many will contend Mubarak was complicit in those war crimes. By keeping the Rafah border crossing closed, he prevented the evacuation of both malnourished and maimed from a war zone.
Although Egyptians may have quietly seethed at this, it does not compare to the anger and resentment built up over decades of corruption and abuse. The people have grown weary of Emergency Law, implemented and maintained since Anwar Sadat’s 1981 assassination, that prohibits all forms of free speech, expression and assembly. It allows for the indefinite detention of any person without charge. Arrested civilians are then put on trial in front of closed military tribunals. The regime is also notorious for turning a blind eye to routine police brutality and torture.
Because he assumed his son Gamal would succeed him, Mubarak also never appointed a vice-president, in violation of Egypt ’s constitution. That was until a few days ago when intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was hastily promoted to the job. Gamal has since fled to London .
In Tuesday’s protests, the scope of which was unprecedented in the history of modern Egypt , the world’s eyes were fixed on downtown Cairo ’s Tahrir Square . The hundreds of thousands gathered not only called for Mubarak’s ouster, but demanded he be put on trial. His hanging effigy conveyed to viewers that Egyptians will not be satisfied with a token cabinet reshuffle.
“ Cairo today is all of Egypt ,” said one. “I want my son to have a better life and not suffer as much as I did ... I want to feel like I chose my president.”
Feeling the pressure, Jordan’s monarch King Abdullah II fired his cabinet as demonstrations in Amman continued. The Palestinian Authority under the discredited president Mahmoud Abbas vowed to hold municipal elections in the West Bank . Bahrain is ripe with discontent, to say the least. The same is true for Yemen, where President Ali Abdullah Saleh—who has ruled for 32-years—now says he won’t run for another term. Tunisians have already taken matters into their own hands.
Despite the best efforts of Mubarak, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel, the sleeping giant has awoken. And the mass protests we are witnessing in Egypt today ... that is merely a yawn.
Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.
A PICTURE SPEAKS MORE THAN A THOUSAND WORDS
Violence erupts in Tehrir Square as pro- and anti-Mubarak protesters clash in Cairo after a week of peaceful demonstrations. Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor
Egyptian anti-government protesters pray in front of an Egyptian army tank during a protest in Tahrir square in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Jan. 29. Hundreds of anti-government protesters have returned to Cairo's central Tahrir Square, chanting slogans against Hosni Mubarak just hours after the Egyptian president fired his Cabinet but refused to step down. Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
A supporter of President Hosni Mubarak on a camel fights with anti-Mubarak protesters in Cairo. Several thousand supporters of the president, including some people riding horses and camels and wielding whips, clashed with antigovernment protesters as Egypt's upheaval took a dangerous new turn. Mohammed Abou Zaid/AP
A protester holds a placard depicting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as Adolf Hitler in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Jan. 31. Yannis Behrakis/Reuters
An Egyptian mother hugs her child as she watches thousands of Egyptian protesters gather at Tahrir square in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 30th. Amr Nabi/AP
A demonstrator shakes hands with a soldier just outside Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo. More than a quarter of a million people flooded into the heart of the city, filling the main square in by far the largest demonstration in a week of unceasing demands for President Hosni Mubarak to step down after nearly 30 years in power. Victoria Hazou/AP
An Egyptian anti-government activist kisses a riot police officer following clashes in Cairo. Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters poured into the streets of Egypt, stoning and confronting police who fired back with rubber bullets and tear gas in the most violent and chaotic scenes yet in the challenge to President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule. Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
A demonstrator yells out in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo where more than a quarter of a million people gathered for the largest demonstration in a week of unceasing protests to demand that President Hosni Mubarak step down after nearly 30 years in power. Ben Curtis/AP
Women adjust Hijabs while protesting in sympathy for those in Egypt calling for the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Saturday, Jan. 29, in San Francisco, California. Ben Margot/AP
YEMEN
A Yemeni demonstrator (c.) shouts slogans during a rally calling for an end to the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in Sanaa, Yemen. Tens of thousands of people are calling for the president's ouster in protests across the capital inspired by the popular revolt in Tunisia. Hani Mohammed/AP
RUSSIAN MUSLIMS:
Every big city is international and it is impossible to avoid that. Once a city has peopled and population limit exceeded at least several millions, a sea of immigrants in the search of work and easy money start flooding the city out and it becomes hectic and busy. As soon as such a thing has already happened, it would be hardly possible to prevent the collision of different religions because most of people around anyone of us are not alike.
These above (photo of Mosque in Tartar and below photo of Tartar women) are the earliest color photos of Russian places made with the the use of the “fotochrome” method by Swiss masters of photography.
(englishrussia.com)ON THE LIGHTER SIDE OF LIFE:
ON MEN, WOMEN, MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE: Forwarded by Dr. Lewis (condensed version)
(DISCLAIMER: Below content do not reflect our views)
By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. - Socrates
All eyes were on the radiant bride as her father escorted her down he aisle. They reached the altar and the waiting groom; the bride kissed her father and placed something in his hand. The guests in the front pews responded with ripples of laughter. Even the priest smiled broadly. As her father gave her away in marriage, the bride gave him back his credit card.
For Sale: Wedding dress, size 8. Worn once by mistake. I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back. - Zsa Zsa Gabor
RUSSIAN I-PHONE
(www.englishrussia.com)Today all the Internet communities discuss the iPhone that was announced by Apple. Many people are really sad that they can buy it only from June in USA and only at the end of the year in Europe. So Russian guys started getting their way of iphones already now.
THE END
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