Tunesia, Egyt and now Yemen: a domino effect in the Middle East?

WikiLeaks: Israel's secret hotline to the man tipped to replace Mubarak

The new vice-president of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, is a long-standing favourite of Israel's who spoke daily to the Tel Aviv government via a secret "hotline" to Cairo, leaked documents disclose.

The details, which emerged in secret files obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to The Daily Telegraph, come after Mr Suleiman began talks with opposition groups on the future for Egypt's government.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8309792/WikiLeaks-Israels-secret-hotline-to-the-man-tipped-to-replace-Mubarak.html#


Robert Fisk: Hypocrisy is exposed by the wind of change sweeping Arab world

So when the Arabs want dignity and self-respect, when they cry out for the very future which Obama outlined in his Cairo speech, we show them disrespect

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-hypocrisy-is-exposed-by-the-wind-of-change-sweeping-arab-world-2209881.html



Egypt's army 'involved in detentions and torture'

Military accused by human rights campaigners of targeting hundreds of anti-government protesters

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/09/egypt-army-detentions-torture-accused

Looks like Assange has moved over from the Guardian to the Telegraph -Suleiman is looking worse by the day (I'm starting to think of him as Saruman)

I doubt that. Maybe those who type online do.

What the hell is the US going to do if it actually gets news media? This could be as big a step for democracy as what's going on in Egypt.

I read that report in today's Guardian, Endy.



Sadly, it looks like you can't teach old dogs (Mubarak, Suleiman) new tricks.

The same old ruthless & hideous methods of suppressing dissent, from the same old culprits ...

How can Egypt possibly move forward with these tired old "leaders" still in charge of the country ?
They are incapable of adapting to new circumstances .... to even listen to what so many of their own people are telling them.

Are all those protesters risking their lives on the streets completely wrong or misguided?

No, I seriously doubt it.

It is the completely out of touch leadership, unable to cope with new circumstances, which must go.

Repression & torture isn't enough to keep their show on the road in quite the same way anymore.

Almost 300 Egyptians have lost their lives in this struggle for a freer Egypt, in two weeks. I think we can confidently say that Egyptians genuinely want change, that they have had more than enough from this repressive & corrupt "government"?

But where to from here for the protesters?
I don't know.

Sorry this is a week old but I don't think anyone posted it, apologies if it's a repeat.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/31/obama-egypt-mubarak-protesters-moral-thunder/

Obama can't offer the moral thunder that Egypt craves
The challenge for the US this week is to raise the temperature delicately, rather than seeking to call the global shots

Michael Tomasky
guardian.co.uk, Monday 31 January 2011 21.30 GMT

On an emotional level, everyone wants Barack Obama to thunder that Hosni Mubarak must go. And there are bad reasons why the US president won't do that. Egypt is probably exhibit A in the broad US foreign policy imperative of geopolitical stability trumping internal democracy and human rights. It's older than the cold war, this impulse. It was in the 1930s that Franklin Roosevelt supposedly said of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza: "He may be a sonofabitch, but he's our sonofabitch." The same words have been true of Mubarak through 30 years of opposition crackdowns and human rights abuses.

In 2005, then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, to her credit, gave a speech in Cairo that critiqued this policy, with the famous line: "For 60 years, my country … pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region … and we achieved neither." This was while the Bush administration was pushing the "freedom agenda". American conservative commentators and bloggers have been quoting it over the past week as a supposed lesson in what moral clarity looks like. But all you have to do is look at today's headlines to see exactly how little impact her words had.

Nothing against Rice; this stuff isn't easy. But it underscores the fact that there are also good reasons why Obama is in no position to offer the moral thunder the protesters and their supporters everywhere crave. It's not just that the US needs to keep its powder on the dry side just in case Mubarak holds on, and it's not even that the US must be extremely careful about emitting any slight signal that might ratchet up the unrest to a point that leads to a violent crackdown and even more repression. Rather, it's that the US should not be dictating outcomes any more. The modern world requires a US posture that is more fluid and subtle, and that no longer seeks to call the global shots.

