'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Quick notes for a quickly changing world

1.

Just 30 days ago, on January 14, I was making the 3.5-hour drive down from Charlottesville, VA to Greensboro, NC, for the Quaker conference held to mark the 50th anniversary of Pres. Eisenhower's prescient 1961 warning about the dangers of a 'Military-Industrial Complex' arising in the U.S.

As I drove, I was listening to the BBC's live coverage of the day's events in Tunis. That was the day the growing but determinedly peaceful anti-government demonstrations there were (amazingly!) able to 'persuade' Pres. Zein el-Abideen Ben Ali to leave the country.

The conference was really good. I got to speak after lunch on Saturday, with my designated topic being the MIC in the Middle East. I reminded the audience that for the past 15-20 years, the MIC's project in the Middle East has been far and away its biggest (and costliest) overseas project; and that the situation there has been used by the bosses of the MIC back here at home to continue to justify the obscene amounts of spending they get from U.S. taxpayers.

But I was also able to share with them the good news that (1) In the Middle East more than anywhere else, the actual utility of military force had been shown to be either nil or negative. What did the US achieve, of lasting geopolitical value, with its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan? What did Israel achieve of lasting geopolitical value with its obscene assaults against Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008?... and also that (2) The events then unfolding in Tunis were demonstrating for all to see that the MIC's vast, sprawling project in the Middle East was beginning to crumble-- and the crumbling would doubtless continue.

I told them that the two key places to watch for further crumbling of the U.S. MIC's Middle East project-- "within either a shorter or longer time frame; but almost certainly within the coming months"-- were Egypt and Jordan.

And then, the heroic pro-democracy activists and organizers in Egypt achieved what they achieved last Friday. Far faster than I had dared to hope.

2.

Of course the democracy movement has a lot further to go-- in those two countries, and elsewhere around the globe. (Including here at home in the United States, folks. Wake up!)

But today I am just feeling so joyous to be able to witness this.

Honestly, I never thought I would live to see this day. Throughout all of the 35-year-plus professional life that I have devoted to a study of foreign affairs, and principally Middle East affairs, the situation in the Middle East has been gloomy and getting gloomier. Autocracy was becoming ever deeper and deeper embedded in many countries, including in Egypt which is truly for that whole region "Um al-Dunya" (The mother of the world.) Periodic wars wracked the region, culminating in George W. Bush's obscene invasion of Iraq.

... Which, remember, had come after a period of 13 years in which the U.S. and Britain forced the U.N to maintain a punishing sanctions regime against Iraq which resulted in the deaths of perhaps 500,000 of the country's most vulnerable citizens. And no other government in the Arab world wanted to (or was able to) prevent those atrocities from happening.

Egypt's Pres. Mubarak was at the heart of Washington's imperial planning for the region. As were the two successive kings of Jordan and the monarchs of Saudi Arabia. Tunisia's Pres. Ben Ali was also a small-scale, but loyal, supporter of it.

Plus, throughout all these years, successive governments in Israel-- Labour as well as Likud and Kadima-- continued their longterm project of implanting their illegal settlers into the heart of Arab land in Palestine, including in the heart of occupied East Jerusalem.

Since 1993, Washington has taken not one single effective step to rein in Israel's settlement-construction program. Indeed, in the way it implemented the Oslo Accords, by insisting on building (and even having the US taxpayer pay for) big new highway systems for the settlers, they gave the settlement-building project a massive new shot in the arm.

And Washington covered the vast, multi-pronged support it gave to Israel in every field during these years with this thin fig leaf of a myth that there was some kind of a meaningful "peace process" underway. (That myth was also cited as a justification for stamping down on Palestinian democracy when it dared to raise its head in January 2006: We can't allow anything to damage the peace process," they said, as they armed Mohamed Dahlan's coup plotters and helped him in his ugly coup attempt against the Palestinians' elected leadership, in 2007... )

Pres. Mubarak and his intelligence sidekick Omar Suleiman were big players in every single one of those imperial schemes.

Now they are out. And Washington's policy in the Middle East is going to have to change. A lot. And rapidly.

Hallelujah! What a day of joy!

3.

