According to Jack Shenker of the Guardian:

Seven straight days of deadly violence can quickly reshape political realities, and Washington is not the only place where support for Scaf appears to be rapidly deteriorating. In the early afternoon, two officers appeared on a balcony overlooking Tahrir Square and led chants against Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Scaf's leader and their own commander-in-chief. They joined a small but expanding group of mid-ranking officers who have effectively defected in recent days and allied themselves with the protesters.

I want the people to know there are army officers who are with them, Major Tamer Samir Badr told the Guardian. My feelings came to a head last week when I saw people dying, and the army gave the orders for us to just stand and watch. I'm supposed to die for these people, not them die for me. Now I'm ready to die in the square, and I'm not afraid of anything.

Speaking next to an open window that looked out on to Tahrir and which Badr insisted was left open so that he could hear the crowds, the 37-year-old claimed that many other officers had been attending the protests secretly in civilian clothes. Scaf is composed of 19 generals and they are the ones who have power in this country. But those 19 are nothing compared to the thousands of people in the forces. I demand that the field marshal hand over power to a civilian government immediately, and that he just leave," he said.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Neoliberalism, YouTube

UPDATE: Protesters battle their way towards the Interior Ministry:

INITIAL POST: Street battles have erupted in central Cairo as protesters in opposition to the post-Mubarak military government engage in confrontations with the security forces. From the Guardian:

• Thirty-three people are reported to have been killed in the violence over the past three days according to morgue officials. The ministry of health said more than 1,500 have been injured in the latest clashes in and around Tahrir Square - the worst bout of violence in Egypt since the revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak. Witnesses said protesters had been hit by rubber bullets and suffocated with aggressive tear gas. Video has been circulating of police apparently beating protesters, including some lying on the ground. The International Federation for Human Rights accused the policemen of using live ammunition on protesters. Reports indicated that demonstrators were responding by hurling stones and molotov cocktails.

• Crowds in Tahrir Square have been growing and clashes continuing as night has fallen in the Egyptian capital. Riot police are continuing to fire teargas and casualties continue to be taken to the field hospital Chants have called for the trial or execution of Scaf head Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.

• The Revolutionary Youth Movement has called for a one million man march in the capital and across the country tomorrow. Other groups have reportedly echoed the call.

According to Jack Shenker of the Guardian, more people are going out into the streets to battle the security forces and the revolt is spreading beyond Cairo:

Major unrest spread beyond Cairo to the large cities of Suez and Alexandria, where at least one leading activist was killed. Mass demonstrations and attacks on police stations were reported in several other towns throughout the Nile delta and southern Egypt.

His account of the street battles on Saturday is striking:

Throughout Saturday, protesters fought running battles with central security forces – a hated symbol of brutality under the Mubarak dictatorship.

Motorbikes ferried hundreds of wounded civilians to a makeshift field hospital on the edge of Tahrir Square, where a handful of doctors, helped by volunteers, struggled to deal with the influx.

We are seeing many patients suffering from severe gas inhalation and flesh wounds from different types of ammunition, Amr Wageeh, a 21-year-old medical student, said.

I've been here four hours and helped treat over 100 in that time – it's hard because the teargas that's being used is stronger than what we've dealt with in the past and appears resistant to [the normal remedies of] vinegar and soda.

An al-Jazeera report yesterday reflects the intensity of the street violence that has erupted in Cairo:

According to Hossam el-Hamalawy, a general strike will be necessary to topple the post-Mubarak military regime:

As el-Hamalawy explained in his al-Jazeera interview, the military has governed Egypt as an extension of Mubarak in order to preserve the economic privileges Mubarak awarded them. They have also labored to preserve the 1978 peace treaty with Egypt despite public opposition to it. Not surprisingly, the United States, as noted by As'ad Abukhalil, has been silent on the violence in Egypt:

In 3 days in Egypt, the government of Tantawi has managed to butcher 30 Egyptians and injure more than a 1000. Yet, there is no uproar in the Arab League or the UN. The US and EU--make no mistake about it--are complicit all in order to save your precious peace treaty with Israel.

Hence, the US sells the Egyptian military the tear gas that it uses against the protesters.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Israel, Neoliberalism, Police, YouTube

UPDATE: Anger on the streets of Cairo, and the use of armored personnel carriers to defend the Israeli embassy:

INITIAL POST: The kind of political reform in Egyptian desired by the US, Israel and the military council:

Egypt says it will send those who incited or took part in the violence targeting the Israeli embassy in Cairo to a emergency state security court.

