JWN's 8th blogiversary
... is today.
Over the Christmas of 2002, my son Tarek said to me a number of times, "Mom, you really should start a blog." I said, "A what?" (not surprisingly)... And then as he told me more about the concept, I became more and more intrigued.
Long story short, he helped set me up JWN... first on Blogger, then on MT (and I even have a plan to move over to WordPress sometime, not yet implemented.)
So here was my very first blog post, from February 6, 2003. In it, I gave my evaluation of the really terrible, mendacious and war-preparing presentation that Colin Powell had just made to the U.N. You remember, the one that included all the allegations about the "aluminum tubes" and the alleged presence of Al-Qaeda operatives in areas of Iraq under Saddam's control...
Over the days that followed, I tried to do as much truth-squadding as I could regarding those completely unfounded allegations. (I also did a little at the Christian Science Monitor.) And over the six weeks that followed February 6, I did what i could to use my blog to warn against the many dangers that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would, in my analysis, almost certainly lead to.
On March 19, 2003, I blogged the way I'd learned about the start of the invasion by writing this post, which featured my 17-year-old daughter Lorna.
Lorna is now an accomplished and lovely young woman of 25 who's deep into a doctoral program here in the U.S.
And what has happened to that whole generation of 17-year-old Iraqis meantime???
The anti-war movement failed to halt the onrush of that war. We failed to halt Israel's assaults against Lebanon in 2006, and against Gaza in 2008.
We failed to halt the U.S. escalation in Iraq in 2006, and in Afghanistan last year.
Now, however, I submit, the dysfunctional (or even, clearly counter-productive) nature of all those attempts by the U.S and Israel to solve their problems by the application of massive amounts of military violence has become clearer than ever. Military violence is not a sustainable or even, at any level, a logical path to greater peace and human wellbeing.
And I think more and more Americans are understanding that now?
... Anyway, it's been a huge eight years in world politics, in my engagement with world politics, and in my life as a blogger.
If you want to see the extent (and the rough balance of the things I've been blogging about, go to the blog's front page, if you're not there already, and scroll down the left sidebar till you come to the "Topical Index". When the categories have become too big, I have tried to break them down, by calendar year or even (for Iraq for a whole period there) by quarter. I see the biggest category is "Palestine 2009" with 165 posts tagged there.
Over this period, I have also built up some great relationships with other bloggers. And even last year-- acting partly on another suggestion that Tarek had made a while earlier-- I got the idea of founding Just World Books as a way to bring the work of these bloggers in a better way to a broader reading public.
I love being a book publisher! But it's been a lot of work, founding a company-- becoming a businesswoman, for goodness' sake!-- learning all those new skills that I never knew before I'd ever have any need of! Then, over Christmas (again), I decided it was time to restore a bit of work/blog balance to my days; and that I needed to reconnect with my voice as a blogger.
Just in time, eh, before this amazing new wave of uprisings started busting out all over the Middle East!
I should note hat another of the pleasures of blogging has been to host the forum that the commenters here all contribute to. Having this conversation across national barriers, time-zones, and worldviews has really been amazing. Back when I started doing it in 2003, it felt even more amazing. I don't want to lose that spirit of wonder and appreciation about this aspect of the blog.
... Where will we all be in another eight years, I wonder?
Can Omar Suleiman be Egypt's De Klerk?
... As a Quaker, I have to believe in the possibility that any person on God's earth is capable of becoming a better person and acting in a more generous and wise manner than hitherto.
In his speech on Tuesday, Hosni Mubarak announced that his role model in life was Ceausescu, not De Klerk.
Since then, his hastily-appointed vice-president, Omar Suleiman, has been diplomatically nudging the old(er) guy aside and seizing the reins of effective power. Many of which now lie in the need to negotiate a completely new social/political compact with the many pro-democracy forces in Egypt.
He made a start today. This could be a new chapter in the "divide and rule" strategy he has pursued toward Egypt's oppositionists throughout his many years of the country's extremely rights-abusing General Intelligence Service.
