Is Egypt the Future IndoTurkeZil? So Many Ways to Strut Your Democratic Stuff in a New World

By Pepe Escobar
Three mummies were recently found in an underground temple in Luxor, Egypt. Translated hieroglyphs identified them as the Clash of Civilizations, the End of History, and Islamophobia. They ruled in Western domains into the second decade of the twenty-first century before dying and being embalmed.

That much is settled. Without them, the Middle East is already a new world that must be understood in a new way.  For one thing, Egypt, that previously moribund land of “stability” and bosom buddy of whoever was in power in Washington, has been hurled into the Middle East’s New Great Game.  The question is: What will be its fate -- and that of the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets in a staggering show of aggressive nonviolence in January and February?

It is, of course, impossible to say, especially since shadow play is the norm and the realities of rule are hard to discern. In a country where “politics” has for decades meant the army, it’s notable that the key actor supposedly coordinating the “transition to democracy” remains an appointee of Pharaoh Hosni Mubarak, Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi from the Supreme Army Council.  At least, popular pressure has forced Tantawi’s military junta to appoint a new transitional Prime Minister, the Tahrir-Square-friendly former transport minister Essam Sharaf.

Keep in mind that the hated emergency laws from the Mubarak era, part of what provoked the Egyptian uprising to begin with, are still in place and that the country’s intellectuals, its political parties, labor unions, and the media all fear a silent counterrevolution. At the same time, they almost uniformly insist that the Tahrir Square revolution will neither be hijacked nor rebranded by opportunists. As the ideological divide between liberalism, secularism, and Islamism disintegrated when the country’s psychological Wall of Fear came down, lawyers, doctors, textile workers -- a range of the country’s civil society -- remain clear on one thing: they will never settle for a theocracy or a military dictatorship. They want full democracy.

No wonder what that implies makes Western diplomatic circles tremble. An Egyptian army even remotely accountable to an elected civilian government will not, for instance, collaborate in the Israeli siege of Gaza’s Palestinians, or in CIA renditions of terror suspects to the country’s prisons, or blindly in that monstrous farce, the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.”
Meanwhile, there are more pedestrian matters to deal with: How, for example, will the army-directed transition towards September elections make the economic numbers add up? In 2009, Egypt’s import bill was $56 billion, while the country’s exports only added up to $29 billion. Tourism, foreign aid, and borrowing helped fill the gap. The uprising sent tourism into a tailspin and who knows what kinds of aid and loans anyone will fork over in the months to come.

Meanwhile, the country will have to import no less than 10 million tons of wheat in 2011 at about $3.3 billion (if grain prices don’t continue to rise) to keep people at least half-fed. This is but a small part of Mubarak’s tawdry legacy, which includes 40 million Egyptians, almost half the population, living on less than $2 a day, and it’s not going to disappear overnight, if at all.

Hit by a rolling, largely peaceful revolution all across MENA (the newly popular acronym for the Middle East and Northern Africa), Washington and an aging Fortress Europe, filled with fear, wallow in a mire of perplexity. Even after the dust from those rebellious Northern African winds settles, it’s hardly a given that they will grasp just how all the cultural stereotypes used to explain the Middle East for decades also managed to vanish.
My favorite line of the Great Arab Revolt of 2011 is still Tunisian scholar Sarhan Dhouib’s: “These revolts are an answer to [George W.] Bush’s intent to democratize the Arab world with violence.”  If “shock and awe” is now also an artifact of an ancient world, what’s next? 

Models for Rent or Sale

On February 3rd, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation published a poll conducted in seven Arab countries and Iran. No less than 66% of respondents considered Turkey, not Iran, the ideal model for the Middle East. A media scrum from Le Monde to the Financial Times now evidently concurs. After all, Turkey is a functional democracy in a Muslim-majority country where the separation of mosque and state prevails.

That stellar Islamic scholar at Oxford, Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, also recently labeled the “Turkish way” as “a source of inspiration.”  In late February, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu agreed, with a surfeit of modesty that barely covered the ambitions of the new Turkey, insisting that his country does not want to be a model for the region, “but we can be a source of inspiration.” 

The Egyptian Marxist economist Samir Amin -- widely respected across the developing world -- suspects that, whatever the hopes of the Turks and others, including so many Egyptians, Washington has quite different ideas about Egypt’s destiny.   It wants, he believes, not a Turkish model but a Pakistani one for that country: that is, the mix of an “Islamic power” with a military dictatorship. It won’t fly, Amin is convinced, because “the Egyptian people are now highly politicized.”

The process of true democratization that began back in the distant 1950s in Turkey proved to be a long road. Nonetheless, despite periodic military coups and the continuing political power of the Turkish army, elections were, and remain, free. The Justice and Development Party, or AKP, now at the Turkish helm, was founded in August 2001 by former members of the Refah Party, a much more conservative Islamic group with an ideology similar to that of today’s Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

As the AKP mellowed out, however, the pro-business, pro-European Union wing of the country’s Islamists mixed with various center-right politicians and, in 2002, the AKP finally took power in Ankara. Only then could they begin to slowly undermine the stranglehold of the traditional Istanbul-based secular Turkish elite and the military that had held power since the 1920s.

Yet the AKP did not dream of dismantling the secular system first installed by Turkey’s founding father Mustapha Kemal Ataturk in 1924. The Turkish civil code he instituted was inspired by Switzerland with citizenship based on secular law. While the country is predominantly Muslim, of course, its people simply would not welcome a system, as in Khomeinist Iran, that is guided by religion.

The AKP should be viewed as the equivalent of the Christian Democrats in Europe after the 1950s -- dynamic, business-oriented conservatives with religious roots. In Egypt, the moderate wing of the Muslim Brotherhood has many similarities to the AKP and looks to it for inspiration. In the new Egypt, it will finally be a legitimate political party and most experts believe that it could garner 25% to 30% of the vote in the first election of the new era. 

All Roads Lead to Tahrir

Turkish critics -- usually from the Western-oriented technical and managerial caste -- regularly accuse the democracy-meets-Islam Turkish model of being little more than a successful marketing ploy, or worse, a Middle Eastern version of Russia. After all, the army still wields disproportionate behind-the-scenes power as guarantor of the state’s secular framework. And the country’s Kurdish minority is not really integrated into the system (although in September 2010 Turkish voters approved constitutional changes that give greater rights to Christians and Kurds).

With its glorious Ottoman past, notes Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Turkey was never colonized by a world power, and thus “‘veneration of Europe’ or ‘imitation of the West’ never had the humiliating connotations” described by Frantz Fanon or Edward Said for much of the rest of the Middle East and North Africa.
There are stark differences between Turkey’s road to a military-free democracy in 2002 and the littered path ahead for Egypt’s young demonstrators and nascent political parties. In Turkey the key actors were pro-business Islamists, conservatives, neo-liberals, and right-wing nationalists. In Egypt they are pro-labor Islamists, leftists, liberals, and left-wing nationalists.

The Tahrir Square revolution was essentially unleashed by two youth groups: the April 6 Youth Movement (which was geared towards solidarity with workers on strike), and We Are All Khaled Said (which mobilized against police brutality). Later, they would be joined by Muslim Brotherhood activists and -- crucially -- organized labor, the masses of workers (and the unemployed) who had suffered from years of the International Monetary Fund’s “structural adjustment” poison. (As late as April 2010, an IMF delegation visited Cairo and praised Mubarak’s “progress.”)

The revolution in Tahrir Square made the necessary connections in a deeply comprehensible way.  It managed to go to the heart of the matter, linking miserable wages, mass unemployment, and increasing poverty to the ways in which Mubarak’s cronies (and also the military establishment) enriched themselves.  Sooner or later, in any showdown to come, the way the military controls so much of the economy will be an unavoidable topic -- the way, for instance, army-owned companies continue to make a killing in the water, olive oil, cement, construction, hotel, and oil industries, or the way the military has come to own significant tracts of land in the Nile Delta and on the Red Sea, “gifts” for guaranteeing regime stability.

It’s not surprising that key sectors in the West are pushing for a “safe” Turkish model for Egypt. Yet, given the country’s immiseration, it’s unlikely that young protesters and their working class supporters will be appeased even by the possibility of a Turkish-style, neoliberal, Islamo-democratic system. What this leftist/liberal/Islamist coalition is fighting for is a labor-friendly, independent, truly sovereign democracy. It doesn’t take a PhD. from the London School of Economics, like the one bought by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, to see how cataclysmic this newly independent outlook could be for the current status quo.  

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Don’t misunderstand: Whether the Tahrir Square activists want to reproduce the Turkish system in Egypt or not, Turkey itself is immensely popular there, as it increasingly is in the wider Arab world. That offers Ankara’s politicians the perfect scenario for consolidating the country’s regional leadership role, distinctly on the rise since, in 2003, its leaders established their independence by rebuffing George W. Bush’s desire to use Turkish territory in his invasion of Iraq. 