After a meeting of the ministerial crisis group and talks with Egypt's military ruler, Information Minister Osama Hassan Heikal made the announcement in a televised statement after Israel, the US and other countries criticised the storming of the tower that houses the embassy.

And, here's another example:

Information Minister Osama Heikal said in a televised message that Egyptian authorities will apply all articles of the emergency law to ensure safety following the embassy attack.

Egypt affirms its total commitment to respecting international conventions, including the protection of all [diplomatic] missions.

Apparently, the defense of the Camp David accords requires the imposition of a state of emergency on the streets of Cairo.

Meanwhile, the nationalistic mood may be accurately captured by the following:

As reported by Reuters news agency, Mustafa Yahya's mother wailed and tore her robe in the Cairo hospital where her son's body lay in the morgue, accusing her own country's troops of killing him as they defended Israel's embassy from protesters overnight.

To hell with Israel. Why is the army protecting Israel and killing my children? she screamed, voicing the popular anger that has been well and truly unleashed since six Egyptian border guards were killed last month in an Israeli operation against a cross-border militant raid.

The global response borders on the hysterical. A perusal of the Guardian blog reveals a parade of countries and political figures rushing to issue public statements condemning the attack. At least 3 people were killed and over 1,000 injured during street clashes.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Israel, YouTube

UPDATE 4: As'ad Abukhalil:

I can't relay the excitement and jubilation that was expressed by Arabs from around the world on twitter and Facebook all day yesterday, regarding the storming of the Israeli occupation embassy in Cairo. I had told you that it will be a different Middle East. The sinister intelligence apparatus that was put in place by the Camp David regime crumbled. I will say more on this in my next post for Al-Akhbar English.

UPDATE 3: A more general Al Jazeera English report:

UPDATE 2: According to Al Jazeera English, the police have been involved in clashes with protesters, firing tear gas, with the Egyptian health ministry reporting 300 injuries. Here is an interview with one of the protesters:

No one should be surprised by this. Israel supported Mubarak unequivocally, despite his creation of a police state that oppressed millions of Egyptians. As noted by the protester interviewed in the video, the construction of a wall around the Israeli embassy in Cairo was a inflammatory provocation, the symbolic incorporation of Egypt within the occupied territories.

UPDATE 1: From the Guardian:

Egypt declared a state of alert early this morning after a group of 30 protesters broke into the Israeli embassy in Cairo last night and dumped hundreds of documents out of the windows.

The storming of the building came after a day of demonstrations outside where crowds swinging sledgehammers and using their bare hands tore apart the embassy's security wall. Hundreds of people converged on the embassy throughout the afternoon and into the night, tearing down large sections of the graffiti-covered security wall outside the 21-storey building. For hours, security forces made no attempt to intervene.

A security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because not authorised to speak to the media, said that one group of protesters reached a room on one of the embassy's floors at the top of the building just before midnight and began dumping Hebrew-language documents from the windows.

The prime minister, Essam Sharif, summoned a crisis cabinet meeting to discuss the situation. In Jerusalem, an Israeli official confirmed the embassy had been broken into, saying it appeared that the group reached a waiting room. In Cairo, officials at the capital's airport said the Israeli ambassador was there waiting for a military plane to evacuate him, and other Israelis were also waiting for the flight to take them back to Israel.

INITIAL POST: This is an important story, with marginal coverage in US and European media. Protests have been ongoing for several weeks now. The Egyptian military responded to the removal of the flag from the embassy by constructing a wall around it, but Egyptians in Cairo have damaged it today during renewed protests. The protests are apparently interwined within larger disputes between the governing military council and secular left groups within Egypt over the nature of political reform. From afar, it appears that the military council and the Muslim Brotherhood are trying to protect their privileged political status by permitting some confrontational protests against the Israelis, while preserving the relationship created by the Camp David accords. But what happens if the military is forced to choose between the preservation of its economic power, the profits that high ranking officers receive from industries controlled by the military, and the continuation of its pro-Israel policy? Is anti-Zionism the means by which the class struggle in Egypt will be intensified?

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Israel, YouTube

I don't recall if I have posted about it here, but I have ascerbically commented elsewhere upon the ethnocentrism associated with the belief that American radical pacifist Gene Sharp played a promiment inspirational role in regard to the Egyptian protests that brought down Mubarak, as reported in the New York Times in February:

Few Americans have heard of Mr. Sharp. But for decades, his practical writings on nonviolent revolution — most notably From Dictatorship to Democracy, a 93-page guide to toppling autocrats, available for download in 24 languages — have inspired dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Bosnia, Estonia and Zimbabwe, and now Tunisia and Egypt.

When Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement was struggling to recover from a failed effort in 2005, its leaders tossed around crazy ideas about bringing down the government, said Ahmed Maher, a leading strategist. They stumbled on Mr. Sharp while examining the Serbian movement Otpor, which he had influenced.

When the nonpartisan International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which trains democracy activists, slipped into Cairo several years ago to conduct a workshop, among the papers it distributed was Mr. Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action, a list of tactics that range from hunger strikes to protest disrobing to disclosing identities of secret agents.

Well, you know, those ignorant Arabs, they would have never thought of engaging in civil disobedience unless Sharp and activists associated with his work told them about it. Because, after all, as devout readers of the Times, know, Arabs and Muslims are reflexively violent in their response to anything they find objectionable. They could have only embraced civil disobedience with the assistance of purportedly more urbane, sophisticated American activists. Until Sharp, Egyptians never engaged in hunger strikes and never disclosed the identities of people involved in the security services.

Of course, the ignorance associated with this pop culture interpretation of events surrounding the Egyptian protests is breathtaking. For example, Egyptians have engaged in hunger strikes or threatened them on a number of occasions in the last decade alone, such as here and here and here and here. While one should not discount the possibility that Sharp and his acolytes may have indirectly influenced the more recent ones, the more likely possibility is that Egyptians learned from, among others, the example of Palestinians nearby. Incarcerated Palestinians have frequently engaged in hunger strikes over the years to protest the occupation and their conditions of confinement, and continue to do so, as anyone who conducts a cursory search on the Internet will readily discover. Meanwhile, the notion that Egyptians never considered publicly exposing the identities of people in the security services as a method of resistance until coming into contact with speakers from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict is absurd on its face.

But this narrative, no matter how implausible, does serve a political purpose outside of Egypt. For educated Americans, Zionist ones, in particular, it is a reasssuring one, an Arab revolutionary movement significantly influenced by secular, American theories of non-violent direct action. Or, alternatively, it can be described as a reassuring narrative centered around the belief that Arabs can only rebel in a way that conforms to Eurocentric values of social and cultural superiority. From this perspective, given that North Africa and the Middle East are characterized as backward societies, they can only undergo radical political transformation by reference to modern, Eurocentric approaches to protest and rebellion. An indirect expression of this ethnocentrism can be found, again, in the pages of Times, where, as As'ad Abukhalil often observes, the reporters rely excessively upon Arabs and Muslims living the US to provide insight into events in their countries of origin thousands of miles away. Because, as we all know, an Arab or Muslim living in the US, having benefitted from the social, cultural and educational advantages of our society, is a more knowledgeable source than an indigenous one.

In regard to Egypt specifically, the reverence for Sharp is especially misguided. First of all, contrary to the desperate need for American elites to describe them as non-violent, the Egyptian protests were, in fact, quite violent, and they were as violent as required to overcome the repression of the Mubarak security forces, as explained by Hossam el-Hamalawy:

Suez was dubbed as Egypt’s Sidi Bouzid during the 18 day uprising. The city witnessed some of the bloodiest crackdowns by the police, and also some of the fiercest resistance by the protesters. In the video above, shot on the Friday of Anger, January 28, the revolutionaries in Suez after storming the police stations and confiscating the rifles, are using them to fight back the police.

One of the biggest myths invented by the media, tied to this whole Gene Sharp business: the Egyptian revolution was peaceful. I’m afraid it wasn’t. The revolution (like any other revolution) witnessed violence by the security forces that led to the killing of at least 846 protesters.

But the people did not sit silent and take this violence with smiles and flowers. We fought back. We fought back the police and Mubarak’s thugs with rocks, Molotov cocktails, sticks, swords and knives. The police stations which were stormed almost in every single neighborhood on the Friday of Anger–that was not the work of criminals as the regime and some middle class activists are trying to propagate. Protesters, ordinary citizens, did that.

Egyptians understand well what a police station is for. Every family has a member who got abused, tortured or humiliated by the local police force in his/her neighborhood. And I’m not even talking here about the State Security Police torture factories. I’m talking about the ordinary police.

Other symbols of power and corruption were attacked by the protesters and torched down during the uprising. Revolutionary violence is never random. Those buildings torched down or looted largely belonged to Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.