Or, it could be the start of a process that will lead Egypt much closer to the rights-respecting order that its 85 million people so desperately need.
(When De Klerk started out talking to Nelson Mandela in 1990, he didn't know which way that was leading, either, I think. Took them four more years to reach the pivotal, free and fair, elections that changed South Africa forever.)
At this point, I'm not analytically "calling" the way that Suleiman's outreach is heading. Firstly, it's far too early to tell. Secondly, I'm just off to Quaker meeting. So holding my Egyptian friends-- and all of Egypt's people-- quietly in God's light for an hour seems like a really good thing to do.
Many details about Mubarak/NDP's counter-revolution plan
... are in this well-researched article by Esam al-Amin. H/t to Jonathan Wright.
Amin gives a lot of details of the plan to launch the counter-revolution, starting with a key meeting by a "small clique of officials", held in Cairo on the afternoon of Monday, Jan.31:
- According to several sources including former intelligence officer Col. Omar Afifi, one of these officials was the new Interior minister, Police Gen. Mahmoud Wagdy, who as the former head of the prison system, is also a torture expert. He asked Hosni Mubarak, the embattled president to give him a week to take care of the demonstrators who have been occupying major squares around the country for about a week...
The meeting included many security officials including Brig. Gen. Ismail Al-Shaer, Cairo’s security chief, as well as other security officers. In addition, leaders of the National Democratic Party (NDP)- the ruling party- including its Secretary General and head of the Consultative Assembly (upper house of Parliament), Safwat El-Sherif, as well as Parliament Speaker, Fathi Sorour, were briefed and given their assignments. Similarly, the retained Minister of Information, Anas Al-Feky, was fully apprised of the plan.
He also starts with this great quote from Lenin:
- There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.
There is a lot of great interest in Amin's piece-- including his reporting that the spirits of the thugocrats have been mightily fortified by the support that various Israeli and Saudi leaders have expressed for their efforts.
He also wrote this:
- The battle plan was for the baltagies [= regime-mobilized thugs] to block seven entrances of the Tahrir Square, leaving only the American Embassy entrance open for the thugs to push back the demonstrators in order for them to come so close to the Embassy that its guards surrounding it would have to shoot at them and thus instigate a confrontation with the Americans.
This whole attempt to use brute force, disinformation, and slimy political tactics to push back Egypt's current democratic revolution really does seem like a ham-handed-- but extremely dangerous-- return to the 1950s.
Egypt, the world food-price crisis-- and JWB's next book!
I just want to pick up on the food-price dimension of what's happening in the Middle East (and other parts of the world) today.
Since the beginning of the current wave of uprisings in the Arab world, I have been of the opinion that this crisis is about two things: livelihoods, and basic human dignity. In both these areas, the recent and ongoing steep rise in world food prices is key; and it is set to continue, or become even steeper over the months ahead.
Simon Nixon had an interesting article in the WSJ on this.
He writes:
Continue reading "Egypt, the world food-price crisis-- and JWB's next book!"Asmaa Mahfouz: The girl who kicked Egypt's hornet's nest!
A friend sent me this vlog, which was recorded on January 18 by Asmaa Mahfouz, a young Egyptian woman who describes on it how earlier in the month she had responded to the self-immolations then taking place in Egypt by deciding to go down to Tahrir Square and undertake a regular public vigil there "For dignity! Against hunger!"
... And she invited her friends to join her. And the first time "We were only three people-- along with three armored cars full of police, and the baltagiyeh thugs were also there... "
But they carried on doing their vigils regularly, and in this video, she's asking people to join her there on January 25, and.... the rest is history.
My piece in The Hill yesterday
... was here.
This was the piece I wrote Tuesday morning, that I mentioned in this JWN post later that morning. So really, you could read the two together... First, the "Hill" piece, then the blog post.