That popularity was only heightened after eight of the nine victims shot by Israeli commandos in the Gaza freedom flotilla fiasco turned out to be Turks.  When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vociferously condemned Israel for its “bloody massacre,” he instantly became the “King of Gaza.” When Mubarak finally responded to the Tahrir Square demonstrations by announcing that he would not run again for president in 2011, President Obama didn’t say much, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Egypt not to “rush towards elections.” As for Erdogan, he virtually ordered Mubarak to step down, live on al-Jazeera for the whole Muslim world to see.

While Washington fiddled with embracing the wrong side of history, however reluctantly and chaotically, in the company of those staunch Mubarak defenders Israel and Saudi Arabia, Erdogan -- with a canny assessment of regional politics -- preferred to back Egyptians attempting to chart their own destiny. And it paid off. 

The point is not that America is now “losing” Turkey, nor that, as some critics have charged, Erdogan is dreaming of becoming a neo-Ottoman Caliph (whatever that might mean).  What must be understood here is a new Turkish concept: strategic depth. For that we need to turn to a book, Stratejik Derinlik: Turkiye’nin Uluslararasi Konumu (Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position), published in Istanbul in 2001 by Ahmet Davutoglu, then a professor of international relations at the University of Marmara, now Turkey’s Foreign Minister.

In that book, Davutoglu looked into a future that seems ever closer to now and placed Turkey at the center of three concentric circles: 1) the Balkans, the Black Sea basin, and the Caucasus; 2) the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean; 3) the Persian Gulf, Africa, and Central Asia. When it came to future areas of influence, even in 2001 he believed that Turkey could potentially claim no less than eight: the Balkans, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian, Turkic Central Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Today, he is a key player, and in many of those same areas of potential influence, people are indeed looking to Turkey.  It’s a remarkable moment for Davutoglu, who remains convinced that Ankara will be a force to reckon with in the Middle East. As he puts it, simply enough, “This is our home.”

Take the idea of Turkey’s “strategic depth” and combine it with the Great Arab Revolt of 2011 and you understand why Erdogan has launched a bid not just to make the Turkish model the Egyptian one or even the Middle Eastern one, but to upstage Egypt as the future mediator between the region and the West. That Erdogan and Davutoglu were heading in this direction has been clear enough from the way, in the past few years, they have tried to insert themselves as mediators between Syria and Israel and have launched a complex political, diplomatic, and economic opening towards Iran.

And speaking of historical ironies, just as Iran’s fundamentalist leaders were watching an Egyptian regime deeply hostile to them go down, protests by the Iranian Green Movement suddenly began to rock Tehran again -- during a visit by none other than Turkish President Abdullah Gul. The protests were handled with what amounted to a velvet glove (by Tehran’s standards) because the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat found itself in a potentially losing competition with its Turkish ally to become the number one inspirational source for Arab mass movements. 

Java: Democracy with Your Coffee?

If Egyptians want lessons in the establishment of democracy, Turkey is hardly the only place to turn to for inspiration.  They could, for example, look to Latin America. For the first time in over 500 years, South America is fully democratic. As in Egypt, so in many Latin American countries in the Cold War era, dictatorships were the order of the day and militaries ruled.  In Brazil, for instance, the “slow, gradual, and secure” political opening that left a military dictatorship behind took practically a decade.

That implies a lot of patience. The same applies to another model: Indonesia. There, in 1998, Suharto, an aging U.S.-backed dictator 32 years in power, finally resigned only a few days after returning from a visit to, of all places, Cairo. Indonesia then looked a lot like Egypt in February 2011: a Western-friendly, predominantly Muslim nation, impoverished and fed up with a mega-corrupt military dictator who crushed leftist intellectuals as well as political Islam.

Thirteen years later, Indonesia is the world’s third largest democracy and the freest in Southeast Asia, with a secular government, a booming economy, and the military out of politics.

I still have vivid memories of riding a bike one day in May 1998 across the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, while it was literally on fire, rage exploding in endless columns of smoke. Washington did not intervene then, nor did China, nor the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Indonesians did it for themselves. The transition followed an existing, if previously largely ignored, constitution. (In Egypt, the constitution now must be amended via a referendum.)

True, Indonesians had to live for a while with Suharto’s handpicked vice president, the affable B.J. Habibie (so unlike Mubarak’s handpicked successor the sinister Omar “Sheikh al-Torture” Suleiman). It took a year to organize new elections, amend electoral laws, and get rid of appointed seats in Parliament. It took six years for the first direct presidential election.  And yes, corruption is still a huge problem, and wealth and the right connections go a long way (as is true, some would say, in the U.S.). But today, the rule of law prevails.

An “Islamic state” never had a chance. Today, only 25% of Indonesians vote for Islamic parties, while the well-organized Prosperous Justice Party, an ideological descendant of the Muslim Brotherhood, but now officially open to non-Muslims, holds only four out of 37 seats in the cabinet of President Yudhoyono, and expects to win no more than 10% of the vote in the 2014 elections.

While Indonesia remains close to the U.S. and is heavily courted by Washington as a counterweight to China, Brazil under the presidency of immensely popular Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva charted a far more independent path for itself and, by example, much of Latin America. This process took almost a decade and future historians may see it as at least as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In Eastern Europe, 1989 could be seen, in part, as a chain of rebellions by people yearning to get access to the global market. The Great Arab Revolt, on the other hand, has been an uprising in significant part against the dictatorship of that same market.  Protestors from Tunisia to Bahrain are striking out in favor of social inclusion and new, better social and economic contracts. No wonder this staggering, ongoing upheaval is regarded across Latin America with tremendous empathy and with the feeling that "We did it, and now they’re doing it."

The future is, of course, unknown, but perhaps a decade or two from now, we’ll be able to say that the Egyptians and other Arab peoples struck out not on the Turkish model, nor even the Brazilian or Indonesian ones, but onto a set of new paths. Perhaps the future from Cairo to Tunis, Benghazi to Manama, Algiers to (Allah willing) a post-House of Saud Saudi Arabia will involve inventing a new political culture and the new economic contracts that would go with it, ones that will be indigenous and, hopefully, democratic in new and surprising ways. 

Which brings us back to Turkey. It’s perfectly feasible that Islam will be one of the building blocks of something entirely new, something no one today has a clue about, something that will resemble what was, in Europe, the separation between politics and religion. In the spirit of May 1968, perhaps we can even picture an Arab Banksy plastering a stencil across all Arab capitals: Imagination in Power! 

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2011 Pepe Escobar

And the (Arab) Oscars go to ...

By Pepe Escobar

Hi, this is not the gorgeously delightful Anne Hathaway, but please allow me to be your Oscar presenter today. As we all know, navel-gazing Hollywood is not exactly fond of the Arab world - except in Orientalist terms.

If only real life was a movie scripted by Aaron Sorkin, directed by David Fincher, with leading starring roles for Colin Firth and Jeff "The Dude" Bridges (and not Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi) - and with an uplifting ending. We wish. Anyway, in the (real) Arab world, this is what Oscar night - somewhere over the rainbow - would probably be like.

Best movie: Social Networks Smash Kings' Speeches - a MENA (Middle East/Northern Africa) production.

Best solo performance by a leading actor: The African King of King's Speech telling of an al-Qaeda conspiracy carried out by "rats" on hallucinogenic-laced milk and Nescafe.

Best Norma Desmond moment: Hosni "I'm ready for my close-up" Mubarak.

Best James Cagney "Look Ma, top of the world!" moment: Muammar Gaddafi's last stand.

Best Julie Andrews "The hills are alive with the sound of music" moment: King "Playstation" Abdullah of Jordan, for whom all's swell in his playground.

Best "Jaws" moment: King Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain, ordering his mercenaries to shoot unarmed civilians.

Best male disappearing act: Omar "Sheikh al-Torture" Suleiman, United States-anointed conductor of an "orderly transition" in Egypt.

Best female disappearing act since Alfred Hitchcock's Pycho: Galyna Kolotnytska, Gaddafi's favorite "voluptuous" Ukrainian nurse, who saw the way the desert wind was blowing and caught a flight to Kiev.

Best creepy sound editing and sound engineering: ex aequo between Bahrain's South Asian/Jordanian mercenary forces killing protesters at the Lulu/Pearl roundabout and Gaddafi's black Africans mercenaries killing protesters in Benghazi.

Best costumes: the liberated Eastern Libya crowd.

Best music: the Egyptian revolution official rap song, by Ramy Donjewan (in Arabic). Close second: Hip Hop song for Egyptian revolution, by Syrian-American rapper Omar Offendum and others (in English)

Best nonsensical plot advance: a perplexed "West" asking for "moderation" from North Africa/Middle East regimes built over the total lack of moderation.

Best line: Tunisian scholar Sarhan Dhouib; "These revolts are an answer to [former US president George W] Bush's intent of democratizing the Arab world with violence."

Best producer: the House of Saud. Over the years, produced Wahhabism, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and 15 of the 19 box-cutter wielding 9/11 actors. May be brought down by an emerging production house - Facebook-savvy "Burning Down the House" (of Saud). Runner-up: Washington Inc; from producer of tyranny and torture, via neo-liberalism and waterboarding, to promoter of made-in-USA Google/Facebook/Twitter "change we can believe in" in the Arab world.