In a number of provinces like in N Sinai and Suez, arms were seized by protesters who used them back against the police to defend themselves. State Security Police office in Rafah and Arish, for example, were blown up using RPGs, hand grenades and automatic rifles, while gas pipelines heading to Jordan and Israel were attacked.

Amazingly, there is a revisionist, pro-Sharp response to Hamalawy. Eric Stoner of Waging Nonviolence actually condemns the Egyptian protesters for attacking the forces that had subjected them to such repression:

No proponent of nonviolence would ever argue that by using nonviolent action protesters will not face violence from the state. In fact, in most cases, when facing repressive regimes violence should be expected.

Moreover, no one that I know ever claimed that there was absolutely no violence in Egypt. We acknowledged the violence of the protesters on this site and were critical of it.

That said, to argue that it was the rocks, Molotov cocktails, sticks, swords and knives that won the day in Egypt is crazy. Could anyone really think that these crude weapons were any match for Egypt’s military and security apparatus?

Rather than being a key to their eventual victory, the moments when protesters resorted to violence were the closest points during the uprising that they came to losing control. The throwing of rocks was about as useful strategically in Egypt as it is in Palestine. Such desperate acts distract onlookers from the cause they are fighting for and provide a ready excuse for state repression.

The truth is that most people in Tahrir Square and throughout Egypt did face violence without responding in kind and their nonviolent discipline was a key to their success. If most people had responded with violence the death toll of the revolution would have been dramatically higher and Mubarak may very well have prevailed.

So speaketh the sanctimonous American pacifist, who pompously proclaims that El-Hamalawy doesn't understand non-violence. If given a choice between a failed non-violent protest movement, or one that resorts to violence and succeeds, Americans like Stoner will choose the latter every time. Even worse, people like Stoner would relegate the peoples of the lesser developed world to imperial subjugation until they can overcome their masters non-violently. If that can't be done, well, too bad, things well get better when they ascend to heaven. No wonder the Times embraced Sharp in the service of its fictional characterization of the Egpytian protests as his insistence upon non-violence transforms a potentially immediate, radical, often violent revolutionary movement against the governments of US client states in North Africa and the Middle East into a long term, evolutionary one that is likely to preserve the prerogatives of capital, if it succeeds at all.

Clearly, the emphasis upon non-violent protest methods disseminated in Egypt by the International Center, as with the comical exaggeration about the importance of social media, is also about obscuring the class aspect of the Egyptian protests. There has been growing labor unrest in Egypt over the last decade as the clientelist policies of the regime began to be supplanted by neoliberal ones. While it would, of course, be an exaggeration to ascribe the success of the protests to the emerging labor movement in Egypt, it did, undoubtedly play a significant role, as explained by here and here by Joel Beinin. Labor protests in 2007 and 2008 against employers supported by Mubarak foreshadowed much more massive ones against the regime this year. By exaggerating the role of Sharp and social networking media, the Times, and other news agencies that did so as well, sought to persuade the American public that the protests were classless. Had Mubarak prevailed, it is likely that they would have been described in different, more ominous terms.

But I have digressed badly. I started this post with the intention of showing how Egyptians have responded to the claims of Sharp's importance to their protest movement. Here is a sample of some of their comments:

@3arabawy: I was happy all my life under Mubarak, but suddenly #genesharptaughtme I must rebel.

@Zjen1: #GeneSharpTaughtMe how to grow and eat garlic and breath in my enemies faces so they will faint.

@M_Alhalaby: #GeneSharpTaughtMe that washing eyes with Pepsi lessens the effects of tear gas.

@CVirus: #GeneSharpTaughtMe how to dodge bullets.

اي اتظاهر تضامنا مع قانون منع التظاهر@moneloky: #GeneSharpTaughtMe How to protest in support of the law that bans protesting

@prof_mostafa: #GeneSharpTaughtMe how to make a Facebook group

@alaa: #GeneSharpTaughtMe how to throw rocks at thugs, baricade myself behind burned out car hulks, dodge petrol bombs

Personally, I like these three best:

@deetaha: #GeneSharpTaughtMe that social networks is the only method to communicate, even when the Internet is down.