As I've noted here many times before, it turns out we're no longer living in the 19th century! We're not even living in the 20th century. The crucial change in world affairs, as the 21st century progresses, is that the global information environment has become so transparent and so inter-connected that any more major wars or invasions (such as what we saw the Bush administration launching against Iraq in 2003) are becoming increasingly unthinkable.

Already, during those fateful days in March 2003 when the invasion was launched, we were having real-time blogging from within Baghdad, in searingly beautiful English, telling us of the horrors of how it was to cower under that bombardment and live through the terrors of the civil collapse that followed.

(And what did the U.S. "achieve" for all those expensive bombs dropped, and all those expensive soldier deployed?? Nothing of any lasting value except the destruction of an entire society there in Iraq... An "achievement" that surely will continue to haunt us for many years into the future.)

Yes, I was part of the emerging global blogosphere back then: Reading, sharing, and interacting with the work of fabulous Iraqi writers like Riverbend, Faiza, or Salam/Pax. That already felt heady enough.

Then, this past Thursday and Friday, I was spending most of my time on Twitter (@justworldbooks). It was amazing. There, we were having a strange form of free-form "conversation" about what was happening, in real time with fellow tweeps who were on the ground in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt, and with people around the world who were also glued to the situation.

In Twitter, in case you don't know about this, there's a simple content-aggregating tool called a hashtag. They always start with what Europeans call a hash-mark. So there has been #Tunisia, #egypt, #jan25, #tahrir, etc. If you put that hashtag into your tweet, the tweet then shows up in the relevant aggregator. And if you want to see what everyone else has been saying about that same subject, you just search for the hashtag.

On Thursday evening (U.S. Eastern time), everyone around the world was waiting and waiting for the speech that, several hours earlier, Mubarak had promised he would be making. As we were all waiting, someone came up with the idea of launching the hashtag #reasonsmubarakislate. And it took off like wildfire!

All the contributions to it were jokes, including some that were very childish. ("#reasonsmubarakislate The situation in his pants is very fluid", etc.) Others were very clever-- but always within the 140-character limit.

So for an hour or two there, as we were waiting, we were sharing these jokes-- with people from all around the world, most of whom were unknown to each other.

And then, finally, Mubarak came onto the screen and gave his terrible speech. People immediately stopped feeling jokey and excited, and the hashtag died almost immediately. If you have a Twitter account-- and you should! follow me there @justworldbooks! --go and read the RMIL hashtag. You'll see the most recent entry there is from Feb. 10.

This amazing ability of the internet to help create a single, inter-connected international public is one part of this story.

The other is what happened in Egypt when the government "turned off" the internet and all cellphone coverage for a couple of days there: The large "modern" portion of the economy got stuck in its tracks! Routine banking or commercial transactions all, with the flick of a switch, became impossible. Tourists, travelers, and millions of Egyptian family members all lost the connections with each other and the outside world that they had come to rely on.

Of course, regime apologists immediately tried to lay the blame on the protesters: "These protests are costing our economy billions of dollars a day and causing chaos and uncertainty in our lives!" But everyone in Egypt knew who had turned off the internet and the cell-phones. It was not the protesters. (And the behavior of the protesters-- non-violent, orderly, well organized, dignified-- was not seen by any observers as having sowed any chaos.)

After two days, the government decided to turn the intertubes and cell-phone service back on again.

Autocrats everywhere, beware.

4.

Everything is changing with dizzying speed. It turns out the long-feared Israel is now "just a small, slightly troublesome country off the northeast tip of Egypt", not some massive and all-powerful global behemoth.

True, it still has something of an iron grip on the "thinking" (or more to the point, the campaign financing) of most members of the U.S. Congress. But in the American public sphere, there have been remarkably few voices echoing the strong advice from Netanyahu and Co. that "all of us in the west should support Mubarak and Suleiman because they are 'our guys'."

Of course, many people in the United States have a lot of questions about the role the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamists might have in the next Egyptian government.

Of course, voices have been raised warning that the democratic euphoria that followed Mubarak's departure on Feb. 11, 2011 might soon turn to dust if "the mullahs" come into power in Egypt as they did in the years that followed the Shah's departure from power on Feb. 11, 1979.