Best TV show: al-Jazeera broadcasting to the whole Arab world the February 18 US veto in the UN Security Council of a resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine (World: 14 votes; US: one vote).

Best Egypt is not Iran performance: Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi returning from exile in Qatar and addressing 1 million people at Tahrir Square in Cairo to say - to Christians and Muslims alike - he is not Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Runner-up: Libya like Iran in 1979, as in only two possible outcomes: restoration (of the Gaddafi regime) or total revolution.

Best tear jerker: assorted Zionists, neo-cons and Zio-cons freaking out with the potential emergence of a new, independent, sovereign Middle East.

Best comeback since the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1922: the Arab world. Up to World War II, miserable life under the colonial boot of France and Britain. Then, since 1956, basically an immense US satrapy, dominated by brutal and corrupt client dictators/monarchs propped up with weapons and "advisers" from Washington. And now, finally, a glimpse towards the road to independence.

Best disaster movie in the high seas: the Mediterranean, imperial Rome's Mare Nostrum, 500 million people spread out over 2.5 million square kilometers from Gibraltar to the Bosphorus. Just when the White House was trying to focus on the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

Worst comeback since Freddy Kruger: humanitarian imperialism in Libya - as in possible North Atlantic Treaty Orginization intervention in an oil-rich country of only 6 million people with a gross domestic product that is roughly 70% of Egypt's (85 million people). So much oil, so few people ...

Best buddy-buddy movie: Muammar Gaddafi and Italian President Silvio Berlusconi. The African King of Kings invited his "amico" to his harem, where he learned the bunga bunga first-hand. Berlusconi later kissed the king's hands in a meeting in Sirte, probably mistaking him for the Pope.

Best international co-production: Libya holding a 7.2% share in Unicredit, Italy's largest bank, and energy giant ENI investing more than $50 billion in exploration/extraction of oil and gas in Libya.

Worst James Bond-style paranoid plot: Western "intelligence" sources warning of Somalization in Libya, as in the emergence of an alleged al-Qaeda emirate in eastern Cyrenaica.

Best sequel with a plot twist: Gaddafi's Libya as the new Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In the original plot, Iraq was isolated and already destroyed by a decade of an US-led blockade; in the remake Libya is a darling of the West after being blessed by the Bush-Blair-Berlusconi trio.

Best invisible plot twist: US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice telling the Security Council, "Those who slaughter civilians will be held personally accountable." Well, what about Israel slaughtering at least 400 children and over 900 men and women in Gaza two years ago? As for referring Gaddafi to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity, the US itself is not a member of the ICC because it fears US politicians and the Pentagon will be accused of war crimes.

Best career move: Gaddafi's possible new act as techno/trance/hip hop sensation.

Best supporting actress: France's Foreign Minister Michelle Alliot-Marie, who didn't even wait for Oscar night to resign over her offer of French "savoir faire" to "resolve security situations" a few days before dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia - and this after she holidayed in Tunisia during the protests. Worst actor: Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi. You may buy a diploma from the London School of Economics, but that doesn't mean you cease to be a thug.

Worst actress: socialite Queen "YouTube" Rania of Jordan. As clueless about the real world as Paris Hilton.

Best screenplay: to live and die and live again in Tahrir Square.

Best ensemble Cast: runners-up range from the extraordinary collective spirit, creativity and unity of purpose displayed by people from Tahrir Square to the Pearl/Lulu roundabout in Bahrain. But the Oscar has to go to the mother of the Great 2011 Arab revolt, Tunisia.

Popular pressure forced prime minister and Ben Ali crony Muhammad al-Ghannushi to resign. They know change goes way beyond deposing the dictator. Unlike Egypt, they are cutting the army no slack. And every day their chants in solidarity with Palestine are more forceful. Go, Tunisia, go.

And yes, somewhere over the rainbow (Arab) dreams come true. May the force be with you.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

CRISIS IN EGYPT: Bread, dignity and lies By Pepe Escobar

So Omar "Sheik al-Torture" Suleiman has warned that the only alternative to dialogue with the opposition is "a coup". The suave United States Central Intelligence Agency point man for extraordinary renditions to Egypt, now Washington-anointed "orderly transition" conductor, may be more versed in electroshocks than onanism; otherwise he would have realized that a military dictatorship toppling itself still ends up as a military dictatorship.

Yet maybe that's exactly what he meant. Suleiman said protests are "very dangerous" - not so subtly implying the interference of hidden agendas by foreign journalists; a subversive coalition of the US, Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and al-Jazeera; the Muslim Brotherhood (MB); and all of the above (and all duly evoked by the regime).

Osama Saraya, editor-in-chief of the pro-government newspaper al-Ahram, who was there when Suleiman uttered his sinister warnings, is assured he meant not only a military coup, but an Islamist coup as well.

The street reaction was swift. The sit-in in front of parliament - a second front beside Tahrir Square - is now permanent; thousands of protesters have already forced military junta member turned Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq to relocate to the Civil Aviation Ministry on the other side of Cairo. Recapitulation: the current military junta in power is Suleiman, Shafiq, Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi (minister of defense for 20 years now) and Lieutenant General Sami Annan (the army chief).

And what about thousands of workers protesting in front of the Oil Ministry? Blogger Hossam El-Hamalawy is right on the money; the "working class has officially entered the battle".

The MB for its part is giving the regime a deadline of "one week" to comply with popular demands. The April 6 Youth movement, in an e-mail to all members of its Facebook page, reminded them there are no talks with the regime until President Hosni Mubarak goes. Only then comes the meat of the matter; key constitutional reforms on civil rights, political freedom and judicial independence; and key new economic policies to fight poverty, unemployment, social injustice and monstrous corruption.

As for Sheik al-Torture's "dialogue" with the opposition, the street as well as a more institutionalized opposition strand has seen it for what it is; a mirage. No wonder strikes are spreading like wildfire; state media employees are abandoning ship; new cabinet appointees are resigning; the regime is trying every trick in the book - from prosecuting former ministers to offering a 15% raise in salaries; and street protests are getting bigger and bigger.

Diaa Rashwan, of the self-described Council of Wise Men, says the negotiations are dead; "The regime's strategy has been just to play for time and stall ... They don't really want to talk to anyone. At the start of this week they were convinced that the protests were going to fade away."

Meanwhile, around the Potomac ...
That's what you get when the horse you bet is of the addicted-to-torture kind. Washington's power players, their dedicated imperial courtiers, their hordes of media sycophants in bad suits, they are absolutely stunned.

Very few, if any, scattered around this cozy, wealthy, high-tech, sprawling apparatchik land could even imagine being confronted by a non-violent, non-sectarian, non-Islamist, non-ideological, non-hierarchical, leaderless, street-level revolution conducted by decent, ordinary citizens of - Holy Koran! - an Arab client-state.

There's no (decrepit) army to fight - or to make a cynical deal with (well, "Sheik al-Torture" and his military cohorts can always be bought, but they are not the enemy; they are "our" horses). Where's Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, Ruhollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden when you need them?

There's no one to demonize, there's no "you're either with us or without us", there's no territory to be bombed by shock and awe. Unless you consider the "enemy" the youth groups (and not "wise men") that spearheaded the revolution, who on Sunday formed a coalition called Unified Leadership of the Youth of the Rage Revolution. "Wow, that sounds communist!" - many will be whispering at Langley.

The "enemy" is young Egyptians - guys from the April 6 Youth Movement, the Justice and Freedom Group, the Popular Campaign to Support [Mohamed] ElBaradei, the Democratic Front Party, and - terrorist alert! - the MB. That makes for a combined leadership of 14 guys in their late 20s to early 30s. In an ideal "us against them" world, a crack special forces team - or, more cost-effectively, a Reaper - would drone some realpolitik into their skulls.

How to topple Mubarak when the 325,000 goons/informers at central security and the 60,000 soldiers from the National Guard are under Mubarak's Ministry of Interior? And how to do it keeping the military dictatorship in place - the same military that got filthy rich by Mubarakism? How to make them accept some token electoral concessions to appease and demobilize the street revolution? And how to make this all credible, with the working class now into the fray, so that a mass of poor, rural, conscripted soldiers also don't start entertaining revolutionary ideas? (and we're not even mentioning the countryside, where 57% of Egypt lives, and 40% with less than $2 a day).

No wonder Washington is scared. No drone-infested surges apply.

Meanwhile, the other dictatorial pillars of "stability" in the Middle East - routinely described by imperial sycophants as "moderate" - are even more scared. Jordan's King Abdullah is pressing for "a quiet and peaceful transition" - as if Sheik al-Torture and his gang were Disney characters. That bastion of enlightenment, the House of Saud, at least showed its true colors, warning Washington that a hasty Mubarak departure could "undermine US interests" - as in "we're next".

Bread and torture
Under three decades of Mubarak, Egypt was kept poor - 116th place in the world for gross domestic product per capita. It's fair to say that lately it has been kept even poorer by Wall Street.

Corn is up 92% in a year, wheat is up 80% - with the usual knock-on effect on the cost of bread, meat and dairy products. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has shown that global food prices have hit a record high, even higher than during the 2007/2008 food crisis. Food inflation now rules all over the world, not only Egypt (where, crucially, more than half of an average income goes for food; food price inflation in Egypt is at an enormous 17% a year).

