Ekraa - اقراء

زيارة خاصة-أسعد أبو خيل

2011-09-21T03:02:00.000+03:00

Debate on Libya's opposition

2011-09-17T05:41:00.000+03:00

Below is a debate I had with Mark Sleboda one of the admins of the Facebook page Free Libya.

Moustafa Yaftasem: I like it, except for the characterization of rebels as fundamentalists.

Free Libya: Mus, all of the TNC's military commanders are veterans of the LIFG. Bel Hadj himself was an associate of Osama Bin Laden. Now, if we assume that Bin Laden's inner circle actually believes in its own discourse (i.e. that it's something more than just a drugs mafia that colludes with US intelligence) then we have to acknowledge that it is pretty fanatical (obviously this doesn't extend to all rank & file rebels).

Moustafa Yaftasem: I am not denying that there are LIFG elements within the ranks of the commanders, but that doesn't mean that the bulk of the opposition are islamists, most of them are ordinary libyans who couldn't even shoot a gun before the uprising started, so I don't agree with the characterization depicted here. Furthermore if we take this caricature more literally we will see that there is a contradiction that AlQaeda or its affiliates are proud collaborators of the west, post war in Afghanistan. The opposition isn't monolithic and ranges from liberals to islamists, who just so happen to be the ones best trained for commanding the military operation against qaddafis forces.

Free Libya: ‎1. Al-Queda is not a unitary actor, in that sense as a global organization it does not exist.. It is a pan-Islamic fundamentalist franchise, a brand, an idea, a blowback against the Western globalization of their lands and societies. The LIFG are far more convernced with the realization of their vision of Islam in their own land than with any global struggle

2. Neither the LIFG nor the US have any principled qualms about momentarily working with one another to meet their short term goals, with a short-term term view of their interests. To whit - the US and UK have a long history of collaboration with fundamentalist Islam against socialist states, which it has always regarded as the greater threat. Fundamentalist Islam and the tactics it has desperately employed, outgunned as it is, called terrorism has never presented a serious or existential threat to the West or the idea of the West. If anything the blowback of fundamentalist Islam has been useful to it, as a pretext to exapand even further into the Islamic world, and to become more openly totalitarian at home.

3. I agree that the disparateTNC rebellion is made up of Islamists, 'liberals' (whatever exactly this mythical universal concept means in a Libyan context), monarchists, self-exiles returned from the US and London, fools, and traitorous corrupt and power hungry officials from the old regime (what the vast majority of the TNC political leadership is including Jalil and Jebril) - but none of those are any more redeemable, or less loathsome than the others. These, fringe minorities of the Libyan population all, would not have been successful without NATO/GCC arms, training, planning, logistics, C4ISR, supplies, strategic bombing, close air support, drones, naval blockade, cruise missiles, special forces, and even shocki troops. The one things the rebels did provide was pretext and serving as useful stage extras for the global media show to recast a foreign coup as a domestic revolution.

4. I can't see anything in that cartoon that distinguishes the 'rebel' as 'fundamentalist' as opposed to a returned exile from the West or a 'liberal' or monarchist. Not that it makes any difference. In the end they are all slaves of NATO/the West now, whether they know it yet or not. The one thing that is somewhat incorrect is to show him raising a Kalishnikov, the weapon of the Libyan Army and Defense forces. The 'rebels' were largely armed with NATO issue Belgian assault rifles and NATO standard ammunition from even before Feb, 17th [according to Russian military sources]

Moustafa Yaftasem: I agree with everything except the generalization in point 3. Surely Qaddafi's regimes has forcefully exiled some dissenting libyans in the last 42 years. And although the TNC heads the opposition the categories that you reduced the Libyan Opposition to leaves out the ordinary Libyans who supported the uprising without any ideological motive (instead of fundamentalist we can just say they were moderates) that they were just tired of Qaddafi's rule, regardless of how naive or "foolish" they were. There are plenty of contradictions within the Libyan Opposition who only agree that Qaddafi's rule should end, but where they go from here is hardly something determined given how diverse they are.

Free Libya: Their future is already determined by who their 'liberators' were and who those liberators have chosen to elevate as their local puppet leaders. It is a fait accompli. The only choice the Libyan people have is accept the neoliberalization and privatization of their country, ie what the rebels have largely unknowingly fought for, like good little pawns or sheep - or as the Islamists and Loyal Libyans who believe in the Jamarhiryah are likely to do, not accept that, and create a brief bloody period of violence and resistance before they are killed or subdued. Either way it is only a matter of time, and mostly Libyan blood. The West has created a sick world where they can profit off of destruction even more than creation, so it matters not to them.

Moustafa Yaftasem: And regarding the "slaves" description you added, this is somewhat naive. Qaddafi wasn't a dissenter of globalism and he started market liberalization to please his western leaders. Wikileaks has shown the degree the US were collaborating with the regime politically economically and in security. The only one opposition to US plans was adding Libya to Africom.

Free Libya: Quaddafi accepted limited market intrusion, as all socialist countries have had to do post 92 to survive in a neoliberal capitalist world without the USSR as patron and protector. However, this was only limited and he most certainly was an ideological dissenter from global capitalism, hands tied as they were. The grudging acquiesce he gave the West was never the total assimilation and submission they require. Minority shares and short term leases in Libya's oil and water wealth (Quadaffi's GMMR) could never satisfy Western neoliberalism, esp when they had to sit their and watch the vast majority of Libya's oil wealth be 'wasted' on maintaining Libya's extensive system of social benefits and rights, one of the last of such remaining in the world. Quaddafi also acted as a geopolitical leader for African states to ever so occasionally resist Western interests (Africom as you mentioned being one such example). Just the idea of a socialist-ish and direct democracy system as the Jamarhiryah is opposition enough to the West to want to see it crushed. The 'Long War' is a war, not only against Fundamentalist Islam, but to End History and to extinguish any other alternatives to Western globalization.

Chomsky and BDS

2011-09-05T11:13:00.002+03:00

I have a lot of respect for Chomsky, and rarely do I find my thoughts in conflict with his own. My introduction to the Arab-Israeli conflict and to anarchism and the Kibbutz movement is all thanks to his writing. His views on BDS are not mainstream and he has several criticisms of it. Below is a summary from the following interview by Frank Barat:

Chomsky argues that BDS must be principled. Why should Tel Aviv university be boycotted, when American universities that are complicit and actively participate in far greater war crimes are not being challenged, he argues? What makes Israeli crimes special? Why should Israel be boycotted when its enabler and biggest supporter, the US, which is also responsible for far greater crimes is not facing a call for BDS. This picking on Israel could hurt the Palestinians. Just because some Palestinians have asked for BDS against Israel, doesn't mean we should blindly follow it, but should first ask whether these actions are going to hurt the Palestinians. Action needs to be principled, he says, and if they're not it will be a gift for Israeli right and Zionist sympathizers and will cause cries of antisemitism which will make it even harder to talk about Palestine, and therefore, it's counterproductive.

Chomsky believes that the one state solution is not much more than a slogan, similar to asking for a no-state solution. He says that there is no reason to worship imperial boundaries and he would like to see all states with their oppressive institutions and boundaries dissolved. He says he does not know of any advocacy of the one state solution, all he keeps hearing is a slogan that we should all live in peace. He says the two state solution which is the international consensus should be advanced. One of the ways this could happen is if the IDF pulls out of the West Bank, which will only happen after withdrawing US support. When that happens almost all of the illegal settlers will move to Israel proper, and et voila, a functioning Palestinian state, which the Palestinians in exile can return to. With time, he says, the borders between Israel and the future Palestinian state could begin to erode, and there might be some settlement in the future where both states are combined and the descendants of the refugees of 48 could return right back to their original hometowns in Israel. Regarding the right of return of the refugees he says the right should be affirmed but it is never going to happen because there is absolutely no support for it, and if there were, Israel would use nukes to prevent it from happening. He says that resolution 194 doesn't mention the right of return of the descendants although certain organisation have interpreted it to include them. Sooner or later he says Israel will accept resolution 194 because there will be no one left.

Well, if Israel continues to build its settlements as it has been doing since 71, and making it even more difficult for a two state solution, it will eventually realize it has no option but for the one state solution. But according to Barghouti the BDS movement has was overwhelmed the progress has made and it might be sooner or later that Israel is pressed to do something. I just ordered his book.

Political Drugs

2011-09-01T13:14:00.003+03:00

Bilal Fadl

Your friend is someone who is honest with you not someone who tries to please you just so you can feel good, so please allow me to bother you with my astonishment that you may consider removing the Israeli flag from on top of the Israeli embassy and replacing it with the Egyptian flag as some sort of political or even symbolic victory. After the January revolution I thought we no longer need symbolic victories as much as we need to pursue realistic ones. In my opinion, if this action symbolises anything it is our strong frivol and misapprehension of our surrounding reality, and sadly shows that some of us have become prisoners of symbolic victories in the fields of amiss.

So that you can understand my bothersome idea more clearly, let me take you from what happened in front of the Israeli embassy to what happened in front of and inside the state security headquarters. Do you remember how ecstatic thousands of activists were when they stormed the headquarters that was paved to them in a carefully calculated way, and how they were amazed to find documents that were deliberately left behind for them? Some turned out to be forged just for the activists' sake, so the truth can mix with fiction and the real secrets could remain archived in electronic format far from their angry hands. The activists considered what happened an unprecedented historical victory and their happiness climaxed when the decision was made to dissolve the State Security system and replaced it with another system called National Security. They attacked those like myself that asked instead of dissolving State Security, it should be put under complete judicial supervision and committees should be assembled to investigate all its activities, including the tremendous wealth accumulated by its top officers and their affiliations. They thought that this proposal corrupts their achievement of toppling tyranny and dictatorship. Ok, and now five months after disposing this symbol, let's ask ourselves: where is the judicial supervision and the various apparatus of the Ministry of Interior that are supposed to be monitoring the new National Security system from which, for example, we can determine the truth of what happened to the Alexandrian activist Mahmoud Sha'aban? Who will bring justice to the thousands that were tortured and lost their futures by this system? Have the fortunes of the inflicted officers been investigated in the abuse of human rights? And who can guarantee that the officers are not just as corrupt when they are moved to a new location? Have the activists been involved in pursuing issues like these or were they just satisfied with disposing the symbol of deception?

Let us return to what happened in front of and above the Israeli embassy where the Israeli flag was taken down and replaced by the Egyptian flag by the young and brave man Ahmah AlShahat. What I liked most about him is that he works as a carpenter six days of the week, and for his day off he goes to Tahrir square. This to me symbolizes the greatest achievement of the January revolution: that it caused millions of Egyptians to take action rather than the passive satisfaction with the reality that they have been entrenched with for thousands of years. I watched a TV interview for Ahmed and I honoured him and loved his lucidity, and I prayed that no harm should come his way, [...] but I don't think he's the symbol that Egypt needs in regards to the struggle against Israel. Perhaps because I'm feeling languid, or maybe because since the January revolution I stopped consuming political drugs. I realized the way to defeat Israel starts with liberating the palace of Arabism. Or, perhaps because whilst Ahmed was climbing the building to reach the Israeli flag I knew that was a young Israeli man at the Dimona nuclear plant working on improving his nation's nuclear capabilities, and another young Israeli woman working in a cancer research lab subsidized by the state with millions working on a cure for cancer which will return billions in profit, and another young Israeli man protesting with complete peace of mind because he isn't vulnerable from military trials, and even if someone were to abuse his freedom to protest he knows that justice will be served. No Israeli needs to climb on top of the Egyptian embassy and replace the Egyptian flag with the Israeli because they understand that the power of the nation isn't embodied in cotton that waves on top of any embassy.

I realise that most of those who demonstrated outside the Israeli embassy aren't delusioned and know that what happened isn't the end of our struggle against Israel. Most of them, by the way, protested with all their courage against military trials for civilians and chanted demanding toppling of military rule. But I am sad that day by dad they don't realize they are looking for symbolic achievements and distant themselves from the right path to topple military rule. It saddens me they they believe that the Egyptian citizen can sympathize with slogans for waging war against Israel when they first need an internal victory against autocrats, exploiters and the corrupt. It saddens me that they don't realize that they are being politically exploited these days. It saddens me they don't ask why they were allowed to do what they did this time in particular; just like they didn't ask why they were allowed to reach Abassaia when it was possible to prevent them in Abdelmoneim Riyad Square, for example. It saddens me that this revolutionary power is dissipated daily as superficial opposition and tampering squabbles instead of chanelling them into serious efforts that produces political currents that are connected to the streets, so that the activists don't remain a deaf cluster provoked by carefully calculated situations, to realize when it's too late that it's abondaned by the public that it revolted for.

I'm from a generation that had the biggest dream of doing what happened infront of the Israeli embassy. This action was considered a fantasy in the 90's. Our biggest dream when we protested the murder Mohammed Durra is that we reach Attaba and become martyrs there. But now we've realized this dream and we've also realized that reaching the top of the Israeli embassy or even inside of it won't bring us a step forward. We will win our civilized battle against Israel if we have a longer breath, calmer, and sharper, and with less concentration on appearances and symbols. So will the generations that will follow us realize this and save time that we and the generations before us have wasted?

If you've considered these sentences veraciously annoying worthy of consideration, then many thanks. If you've considered it to be the grounds of the final chapter between you and me then let me tell you that it was only a draft.

Translated from Arabic, and I may have left out a phrase or two.

Tahrir News, August 23rd 2011

Follow up on my article in +972

2011-08-31T09:06:00.011+03:00

My last post was published in the Israeli magazine +972 with the title 'Antinormalisation: unhelpful to Palestinians' and it generated a lot of controversy and misunderstanding to which I must respond. Some of the responses were thoughtful and critically constructive, and some were just knee jerks to the title: I am blaming "antinormalisation" ergo I am a "normaliser." This logical error lead to denounciation by pro-Palestinians, and praise by pro-Israelis. The thoughtful responses mainly criticized the way I used the term anti-/"normalisation" although I didn't try to define it but was simply referring to the way Arabs use it in avoiding to engage with Palestinians in Israel-Palestine as well as Israeli Jews who oppose Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. In this follow up I'll try to summarize the comments my article recieved and clarify certain issues.

Firstly, I'd like to explain how I came to publish this article in +972 - an Israeli magazine, whose readers are presumably mostly Israeli - when my article is addressing Arabs. This is sadly because I was unable to publish at Electronic Intifada, Kabobfest or Jaddaliya. The former two never responded. Jaddaliya's co-editor replied that the article was considered but wasn't selected. Perhaps my use of the term antinormalisation was the reason they refused. My next choice was +972 Magazine, which provides news and insightful commentary from Israel and the occupied territories that I learn from and share and I was happy to contribute to it. (THIS ISN'T AN ACT OF NORMALISATION!!) So I sent my article to one of its editors, and I was pleased by her enthusiasm for publishing it.

In the first revision of my article the editor said that the title "What the Arabs can do" wasn't descriptive enough. So I added, "What the Arabs can do for Palestine" which was initially accepted (as you can tell from the article's URL) but then rejected by the main editor who thought that it was still not descriptive enough for publication. Then the editor(s) decided unilaterally to its current title that I never agreed to. My editor told me that I can still change it but I couldn't think of a better one so it wasn't changed. Furthermore the editor(s) added the word 'policy' to the article's description. I haven't used this word before in my article nor did I see it when reviewing with my editor prior to publication. I wasn't criticizing a "policy of anti-normalisation." I was criticizing the Arab practise of "antinormalisation". I didn't bother changing this either because I didn't have time to go back and forth with the editor, and readers were already commenting on what they read. So I swallowed these two errors and hoped that my readers would go beyond the title and description, read my essay and contemplate the point I was making. After catching some sleep I read the comments in +972 and reactions from Twitter, and I realized the consequences of an Arab criticizing "the policy of antinormalisation" on the front page of an Israeli magazine.

In the comments sections of the article I briefly responded to some of the comments made against my use of the term "antinormalisation," and I apologised to my readers and the Egyptian Independent Union Federation for not mentioning two of their three "principled reasons" to why they were opposed to the now dissolved Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions. However, as all three reasons are principled, the "participation in a visit to occupied Jerusalem" was independent of the two I omited, and I used this particular opposition as an introductory example of how Arabs generally refuse to visit Palestine or engage with Israeli Jews in the name of antinormalisation. But to make sure I understood the EIUF's position fully, I looked up the original Arabic statement. Article 5 says,

ترفض النقابات المستقلة بشكل قاطع أي شكل من اشكال التطبيع مع العدو الصهيوني او أيا من مؤسساته الرسمية أو الحزبية أو النقابية أو أي جهة تنتمي إليه بأي طريقة. كما ترفض النقابات المستقلة التعامل مع أي جهات أو أفراد يمارسون التطبيع أو يدعون إليه أو يوافقون عليه. وتؤكد على دعمها الكامل لحق الشعب الفلسطيني العربي في إقامة دولته المستقلة على كامل التراب الفلسطيني وحقه الكامل في استخدام كافة أشكال المقاومة من أجل الحصول على حقوقه. كما تؤكد النقابات المستقلة أن أحد أهم أسباب رفضها للتنظيم النقابي الرسمي إلى جانب تبعيته للسلطة والحزب الوطني المنحل هو مشاركته في زيارة السادات للقدس وعدم اتخاذه أي موقف تجاه سياسات التطبيع مثل اتفاقية الكويز وتصدير الغاز وغيرها من السياسات التي تواطأ عليها الاتحاد الرسمي للعمال بصمته في الوقت الذي كانت الحركة العمالية المصرية ترفضها وتقاومها.

"The independant unions confirm that one of their main reasons for their rejection to the official union federation aside from its subservience to the state and the now-dissolved National Democratic Party is its participation in Sadat's visit to Jerusalem and its failure to take any position against the normalisation policies such as the QIZ [Qualified Industrial Zones] agreement and the gas export agreement and other policies which the Egyptian Trade Union Federation by its silence was complicit whilst the Egyptian workers’ movement rejected them and was resisting them."

As you can see Arabawy's translation omitted the reason behind EFTU's visit. They were participating in Sadat's historical visit to Jerusalem in 1977 which marked the beginning of normalised relations between Egypt and Israel. My impression from Arabawy's translation was that they were strictly against a visit to Jerusalem because it is under occupation, a position taken by the overwhelming majority of Arabs. Having understood this my criticism of their position as "championed irrational parochialism" is incorrect. I should've picked on someone else as an introductory example to my essay.

Regarding the normalisation between Egypt and Israel, we can understand the logic why many Egyptians who are opposed to it might refuse visiting Israel and the occupied territories as this was only possible after the fact. Is this contradiction significant enough to pass on a visit to Palestine? I don't think so. I think we should take advantage of it and do what we can in helping the Palestinians and engaging with Israeli dissidents. As Edward Said says,

One of the things that I try to do, in a very uncompromising and quite open way, is to say, We have to break that attitude. We have to break out of our self-constructed mind-forged manacles and look at the rest of the world and deal with it as equals. There's too much defensiveness, too much sense of aggrieved, unfulfilled whatever. This is in part account for the absence of democracy. It's not just the despotism of the rulers, not just the plots if imperialism, it's not just the corrupt regimes, not just the secret police. It's our intellectuals' lack of citizenship and keep insisting on. For myself, since there is little that I can do at this distance, whether in person or through my writing, is to keep making that point. The only way to change a situation is oneself doing it, reading, asking, encountering, breakout of the prison.

Comments by Miki criticized my use of the term "normalisation." As I said before, my article made no attempt to arrive at its definition but only criticizes how it is used. Antinormalisation in practise, not in theory. She insists that I don't understand the political definition of anti-"normalisation," and references a definition:

"Normalisation means to participate in any project or initiative or activity, local or international, specifically designed for gathering (either directly or indirectly) Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis, whether individuals or institutions; that does not explicitly aim to expose and resist the occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people."

If we assume this policy of normalisation is correct there should be absolutely no problem of bringing together Arabs with Palestinians and/or Israeli dissidents who are in Israel or in the occupied territories. But the overwhelming majority of Arabs consider this a replusive act of normalisation. Perhaps if I included this definition in my article it would have strengthened my argument, but I still don't think not having it subtracts from the point that I was arguing, namely that the Arab understanding of "normalisation" is harmful to the Palestinians.

I also said in the article that antinormalisation - in the practical sense I alluded to - was different from BDS. Miki noted that this shows that I have no political understanding of the term. She is right, I didn't have and only learnt the "correct" definition after reading her comments. I really had no use of the term because I kept on hearing it as an excuse to a point where it has been evacuated of any meaning. My article didn't imply that we should "normalise" with Israel, or accept its occupation, but that we should be pragmatic. That we should deal with the fact of occupation by doing more than whining about it.

I recently watched the Tunisian actress Hindy Sabry's interview on Yousry Fouda's show Akher Kalam where she talked about her visit to the West Bank. She was invited by the Kasaba International Film Festival amongst other prominent Arab cinematographers, none of which attended except the director Nadia Kamel. She thanks god that she visited Ramallah and says that she will never regret it no matter how much the Arabs blamed her for it. "Normalisation has been one of those words we repeat without understanding what it means." she says. She recalls how happy the Palestinians were by her visit,

You can't describe their happiness when we visit them because they are not treated as news material that you watch and cry for infront of the TV but as real human beings.

They repeated to her a reassuring saying by the Palestinian leader Faisal Al-Husseini

زيارة السجين ليس تطبيع مع الساجن
Visiting a prisoner is not to normalise with the warden

Now that would have been an awesome title for my article in +972! I will work on an Arabic version of my article which will include everything I learnt from the commentary, which will of course include the definition of "normalisation" provided by the BDS campaign.

What the Arabs can do

2011-08-18T07:53:00.820+03:00

I tweeted that an Egyptian revolutionary committee should address the Israeli protesters who were apparently influenced by the Egyptian intifada - as many parts of the Arab World and indeed the entire world - on what they think of their apartheid and occupation. An impassable proposal given the dogmatic position Arabs have towards normalisation with Israel expressed here in the Egyptian Independent Union Federation statement:

5. The independent unions completely reject any form of normal relations with the Zionist enemy, as they reject all forms of co-operation with any person or organisation who is involved in normalisation or is calling for normalisation. ...

Outreach to any Israeli institution or individual which may include ones actively challenging Israel's racist policies, as well as Israeli Palestinians and Palestinians living in the West Bank is rejected. As stated further in article 5, one of the main reasons why they were opposed to the government backed (now dissolved) Egyptian Trade Union Federation is "its participation in a visit to occupied Jerusalem." To be in solidarity with Palestinians is to keep them in a state of total isolation from their Arab brothers and sisters. But even more perplexing as we will read below is that visiting Gaza is not much of a problem. This championed irrational parochialism that pretends that Israel doesn't exist whilst Palestinians suffer daily form its discriminatory policies and wars does absolutely nothing to help their struggle for liberation, and needs to be challenged head-on.

Anti-normalisation is a strategy of irresponsibility towards Israel's harsh reality. It is avoiding the entirety of Israeli society and the Palestinians it subjects except in charity and rhetorical support for their Resistance, whilst at home we challenge the Zionist colonial project by treating the Palestinians with the same inverted logic applied by Israel: we reject to normalise them, many of whom have for decades been living in refugee camps, and similar living conditions to Palestinians in Israel-Palestine. If Arabs can just swallow their pride for a minute and think about the positive impression their visit to Palestine can have. Artists, writers and musicians can boost morale and culture, professionals can help build institutions, professors can give talks at universities, ordinary people can experience what it means to be Palestinian by passing through checkpoints, watching houses demolished, land stolen and trees uprooted, and join the weekly protests held in places like Bilin. Are international solidarity activists normalising with Israel when they demonstrate in Bilin anymore than than Arabs would if they attended? Is there any better act of solidarity that being physically present? A typical response from an Arab whose country has made formal peace with Israel and therefore can visit the occupied territories but refuses, "I'll visit it once it is liberated." A seemingly defiant response but one that absolves the responsibility of physically and spiritually helping them in their struggle and daily plight.

Anti-normalisation is merely symbolic and unprincipled. When a football tournament was held in Gaza which brought Egyptian, Tunisian, Jordanian and Palestinian kids together to help in "breaking the siege on Gaza," the Egyptian Minister of Youth "praised the responsive attitude of the officials in Egypt and their keenness to support the young Palestinian people and to open up areas of cooperation and communication." However when Egypt's Olympic football team was invited by the Palestinian Football Federation to play in East Jerusalem it was met with a storm of protest because the visiting Egyptians would have to accept passing through Israeli checkpoints and have the Star of David stamped on their passports. A stamp that to them signifies a defeat, recognition of Israel and acceptance of the occupation, but visiting the besieged Gaza Strip is acceptable because you can bunk the reality of the Israeli occupation when there are no Jews around. Are the Palestinians in the West Bank not worthy of our cooperation and communication? Does the nature of Israel's occupation dictate how we will treat one Palestinian locale over another?

Anti-normalization is also a strategy of ignorance. Take the refusal of Alaa AlAswany, the prominent Egyptian novelist who sued an Israeli publishing company for translating his international best selling novel The Yacoubian Building without his permission. Although he accused the company of plagiarism, he says his "position regarding normalization with Israel has not changed. I reject it completely." Edward Said countered this position eloquently,

Take the recent campaign against the translation of Arabic books into Hebrew. One would have thought that the more Arabic literature is available in Israel, the better able Israelis are to understand us as a people, and to stop treating us as animals or less-than-human. Instead we have the sorry spectacle of serious Arab writers actually denouncing their colleagues for "allowing" themselves to "normalise" with Israel, which is the idiotic phrase used as an accusation for collaborating with the enemy. Isn't it the case, as Julien Benda was the first to say, that intellectuals are supposed to go against collective passions instead of trading in them demagogically? How on earth is a Hebrew translation an act of collaboration? Getting into a foreign language is always a victory for the writer. Always and in each case. Isn't it a far more intelligent and useful thing than the craven "normalisation" of the various countries that have trade and diplomatic relationships with the enemy even as Palestinians are being killed like so many flies by the Israeli army and air force? Aren't Hebrew translations of Arabic literature a way of entering Israeli life culturally, making a positive effect in it, changing people's mind from bloody passion to reasonable understanding of Israel's Arab Others, especially when it is Israeli publishers who have gone and published the translations as a sign of cultural protest against Israel's barbarous Arab policy?