This is natural. Most westerners don't know anyone associated with the Muslim Brotherhood or with other Islamist organizations. We have all been subjected in recent years to repeated barrages of anti-Muslim, anti-Islamist hate speech. Many of us (self included) do have some very deep and genuine concerns about the practices of the current Iranian government-- as, of course, those of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

There has been, in the general discourse here in the U.S., remarkably little ability to discern the differences among these different forms of Islamist organizations. In my life and career, I have had the good fortune to meet and interview representatives of many different kinds of Islamist organizations; and I have tried to do what I can to explain the differences to my readers and the general public. One distinction I always try to make is between organizations that are deeply rooted in the societies in which they operate and are willing to participate in fully democratic, one-person-one-vote elections, and those (like Al-Qaeda) who share neither of those attributes.

And we are all very lucky today that there is, in the Middle East today, one democracy in which a moderately Islamist government has held sway for nearly a decade now-- and has performed very well in that role, in both the technocratic sense of delivering good services on a sound basis, and the civil-liberties sense of respecting and strengthening the rule of law and the democratic basis of society.

This is the AK ('Justice and Development') Party in Turkey. So it is not the case today that the only possible "model" one could point to of a republic dominated by an avowedly Islamist party would be Iran under the mullahs, or Afghanistan under the Taliban. Hello! Go to Turkey, people! See how things are proceeding in the politics and society of that vital NATO member!

Also, neither I nor anyone else can tell you what the political favor of a freely elected parliament in Egypt will be. The MB have said they won't run for the presidency, but they will likely run for parliament.

All I'm saying here is that even if they end up with a strong showing in the next government, this is not the end of the world. (And to understand more of my reasons for reaching that conclusion, go read the piece I had on ForPol's Middle East Channel about them, back on January 31.)

Egypt's economy and society have some way to go before its 83 million people can catch up with the living and economic standards of Turkey's 75 million. In Turkey, businesses and industrial conglomerates from throughout the country have been building up huge operations throughout the whole of the former Soviet space, as well as in the Arab world and have pulled the country's per-capita GDP up to about twice the level in Egypt. But if Egypt's businesswomen and -men can be freed from the terrible yoke of corruption under which they've labored so long, they'll be able to compete soon enough.

5.

Many of my Egyptian friends are saying that if westerners really want to support Egypt's democracy, the best thing we can do is go and take vacations there. Well, I guess I can support that (and yes, I am really eager to come back!)

But I think maybe the very best thing we can do is to stop using our taxpayer dollars to provide completely illegal subsidies to the U.S. Big Cotton cartel. Here are some resources I quickly gathered on this issue: 1, 2, 3. The last one notes that,

According to the Environmental Working Group, American cotton growers are among the largest recipients of U.S. Department of Agriculture subsidies. They receive a total of more than $3 billion a year in payments each year.

The first source I link to (the FT, from summer 2009), has this:

In Egypt, the area to be cultivated with cotton this season has shrunk by 10 per cent to 300,000 acres, its lowest ever, says Mefreh El Beltagui, a cotton exporter and an official of Alcotexa, the Alexandria-based association of cotton exporters.

“If the US were to remove its cotton subsidy, they would not be able to compete with us,” he says. “Here there are no subsidies for cotton exports. The state needs to intervene, because here we have mostly small farmers who cannot deal with price fluctuations. Also because we need to preserve our [international] customers for Egyptian cotton. Once you lose a customer it is hard to get them back.”

A fund to support the rehabilitation of the thousands of Egyptians (and others) tortured in the U.S.-supported prisons in Egypt run by U.S. (and Israeli) ally Omar Suleiman would be a fine place to start that project.

6.

Democracy and national self-determination in Tunisia and Egypt: What a beautiful idea!

I have such a lot of confidence in all my friends in both countries that they can do this: That they can rewrite their constitutions to the degree that they all agree on; that they can figure out the rules they want for free and fair elections; that they can fashion new and fairer rules for their economy; that they can define and pursue a role in the world that is both dignified and consonant with their values.

Some people here in the U.S. have been worried, regarding Egypt, about things like "What will become of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel? What will become of the 'peace process'?" I think those are so far from being the first concerns of Egypt's democrats today. (The very first one, of course, is to preserve their revolution from the machinations that anyone else-- including the Mossad-- might be planning to undertake against it.)

The army has said they will stick by the bilateral peace treaty. And there is no current 'peace process' in existence. So what's the bother?