But the absolute key point in all this is not rising demand from emerging giants such as India and China; cuts in food subsidies; states using more corn-based biofuel; or droughts and poor harvests in Russia, Australia, Argentina, or the next one in China. These are all factors. But to ask the protesters to pray for rain in China is a cheap shot. The absolute crucial factor is casino speculation by investment banks in food commodities.

To sum it all up: as much as the mortgage bubble exponentially increased the wealth of already wealthy global bankers (and plunged millions into homelessness), the food bubble works the same way (and is plunging tens of millions into starvation), with no end in sight.

That's a direct consequence of the deregulation operated by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, approved by the Bill Clinton administration, and the advent of "dark" unregulated futures trading markets such as the Intercontinental Exchange in London - invented by Wall Street, European investment banks, and sectors of Big Oil.

Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar Robert Alvarez notes what hedge fund manager Michael McMasters told a US Senate panel in 2008; this amounts to "a form of electronic hoarding and greatly increases the inflationary effect of the market. It literally means starvation for millions of the world's poor."

Masters has estimated that on US exchanges, 64% of all wheat contracts were pure speculation. It's probably more by now. This is what George Soros described as "secretly hoarding food during a hunger crisis in order to make profits from increasing prices".

Then there's Goldman Sachs and its commodity index fund - plus the artificially created "demand shock", which is essentially inventing an artificial demand to buy wheat, and then setting up the price. Who cares about hungry people in Northern African countries when there are billions of easy dollars to be made? And the bubble will go on. And Egypt will keep suffering from it.

Talk about suffering. Creditors from the "international community" are already waiting like a pack of vultures to collect. Egypt owes 17.6 billion euros (US$24 billion) to France; 10.7 billion to the UK; 6.3 billion to Italy; 5.35 billion to the US; and 2.4 billion to Germany. The vulture-in-chief International Monetary Fund is preparing more structural adjustments.

The same "international community" is already busy diverting tourism flows to Egypt (55% of the country's foreign currency) to other destinations in Africa - while foreign capital is going, going, gone, following leads by the small Mubarak-linked oligarchy, which includes telecom tycoon Naguib Sawiris and steel tycoon Ahmed Ezz.

The Western power elites demand from Egypt political "stability" and preservation of the status quo. This implies total security for Israel, draconian isolation of Gaza and Egypt totally aligned with Saudi Arabia and Jordan as faithful US vassals.

That's not exactly what the street revolution wants - after they finish with phase I. The Unified Leadership of the Youth of the Rage Revolution, via its spokesperson, attorney Ziad al-Olaimai, 32, has laid out its seven key demands - for now. Here they are: resignation of Mubarak; immediate lifting of emergency law; release of all political prisoners; dissolution of both upper and lower chambers of parliament; formation of a national unity government to manage the transitional period; investigation by the judiciary of the abuses of security forces during the revolution; and protection of the protesters by the military.

And this would be only the beginning; a truly sovereign Egyptian government won't possibly behave as a subservient US satrapy. But now there's no turning back. The street knows that it simply can't pack up and go home - as the regime badly wants.

They know that in the dead of night Suleiman could order his immense "secret" goon squad to ship the hundreds of thousands of them to the torture chambers he runs on behalf of the CIA, such as Abu Zaabal, or the maximum-security dungeon Scorpion, so they can be waterboarded, or electro-shocked upside down, or forced to lie in a electrified bed frame, or be beaten by electric cattle prods, or be anally raped by specially trained dogs, or have their spines hyper-extended to the point of fracture, or be kept for days in the dreaded "tiny coffin" cage, or simply be left to rot wrapped head to toe in duct tape, like a mummy.

And Suleiman would be there to supervise it all. All in secret, of course, so the "international community" would not be disturbed in their silent praise of "stability".

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Counter-revolution brought to you by ...

CRISIS IN EGYPT

Counter-revolution brought to you by ...

By Pepe Escobar

It will be a long, winding, treacherous and perhaps bloody road before the popular Egyptian revolution even dreams of approaching the post-Suharto Indonesian model (the largest, most plural democracy in a Muslim-majority country) or the current Turkish model (also sanctioned at the ballot box).

As predicted (Rage, rage against the counter-revolution - Asia Times Online, February 1) the counter-revolution is on, and brought by the usual suspects; the Egyptian army; Mubarakism's comprador elites; and the triad of Washington, Tel Aviv and European capitals.

After more than two weeks of protests on the streets of Egypt against President Hosni Mubarak, this is what the White House's "orderly transition" is all about - with Washington still playing all sides even as the Egyptian street smashed the mirror and defied for good the "stability"/terror imposed on it by the dark side.

The counter-revolution goes way beyond comments by Frank Wisner, a United States Central Intelligence Agency/Wall Street asset who is US President Barack Obama's secret agent to Cairo and a personal friend of the Egyptian president, on the desirability of Mubarak stay and supervise the transition.

It comes across almost casually as Robert Springborg, professor of national security affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School, tells Reuters, "The military will engineer a succession. The West - the US and the EU [European Union] - are working to that end. We are working closely with the military ... to ensure a continuation of a dominant role of the military in the society, the polity and the economy." Translation; erase the people to ensure "stability".

The tent city in Tahrir Square in the capital, Cairo, is very much aware that decades of Egypt as a US client-state plus endless International Monetary Fund/World Bank manipulations created the perfect economic storm that was a key cause of the revolution. That's also a key cause for the street to want - according to one of its top slogans - the whole regime brought down. Connecting the dots, the street also knows that a truly representative, sovereign Egyptian government cripples the entire US-controlled Middle East power arrangement.

Historically, what Washington always really feared is Arab nationalism, not crackpot self-made jihadis. Arab nationalism is intrinsically, viscerally, opposed to the 1979 Camp David peace accords, which have neutralized Egypt and left Israel with a free iron hand to proceed with its slow strangulation of Palestine; for As'ad Abu Khalil of the Angry Arab website, every Middle East expert who worked on the accords "helped construct a monstrous dictatorship in Egypt".

Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, now with the New America Foundation, spells it out further for the New York Times, "The Israelis are saying, apres Mubarak, le deluge ... The problem for America is, you can balance being the carrier for the Israeli agenda with Arab autocrats, but with Arab democracies, you can't do that."

Correction; in fact it's after Mubarak not the deluge but "our torturer" - Vice President Omar Suleiman, the head of the Mukhabarat, widely dubbed by protesters "Sheikh al-Torture", after his performance tossing at least 30,000 people in jail as suspected jihadis, accepting CIA renditions, and torturing the rendered. Innocents among them include Sheikh Libi, who, under torture, confessed that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's goons were training al-Qaeda jihadis; former US secretary of state Colin Powell had no qualms using this "information" at his infamous speech to the United Nations in February 2002 justifying war on Iraq.

Throw the bums into the Nile
Essentially, this is what the Egyptian street wants. Mubarak down immediately. Suleiman starts a national dialogue with an opposition coalition, observed by a neutral UN delegation. Then a constitutional assembly is established to amend articles 77, 78 and 88 of the constitution to enable any Egyptian to be a candidate for the presidency.

The state of emergency (in effect for over 25 years) is lifted. The judicial system establishes monitoring bodies for future elections. A national coalition body is established to monitor the transition during the next six months, and organize elections according to international standards. New guidelines are set for legal political parties not vetted by Mubarakism's National Democratic Party (NDP) but by an independent neutral body. The country starts over with the rule of law and an independent judiciary.

The youth groups central to the revolution go way beyond. They want; the resignation of the entire NDP, including Suleiman; a broad-based transitional government appointed by a 14-strong committee, made up of senior judges, youth leaders and members of the military; the election of a council of 40 public intellectuals and constitutional experts who will draw up a new constitution under the supervision of the transitional government, then put it to the people in a referendum; fresh local and national elections; the end of emergency law; the dismantling of the whole state security apparatus; and the trial of top regime leaders, including Mubarak.

The street simply does not trust the self-described "Council of Wise Men" - which includes secretary general of the Arab League Amr Moussa; Nobel prize-winner and Obama adviser Ahmed Zuwail; professor Mohamed Selim al-Awa; president of the Wafd party Said al-Badawi; powerful Cairo businessman Nagib Suez and lawyer Ahmed Kamal Aboul Magd - who are all in favor of Suleiman presiding over the "orderly transition", under the pretext that the opposition leadership is extremely divided and cannot agree on anything. But to believe that Suleiman will agree to dissolve his own party, dissolve parliament, dissolve the police state and change the constitution, they must be all under the spell of an Orientalist opium dream.

For the moment, the new Wafd party (six seats) and Tagammu (five seats) are the largest regime-approved opposition parties in parliament (518 seats). Then there's al-Ghad ("Tomorrow"), founded by Ayman Nour (he contested the last presidential election and ended up in jail). The Generation Y in the streets views them all as irrelevant; they congregate around the Kefaya ("Enough") movement, and have just formed a Youth Front for Egypt.