@nermin79: #GeneSharpTaughtMe that the west always wants to be sure that white men get credit for all the great things that happen

@ArabUprising: #GeneSharpTaughtMe that backward brown & black people need the permission of the white man to #revolt against his puppets

Apparently, the Egyptians have learned a lot from Gene Sharp, and fortunately, it is different than what the Times would have us believe.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Eurocentrism, Neoliberalism, New York Times, Palestine

Day by day, the US/Israeli/Saudi directed counterrevolution intensifies the violence in North Africa and the Middle East. In Libya, NATO military operations obstensibly launched to prevent a mass slaughter of civilians is now being conducted for the express purpose overthrowing the Gaddafi regime. Predictably, an intervention originally described as one of limited duration has become open-ended, with British military advisors already on the ground. Libya therefore constitutes one form of the colonial manipulation of the democracy movements that have erupted across the Middle East, the incorporation of legitimate demands for social transformation within a broader context of increasing imperial control over the region. Given what has transpired in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt, the mission has an urgency that it would otherwise lack, the necessity of containing the liberatory social forces within those countries. Of course, the immediate victims are the people of Libya, caught between a violent, kleptocratic dictator and a rebel movement dependent upon NATO and religious extremists.

If they are not already concerned, the people of Egypt and Tunisia should be alarmed at what is happening nearby. Because of the weakness of the rebellion, the inability of its participants to remove Gaddafi without outside assistance, the door was opened for countries like France, Italy and the US to attempt to reassert a more overt imperial role. Hence, we should not dismiss the possibility that, if social reforms fail in Egypt and Tunisia, resulting in violent conflict, the US, Europe, and, more covertly, Saudi Arabia and Israel, will intervene to render them ungovernable. Such an outcome, analoguous to what transpired in Lebanon in the 1980s and, in a much more extreme case, Algeria in the 1990s, is a more acceptable outcome than the emergence of stable governments capable of charting an independent course. Indeed, it appears that the Saudis are already providing substantial funding to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and there are rumors that the violence between Copts and Muslims is being instigated by outside forces, such as, again, the Saudis. Meanwhile, Obama has publicly announced a carrot for Egypt, a billion dollars in loan guarantees and a billion dollars of debt relief, subject to Egypt's meeting its commitments, a euphemism for continued participation in the effort to crush Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories.

For the occupied territories remain the most vexing problem for the counterrevolutionaries. Despite the efforts of Fatah and Hamas, a Palestinian mass movement has stepped onto the stage in the most spectacular fashion, centered around, horror of horrors, the right of return for people exiled to refugee camps for decades. On Sunday, May 15th, the IDF found itself confronted by thousands of people, insistence upon entering Israel and the Golan Heights to return to the locations where they had once resided. Consistent with past practice when facing large numbers of Palestinians, it fired large ammunition, and, in Gaza, even artilliery shells. 15 died, with many more wounded. As with much lesser episodes of IDF violence, such as, for example, force directed against protests seeking to stop construction of the apartheid wall in the West Bank, there was no condemnation, and, in the US, there was nearly universal political support for Israel's actions. Protests are again planned for this weekend, and the IDF is naturally prepared to respond with force. The protests are an inevitable manifestation of something far more serious, the imposition of social control and surveillance measures throughout the occupied territories by Israel that make it impossible for any peace settlement, other than the creation of a new unitary state throughout all of Palestine, to be implemented. Accordingly, the IDF violence in response to the May 15th protests is a foreshadowing of much greater violence to come, as the segregated society of Palestine, both within and without the occupied territories, can only be perpetuated through the increased application of it.

As a consequence, Syria presents a counterrevolutionary dilemma. Certainly, the US, the Saudis and the Israelis would love to be rid of Assad, particularly because of the relationships that Syria has preserved with Hizbollah and Iran. But there is a serious problem. Assad has maintained control over the Syrian populace when it comes to challenging Israel over its retention of the Golan Heights and its treatment of the Palestinians. On May 15th, Assad either lacked the ability of use force to prevent protesters from attempting to enter the Golan, or had no inclination to do so because of criticism over his repressive measures to retain power. One need only look to Egypt to recognize what the US, the Israelis and the Saudis fear if Assad is removed, a newly assertive populace insistent upon ending collaboration with Israel. With the fall of Mubarak, the situation is so acute that the military is manipulating sentiment against Israel in order to preserve its socioeconomic privileges. A public expression of support for Israel is an act of political suicide, while harsh criticism is received enthusiastically. Thus, there will be no NATO airstrikes upon Syrian targets and the deployment of military advisors to assist the movement. The counterrevolutionary expectation is probably that Assad survives in a much weakened position, but even that is problematic, because Assad would find it much more difficult to impose restrictions upon political activity, as current events demonstrate.