We're at a strangely paradoxical point in geopolitical history. On the one hand, we live in a unipolar world. The US is unchallenged in terms of global supremacy. It continues to have immense global obligations that no other country could or should fulfil (you want China to start arranging global alliances?). America remains the global hegemon. On the other, we have seen in the past decade the limits of American power far more clearly than we have seen its possibilities. The world's greatest superpower got badly tangled up in Iraq and is bogged down in a seemingly unwinnable, decade-long war in one of the poorest and most backward countries on the planet. We can't change Iran. North Korea does its thing. Bibi Netanyahu thumbs his nose at the US, as do Hamas and Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad on the other side.

Meanwhile, on the economic front, China makes deals and finances construction projects across the developing world; and it is Germany, not the US, that appears to be leading the way into the global economic future. Add to that – and this is perhaps most important of all – what Zbigniew Brzezinski has called the "global awakening" of peoples around the world in developing countries, who have more and more access to information and more and more impatience with the old geostrategic arrangements, and we are in a world of mightily reduced American leverage.

The US can respond in two basic ways. One path is the neoconservatives' chosen direction of maintaining hegemony at all costs – which, paradoxically, has reduced American hegemony, because they led the US into the very wars that exposed its limitations, and they made decisions that are directly to blame for doing so (Donald Rumsfeld's conviction that Iraq could be tamed with just 130,000 troops, say). That way lies further disaster, and quite possibly war with Iran one of these days.

The other choice is to manage carefully the transition from a hegemonic world to an awakening world. This is a process whereby the US encourages reform and openness without being seen as dictating outcomes. Here is where writers use words like "challenging", but challenging understates the matter. Doing this will be extremely difficult. For one thing, it's subtle and doesn't lend itself to slogans. It's hard to communicate politically. And never forget domestic politics: the neocons will be banging on about how such a posture signals weakness to the world. And, like a stopped clock, every once in a while, they'll be right.

The challenge for Obama, Hillary Clinton and the rest of the team this week is to raise the temperature delicately, on behalf of the right things: not against Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood or for Mohammed ElBaradei, but on behalf of the great global awakening for rights and freedom. That is the "right side of history" everyone is chattering about. Another American gave a pretty good speech in Cairo once, instructing his audience: "You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party." That was Obama. They're words I hope he's rereading.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

Mideast Allies: "U.S. Go Easy on Egypt"




The top half is at the source above.

Which might only be a passing fashion in the rolling train of history. Had the "meltdown" we seemed to have risked in the Great Deficit Crisis actually happened I expect talk of rights and freedom would be irrelevant. It could have meant an unlimited amount of rights and freedom being restored which the bailouts were specifically designed to prevent using our money.

Bloody sophists eh? Mr Tomasky has to write something. "Something topical Mick". (Ed.)

Egypt got no mention yesterday on any of our News broadcasts that I saw. CBS last night led with the story with a whole 10 minute long item which explained, in words of 1 or 2 syllables how Egypt should be run.

That Katie Couric. She can do facial expressions and tones of voice which reflect what she reads off the prompter so well that I sometimes wring my hands in empathy at the plight of some individual who has been chosen to fill up the gaps between the ads tonight.

After one of those "American Spirit" feechewers I often feel like emigrating to the USA. But a few minutes on A2K soon brings me round.

that's best I think.

I cannot imagine you here...

I am beginning to think you have a thing for Katie Couric you mention her so much.

It is not really surprising that US (I am assuming you are talking of US news since you mentioned Katie Couric and CBS news) cable and network news have slacked off on the Egypt unrest. They haven't led in the story from the beginning anyway. For that we had to go to Internet news of mostly foreign news. BBC I think has stopped its live coverage though if that makes you feel better. Not sure about the Guardian. I have been reading in Al Jazeera for the first time today and I see a lot of coverage and informative pieces about it and other issues in the region. So I guess only those truly interested and not in it for the entertainment are going to keep following the events taking place in Egypt. So you can keep a running a tally and put a score card on those you think are truly interested and those just in it for the heck of it.