For the moment the only opposition group spelling out key economic demands is the brand new Egyptian Federation for Independent Unions; they want a monthly minimum wage of 1,200 Egyptian pounds (about US$204), annual raises matching inflation and guaranteed rights to bonuses and benefits.

Obviously nothing will change in Egypt without a new constitution capable of guaranteeing political rights to Copts, Shi'ites, Baha'i, Nubians, Bedouins, you name it. At the same time, secular Egyptians, Christians, the brand new Youth Front for Egypt, Nasserists, New Wafd partisans, socialists, all seem to agree there is no specter of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) turning Egypt into sharia law. Superstar scholar Tariq Ramadan, whose grandfather Hasan al-Banna founded the MB in 1928, stresses this is "completely an ideological projection to protect geopolitical interests".

The MB by all local estimates does not represent more than 22% of the Muslim population; so 78% wouldn't vote for them. Egyptian society already practices what can be considered a very moderate brand of Islam. Islam is the state religion; the hijab and the niqab are common, as well as the galabiya for men.

And for those brandishing the specter of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran (and who obviously cannot tell a Shi'ite from a Sunni) Egypt's social and religions composition is completely different from Iran's. What's definitely more revealing is what the Arab world itself considers to be a threat. An August 2010 Brookings poll showed that only 10% of Arabs regard Iran as a threat; instead they consider the US (77%), and even more Israel (88%) as the major threats.

Allow me to spread you with democracy
The street has pyramids of reasons to worry. All evidence points out to these days that shook the world evolving towards a Washington-spun definition of "stability", with an "orderly transition" conducted by a former torturer and the regime fully in place, buying time, arguing that all crucial constitutional changes need to be discussed - plus the internal Egyptian argument that Mubarak cannot step down now either because it's unconstitutional or because then it would be chaos.

And as the standoff persists - even with the street still fully mobilized - what passes for dialogue between the regime and a few sectors of the opposition, including the usurpers of the revolution, is bound to split the already divided and essentially leaderless protest movement. Washington is not exactly unhappy. Nor are the EU minions. The EU's foreign policy chief Lady Catherine Ashton defends Suleiman - with whom she has spoken - as having a "plan in place" to meet some of the protester's demands. The crucial operative word here is "some".

Imagine the result of all this sound and fury, the hundreds dead and thousands wounded by the regime - in addition to the untold thousands eliminated these past three decades - being this aseptic "orderly transition" conducted by "Sheik al-Torture", hailed by politicians and corporate media in Washington, European capitals and Tel Aviv as a democratic victory for the street revolution/collective will of the Egyptian people.

Minimalist political/economic reforms are already being dangled as rotten carrots - even as foreign journalists keep being arrested, goons terrorize protest leaders and state media remains in Animal Farm mode. Egyptian public opinion is being slowly, methodically split. The military junta is showing no cracks. Suleiman and Annan are Washington darlings. Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi is Pentagon supremo Robert Gates' darling.

The military dictatorship certainly wants America to keep spreading democracy in Egypt - as in aid money paying for Abrams tanks assembled in suburban Cairo, Boeing selling CH-47 Chinook helicopters, Lockheed Martin selling F-16s (a $230 million contract), Sikorsky selling Black Hawks, L-3 Ocean Systems selling equipment for detection of submarine threats, CAE from Tampa, Florida selling C-130H weapons system, plus an influx of 450 brand new Hellfire II missiles, not to mention the very helpful tear gas canisters from Combined Systems Inc (CSI) in Jamestown, Pennsylvania.

And don't forget those Pentagon contracts showing the US government spent over $110 million to buy and maintain Mubarak's fleet of nine Gulfstream jets. Those in Tahrir Square would be wondering whether any one of the Gulfstreams could be used to jet him to Guantanamo?

A wily counter-revolution is exactly what the revolution needs right now to remain on maximum alert. When "orderly transition" is finally seen for what it is, there's a great probability not only Egypt but the whole Arab world will become a ball of fire.


Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).


He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Statement from Veterans For Peace Regarding Current Events in Northern Africa

"THERE IS ONE THING STRONGER

THAN ALL THE ARMIES IN THE WORLD:

AND THAT IS AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME."

 

Statement from Veterans For Peace

Regarding current events in Northern Africa

January 30, 2011

Events unfolding in Tunisia and Egypt hold much hope for the people of that region and indeed the entire world.  What do those events show us?

• The demonstrations are succeeding because in the main people are relying on the power of nonviolence. People are demonstrating nonviolently and young troops are refusing to violently stop them.
• Two weeks ago, few people thought the events in Tunisia and Egypt could ever happen but they are happening.

In northern Africa, the words of Victor Hugo have come to life.  "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and that is an idea whose time has come."   
There is absolutely no reason Victor Hugo's words can't come to life in our own country. 
 

• A clear majority of U.S. troops and U.S. residents oppose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but few believe we can bring the killing to a swift conclusion.
• If a small percentage of U.S. troops refused to fight and an even smaller percentage of U.S. residents halted business as usual by simply staying home from work and school, the killing would end.

 
Anyone who thinks Hugo's words are only a dream today in Egypt or America should be aware of what has already come to pass in Egypt, as in so many other places since then.
 
In Egypt, grassroots organizing during World War I led to a demand, only two days after the November 11 armistice in 1918, for a meeting to discuss independence with the head of the British forces that had occupied Egypt for 36 years.

 The British refused, but the growing movement refused to back down.  When four of its leaders were arrested in March, 1919 trying to represent Egypt at the Versailles Treaty talks, people began a general uprising. 

 All social classes participated.  Organizers adopted as their symbol the "Crescent and the Cross," uniting majority Muslims and minority Coptic Christians.  Within a week Egypt was economically paralyzed by strikes of every sort.  The protests were mainly nonviolent in the cities but when the British tried to suppress the demonstrations violently, 800 Egyptians and nearly 30 British soldiers were killed by that summer.

Years later, Egyptian women chose March 16 as Women's Day because on that day in 1919, 300 women demonstrators led by Hoda Sha'arawi denounced British occupation and Hameida Khalil became the first woman to give her life for independence.


This mostly nonviolent revolution forced the British to recognize limited Egyptian independence in 1922.  The following year, Egyptians adopted a new constitution.
Since the 1978 Camp David “Peace Accords,” the U.S. has given Egypt over $50 billion in military aid, plus forgiving $7 billion in military debt  for Egypt’s support in the 1990 Persian Gulf War.  The U.S. has a huge responsibility to see that Egypt does not use the weapons we gave it to crush a democratic movement. 

 "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and that is an idea whose time has come."  

 ###

US Media & Egypt Coverage: Dodging the Real Issues & Fudging the Real Culprits

$60 Billion US Aid to Egypt=$60 Billion Current Net-worth of Mubarak Family With all eyes and attention on Egypt, the unsavory ‘US Foreign Policy’ has become the topic of choice among the intelligentsia, journalists, and the overly populated US analyst colony. There are scores of analyses out there; thousands of articles, millions of blog threads and unending ‘update’ headlines on TV screens. Yet, at least in ‘popular’ outlets, reality appears to be the missing link. Don’t worry, I am not about to hit you with a long-winded article on Egypt. If you are masochistic enough to actually want my take (pages and pages of  history/analyses) you can revisit a few of our pieces on the topic of nefarious US foreign policy practices here, here and here; timeless and equally applicable to what we are witnessing with Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia today. Instead, I want to share with you a few select points and coverage that got my attention:
Let’s start with the tongue and cheek protest sign in the above picture: “USA Why You Support Dectatour” Of course, these demonstrators, in fact almost the entire population in that part of the world, know the answer to this rhetorical question. I think they are trying to get Americans to ask this question and seek ‘real’ answers, no matter how unsavory, nauseating, awful…You see, this is what the US media is selling the majority as to why we support and maintain (pay for, defend…you name it) corrupt ruthless dictators:

Alliance with new governments to protect U.S. interests: security for Israel, sustainability of world energy supply and the fight against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

That’s right: the above, instead of: dictators who will purchase our arms from our mega corporations, serve Israel’s interests, give us cheap oil, and become our official or semi-official base (aka: colony), and that at any price (that is, the price to the population and human rights there). Think Saudi Arabia, think Turkmenistan, Think Uzbekistan…Think about all the dictator allies we support, maintain and sustain. While we are at the topic of ‘sustaining,’ let me illustrate what I mean:
The same article source above, Bloomberg, lightly mentions the following:

Egypt is the fourth-largest recipient of U.S. aid, after Afghanistan, Pakistan and Israel, according to the State Department’s 2011 budget, receiving more than $1.5 billion a year.

Another semi alternative publication (alternative in name only) goes only half a step further and actually adds it up, the US taxpayers’ dollars that is:

American support for the Egyptian government — to the tune of $60 billion in aid over the last 30 years — garnered virtually no regular attention before the protests began.