(...)

There is simply no rational justification from an intellectual point of view of having a policy of ignorance, or using ignorance as a weapon in a struggle. Ignorance is ignorance, no more and no less. Always and in every case.

A sustainable peace will not come about militarily nor will it be in the form of some divine intervention. And although the onus is on Israel, not the Arabs, to do what is just, to recognize their dispossession of the Palestinians and admit their equal right to the land the Arabs can certainly play an important part in calming Israeli hysteria and alluding to the prospect of a just peace by engaging with them. Liberation based on boycott alone will not suffice. We need to reassure the Jews, like the ANC and Nelson Mandela reassured the Whites of South Africa, that the land is for both groups to share, and the victorious will not rule over the defeated. This mutual element of trust must be developed, and without it there won't be a sustainable peace. What's missing is an Arab initiative.

Bassel, a Palestinian living in the West Bank responded defensively to my tweet stating that "I think we don't need to address no body..we need to fight for our freedom." My position was, and remains, that engaging with Israeli society, and especially with sectors that stand for civil and universal human rights is necessary, regardless of how unpopular their positions may be in Israel. Bassel was pessimistic of the prospects of dialogue and of the Israeli protests.

"Do you really think the Arabs should wait till the Zionists come around? or convince them?.. Do you really think they don't know? You've obviously never been here, if you really think they don't know what's going on. They know very well."

But the Arabs have been doing nothing but waiting until the Zionists come around. Consider if a truly democratic government came to power in Egypt. We might eventually terminate our gas sales to Israel, end our siege on Gaza and continue in condemnation of the state of apartheid and the settlements or even cut all diplomatic ties, but nothing substantial beyond that.

Comments on my cousin's Facebook update gave a sample of what some Arabs believe and helps to explain their lack of initiative. He noted that it was stupid of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdelnasser to expel the local Jewish population, many of whom left for Israel. He argues, I think correctly, that if they didn't leave their presence would today be a direct contradiction to the Zionist claim that only a homeland for Jews can protect them from endemic global Antisemitism because only next door exists an old and established Jewish population that has for centuries peacefully coexisted with non-Jews. Several people commented things to the effect that, It was good that they left. Well they left and it only added to the number of Jews living on stolen Palestinian land. There is an inability to differentiate between Antisemitism, hating Jews for being Jewish, and anti-Zionism, rejecting the colonial project in Palestine. The former of course is inclusive of the latter: if you are against Jews you are against their presence amongst us. We should confront equating Jews with Israeli policy - even though the majority of Israeli Jews are Zoinists - and Israelis as necessarily anti-Palestinian. Anti-Zionism is not one of the same as Antisemitism, an equation that the Israeli establishment together with American mainstream press stress endlessly.

A discussion and more sensible definition of normalisation is given here by Rifat Odeh Kassis, a board member of the Alternative Information Agency:

"Normalisation means to participate in any project or initiative or activity, local or international, specifically designed for gathering (either directly or indirectly) Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis, whether individuals or institutions; that does not explicitly aim to expose and resist the occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people."

We see that there is absolutely no objection for Arabs to visit Palestinians in the occupied territories or even in Israel proper, or with Israelis who are trying to "expose and resist" the occupation."
Recommended Readings:
Defiance, Dignity, and the Rule of Dogma, Edward Said
Inside the other wilaya, Edward Said
Excerpts from Culture and Resistance, conversations with Edward Said

A real #J14 struggle

2011-08-16T01:07:00.003+03:00

Two Palestinians trying to find a place to rent in Israel

2011-08-14T22:27:00.000+03:00

Two clips that strike at the heart of the J14 protests. Of course Israeli Arabs can't own land or build houses in Israel. They are limited to their ghettos of 48.

Inside the other wilaya

2011-08-12T07:46:00.003+03:00

Edward Said

Whether political or military, modern conflict is rarely static. One side takes a position and holds it, but must also use maneuvers and mobile tactics to protect that position. The more political the conflict, the more dynamic and complex its nature. Most of the great liberation struggles of the twentieth century were unconventional in that they were ultimately won not by armies but by flexible, mobile political forces who relied more on initiative, creativity and surprise than they did on holding fixed positions, the firepower of conventional armies, and the sheer weight of formal institutions and traditional establishments. During the l968 Tet offensive, the North Vietnamese risked, and lost, many men in all sorts of daring raids inside the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, which is where the American general command was also located. The purpose of these attacks was to draw attention to American and South Vietnamese vulnerability, and this was certain to be recorded on US television. In other words, the point was to influence American audiences in America, to provoke resistance and dissent in the US, to demonstrate the weakness of the American political cause whose main purpose was to impose its will on Vietnam.

During the l954-62 war of national liberation in Algeria, the FLN divided Algeria into six districts, or wilayat, each of which had its own command structure, field of operations, and fighting forces. The seventh wilaya was metropolitan France itself. The idea was that, given French military superiority, it would be crucial for the liberation movement to conduct political operations behind the French lines -- that is, to win as much opinion and gain as much support as possible from French civilians. And this proved to be a significant factor in the Algerian victory which, to repeat, was not military but political. Influential French public figures like Jean-Paul Sartre, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Jean Genet and others were won over to the Algerian side, even though, as French citizens, they were theoretically opposed to the insurrection defying French colonialism.

And in South Africa, it was a major component of ANC policy to make sure that white South Africans were directly involved in the struggle against apartheid. The policy was clear.

Since it was necessary to convince whites that a victory for justice was not the beginning of a new form of injustice -- whites were always promised that if they stayed, they would enjoy equality with blacks in the event of an ANC victory. Therefore it was a logical necessity for whites to be directly involved in the struggle against apartheid as members of the ANC. Without such a policy of actually getting white men and women to fight a policy that racially favored them, the ANC could not have won the battle inside South Africa. When the movement was at its lowest ebb inside the country, its leaders imprisoned, killed or exiled, its cadres demoralised, the apartheid government's forces in complete control, the focus of struggle shifted to the international arena and to influential whites. Similarly, during the civil rights movement of the '60s in the United States, it was because the black leadership actively sought out intellectuals and public figures for their support as whites in supporting the movement, going on marches, signing petitions, and so forth, that it achieved some measure of success.

Such a strategy demands extraordinary discipline and detail. A friend of mine who went to North Vietnam in the late '60s told me that, when he visited the NLF's political headquarters, he was astonished to see an enormous map of the United States divided into each of the many hundred congressional districts. For each district the Vietnamese had drawn up a list of congressmen as well as ten issues -- domestic as well as international -- that each of the congressmen had voted on. In this way the Vietnamese were able to keep tabs on every voting record and each congressman who might be persuaded to change or re-confirm a vote bearing on the war in Vietnam. And this at a time when the US was bombing the whole of Indochina on a scale that far outstripped anything in World War II or the Korean conflict.

The South Africans during the 1980s and early '90s organised a boycott of visiting academics, journalists, sports figures, entertainers, and businessmen, but lifted the boycott in individual cases. When I went there in May 1991 as a guest of the Universities of Cape Town and Johannesburg, I had to be passed by the boycott committee, who reasoned that my presence would enhance the anti-apartheid struggle. In other words, there was never a total, undiscriminating opposition to every person assumed to be on the other side, neither in Vietnam, the United States, Algeria nor South Africa. A subtle system of trying to involve people from the opposing camp on the side of liberation was an essential component of the battle.

Our opposition, as Palestinians and Arabs generally, to the abuses of Zionism must deal with the other side with equal knowledge and discrimination. The idea that we should boycott all Israelis as a way of opposing normalisation is, in my opinion, far too blunt an instrument and in the end both impractical and self-destructive. In the first place, there is practically no conventional Arab military or political force that truly opposes Israel. Even the PLO, to say nothing of states like Jordan and Egypt, have signed peace agreements with Israel. We have no credible military option of any sort, with the exception of a valiant guerrilla struggle waged by Hizbullah in south Lebanon. Secondly, there are many Israelis who are quite disgusted with the policies of the Netanyahu government and who can be effective in helping us with the struggle against apartheid, which currently disfigures the Israeli and Palestinian landscape. Thirdly, we have foolishly confined our "acceptance" of Israeli forces for our side only to those connected in some way to the government and establishment. This is as true of the PLO currying favour with the Labor Party as it is of independent intellectuals who are happy to meet with people like David Kimche in Copenhagen.

This is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of our battle for equal rights and self-determination. As was the case in South Africa, we cannot be ambiguous about making it clear to Israelis that our fight does not envision driving them out of the Middle East altogether: we cannot turn the clock back to pre-1917 or pre-1948 days. But we can assure them, as Mandela regularly did the white South African community, that we want them to stay and share the same land with us on an equal basis [my emphasis]. There is therefore an appeal to be made to Israelis on the grounds of civil, human and political rights for all the peoples of Palestine. What we oppose is that Israelis should dominate us, and continue to occupy and deprive us of our land. If we were to say to democratic elements in the Israeli population that we want the same things, equal rights and a decent life in peace and security, we can then enlist each other's help in the struggle. But we must do this with attention to the exact nature of Israeli civil society, just as the Vietnamese did with the US or the Algerians with France.

I emphasise this notion of acting and taking into consideration the existence of other wilayat as a way of criticising the ineffective notion of an absolute demarcation between us and every single Israeli or Jew. This is why in a previous article I spoke about the need for Palestinian intellectuals to address Israeli students, professors, intellectuals, artists and other independent people directly, rather than to say that we will never talk to or deal with any Israeli. In the absence of a real military option, in the absence even of a real front dividing Palestinians from Israelis (the two populations are mixed despite the dreams of Zionism to separate them), there is no way for Palestinians to gain their rights without actively involving Israelis in their struggle [my emphasis]. A well-organised international campaign against the settlements; a major march including Israelis and Palestinians on one of the settlements; public meetings in which common goals are articulated. In such efforts, it is we, not the Israelis, who must take the initiative, and we must do so at the same time that we speak openly and candidly about putting our own house in order. As a people, we can no longer endure quietly the tyranny and corruption of the present Palestinian regime. Make no mistake about it: the Israeli government wants a weak, corrupt and unpopular Palestinian Authority. It has no use for democracy or a dialogue between equals. This is why we must take our cause to the very heart of the Israeli wilaya, to speak both of peace and of democracy for two peoples. Until we can do this and do it without complexes about speaking with "the enemy", until we can make distinctions between the real forces of peace in Israel and the Labour Party, we will continue to drift and suffer the costs of occupation and undemocratic Palestinian rule. We must speak the truth to power.

Two movies on Palestine you got to watch

2011-08-12T07:44:00.000+03:00

Forget the cultural BDS for a moment and watch this movie, and especially if you can watch how the actors got together to make this movie. Surely a sense of hope shines between the cracks of apartheid and discrimination.

Edward Said on HardTalk

2011-08-05T08:22:00.000+03:00

Few Updates on Libya by David Montoute

2011-08-04T05:35:00.004+03:00

Since the killing of General Younis, there have been a number of reports of uprisings in Benghazi to oust the NATO-backed rebels. Some of what I heard sounded kind of hard to believe at first, but Leonor in Libya, whose blog I've been following these past months is providing on-the-spot testimony about the Warfalla - Libya's biggest tribe - marching to Benghazi against the rebels. She says, amongst many other things, that Qatar (arming the rebels and publishing their non-stop propaganda on Al Jazeera) actually has tanks on the ground in Benghazi. Leonor also claims that NATO helicopters are shooting down the Warfalla protestors:

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

Alexander Cockburn also has a brief summary of the consequences of the Younis killing:

"The same day this news of Younis’s killing came, Britain recognized the rebels at the legitimate government of Libya and gave them the okay to take over Libyan government facilities in London. There seems to be civil war in London, since foreign secretary William Hague had come off his hardline stance against negotiations with Tripoli. By way of thank you, as his men pumped bullets into Younis, Jalil swiftly requested the $25 billion in Libyan government funds, held by NATO powers, which if turned over, -- which I strongly doubt -- will no doubt enter many a private rebel account, not to mention private NATO accounts – which aim was evident from the start, when Benghazi opened a “central Libyan bank.”

This is one of the greatest humiliations of NATO in its history (also, to be petty, a terrific smack in the eye for the analytic and political acumen of a prime propagandist in progressive circles for the rebels, Prof. Juan Cole, whose blogs on Libya have been getting steadily more demented.) Incidentally, they keep calling for Ghadafi to “step down.” In constitutional terms, which is what NATO must keep in mind, I believe he did some time ago."

Prof. Peter Dale Scott also has this great analysis of the ongoing relationship between the West and Al Qaeda.

Also see Patrick Cockburn's Why the West is committed to the murderous rebels in Libya:

The Libyan Fiasco:

"The Libyan conflict gets extensive coverage in the media. CNN and Al Jazeera look like strange allies in their pro-rebel stance. But the true nature of the war does not receive the attention it deserves. The assassination and subsequent clashes in Benghazi bring into focus the tribal nature of Libya's war, which Britain, France and the United States, above all, portray as a straightforward contest between good and evil. The gun battles among rival factions and threats from General Younis's Obeidi tribe raise the prospect of Libya sinking into a deeper tribal war over oil resources. The scenario is far removed from the delusion in Western capitals that a Bedouin society of six-and-a-half million people, scattered over a vast North African desert, will be transformed into a democratic nation, sitting in the Western camp engaged in free trade."

The moronic British government finally admits what was obvious all along.

Interesting reads: nationalism, left, neoliberalism, Roundtable on Post-Mubarak and more

2011-08-03T02:32:00.001+03:00

Nationalism | KABOBfest

tags: nationalism
Honest and Lucid Criticism for the Western Left By Pascual Serrano, translated by David Montoute « William Bowles.info

tags: Libya left
- According to Bricmont, “a minimum level of modesty would help us understand that far from helping a resistance that doesn’t ask us for anything, it is the resistance that helps us. After all, this resistance is far more effective in stalling the US military machine, at least temporarily, than the millions of demonstrators who marched peacefully against the war and unfortunately failed to stop the bombs or the soldiers” of their own nations. But Bricmont makes it clear that he is not in favour of staying at home and “taking up gardening”. “Why is it that the people who criticize our inaction in Rwanda, where around 8.000 people died every day for one hundred days, do not feel responsible for the same number of people dying in Africa every day, throughout the year, due to easily preventable diseases?”. There is a difference between intervention and cooperation, and to change our mentality, it would require more modesty and less arrogance. Our pride leads us to believe that the First World is able to sort out the world’s problems. From this arise dilemmas such as the reigning chaos in Iraq making a withdrawal of occupation troops seem unadvisable. However “it would be much more realistic to admit that we don’t have the solutions to everyone’s problems and consequently, the best we can do is to stay out of their affairs”. Therefore, the recommendable option would be “peaceful cooperation, non-interference, respect for national sovereignty and conflict resolution through the mediation of the United Nations”.
WATCH: Palestinian youth abducted by police in E. Jerusalem
- when there are no big headlines in the news about confrontations between Israelis and Palestinians, one should assume the mundane atrocities of daily occupation are taking place, in what is a very asymmetrical conflict.
After Tunisia and Egypt: Palestinian Neoliberalism at the Cross-roads

tags: neoliberalism Palestine
Roundtable on Post-Mubarak Egypt: Authoritarianism without Autocrats? (Part VII: Abul-Magd)

tags: Egypt neoliberalism
Pope Shenouda III considers divorce and second marriage proposals following protests

video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78DwWv66MX4

tags: Copts marriage
Photos: 5,000 in Tel Aviv say YES to 1967 borders

tags: Israeli opposition 1967 two-state
LRB · Adam Shatz · Is Palestine Next?

tags: Palestine Inifada
- Mahmoud Darwish was not the only one to note that during the siege of Beirut in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon in an attempt to crush the PLO, tens of thousands of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv but the Arabs were too busy watching the World Cup Final to take to the streets.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Uruk Net on Syria

2011-08-03T01:37:00.002+03:00

[The] Assad Nazi regime slaughtered 2,000 people (including about 100 children, some of which tortured to death ), mass arrested 20,000 people (+ 3,000 people missing, maybe killed), seized whole towns, shelling then ...and cutting water, food, electricity and phoned and nobody says a peep. And now the western press is not only downplaying and hiding Assad's crimes agaisnt humanity , but also writing packs of lies to defend Obama's darling Assad. You can say that you couldn't care less about the syrian massacre or aven that you enjoy it , but you can't say that there isn't a total silence about it. When israel slaughtered 1,417 gazans during Cast Lead, we all wrote that it was a genocide (and it really was), now suddenly at least 2,000 syrian killed are nothing at all. Talk about double standards. As for the "zionist battles", the beacon of resistance Assad didn't resist one day against Israel: he never moved a finger to free the Golan, when Israel bombed Lebanon he did nothing, when Israel destroyed his own alleged nuclear facility he did nothing, when israel bombed Gaza he did nothing.... He is only able to resist against syrian children. And this is one of the main reasons why the US and the EU want that butcher to stay in power. Assad is not anti-US and anti-israel, and I thought that everybody at this point had understood that Obama (let alone Israel) does NOT want a regime change in Syria. But even if Assad was anti-US and anti-Israel, Syrian regime would be fascist all the same: Assad is not fighting against Israel, but against his own people. The Syrian conflict is not "Assad against the US or Israel", but "repressive State machine against the people". Refusing to stand with the Syrian people, and instead standing steadfast with the murderous machinery that is shooting the people in the streets and torturing children to death, is de facto a FASCIST choice (my emphasis). Anybody not standing with the people, in this very unambiguous people-v-state situation , are standing with the vicious nazi-like dictatorship the Syrians have had to endure. I'd like to see what you would say if YOU were forced to live under a monstrous regime that slaughter his own people and if the children castrated ands tortured to death were YOUR children.

Being an anti-zionist is not enough: one should also be better than the zionists, not worse. And whoever, for whatever alleged reason, defends a a Nazi-like regime that castrates and tortures to death children, is worse than the Zionists. I repeat again that the support for the murderous Syrian state machine against the revolutionary people has showed the definitive not only political and moral, but also HUMAN bankruptcy of some so-called anti-zionists and of that fascist bloodthirsty thing called "western radical left".

Quoted from Paola Pisi's Facebook

Souad Massi in Ramallah!

2011-07-27T21:49:00.002+03:00

Souad Massi played in the International Festival 2011 in the West Bank city of Ramallah! This was very happy news for me, especially because I have a huge crush on Massi.

So why can't Egyptians, Syrian and Lebanese musicians, writers, actors and intellectuals go to the West Bank and Gaza and show their solidarity with Palesitnians? It is either because they are cowardly or lazy. Scared to face criticsm of "normalization" "we will never allow our passports to be stamped by the Zionist entity", or "do you know how difficuilt it is to enter Palestine?!" Cowardice or Lazy is all it is. Edward Said was right. Egypt and Jordan are in peace, albeit a cold one, with Israel, but they can go to Israel, can help Palestinians and raise their spirits, and experience the daily humiliation Palestinians go through. Enough of this lousy excuse of normalization already.

Excerpts from Culture and Resistance, conversations with Edward Said

2011-07-26T17:49:00.004+03:00

Conversations with Edward W. Said. Interviews by David Barsamian. South End Press. 2003

From page 15
After you visited Israel, you went to Egypt, where you encountered some parochialism. Did that take you by surprise?

No, because I confronted it before. That is to to say, what you notice amongst Palestinians, whether inside Israel or on the West Bank and Gaza, is a sense of isolation. There's no question that they live under the shadow of Israeli power. What is missing is easy and natural contact with the rest of the Arab world. As a Palestinian, you can't get to any place in the Arab world from Israel or the West Bank and Gaza without going through a fairly complicated procedure, which causes you to think three or four times before you do: crossing the border, you need permits, you go through endless customs. I must say, for Palestinians traveling throughout the Arab world - and this is also true of me, and I have an American passport, but the fact that it says on it that I was born in Jerusalem means that I'm always put to one side - you're automatically suspected. So traveling and being in contact with the Arabs in the Arab world for Palestinains is very difficult.

More important even that is that very few Arabs who are not Palestinians come into Palestinian territories, and hardly any at all, practically none, go to Israel. One of the themes - and this is kind of complicated thing to explain, amongst the nationalist and radical intellectuals of most Arab countries, which would include the Gulf people, it certainly includes Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan - has been the opposition to what they called "normalization," tatbee in Arabic, meaning the normalization of life between Israel and, in the case of Jordan and Egypt, Arab states who have made formal peace with Israel. The peace with Egypt is described, as it is with Jordan, as a cold peace. The peace with Egypt is described,a s it is with Jordan, as a cold peace. In other words, ordinary Jordanians or Egyptians, don't go to Israel, have nothing to do with Israelis. Israeli tourists go to Jordan and Egypt and visit the historic sites in buses for short periods of time. But beyond that, there's very little in the way of the kind of intercourse, say, exchanges between universities, learned societies, businesses, and so on, that occur between European countries or neighboring countries otherwise at peace in any other part of the world. One of the reasons for this has been the general refused, as an act of solidarity with Palestinians, of these intellectuals to have anything to do with Israel.

The problem this poses for Palestinians, trying to build institutions, is they are being cut off from the kind of help they can get from Arabs. For example, physicians and other medical professionals from Egypt, Syrian, Lebanon or Jordan could come and assist Palestinians in setting up clinics and hospitals. They could be involved in a whole range of activities from administration to the production of pharmaceuticals. But it doesn't happen because of this stance against normalization. Similarly, university students who read important scholars, journalists, writers, and poets from various Arab countries don't get the opportunity to meet them.

When I now encounter Arabs and go to those Arab countries, I say to them, especially to to the Egyptians, you can go to Palestine. You can go through Israel, because Israel and Egypt are at peace. You can take advantage of that to go to Palestinians and go to their institutions and help them, appearing, speaking, being there for some time, training them. No, they say, we can't possibly allow our passports to be stamped. We won't go to the Israeli embassy and get visas. We won't submit to the humiliation of being examined by Israeli policemen at the border or their barrier.

I find this argument vaguely plausible on one level but really quite cowardly on the othe. It would seem to me that if they took their pride out of it, if they did go through an Israeli checkpoint or barricade or border, they would be doing what other Palestinians do every day and see what it's like. Second, as I keep telling them, by doing that it's not recognizing Israel or giving Israel any credit. On the contrary, it's going through that in order to demonstrate and be with Palestinians and help them. For example, as Palestinians face the Israeli bulldozers as they expropriate land and destroy houses for settlements, it would be great if there were a large number of Egyptians and Jordanians and others who could be there with Palestinians confronting this daily, minute-by-minute threat. And the same in universities. Well-known writers, intellectuals, historians, philosophers, film starts could go, but they say, We don't want to have to request visas from the Israeli consulate in Cairo. I said, You don't even have to do that. You can ask the Palestinian Authority, which has an ambassador in Cairo, to give you an invitation to go to Gaza, and then you can go to the West Bank.

So there are ways of getting around it. It's not so much only parochialism as also a kind of laziness, a kind of sitting back and expecting somebody else to do it. I think that's our greatest enemy, the absence of initiative [my emphasis]. We're always expecting that the Israelis are out there, the Americans, concocting conspiracies, the Ford Foundtion. Many people want to work with these people groups but are afraid to do it publicly. They do it surreptitiously. And in public they express opposition and say, We are going to remain untouched by this. We are not going to normalize. We refuse to have anything to do with imperialism. We refuse to sit down and plan something that could actually help Palestinians and actually deal with Israel, not as a fictional entity but as a real power that is in many ways negatively affecting Arab life.

For me, the great symbol of this is the fact that in no university that I know if in the Arab world - none of these universities are free in any case, they're all highly politicized and there are all kinds of pressures on professors and students, which is quite obvious - but in no important Arab university is there, for example, a department of Israeli studies, nor do people study Hebrew. And this is true even of Palestinian universities, where again, you can understand it is a kind of defense against this great power which has intervened in all of our lives, that we don't want to have anything to do with it. But for me the only salvation is in fact to encounter it head-on, learn the language, as so many Israeli political scientists and sociologists and Orientalists and intelligence people spend time studying Arab society. Why shouldn't we study them? It's a way of getting to know your neighbor, your enemy, if that's what it is, and it's a way of breaking out of the prison which suits the Israelis perfect to have Arabs in, whether Palestinians or others.

...

One of the things that I try to do , in a very uncompromising and quite open way, is to say, We have to break that attitude. We have to break out of our self-constructed mind-forged manacles and look at the rest of the world and deal with it as equals. There's too much defensiveness, too much sense of aggrieved, unfulfilled whatever. This is in part account for the absence of democracy. It's not just the despotism of the rulers, not just the plots if imperialism, it's not just the corrupt regimes, not just the secret police. It's our intellectuals' lack of citizenship and keep insisting on. For myself, since there is little that I can do at this distance, whether in person or through my writing, is to keep making that point. The only way to change a situation is oneself doing it, reading, asking, encountering, breakout of the prison.

From page 23
Daniel Barenboim is a world-famous pianist and conducted who was born in Argentina, grew up as an Israeli. You've had some interesting musdical interactions with him.

We met seven or eight years ago and quite surprisingly we've become close friends. He travels a great deal, as do I. Sometimes our paths have crossed. We've tried to do things. We've had public discussions, not political ones so much, because he's not a politician any more than I am, but we talk about things like music and culture and history. He's very interested as an Israeli or Jewish musician in the work of people like Wagner, who represents you might say, the total negation of Jews but was a great musician. So he's interested in that paradox whereby culture and music work in parallel and create contradictions at the same time. We're doing a book together based on that theme. But he's also very dissatisfied, as I, with the prevailing orthodoxy in his own community. He hasn't lived in Israel recently, and last year refused to do anything with the Israel Philharmonic for the fiftieth anniversary of Israel. He is very much opposition to the occupation of the West Bank. He speaks openly about a Palestinian state. He's a man of courage, an unorthodox personality. Music connects us, but also the facts of biography. He arrived in Palestine, or Tel Aviv, which is where his family lived, roughly about the time that my family was evicted.