As Egypt does generate its new, much more transparent and accountable system of governance, we can all be certain, I think, that it will be one that is much less willing to see Cairo act as a cat's-paw of Israel and of the AIPAC-dominated U.S. Congress, and much more determined to stand up for Palestinian and Arab rights.

Deal with it, Israel.

And if democracy and national self-determination are such a beautiful idea in Egypt, are they not equally beautiful in Palestine, as well?

7.

The whole region-- and the whole world-- is changing. That region-spanning Apartheid system that Israel and its friends in the U.S. Congress have been running for so long-- the one in which "Egypt" and "Jordan" and to some extent "Saudi Arabia" were all just treated like little subservient homelands within Apartheid South Africa-- is starting to slit apart at the seams.

The era of human equality and an end to war has been brought 100 times closer by the stupendous events of the past month.

Thank you, thank you, the Tunisian and Egyptian people.

Appeal on behalf of 'Bedouins' in Israel

Amos Gvirtz, who was my generous host in his home at Kibbutz Shefayim two years ago, sends out a short weekly report on some current rights outrage committed by the government of Israel, under the title "Don't say you didn't know". His latest email is longer than usual and comes with a short but heartfelt letter at the top:

I wrote this article after 9 of us were arrested when we tried to rebuild the homes of El-Arakib after the entire village was demolished again. This time the police arrived again and arrested 4 people from El-Arakib and 5 human rights activists that tried to help them to rebuild their homes. One human rights activist was arrested earlier that day.

I wish you could ask your Foreign ministers to intervene in this grave human rights violation by the Israeli government against defenseless citizens whose only crime is that they are Bedouins in the Jewish state. I wish you ask them to check the racist role of the JNF in this case.

All the best to you and thank you!

Amos Gvirtz

Gvirtz's report deals with a long-running campaign by "Bedouins", who are transhumant Palestinian Arabs who are supposedly "full" citizens of the State of Israel (as opposed to mere "residents" of the OPTs)... to resist having their homes torn down by the Israeli authorities.

Here it is:

By Amos Gvirtz

On Monday January 17, 2011, America celebrated Martin Luther King Junior Day. In the 1960s King led a non-violent struggle against the racial segregation in the southern states. He was arrested many times during the course of this struggle for breaking the laws of those states. Nevertheless, his birthday was declared a national holiday in the U.S. – and this during the term of a right-wing president, Ronald Reagan.

How is it possible that the birthday of a serial criminal has become a national holiday? The difference between King and other criminals is that the latter break laws which are intended to protect all citizens, while Martin Luther King Junior broke laws which discriminated against some of the citizens – deplorable racist laws.

On Monday January 17, 2011, representatives of the State of Israel, accompanied by a large police force, destroyed the Bedouin village El-Arakib for the 10th time. They then proceeded to clear away the rubble in preparation for the planting of a forest by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) on the village land! That same day the police arrested 10 people at the site, residents of the village and human rights activists who protested against the state's reprehensible act.

D. Levy: Also too little, too late?

Daniel Levy is an engaging and energetic young Brit-Israeli who first made a name for himself helping to organize those-- as it turned out ill-fated, and perhaps all along misguided?-- "Geneva Accords" and who in recent years has been making quite a splash at Washington DC's New America Foundation. His values and worldview are generally excellent. He has been honest and courageous in describing various aspects of the Palestine Question as they really are (and let me tell you, in the often completely toxic, AIPAC-dominated echo chamber of Washington DC, that is something that takes real courage.)

Today, Daniel has an article in Haaretz in which he argues correctly that in the wake of the Revolution in Egypt,

Sweet victory! Many more steps needed!

Nothing more to say right now. Am tweeting. And trying to work....

(On reflection, the title of yesterday's post should maybe have been "Death dance of the Co-dependents." But too morbid.)

U.S.-Egypt: Dance of the co-dependents

The ruling circles in Washington and Cairo are now each in their own way (but also, jointly) engaged in a dance of resistance to the wave of massive political change unleashed by the democratic revolution in Egypt.