But here is one article, written by a true alternative journalist (an independent one), where American taxpayer dollars spent on this Dictatorship ally for the last 30 years come together, and actually add up nicely:

According to a mix of United States, Syrian and Algerian sources his personal fortune amounts to no less than US$40 billion – stolen from the public treasury in the form of “commissions”, on weapons sales, for instance. The Pharaoh controls loads of real estate, especially in the US; accounts in US, German, British and Swiss banks; and has “links” with corporations such as MacDonald’s, Vodafone, Hyundai and Hermes. Suzanne, the British-Irish Pharaoh’s wife, is worth at least $5 billion. And son Gamal – the one that may have fled to London, now stripped of his role as dynastic heir – also boasts a personal fortune of $17 billion.

Mubarak’s fortune, including his wife’s and son’s, is estimated to be …$40 Billion + $5 Billion + $17 Billion= $62 Billion. We Americans have been paying this man for 30 years, for a total of $60 Billion. Was it for infrastructure, job creation…you know, all those vital ingredients? Or was it to create another king, a dictator, or as Escobar puts it, a Pharaoh with a $Billions fortune?
Here is more by another true alternative reporter:

Now, if through some incredible circumstance Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak decides to flee the country, à la Ben Ali, there’s a good chance his first-class flight would come courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Pentagon contracts show that the US government has spent at least $111,160,328 to purchase and maintain Mubarak’s fleet of nine Gulfstream business jets. (For those keeping score, Gulfstream is a subsidiary of General Dynamics.)

And this:

Hounshell also noticed a report that Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak once “commandeered a bus that had been bought with money from the United States Agency for International Development and that had been meant to carry children to school.”

            …
But wait a minute; let’s not forget another involved party these tax dollars happen to benefit. You know who I’m talking about, right? This is where our government takes our dollars, gives it to dictator allies, and then asks them to turn around, give that money (minus the personal share for personal wealth) to our military industrial complex corporations. Then, we have those CEO’s with $$$$$$$ salaries, and $$$$$$$ to the lobbyists and $$$$$$ to our elected representatives, who then in turn, sanction giving more money, aid, tax payers’ dollars, to these dictators; and the cycle repeats, repeats, repeats…well, it’s been repeating nonstop for more than half a century.
As for this great ally for ‘regional security’ my favorite site has the following on a recent Robert Gates-Egypt Defence Minister meeting involving the so-called partnership for ‘regional security’:

When the two military leaders met in May 2009 to discuss “a wide range of security issues,” Egyptian Defence Minister Hussein Tantawi presented US Defense Secretary Robert Gates with a set of gifts. They included a shotgun (with five bullets), a decorative rug and a gilded photo album.

With a confidence that, in retrospect, seems dubious, Gates said “he looks forward to expanding the two countries’ military-to-military relationships in ways that promote regional stability.”

Five months after that meeting, the Pentagon announced it would sell a new batch of two dozen F-16 fighter aircraft to Egypt—a $3.2 billion deal that is among the most recent of a long string of arms deliveries from America to its North African ally. These F-16s, according to the Pentagon announcement (pdf) would support “Egypt’s legitimate need for its own self-defense.”

Today the Egyptian Air Force buzzed a crowd of demonstrators in Cairo with fighter jets much like those supplied, over a period of decades, by the US. It was a tactical decision that bore little relation to “legitimate” national “self-defense,” although it can be construed as a desperate attempt to defend Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade hold on the presidency.

            …
Rest assured the American mainstream media won’t delve into these ‘real’ issues, because that would get into the real disease, our hypocrisy-ridden sick imperialistic foreign policy, where American taxpayers and the people of these nations are among the victims-losers, and a handful of corporations have been reaping the benefits. The media’s neocons have been twisting and intentionally misinterpreting the recent developments in Egypt. Please don’t think of only the Neocons of the Right, because the neocons of the left have been equally if not more involved in this deception game, and here is a recent example provided by Antiwar.Com, with excellent questions directed at the Israel lobby’s outspoken Maddow:

So you thought it was only the wackos on the neocon right who support Mubarak? Wrong! I’m listening right now to Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s resident ultra-liberal, attack Rand Paul for being “offshore” because he calls for ending the $1.5 billion in “aid” to the Egyptian military.
What I’d like to know is this, though: why does Maddow think funding the Egyptian torture machine, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine, is good for America? How does it serve our legitimate interests? Is it “stimulus” money? Does she just support any and all government spending as a matter of high principle? Or does she really think it’s a good idea for us to be subsidizing a regime so brutal that even the US State Department characterizes it as “repressive”?

…
I am going to leave you with the following quotes from Escobar’s article:

Since the start of the protests, the Repulsive Ideology Trophy has got to go to former British prime minister and Iraq invader Tony Blair in his interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan. For Blair, democracy for the Middle East may be a good thing; but “we” have to manage it; and that means compromising with Mubarakism. Blair simply can’t understand that if Mubarakism survives with a facelift, blowback will be cosmic. And it will come from all sectors of Egyptian society, the young, the apolitical, secular and Islamists alike, and from the whole Arab world.
Slovenian Slavoj Zizek, the Elvis of philosophy, is right on the monstrous hypocrisy of Western liberals (or so-called liberals); “They publicly supported democracy, and now, when the people revolt against the tyrants on behalf of secular freedom and justice, not on behalf of religion, they are all deeply concerned.”
Real democracy can only be a dynamic grassroots process, from the bottom to the top. It’s not a fixed formula, it’s constantly reshaping itself. That’s bound to scare Western global elites – from “liberals” to the fear/warmonger set – because real democracy implies a huge loss of privilege for the “stable”, developing world comprador classes that are slaves to these haughty Western elites. No wonder they’re all as scared – and scary – as dead men walking.

            …

The Brotherhood factor By Pepe Escobar

A million marching in the streets of Cairo this Tuesday, a million more marching towards the Egyptian presidential palace in Heliopolis in the upcoming "Friday of Departure". The top graffiti - also scrawled on khaki-colored US Abrams tanks - as well as the top slogan, remains "the people want the system to fall". The army seems to have chosen its side, tacitly affirming it "will not resort to use of force against our great people".

With Brent crude oil futures smashing the barrier of US$100 a barrel for the first time since September 2008; mounting fears for the oil flow through the Suez Canal; banks, schools and the stock market closed; people's committees running security; some police burning their uniforms and joining the protests; and rows of activists, protesters and bloggers tapping furiously at banks and banks of laptops to send the word (before the President Hosni Mubarak system "bravely" shut down the last functioning Internet service provider), the Egyptian revolution might be approaching the end game.

The Pharaoh and his "successor" Omar "the suave torturer" Suleiman's strategy to use the army to intimidate, and then reclaim, the street could only work if the Nile turned blood red this week. That seems unlikely. Still this ruthless military dictatorship will do whatever it takes to cling to power.

As the multiform Egyptian street sees it, the point is not, as the Wall Street Journal so quaintly put it, "maybe the new phase is a happy one for Washington". Those masses at Tahrir Square (Liberation Square) protesting with their lives couldn't care less - as they couldn't care less for the security of oil supplies to the West or the security of Israel. This is about Egypt, not America.

On Sunday, US President Barack Obama urged a meek "shift in Egypt's administration" - while the streets are yelling "out with the dictator". Al-Jazeera had to come out with an editorial reminding everyone that Obama's definition of "reform" simply cannot mean the same corrupt/repressive regime with a facelift.

This is a classic revolutionary situation; those few on top cannot impose their will like they used to, those many below refuse to be dominated like they used to. Infinitely puzzled, Washington and European capitals may play at best minimalist background vocals to the sound and the fury in the street. The street wants a solid political and institutional life, and to be able to make a decent living in a less corrupt environment. And that has proved to be impossible under the immutable rules of the game - the "our" dictator system supported by the industrialized West.

Among silly conspiracy theories that the Egyptian revolution is being funded by the Jewish lobby, the US Central Intelligence Agency, American financier George Soros or all of the above, the Egyptian street couldn't care less whether or not the Pharaoh decides to "lead an orderly transition"; they won't settle for anything less than his one-way ticket, perhaps to embrace his friends in the House of Saud. Especially now that the street has seen how, with Suleiman, Mubarak is pulling a Shah of Iran in 1978, when he installed Shapour Bakhtiar as his prime minister (it didn't work).

Talk to the Sphinx 

The sensible way ahead points to an Egyptian civic alliance dominated by all the sectors opposed to the regime (virtually everyone in the country) and the inevitable component, the army. As much as sectors of the Washington establishment and US corporate media may have been frantically spinning it, there are no objective conditions for an Islamist takeover; this is just plain silly.

Washington may be about to give the green light to Mohamed ElBaradei - who has been crucially endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet not even the Sphinx in Giza knows whether this will be enough for the street.

ElBaradei is a credible outsider. During the Pharaoh's hardcore years he was abroad. He is no pushover, and stoically stood his ground against the George W Bush administration as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency over Iran. ElBaradei, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, may in fact emerge as the "bridge" before free and fair elections, a new constitution and a new order in Egypt.

But there's no evidence he will concoct an economic policy much different from the usual International Monetary Fund-World Bank "structural adjustment" scam, with lots of dodgy privatizations mixed with that hazy Davos mantra, "good governance". If that's the case the street is bound to get really angry - again.