We have a very warm and cordial relationship. I arranged recently for him, in fact last week, the first time ever, to play a recital at Bir Zeit, the leading West Bank university. It was a great gesture on his part. Bir Zeit was shut down by the Israelisfor four years during the Intifada. The president had been deported for twenty years, between 1974 and 1994. Only a couple of months ago, a student was killed by Israeli troops near the campus. There's this long history of animosity and hostility between Bir Zeit and the Israelis.

So it was difficult to accept at first the idea of an Israeli coming to play there. But it worked over time, and it was a fantastic success. It was one of the great events of my life, and if I can speak for him, of his life, that he was able to do this and transcend in an act that was purely cultural but also a human act of solidarity and friendship, offering his services, which God knows in any concert hall in the world would be in tremendous demand and are very costly. He's at the very top of the musical profession as a great pianist and a great conductor. He came simply as an individual to play. He brought his own piano with him, since there are no pianos that are any good there, to play a recital for an essentially Palestinian audience, ironically, in the hall in the university called Kamal Nasser Hall, named after a cousin of the president, who has been assassinated in Beirut in 1973. He was a very good friend of mine, and I was there when it happened. The assassination team was led by Ehud Barak, who is today a leader of the Labor Party and was an intelligence commando officer at the time.

All of that gave the evening a very high emotional and I would say cultural resoncnce that was lost on absolutely no one there. Zubin Mehta came, a great friend of Dnaiel's. He's the conducted of the Israel Philharmonic. He's an Indian. He's avidly pro-Israeli. He'd never been to the West Bank. But he came. Tears were streaming down his face. It was an event of considerable important, precisely because it wasn't political in the overt sense. Nobody was trying to make a milling, score a point. It was just a humane gesture, an act of solidarity based on the friendship between myself and Barenboim and a gradually expanding group of Palestinian friends who admire and like him and with whom he likes to be. He's taken the position, I think quite correctly, that if Israel is going to continue to exist it has to to exist in relations of friendship and equality with Arabs and Muslims [my emphasis]. He's desperately anxious to learn Arabic. He's a very unusual, remarkable, advanced case of a prophetic genius. There aren't too many of them around. I hope we can sustain this kind of activity over time.

Saddam donated 21 million dollars to the Library of Alexandria and Mubarak recorded the donation in the name of his wife

2011-07-19T09:29:00.007+03:00

Mubarak denied Iraq's donation to the Library of Alexandria and recorded the donation in his wife's name removing Iraq's from the honor list.

In 1989 President Mubarak and his wife traveled to Iraq where they were met by the late President Saddam Hussein in a welcome celebration. One of the reasons for the trip was to collect donations to revive the ancient Library of Alexandria. In the event Mubarak mentioned to Saddam that the late Saudi King Fahad Abdullah, the late UAE president Zayed and other emirs of the gulf donated to the project. Saddam asked how much they donated. The Saudi king donated twenty million, the UAE president also donated twenty million, the sultan of Omani donated five million and the emir of Kuwaiti donated six million. So Saddam decided to donate twenty one million dollars to the library. Mubarak and his wife were surprised by his decision, particularly when Iraq was still recovering from the devastating Iraq-Iran war and its economy was fragile. Saddam swiftly wrote the cheque and handed it to Mubarak and his wife. And that is how just one of the compliments Iraq paid to Egypt went unnoticed.

The Library of Alexandria was opened four years later in a huge celebration inviting guests and official delegates from all over the world (execpt Iraq!). A mural was displayed noting the names of persons and countries that donated to rebuild the library all mentioned except its biggest donor: Iraq and its late president Saddam Hussein.

And the days passed and we said There is no power but with Allah and hoped that the Arabic Egypt will one day acknowledge the donations it received from Iraq and demand from its president to admit its considerable donations to the Library of Alexandria, but it didn't happen.

Until the January 25th Revolution which disposed Mubarak and took him to court. And here we are reading what Egyptian newspaper The Seventh Day published from the testimony of the disposed president during the investigation conducted by the public prosecutor that he raised seventy million dollars to rebuild the Library which included twenty million from Sheikh Zayed, twenty million from King Fahad, five million from Sultan Qabus and twenty one million from Saddam Hussein, which will make it the first time Mubarak ever acknowledges the donation Iraq made to the library.

Part translation

Might wants to also read Egypt's Role in the Destruction of Iraq

One state just a slogan, for now

2011-07-18T07:34:00.002+03:00

I agree with Chomsky, a long time supporter of a binational (one) state solution but also a supporter of the two state settlement of Israel and Palestine divided by the 1967 lines. The one state is just a slogan for peace and justice. Why should people be divided by borders, afterall? But a slogan like "let's all live together in one place" isn't going to get us anywhere. Going with the international consensus and law for a two state based on the 67 lines would be a first good step. Then economic cooperation and political stability between the two populations enjoying equal rights will erode the borders to a single state, or possibly kibbutzing to a non-state solution.

Nasr Abu Zayd On A Humanistic Reading Of The Islamic Tradition

2011-07-10T11:13:00.002+03:00

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd is a well-known Egyptian Islamic scholar. In 1982, he joined the faculty of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at Cairo University. In 1995, he was promoted to the rank of full professor, but controversies about his academic work led to a court decision of apostasy and the denial of the appointment. A hisbah trial started against him Islamist groups and he was declared a heretic (Murtadd) by an Egyptian court. Consequently, he was declared to be divorced from his wife, Cairo University French Literature professor Dr. Ibthal Younis. This decision, in effect, forced him out of his homeland and seek refuge in the Netherlands, where he now works. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand, he speaks about his work and reflects on his efforts to promote a humanistic reading of the Islamic tradition.

Sikand: You have been writing on the question of human rights in Islam for a long time now. What are you presently working on?

Nasr Abu Zaid: I am presently working on a project that explores and develops the notion of the rights of women and children in Islam. The aim of the project is to promote knowledge of the traditional sources of Islam, such as the Qur’an, the Sunnah or practice of the Prophet and fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence, within Muslim communities so as to help promote general awareness of these rights. Alongside this, the project also seeks to critically look at aspects of tradition that might appear to militate against these rights.

In the course of your work how do you relate to those aspects of the historical Islamic tradition which you think might be opposed to the notion of women’s and children’s rights?

Every tradition has both negative as well as positive aspects. The positive aspects are to be further developed, while the negative aspects need to be discussed closely, to see if they are indeed essential elements of the faith or are actually simply human creations.

How does this work relate to what you have been previously engaged in?

I see it as part of my long interest in Islamic hermeneutics, the methodology of understanding the Qur’an, the Sunnah and other components of the Islamic tradition. Of particular concern for me are certain assumptions in popular Islamic discourse that have not been fully examined, and have generally been ignored or avoided. Thus, for instance, Muslim scholars have not seriously reflected on the question of what is actually meant when we say that the Qur’an is the revealed ‘Word of God’.

What exactly does the term ‘Word of God’ mean? What does revelation mean? We have the definitions of the Word and revelation given by the traditional ‘ulama, but other definitions are also possible. When we speak of the ‘Word of God’ are we speaking of a divine or a human code of communication?

Is language a neutral channel of communication? Was the responsibility of the Prophet simply that of delivering the message, or did he have a role to play in the forming of that message? What relation does the Qur’an have with the particular social context in which it was revealed? We need to ask what it means for the faith Muslims have in the Qur’an if one brings in the issue of the human dimension involved in revelation.

Are you suggesting that the Qu’ran cannot be understood without taking into account the particular social context of seventh century Arabia?In other words, are there aspects of the Qur’an that were limited in their relevance and application only to the Prophet’s time, and are no longer applicable or relevant today?

What I am suggesting is that in our reading of the Qur’an we cannot undermine the role of the Prophet and the historical and cultural premises of the times and the context of the Qur’anic revelation. When we say that through the Qur’an God spoke in history we cannot neglect the historical dimension, the historical context of seventh century Arabia. Otherwise you cannot answer the question of why God first ‘spoke’ Hebrew through his revelations to the prophets of Israel, then Aramaic, through Jesus, and then Arabic, in the form of the Qur’an.In a historical understanding of the Qur’an one would also have to look at the verses in the text that refer specifically to the Prophet and the society in which he lived. Some people might feel that looking at the Qur’an in this way is a crime against Islam, but I feel that this sort of reaction is a sign of a weak and vulnerable faith. And this is why a number of writers who have departed from tradition and have pressed for a way of relating to the Qur’an that takes the historical context of the revelation seriously have been persecuted in many countries. I think there is a pressing need to bring the historical dimension of the revelation into discussion, for this is indispensable for countering authoritarianism, both religious and political, and for promoting human rights.

Could you give an example of how a historically grounded reading of the Qur’an could help promote human rights?

Take, for instance, the question of chopping off the hands of thieves, which traditionalists would insist be imposed as an ‘Islamic’ punishment today. A historically nuanced understanding of the Islamic tradition would see this form of punishment as a borrowing from pre-Islamic Arabian society, and as rooted in a particular social and historical context. Hence, doing away with this form of punishment today would not, one could argue, be tantamount to doing away with Islam itself. By thus contextualising the Qur’an, one could arrive at its essential core, which could be seen as being normative for all times, shifting it from what could be regarded as having been relevant to a historical period and context that no longer exists.

If one were to take history seriously, how would a contextual, historically grounded understanding of the Qur’an reflect on Islamic theology as it has come to be developed?

As I see it, Sunni Muslim theology has remained largely frozen in its ninth century mould, as developed by the conservative ‘Asharites. We need to revisit fundamental theological concepts today, which the Sunni ‘ulama, by and large, have ignored, for there can be no reform possible in Muslim societies without reform in theology. Till now, however, most reform movements in the Sunni world have operated from within the broad framework of traditional theology, which is why they have not been able to go very far.

How would this new understanding of theology that you propose reflect on the issue of inter-faith relations?

When I suggest that we need to reconsider what exactly is meant by saying that the Qur’an is the ‘Word of God’, I mean Muslims must also remember that the Qur’an itself insists that the ‘Word of God’ cannot be limited to the Qur’an alone. A verse in the Qur’an says that if all the trees in the world were pens and all the water in the seas were ink, still they could not, put together, adequately exhausted the Word of God. The Qur’an, therefore, represents only one manifestation of the absolute Word of God. Other Scriptures represent other manifestations as well. Then again, many Sufis saw the whole universe as a manifestation of the ‘Word of God’. But, today, few Muslim scholars are taking the need for inter-faith dialogue with the seriousness that it deserves. Most Muslim writers are yet to free themselves from a rigid, imprisoning chauvinism.

How does this way of reading the Qur’an deal with the multiple ways in which the text can be understood and interpreted?

The Qur’an, like any other text, can be read in different ways, and there has always been a plurality of interpretations. The text does not stand alone. Rather, it has to be interpreted, in order to arrive at its meaning, and interpretation is a human exercise and no interpreter is infallible. As Imam ‘Ali says, the Qur’an does not speak by itself, but, rather, through human beings. True, Muslims from all over the world, do share certain rituals and beliefs in common, but their understanding of what Islam and the Qur’an are all about differ considerably. It is for us to help develop new ways of understanding Islam that can promote human rights, while at the same time being firmly rooted in the faith tradition.

Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at the National Law School, Bangalore

Adapted from indianmuslims.in

Our Debt to Zionism

2011-07-03T07:59:00.003+03:00

Einstein was in debt to Zionism and yet he was not in favour of a Jewish state. Today, Zionism and a Jewish state are synonymous. Chomsky calls this the "degradation of Zionism." Early Zionism had two currents, political and cultural. Political Zionism advocates a Jewish state whilst cultural Zionism focuses on social and spiritual enrichment, and a non-political settlement through Arab-Jewish cooperation. Of course Zionism originated as a solution to Jewish oppression in Europe, not as some libertarian experiment. Herzl thought cultural Zionists like Einstein, Chomsky and Buber were living in Lala land, which is somewhat true given the circumstances of mandate Palestine. When the anarchists of the first kibbutzim first settled in Palestine in the early 20th century they were disgusted by some of the local Arabs Jews who owned land and exploited their workers (ie capitalists). But then again, it's not like you can't have racist anarchists like you do today who deliberately build their kibbutzim on the borders of Gaza and Palestinian towns in the WB..

From an address on the occasion of the celebration of the "Third Seder" by the National Labour Committee for Palestine, at the Commodor Hotel in New York City, April 17, 1938. Published in New Palestine, Washington, DC, April 28, 1938

Albert Einstein

Rarely since the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus has the Jewish community experienced a period of greater oppression than prevails at the present time. In some respects, indeed, our own time is even more troubled, for man's possibilities of emigration are more limited today than they were then.

Yet we shall survive this period too, no matter how much sorrow, no matter how heavy a loss in life it may bring. A community like ours, which is a community purely by reason of tradition, can only be strengthened by pressure from without. For today every Jew feels that to be a Jew means to bear a serious responsibility not only to this own community, but also toward humanity. To be a Jew, after all, means first of all, to acknowledge and follow in practice those fundamentals in humaneness laid down in the Bible -- fundamentals without no sound and happy community of men can exist.

We meet today because of our concern for the development of Palestine. In this hour one thing, above all, must be emphasized: Judaism owes a great debt of gratitude to Zionism. The Zionist movement has revived among Jews the sense of community. It has performed productive work surpassing all the expectation anyone could entertain.This productive work in Palestine, to which self-sacrificing Jews throughout the world have contributed, has saved large number of our brethren from direst need. In particular, it has been possible to lead a not inconsiderable part of our youth toward a life of joyous and creative work.

Now the fateful disease of our time -- exaggerated nationalism, borne up by blind hatred -- has brought our work in Palestine to a most difficult stage. Fields cultivated by day must have armed protection at night against fanatic Arab outlaws.

...

Just one more personal word on the question of partition. I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in the peace than the creation of a Jewish state.Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state. We are no longer the Jews of the Maccabee period. A return to a nation in the political sense of the world would be equivalent to turning away from the sprititualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets. If external necessity should after all compel us to assume this burden, let us bear it with tact and patience.

One more word on the present psychological attitude of the world at large, upon which our Jewish destiny also depends. Anti-Semitism has always been the cheapest means employed by selfish minorities for deceiving the people. A tyranny based on such deception and maintained by terror must inevitably perish from the poison it generates within itself. For the pressure of accumulated injustice spreads strengthens those moral forces in man which lead to a liberation and purification of public life. May our community through its suffering and its work contribute toward the release of those liberating forces.

Adapted from Ideas and Opinions (1954) Wings Brook, New York

Some bookmarks

2011-07-03T07:37:00.001+03:00

What is [the] Left?

tags: Left Arab intifada
- I have been reading accounts of the demise of the Lebanese left with some ambivalence. After all, has the word “left” come to only mean supporting the resistance? Is supporting Hezbollah, the group that is only the most recent incarnation of Lebanese resistance to Israel (and an incarnation with troubling economic policies, at that), all it takes to win your “leftist” credentials in Lebanon today? What about other historically progressive issues, such as questions of gender and economic equity, or political rights and the freedom of expression? Since the protests began in Syria, many Lebanese activists who consider themselves part of "the left" (you can see many of them, chain smoking their way through cups of coffee in cafes) have been wringing their hands over the fate of the Syrian regime while self-proclaimed “leftist parties” have been chest pounding their way through Ras Beirut. I recently told a friend of mine that I was working on a piece for Jadaliyya about the fatwa issued by Lebanon's Mufti “analyzing” a proposed civil law to protect women and children (but not, it seems, men) against domestic violence. This particular "leftist" patiently explained to me that now is not the time write about these “micro” issues, not while the “greater good” is at stake. My friend was telling me that my time and intellect were better spent writing about “the big picture.” But what exactly is this bigger picture if not an intricate mosaic of interconnected inequalities, and what is the “greater good” if not a silent prayer for those people that will be sacrificed in order to achieve it?
- Writing this lament from Beirut while a revolution is being brutally oppressed in Syria and while Israel continues to threaten the next invasion, I think of Iraq in 2003. Sitting in that Baghdad hotel room one month after the US led invasion and destruction of most of that country, and remembering the posters of Saddam Hussein hastily pasted on the streets of Beirut following those Scud Missiles in 1991, I felt cheap. Just as I feel cheap today, arguing with some self proclaimed “leftists” that we can be against authoritarianism and against US-Israeli interests. That we can be both pro-democracy and pro-Palestine, both pro-revolution and anti-Zionist. That we should not allow our fear of what might come after stop us from acting with our principles, now.
BBC - BBC Radio 4 Programmes - The Reith Lectures: Edward Said: Representation of the Intellectual: 1993

tags: Edward Said intellectual
Slovenian philosopher: “Antisemitism is alive and kicking in Europe”

tags: Zizek Israel BDS occupation
- However, Zizek did not officially endorse or even talk much about BDS – and when he did it was because he was prompted to during Q&A. His two clear statements about BDS were that a) he is not 100% behind it and b)he supports a movement that is initiated jointly by Palestinians and Israeli here in the region.
  
  Rather, Zizek spent almost two hours with the crowd’s undivided attention talking about antisemitism, capitalism and the place of the Jew in the world. He warned that antisemitism is “alive and kicking” in Europe and America and asserted that the State of Israel should worry more about Christian right antisemitism rather than wasting its energy on self-proclaimed Jewish anti-Zionists. He said that the Christian Zionists in America are inherently antisemitic and that Israel’s willingness to embrace their support is baffling.
  
  He started his talk by saying that when he was invited to speak in Tel Aviv (most of his trip was spent in Ramallah with Udi Aloni), people reassured him there are still some “good Israelis” left that would love to hear him, as if trying to convince him of why he should bother to step foot inside Israel. Zizek said he doesn’t like this approach.
- As someone familiar with Zizek’s ideas and who is well acquainted with his poignant criticism of Israel, I was quite pleased, because I didn’t need to hear over again from him how Israel is occupying the Palestinians. And really, as a philosopher who spends his time in Europe, what could he renew for us on that? But of course, an activist in the audience was not happy that he did not devote enough time to criticizing Zionism, so she asked him why that is.
Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt | Revolution in their eyes

tags: Egypt revolution Azmi Bishara
- Moving on, Bishara noted what both Egyptians and Tunisians know: in both revolutions, the revolutionaries didn't take over power; they "knocked on its door" but "didn't assume it". This, he said, "will have massive consequences on Egypt's history in the future and on other Arab regimes." In Egypt, like in Tunisia, the military is in charge. "These are not new elites in power," he said. What happened, Bishara added, is that a part of the outgoing regime's ruling elite practically sided with the revolution's demands and were forced to reform.
Mubarakistas | Inanities

tags: Egypt mubarak
Norman G. Finkelstein » Reasoned rejection of one-state position

tags: one-state two-state Palestine Israel

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Since when?

2011-06-27T07:23:00.000+03:00

Defiance, Dignity, and the Rule of Dogma

2011-06-27T01:58:00.007+03:00

Edward Said

During the discussion period that followed a lecture of mine at Oxford three and a half years ago I was stunned by a question put to me by a young woman, whom I later discovered to have been a Palestinian student working for her doctorate at the university. I had been speaking about the events of 1948, and how it seemed to me necessary not only to understand the connection between our history and Israel's, but that as Arabs we needed to study that other history as one concerning us rather than avoiding or ignoring it totally as has been the case for such a long time. The young woman's question was to raise doubt about my views on the necessity of studying and learning about Israel. "Wouldn't that kind of attention paid to Israel," she said, "be a form of concession to it?" She was asking me if ignorant "non-normalisation" didn't constitute a better approach to a state that had for years made it a point of policy to stand in the way of and deny Palestinian self-determination, to say nothing of having caused Palestinian dispossession in the first place.

I must confess that the thought hadn't occurred to me, even during those long years when Israel was unthinkable in the Arab world and even when one had to use euphemisms like "the Zionist entity" to refer to it. After all, I found myself asking in return, two major Arab countries had made formal peace with Israel, the PLO had already recognised it and was pursuing a peace process with it, and several other Arab countries had trade and commercial relations with it. Arab intellectuals had made it a point of honour not to have any dealings with Israel, not to go there, not to meet with Israelis, and so on and so forth, but even they had been silent when, for instance, Egypt signed large deals selling natural gas to Israel and had maintained diplomatic relations with the Jewish state during frequent periods of Israeli repression against the Palestinians. How could one possibly oppose analysing and learning everything possible about a country whose presence in our midst for over 50 years has so influenced and shaped the life of every man, woman and child in the Arab world?

In this young woman's understanding therefore, the opposite of conceding was supposed to be defiance, the act of defying, resisting and refusing to bend under the will of a power that one perceives as unjust and unreasonable. That, I took it, was what she suggested we should be practicing towards Israel and not what I was trying to propose, which was a creative engagement with a culture and society that on all significant levels had behaved and (as the ongoing Israeli brutality against the Aqsa Intifada shows) continues to behave with a policy of deliberate dehumanisation towards Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. In this the egregious Ariel Sharon is scarcely distinguishable from Barak, Rabin and Ben-Gurion (leaving aside the truly vicious racism of many of Sharon's allies like Scharansky, Liberman and Rabbi Ovadia Yousef). What I said in contrast was not only a matter of understanding them but also of understanding ourselves since our history was incomplete without consideration of Israel, what it represented in our lives, how it had done what it had, and so forth. Besides, I continue to believe as an educator that knowledge -- any knowledge -- is better than ignorance. There is simply no rational justification from an intellectual point of view of having a policy of ignorance, or using ignorance as a weapon in a struggle. Ignorance is ignorance, no more and no less. Always and in every case.

I remained puzzled, dissatisfied with my groping answer and put off by the question which has remained with me until the present. But once again it has appeared to challenge me unexpectedly. Let me explain. A short time ago it was revealed in the New York press that Hilary Clinton had been compelled by federal law to return $7,000 worth of jewelry given to her by Yasser Arafat; and, according to the same official US government source, Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State during the second Clinton presidency, had received $17,000 worth of jewelry from the same generous donor. Suddenly it became possible to see the relationships between public and private attitudes in the Arab world and to understand the connection between the young student's defiant ideas about what she considered to be concessions to Israel on the one hand and, on the other, the Palestinian leadership's abject and profligate generosity to American politicians who are in some measure directly responsible for the woes heaped upon the Palestinian people. Even as I write, American weapons of mass destruction, supplied in unlimited number to Israel, are being used illegally -- according to US law -- to attack, kill, and maim unprotected Palestinian men, women and children, to demolish their houses, raze their refugee camps, make their lives basically unlivable. Yet for some years a policy of trying without reason or dignity to woo American leaders in the most vulgar way possible has been implemented, as if the personal pleasure and satisfaction of Hilary or Madeleine bought at the expense of Palestinian public money were a form of policy rather than an indecent display of bribery of a sort. The grotesque assumption has been all along that countries like America and Israel are mirror images of Third World states in which, like Mobutu's Zaire, for instance, policy is made according to the ruler's whim or for his family's enrichment. What is missing here is any apprehension that these are complex, on the whole democratic, countries whose civil societies and their interests play a large, if not decisive, role in each country's behavior. But rather than address and try to change the mood or ideas of their civil societies, our leaders ignore them and concentrate instead on a quick fix, i.e. buttering up, flattering, or bribing the leader. Anyone who knows anything about either Israel or the US will tell you that such tricks are absolutely useless; they may gain one a dinner or a scowling handshake from the late General Rabin in the White House, but little more than that.

The proof of what I am saying is plainly evident in the calamitous recent history of our dealings with the US and Israel during the period since the Oslo accords were signed. Since the Palestinian leadership betrayed its people's trust and sacrifices by entering the Oslo process the way it did in the first place, and remaining in it as a weak and, alas, all-too-willing partner, it has at the same time maintained a public stand that can only be described as defiant -- a defiance, one must immediately add, that is principally rhetorical and completely contradicted by official Palestinian behavior which has remained (to say the least) mysteriously servile to the US and to Israel. Unsolicited presents of expensive jewelry to American officials illustrate the point all too well. Now, while Palestinians, armed with a few rifles and stones, are bravely defying Israel's military the leadership is still acting like a supplicant in trying to re-open negotiations with Israel and the US. The same things can be said about the Arab regimes and even their intellectual sectors, who roundly proclaim their enmity towards Israel and the US while in fact either collaborating with them politically and economically, or loudly and clamorously denouncing normalisation. The sad thing is that this contradiction is not generally perceived as a contradiction, but as a necessary part of life today. I would have thought that better than denouncing Israel from top to bottom it would have been a smarter thing to cooperate with sectors inside the country who stand for civil and human rights, who oppose the settlement policy, who are ready to take a stand on military occupation, who believe in coexistence and equality, who are disgusted with official repression of the Palestinians. For only in this way is there any hope of changing Israeli policy, given the gigantic disparity in military power between all of the Arabs and Israel. I would also have thought that it is the better part of honesty to have dissociated oneself from crude anti-Semitic attacks such as those emanating from Damascus recently: what do these do except display to the world a mind-set that is both sectarian and viciously stupid?

I know perfectly well that passions regarding Israeli repression of Palestinian today are genuine and that people everywhere are disgusted with the policies of the Sharon government. But is that passion enough of an excuse to abandon rationality altogether, and for intellectuals, in particular, to flail around incoherently instead of trying in a serious way to come up with a serious political and moral stand based on knowledge rather than uninformed and blind ignorance, which cannot under any circumstances be described as a political position?