This evening I watched Pres. Mubarak's latest, very disappointing and retrograde televised speech to the Egyptian people, then read the careful but ultimately mealy-mouthed response from Pres. Obama. My reading of the situation is that within the ruling circles of both countries there are powerful factions that are resisting the wave of democratic change in Egypt, but also other other factions that have seemed inclined-- whether from a genuine adherence to the principles of democracy and equality, or from a desire to try to "ride this tiger of change" in order, sooner or later, to leash and constrain it-- to give more, and more substantial, concessions to the democracy forces in order to try to work with them.

For now, the conservative, change-resistant forces in both capitals appear to have won their respective arguments. In Washington, the speech that Obama gave was very long on fine principles but completely devoid of announcing any actual policy consequences for Mubarak/Suleiman if they continue to thumb their noses at these principles in practice.

"Going forward," Obama said,

it will be essential that the universal rights of the Egyptian people be respected. There must be restraint by all parties. Violence must be forsaken. It is imperative that the government not respond to the aspirations of their people with repression or brutality. The voices of the Egyptian people must be heard.

Nowhere.

The flow of military aid apparently-- in this case as in the case of Israel, despite its repeated violations of Washington's declared "wishes" regarding settlement construction or other matters-- continues to gush unimpeded.

Americans, and everyone else, should worry about this situation a lot.

Some useful details about the conservative, pro-Mubarak faction within the White House were in this LA Times article today. The authors identified the pro-Mubarak faction in the White House as including the powerful trifecta of Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates, and national security adviser Thomas Donilon, along with both Dennis Ross (!) and Dan Shapiro. Identified with the pro-reform faction are named only a speechwriter, Ben Rhodes, and the veteran human-rights activist Samantha Power.

(Interestingly, the article notes that Dan Shapiro, who is the NSC official in charge of all Arab-Israeli matters, had previously worked as Obama's outreach guy to the U.S. Jewish community during the presidential campaign. Oh yes, can't we just all "take it on trust" that he is a guy who knows a lot about the Middle East and can understand the intricacies of the politics, society, and needs of each Arab country as well as he understands Israel's...)

As for Ross, the former head of the Jerusalem-based Jewish People's Policy Planning Institute, no further comment on his ability to be "fair and balanced" is needed here.

The reason we Americans should worry about this situation is that the interests that members of this powerful faction have in propping up the Mubarak-Suleiman duo are now, with every day that passes, dragging the ability that our country might have to have decent relations with the future democratic Egypt ever lower and lower. They also seem quite happy to have our taxpayer dollars continue to flow unimpeded into propping up Egypt's corrupt and repressive "security" apparatus-- in the same way that they do into Israel's.

The anti-reform factions in Cairo and Washington still wield considerable financial, military, and organizational power. What they are losing more and more of every day is the power to persuade-- especially, the power to persuade that large portion of Egypt's 85 million fairly well educated and right now highly mobilized people who care very deeply indeed about the situation in their own country and who now, urgently, need to see some serious reform there.

And you know what? The current situation in Egypt is one in which military power-- the power of the Egyptian military, the Israeli military, or even the U.S. military-- counts for almost nothing.

This is one of the really exciting aspects of the present situation! All that long-sustained "investment" that these three countries have made in building up hi-tech, capable military formations in the region? In the present situation, it is worth nothing! Nothing. What would the Israeli military do to respond to Egypt's cries for democracy? What would any of them do? What can any of them do that would not, almost instantaneously, make America's situation in the region 100 times worse than it currently is?

Oh sure, the Egyptian military could roll their tanks into the square and kill a huge number of people... Or use their helicopter gunships, or whatever. But then what? The geopolitical consequences of any actual, significant use of force would be devastating-- for the frightened denizens of the White House and of Abdin Palace, alike.

* * *

Change is coming in Egypt. The stubbornness that Mubarak exhibited today-- that he exhibited last week, the week before, and back in November when he brazenly stole the country's parliamentary elections-- just makes the arrival of this change harder for everyone concerned. The desire for change has been bottled up for two decades now. Mubarak is trying to keep it bottled up for a further seven months. And almost inevitably, the more he tries to do this, and the more his allies in Washington and Tel Aviv encourage and enable him to do so, the bigger will be the explosion when it occurs. He and his enablers are acting in an extremely reckless fashion.

* * *

So many aspects of his speech, as I listened to it today, enraged and disappointed me. One that angered me a lot was the patronizing, paternalistic way he referred to those courageous men and women of all ages who have take their stand for democracy in the public square: Referring to them repeatedly as "youth", he claimed to be like their "father"-- and in true paternalistic fashion therefore to know what was best for them.