For the moment, there's not much evidence that Egypt could go the way of Iran in 1979. The secular left was in charge of Iran's post-revolutionary government (in Egypt, the left has been decimated by repression). Iran only became an Islamic republic months later, after a national referendum (were that to happen, Egyptians would overwhelmingly support a secular republic). The most probable, positive, scenario is that by 2012 Egypt may be closer, politically, to Turkey.

That leaves us the burning unanswered question to burn them all; what will be the post-revolutionary role of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)?

Brothers to the rescue 

The MB elicits panic fear all across the West because the Mubarak regime always effectively equaled them to al-Qaeda. This is nonsense.

The MB was founded by Hasan al-Banna in the port of Ismailia in 1928 - then moved to Cairo. Its initial concern was to concentrate on social services, establishing mosques, schools and hospitals. Over these past decades, the MB managed to become the most important fundamentalist political force in the Sunni world. It's also the largest dissident party in Egypt, with 88 seats of the 454 in the lower house of parliament.

The MB does not endorse violence - although it did in the past, until the 1970s. The aura of violence is mostly related to the legendary Sayyid Qutb, considered by many as the spiritual father of al-Qaeda. Qutb, a literary critic who had studied in the US, joined the MB in 1951, and split years later.

Qutb's ideas were radically different from al-Banna's - especially his concept of a "vanguard", which is more Lenin than the Koran. He was convinced that parliamentary democracy was "a failure" in the Islamic world (unlike the overwhelming majority of Egyptians today, who are fighting for democracy; the MB, moreover, is a full participant of civil and political society.) Qutb does not even qualify as the most influential modern Islamist thinker; mainstream political Islam, personified by the authority of the imam of al-Azhar in Cairo, mercilessly refuted him.

Contrary to US neo-conservative propaganda, the MB also has nothing to do with fascist movements in 1930s Europe or socialist parties (they are in fact in favor of private property). It is above all an urban, lower middle class nativist movement, as defined by University of Michigan professor Juan Cole. Even before the revolution, the MB was committed to bring down the Mubarak regime, but peacefully and politically.

The Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1930s in Mosul, is now the Iraqi Islamic Party, and an important political actor who always had a dialogue with Washington. And in Afghanistan, the Jamiat-I Islami party was inspired by the MB.

The MB certainly does not shun technology and intellectual innovation.

It's very much everywhere in the streets of the Egyptian revolution, but very careful not to display an "in your face" attitude. According to spokesperson Gamel Nasser, they see themselves only as a small sector of the revolution. And the revolution is about the future of Egypt - not Islam.

Some may argue once again this is what the mullahs were saying in Tehran in 1978/1979. The shah was indeed deposed by virtually all sectors of society, including the Communist Party. Then the theocrats took over - violently. According to its background over the past three decades, there's no evidence the MB would have the reach to attempt the same move.

It's hard for outsiders to imagine how brutal has been the Mubarak repression machine/police state. The system relies on 1.5 million police - that's four times more people than the army. Their salaries are paid to a great extent by the annual $1.3 billion of US "aid", which also served to crack down really hard on the working class and virtually every progressive organization.

This state of things has been in place way before Mubarak. History will ask questions directly to the ghost of former president Anwar Sadat. Sadat built a trifecta to make his intifah policies work; the IMF advised him to build a rudimentary export economy, he manipulated religion to extract funds from Saudi Arabia and thus undercut the MB, and he got billions from the US for cutting a deal with Israel. The key inevitable consequence of all this was a mammoth police state bent on, among other repressive gems, a total crack down on working class organizations.

Meet the antidote to al-Qaeda 

Even also being ravaged during the Sadat/Mubarak decades, the MB at least kept a structure. In free and fair elections the MB would certainly get at least 30% of the votes.

Global corporate media could do worse than trek to the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, in El Malek El Saleh, and learn something. The new head of the MB, Mohammed Badie, is more concerned with the social than the political arena. On the possibility of Egypt eventually becoming an Islamic state, he insists the decision will be "by the people".

Unlike Badie, Sherif Abul Magd, an engineer professor at Helwan University and the head of MB in Giza, was much more loquacious talking to Italian daily La Stampa. He was careful to point out that the protesters should not antagonize the military. He emphasized, "Our people already control the streets."

Above all he delineated the MB strategy for the next stage; to an interim prime minister should be added five judges to set up a presidential committee charged of rewriting the constitution and then calling for elections for parliament and the presidency.

Magd was adamant: "An Islamic state is not in conflict with democracy - but the people should be able to choose it." Washington already knows it, but will be alarmed anyway that the MB does not believe in that famous geopolitical cadaver - the Israeli-Palestinian peace process; "peace is impossible without a deal with Hamas." As for al-Qaeda, "today it is just a CIA invention to justify the war on terror."

The Arab street knows - and largely approves of - the fact that the MB has always opposed the 1978 Camp David accords, and does not recognize Israel. Strategically, the MB has realized it's counter-productive to project itself now; later it's another story. The crucial point is that the MB is adamantly opposed to violence against civilians - and thus resolutely dismisses al-Qaeda. An MB refuting violence and very active in civil politics in Egypt cannot possibly spook the West. As an established party of political Islam, the MB could not be a better antidote to al-Qaeda style fanatics.

Contrary to alarmist rightwing sirens, there's no "Islamic fervor" enveloping the Middle East. On the contrary - what one finds at the moment is plenty of moral turpitude, on top of it on the wrong side of history.

Israel's position is self-explanatory - from the Jerusalem Post describing the Egyptian revolution as "the worst disaster since Iran's revolution" to a columnist in Ha'aretz newspaper blaring that Obama betrayed "a moderate Egyptian president who remained loyal to the United States, promoted stability and encouraged moderation".?

As for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, he phoned Mubarak to say how sorry he is for all this mess; and then ordered his goons to stop Palestinians demonstrating their support for democracy in Egypt.

There's no question - with the MB as part of an Egyptian government, a really sovereign Egyptian government, the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt will be renegotiated (the MB favors a referendum). And so we reach the heart of the matter. After this revolution, US and Israeli interests cannot possibly converge - even as optical illusion.

This is not an anti-American revolution; it's a revolution against an American-supported regime. A legitimate, sovereign, post-Mubarak government cannot possibly be a Washington puppet - with all the regional implications that entails. And that goes way beyond the MB. This is about the millenarian heart of the Arab world possibly on the verge of a dramatic seismic shift.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

A Muralha Egípcia

Lejeune Mirhan *

Na minha coluna de final de ano, quando fiz o balanço de 2009 e as perspectivas de 2010, já havia mencionado esse assunto, polêmico de toda forma. Nenhum grande jornal no Brasil o fez até agora. Como recebo artigos de várias partes do mundo e com base em pesquisas, vi que a gravidade do assunto vai ganhando maiores espaços na mídia internacional. Por isso, na primeira coluna do ano, trato do tema.

Cidade de Rafah, fronteira de Gaza com o Egito que vive apinhada de gente

Muralhas não funcionam

Esse subtítulo é de importante artigo comparativo do maior jornalista que cobre Oriente Médio da atualidade, Robert Fisk (1) onde ele compara a muralha que vem sendo construída pelo Egito na fronteira com a Faixa de Gaza, na Palestina e uma situação parecida ocorrida em sua terra, na Inglaterra e na Irlanda, no conflito entre católicos e protestantes. E estou plenamente de acordo com ele. Muralhas que separam, que segregam povos e pessoas não funcionam e nunca funcionaram. O que me estranha é que continuam a ser construídas.

Muralhas existem desde a antiguidade. A mais famosa de todas, a da China, tem sua construção iniciada 221 antes de Cristo, ou seja, há quase 2,3 mil anos. De lá para cá tivemos muitos muros e muralhas, famosas também. A de Berlim, que caiu em novembro de 1989, mas temos também o projeto de Muro Americano, que separa vários estados americanos do México e o mais vergonhoso de todos, o Muro de Israel, que divide inclusive aldeias palestinas, segrega pessoas e corta fornecimento de água potável aos palestinos. Esse Muro já foi condenado por cortes internacionais, que ordenaram a interrupção de sua construção. Mas quem disse que Israel obedece a algum organismo internacional?

Como diz Fisk, o que vemos hoje na Palestina talvez seja a última guerra colonial em curso na história da humanidade. E tal guerra é travada com o apoio integral dos EUA, país que combateu o colonialismo inglês de armas nas mãos no século XVIII e já foi tida como uma nação anticolonial. E tal colonização baseia-se em premissas sionistas falsas, mentirosas, sendo que as duas mais famosas são “uma terra sem povo, para um povo sem terra” e “israelenses farão florescer o deserto” e outras falácias.

O bombardeio da Faixa de Gaza perpetrada pela força aérea de Israel entre dezembro de 2008 e janeiro de 2009, completado um ano no último dia 27 passado, foi feito além da conivência dos EUA, com o beneplácito do Egito, nação árabe hoje completamente subjugada pelos Estados Unidos.