Take the recent campaign against the translation of Arabic books into Hebrew. One would have thought that the more Arabic literature is available in Israel, the better able Israelis are to understand us as a people, and to stop treating us as animals or less-than-human. Instead we have the sorry spectacle of serious Arab writers actually denouncing their colleagues for "allowing" themselves to "normalise" with Israel, which is the idiotic phrase used as an accusation for collaborating with the enemy. Isn't it the case, as Julien Benda was the first to say, that intellectuals are supposed to go against collective passions instead of trading in them demagogically? How on earth is a Hebrew translation an act of collaboration? Getting into a foreign language is always a victory for the writer. Always and in each case. Isn't it a far more intelligent and useful thing than the craven "normalisation" of the various countries that have trade and diplomatic relationships with the enemy even as Palestinians are being killed like so many flies by the Israeli army and air force? Aren't Hebrew translations of Arabic literature a way of entering Israeli life culturally, making a positive effect in it, changing people's mind from bloody passion to reasonable understanding of Israel's Arab Others, especially when it is Israeli publishers who have gone and published the translations as a sign of cultural protest against Israel's barbarous Arab policy?

All these confusions and contradictions I have described are signs of a deeper Arab malaise. When we mistake puerile acts of defiance for real resistance, and when we assume that know-nothing ignorance is a political act (when in fact it is nothing of the sort), and when we shed all dignity and clamour for American patronage and attention, surely our sense of dignity and self-respect is in tatters. Who hasn't cringed at the memory of Arafat on the White House lawn in 1993 repeating his three "thank yous" with fawning abjection, and who hasn't felt that our leaders lack a sense of self-esteem when they are unable to decide whether America is the enemy or our only hope? Instead of a policy based on principles and norms of decent behaviour we wallow instead in futile acts of defiance based on silly, unreflective dogmas about opposition to Israel while at the same time we only offer our besieged Palestinian compatriots lip service and patriotic formulas. No model helps us to guide our actions. The Arab world today is the triumph of mediocrity and opportunism, but given the leadership's failures on nearly every front, it becomes the intellectual's role to provide honest analyses and indications of what is reasonable and just, instead of joining the chorus of hand-clapping flatterers who decorate the royal and presidential courts and the corporate boardrooms with their oily, unremittingly approving presences.

I shall conclude with a concrete example of what I mean. In all the din about normalisation, I have noticed one startling absence, namely, the current status of the Palestinian refugees living in every major Arab country, whose condition everywhere -- there are no exceptions -- is unacceptably miserable. Wherever there are Palestinians in the Arab world, there are rules and regulations forbidding them full status as residents, forbidding them work and travel, requiring them to register with the police on a monthly basis, etc. It's not only Israel who treats Palestinians badly, it is the Arab countries who do so also. Now see if there is a sustained campaign by Arab intellectuals against this invidious local treatment of the Palestinian refugees: you won't see or hear one. What excuse is there for the horrible refugee camps in which so many of them live, even in places like Gaza and the West Bank; what right do local mokhabarat forces have to harass and generally make their lives miserable? And why is there no protracted press campaign to end this appalling state of affairs? Why, because it is much easier (and less risky) to rail against normalisation and Hebrew translations than it is to dramatise the unacceptable condition of Palestinian refugees in the Arab world, who are always being told that they cannot be "normalised" because it would implement Israel's design. What rubbish!

We must return to basic values and honesty of discussion. There can be no military solution to what ails us, Arabs and Jews alike. This truth leaves only the power of mind and education to do the job that armies have been unable to accomplish for over half a century. Whether Israeli intellectuals have failed or not in their mission is not for us to decide. What concerns us is the shabby state of discourse and analysis in the Arab world. For that, as citizens, we must take responsibility and try first of all to release ourselves from the jejune clichés and unthinking formulas that clutter our writing and speaking.

Adapted from Al-Ahram, May 17-23, 2001

Note on Syria, the media, and the hypocrisy of the Western "Left" by Uruk Net

2011-06-22T06:35:00.005+03:00

Nobody is calling for a western intervention in Syria. But not only the US doesn't destabilize Syrian fascist regime, but it de facto support it! And for this reason the western press is downplaying and even hiding the massacre of Syrian people. As for that little obscene thing called western "radical left " (and i too am a far leftist, even if am ashamed to confess it) , it is literally cheer-leading for the Syrian butchery and claims that Syrian revolution is all a KSA/US/Israel/Jordan/Hariri/MB/Turkey's plot (without showing any evidence of its crazy claims). Many "leftist" (?) people are justifying Assad's massacres because the MB is part of the protesters, It's true that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood strongly supports the protests and accused Assad of "genocide". And so what? When the MB supported the Egyptian protests, everybody defended it, said they were democratic and not radical Islamists and so on. Now, suddenly, in Syria the MB guys has become criminal "Salafis", and seems it's fine to slaughter them in cold blood. I don't like the MB, but even less like the butchery of unarmed protests. And in any case, the so-called "left" missed an insignificant detail: Assad is not fighting against the US, but against his own people. Assad is not anti-US and I thought that everybody at this point had understood that Obama (let alone Israel) does NOT want a regime change in Syria . But even if Assad was anti-US, Syrian regime would be fascist all the same: the Syrian conflict is not "Assad against the US", but "repressive State machine against the people". One can't choose a fascist dictatorship against the revolutionary people saying that this fascist dictatorship is enemy of another fascist state: anti-fascism means just anti-fascism , not supporting a vicious form of fascism against the people because it would oppose another vicious form of fascism (and i repeat, it isn't even true that Assad's regime opposes the US one). Refusing to stand with the Syrian people , and instead standing steadfast with the murderous machinery that is shooting the people in the streets and torturing children to death, is de facto a far-rightist choice.

Anybody not standing with the people, in this very unambiguous people-v-state situation , are standing with the vicious FASCIST dictatorship the Syrians have had to endure. And trying to justify the support for the repressive and bloodthirsty dictatorship against the revolutionary people alleging - without the slightest evidence - that the people are fueled by some obscure Saudi/Israel/US/Jordan/Hariri/MB/turkey's conspiracy, means to deny that the people are able to self -determine and to make political choices. And finally i add that crimes against humanity (since Syrian regime didn't only violate human rights: it just committed crimes against humanity ) are crimes against humanity everywhere and should always be condemned and not praised or justified. One doesn't need to be a leftist or an anti-fascist to condemn a Nazi-like regime that castrates and tortures to death children : it's enough to be a decent human being. Therefore the support for the murderous Syrian state machine against the revolutionary people has showed the definitive not only political and moral, but also HUMAN bankruptcy of that thing called "western radical left".

Check out Uruk Net's website. The editor of the blog Paola Pisi debates frequently on her facebook page.

Recommended reading by Hamid Dabashi that's regarding the 2008 election uprising in Iran and the hypocrisy of Leftists in general and Asaad Abukhalil in particular.

Liberal terrorism vs. dictatorial terrorism

2011-06-21T07:27:00.055+03:00

An enlightening conversation about the difference between crimes committed (if any) by Western liberal governments and dictatorships.

May 2011

Mauricio: "Back in 1986, Gaddafi once claimed that Ronald Reagan, then US president, had launched a strike on his compound in Tripoli and killed his daughter. Many journalists since then dug around and found out that the actual child that had died had nothing to do with Gaddafi, that he sort of adopted her posthumously."

From the Al Jazeera article you suggested me.

David: Yeah, I know. Nobody knows, but it's irrelevant anyway. The poor girl still died.

Mauricio: It is not irrelevant. It says a lot about Gaddafi, how shrewd and manipulative he is. How about the people that died in the Lockerbie crash? How about the 1.2 million dead in the Sierra Leona and Liberia conflicts (for which, according to a magistrate in the case, Gaddafi is largely corresponsible)?

David: Gaddafi wasn't responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. And how about US-UK "co-responsibility" for the MILLIONS killed in Angola and Mozambique? Or is that only to be analysed "structurally"?

Mauricio: It is very significant. Gaddafi, as just one person caused all that mayhem, he must go. It is also very significant the level of defections in his own camp, ambassadors, military, people from his closest circle. It tells a lot about his mental fitness to rule. We will know for sure how the Libyan people regarded him when he leaves. Right now we really can’t.

David: ‎"He must go". Who are *you* to decide that? The US must also "go" from all the countries it is occupying/bombing. Is anyone proposing this?

Mauricio: He turned out to be much worse than I thought, from an A&E program I saw, during the time when the West was cozying up to him, when he hired PR firms to boost his image, etc.

David: Mauri, this is not *about* Gaddafi! Why can't you see that?

Mauricio: Well, that despot is kind of cool, not too bad. [sarcasm]

David: This war was planned in France by Sarkozy in conjunction with exiles groups seeking power.

Mauricio: Obviously, I can’t decide anything, neither can you. It is just my personal feeling. You can’t put a personal tyrant on the same level with the US, UK, etc.

David: You're lending your voice to one group of murderers because you naively believe they'll be better than the current murderer.

Mauricio: Don’t get so emotional, Dave.

Mauricio: I don’t care much really, because I really don’t have enough knowledge. I am following my instinct and trying to reason the best I can with the little available information I have. But we are back to the earlier discussions. We have different premises, starting-points, interpretative frameworks, and certainly a host of irrational feelings to judge politics. There is no point to arguing on this flimsy basis, so we’d better be minimalistic about it. I don’t know if you get my last point.

David: This is you shilling for mass murderers, Mauri. Look at the bombing of Serbian RTV. First they announced they were going to bomb it (Belgrade’s state TV and radio station) unless the station broadcast 6 hours of NATO news per day. And when Belgrade refused, they bombed it, killing 16 make-up ladies and technicians. And you say I can't put them on the same level as Gaddafi!

Even if your intentions are good, you're just ignoring their record. Promising to bomb civilians if they don't do as you say is terrorism and NATO is guilty of that hundreds of times over.

Mauricio: We just don’t have the same perceptions. Your facts are worth looking at, but still I think we argue with different facts and weigh them differently (which ones you choose, how you select them, etc.). So the discussion is really pointless if it is driven towards a maximalist position ("And you say i can't put them on the same level as Gaddafi!"), moralistic judgments and condemnations. I really believe it is hard to get an agreement or an interesting exchange within a maximalist position (like say "NATO is much worse than all the tyrants in the world combined", "you're shilling for mass murderers", etc. It gets nowhere really.

David: Mauricio, everybody knows that the so-called "Rambouillet Accords" were an ultimatum, designed to be rejected so that NATO could bomb Serbia (even Madeleine Albright admitted as much!). So they deliberately set up fraudulent “negotiations” in order to justify bombing a country. They deliberately bombed a wide range of civilian targets, and gave an ultimatum to State television to broadcast their news or be bombed. Is this ethical behaviour? Is it the behaviour of "democrats"? A simple answer will suffice.

Mauricio: That issue is very controversial. I won't manifest myself with a simple answer. I haven’t studied that issue and is not right now on my priorities list. Anyway, the question also misses the point I have been trying to make, even if Madeleine et al are shitty, treacherous, etc.

And yes, I believe US-NATO violence has to be analyzed "structurally".

David: Well, you'd sooner make academic distinctions about political systems than look at what governments are actually doing (or you just want to look at dictatorial governments which somehow are the only ones who do bad things). I don’t know what to say. I thought you were more real-world.

Mauricio: I want to understand what imperialism actually is, how it functions, rather than getting upset about this or that particular crime. It is different with dictators, because their violence is much more obvious, can’t be pinpointed, and it is done on a personal basis, with personal responsibility. Outrage is more appropriate in those cases. I would probably use the moralistic card if I had any political influence or had a say in policy-making, I would use it to shame "democrats" and require they live up to the standards of democracy, etc. As long as I am out, I just don’t feel the need to be "too" outraged, but more by the need to understand.

David: Mauri, you get plenty upset by Evo Morales, over abuses that are many orders of magnitude inferior to those we are discussing.

Mauricio: anyway, I can feel upset by Evo, bc it is closer to my daily life, for one. also, his style of ruling is more "personalistic" so to speak.

‎"You just want to look at dictatorial governments which somehow are the only ones who do bad things". I never said that, it is your own interpretation of what I say. Of course, imperialists do bad things; do you think I would believe otherwise?

David: I understand that psychopaths (who are *not* limited to dictatorships) will lie about pretty much anything. Of course it makes me angry that they're bombing yet another country that can't fight back, and that they're doing it with radioactive munitions. My taxes are helping to pay for this shit.

Mauricio: well, there you have a point, because you are a British citizen, and so you are in a position to do something about it, in part also thanks to the freedom of expression you enjoy. You can organize, petition, make your voice heard (to some extent, and with the known limitations, of course).

Mauricio: As far as psychopaths are concerned, they can thrive in different systems. But in non-democratic regimes, the more violent ones have a better "playing field". Democratic regimes set some limits, and they can be tampered with, but it is more difficult. Saddam and Trujillo could fancy a woman and have their security agents get them into their beds. Uday could personally torture, etc. What is the cost of all that?

David: I'm not sure if occult psychopaths operating behind the scenes are really any better than overt psychopaths. At least with the latter you know where you stand. In the West you have a "democratic" system that has a powerful symbiotic relationship with organised crime ($600 billion a year in recycled drugs money just for starters). These two systems not only coexist but feed off each other. That's why I think your claim of "rogue networks" organising S-11 is in some way fundamentally wrong. The government's inner circle (Rumsfeld, Rice, Bush & and of course the mastermind Cheney) were all guilty participants, and the subsequent criminal actions which covered up their tracks were really quite obvious. It's true to say that the American establishment as a whole has sanctified and whitewashed these actions & gone along with a blatant cover up, just as they did after Kennedy was shot. In that case, only one public official in the whole country dared to call the government on its bullshit, and he paid for it with his career and his reputation. When you investigate what Prof. Peter Dale Scott calls "Deep Politics" you find that the hard and fast distinctions that you want to draw are not really there.

Mauricio: OK, it happens, but it is not a direct product of democracy. Uday is a direct product of tyranny.

David: Here we have a tyranny of capital (a nice 'clean' surgical tyranny if you like) but a tyranny nonetheless. That’s why all of these adventures in other people's countries have an economic character. For example, NATO didn't bother with destroying the Serb army in Kosovo (although the Serbs outwitted them with dummy tanks) but they were very effective at destroying the country's industrial facilities. And when you look at the Rambouillet diktat, it specifies that Yugoslavia must operate "a market economy" and relinquish what was left of Titoist statism. Here is Pilger: "At the Davos summit of neoliberal chieftains in 1999, Blair berated Belgrade, not for its handling of Kosovo, but for its failure to embrace "economic reform" fully. In the bombing campaign that followed, it was state-owned companies, rather than military sites, that were targeted. Nato's destruction of only 14 Yugoslav army tanks compares with its bombing of 372 centres of industry, including the Zastava car factory. "Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed," wrote Clark." http://
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7439.htm

Mauricio: The distinctions I draw are for analysis and they transcend the particulars of any democratic regime, particularly the US that has something of a superstate operating behind the scenes. Anyway, you don’t believe those distinctions are as significant as I do. Now, (ideally) even if the reptilian-illuminati are managing it all, the distinctions I draw would still be meaningful to me, as a blueprint to research, to interpret, to have opinions and feelings about things.

David: This is the dictatorship of capital. It might make you feel better that it's impersonal", but I guess it didn't mean much to the make-up ladies whose head were severed and found blocks away from the TV station. Interestingly enough, for a group that makes so much noise about press freedom, this act aroused no indignity from the British press.

Mauricio: That is an interesting point u make on NATO and Yugoslavia, but it is not a matter of "better" or "worse", I think you don’t take that as seriously as I do, clearly. We have different lenses to view reality. That is quite clear.

David: I hate impersonal, "scientific" dictatorship that masquerades as something else. I prefer to see my dictators, instead of being imprisoned by impersonal, technological totalitarianism. That's why Marcuse's One Dimensional Man had such a profound effect upon me (I read it when I was about 19).

Mauricio: I love that book myself, and yet I have a different perception of it. I guess I can perceive on different levels. Marcuse is crucial. Yet, I take it as just one more reading of reality. I would rather have liberal democracies all around the globe, the Empire Negri talks about.

David: Liberal democracies have not shown themselves capable of reigning in psychopaths. If they have anything to their credit, it is the effect of humanising the political culture, so that the State has to take its crimes underground.

Mauricio: ‎That is an interesting comment on Yugoslavia. Which Clark? Ramsey?

David: No, Guardian journalist Neil Clark.

Mauricio: It is funny, just the other day this girl told me almost exactly the same u did: "I prefer to see my dictators, instead of being imprisoned by impersonal, technological totalitarianism." not in the same terms of course. At one point I was very close to that position, but not anymore.

We need Empire, in the Negri sense: the rule of law, democracies everywhere, the UN and other international organizations presiding over everything, then and only then can we achieve a better more humane world. Dictatorships are backward. It is like Naomi Klein, she was for going back to the old classic US domination, Clinton style, instead of the brutish bush style. That way we could focus on the important issues. Whereas with Bush you are stuck trying to get civil liberties back, and it is a loss of energy.

Now, again if the reptilians are behind scenes, I don’t know what I would say. Maybe it is more comfortable to have the enemies with a face, to have an autocrat to fight. In any case I’d rather end up like David Icke than like Ramsey Clark

http://extra.shadowpress.org/sin001/clark.htm

David: ‎"In any case, I’d rather end up like David Icke than like Ramsey Clark"

Why? And who's talking about Icke and reptiles anyway? All that stuff is madness.

I read that piece about Clark a long time ago. It's a hatchet piece. And whilst I do disagree with Clark on many things, he's obviously a basically good man with the right intentions.

Bishop of Tripoli: NATO bombs a Coptic church. Civilian Casualties

Mauricio: These bombings fuck up always. Terrible. But it is also true Gaddafi puts up human shields and his government said they were "voluntary".

David: You're obsessed with Gaddafi, and don't seem to realise that NATO actually plans and deliberately *starts* wars. The current war, by the way, is not a reaction to the exaggerated tales of Gaddafi's repression, but was pre-planned in France in 2010.

Mauricio: I think that the best way to analyse what NATO does is by avoiding moralistic assessments. I think there is no moral equivalence between a collateral damage and, say,forcing people to become human shields (knowing that will make it harder for NATO to strike). Besides, what evidence is there that France planned this already (maybe it was "war games"?)

David: Then how about a moral equivalence with countries that destroy vital civilian infrastructure, as they did in Iraq ('91) and Serbia ('99)? Mau, yours is the discourse of the liberal intelligentsia, which says "Yes, we may make *mistakes*, fuck ups etc, but we're not *evil* like …[fill in with the hate figure of the moment]" It's essentially, the discourse critiqued by Jean Bricmont:
"So a great part of the Left’s ethical discourse considers the need to export democracy and human rights via the First World ’s miltary interventions, and qualifies critics of these interventions as moral relativists, indifferent to the suffering of others. Hence, it is preciely this Left that invents and interiorises “the ideology of the humanitarian war as a means of legitimation” ....The idea that there are good governments –which are allowed to carry out invasions –and bad governments which deserve to be invaded and overthrown –is mistaken."
http://www.israelshamir.net/shamirReaders/english/Serrano--Western-Left.php

More NATO 'mistakes':

http://uruknet.info/?p=m78030&fb=1

http://www.uruknet.info/?new=77681

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27995.htm

As for what evidence there is that France planned this, here is anecdotal evidence of NATO preparation:

http://tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=4653

Here is visual evidence that the rebels had spanking new weaponry from day 1:

http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2011/04/libya-rebels-had-nato-weapons-day-1

And here is testimony from Gen. Wesley Clark admitting (circa 2006) that Libya was on a list of countries to be attacked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSNyPS0fXpU

And finally, this: "UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1973 PERTAINING TO LIBYA WAS ALREADY ON THE DRAWING BOARD, MONTHS PRIOR TO THE ONSET OF THE "PRO-DEMOCRACY" INSURRECTION IN EASTERN LIBYA. ...
Read carefully [" " indicate quotation from "The Southern Mistral 2011" War Games, Scenario)]

On November 02 2010, more than four months prior to the onset of Operation Odyssey Dawn, France and the UK announced the conduct of war games under Operation "SOUTHERN MISTRAL 2011" against "AN IMAGINARY COUNTRY' called "SOUTHLAND", living under a "DICTATORSHIP" which allegedly "was responsible for an attack against France's national interests". The Franco-British (humanitarian) air operation against "SOUTHLAND" was to be carried out pursuant to an IMAGINARY "UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION NO: 3003".
http://the-tap.blogspot.com/2011/04/britain-and-france-were-preparing-for.html

Mauricio: Lybia is not Iraq (hopefully).

David: Libya is not Iraq? Yes, and Germany's occupation of France was very benign compared to its invasion of Russia. But both were equally wrong.

Mauricio: I have read Bricmont but find him mistaken.

How about the Allies’ occupation of Germany, was that wrong too? I don’t think so.

David: Your argument more or less says: Nazi invasion of France? Bad. France was a democracy. Nazi invasion of Russia? Good. Stalin was evil.

Mauricio: It doesn’t work that way. The Nazis didn’t have any good intentions whatsoever by invading Russia, they wanted to enslave the Slavs to increase their "vital space" or Lebensraum.

David: Ahhh. So NATO has good intentions! Riight!! Now I understand!

There's a subtle racism to your argument: that there is one class of people who can be bombed because they're "radical evil" (your term) and another class of benign global cops who you can "disagree with" but are not in any way evil. I suppose using radioactive weaponry and leaving thousands of tons of radioactive waste on essentially defenseless countries counts as "good intentions" too?

Mauricio: It is the old discussion over again. I think we will never reach a consensus on this issue. I am not sure the Libyan war is will have a good ending or whatever, but I think it is substantially different to other interventions. I believe there has been some progress in the actors involved. They are learning the new rules of international justice, etc.

We are arguing from quite different standpoints, you are all too ready to ascribe NATO and "Western" nations the most evil intentions and actions imaginable. I think that their very nature makes it hard and sort of irrelevant to criticize them from a moralistic point of view.

David: Everything they've done has violated the mandate that the UN gave them. Meanwhile, Assad murders around 1,300 Syrians, and the US says "But Assad is a reformer!"

Please! Don't make me laugh.

Mauricio: The "global cops" you speak about are not monolithic

David: So you cannot criticize them from a moralistic point of view, but you can evaluate Gaddafi from a moral standpoint? Again, I repeat: There's a subtle racism to your argument: the two classes of nations: one that can be bombed because they're "radical evil" and another class of benign global cops who must be analysed structurally.

Mauricio: They don’t have a single intention, but their actions stem from a lively and free civil society, working under a field of forces (sometimes hard to work through, etc.)

David: I've never seen you jump through so many intellectual hoops before in order to justify your argument.

Mauricio: My argument is not racist. If you believe so then it shows (in my view) that you don’t understand my point, and there is no way you can. You feel too strongly about these issues.

Mauricio: We are not talking with the same assumptions really.

David: Yes, it is racist. You there are two classes of beings - one that can be invaded, bombed, and another that can only be disagreed with. NATO (and the West) is superior. They can only criticised from a technical standpoint. They don't have evil intentions, but Gaddafi is "radical evil" etc. That sounds like classic orientalism to me.

Another question is what is "evil"? It is a point of view. Robert Fisk recounted how a man came up to him in Baghdad in 2006 and told him: "I am Shia. Saddam killed my brothers, but if Saddam appeared now I would kiss his feet". This is how bad things were. There's also a certain Arab cultural logic that favours strong (or ruthless) leaders. And that makes sense to some people, no matter how you happen to see it. Ultimately, "evil" is a point of view, and classifying an entire government and State apparatus that way also denies it any positive and progressive aspect. You're simplifying and flattening an entire dimension of reality into a stereotype: "radical evil" as if that were the totality of Libyan people's experiences over 40 years.

Mauricio: I understand the word "racism" in a different way. Hitler was radically evil. It is not an issue of "orientalism" at all.

David: That’s where we differ: I don't believe that Hitler was any worse than the other imperialists (it's down to which facts go to make up your understanding of history).

From an article you really should read:

‎"But objectively speaking, there was not much to choose between the two sides. The Americans were beastly enough: they burned Dresden, nuked Hiroshima, starved to death millions of German POWs. Even their racism was quite comparable: in the US, a sexual union of an Aryan and a Black was considered a criminal offence many years before the Nuremberg Laws, and remained so many years after the Nuremberg Laws were voided (Alabama dropped it from their book of laws in 2000)."

http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Eng10.htm

Mauricio [Race laws]: Not in the entire United States, though, but, significantly in the most backward part of the country. Backwardness is just a historical contingency, has nothing to do with "race" (which by the way is, probably, just an illusion).

David: Yes, I agree that race is essentially an illusion. That's why my understanding of "racism" is perhaps not so different from yours. I see it as uniquely a function of power, and that without relations of dominance-submission, there can be no racism.

Mauricio: OK, so please dont say my argument is racist.

‎"I am Shia. Saddam killed my brothers, but if Saddam appeared now I would kiss his feet". I think this is a terrible statement. A justification of the strongman’s rule? I just can’t imagine a relative of a disappeared in Chile saying this of Pinochet. Of course, the case is different. Chile wasn’t invaded. As Adorno said: "Some people like oppression". Luckily, Libya is not Iraq.

Whatever their weaknesses and imperfections, I am really happy people rebelled, I am happy they were not crushed (thanks in great part to NATO intervention). I wish them success (which they are not having) and that they complete their mission overthrowing that brutal tyranny. I am not obsessed with Gaddafi, by the way. I have not the time or energy to be obsessed with anything at this point. I used to believe Gaddafi was benign, in part thanks to the "western" media (A & E). An article by Pablo Stefanoni last year opened up my eyes. Libyan war has definitely caused a rift on the left. There are similarities with fellow travelling during the Cold War.