I think this discourse of the Egyptian revolution as having been "spearheaded by the youth" has been a misleading one from the outset. Okay, maybe people under 35 like Asmaa Mahfouz or Wael Ghonim initiated it in the first instance. But I wouldn't exactly refer to either of them as "youth." Asmaa is, I believe 26, and Wael 30 years old. Wael has two children. When I was Asmaa's age, I had two children, too. Only under a particular (gerontocratic) view of the world would people in this age-range still be described as "youth"... And then, once the demonstrations in Tahrir Square started becoming large and serious, from January 25 on, the faces of the people there included many who looked to be in their 40s, 50s, 60s, or 70s.

So enough with being patronizing, already!

(I think many western commentators have bought too much into this discourse of the revolution being a "youth" phenomenon, too. Perhaps this was because of the association of "youth" with the tools of Web 2.0 organizing, and a fond illusion on the part of some Americans that it was really only these made-in-America tools of social organizing like Facebook and Twitter that allowed this upheaval to get off the ground at all. Guess what. The very solid, real-world logistics of organizing food deliveries, toilet facilities, news-runners, and first-aid stations have been even more important. Remember that even when Mubarak's minsters cut off all the country's internet connections for that couple of days, the organizing and the protests went right ahead.)

* * *

One of the notable things about this revolution is the degree to which it has already-- even before it has attained the success that it seems so clearly headed for-- reduced Israel's importance in the region to something much closer to its appropriate size.

Israel, remember, has a population of about 7.5 million people (only 6 million of them Jewish), which is less than 10% of Egypt's population. So the idea that the claimed security or other "needs" of Israel's citizens should necessarily and in all cases trump the security and other needs of Egyptians is a crazy and racist one from the outset. Deal with it, Israelis: What is happening in Egypt today is far, far bigger than any of your paltry concerns. And if a new Egyptian government decides it wants to take up the issue of the protection of Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem; or that it wants to take seriously the need to combat and reverse Israel's many illegal settlement projects in East Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied territories; or Israel's continuing punitive siege of Gaza; or Israel's continuing violations of Lebanese airspace-- then why should anyone in the world feel they need to try to protect Israel from a determined Egyptian diplomatic campaign to end these continuing violations of international law?

The now-inevitable collapse of the Mubarak-Suleiman regime in Egypt will have other, more far-reaching consequences for U.S. power in the region, and in the world, too. I am not talking about an Egypt that is hostile to Washington: Indeed, I sincerely hope that that does not come about. What I am talking about is an Egyptian government that will serve its own people's interests first, and therefore will not feel any "need" to keep itself in power by allying itself closely with the U.S. military-industrial project in the region and the world... An Egypt in which the armed forces are returned to a reasonable size, both numerically and politically; in which the generals and retired generals no longer control huge swathes of the economy; and in which there is no longer a whole, powerful class of people like this whose power rests almost wholly on retaining their access to the teat of American military aid and therefore their integration into American military planning.

The Middle East ("Centcom") has been the major overseas project for the U.S. military-industrial complex since the end of the Cold War; and within the Centcom area, for various reasons Egypt-- or rather, the Egyptian military and "security" forces-- have played a pivotal role. It is this relationship that Frank Wisner, Bob Gates, and other key members of the U.S. political elite are so eager to protect.

But the whole of Washington's Middle Eastern power-projection project has become a deep financial sinkhole over the past 10 years. It is financially unsustainable over the three- or seven-year term, under any circumstances. There is no 'victory" in Iraq, no "victory" in Afghanistan, and not even any longterm U.S. ability to maintain its present military domination of the Gulf region... Thus, as the Pentagon's ability to continue projecting its power into the region will be retracting over the years ahead, so too will its need to rely on Egypt as a launching pad, and therefore the U.S. taxpayer's willingness (let alone her ability) to continue shoveling money into Egypt's military-security complex.