Só temos quatro locais para ingressarmos nesse pequeno território, do tamanho da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Três são controlados por Israel (dois por terra e um pelo mar mediterrâneo). Ocorre que a quarta localidade (entrada leste) para essa estreita faixa de terra onde moram 1,5 milhão de palestinos (uma das mais altas densidade populacional do mundo), vem pela região chamada de Rafah, cidade fronteiriça egípcia. Durante os bombardeios do ano passado, esta localidade permaneceu fechada, como tem ficado fechado, regra geral toda a fronteira egípcia com Gaza. Isso asfixia o que o mundo tem chamado de a maior prisão a ceu aberto do mundo. Dezenas de caminhões com alimentos e ajuda humanitária vindos de todos os países deveriam entrar diariamente no território, que não tem autonomia para quase nada e onde um em cada dois adultos encontram-se desempregados.

Essa muralha, vem sendo chamada de Muralha da Morte pelos palestinos. Sua construção esta sendo feita por centenas de operários egípcios, mas supervisionados diretamente pelo Corpo de Engenheiros do Exército dos Estados Unidos. As reações vêm aumentando, tanto no Egito, como em vários países e na comunidade internacional que vem levantando suas vozes contra esse cerco aos palestinos. Até em Israel vem sendo realizados protestos contra essa construção.

Mas o pior é que o projeto da Muralha é construí-la em aço muito grosso, resistente a projéteis e mísseis Qassams, usados pelos palestinos e que além de alta (uns seis metros), adentra ao subsolo outros seis metros ou ainda mais, para bloquear os túneis e as passagens subterrâneas construídas clandestinamente para o contrabando de alimentos (estima-se que existam 1,5 mil desses pequenos túneis). Israel bombardeou vários deles, mas eles continuam a existir e acabam sendo uma das poucas possibilidades da Faixa receber ajuda externa. Como os produtos – alimentos e medicamentos – entram de forma clandestina, como se fossem contrabando, eles acabam sendo muito caros, dificultando ainda mais a já sofrida vida dos palestinos. A destruição desses túneis prejudicará inclusive a economia egípcio, onde diversos negociantes dependem desse comércio.

O projeto original da Muralha Egípcia prevê o bombeamento de água para dentro desses túneis. Mas, o que é pior, essa água seria bombeada de forma envenenada. Especialistas asseguram que isso prejudicaria os palestinos ainda mais, mas prejudicaria vastas regiões da própria fronteira egípcia, impedindo a agricultura local próxima á Muralha.

Todos os pedidos de organizações humanitárias para ingressar pelo Egito de grandes comboios de caminhões lotados de alimentos e medicamentos – o maior deles, vindo da Europa com 70 caminhões trucados – vêm tendo sistematicamente seus vistos de entrada negados pelo governo egípcio, presidido por Hosni Mubarak.

É preciso registrar – e a maioria das pessoas no mundo não sabem – é que Israel vem bloqueando as três passagens para Gaza há muito tempo. Ingressam apenas e tão somente remédios essenciais e alimentos básicos. Até o simples macarrão, esta vetado da lista pelo fato que o governo de Israel considera esse alimento como não sendo essencial.

Por que o Egito vem se comportando assim?

O Egito tem seis mil anos de história. Dizem que ali surgiu a primeira civilização humana mais organizada e a primeira sociedade dividida em classes sociais, a escravista. Quando Napoleão conquistou esse país, a partir da campanha de maio de 1798, quando chega próximo às pirâmides pronuncia a famosa frase: “do alto dessas pirâmides, quatro mil anos de história vos contemplam”, em discurso aos seus soldados, para falar de respeito ao país conquistado. Errou nas contas. São mais de seis mil anos.

O Egito é o maior e mais populoso país árabe. Foi lá que, em 1954, sob o comando de jovens oficiais sob liderança de Gamal Abdel Nasser, foi criado o pan-arabismo e o nacionalismo árabe mais radicalizado (muito em baixo na atualidade). Alguns chegam a falar em “socialismo árabe”, sob influência da URSS. O Egito sempre quis a liderança do mundo árabe. E na época de Nasser praticamente a conquistou, com amplitude, com alianças e com unidade com os países vizinhos. Infelizmente, com sua morte em 1970, as coisas mudaram de rumo, quando assumiu Anuar Sadat. Também quis o Egito ser porta voz dos palestinos. Ajudou a fundar a OLP para tentar controlá-la, mas Arafat nunca aceitou essa situação. Mubarak assume com a morte de Sadat em 1981, Mubarak assume e esta até hoje (note-se a “democracia egípcia: em 56 anos o país teve três presidentes, ou seja, uma média de 18 anos por presidente...).

O que todos se perguntam hoje é o seguinte: porque o Egito impõe esse imenso sacrifício a 1,5 milhão de palestinos e faz o jogo político e militar de Israel? Algumas respostas, algumas pistas podemos explorar e quero enumerar algumas, a partir de excelente artigo, como sempre, do combativo ativista e pacifista israelense, o escritor Ury Avnery (2).

O mais sionista, reacionário e direitista que já conhecemos e estudamos chamava-se Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940). Mais até do que Herzl e Gurion. Ele foi o que primeiro defendeu uma “Muralha de Ferro” (Iron Wall). Suas ideias, consideradas extremadas até por algumas correntes sionistas, que o viam com reservas, não prosperaram (3). Como diz Avnery, ninguém imaginaria que construir um muro contra palestinos fosse implementado 86 anos depois da sua proposta original, por um “líder” árabe, no caso Hosni Mubarak. É irônico, se não for trágico.

Pelo menos três razões podem ser arroladas para tentarmos explicar o comportamento equivocado – de nosso humilde ponto de vista – para que compreendamos os reais motivos que levaram um árabe praticamente romper com a luta histórica dos palestinos e fazer o completo jogo político de Israel neste momento.

1. Descolamento dos palestinos – É uma quase unanimidade entre as lideranças palestinas mais radicalizadas, que Mubarak descolou-se da luta palestina. E o faz para manter distância em particular do grupo palestino Hamas, que tem fortes e históricos vínculos com a Fraternidade Muçulmana, maior agrupamento de oposição no Egito e maior força política hoje no parlamento e na sociedade, mas que, ainda assim, não tem mais que 20% nas “eleições” gerais do país (sempre uma farsa geral, fraudadas, pois o presidente é sempre “reeleito” com 98% dos votos, como se isso fosse possível). Isso faz com que o Egito vá ficando, a cada dia, mais isolado no mundo árabe e mesmo na comunidade internacional;

2. Apoio dos Estado Unidos – Não é só Israel que recebe bilhões de dólares todos os anos do tesouro dos Estados Unidos a fundo perdido (sem qualquer contrapartida de prestação de contas). O Egito recebe todos os anos algo como dois bilhões de dólares. Para uma economia quebrada, desaquecida (sem controle populacional, a explosão demográfica é elevada e não há empregos para todos), esses recursos pesam no orçamento do país. Assim, além do alinhamento ideológico, que Mubarak tem com os EUA (e com Israel, por ter assinado a paz em separado com esse país em 1979 nos famosos acordos de Camp David que renderam o prêmio Nobel para Anuar El Sadat e Menachem Béguin, sob os auspícios de Carter, que veio a ganhar o prêmio apenas muitos anos depois desse episódio). A situação econômica do Egito é muito ruim e isso faz com que aumente a sua dependência e vinculação política e ideológica dos Estados Unidos;

3. Os eixos do Oriente Médio – Mubarak faz uma análise geopolítica da região e das forças que estão em jogo. Deixar livre essa passagem da imensa fronteira egípcia seria acabar por fortalecer o que se chama de Eixo Damasco-Gaza (Síria e Hamas) e ainda Teerã-Hizbollah-Beirute (Irã e os xiitas libaneses), em detrimento do eixo que Mubarak se alinha que é formado por Cairo-Riad-Amã-Ramallah (Egito, Jordânia, Arábia Saudita e Fatah). Nem que para isso tenha que impor imenso sacrifício aos palestinos – como vem fazendo, impedindo entrada da carregamentos até das Nações Unidas – Mubarak aposta no enfraquecimento do grupo Hamas, no seu isolamento e, no limite, que a própria população palestina se levante contra suas lideranças nessa faixa territorial. Errará, como Israel errou, nessa estratégia, pois o Hamas, mesmo tendo sido bombardeado 22 dias seguidos ano passado, não se enfraqueceu, ao contrário, acabou se fortalecendo.

Esperemos que esse Muro e outras muralhas existentes que separam, segregam, dividem, sejam, de uma vez por todas, demolidas, destruídas e derrubadas. É nosso desejo nesta primeira coluna do ano de 2010.

Aproveito para desejar aos meus leitores que tenham um grande ano de muitas lutas e sucessos, pessoais e os coletivos de que nosso sofrido povo brasileiro e palestino, tanto precisam.

(1) A matéria pode ser lida em http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-walls-never-work-in-the-middle-east-or-in-ireland-1855417.html

(2) A matéria pode ser lida em http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1262516758/

(3) Veja no original em inglês o artigo em http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/ironwall.htm

1 comentários

* Presidente do Sindicato dos Sociólogos do Estado de São Paulo, escritor, arabista e professor. Membro da Academia de Altos Estudos Ibero-Árabe de Lisboa e da International Sociological Association.

* Opiniões aqui expressas não refletem necessáriamente as opiniões do site.