David: I didn't have such illusions about Gaddafi, not since reading Victor Ostrovsky's book "By Way of Deception" about 5 or 6 years ago. Even though the book is about the Mossad, not Gaddafi, I learnt a few things that opened *my* eyes to Gaddafi's ruthlessness. I was also (like you) enthusiastic about the apparent Libyan uprising in February before I realised that it was being largely directed by exile groups with a foreign agenda. That was when i changed my mind. You need to look behind the scenes a bit more and stop assuming that everything that happens is down to one evil man.

Mauricio: He is worse than Franco, in fact. Of course franquismo wasn’t just about Franco. It was a social movement with a, mainly, anticommunist agenda. The rebels may be tainted but I am sure they can’t be worse than Gaddafi`s rule (the whole rotten regime) and it is better to see a change.

David: Without being there, you can't possibly know who's "worse". And Franco murdered hundreds of thousands of people, even after the Civil War was over.

And just because Gaddafi ain’t a nice guy doesn't mean I have to buy every single bullshit story that's being peddled about him. It's the same in any situation. There's no political philosophy that I hate more than fascism/Nazism, but that doesn't mean i have to uncritically lap up all the ridiculous and physically untenable stories about millions being gassed and Nazis turning people into bars of soap etc.

Mauricio: Then, I have a big problem: I haven’t travelled much, so I cannot have any opinions.

David: Anyone can have opinions, and nobody needs to travel to understand what the world is about (although sometimes it helps). But my point is that there are lies and deceptions that precede EVERY war. It's proven that the US lured Iraq into Kuwait in '91 (& Kuwait was deeply complicit, as its own military attaché in Baghdad later admitted after the war). It's proven that Iraqi troops didn't throw Kuwaiti babies from incubators in 1991, as claimed by "Nayirah" and Bush Sr. It's proven (and admitted by Madeleine Albright) that the so-called Rambouillet "negotiations" were a farce, an ultimatum designed to be rejected because "the Serbs needed a little bombing". It's proven that there were no so-called "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. It's proven that Saddam's sons didn't feed people into a wood-chipping machine (anyone who'd ever used one knew that). It's proven that the three major market and breadline massacres that took place in Sarajevo were *not* carried out by the Bosnian Serbs. It's proven that there was no North Vietnamese attack on a US ship (the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident which was used to justify the acceleration of the war against Vietnam). It's proven that the German Communist Party was not behind the burning of the Reichstag, but the Nazis themselves. And as you well know, it's proven that Rozsa Flores knew one of the men who later killed him, and so was fairly unlikely to be in Bolivia to wage a "terrorist" campaign. All I'm saying is don't believe every single thing you hear when the media launches a new two-minute hate-campaign against the latest "Hitler". There are always secret motives behind all major events, as well as other events behind those events.

David: See the 'Don Debar' video I posted. He presents a homemade documentary by a Libyan man that refutes most of what the media has told you about events there, including the supposed aerial bombardment of peaceful protesters in Tripoli in February, which, as the Russians confirmed at the time, did *not* take place.

Mauricio: Lies, sure, there are. I think we will find that Gaddafi's regime was worse than many expected. I draw a moral distinction between those who kill civilians with full intent and hose who would rather (even for selfish, self-serving PR reasons) not have any dead civilians, for example.

Recent bookmarked pages

2011-06-21T02:57:00.001+03:00

Norman G. Finkelstein » Reasoned rejection of one-state position

tags: one-state two-state Palestine Israel
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Imperialism and revolution in the middle east

tags: Libya
The Lebanese Left Fails in Syria

Today, we have reached the of the point of a "secular sectarian" Lebanese left, which has retired from its duties, vacillating between a Lebanese nationalist vision and an Arab nationalist position in the archaic sense of the word. It is intellectually lazy, politically cowardly, folkloric, of trite Marxist discourse and an opportunist tendency, and not self-sufficient, such that it adopts a narrative of injustice starting with the "imperial West" and ending with lamentation over the "injustice" committed by the other Lebanese sectarian parties towards it. When the left does not question the ready-made answers, it becomes (in a sense) a "religious" left. The Lebanese left is united with all the oppressed peoples of the world, with the exception of the Arab peoples. Maybe it is because those [Arab peoples] are in their depths [really] "Muslim," meaning they are not "secular" enough!

tags: Lebanon Syria communist party
- Given that the communist leadership is rightwing to this degree, this does not summarize the entire problem. Many–not all, of course—of the Lebanese leftists, both from within the [Communist] Party and outside of it, are convinced that what is happening in Syria is the doing of the "Salafis" or the "Anglo-Americozionist-Saudi-Qatari" conspiracy. Here, the ever-present phobia of conspiracy mixes with secular sectarianism, to use the expression of Syrian author Yasin al-Hajj Salih. Many leftists repeat the repudiation by poets like Adonis and Saﬁdi Yusuf of "the coming out of revolution from the mosque," or that what is happening is nothing but a verse of "the West’s making." Here, secular sectarianism consciously or unconsciously inflates a minority sensibility which is horrified by cries of allahu akbar [Allah is great], and salutes a sick elite that does not see a sufficient "revolutionary consciousness" among the Syrian masses. The communist comrades boast that they do possess it [i.e., the revolutionary consciousness] just as those who claim to possess the keys to paradise. This might also reflect a class disdain expressed by a small bourgeois leadership towards workers and peasants who are being kille
Mass shooting reported in Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria - video | The Electronic Intifada
- “Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) opened fire on mourners burying Naksa day martyrs killing a number, after some demonstrators burned offices of the Front.”

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Hashish farm in Bekaa Valley in Lebanon

2011-05-30T06:34:00.001+03:00

Adapted from Hashish! 2nd. ed. Robert Clarke Red Eye Press 2010

Bringing the revolution to hashish

2011-05-28T09:23:00.018+03:00

Fellow Potheads, Comrades, Brothers and Sisters:

Mabrook on the intifada. It was beautiful seeing you in the streets and avenues across Egypt and around the world demanding the removal of the regime. The carnival pictures I saw from Tahrir square were exhilarating. Millions gathering, discussing, sharing, singing, and toking with complete strangers. What a beautiful anarchist sentiment of the true human spirit. The road to political freedom and social justice is still a long way ahead folks but with the fear barrier taken down we now have the power of paving our way towards them. As long as we are loud and taking action I'm confident that change in our direction is inevitable.

I am writing you about cannabis, which by no stretch is central to the revolution's aims but is on at least half our minds, literally. It’s a taboo that still can't be discussed honestly and openly but just hiding underneath the surface. When I was preparing to write this essay I searched forums on the internet to find out what Arabs think about the illegal status of cannabis or if there is advocacy of its medical use. Sadly all the forums I visited started by asking the same old boring useless question: is cannabis haram or halal? And the Muslim answer to that was simple: anything that blurs the mind is haram. Aren't we over these silly religious quarrels already? Religion is a personal matter and shouldn't be part of any discussion bearing on politics or the legal system. If you don't want to puff then pass. Cannabis is not illegal because it's allegedly forbidden in Islam because alcohol which is indisputably haram is allowed. It should be clear by now that no amount of preaching or policing will put a dent on the consumption of cannabis. You simply can't stop those who want to smoke from smoking. If you arrest one poor kid for possessing a few coins of hash, there are thousands of others waiting for your call.

We need to have a frank discussion about cannabis supported by medical evidence on its health effects and not to be skewed by religiosity or inaccurate anecdotal evidence. No more shame or fear, remember the fear barrier is now toppled. Cannabis’ effect are exponentially safer than real drugs like cocaine and heroine, or even alcohol and panadol. It’s not a drug at all. In the United States there are hundreds of alcohol overdoses every year, and tens of thousands of deaths related directly to alcohol impairment (20,687 in 2003 according to US Centre for Disease and Control). Alcohol’s fatal dose to effective dose is 10 to 1; heroine and cocaine are 5 and 15, respectively. Every year in the US, cigarettes take the lives of about 438,000 smokers (American Cancer Society). On the other hand, there hasn’t been a single recorded fatality by a marijuana overdose. Numerous studies have been conducted to determine marijuana's toxic level: they have concluded that it would take 20,000 to 40,000 times the normal dose to induce death (Institute of Medicine, 1982: Randall, 1988). Another way of stating this would be that a person would have to ingest (or inhale) 1,500 pounds in 15 minutes. You can’t smoke yourself to death, it is simply impossible. In North America, some cancer and Multiple Sclerosis patients are prescribed over an ounce of cannabis per day! So the poor plant has just received a bad reputation and this needs to be fixed if we want our society to be safer and healthier.

Those who consume cannabis shouldn't be ashamed of it and step out of their closet. And just like the fear barrier that was broken when we overwhelmed the police in our millions, the more people take a liberal approach to cannabis, the stronger we all will be. Furthermore, we can no longer ignore its medical benefits for diseases ranging from cancer, to depression (its first prescription in the mid 1800s), arthritis, and pregnancy (yes you read that one right, relaxes contractual pain).

Egyptian hash users are aware that hash is almost always laced with substances ranging from horse tranquilizer to henna and donkey shit. Baskoota ('biscuit') hash is referred to crumbly impure hash, and is cheaper and easier to get. This could be extremely dangerous given whatever the counterfeiter added to it. Purer hash can be two or three times more expensive and is usually obtained in remote locations from armed powerful dealers. Growing at home at your own convenience will save your money, save your health, and let you select what strains you like best. Grow operations are not common in Egypt so the chances of you being caught given the huge size of our metro cities is far less than if you were to frequently meet a dealer in a sketchy alley. Furthermore, dealers, who buy from bigger dealers are usually dealing with the police, so growing helps to decentralize the marijuana trade and removes power from huge producers of marijuana and weeds out the corruption involved on the legal and security systems, so it's more ethical.

Revolutionary graffiti
'We want freedom, we want to live, we want hashish'
...yes it rhymes in Arabic

Revolutionaries, we broke the fear barrier, you are now free. It’s time to take direct action. Time to grow up, grow some, and raise awareness of its medical benefits to tens of thousands of suffering Egyptians.

صبح صبح

J'accuse

2011-05-08T22:45:00.003+03:00

Hypocrisy and good intentions will not stop the next massacre. Only a good hard look at ourselves and sufficient resolve to face up to the ugliness in our midst will do so

Hani Shukrallah , Saturday 1 Jan 2011

We are to join in a chorus of condemnation. Jointly, Muslims and Christians, government and opposition, Church and Mosque, clerics and laypeople – all of us are going to stand up and with a single voice declare unequivocal denunciation of al-Qaeda, Islamist militants, and Muslim fanatics of every shade, hue and color; some of us will even go the extra mile to denounce salafi Islam, Islamic fundamentalism as a whole, and the Wahabi Islam which, presumably, is a Saudi import wholly alien to our Egyptian national culture.

And once again we’re going to declare the eternal unity of “the twin elements of the nation”, and hearken back the Revolution of 1919, with its hoisted banner showing the crescent embracing the cross, and giving symbolic expression to that unbreakable bond.

Much of it will be sheer hypocrisy; a great deal of it will be variously nuanced so as keep, just below the surface, the heaps of narrow-minded prejudice, flagrant double standard and, indeed, bigotry that holds in its grip so many of the participants in the condemnations.

All of it will be to no avail. We’ve been here before; we’ve done exactly that, yet the massacres continue, each more horrible than the one before it, and the bigotry and intolerance spread deeper and wider into every nook and cranny of our society. It is not easy to empty Egypt of its Christians; they’ve been here for as long as there has been Christianity in the world. Close to a millennium and half of Muslim rule did not eradicate the nation’s Christian community, rather it maintained it sufficiently strong and sufficiently vigorous so as to play a crucial role in shaping the national, political and cultural identity of modern Egypt.
Yet now, two centuries after the birth of the modern Egyptian nation state, and as we embark on the second decade of the 21stcentury, the previously unheard of seems no longer beyond imagining: a Christian-free Egypt, one where the cross will have slipped out of the crescent’s embrace, and off the flag symbolizing our modern national identity. I hope that if and when that day comes I will have been long dead, but dead or alive, this will be an Egypt which I do not recognize and to which I have no desire to belong.

I am no Zola, but I too can accuse. And it’s not the blood thirsty criminals of al-Qaeda or whatever other gang of hoodlums involved in the horror of Alexandria that I am concerned with.
I accuse a government that seems to think that by outbidding the Islamists it will also outflank them.

I accuse the host of MPs and government officials who cannot help but take their own personal bigotries along to the parliament, or to the multitude of government bodies, national and local, from which they exercise unchecked, brutal yet at the
same time hopelessly inept authority.

I accuse those state bodies who believe that by bolstering the Salafi trend they are undermining the Muslim Brotherhood, and who like to occasionally play to bigoted anti-Coptic sentiments, presumably as an excellent distraction from other more serious issues of government.

But most of all, I accuse the millions of supposedly moderate Muslims among us;
those who’ve been growing more and more prejudiced, inclusive and narrow minded with every passing year.

I accuse those among us who would rise up in fury over a decision to halt
construction of a Muslim Center near ground zero in New York, but applaud the Egyptian police when they halt the construction of a staircase in a Coptic church in the Omranya district of Greater Cairo.

I’ve been around, and I have heard you speak, in your offices, in your clubs, at your dinner parties: “The Copts must be taught a lesson,” “the Copts are growing more arrogant,” “the Copts are holding secret conversions of Muslims”, and in the same breath, “the Copts are preventing Christian women from converting to Islam, kidnapping them, and locking them up in monasteries.”

I accuse you all, because in your bigoted blindness you cannot even see the violence to logic and sheer common sense that you commit; that you dare accuse the whole world of using a double standard against us, and are, at the same time, wholly incapable of showing a minimum awareness of your own blatant double standard.

And finally, I accuse the liberal intellectuals, both Muslim and Christian who, whether complicit, afraid, or simply unwilling to do or say anything that may displease “the masses”, have stood aside, finding it sufficient to join in one futile chorus of denunciation following another, even as the massacres spread wider, and grow more horrifying.

A few years ago I wrote in the Arabic daily Al-Hayat, commenting on a columnist in one of the Egyptian papers. The columnist, whose name I’ve since forgotten, wrote lauding the patriotism of an Egyptian Copt who had himself written saying that he would rather be killed at the hands of his Muslim brethren than seek American intervention to save him.

Addressing myself to the patriotic Copt, I simply asked him the question: where does his willingness for self-sacrifice for the sake of the nation stop. Giving his own life may be quite a noble, even laudable endeavor, but is he also willing to give up the lives of his children, wife, mother? How many Egyptian Christians, I asked him, are you willing to sacrifice before you call upon outside intervention, a million, two, three, all of them?

Our options, I said then and continue to say today are not so impoverished and lacking in imagination and resolve that we are obliged to choose between having Egyptian Copts killed, individually or en masse, or run to Uncle Sam. Is it really so difficult to conceive of ourselves as rational human beings with a minimum of backbone so as to act to determine our fate, the fate of our nation?
That, indeed, is the only option we have before us, and we better grasp it, before it’s too late.

Recommended analyses on the Egyptian Revolution

2011-02-09T08:54:00.002+02:00

Creative-i : Egyptian Uprising Must Address U.S Interference and the Role of Israel in the Region By Ghada Chehade
tags: Jan25
ei: The danger to Egypt's revolution comes from Washington
tags: Jan25
المعرفة - وجهات نظر - الثورة المصرية الكبرى: آفاق ومخاطر
tags: Jan25
Egypt's Three Revolutions: The Force of History behind this Popular Uprising
tags: Jan25
Suleiman: The CIA's man in Cairo - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
tags: Jan25
ISS - U.S. defense contractors with the most at stake in Egypt
tags: Jan25
A call from Egyptian socialists | SocialistWorker.org
tags: Jan25
- We will not be guard dogs of America and Israel
  This system does not stand alone. As a dictator, Mubarak was a servant and client directly acting for the sake of the interests of America and Israel. Egypt acted as a colony of America, participated directly in the siege of the Palestinian people, made the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace free zones for warships and fighter jets that destroyed and killed the Iraqi people, and sold gas to Israel dirt cheap while stifling the Egyptian people by soaring prices. Revolution must restore Egypt's independence, dignity and leadership in the region.
  The revolution is a popular revolution
  This is not a revolution of the elite, political parties or religious groups. Egypt's youth, students, workers and the poor are the owners of this revolution. In recent days, a lot of elites, parties and so-called symbols have begun trying to ride the wave of revolution and hijack it from their rightful owners. The only symbols are the martyrs of our revolution and our young people who have been steadfast in the field. We will not allow them to take control of our revolution and claim that they represent us. We will choose to represent ourselves and represent the martyrs who were killed, their blood paying the price for the salvation of the system.
Washington Faces the Arab Revolts: Sacrificing Dictators to Save the State
tags: Jan25 Egypt
Ekraa - اقراء: Egypt's role in the destruction of Iraq
tags: Jan25 Egypt Iraq
The Arab Nationalist Reawakening in Egypt and Beyond
tags: Egypt Jan25
- Americans have for so long pretended that Arab nationalism is dead, their corporate media fail to recognize an Arab nationalist rebellion when it breaks out in front of their noses. Arab nationalism is more dangerous than Islamist politics to U.S. imperial hegemony, because "the path to mass mobilization can be direct and democratic, as evidenced by the spread of the Pan-Arab conflagration from the spark in Tunisia only weeks ago."
The great unravelling: Tunisia, Egypt and the protracted collapse of the American empire | Energy Bulletin
tags: Egypt economy neoliberalism Jan25
- Since the 1960s, Egypt has moved from complete food self-sufficiency to excessive dependence on imports, subsidized by oil revenues. But as Egypt’s oil revenues have steadily declined due to increasing domestic consumption of steadily declining oil, so have food subsidies, leading to surging food prices. Simultaneously, Egypt’s debt levels are horrendous — about 80.5 per cent of its GDP, far higher than most other countries in the region. Inequality is also high, intensifying over the last decade in the wake of neoliberal “structural adjustment’ reforms — widely implemented throughout the region since the 1980s with debilitating effects, including contraction of social welfare, reduction of wages, and lack of infrastructure investment. Consequently, today forty per cent of Egyptians live below the UN poverty line of less than 2 dollars a day.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Egypt's role in the destruction of Iraq

2011-02-08T21:50:00.002+02:00

From Malcom Lagauche's facebook

Hosni Mubarak is being surrounded by opposition from many sides of Egyptian society. The message is clear: he has to go. Various explanation for his imminent ouster have been well-chronicled: brutal repression, abject poverty in Egypt and corruption in the government are but a few of the reasons. The international press has delved into these and made the world aware of Mubarak’s actions over the years. However, one aspect yet to be brought out is his activities in 1990 that played a major role in making an attack against Iraq acceptable in the eyes of the world.

Let’s look at the chronology. On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops crossed the border into Kuwait. This was no mere on-the-spot decision made by Saddam Hussein. For months prior, Saddam brought up the subject of Kuwait’s attempts to undermine Iraq’s economy, that was fragile at the time because Iraq had just ended an eight-year war against Iran in which it defended all Arab countries, especially Kuwait, against a possible Iranian intrusion and the desired spreading of the Iranian Islamic revolution to the entire Arab world.

Saddam Hussein called for a summit in Cairo, Egypt to be held on August 4, 1990. At this meeting, all issues would be addressed and some sort of arrangement probably would have emerged that would have received world attention and explained why Iraq had to resort to military means to right the wrongs. Additionally, Saddam proclaimed that Iraqi troops would withdraw from Kuwait on August 5. He was, hindsight shows, falsely optimistic. The only concession that Saddam asked was that no Arab country condemn the Iraqi intrusion before the summit. In other words, he wanted Arabs to determine the outcome of the animosities between Iraq and Kuwait.

Shortly after Iraqi troops crossed the Kuwaiti border, King Hussein of Jordan talked with Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi president mentioned that most problems could be resolved at the scheduled mini-summit to be held in Cairo. King Hussein took the role of mediator and said he would talk to the other Arab nations. He foresaw few problems.

One of the first calls King Hussein made was to the Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak. After the king explained the situation, Mubarak replied, “I’ll support you.”

On the same day, August 2, 1990, King Hussein called President Bush to explain the latest developments in negotiations. He wanted to obtain Bush’s commitment that he not pressure Arab countries to issue communiqués criticizing Iraq’s actions for at least 48 hours. At the time of the call, Bush was on an airplane from Washington D.C. to Colorado. The Jordanian leader told Bush, “We (Arabs) can settle this crisis, George … we can deal with it. We just need a little time.” Bush’s reply was, “You’ve got it. I’ll leave it to you.”

King Hussein thought he was dealing with honorable people, and, when the conversation ended, he took Bush’s word that he would do nothing for 48 hours. Bush did not wait 48 seconds to start thwarting the efforts of a negotiated settlement.

While the Arab world was awaiting the mini-summit in Cairo, George Bush was already lining up allies to condemn Iraq, despite his promise to King Hussein to remain quiet for 48 hours. On August 3, 1990, Saddam Hussein issued a communiqué announcing he would begin to withdraw Iraqi troops from Kuwait on August 5. He was confident that the mini-summit scheduled for August 4 would reap benefits for everyone. Saddam, as well as the entire Arab world, was unaware of the American chicanery, supported by Hosni Mubarak, which was occurring.

On August 3, 1990, Bush met with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell. The topic was the option of military force against Iraq. Powell told Bush, “If you finally decide to commit to military forces, Mr. President, it must be done as massively and decisively as possible.”

Meanwhile, on August 3, in Amman, Jordan, matters worsened. King Hussein met with his foreign minister, Marwan Al Qasim, and stated, “I have very good news. Saddam Hussein has told me he’s going to pull out of Kuwait.” The foreign minister was a little more up-to-date on the situation and he wasted no time telling the king, “You haven’t heard, but the Egyptian Foreign Ministry has just put out a statement condemning the Iraqis for invading Kuwait.”

King Hussein realized he had been duped by Bush. Egypt was an Arab country that held much influence and its condemnation could destroy all possible negotiations. The king did not know at the time that Bush had already called Mubarak and cancelled a $7 billion Egyptian debt in return for Mubarak’s condemnation — a debt George Bush had no right to forgive under U.S. law.

An irate King Hussein called Mubarak and asked, “Why did you release that communiqué? We had an agreement not to do something like that until the mini-summit took place.” Mubarak answered, “I was under tremendous pressure from the media and my own people. My mind is not functioning.” King Hussein angrily told Mubarak, “Well, when it starts functioning again, let me know.”

Mubarak’s denunciation stopped any discussion by Arabs to come to an agreement. Of course, Saddam Hussein was irate and he cancelled his edict to remove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. Without Mubarak’s non-functioning mind, there was a strong chance that Iraq would have pulled out of Kuwait and there never would have been a Gulf War that began in January 1991. The actions of 28 nations, all bought off in various manners by the US, destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq and created a devastating embargo that kept Iraq isolated, even though the Iraqis had performed all the necessary draconian obligations that the US-led United Nations imposed on it.

Then, in the mid-1990s, Mubarak had the audacity to declare that Saddam Hussein should step down and allow “democracy” in Iraq. Today, he’s the victim of his own suggestions to Saddam. Mubarak was instrumental in the destruction of Iraq, yet today’s pundits rarely bring up the despicable incidents that Mubarak orchestrated 20 years ago that led to Iraq’s demise. He was a tool of the US and Western imperialism in 1990 and remained so for more than two decades. The only question now is will his successor(s) carry on the tradition?

Prospects for a democratic Egypt

2011-02-06T18:43:00.002+02:00

The Egyptian Intifada took off on the 25th of January in every major city across the country. Millions of Egyptians made it to the street demanding president Hosni Mubarak to step down. Following the pressure of the demonstrators, president Hosni Mubarak assigned head of intelligence Omar Suleiman as VP, dismissed government and parliament and vowed not to be a candidate in the next presidential elections in September 2011. Omar Suleiman is supposed to be leading the transit government to free and fair elections but the overwhelming majority of the protesters want to see President Hosni Mubarak step down before any negotiations begin.

So what are Egyptians demanding and how will they achieve it? Obviously, end to rule of the dictatorship, corruption - respect for the rule of law, employment, end emergency law that allows the state's security apparatus to arrest and detain anyone it likes. But remember that dictators don't just dictate, they obey orders from their superiors, namely the US. There must be greater independence from US and Israeli FP if the demands of this intifada were to be realized. The Egyptian economy and foreign policy have been aligned with US and Israeli security demands. The 1.5 billion dollars in aid the military receives from Washington puts it on a leash on Camp David accords. Egypt needs to be independant of this aid and any other economic and financial support from the US. This peace treaty asks Egypt to sell Israel gas, which is sold at 5 or 6 times the market price. By selling the gas on international markets and reversing the pro-business policies imposed by the IMF Egypt could start heading in the direction of economic and military independence and revive its role as a key player in the region once more.

Temporarily, quick fixes could be made in the new government.

Declare a minimum wage no less than LE1200 per month
End to the emergency law
Continue with the radicalization of the revolution

2010-12-29T00:05:00.003+02:00

The article I referenced made an analysis based on the facts on the ground and of the existing puppet and sectarian Iranian regime in Baghdad.

"The Islamic revolution had just succeeded in overthrowing the Shah and it had to wage war against Arab regimes who had deputed Saddam Hussein to represent them in that conflict. "
Had to wage war? Explain that please. Did you know that Khomeini's first priority after came to power and slaughtered the leftists who help him return from France was to topple the secular Iraqi baathist regime, sending human waves of kids to clear mines? He had a clear fanatic agenda to spread the revolution, just like the totalitarian Soviet Union after it came to power. States behave as imperial entities regardless how "revolutionary" or anti-imperialist they may seem. But thankfully Iraqis did not have his desired sectarian mentality and fought a long and brutal 8 year war. Of course the United States supported Iraq in defeating Iran, and as you will read below they had no problem in supporting Iran because they wanted to destroy both them regional super powers.

Both United States (and Israel) and Iran have an interest in calming down Iraq, and the article notes how this happened, with Iranian backed advised supervised Shi'a militias. This mutual benefit doesn't have to happen directly or covertly of course. So for those who are worried of an American invasion of Iran, it's not going to happen. And Khomeini had no problem affiliating with the United States or the devilish West, do you know about the Contra Affair?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
There is no morality or "Muslim Brothers" in politics. Iran behave like any other state, there is nothing "Islamic" about it.