Bottom line: There is tremendous amount a successor regime in Egypt could do to support Palestinian rights and the Palestinian cause-- hopefully, on the basis of a strong commitment to human rights and international law-- that would not necessarily involve abrogating the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
For 63 years now, successive governments of Israel have succeeded in keeping consideration of the political future of the Palestinians in a compartment completely separate from that of international law. (And international law itself has progressed a lot since 1948, too.) All versions of the so-called "peace process" pursued over the past 15 years have been pursued quite separately from the requirements of international law. As a result, it has been entirely devoid of any real, sustainable peacemaking. On the contrary. It has led to the caging up of the Palestinians in tens of completely separate open-air cages while the bulk of their land and heritage has continued to be stolen from them.
So quite simply, let's return to international law. Unless the democracy movement in Egypt (and Jordan) gets completely crushed, I'm thinking this will be the central demand of the post-Mubarak government regarding the always-crucial Palestine Question. The "rule of law", both domestically and internationally.
Of course, the prospect of any return to a rights-based, international-law-based resolution of the longrunning Palestine-Israel conflict has the vast majority of "status-quo" Israeli political figures running very scared indeed. They almost can't imagine what life might be like if they can no longer, lazily and very comfortably reclining behind their Apartheid wall, rely on Egypt to be their shield and spear.
Mubarak and the Egyptian army: the Pinochet option?
In last night's post, I said that prior to his speech, Muabarak had the option to be like Frederik De Klerk but instead had come out swinging with his dead-end rear-guard action like Ceausescu.
Today, the veteran Middle East expert Bill Quandt* has a good piece on Politico in which--identifying the key role the Egyptian military needs to play right now in "persuading" the ageing dictator to step down now, not in September, for God's sake!-- he argues that they need to make an offer to Mubarak like the one the Chilean military made to Augusto Pinochet in the late 1980s: basically, that he should leave the presidency but would be immune from prosecution for past misdeeds.
At that time, that was an excellent compromise that prevented considerable further bloodshed and allowed/helped the Chilean people to proceed toward much fuller democracy. Today, the anti-Mubarak protesters in Cairo and the rest of Egypt desperately need a deal that can similarly halt the bloodshed that Mubarak's dreadful thugs (the baltagiyeh) are raining down on them.
As Quandt notes, the Egyptian military-- which has a very long and close relationship with the U.S. military-- has a key role to play if this deal is to happen. Sill not clear whether they will play it or not.
If they don't, everyone around the world knows of their ties to the U.S. military and will be asking why these ties were not actively used to try to save lives on Tahrir Square.
--
* Full disclosure: Bill Quandt has made many previous appearances on this blog under the guise of "Bill the spouse". We have been happily married for nearly 27 years. When I started the blog I wanted to keep it as my space for self-expression and not get identified simply as someone else's spouse. We are still separate people, and discuss all these issues frequently and fruitfully, though not always with 100% agreement. But hey, I'm also proud of his work and think it's good to start featuring it here, too.
Mubarak gives go-ahead to his goons
This afternoon (U.S. Eastern time) we were waiting anxiously for the statement that, Egyptian state TV promised, was coming "shortly" from-- or on behalf of-- Pres. Mubarak. Would it contain notice of his resignation or his departure from the country? In the end, no. He promised only that he "would not run again" in the presidential elections scheduled for September... And he vowed that:
- 1. He intended to "die on Egyptian soil", and
2. He would stay in office until, apparently, the end of his term in order to "oversee" the process of transition in a way that would-- he claimed-- ensure stability.
(The truth being, as has been widely reported, that the protesters have been extremely peaceable and disciplined while such mayhem as has been observed seems often to have been undertaken by uniformed or un-uniformed thugs from the country's various police forces.)
The effect-- and likely also the intent-- of Mubarak's speech was to mobilize and unleash those thugs in many areas around the country. As I write this, I fear for the fate of the many heroic members of Egypt's opposition movement. Their hopes were so high this afternoon! But now, as Egypt goes through the wee hours of the night, I fear many of them are being set upon by Mubarak's hastily mobilized goons.
Of course, a lot depends on the attitude taken by the country's large military. The army-- and its military police-- could have the capacity to protect the civilians of the opposition movement from the rampages of the goons, if it so chose. The statement by the military brass over the weekend that it would not actively intervene to suppress the protests was certainly welcome. But will it be enough to protect the populace from the goons' rampages? And will the army stick to it anyway?