The Guardian and Al Jazeera are still running daily blogs, I haven't checked the NYT yet. I'll get to updating the blog posts in a bit, but here's an article from one of the leaders of the April 6th movement who says the west needs to help them.
~~~~~~~


This week has seen the biggest protest in the history of Egypt. Millions have demonstrated in Cairo and other cities all over the country – north, south, east, and west. All had the same demands. The first, as the world knows now, is that the dictator Hosni Mubarak must step down.

We managed to lay siege to the parliament, the government, and the notorious ministry of interior, sites that have witnessed the murder and injury of hundreds of Egyptians, and where I was hit by a sniper's rubber bullet. This was proof that – contrary to the regime's belief that time is on their side, and that the revolution will grow weaker as protesters tire and lose momentum – the revolution is actually getting stronger by the day.

This revolution is not for bread as much as for freedom. It was made principally by the educated, rather than the crushed poorer classes. And it is getting more and more popular as Egyptians balance values such as democracy, freedom, justice, dignity and transparency on one hand, and despotism, oppression, injustice, humiliation and corruption on the other.

Understanding this, the regime has gone back to the language of threats. So, the newly appointed vice-president, former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, now warns that he won't tolerate this much longer and that Mubarak is not leaving any time soon. Meanwhile, security forces are still kidnapping, interrogating and torturing activists, even taking them from their homes. Some of them are still in unknown locations. They do not understand that we, the activists, no longer control the will of the people. The will of the people has its own impulse and power.

But why is this regime clinging to power so hard? Why are they willing to do whatever it takes to stay in control? They still murder protesters in parts of the country where they believe they can get away with it. On Tuesday they shot dead two and injured scores more in the city of Sohag, in the south. On Monday dozens were injured in the Oasis of Elkharga after live bullets were fired at them. The regime is doing this only to protect its loot. The wealth of Mubarak, in British and Swiss banks alone, is estimated at between $40bn and $70bn. And what about his bank accounts in other countries, property and real estate, gold and diamonds? He is not alone, either. All members of his regime, past and present, have huge fortunes in western banks that resulted directly from obscene corruption.

Why has the west been silent about this corruption, about the terrible violations of human rights in Egypt and the region, and about the torture and killing? The west, including the UK, has been complicit in all these crimes by providing support and safe havens. It has mistakenly believed that democracy and freedom is dangerous if implemented in the Middle East, fearing that Islamists would take power.

The world can see now, in both Tunisia and Egypt, how false this assumption was. It is clear those revolutions encompass all elements of society and seek values aspired to by people around the world – the most important of which is freedom. We were systematically punished for decades for a notion that only resides in the minds of western politicians and the lies of tyrants. We lived in a police state, occupied by a two million-strong militarised police force. Given this, isn't there now a moral responsibility that the west bears?

Britain, and other western powers, must take a moral stand in support of the people of Egypt and their demand for the right to be free. This should not be mere diplomatic words: real tangible support should include measures to ensure power is passed to the people, and to put an end to the regime's efforts to kill this revolution.

This is the least compensation our people deserve for the years of western support for these injustices. The money looted from Egypt should be returned and a democratic government should use it to resolve the huge problems this regime has been creating for decades. Dare we hope that these calls for support won't be ignored again?


emphasis added
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/10/the-west-has-debts-to-egypt

So much for $$$ leverage



There is a certain percentage of the American population that will say that there are 1.5b other ways to put that $1.5b to good use.

From the Guardian

10:29am GMT:The April 6 youth movement is refusing to take part in the discussions with the government. In a couple of interesting messages sent to members of its Facebook page, it has respectively condemned the Brotherhood and Mohamed ElBaradei as "bourgeois" and warned of an impending attack by the army.

Quoting from an article entitled "The Arab revolution in danger" – and presumably therefore endorsing it, the youth movement posted this:

The US imperialism wants to make small changes in order to get the regime stronger in order to keep its essential aspects: The Army and Egypt's role as the main imperialist ally in the Arab world. Particularly, the US wants to preserve the political agreements between Egypt and Israel.

Obama and Hillary Clinton also criticised the attacks conducted by pro-Mubarak militia against protesters and journalists. They fear that these attacks will lead to a radicalisation on the revolutionary process, strengthening the self-defense groups and ruptures in the Army.

Vice-president Omar Suleiman, an ally of the American imperialism, hold a meeting with the bourgeois opposition parties to set the directives of the democratic transition. The main proposal is to set up a council to reform the constitution, so as to limit or abolish the emergency laws, and make easier the recognition of political parties, which today need to be endorsed by the regime to take part in the elections. Not a word about the immediate removal of Hosni Mubarak, the much hated Egyptian dictator, as well as nothing about the other popular demands.