I'm sure your mind is big and wise enough to know the truth Xdaniel. I don't like this dogmatic love some "leftists" have for Iran just because Ahmadeinejad can make a few anti-Israeli speeches from a safe distance in Tehran. Those who are consistent against imperialism and states should think again about Iran's role in the region.

As for the Islamic revolution, it's dead, it's been dead since Khomeini came to power. Thanks to the aid being sent to the Resistance, but **Iranian freedoms must not come at the expense of solidarity**. Zionism poses a threat to Iran and Iran would naturally want to fund military militias targeting Israel, together with the revolutionary and religious rhetoric to legitimize it, and of course many Iranians have empathy for those Arabs who are under constant threat by Israel but like I said above, Iranian freedoms must not come at the expense of solidarity and I find it quite sad that no one mentions Iran's ugly side because of this. States generally don't act based on religion or for the sake of people in other states, or the "Muslim Ummah" but because of their own state interests. Your description of revolution is exactly what Soviet states used to expand their control over sovereign countries during the cold war, but we know Soviet Union had to do with communism as much as the West has to do with democracy.

Here's another article if you are interested:
http://www.alternet.org/world/77595/

"Despite its very public saber-rattling against Iran, however, the United States has spent most of the past five years in a de facto alliance with Iran in support of the Shiite-led (and US-installed) regime in Baghdad. The most powerful component of that regime, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and its disciplined Badr Corps militia, is also Iran's closest Iraqi ally. Taking advantage of the political vacuum created by the US destruction of Saddam Hussein's government, Tehran has established a vast presence, both overt and covert, in Iraq, with enormous influence among nearly all of its western neighbor's Shiite and Kurdish parties. "The American military occupation of Iraq has facilitated an Iranian political occupation of Iraq," says Chas Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia."

Viva Iran!

2010-12-28T03:46:00.001+02:00

Shame on those Arabs, Muslims and "leftists" who demonize Iranian dissidents because of solidarity for the Resistance against Zionism. Who are only capable of viewing states as either holy good or holy bad.

Iranian solidarity for the Resistance must not come at the expense of your own people, and those Iranians who believe their government should be more responsible to its citizens before looking beyond its borders have every right to protest. But I'll say it again, Iranian regime funding for the Resistance is not for the blackness of our eyes (Egyptian saying), but primarily because Israel poses a military threat to them.

Suppose there were some truth behind the utilitarian logic: that support for the Resistance in Lebanon and Palestine compensated for suffering done on Iranians, that still doesn't discredit the right for civil disobedience by Iranians

Iranian hypocrisy

2010-12-26T13:44:00.002+02:00

Why do you support the Iranian regime? Because of a few speeches by Ahmadeinejad?Because of their democracy and freedoms? or because they "stand up" against Israel?Were you a Baathist before the invasion of Iraq? Is Iran funding Hizbullah and Hamas because they support the Resistance or because Israel poses a military threat to them?...

The Arab neoliberal conspiracy

2010-12-26T13:43:00.002+02:00

Egyptian and Arab parents are part of the neoliberal conspiracy. All they allow us to be are doctors, engineers, pharmacists and in business. Who's going to irrigate the fields and crop the vegetables?

Mahdi Army Torturing Muslims!!!!

2010-12-21T00:47:00.003+02:00

Today, it is not the American occupation but the IRANIAN occupation of Iraq. AND these pictures are not by White folks from Abughraib, but by sick Iraqis and Iranians with no national allegiance. Wikileaks will not leak this video for you. THIS IS MUSLIM TORTURING MUSLIM. This is the new occupation. The Iranian occupation of Iraq. 3ashat al mo8awamah!!! VIVA THE RESISTANCE

Iraq - Tortures in prisons
Uploaded by kasman1. - News videos hot off the press.

Iran and the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance

2010-12-20T12:01:00.001+02:00

There is public support in Iran for the Resistance in Lebanon and Palestine, but solidarity must not come at the expense of Iranian freedoms. Iran for Iranians before Palestine or Lebanon. It is vital that we and those who stand with the people of Iran acknowledge how Iran's personal freedoms have been sacrificed by the regime for the sake of national independence, and every day Iranians are paying the price - no doubt this pisses of a lot of Iranians and they have all right to be pissed

Oh Baghdad, they killed you...

2010-12-20T11:20:00.001+02:00

Dabashi on the Islamic Republic

2010-12-10T01:32:00.004+02:00

Dabashi's replied to an Arash Sobhani who thinks - or at least thought - that Dabashi is pro-american, pro-regime-change...""Dabashi:....The percentage of the people who want to change the regime-even if they exist!!!!!- is very minimum!!!!!! What does this guy smoke??? all the kiilling and torture and...going on in Iran is for what??? ....Dabashi represents Iranians as much as Ahmadinejad is their president!" I have posted a response on his page that will"

Dabashi replies:

Arash Sobhani: From day one of this movement I have said that this is a civil rights movement and not a revolution--this is both my assessment of this movement and my way of making sure there is less bloodshed in the streets of Tehrani and other cities. I say Iranians are not for “regime change” on this program for those of us who have lived long enough in this country know that in Washington DC (where this program was taped) that phrase "regime change" means imposing crippling sanctions against Iranians and initiating military strike—as it happened with Iraq. On this very program I also say that what we are witnessing in Iran is a massive social uprising that will sweep the entire region. But you did not include that part in your clip—for you are a deceitful liar who has no qualms sitting in California being party to economic sanctions and military strike against Iran. Next time you (Arash Sobhani and friends) walk into a drug store to buy something think of an Iranian child in need of medicine that is not coming through because of sanctions, or worse that child and his family being bombed by US/Israel military. Those very real and imminent possibilities are on my mind when I say “no regime change.” Half a million Iraqi kids perished because of sanctions alone, and this was before the US-led war started. That is on my mind when I say Iranians are not for “regime change.” Bastards like Ahmed Chalabi and Kanan Makiya (and they have their counterparts among Iranians today) were in the US telling Americans that Iraqis want regime change—and one million Iraqis perished and four million are made into refuges because of that. That was in a population of 26 million. You do the math for the population of 72 million. For thirty years I have exposed the criminal atrocities of the Islamic Republic, and I will be the first to celebrate the collapse of this medieval state—BUT only if Iranians do it themselves, not via an American/Isareli initiated “regime change.” Living in the United States and supporting the democratic movement in Iran or any other country requires very special care and intelligence, for what we say can very well be used to wage war against the very people we think we are supporting. Arash Sobhani you are a liar when you say here on your FB you asked me about this clip--you never asked me anything. Someone else has said I was a translator for AN—I have never been a translator for AN or for any other official of the Islamic Republic, or for any other official of any other kind of republic. I have never even met AN, and I refused to see him even when he was invited to Columbia. I am the only one who wrote against inviting AN to Columbia (see my al-Ahram essay on the matter). Arash Sobhani I will expose you for the deceitful liar that you are—I never turn the other cheek—I detest the Islamic Republic as much as I detest deceitful liars like you who have no qualms being party to imposing crippling sanctions or even military strike or asking for “regime change” to wreak havoc on their own people—and then maligning the name of people who don’t think like they do. There is no difference between you and the interrogators of the Islamic republic—fabricating a parvandeh for those who do not think like they do out of thin air. Over thirty years of the life of Islamic republic I have been to Iran only for one month when Khatami was elected. I lost my two brothers and my mother and could never attend even their funerals because of what I have said and done exposing the Islamic republic. Not a single book of mine is allowed translation into Persian precisely because of that and you come here manufacturing an image of me as denying the democratic aspiration of my people. You must be exposed, and I will expose you, for the deceitful liar that you are. One more thing, Arash Sobhani: I don’t smoke, I don’t do joint, I don’t overeat or overdrink. I exercise, I eat healthy food, and I have a beautiful family to love and to live for—and on top of that to stay healthy to fight against deceit and corruption and to expose any moron who maligns me or my name or above all discredits what I fight for—Hamid Dabashi

Who killed Kurds in Halabja?

2010-12-04T16:40:00.004+02:00

Why would Colin Powell lie saying that it was Iraqi's chemical weapons that massacred Kurds at Halabja when his own military intelligence reports say otherwise?

‎"Tabun is a crude agent; however the Iraqis are ebleived to have developed sarin, a more sophisticated variety that acts like tabun. This was supposedly employed during the 1988 attack on the Al Faw peninsula, and in several of other operations which make up the Tawakalna Ala Allah campaign. However, we doubt this was the case. Similarly, we find no evidence whatsoever that the Iraqis have ever employed blood gases such as Cyanogen chloride or hydrogen cyanide.

Blood agents were allegedly responsible for the most infamous use of chemicals in the war - the killing of Kurds at Halabjah. Since the Iraqis have no history of using these two agents - and the Iranians do - we conclude the the Iranians perpetrated this attack. It is also worth nothing the lethal concentrations of cyanogen are difficult to obtain over an area target, thus the report of 5,000 Kurds dead in Halabja are suspect.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/appb.pdf
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/

"Regarding the Halabjah incident where Iraqi soldiers were reported to have gassed their own Kurdish citizens, the USAWC investigators observed: “It appears that in seeking to punish Iraq, Congress was influenced by another incident that occurred five months earlier in another Iraq-Kurdish city, Halabjah. In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemical weapons in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds.” [The Iranians thought the Kurds had fled Halabjah and that they were attacking occupying Iraqi forces. But the Iraqis had already vacated Halabjah and the Kurds had returned. Iran gassed the Kurds by accident]
http://www.whitenewsnow.com/forums/bad-wars/11272-iran-not-iraq-gassed-kurds.html

Amina Alaoui

2010-12-04T06:18:00.002+02:00

Amina Alaoui is a Moroccan interpreter of Andalusian classical music. She sings in Arabic, Classic Persian and Haketia. Haketia is an endangered Jewish-Moroccan Romance language, also known as Djudeo Spañol or Ladino Occidental (western Ladino), that was spoken on the Northeast coast of Morocco in Tetuan, Tangiers and the Spanish towns of Ceuta and Melilla, in the latter of which it has achieved partial official recognition[citation needed].http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haketia

Why the Muslim Ummah hurts

2010-12-03T23:56:00.005+02:00

Some edited comments by Secular Arab from this great post and following commentary

'The White European Christians destroyed Belgrade, a white Christian capital in Europe and sided with Muslims when it was in their interest to do so. Muslim Turks are members of NATO, the white Christian alliance because its in their own interest to do so. Only the ignorant Arabs define themselves as Muslims and go around expressing solidarity with the "Moslem Ummah" while ignoring their own national interest.'

And before he wrote

[Political Islam is the problem]....I was not very precise in my last comment, but those who read what I write on here know very well that I do not attack Islam the religion but political Islam the ideology and movement. Yet at the same time I don't like religion, and while Christians and Muslims, and others have a right be people of faith, I am entitled to be a person who is secular and atheist. And I don't need to be reserved about it. I can express my views that religion is a drug, the Bible and Quran were written by men, and anyone who believes in them is pretty much ignorant and primtive. I do however support their right to remain living in ignorance as long as they don't use it to destroy society which belongs to all of us.

Paola, you have to admit if Iran was not a Muslim country Arabs would not be supporting Mahmoud IamAnutJob nor would they have gone to Afganistan to work with the CIA against the USSR, nor would they have lost India to Israel in order to express solidarity with their brothers in Kashmir, nor would they have supported US and NATO in Kosovo if it was not occupied by Muslims. Islam IS a problem, and an obstacle to progress just as Christianity was before the West told the Church to move over. We can't deny this, and as an Iraqi I can never forget or forgive the Arabs support of Iranians who have murdered us, slaughtered our people, invaded our country, and taken over our capital. Never.

--
My comment The point I think is one can't treat the "Muslim Ummah" like it's some legitimate or real political entity - it has consequences for our own people. One should be (pragmatically) concerned about the fates of "their" likes, than about someone living 3000 miles away just because they happen to have the same religion.For example my cousins and friends don't talk about Coptic oppression which is done by Muslims, instead chose to recite Israeli or American crimes whenever we have a political discussion. Egyptian Muslims and Copts are part of the same society, and they can help each other better than if Copts were to "support" Christians in Latin America or if Muslims were to go fight in Afghanistan.

Being Muslim makes you, whether or not its theologically intended, to care for other Muslims - you build Muslim empathy, but that shouldn't blind us from the fact that Muslims states can be oppressive and can have problems and non-Muslim Arabs and within other Muslim community requrire 100% of our empathy BEFORE we give it to other similar religious adherents thousands of miles away

So whilst I can't have a problem with Indonesians or Turks going on a freedom flottila to Gaza who they consider are part of their "Muslim Ummah" there are plenty of problems in Indonesia, and every citizen should be primarily concerned for their own nation because of their proximity and linguistic and cultural similarities to those oppressed and therefore they could be easier to help out.

Atoms for peace

2010-12-01T14:15:00.002+02:00

In 1991 Saddam made an offer to the Israelis that if they end the occupation, he will end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Ahmadeinejad should present the same offer to Israel in front of rest of the world: atoms for peace - end the occupation, and we'll stop our local enrichment project. Of course Israel will never accept, but important to put both these issues on the same shelf, to show world that at the core of all problem in the middle east is the Israeli occupation of Palestine. No justice, no peace.

Election day is today

2010-11-28T16:55:00.000+02:00

A few videos, pictures and commentary caught on facebook

Hamdeen Sobahy, workers leaders, a header of Karama (dignity) party withdraws from the elections. The voters refuse Sbahy's decision and they are marching to the ballot boxes insisting to continue the vote.

Translated comment by a friend of mine:
"If the presidential candidate himself withdraws from the parliamentary elections, means that the presidential elections is going to be a bloodbath. And ElBaradei escaped from all this chaos to Brazil." Yes ElBaradei is NOT in Egypt covering these election, or at least showing his support for a no vote.

Egypt’s Pope snubs NDP, votes for opposition party

NDP thugs chasing MB candidates and voters

Demonstrations, Protests and Rallies all across Egypt

2010-11-28T00:04:00.000+02:00

CKDU news 27 November

2010-11-27T17:54:00.003+02:00

اليوم السابع - Annotated
- دخلت أزمة العاملين بشركة جنوب الوادى للتنمية بتوشكى منعطفاً جديداً اليوم، إذ أضرب 1200عامل عن الطعام، بسبب عدم حصولهم على مستحقاتهم المالية من حوافز ورواتب.
  
  وقال العمال فى اتصال هاتفى بـ "اليوم السابع" إنهم يناشدون المهندس أحمد السيد، رئيس مجلس إدارة الشركة القابضة للتشييد والبناء، تحقيق العدالة والقضاء على- ما وصفوه - بسياسة التفرقة المتبعة فى الشركة منذ إنشائها، والتى منحت مميزات لأبناء الدلتا من أقارب أعضاء مجلس إدارة الشركة، مقابل حجب هذه الحقوق، على العاملين من أبناء محافظات الصعيد
  
  وأضاف العمال، أن نسبة كبيرة من العاملين البالغ عددهم1550 عاملاً فى مشروعات الشركة بمنطقة توشكى، من أقارب ومعارف رئيس مجلس الإدارة، وخصهم بالعقود التأمينية، فى حين لم يطبق المبدأ نفسه على أبناء الصعيد .
- وأوضحوا، فوجئنا بأن الشركة قامت بخصم الحوافز والبدلات التى كنا نحصل عليها، بل إنها رفضت دفع الأرباح السنوية، بعد الانتهاء من الميزانية العمومية للشركة، فى خطوة الهدف منها تطفيشهم بعد أن انتهت من استصلاح المشروعات الخاصة بها.
  
  ومن ناحية أخرى، أكد سعودى عليوة، رئيس مجلس إدارة الشركة، لـ "اليوم السابع" أن هذه العمالة ليس لها حق تطالب به. مضيفا، كنت بصدد الاستغناء عنهم، خاصة وأن نشاط الشركة الرئيسى هو استصلاح المشروعات من خلال إنشاء البنية التحتية كالترع والمصارف وشبكات الرى والصرف ومحطات رفع المياه وإنشاء وحدات تسمين المواشى وتربية الدواجن، وتحسين الأراضى بزراعتها عدة سنوات، ثم يتم تسليم المشروع للدولة.
Egypt NGOs slam investigations with Coptic protesters | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt - Annotated
- Several NGOs have slammed the prosecution’s investigations into Wednesday's clashes between security forces and Coptic rioters. The violence came as thousands of Copts protested a decision by the Giza authorities to halt construction at a local church.
  
  A statement released on Thursday by six organizations accused the general prosecution of infringing on defendants’ rights during interrogations.
  
  The prosecution allowed only five of 25 lawyers to attend the interrogations, according to the statement, adding that the law instructs each suspect to be accompanied by an attorney. The statement noted the prosecution denied a request by the lawyers to meet exclusively with their clients and to discontinue interrogations. They also demanded the documentation of injuries caused to the defendants during the sessions.
- Prosecutor-general Abdel Meguid Mahmoud ordered 159 suspects involved in the incidents to be remanded into custody for 15 days pending further investigation. They face charges of illegal assembly, damaging personal and public properties, disrupting traffic movement, resisting arrest, assaulting security officers on duty, and possessing detonative explosives.
  
  The defendants denied the charges. Some said they were out of the city during the clashes, while others claimed they were arrested in the surrounding vicinity.
  
  Meanwhile, more than 5000 Christians and Muslims from Balyana, Souhag, attended the funeral procession of Mackarious Gad Shaker, the 19-year-old Copt killed in the clashes.
  
  Scores of protesters and security personnel were also injured.
Activists call for 'Day of Anger' following Giza church clashes | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt - Annotated

tags: Copts Church protest
- In the midst of sectarian turmoil and a turbulent run-up to Sunday’s parliamentary polls, Facebook activists added fuel to the fire with calls for a nationwide protest this weekend.
  
  The anonymous administrator of the Facebook page “We are all Khaled Saeed” called upon Egyptians to turn Friday, 26 November into a “day of anger,” during which participants are expected to wear black and produce noise to express their opposition to police violations of human rights and the continuation of the state of emergency.
  
  The Facebook page reads: “On Friday, we will all prove that we are united against torture and the humiliation of the dignity of Egyptian young people.”
- The page was created last summer to commemorate the killing of a young man in Alexandria, allegedly by two policemen, and expose Egypt’s poor human rights record.
  
  The Facebook platform attracted hundreds of thousands of users who sympathized with the cause and mobilized scores of demonstrations in Alexandria. Eventually, the two suspects were referred to court. Their trial opened in late July and is set to resume on Saturday.
  
  In an earlier interview, the page’s architect told Al-Masry Al-Youm that he sought to come up with innovative protest tactics in order to circumvent laws that ban demonstrations. Last summer, the page introduced the idea of silent protests, during which silent protestors dressed in black and stood in line along the sea.
Egypt detains journalist on drug charges in Alexandria - Committee to Protect Journalists - Annotated

tags: Yousef Shaaban
- Shaaban
  was arrested Friday during a demonstration against a new construction project in
  the Abu Suleyman neighborhood that local residents say threatens their
  buildings with collapse. Dozens of people were rounded up but most of them were
  released, according to news reports. Shaaban is accused of possessing drugs,
  according to his lawyer, who did not specify what kind of drugs he is accused
  of possessing or what sort of punishment he may face.
ابو نضارة: عمرو خالد : خليك نصاب و ادعي ربنا و كله هيبقي تمام

tags: religion religion and politics Amr Khaled
Free Youssef ! الحرية ليوسف شعبان « 3arabawy

tags: Egypt Yousef Shaaban picture
الانترنت لم يصبح بعد وسيلة للتعبئة الشعبية في مصر | Reuters
شعبان لم يمثل أمام قاضي المعارضات.. واعتصام أمام الصحفيين لحين الإفراج عنه | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية - مصر

tags: detained
Stuxnet Targeted Bushehr, Iran’s Civilian Nuclear Reactor « Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place - Annotated
- The NY Times has published two stories in the past two days about the latest developments in the attempt by computer security specialists to penetrate the Stuxnet worm and its target. They have isolated the precise targets as being the centrifuge arrays and steam turbines at the Natanz and Bushehr plants. Now, more than ever these individuals are convinced that it was the work of Israel. There are no longer any other perpetrators being spoken of as likely suspects. Yesterday’s article even noted without providing a source that Israeli officials were seen to break out into wide smiles when asked if Israel could be credited for the job.
Egyptian Chronicles: And Saudi Arabia Joins Kuwait - Annotated

tags: Saudi Arabia Baradei
- ust like the Kuwaiti regime , the Saudi regime is showing its support to the Mubarak regime on the expense of the Egyptian people.
  
  From four days ago the Saudi authorities arrested the coordinator of NAC Osama Mushraf whom up till now has been detained at Al Mals prison before being deported to Egypt according Al Quds Al Arabi. Al Mals prison has got a bad reputation in the Kingdom by the way.
  
  Why does the Saudi regime interfere in an Egyptian internal matter !!?? Why does the Saudi regime arrest an Egyptian who did not break any Saudi law nor posed any kind of danger on the Saudi national security !!??
  
  The Saudi regime must understand that insh Allah change will come and sweep the Egyptian regime in its way because this is the core of life , as Muslims we believe in this.
  
  We will not forget this for the Saudi regime as we have forgotten this to the Kuwaiti regime. Some day they will have to apologize for us on this.
جماعة حقوقية: الإفراج عن مدون مصري بعد أربعة أعوام في السجن

tags: Kareem Amer
Kareem Amer, History's Longest Imprisoned Blogger, Is Free

tags: blogger Kareem Amer

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Solidarity with Copts

2010-11-26T04:54:00.000+02:00

"I'm a Muslim and I refuse the oppression of the Copts"

رجاء محمد - شويخ من أرض مكناس. جودة ممتازة

2010-11-24T03:24:00.000+02:00

شويخ من أرض مكناس وسط الأسواق يغني *** وشعليا أنا من الناس وش على الناس

أش عليا ياصاحب من جميع الخلايق ** أفعل الخير تنجو وأتبع أهل الحقايق

لا تقل يا بني كلمه إلا إن كنت صادق ** خذ كلامي في قرطاس وأكتبه حرز عني

أش عليا أنا من الناس وش على الناس مني

ثمّ قولُ مبينُ ولا يحتاج عباره ** أش على حد من حد أفهموا ذي الإشاره

أنظروا كبر سني والعصا والغراره ** هكذا عشت في فاس وكذا هون هوني

أش علي أنا من الناس وش على الناس مني

وما أحسن كلامه إذا يخطر في الأسواق ** ترى أهل الحوانيت يلفتوله بالأعناق

الغراره في عنقه وعكيكز وعكاز *** كويس مبني على ساس كما أنشأه الله مبني

أش عليا أنا من الناس وش على الناس مني

ياإلهي رجوتك جد علينا بتوبة ** بالنبي قد سألتك والكرام الأحبه

الرجيم قد شغلني وأنا معه بنشبة ** قد ملى قلبي وسواس مما هو يبغي مني

أش علي أنا من الناس وش على الناس مني

I love you Egypt

2010-11-23T14:53:00.003+02:00

بحبك يا مصر

Citizen journalist Yousef Sha'ban

2010-11-22T01:03:00.001+02:00

I think Yousef's fingering the asshole on the left! edeelo!!!

From Kolena Khaled S3yd's Facebook page:
الصحفي الناشط يوسف شعبان قبل اعتقاله وتلفيق قضية حيازة مخدرات له رغم إنه مش بيشرب حتى سجاير! حكومة بتتعامل مع شبابها بالاسلوب الهمجي ده .. ازاي تتوقع منهم يحبوا بلدهم ويخلصوا لوطنهم ويساهموا في نهضته؟.. الشباب في العالم كله دلوقتي أصبحوا نواب في البرلمان ومفكرين ومبدعين وأصحاب شركات ضخمة .. وفي بلدنا الشباب اللي بيفكر وليه منهج وبيعترض بيتسحل ويتشد من شعره بالأسلوب الهمجي ده

This is citizen journalist Yousef Sha'b3an before he was arrested for a fabricated charge of drug possession despite the fact he doesn't even smoke cigarettes! The government is dealing with its youth in this barbaric way. How can you expect them to love their country and work hard for their country and invest in its awakening? ...