This evening in Washington, Pres. Obama also said a few words in public on the situation in Egypt.
I can't find the full text of his remarks. But according to various accounts described the passion and dignity demonstrated by the people of Egypt as "an inspiration," said the protesters would reach their destiny, and told them, "We hear your voices." (That, from AP.)
Alternatively, from the WaPo's own reporters we had this:
- Speaking after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's announcement Tuesday... Obama said he had called Mubarak after the speech and discussed the situation in Egypt with him.
"He recognizes that the status quo is not sustainable and that change must take place," Obama said at the White House. He said he told Mubarak of "my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now."
We Americans, including Obama, need to understand the deeply anti-democratic nature of the claims Mubarak makes to any kind of "constitutional" legitimacy. He was elected president in 2005 in a heavily skewed election process. Read accounts of that election here. Then, last November. This one was also highly flawed. Read about it here.
Over the weekend, Mubarak for the first time in his 30-year presidency named a vice-president. This was almost like naming a "Crown Prince", since he had taken over from Sadat because he was VP, when Sadat was killed in 1981; and Sadat had taken over from Nasser as President in September 1970m when Sadat was VP.
The man whom Mubarak named as VP on Saturday was Omar Suleiman, the man who as longstanding head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service has been responsible both for most of the tortures and other abuses committed against suspected regime opponents as well as the person responsible on a daily basis for coordinating with Israel in the continuing campaign against Gaza and Hamas.
I can completely understand why the protesters in Egypt's towns, cities, and villages do not believe that the upcoming presidential elections this September cannot be free and fair if their preparation is overseen by this president, this vice-president, and this parliament.
Obama and the U.S. Congress, and all other governments around the world, should cut off all aid to this government of Egypt until a credibly free and fair transition process is in place. It cannot be one that remains solely in the hands of Mubarak, Suleiman, and their puppet parliament.
Tonight, Mubarak was given the chance to be Frederik De Klerk, the South African PM who-- however belatedly-- saw the need to open up his country's election system to full, fair, and free participation by all parties. De Klerk, you remember, ended up winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his vision.
Instead, he chose to be Nikolae Ceausesu. Ceausescu did, it can be remembered, die on the soil of his homeland. But I hope that was not the choice Mubarak was thinking of. At this stage, the fate of the millions of Egyptian protesters hangs in the balance.
Arab democracy movements and the power of the 'rule of law'
I've been writing yet another piece of journalism on the Egyptian uprising. (I hope I can share it with you soon.)
Writing truly does help me to think. So I was trying to think about-- yes, this is a big topic in Washington DC!-- what the attitude toward Israel of the post-Mubarak government in Cairo might be. I know the big fear felt-- or anyway, propagated-- by status-quo Israelis and their many friends and amplifiers here in the US is that a post-Mubarak government might speedily abrogate the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
There would be something of a precedent for that. In May 1983, the Israeli-installed Amin Gemayyel government in Beirut signed a very extensive Declaration of Principles with Israel... But then, the tides of power turned in Lebanon (read all about it in my 1985 book on the country) and by Feb 1984 Gemayyel was running cap-in-hand to Damascus to beg the forgiveness of the Syrians. The May 17 agreement went swiftly out the door and the Israeli "security liaison office" or whatever it was called that the agreement had allowed them to open in Beirut was closed.
However, that was not a full peace treaty. The abrogation of a treaty would, under international law, be a much weightier matter (and could provide a casus belli for Israel... more on that, later. Not here.)
What I've been thinking though is that if the popular movement now emerging so gloriously in Egypt has any single central organizing idea it seems to be one of support for the rule of law. Mostly, this has been expressed in terms of support for the rule of law at the domestic level: That no-one should be subjected to torture, elections should be fair, government transparent and accountable, the economy well and fairly run, etc etc.