Amidst the bargaining, the government announced 15% increase in the wages of all public employees, starting in April.

Mohamed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood did not accept the proposal but are really committed to the negotiation with the regime. They try to preserve themselves as bourgeois alternatives in case the regime is not able to stop the revolutionary process.

11:26am GMT:Jack Shenker, who is also in Cairo, sends me the following on what he calls "the rapidly-collapsing facade of Omar Suleiman's 'peace talks'". These talks, says Jack, have exposed the Egyptian regime's lack of genuine interest in a transition to democracy. The Guardian's stories on both this and the allegations of torture regarding the army (see 9.53am) are causing a stir in Egypt, he reports.


What's been really interesting this morning though is the news filtering in about small-scale strikes and demonstrations breaking out in all manner of nooks and crannies across the country. When corruption and the primacy of wasta (connections or influence) is as institutionalised as it has been in Egypt over the past few decades, it affects everyone at every level – from the presidency down to the local cigarette kiosk at the end of the street. And when the anchors of that system appear to be crumbling at the top, as Ashraf Khalil persuasively argued in a piece for Foreign Policy yesterday, a sense that it is now possible to fight back quickly percolates down as well.

Hence entities that you would never normally associate with political activism are suddenly rising up in protest – from the Supreme Council of Antiquities to the Animal Research Centre, where staff claim their director has been siphoning off money destined for avian influenza programmes to buy personal villas in Alexandria.

Not all of these micro-dramas are explicitly political, and few of them will make headlines on their own. But they all add up to a growing sense that something fundamental is shifting in Egypt: people are no longer willing to accept the status quo power dynamics between themselves and their overlords, be they in the presidential palace or in the boss's office next door.

12:14pm GMT: On Twitter there are several reports of the Egyptian army "raising yellow flags near tanks" and many are asking what this means. In the comments, SanFranDouglas points to a tweet from Sandmonkey offering his explanation.

Live blog: Twitter

A friend says that the army raising yellow flags means they are preparing to use teargas. Good luck with that in this rain. #jan25

We can't confirm that.

She's the face of American News for me.

I certainly don't think anybody here is really interested. I've seen the Arab world so I am a bit interested. I never watch the talking head. I watch what is going on behind them. I often wonder if it is a superimposed picture and they are actually in a studio in Shepherd's Bush.

I once saw an Arab in the transportation business beating a mule, with a thick stick, which had come to a stop half way up a hill with a large load on its back. People were walking, and a few driving, past like New Yorkers were shown doing when Joe Buck (Jon Voight) comes across a guy lying spark-out on the sidewalk in Midnight Cowboy. The mule remained as stationary as he was. Anyone who has read the scene in Tristram Shandy in which the hero, travelling in France, gives a similarly treated donkey a marshmallow, would have, at the least, remonstrated with the Arab gentleman. But no. It was an ordinary everyday occurence to a population which never had Laurence Sterne's wonderful masterpiece set in literature courses because it contains a great deal of lewdness, decorously presented of course.

We should allow for that sort of thing before we start expansively expostulating about the "people of Egypt" as a means of declaring our virtuous credentials to the world. They are not like us. Flaubert's descriptions of the country he spent over a year in were written 70 or so years after the Constitution was written.

define "really interested".

With the sort of dedication that those who sit at the "Egypt Desk" in our foreign affairs bureaucracies apply. As I said--I'm only a bit interested. In between the exciting parts of my life I mean.

We don't have to have a PhD in Mideast history to be interested in the events unfolding in Egypt, Jordan, Tunesia right now. Just a general knowledge and a desire to learn more will do. The events has the potential to really change things if all those people in there in charge right now actually leave and a reasonable free election actually takes place. Admittedly those are big ifs and looks to me from what I have read, really long odds. I hope that those odds are realized if only through my computer desk on a message board from a world away. Make of it what you will.

I am trying to figure if your diss if with those of here expressing an interest in Egyptian affairs or the news people for reporting on it.

The intensity has waned off somewhat, but some people are still interested in seeing how or if it all unfolds. Some of us are wishing the protesters well. It may not take up all of our whole lives, but we can still wish them well and be genuinely interested and still have other interests and our own lives. There is nothing with it and I don't understand your hangup with it all. In fact since you showed up in this thread, it has been all you have talked about. If you don't like it, there are other threads but you are getting a bit obnoxious. No offense intended, but just try to knock it off a little.

CNN has this banner on their homepage:



Cycloptichorn