Galloway on CKDU

2010-11-20T03:23:00.000+02:00

I will be playing Galloway's speech "Free Afghanistan, Free Palestine, Free Speech" tomorrow on the station of the Heart 88.1 CKDU.ca at 330pm or 930pm Egypt time or 1030 Kuwait time

Islamic fundamentalism and the left

2010-11-17T01:57:00.001+02:00

Sick and tired of criticism of religious extremism being shunned by leftists who are only but obsessed with their own antiamericanism

CKDU news 13 November

2010-11-13T20:46:00.001+02:00

الأخبار - تقارير وحوارات - إخوان مصر ينفون التفاهم مع النظام

Doustour Newspaper wrote last Thursday that some members of the NDP MP cooperated with the MB to get some support in the face of the opposition, and that the regime allowed the secretary general of the MB Mohamed Ezzat and member of the Guidance Buraeu Dr Mohammed Ali Bish to travel to KSA to do Hajj if the group would halt its attack on the NDP until the pariliamentary elections this November 28th.

tags: Muslim Brotherhood stupid
اعتقال طالبين عقب اعتداء الحرس الجامعي عليهما بالمنوفية | الدستور - Annotated

State security arrest three students who were involved in organizing the protest against having state officers on campus

tags: students
- في أول انتهاك للتعهد بعدم استخدام قانون
Raafatology ® الْأَغــــانّى لِلـــرَأْفَتــانّى: حــارب النظام بنفس سلاحه : الإستعبـاط - Annotated

أنا من منبر ى هذا أناشد الشعب بكافة طبقاته بمحاربة النظام بنفس سلاحه. أخى المواطن أختى المواطنه : أرجوكم سوقوا الهب

tags: funny
- الحكومه عامله زى الست القرشانه العجوز اللى فى الأفلام القديمه. عامله ودن من طين وودن من عجين. تسمع اللى على مزاجها وتنطش اللى على هواه
- وفى مذكراته، كتب الرئيس الهمام جورج بوش أن مصر أكدت له أن العراق يمتلك أسلحة دمار شامل! وبرضه الحكومه لبست وش عبده الأهبل ولم تصدر أى بيان تأكيد أو تكذيب وقالك تلاقى بوش بيتكلم على مصر الفاطميه مش مصر الحديثه هو بوش بيعرف يقرأ ويكتب أص
- وأخيراً ، من كام يوم كده نشرت مجلة التايمز الأمريكيه تقرير بأن مصر ساعدت إسرائيل فى إغتيال بعض القيادات الفلسطينيه فى غزه . لكن الحكومه ما بتقرأش اى جرائد غير الأهرام وروز اليوس
- لو سألت أى دكتور هيقولك إبعد عن الزعل وعن أى أخبار تعكر دمك علشان أمراض العصر زى الضغط والسكر والجلطه. والحكومه بتسمع كلام الدكاتره جداً والدليل على كده اللهم لا حسد أن متوسط أعمار الحكومه معدى ال 70
EGYPT: Hepatitis C infection reaches alarming figures | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times - Annotated

tags: hepatitis c health Egypt
- gypt’s spiralling threat of hepatitis C virus – already the highest incidence rate in the world -- is alarming researchers who fear a potential epidemic of the blood-borne disease could spread across the most populous Arab country.
  
  The findings of a recent study published in the National Academy of Sciences showed that more than 500,000 new HCV infection cases occur in Egypt every year. Much of the problem behind the soaring infectious rates is poor healthcare oversight and erratic medical hygiene.
BBC News - Tensions over media freedom in Egypt ahead of elections

Hosni Mubarak tells NDP elections are going to be free and fair. Cracking down on Egyptian media and live television. Reapplication media licenses.
عدد الصعايدة المصابين بـ السرطان يتضاعف 4 مرات فى 7 سنوات - بوابة الشروق

Cancer rates quadruple amongst Upper Egyptians in seven years

tags: cancer
انتصار لطلاب حلوان | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية - مصر

tags: students

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Left is wrong on Iran

2010-11-08T16:51:00.004+02:00

Hamid Dabashi

When a political groundswell like the Iranian presidential election of June 2009 and its aftermath happen, the excitement and drama of the moment expose not just our highest hopes but also our deepest fault lines, most troubling moral flaws, and the dangerous political precipice we face.

Over the decades I have learned not to expect much from what passes for "the left" in North America and/or Western Europe when it comes to the politics of what their colonial ancestry has called "the Middle East". But I do expect much more when it comes to our own progressive intellectuals -- Arabs, Muslims, South Asians, Africans and Latin Americans. This is not a racial bifurcation, but a regional typology along the colonial divide.
By and large this expectation is apt and more often than not met. The best case in point is the comparison between what Azmi Bishara has offered about the recent uprising in Iran and what Slavoj Zizek felt obligated to write. Whereas Bishara's piece (with aspects of which I have had reason to disagree) is predicated on a detailed awareness of the Iranian scene, accumulated over the last 30 years of the Islamic Republic and even before, Zizek's (the conclusion of which I completely disagree with) is entirely spontaneous and impressionistic, predicated on as much knowledge about Iran as I have about the mineral composition of the planet Jupiter.

The examples can be multiplied by many, when we add to what Azmi Bishara has written pieces by Mustafa El-Labbad and Galal Nassar, for example, and compare them to the confounded blindness of Paul Craig Roberts, Anthony DiMaggio, Michael Veiluva, James Petras, Jeremy Hammond, Eric Margolis, and many others. While people closest to the Iranian scene write from a position of critical intimacy, and with a healthy dose of disagreement, those farthest from it write with an almost unanimous exposure of their constitutional ignorance, not having the foggiest idea what has happened in that country over the last 30 years, let alone the last 200 years, and then having the barefaced chutzpah to pontificate one thing or another -- or worse, to take more than 70 million human beings as stooges of the CIA and puppets of the Saudis.

Let me begin by stating categorically that in principle I share the fundamental political premise of the left, its weariness of US imperial machination, of major North American and Western European media (but by no means all of them) by and large missing the point on what is happening around the globe, or even worse seeing things from the vantage point of their governmental cues, which they scarcely question. It has been but a few months since we have come out of the nightmare of the Bush presidency, or the combined chicaneries of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and John Ashcroft, or of the continued calamities of the "war on terror". Iran is still under the threat of a military strike by Israel, or at least more severe economic sanctions, similar to those that are responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis during the Clinton administration. Iraq and Afghanistan are burning, Gaza is in utter desolation, Northern Pakistan is in deep humanitarian crisis, and Israel is stealing more Palestinian lands every day. With all his promises and pomp and ceremonies, President Obama is yet to show in any significant and tangible way his change of course in the region from that of the previous administration.

The US Congress, prompted by AIPAC (the American Israel Political Affairs Committee), pro-war vigilantes lurking in the halls of power in Washington DC, and Israeli warlords and their propaganda machinery in the US, are all excited about the events in Iran and are doing their damnedest to turn them to their advantage. The left, indeed, has reason to worry. But having principled positions on geopolitics is one thing, being blind and deaf to a massive social movement is something entirely different, as being impervious to the flagrant charlatanism of an upstart demagogue like Ahmadinejad. The sign and the task of a progressive and agile intelligence is to hold on to core principles and seek to incorporate mass social uprising into its modus operandi. My concern here is not with that retrograde strand in the North American or Western European left that is siding with Ahmadinejad and against the masses of millions of Iranians daring the draconian security apparatus of the Islamic Republic. They are a lost cause, and frankly no one could care less what they think of the world. What does concern me is when an Arab intellectual like Asad AbuKhalil opts to go public with his assessment of this movement -- and what he says so vertiginously smacks of recalcitrant fanaticism, steadfastly insisting on a belligerent ignorance.

On his website, "Angry Arab", Asad AbuKhalil finally has categorically stated that he is "now more convinced than ever that the US and Western governments were far more involved in Iranian affairs during the demonstrations than was assumed by many." He then tries to be cautious and cover his back by stipulating, "Let us make it clear: the US, Western and Saudi intervention in Iranian affairs does not necessarily implicate the Iranian protesters themselves. And even if some of them were involved in those conspiracies, I do believe that the majority of Iranian protesters were motivated by domestic issues and legitimate grievances against an oppressive government." This latter stipulation is in fact worse than that categorical statement about the conspiratorial plot behind the movement, for it seeks to play fancy speculative footwork to cover up a moral bankruptcy -- that he dare not take a stand, one way or another. AbuKhalil's final edict: "I was just looking at US and Western media coverage of Honduras, where the situation is rather analogous, and you can't escape the conclusion that the US media were involved with the US government in a conspiracy the details of which will be revealed years from now." In other words, since the US media is not covering the Honduras development as closely as it does (or so AbuKhalil fancies) the Iranian event, then the US media is in cahoots with the US government in fomenting unrest in Iran, and thus this movement is manufactured by US imperial designs with Saudi aid; and though we may not have evidence of this yet, we will learn of its details 30 years from now, when a Stephen Kinzer comes and writes an account of the plot, as he did about the CIA- sponsored coup of 1953.

One simply must have dug oneself deeply and darkly, mummified inside a forgotten and hollowed grave on another planet not to have seen, heard and felt for millions of human beings risking their brave lives and precious liberties by pouring into the streets of their cities demanding their constitutional rights for peaceful protest. Thousands of them have been arrested and jailed, their loved ones worried sick about their whereabouts; hundreds of their leading public intellectuals, journalists, civil and women's rights activists, rounded up and incarcerated, harassed and even tortured, some brought to national television to confess that they are spies for "the enemy". There are pregnant women among those leading reformists arrested, as are such leading intellectuals as Said Hajjarian, who is paralysed having barely survived an assassination attempt by precisely those in the upper echelons of the Islamic Republic who have yet again put him and his wheelchair in jail. Three prominent reformists, all heroes of the Islamic revolution (Khatami, Mousavi, and Karrubi: a former president, a former prime minister, and a former speaker of the house to this very Islamic Republic) are leading the opposition, charging fraud, declaring Ahmadinejad illegitimate. The senior most Grand Ayatollah of the land, the octogenarian Ayatollah Montazeri, has openly declared Khamenei illegitimate. The Iranian parliament is deeply divided and in turmoil. A massively militarised security apparatus has wreaked havoc on the civilian population: beating, clubbing, tear gassing, and plain shooting at them. University dormitories have been savagely raided by plainclothes vigilantes and students beaten up with batons, clubs, kicks, and fists by oversize thugs. Millions of Iranians around the globe have taken to the streets, their leading public figures -- philosophers like Abdul-Karim Soroush, clerics like Mohsen Kadivar, public intellectuals like Ata Mohajerani, filmmakers like Mohsen Makhmalbaf, pop singers like Shahin Najafi, footballers of the Iranian national team, countless poets, novelists, scholars, scientists, women's rights activists, ad infinitum --coming out to voice their defiance of this barbarity perpetrated against their brothers and sisters.

Not a single sentence, not a single word that I utter comes from CNN, The New York Times, Al-Arabiya or any other sources that Asad AbuKhalil loves to hate. None of these people means anything to Mr AbuKhalil? Can he really face these millions of people, their best and brightest, the mothers of those who have been cold- bloodedly murdered, tortured, beaten brut ally, paralysed for life, and tell them they are stooges of the CIA and the Saudis, and that CNN and Al-Arabiya have put them up to it? AbuKhalil has every legitimate reason to doubt the veracity of what he sees in US media. But at what point does a legitimate criticism of media representations degenerate into an illegitimate disregard for reality itself; or has a sophomoric reading of postmodernity so completely corrupted our moral standards that there is no reality any more, just representation?

Asad AbuKhalil dismisses a mass social uprising that is unfolding right in front of his eyes as manufactured by Americans and the Saudis. What else does AbuKhalil know about Iran? Anything? Thirty years (predicated on 200 years) of thinking, writing, mobilising, political and artistic revolts, theological and philosophical debates -- does any of it ring a bell for Professor AbuKhalil? Do the names Mahmoud Shabestari, Abdul-Karim Soroush, Mohsen Kadivar, among scores of others, mean anything to him? Has he ever listened to these young Iranians speak, cared to learn the lyrics of their music, watched the films they make, gone to a photography exhibition they have put together, seen any of their art work, or perhaps glanced at their newspapers, journals, magazines, weblogs, websites? Are all these stooges of America, manipulated by CIA agents, bought and paid for by the Saudis? What depth of intellectual depravation is this?

In his most recent posting, AbuKhalil has this to say about Iran: "For the most reliable coverage of the Iran story, I strongly recommend the New York Times. I mean, they have Michael Slackman in Cairo and Nazila Fathi in Toronto, and they have 'independent observers' in Tehran. What else do you want? If you want more, the station of King Fahd's brother-in-law (Al-Arabiya) has a correspondent in Dubai to cover Iran. And according to a report that just aired, Mousavi received 91 per cent of the vote in 'an elite neighbourhood'. I kid you not. They just said that." The Iranians have no reporters, no journalists, no analysts, no pollsters, no economists, no sociologists, no political scientist, no newspaper editorials, no magazines, no blogs, and no websites? If AbuKhalil has this bizarre obsession with the American or Saudi media that he loves to hate, does that psychological fixation ipso facto deprive an entire nation of their defiance against tyranny, their agency in changing their own destiny?

What a terrible state of mind to be in! AbuKhalil has so utterly lost hope in us -- us Arabs, Iranians, Muslims, South Asians, Africans, Latin Americans -- that it does not even occur to him that maybe, just maybe, if we take our votes seriously the US and Israel may not have anything to do with it. He fancies himself opposing the US and Israel. But he has such a deeply colonised mind that he thinks nothing of us, of our will to fight imperial intervention, colonial occupation of our homelands, and domestic tyranny at one and the same time. He believes if we do it then Americans and the Saudis must have put us up to it. He is so utterly lost in his own moral desolation and intellectual despair that in his estimation only Americans can instigate a mass revolt of the sort that has unfolded in front of his eyes. What an utterly frightful state for an intellectual to be in: no trust, no courage, no imagination and no hope. That we, as a people, as a nation, as a collective will, have fought for over 200 years for our constitutional rights has never occurred to AbuKhalil. What gives a man the authority to speak so cavalierly about another nation, of whom he knows nothing?

Ten years I spent watching every single Palestinian film I could lay my hands on before I opened my mouth and uttered a word about Palestinian cinema. I visited every conceivable archive in North America and Western Europe, travelled from Morocco to Syria, drove from one end of Palestine to another, was blessed by the dignity of Palestinians resisting the horror of a criminal occupation of their homeland, walked and showed bootlegged videos on mismatched equipment and stolen electricity from one Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon to another; then I went to Syria and found a Palestinian archivist who knew infinitely more about Palestinian cinema than I did, and I sat at his feet and learned humility, and I still did not dare put pen to paper or open my mouth about anything Palestinian without asking a Palestinian scholar -- from Edward Said to Rashid Khalidi to Joseph Massad -- to read what I had written before I dared publishing it. This I did not out of any vacuous belief in scholarship, but out of an abiding respect for the dignity of Palestinians fighting for their liberties and their stolen homeland, and fearful of the burden of responsibility that writing about a nation's struggles puts on those of us who have a voice and an audience.

For people like Zizek, social upheavals in what they call the Third World are a matter of theoretical entertainment. It is an old tradition that goes back all the way to Sartre on Algeria and Cuba in the 1950s, down to Foucault on Iran in the 1970s. That does not bother me a bit. In fact, I find it quite entertaining -- watching grown up people make complete fools of themselves talking about something about which they have no blasted clue. But when someone like AbuKhalil indulges in cliché ridden leftism of the most banal variety it speaks of a culture of intellectual laziness and moral bankruptcy so outrageously at odds with the struggles of people from which we emerge. Our people are not to conform to our tired, old, and cliché-ridden theories. We need to bypass intellectual couch potatoes and catch up with our people. Millions of people, young and old, lower and middle class, men and women, have poured in their masses of millions into the streets, launched their Intifada, demanding their constitutional rights and civil liberties. Who are these people? What language do they speak, what songs do they sing, what slogans do they chant, to what music do they sing and dance, what sacrifices have they made, what dungeons have they crowded, what epic poetry are they citing, what philosophers, theologians, jurists, poets, novelists, singers, song writers, musicians, webloggers soar in their souls, and for what ideals have their hearts and minds ached for generations and centuries?

A colonised mind is a colonised mind whether it is occupied by the European right or by the cliché-ridden left: it is an occupied territory, devoid of detail, devoid of substance, devoid of love, devoid of a caring intellect. It smells of ageing mothballs, and it is nauseating.

* The writer is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.

Adapted from Al-Ahram Weekly Online

CKDU news 6 November

2010-11-06T19:46:00.002+02:00

Iraqi Solidarity News (Al-Thawra): Protect Iraq’s Christians
tags: Iraq Christians murder
البديل | البديل » مصادر: عز يحرق أسعارالحديد للدعاية للوطني في الانتخابات ..والمصانع الصغيرة تدفع الثمن
Egyptian tycoon and NDP secretary for organizational affairs Ahmed Ez who also controls 60% of the steel industry in Egypt "burns" (drops) steel prices by LE500 (about 12%) in order to boost publicity for the NDP putting smaller steel producers out of business
tags: Egypt NDP freemarket Ahmed Ez
Foucault in Iran: Revolution, Entropy and Equality | Wu Ming Foundation - Annotated
In France, in the autumn of 1793, the Jacobin-led Convention decreed the dissolution of women’s revolutionary clubs. In 1979 Iran, the restriction of women’s freedom was one of the first concerns of the newly installed Khomeini regime. In the spring of 1979, in a matter of a few weeks, a hail of discriminatory laws struck Iranian women. In Tehran, on March 8, Hezbollah militants attacked a great demonstration of women protesting against the crackdown. The protesters shouted “No to dictatorship!”, “We made the revolution to be free” and “Freedom is neither Eastern nor Western: it is universal”. The attackers responded with stones and sticks
tags: Foucault Revolution 79 Iran
- «It’s true that certain people [...] are not likely to find advice or instructions in my books to tell them “what is to be done” But my project is precisely to bring it about that they “no longer know what to do”, so that the acts, gestures, discourses that up until then had seemed to go without saying become problematic, difficult, dangerous…» (stated during a roundtable on prisons, May 1978, a few months before the trip to Iran).
- In France, in the autumn of 1793, the Jacobin-led Convention decreed the dissolution of women’s revolutionary clubs. In 1979 Iran, the restriction of women’s freedom was one of the first concerns of the newly installed Khomeini regime. In the spring of 1979, in a matter of a few weeks, a hail of discriminatory laws struck Iranian women. In Tehran, on March 8, Hezbollah militants attacked a great demonstration of women protesting against the crackdown. The protesters shouted “No to dictatorship!”, “We made the revolution to be free” and “Freedom is neither Eastern nor Western: it is universal”. The attackers responded with stones and sticks.
« Color revolution » fails in Iran [Voltaire]
tags: revolution color revolution Iran interventionism
“They Fled Away Like Gangsters”: Murder & Greed in Baghdad [Voltaire]
tags: Australia mercenaries Pigs Iraq murder Armenian
Black taxi or white taxi? | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt
tags: Egypt economics minimum wage
As Police Crack Down on Egyptian Campuses, a Recent Court Ruling May Force Reform - International - The Chronicle of Higher Education
tags: Egypt university Cairo University police
EFTU to challenge minimum wage decision | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt
tags: workers Egypt minimum wage EFTU
Undocumented Egypt migrants in Italy protest to demand legal residence | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt
tags: workers Italy Egypt
حركة «حقى»: طلاب ضد لائحة 79 | المصري اليوم، أخبار اليوم من مصر
tags: students Cairo University movement

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

A catastrophe in Ain Shams University

2010-11-05T14:02:00.003+02:00

State sponsored thugs attack students and professors organizing to expel state-security from all university campuses with knives and other "white" weapons (belts and wires etc.). Picture adapted from AlMasryAlYoum

Nawal AlSaadawi

2010-11-01T16:28:00.012+02:00

"They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman.”
I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous."

"If you are creative, you must be dissident."

"Now i had learnt that honor required large sums of money to protect it, but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one's honor. An infernal circle whirling round and round, draggng me up and down with it."
— From Woman At Point Zero

I read rumors that she was actually an active member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in the late forties. The lie actually comes from a book titled "We 3rfto alIkhwan" (And so I knew the Brothers). The author is an ex-MB member who was supposedly Nawal's schoolmate in medical school and who says that she was an active member of the brotherhood.

Two birds with one stone: the Communist-Zionist conspiracy

2010-11-01T02:23:00.010+02:00

Checkout this classic antisemitism. The same kind of propaganda that was spread by Nazis that Jews are Bolsheviks is being revived today. I guess for some Muslim fundamentalists you can't ask for more than a Communist-Zionist conspiracy, on one end it encompasses the Palestinian struggle against Zionist colonialism and imperialism, and on the other it exposes the kufr of the local left. Two birds with one stone. Marx was a Jew, as well as Trotsky and Lenin who were Bolsheviks, but Chomsky, an old critic of American foreign policy and Israeli violence and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians describes himself as a labour Zionist, and is also critical of Lenin's and Trotsky's state socialism. The left is about worker solidarity and struggle, therefore it is natural to expect the Jews of Europe to have gravitated towards it, and on the other hand made them very good entrepreneurs

Anyways the video's all crap because when the Bolshevik party came to power it had about 10,000 members, 364 who were Jewish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Bolshevism

In Egypt like many Arab countries we have Revolutionary Socialists, and they are as anti-Zionist as they get. What's wrong with communism? Why is it being demonized? Religion fears the left because it doesn't like the people to get under a different banner than its own. It sucks, but coincidently the government also hates the left because they make a fuss, protests, ask for higher minimum wages, demand social benefits etc. Shouldn't religion be on the oppressed side? And religious or not, one should reason and analyze socialism and other ideas before dismissing them because of idealogical reasons.

CKDU news 30th October

2010-10-30T17:28:00.003+03:00

Report: Egypt gov’t not abiding by the int’l labor conventions - Bikya Masr - Annotated
“The government has worked to expedite the sale of the public sector where 17 institutions were privatized during the first year of taking office and increased the pace of selling dramatically, which seemed a deliberate liquidation of the heritage of the Egyptian people and for the success of this policy in the sale and privatization, all the members of the government had obtained degrees from Western universities and have business associates within the Policy Committee of the National Party,” the report stated.
tags: Egypt privatization report
- An International Report on Egyptian labor practices prepared by the Center for International Labor Solidarity, under the supervision of a Gules Benin, one of the leading experts in the field of labor issues in Egypt under the title “The Struggle for the rights of Workers in Egypt” said that Egypt does not abide by the terms of international conventions on workers rights, despite being a signatory.
- he report indicated that the number of workers who have organized and participated in protests hit 1.7 million workers, “most of whom were affiliated with the public sector” and while the protests of private-sector workers was substantial, the report shows changes in the Egyptian society since the inauguration of Ahmed Nazif as Prime Minister in 2004.
- t said that due to a lack of democratic reforms being promoted credibility after the presidential elections and the 2005 Parliamentary vote, “the government has stepped up the pace of repression against all opposition forces and the labor movement gives the government a chance to listen to the people and apply the long-awaited political and economic changes but if the government doesn’t comply to these demands, this can lead to the collapse of national security.”
American University in Cairo workers go on strike

tags: AUC students strike workers
Egypt court orders police to leave universities | Reuters - Annotated

tags: Egypt police university students
- The High Administrative Court has decided to uphold the ruling ... which revoked the interior minister's decision to establish security units on university campuses," a court statement said.
  "The presence of permanent Interior Ministry police forces inside the Cairo University campus represents an impairment of the independence guaranteed to the university by the constitution and the law," the court added.
- The decision to install Interior Ministry police on public university campuses dates back to September 1981, when President Anwar Sadat rounded up political opponents, Mustafa said. Sadat was assassinated in October 1981.
- The ruling comes in the run-up to Egypt's parliamentary elections, scheduled for November 28. While the ruling party's dominance is not in doubt, the poll is expected to test government restrictions on political opposition ahead of a 2011 presidential vote.
  President Hosni Mubarak, 82, has not said whether he will seek a sixth six-year term, but members of the ruling party have indicated that he would seek re-election.
Alaa al-Aswany protests Hebrew translation of novel | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt
Alaa al-Aswany told The Associated Press on Friday that he will sue an Israeli center for translating his hit book, "The Yacoubian Building," because he is opposed to cultural normalization with Israel.
tags: Alaa alAswany Israel culture cultural boycott normalization
Court orders government to set minimum wages | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt
Right now, the minimum wage is under LE100 per month, hasn't been reviewed since the 80s. Socialists are demanding somewhere around LE1400 to compensate for increase in price hikes
tags: minimum wage Egypt workers
Q&A: Economist Gouda Abdel Khaleq on crony capitalism in Egypt | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt - Annotated

tags: interview Egypt capitalism imperialism
- Al-Masry: Has Egypt followed capitalism?
  
  Abdel Khaleq: Of course not. The reality tells us that we are applying a sort of Memluke feudalism, with each tycoon controlling a specific sector of economy, and all of this is far away from capitalism, which is, eventually, governed by gain-seeking mechanisms.
Agriculture Ministry weighs benefits of growing American cotton | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt
Long live Egyptian cotton!
tags: Egypt imperialism cotton
Info Center employees protest in front of cabinet | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt - Annotated

tags: Egypt Workers IDSC protest
- Protesters demanded the government implement a decision taken in May to raise their salaries.
- The employees on Monday announced they would organize a march from Tahrir Square to the People's Assembly, but instead they opted to stage their sit-in in front of the cabinet.
- Employees will receive their new contracts within a week and their new salaries will be disbursed by December, al-Mahgoub told Al-Masry Al-Youm. Salaries will range between LE320-380.
القضاء الادارى يحكم بالزام الحكومة بالاستمرار في تنفيذ حكم الحد الأدنى للأجور | مركز الدراسات الاشتراكية - مصر

tags: Egypt Workers minimum wage

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

American University in Cairo workers go on strike

2010-10-28T19:52:00.083+03:00

Translated from Salma asks
Egyptian American University in Cairo workers went on strike in-front of the arts building on 20th October. The translated blogger went to the site of the demonstration where dozens of workers and students in solidarity were gathered as planned to force the university's administration to listen to their complaints.

There was an atmosphere of hostility towards the university by the workers and the students. The students' natural gravitation to the "revolution" and their general skepticism of the university's administration lead them to ask the workers why it is they are going on strike and what their demands are.

The director of human resources asked to postpone the "discussion" of salary reductions and deductions to Sunday or Monday promising to look into the issue, but the workers refused insisting they will not leave until there is a firm and swift decision to their situation.

The blogger asked some of the striking workers about the problem:

Mohammed Sed2y - worker in AUC, has three kids eldest who is in juniors, salary is LE600 (about C$100) after Medicare health insurance deduction
Mohammed Ahmed - worker in AUC, salary is LE450 and his rent is LE300
Abdelma2sood - worker in AUC, salary is LE320 after LE550 deductions in insurance, has 3 kids all which are in school

Dozens of workers, with expressions of anger and a feeling of injustice on their faces, chain smoking cigarettes, refused to be silent and to listen to the same empty words they've heard over and over again.

With the continuation of frustration, the director of HR left the site leaving the frustrated striking men and women chanting behind him "harabo harabo" ('they got away, they got away').