Support for the rule of (a fair form of) law is indeed a powerful concept. But it need not, does not, stop at the water's edge. People-- In Egypt, in the U.S., or anywhere-- should surely also support the rule of law in the international arena, and specifically as regards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
For ways too long, my government here in the U.S. has almost completely ignored the application of the rule of law to Israel, and has given continuing de-facto support to Israel's many transgressions of it. Mubarak's Egypt-- like Jordan under both Hussein and now Abdullah-- have both for many years now been co-conspirators in the US/Israeli-led trashing of the rule of (international) law in Palestine. Indeed, the vast majority of the American "aid" sent to those two countries has been predicated precisely on their continuing unwavering support for the American policies that undercut, indeed completely violated, the rule of law there.
It is that aspect of Egypt's foreign policy that, I think, any successor government in Cairo will have to change if it is to be seen as responsive to the Egyptian people's wishes and demands. Yes, I am sure there will be some grassroots pressure on the new government to abrogate the peace treaty. Who knows whether or not that might end up happening? But abrogating the peace treaty is not the only thing the Egyptian government can do to express its support for Palestinian rights. It can also join-- indeed become an important leader of-- the global movement calling for the application of international law to the Palestine issue.
(And if Egypt joins the international law camp in this way, Jordan, which also has a large and growing popular movement-- and which also has a majority of its population who are of Palestinian origin-- will not be far behind. There go Israel's two "peace partners" in the region!)
How would a shift to supporting the application of international law change Egypt's policies in practice? In many ways!
- * It would end its support for this (now completely shredded) fig leaf of a US-led 'peace process' and demand that the Palestine Question be sent back to the UN-- without the US shielding Israel every time with its veto.
* It would recognize the legitimacy of the PA elections of January 2006... Or perhaps, since actually the term of the PA "parliament" elected that year ended last month, Cairo would push for the holding of new elections there, to be held under free and fair conditions...
* Anyway, the role of Egypt as Israel's "spear" in the fight against Hamas would end. Cairo could become truly qualified to be a place supporting the respectful, equitable, resolution of inter-Palestinian differences.
* The Egyptian and Jordanian governments could take concrete actions through international legal venues to help protect the property and other rights of Palestinians being repressed and ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem.
* Cairo could lead the Arab world and much of the rest of the world in demanding the speedy convocation of an international conference charged with finding a final end to all the remaining strands of the Israeli-Arab conflict-- and one that is based on the equal rights of all persons, and on international law. No more support for endless Israeli colonization and racial superiority!
My Middle East Channel piece on the MB
... is here.
The editors there took quite a bit of time to turn it around.
If I had had the time I would have tightened up the ending-- and also, inserted some of the material from this well-reported article in today's WaPo.
I would also have noted that on Friday, Essam al-Erian was one of the numerous MB leaders who were arrested and imprisoned by the security forces... and that for most of the weekend, the MB's main website was down. (That, after the arrest of their webmaster at Cairo airport, Friday.)
However, the website is now back up again, and it's providing pretty good, regular roundups of news from all around Egypt.
I don't know if Dr. Erian has been freed yet? I hope so!
... Anyway,the material in that 2007 interview I was using in the MEC piece is still interesting. It certainly provides some good source material for a rational discussion by non-Muslims with (or about) the MB.
Right now, I am very worried that news of the overthrow of the Mubarak regime, and the participation of the MB in the uprising, may lead to a strong new wave of (appallingly ignorant) Islamophobia in the United States, such as the dreadful presidential candidate Mike Huckabee seemed to be trying to stir up during his latest visit to Israel (his 13th.)
Why should westerners be so scared about a party that is both explicitly Muslim and democratic-- any more than they/we are of a party that is both explicitly Christian democratic, such as we have had in several west European countries over the years?
Luckily, we do already have a very good example in Turkey today, of a party that is explicitly Muslim, and democratic-- and also pro-western, and also, a pretty good example of good governance. (Unlike, say, Italy's Berlusconi or various other sleazebags of the western world.)
So studying the MB closely, and engaging with it respectfully, seems like me to be a good place to start...