Bahrain is a tragedy, one that will haunt the US much as the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel does. In Bahrain, the US and the Saudis, as discussed here previously, responded to the democracy movement by sectarianizing it, characterizing it as an Iranian inspired Shia scheme to destroy the monarchy. With US and Saudi acquiescene, the Sunni royal family has unleased a sadistic repression, rounding up Shia so that they can be tortured and raped, firing them from their jobs and bulldozing mosques. As stated here previously:

If Salih in Yemen and al-Khalida in Bahrain succeed in suppressing public protest, they will then proceed to impose even more severe authoritarian measures of social control, with the assistance of private contractors recommended by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. As with the current violence, the US will issue public denunciations without adopting any measures to induce Salih and al-Khalida to ameliorate their repressive measures, indeed, as noted, it will instead provide covert aid to intensify them, hidden from public view through the black box of war on terror programs. The poor populace of both of these countries are going to soon find themselves subject to the sort of technological surveillance and violence inflicted upon people in the occupied territories and Afghanistan. The need to economically exploit these people for the benefit of the elites will be the only contraint upon it.

Indeed, the suppression of the Shia has been accompanied by a public relations campaign to assure everyone that all is well, so that people from countries in the developed world will feel comfortable enough to return and enjoy Bahrain as a tourist destination.

The counterrevolutionaires face an inescapable contradiction in Bahrain. In order for Bahrain to be rendered sufficiently stable in order to continue to play a valuable role in the perpetuation of US, Israeli and Saudi hegemony, it must modernize sufficiently to be incorporated into a global neoliberal axis that is hostile to feudalism and sectarian strife. Bahraini modernization therefore requires the creation of a Shia middle and upper middle class that associates their status with the policies of regime. But the Sunni elite cannot retain control of Bahrain without drawing sharp distinctions between Sunni and Shia so as to justify harsh measures against the Shia. In this, Bahrain has disturbing implications for the Saudis themselves. For the US, the problem is a different one. US troops still remain in Iraq, a country with a Shia majority. Opposition to the occupation remains strong, with recent public protests against it. The government does not feel secure enough to enter into an agreement to provide a legal authorization for US troops to continue to be stationed within the country. If they were under any doubt, events in Bahrain reveal what the US really thinks about the social and political empowerment of the Shia. As elsewhere, the counterrevolution is dependent upon the use of military force and repressive measures of social control to prevail, administered to the degree necessary.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Bahrain, Egypt, Gulf States, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia

Earlier today, President Obama delivered a speech concerning US objectives in the Middle East and North Africa. Overall, As'ad Abukhalil probably has it right: It is not that it brought nothing new: It was not even novel or original rhetorically. I don't see any reason why he delivered it.

The tiresome centerpiece of this speech was this gem about Palestine:

So while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

What one hand giveth, the other hand taken away, as the purpose of any land swaps is, of course, to allow Israel to retain settlements illegally constructed in the occupied territories. Furthermore, Obama is well aware that there is a tremendous power imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians, as most recently evidenced in the Palestine Papers, so the notion that these swaps would result from a mutual agreement is merely an effort to legitimize a coercive process.

Zlyad Clot, one of the people responsible for their release, put it succinctly:

The peace negotiations were a deceptive farce whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU. Far from enabling a negotiated and fair end to the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population, as well as its geographical fragmentation. Far from preserving the land on which to build a state, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory. Far from maintaining a national cohesion, the process I participated in, albeit briefly, was instrumental in creating and aggravating divisions among Palestinians. In its most recent developments, it became a cruel enterprise from which the Palestinians of Gaza have suffered the most. Last but not least, these negotiations excluded for the most part the great majority of the Palestinian people: the seven million Palestinian refugees. My experience over those 11 months in Ramallah confirmed that the PLO, given its structure, was not in a position to represent all Palestinian rights and interests.

Today, Obama announced that this farce will continue. But there is something else embedded in his speech that deserves comment as well. Obama rhetorically aligns himself with the liberatory aspirations of the protest movements that have proliferated throughout North Afica and the Middle East, while retaining a close alliance with monarchies in the Persian Gulf, most importantly, the House of Saud. For those of you with long memories, it should sound familiar. Back in the late 1970s, President Carter, along with his Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, and his United Nations Ambassador, Andrew Young, emphasized the importance of human rights as an objective of US foreign policy, while announcing that the Gulf states now fell underneath a protective US military umbrella.