There was no fuss or violence at the demonstration. A woman demonstrating collapsed in tears, shouting against the reduction in salaries and for being unable to properly raise her children. She bravely stood in-front of one of the HR managers whilst her male colleagues whispered "7atwe7asheena wallah" ('we will miss you I swear' ie. shut-up before you lose your job) . Some demonstrators lost conscious probably because of the anxiety, tension and over-crowdedness.

The workers printed a list of their complaints to provide to the union, and which the university is expected to respond:

Not providing an increase in salaries in the face of increased commodity prices as per the law (their emphasis).
Hiring employees without including them in an insurance package, or even notifying the insurance office of their new employment (their emphasis).
Deliberately demoting workers after they have been promoted some of which have been working the same job for more than three years.
Discriminating between Egyptian and foreign workers in a variety of benefits. A statement was released last July to not hire [Egyptian] workers' relatives without the approval of specific authorities, then in September foreigner workers were allowed to hire their relatives without approval - even if that foreigner was Sudanese or Palestine - because it's believed the foreigner is unique and better than his local Egyptian counterpart in all areas. [the khawaga (foreigner) complex]
The administration's deliberate deceit of employees of Compass , a private labor contractor for the university: last March the university asked Compass workers to terminate their employment with Compass so that the university can employ them directly. They terminated employment but the university did not hire them as they promised, and when the union got involved they managed to only get 6 months of work signed so they can have enough time to find another job. Many of those workers are married with kids and have been working on campus for more than five years.
Inciting rumors and seditions on campus after the HR manager hired Copts without following hiring and labor regulations, and terminated employment of some Muslims just for growing their beards during the holy month of Ramadan. And although the HR manager has only been working for six months at the university and clear university regulations state that the manager has to be employed for five years before their kids can be taught for free, his own son goes to the AUC and pays no tuition.
Ignoring the law that states a minimal employment rate for disabled people.
Ignoring the law for a lunch meal, and avoiding to notify the relevant authorities of that, far from the invigilation of unions and Ministry of Health and Ministry of Labour, and discrimination in spending because it feeds professors and staff but not the administrative workers [janitors, security etc.]
Inadequacy of the remote location of the new campus: it is not reachable by public transportation, water is not drinkable, frequent power cuts that are exasperated by hot weather, the lack of food and low salaries (their emphasis). [socialists demand minimum wage no less than LE1200]
Severe discrimination between the salaries of the new workers and similar workers of the same qualifications and experience (their emphasis).
Drastic discrimination amongst pay increases. For example: those whose performance was "excellent" didn't get a pay increase but those who performed as expected got 5% pay increases.
Meddling with annual reports after they have been signed by the workers and managers, especially with those who have achieved their set goals and who have not been rewarded a pay increase and furthermore have been threatened with termination if they did not meet their next year's goals without notifying the workers with what they did wrong or providing assistance to improve their working performance.
An unreasoned reduction in university workers' minimum wage from LE1200 to LE650, and even worse is that they provided some managers with increases of 12%, which for some was an increase of LE1500 alone, for working silently, and terrorizing the workers (their emphasis).
Complete disregard of the union committee's views and interests. The university's administration avoids presenting its radical changes in working regulations to the committee, or even when making a decision that is going to impact the workers. Our answer to them is this is not acceptable. (my emphasis)

Us versus them

2010-10-27T17:35:00.007+03:00

Photo by Sarah Carr

From AlMasryAlYoum
Security forces on Tuesday clashed with thousands of Information Decision Support Center (IDSC) employees while they staged an open-ended sit-in before the ministerial cabinet on Hussein Hegazy Street. Protesters demanded the government implement a decision taken in May to raise their salaries.

Demonstrators blocked Qasr al-Ainy Street for almost 20 minutes, shouting anti-government chants, until security forces forcibly returned them back to Hussein Hegazy Street. An Al-Masry Al-Youm reporter and photographer were assaulted by security in an attempt to prevent them from covering the protest.

The employees on Monday announced they would organize a march from Tahrir Square to the People's Assembly, but instead they opted to stage their sit-in in front of the cabinet.

Many security leaders were on location, most notably head of the Cairo Security Directorate Ismail al-Shaer.

Minister of Local Development Abdel Salam al-Mahgoub said he met Tuesday with a group of protesting employees and informed them of the prime minister’s agreement on new contracts issuance. Al-Mahgoub said they would follow the same administration but work on the population issue in collaboration with the Ministry of State for Family and Population.

Employees will receive their new contracts within a week and their new salaries will be disbursed by December, al-Mahgoub told Al-Masry Al-Youm. Salaries will range between LE320-380.

Meanwhile, protest coordinator Gharib Hafez said, “The proposal of transferring us to other ministries means officials are not willing to implement decisions taken.”

Hussein Megawer, head of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), said the crisis will end in hours. He said he will meet with representatives of employees to urge them to be patient, he told Al-Masry Al-Youm, and not to follow those who push them to protest."

د حكومة هز الوسط ، اكلونا العيش ب القسط
This is a government of belly dancing, fed us bread in installements

Paulo Freiri on student-teacher relations

2010-10-25T05:36:00.003+03:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire‎
"More challenging is Freire's strong aversion to the teacher-student dichotomy. This dichotomy is admitted in Rousseau and constrained in Dewey, but Freire comes close to insisting that it be completely abolished. This is hard to imagine in absolute terms, since there must be some enactment of the teacher-student relationship in the parent-child relationship, but what Freire suggests is that a deep reciprocity be inserted into our notions of teacher and student. He goes so far as to say that “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously students and teachers” (Freire, 1970, p. 72). Freire wants us to think in terms of teacher-student and student-teacher – that is, a teacher who learns and a learner who teaches – as the basic roles of classroom participation. Freire however insists that educator and student, though sharing democratic social relations of education, are not on an equal footing, but the educator must be humble enough to be disposed to relearn that which he/she already thinks she knows, through interaction with the learner. The authority which the educator enjoys must not be allowed to degenerate into authoritarianism; teachers must recognize that "their fundamental objective is to fight alongside the people for the recovery of the people's stolen humanity", not to "win the people over" to their side (Freire, 1970, p. 95).

Antiracist soldier - we are the freedom fighters!

2010-10-24T18:16:00.000+03:00

CKDU news 23 October

2010-10-23T17:23:00.004+03:00

تظاهر المئات بالزقازيق من أجل (سمية) وضد الحرس الجامعي
About 500 students and activists from the National Association for Change in Sharqiya organized a demonstration in front of the entrance to the arts college in AlAzhar University in Za'Zi' to denounce what happened to Sumaya Ashraf, a student in Islamic Studies that was beaten up by a university security guard because she refused to be searched.
tags: Egypt protest university students
Egypt shuts down more TV stations - Middle East - Al Jazeera English
Egypt's main satellite operator said on Tuesday it pulled the plug on 12 private television channels on grounds of violating broadcasting licences.Tensions are rising as the balloting nears and although the election date hasn't been set, voting is expected in late November.
tags: Egypt freedomofspeech
Who you callin' lazy? | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt
tags: Egypt workers
Haqqi Student Movement طلاب حركة حقي: الإدارية العليا تؤيد إلغاء الحرس الجامعي
This Saturday morning, the supreme court decided to remove all security guards from ministry of interior on university campuses and replace them with security guards who follow rules of the ministry of education instead. The issue started more than two years ago after a professor - and member of 9 March university independence movement - filed a lawsuit to expel police officers form campus.
tags: students university Egypt
- This Saturday morning, the supreme court decided to remove all security guards from ministry of interior on university campuses and replace them with security guards who follow rules of the ministry of education instead. The issue started more than two years ago after a professor - and member of 9 March university independence movement - filed a lawsuit to expel police officers form campus. - post by Moustafa Yaftasem
Female Al-Azhar students protest body searches by campus security | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt - Annotated
tags: protest university Egypt female
- Female students at Al-Azhar University in the Nile Delta city of Zagazig on Sunday staged a sit-in on campus, claiming they had been assaulted by campus security after refusing to submit to body searches.
  
  Police eventually dispersed the protesters, arresting ten male students that had been supporting their female colleagues.
  
  According to one protester, female students were beaten by campus police after they asked to be searched by female security personnel.
Student union elections: A bad omen for upcoming polls | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt - Annotated
Newspapers reported on Monday that most of the seats in Cairo University’s student union election were won without contest as the number of candidates did not exceed the number of seats to be filled. The fact that student union membership is being increasingly determined in this fashion merits some contemplation.
tags: Egypt university activism
- Dr. Nafaa is currently a professor and chairman of Political Science department at Cairo University. He is a specialist on International Relations/ Organization and Middle East politics - post by Moustafa Yaftasem
- It’s true that some students continue to participate in elections despite this pattern of repression, but the silent and frustrated majority prefers to stay away and considers election day just another holiday.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Psychedelic spirituality

2010-10-22T22:03:00.001+03:00

Mystics like Sufis don't have a problem with psychedelic spirituality but organized religion does. Maybe because when you're high you are bound to come up with trippy/surreal reality that can clashes with the religious story. The mystic's focus is on experience rather than belief. Belief is actually delusional: only experience grants certainty of god, not mere faith.

Even Abbas

2010-10-22T05:23:00.000+03:00

Even Abbas is tired of the peace talks

masked youths clash with police as pension reform protests get radical in France

2010-10-22T04:47:00.000+03:00

University students protest tuition fees

2010-10-22T04:43:00.001+03:00

No ifs, no buts, no education cuts!!

Encircling beating protesters

2010-10-21T15:36:00.000+03:00

Egyptian police harassment of protesters: they encircle the demo, keep squeezing on them until they're on the ground then they start beating them up, women officers included

Azhari Thugs

2010-10-20T16:03:00.006+03:00

A police officer was videotaped beating up a female student at AlAzhar University in Za'zee', Egypt. The govt. newspaper says that it was the students who provoked the security by throwing stones. And Sheikh of AlAzhar, Dr Ahmed Al6yb, lackey of the government and its security apparatus comes out and says students ought to deal with situation with a little bit more restraint and consideration in the future....in Egypt we would now say a7a!

Bookmarks for 19th October

2010-10-20T15:22:00.001+03:00

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shhhhhhhut your mouth!

2010-10-20T04:06:00.003+03:00

Marijuana - The Big Picture - Boston.com

2010-10-19T19:18:00.004+03:00

Marijuana - The Big Picture - Boston.com
"With marijuana on the ballot in four U.S. states this November, most prominently California's Proposition 19, which would fully legalize the substance, the legalization of marijuana has become a hot topic of discussion in North America. If pot were to become legal in California, it is unclear how that would affect the ongoing drug wars in neighboring Mexico - whether it would increase, decrease, or have little effect on the widespread violence. What is clear is that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has declared that the federal Justice Department will continue to prosecute those who use or distribute recreational marijuana, regardless of any change to state law. Collected here are photos from the past year of marijuana in the news, for both medicinal and recreational purposes, and some of the legal entanglements involved.
tags: marijuana photography

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Collection of readings on Anarchy

2010-10-19T18:48:00.006+03:00

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Human Windmill

2010-10-19T05:53:00.001+03:00

A trailer for a documentary on the relationships between Israeli activists and Palestinians in the town of Susiya

Indoor marijuana hydroponics is a great idea for a heavily populated city like Cairo.

2010-10-19T02:30:00.005+03:00

Marijuana (green stuff) is not a very popular drug amongst "bourgoise" teenagers and drug users so it wouldn't be expected. Most of the people that smoke marijuana aka bango are peasants, truck drivers, u know, blue collar workers. But that needs to change. With an efficient air circulation system and a seeds dealer from Europe or Canada - who can deliver you via mail-, you are on your way for a more healthier, sustainable, smoking: won't have to friction with dealers or smoke hash that's really henna mixed with shit (literally, shit)

Writing a novel?

2010-10-18T21:34:00.017+03:00

You don't need to write objectively. Writing fiction can allow you to combine, mix, your ideas, ideals, knowledge, with ease and creativity. Patience and imagination and any amount of wrong knowledge will do as long as it rhymes with the reality you create. Maybe you like to envision an ideal world, or our existing world under different circumstances, a surreal one like Orwell's Animal Farm, whatever, writing a novel, contrary to formulating theories or reporting news gives you all the freedom to express yourself.

Religious Fundamentalist Regimes: A Lesson from the Iranian Revolution 1978-1979

2010-10-17T19:34:00.000+03:00

From Anarkismo

Khomeini founded the fundamentalist Iranian Republican Party (IRP) to squeeze opposition parties out of the provisional government and at the same time established the Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran), a political police force to marginalise the secular left within the komitehs which it wanted to mobilise as a supporter bloc.

Khomeini founded the fundamentalist Iranian Republican Party (IRP) to squeeze opposition parties out of the provisional government and at the same time established the Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran), a political police force to marginalise the secular left within the komitehs which it wanted to mobilise as a supporter bloc.

RELIGIOUS fundamentalism, whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu or other deserves to be closely examined by anarchists because it has increasingly become a player on the world stage in recent years. On the one hand, many media commentators and pro-war agitators were not slow to characterise the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Chechnya, Palestine/Israel and Afghanistan as "crusades" against the Muslim populations or "jihads" against Christian or Jewish people. On the other hand, many religious working class peoples who have borne the brunt of these wars - especially when driven by US imperialism as in Afghanistan - have succumbed to the false belief that they are being protected by their domestic theocratic (religious state) regimes. The debate around the supposed "revolutionary" nature of some religious fundamentalist regimes is similar in many ways to the debate on the "liberatory" nature of national liberation movements.

As anarchists, we know that national bourgeoise elites, whether atheist communist, secular capitalist or religious fundamentalist all have one thing in common: their elite class interest as rulers over, and exploiters of, the working class, peasantry and poor. The false premise confusing many workers here is: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend". As anarchists we know this is rubbish. Many reactionary, bourgeouis and even fascist forces side with, and even emerge from, the working class in times of crisis - but they all have their own right-wing agendas and are only interested in *using* the power of the working class to achieve a position of rulership over it. It is obvious, for instance, that the PLO only wants to establish a capitalist Palestinian state, with ordinary Palestinians slaving away for the enrichment of Yassir Arafat and his associates.

We are so accustomed to seeing on TV images of religious "radicals" committing acts of defiance against imperialist and sometimes even capitalist and state targets, that it is easy to confuse radicalism with revolutionism. The mere acts of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers (no matter how brave or how necessary) and burning US flags do not in themselves make one a revolutionary. That requires a much more far-reaching hardline code of liberatory political thought, tactics and strategies - which revolutionary anarchism provides. As far as religion itself is concerned, anarchism is a rationalist materialist philosophy. It is essentially atheist, although many individual anarchists hold personal spiritual beliefs and are free to do so. The easiest way to state it is to say that anarchism stands against organised religion (those politico-business organisations called churches, mosques and temples), hierarchical religious elites (priests, imams, rabbis and pundits) and against superstitious mysticism - but is not against "spirituality" in its broader sense: humanity's search for meaning. So although the relationship between anarchist revolutionary workers and religious workers fighting for a better life is complex, given the current war on the Afghan people, an examination of a genuine workers' revolution in a majority Muslim country is probably the most effective way to clarify our position. So we will look at what happened during the Iranian Revolution of 1978-1979.

Iran is an important test case firstly because until the revolution, Iran was one of three key pro-Western strongholds in the Middle East necessary for suppressing local worker demands and keeping oil production cheap (the others being Israel and Saudi Arabia: having lost Iran and later Iraq, the US clearly now wants Afghanistan as its third satellite). Secondly because the revolution - or more correctly, the Muslim clerical counter-revolution that destroyed it - was to the Arab, Kurdish and Persian world what the Russian Revolution was to the European world and has provided the "model revolution" debated amongst anti-imperialist and revolutionary Muslim workers ever since. Iran developed great strategic importance for the imperialist powers (especially Britain and Russia, then later the USA) following the discovery of massive reserves of oil there in 1908.

The Iranian oil industry concentrated more workers together than any other industry in the Middle East, with 31 500 working in oil production by 1940 - but most of the profits went to Britain. The following year, Russia and Britain invaded Iran and installed a puppet shah (ruler), but worker militancy was on the rise. The Communist Party of Iran had collapsed in the 1920s, but new leftist and nationalist forces came into being and organised industrially: the communist-inspired Masses organization and the National Front. A crackdown by the British-backed shah's forces in the late 1940s drove the movement underground.

But despite the intensive activities of the secret police, militant cells of workers - and, operating in parallel, religious fundamentalist scholars allied to the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini - re-emerged to agitate for change, especially during the 1963 revolt, and starting again in the early 1970s.

Increasingly, the extravagance of the shah's Pahlavi dynasty provoked resentment in all parts of Iranian society, even among the middle classes which were traditionally strong supporters of the regime. In August 1977, 50 000 poor slum-dwellers successfully resisted their forced removal by police, then in December, police massacred 40 religious protestors and the resentment boiled over into open anger. Strikes and sabotage were on the rise while wages dropped due to an economic downturn. The shah imposed martial law and on "Black Friday", September 8, 1978, troops gunned down thousands of protestors. In response, infuriated workers launched a strike-wave that spread across the country like wildfire. Oil workers struck for 33 days straight, bringing the economy to a dead halt, despite fruitless attempts to send troops into the oilfields. On December 11, 2-million protestors marched in the capital, Tehran, demanding the ousting of the shah, an end to American imperialism and the arming of the people. Soldiers began to desert. On January 16, 1979, the shah fled to Egypt. In mid-February, there was an insurrection, with air force cadets joining with guerrilla forces - the leftist Organisation of Iranian Peoples' Fedai Guerrillas, or Fedayeen, and the nationalist Mujahedeen - in over-running the military academy, army bases, the parliament, factories, armouries and the TV station. The Pahlavi regime collapsed and Khomeini, who had returned from exile, cobbled together a multi-party provisional government, but the people wanted more.

Women's organisations flourished, peasants started seizing the land and in some places, established communal cultivation councils, strikes were rampant and workers seized control of their workplaces, arranging raw materials, sourcing and sales themselves, even setting prices in the oil industry. A system of grassroots soviets - called "shoras" in Iranian and based on the old factory council idea - sprang up in fields, factories, neighbourhoods, educational institutions and the armed forces. Armed neighbourhood committees - called "komitehs" - based on the old Muslim scholar networks - patrolled residential areas, arrested collaborators, ran people's courts and prisons, and organized demonstrations. It was a true workers' revolution with secular revolutionaries and Muslim workers overthrowing the capitalist state side by side. A May Day march in Tehran drew 1,5-million demonstrators.

The former headquarters of the secret police-controlled official trade union federation was occupied by the unemployed and renamed the Workers' House. The new workerist federation, that replaced the old state one, the All-Iran Workers' Union, declared that its aim was an Iran "free of class oppression" and called for shoras to be "formed by the workers of each factory for their own political and economic needs". But the religious fundamentalist clerics lead by Khomeini were terrified of the power of the working class and haunted by the spectre of the imminent collapse of Iranian capitalism. If it collapsed, they could not reconstitute themselves as the ruling elite in place of the shah and there would be no profits for them to steal from the workers. Three days after the insurrection, the provisional government ordered workers back to work, but the strike, shora and komiteh movements just spread.

A month later, the government declared the shoras to be "counter-revolutionary", claiming that their minority bourgeois regime was "the genuine Islamic Revolution". Still the shoras spread, so the regime introduced a law aimed at undermining worker self-management by banning shora involvement in management affairs - while at the same time trying to force class collaboration by insisting that management must be allowed to participate in the shoras. The shora movement peaked in July but then the government offensive, combined with the inexperience of the left, began to take its toll. The National Front, Masses, Fedayeen and both the leftist and Muslim wings of the Mujahedeen all backed the provisional government mistakenly believing that an Iranian clerical-dominated bourgeoisie was better than the imperialist-backed Pahlavi dynasty.

Khomeini founded the fundamentalist Iranian Republican Party (IRP) to squeeze opposition parties out of the provisional government and at the same time established the Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran), a political police force to marginalise the secular left within the komitehs which it wanted to mobilise as a supporter bloc. The Pasdaran were soon forcibly liquidating shoras, purging komitehs and repressing ethnic Kurdish separatists and women's organisations, while the Party of God (Hezbollah) was created as a strike-breaking force of thugs. The IRP also created a public works project to divert the energies of the most militant shoras - replacing them with fundamentalist shoras and Islamic Societies - and to rebuild the exploitative capitalist economy (all the while spouting populist and anti-capitalist slogans in the manner of all fascist dictatorships). The true workers' revolution was destroyed and for the Iranian working class, whether secular or Muslim, a long night of living under a new autocratic regime had begun.

The fundamentalist clerical regime had not set them free: it had only produced new forms of capitalist exploitation and police state repression. The lesson of Iran is a basic anarchist one: workers can never trust groups, religious or not, who chant the right revolutionary slogans but whose real aim is class rule.

Souad Massi

2010-10-16T18:32:00.004+03:00

Souad Massi ( Arabic : سعاد ماسي ) (born August 23, 1972), is an Algerian singer, songwriter and guitarist. She began her career performing in the Kabyle political rock band Atakor, before leaving the country following a series of death threats. In 1999, Massi performed at the Femmes d'Algerie concert in Paris, which led to a recording contract with Island Records.Massi's music, which prominently features the acoustic guitar, displays Western musical style influences such as rock, country or the Portuguese fado but sometimes incorporates oriental musical influences and oriental instruments like the oud as well as African musical stylings. Massi sings in Algerian Arabic, French, and occasionally English and Kabyle (Berber language), often employing multiple languages in the same song.

Le Bein et le mal
Yemma
Raoui
Paris

Marijuana and Anarchy

2010-10-15T00:26:00.007+03:00

Of course there is nothing like prohibition in Anarchy, but how are we going to achieve her if we are busy getting high? Will opposition and resistance suffer from marijuana legalization? If workers are blazing does it mean less are going to be organizing and fighting the boss? Marijuana or anarchy?

In the United States marijuana prohibition started in the southern states targeting Mexican laborers who were the dominant users of the drug. There was fear that it would spread to the white middle class, and it was a way to curb Mexican immigration and satisfy the resentment of whites who were struggling to find work during the depression.

Similarly in England in the middle of the 19th century there was a period when gin was illegal but whiskey wasn't, the latter being for the rich. The British Empire forced their opium trade on the Chinese in order to continue their imperialist economic expansion and occupation of China.

Capitalists are making money from every aspect of marijuana's prohibition - from the dealers and their bigger providers, real-estate market, pharmaceutical industry, the police security complex. And even if it becomes decriminalized, pharmaceutical corporations might monopolize 'medical marijuana' and the black-market can continue easily. So in light of all this criminal prohibition that serves powerful interests and the tremendous benefits marijuana could have on public health and safety, full legalization seems like the right course to take.

But don't drugs alienate workers? Aren't they a safety valve to vent off worker's anger, which could instead be used for raging against the system?

Perhaps there is some truth in that marijuana is another 'opium of the masses', a temporary fix for workers' suffering.

But doesn't marijuana have an enlightening effect beyond the workplace central to anarchist understanding of authority? Weather permitting I like to go out and smoke in public because it gives others the impression that it is a socially accepted practice. The state has no bearing on what we ought to think is right or wrong because the state itself is illegitimate. There is a fear barrier that needs to be broken. With the brainstorming surge of the high, the criticism of the system's illegitimacy extends beyond the context of marijuana to other affairs. The illegal marijuana experience generates healthy and essential skepticism.

And doesn't marijuana inspire creativity and imagination and discussion? Couldn't these have progressive effects or are they as short-lived as the high?

Fifty pounds (ten bucks): all you need to get a cop shoot a civilian in Egypt

2010-10-14T21:12:00.026+03:00

Translated from AlNadeem
El Nadim Center for the Management and Rehabilitation of victims of violence is an independent Egyptian NGO that was established in August 1993 as a civil not for profit company.

Ali Ahmed Ali is an Egyptian youth of 26 years, married and has a two month old child called Adam. Since he was eight years old, Ahmed has been sustaining himself. He started as a Pepsi bottle distributor for ten years and then as a microbus driver for eight years until a police corporal decided to get rid of his driving ability by shooting a close range bullet into his shoulder that penetrated from his back and breaking his right shoulder blade.

Ahmed's story began in the Moqattam region on 29th August 2010 when a bunch of teenagers asked him to take them to a place called Alhay AlSabe' . The rules are such that Microbus' are not allowed to workout outside their designated areas. Therefore Ahmed refused to transport the teenagers, which lead to a confrontation with them. They rushed to a police corporal and bribed him 50 pounds to teach Ahmed a lesson he will never forget.

They gave the corporal LE50 to 'get me'. He [the police corporal] found me at the bus stop and started to beat me up. I ran into the microbus and fled but he managed to hold on to the microbus so I stopped driving afraid he might get hurt and get into more trouble. And so I stopped, he got around the microbus, pulled me out and started beating me. After that we (Ali and the corporal) were on our way to the police station when he shot me in my shoulder at close range. I spent an hour at the police station without doing anything for my shoulder and back. After they took my car and finished all their paperwork and took my car they took me to Ahli Bank hospital where they just wrapped my shoulder.

People gathered outisde the hospital insisted that I leave to go to the private hospital Kasr AlAini. The doctor who saw my arm said that I required an operation, but after speaking to an intelligence officer the doctor retracted saying that it wasn't, and they took me back to the station again in the same day and presented me to a forensic specialist.

The police officer, Mohmoud Saad Saleh AlAraby was interrogated and admitted that he pulled the trigger at Ali saying that it was "unintentional", not explaining why he pulled out his gun in the first place when Ali accepted going to the police station with him.

What happened to the corporal? Is he held at the police station in Moqattam? Suspended from his duty? Was he denoted as a threat to public security in the files of the interior ministry? None of this happened.

The police station released the corporal after the orders of the attorney general and is currently on the streets like nothing happened!

"I am a microbus driver and my arm is my capital. If I can't drive how am I expected to feed my wife and child?" Ali is wondering, and we wonder how long the internal logic of the mafia is going to continue.