* * *

As we saw all too painfully tonight, the forces of Egypt's democratic revolution cannot yet expect an easy or straight path to victory. The casualty list has already grown achingly high. (200 dead over the past three weeks? 300? The memorials are proliferating... And nearly every one of these men and women was struck down by U.S.-supplied bullets, or beaten to death by members of the U.S.-supported "security forces.") But the Egyptian revolutionaries are steadfast. They have shown an impressive ability to organize, and to refine and develop their organization to meet changing needs. They are gaining momentum among previously undecided segments of the public. And many of their leaders seem to have reached the (very realistic) judgment that there is no simple turning back for them now. The fear they express is that if they bow down now, then the forces of counter-revolution will come after them all, and their children and grandchildren after them.

Ah, I wish I were in Cairo tonight. But there is important work to do here in the United States, too. Long live the equality of all human persons. Long live the rule of law-- domestically and in the international arena. Long live an end to hypocrisy. Long live this wonderful Egyptian revolution.

I've been tweeting

... more than blogging these past few days. You can follow me here.

MB gets voice into NYT and WaPo

(I just moved the earlier text of this post over to this one, with a better headline. ~HC)

MBs show their impressive communications skills

Well, it's two for two for the Muslim brotherhood in the NYT and WaPo today. On the op-ed page of the WaPo, we have Abdel Moneim Abou el-Fotouh, arguing why Democracy supporters should not fear the Muslim Brotherhood, and on the op-ed page of the NYT we have Essam al-Errian explaining What the Muslim Brothers Want.

Their messages are very similar to that of the Errian (Erian) articles on the MB website that I referred to here, yesterday.

Aboul-Futouh today:

We are mindful, however, as a nonviolent Islamic movement subjected to six decades of repression, that patent falsehoods, fear mongering and propaganda have been concocted against us in Mubarak's palaces the past 30 years and by some of his patrons in Washington. Lest partisan interests in the United States succeed in aborting Egypt's popular revolution, we are compelled to unequivocally deny any attempt to usurp the will of the people. Nor do we plan to surreptitiously dominate a post-Mubarak government. The Brotherhood has already decided not to field a candidate for president in any forthcoming elections. We want to set the record straight so that any Middle East policy decisions made in Washington are based on facts and not the shameful - and racist - agendas of Islamophobes.

Contrary to fear-mongering reports, the West and the Muslim Brotherhood are not enemies. It is a false dichotomy to posit, as some alarmists are suggesting, that Egypt's choices are either the status quo of the Mubarak regime or a takeover by "Islamic extremists." First, one must make a distinction between the ideological and political differences that the Brotherhood may have with the United States. For Muslims, ideological differences with others are taught not to be the root cause of violence and bloodshed because a human being's freedom to decide how to lead his or her personal life is an inviolable right found in basic Islamic tenets, as well as Western tradition. Political differences, however, can be a matter of existential threats and interests, and we have seen this play out, for example, in the way the Mubarak regime has violently responded to peaceful demonstrators.

We fully understand that the United States has political interests in Egypt. But does the United States understand that the sovereign state of Egypt, with its 80 million people, has its own interests? Whatever the U.S. interests are in Egypt, they cannot trump Egyptian needs or subvert the will of the people without consequences. Such egotism is a recipe for disaster. With a little altruism, the United States should not hesitate to reassess its interests in the region, especially if it genuinely champions democracy and is sincere about achieving peace in the Middle East...

The people of Egypt will decide their representatives, their form of democratic government and the role of Islam in their lives. For now, as we verge on national liberation from tyranny, Egyptians in Tahrir "Freedom" Square and all over the country are hoping Americans will stand by them in this crucial hour.

In Egypt, religion continues to be an important part of our culture and heritage. Moving forward, we envision the establishment of a democratic, civil state that draws on universal measures of freedom and justice, which are central Islamic values. We embrace democracy not as a foreign concept that must be reconciled with tradition, but as a set of principles and objectives that are inherently compatible with and reinforce Islamic tenets.

The tyranny of autocratic rule must give way to immediate reform: the demonstration of a serious commitment to change, the granting of freedoms to all and the transition toward democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood stands firmly behind the demands of the Egyptian people as a whole.

Steady, gradual reform must begin now, and it must begin on the terms that have been called for by millions of Egyptians over the past weeks. Change does not happen overnight, but the call for change did — and it will lead us to a new beginning rooted in justice and progress.

Maybe the Obama administration folks could go to them for some lessons in these matters?