Needless to say, this is a policy that has become increasingly threadbare, with events in Palestine and Bahrain exposing the cynical calculation behind it. Throwing money at the problem in an effort to corral the fractuous revolutionary movements within safe, neoliberal boundaries, is one patchwork solution, with Obama promising US assistance to the governments of Tunisia and Egypt, but this is consistent with the paradoxical naivete that so characterized Carter's presidency, as I noted back in 2007:

Carter, as later, with Clinton, consciously eschewed the trappings of the imperial presidency, and emphasized a religious inspiration for his life in politics quite different than the fundamentalist kind repeatedly described by Bush. He, with a charming naivete, has sought to live a life of humble Christian service, and, while President, believed that the public would respond to his example, and his attempts to educate them. It was a simpleminded idealism that might have been very effective in a communitarian society, but it was destined to fail in the crucible of the final stages of the Cold War, with the contours of the coming neoliberal order, designed to drain away the energy of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, already visible.

Accordingly, it was now the primary function of leaders to depoliticize the social life of their countries, not encourage it, and sadly, a lot of people were ready to acquiesce. Carter, unlike his successors, lacked a clear understanding of his role, and, hence, swung between social and economic policies that disempowered people, and attempts to motivate people through education, appeals to rationality and community involvement (and, if necessary, sacrifice, as with his national energy policy).

In other words, Carter actually believed that Americans, and, indeed, people everywhere, could be persuaded to endorse an increasingly deregulated, privatized world under the benign oversight of the US, and, curiously enough, he still seems to believe it today.

There is very little in this analysis that cannot be equally applied to Obama. Unfortunately, just as the neoconservatives have consistently warned, the consequences of such a paradoxical fusion of realpolitik and idealism are combustible, as Carter discovered with the revolutions in Iran and Nicaragua.

And, as I observed in 2007, the US is now confronting an even more politically charged situation than Carter did:

Now that it has become evident, after Iraq, that the world cannot be subjected to the demands of transnationals and finance capital through force, Carterism suggests a rosier outcome through dialogue, multilateralism and economic coercion. If adopted, it will fail again, even more so than in the 1970s, because it retains that enduring American perspective that it is our mission to modernize the world in our image, despite increasing opposition to such an endeavor.

Nothing reveals the poverty of US policy in North Africa and the Middle East more than the fact that, faced with one of the most important political uprisings in human history, the US can only respond by throwing more gasoline onto the fire.

Labels: American Empire, Barack Obama, Egypt, Gulf States, Israel, Neoliberalism, Palestine, Tunisia

UPDATE 3: Here comes your non-violent resistance:

In any case, if you're among those who have made the argument that Israelis would give Palestinians a state if only the Palestinians would learn to employ Ghandhian tactics of non-violent protest, it appears your moment of truth has arrived. As my colleague writes, what happened on Nakba Day was Israel's nightmare scenario: masses of Palestinians marching, unarmed, towards the borders of the Jewish state, demanding the redress of their decades-old national grievance. Peter Beinart writes that this represents Israel's Palestinian Arab Spring: the tactics of mass non-violent protest that brought down the governments of Tunisia and Egypt, and are threatening to bring down those of Libya, Yemen and Syria, are now being used in the Palestinian cause.

So now we have an opportunity to see how Americans will react. We've asked the Palestinians to lay down their arms. We've told them their lack of a state is their own fault; if only they would embrace non-violence, a reasonable and unprejudiced world would see the merit of their claims. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of them did just that, and it seems likely to continue. If crowds of tens of thousands of non-violent Palestinian protestors continue to march, and if Israel continues to shoot at them, what will we do? Will we make good on our rhetoric, and press Israel to give them their state? Or will it turn out that our paeans to non-violence were just cynical tactics in an amoral international power contest staged by militaristic Israeli and American right-wing groups whose elective affinities lead them to shape a common narrative of the alien Arab/Muslim threat? Will we even bother to acknowledge that the Palestinians are protesting non-violently? Or will we soldier on with the same empty decades-old rhetoric, now drained of any truth or meaning, because it protects established relationships of power? What will it take to make Americans recognise that the real Martin Luther King-style non-violent Palestinian protestors have arrived, and that Israeli soldiers are shooting them with real bullets?

UPDATE 2: J Street responds to the right of return protests on Sunday:

J Street is deeply alarmed by the serious outbreaks of violence in and around Israel today.