Egypt: Regime's slow crumble continues; MB leaders spell out their position

The demonstrations and anti-government protests continued and multiplied throughout many parts of Egypt today. No sign the opposition is backing down. Indeed, it is settling in for the long haul, and reports from around the country indicate that in several places the regime may be starting a slow crumble.

On January 27, I blogged that the decision the Muslim Brotherhood announced that day, that they would formally be joining the protest announced for January 28, "could very well mean the end of the Mubarak regime."

It hasn't happened yet, as we know. But the MB did bring to the protest movement a degree of discipline, organization, and nationwide reach that it had not had until that point.

As of today, I believe the two main scenarios are (1) a slower or faster victory for the pro-democracy movement, as the bastions of the old regime continue their present crumbling; or (2) a counter-stroke by the regime and its allies inside and outside the country that would most likely be very brutal and would leave Egypt in a mess for a very long time to come.

I've been trying to keep up with the actions and pronouncements of the MB. I just read this short account on the MB's English website of the press conference they held earlier today.

They were positioning themselves as cautious (but generally negative) regarding the discussion with VP Suleiman that they-- along with most of the other opposition groups-- entered into last Sunday:

During the conference the MB reiterated that they are not seeking power nor do they have any intentions of fielding any of the group’s members for presidency.

According to the group the preliminary dialogue with the newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman was nothing more than the testing of waters in an attempt to see the regime’s real intentions for reform and constitutional amendments which would guarantee freedom and democracy for the people of Egypt.

The MB asserts that the group’s major concern is the wellbeing of all Egyptians regardless of religion, political trend and sect. It relayed its disappointment of the talks stressing that the regime sidelined the key demands in order for peaceful transition; that being the immediate stepping down of Mubarak...

He wrote:

The Brotherhood has announced that they will not put forward a candidate for the next presidency and that they will be looking at the programs of the candidates to find the best among them. They will put forward candidates for parliament, on the basis of a desire to participate, not to gain a majority, and they will ally themselves with all the nationalist forces in order to bring about true stability built on a foundation of freedom, justice, human dignity, and social justice.

He writes,

If America is to restore its credibility in Egypt and the Arab world, it must respect the right of the Arab peoples to choose their rulers on the basis of democracy, and it should not rely on the power of the rulers to repress the peoples.

If it wanted to guard its interests, particularly its strategic interests, then it must respond to the desire of the people to build a democratic order marked by transparency and accountability...

America will lose its allies among the Arab rulers one after the other if it doesn't change its policy and reconsider all its strategic alliances in the region. The wave of democratic change has arrived in the Arab region and the power of the winds of change and the people is endless. The false American attempts to do nation-building in Afghanistan and to build a democratic system in Iraq both failed. But the Egyptians have proved that they are able-- without any help from America-- to build a better future. And if God wills it they will build a truly democratic system in Egypt that will shine its light on the region.

America is the richest and most powerful state on earth, and for long decades it has claimed to be the leader of the free world and has raised great slogans [on this matter.] So how should it act if it were to honor the right of the peoples to self-determination and to choose their own leaders, and the fundamentals of democracy; and if it were to preserve world peace and international cooperation in the fields of economy, information, and technology, so that it could become an example to humanity that would earn the friendship of the whole world...

The Obama administration has huge sway over the Egyptian military, which it has funded, trained, and supplied for 30 years now. Our government therefore bears considerable responsibility for the gross rights violations that the military in addition to the police, have been continuing to commit even this week... Even after Obama "asked them politely to stop doing it."

Asking politely is not nearly enough. All aid to Egypt's military and "security" bodies should be cut off until they puts in place clear and clearly enforced orders that their units will not engage in, and will not connive in, any actions that violate the rights of civilians.

The role of Egypt's military is to be the shield of the people's rights, not their violator. And its role as the people's shield should not be subordinated to the agendas of any other nation. That has tragically been the case for far too long now. Let Egypt's citizens work peaceably together to design the ground-rules of their own democracy. Why would anybody think they are "not yet" capable of doing that?

'Gaza Mom's west coast tour: Starts this week!

I realize that I haven't done enough to tell JWN readers about the exciting plans for Laila El-Haddad's west coast book tour. The preliminary schedule is here... But more events still need to be added to this, especially in the Bay Area.

Tell your friends! Turn up and support Laila if you possibly can!