We call on Palestinian leaders and the Israeli government to work to minimize further violence and casualties, and to prevent further escalation. We urge governments and communal leaders in surrounding states to similarly avoid escalation.

The violence comes at the start of an important week, during which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit the United States, meet President Barack Obama, and deliver several speeches outlining his government’s thinking about the state of the political process with the Palestinians. President Obama too has scheduled an important address Thursday in which he may lay out his ideas for reviving the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

This weekend’s violence only reinforces J Street’s concern that the absence of a credible diplomatic route to achieving a two-state solution sows the seeds of hopelessness that lead to conflict and violence.

J Street’s goal is to promote the security and survival of the state of Israel and its future as a democracy and a Jewish homeland. We fear that the failure of either leader to lay out bold steps toward a two-state solution this week and then to follow through on them in the months ahead condemns Israel, the Palestinians and their neighbors to more dark days of violence and bloodshed and puts Israel’s future and security at risk.

If you had a residual belief that J Street possessed some promise of protecting the Palestinians from the predations of Israel, this should dispel any remaining doubt. Indeed, the language of President Jeremy Ben-Ami's statement is eerily reminiscent of Tony Kushner's defense against the criticisms of Jeffrey Wiesenfeld.

Hat tip to Max Ajl at Jewbonics.

UPDATE 1: Syrian Revolution: It is all about Israel's security.

INITIAL POST: It is difficult to put into words, especially for someone who is not Palestinian like myself, but I believe that the yesterday's events in Palestine, where many Palestinians sought to exercise their right of return by forcing their way past Israeli checkpoints in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, are momentous, a foreshadowing of major changes in the Middle East, and perhaps, even the rest of the world.

Consider this account by Matthew Cassel:

Climbing up the mountain to reach the Palestinian right-of-return protest in Maroun al-Ras in south Lebanon on Sunday felt a bit like being back in Tahrir Square.

The thousands of mostly Palestinian refugees were smiling as they joked about the strenuous climb, and helped each other up the mountain to reach the site where they were going to stage their demonstration. Some knew it could even be dangerous, but that didn't matter as much as the rare opportunity to join together and call for their rights.

The small elevated Lebanese village just overlooking the border with Israel became a massive parking lot as buses carrying Palestinian refugees and Lebanese from across Lebanon converged for a protest commemorating what Israeli historian Ilan Pappé calls the ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their lands and homes in 1948 – what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Large buses had difficulties reaching the top of the mountain, and rather than wait, protesters chose to make the half-mile climb by foot.

Men and women, young and old, secular and religious, were all present. This was the first time in 63 years that Palestinian refugees would go to the border in their tens of thousands and call for their right to return home. For most, it was their first time even seeing the land that they've grown up hearing described in precise detail through the popular stories of elders old enough to remember life in what is today considered Israel.

Or, consider this one about Maroun al-Ras as well, sent to As'ad Abukhalil, the Angry Arab:

I saw courage and heroism today in front of my eyes. The sight was unbelievable. 10 death and dozens injured and the Palestinian guys would not stop. It is mind boggling. I was 200 meters behind the fence. The Lebanese army at the end attached us and was shooting like crazy up in the air. They chased us up the whole mountain. A day I won't forget in my life. Thousands of bullets wire fired above us to drive us back. Friends were literally at the fence and saw the guys falling. I will upload pics and videos later on FB. I will email you my thoughts later. We are still under shock. We were literally taking cover behind rocks, I really don't know what to say.i swear if only these Palestinians are trained, given arms and support, Israel will not last a week. Every shot Asad from Israelis, a wounded or a killed from our side, dozens of ambulances leaving the scene.. and the guys would not stop. Showers of rocks were going the other way, and the damn Israelis snipers were shooting them down one by one.

Perhaps, I exaggerate. Perhaps, with the passage of a week, a month, a year, yesterday's protests and the typically violent Israeli response to them, will be incorporated into the lethargic flow of history as the grinding brutality of the occupation persists unabated. But I don't think so. For those of us unable to perceive the subtle changes in the current, yesterday was, in the words of Fredric Jameson and others, a rupture, one that, paradoxically, did not constitute an actual, violent departure from the continuity of the past, but, rather, exposed our reflexive embrace of something that no longer existed. After all, a rupture is in the eye of the beholder, a subjective perspective incapable of keeping pace with the dynamism of social transformation.

And, what, precisely, was it that we embraced, that many of us considered so inexorable? It was, quite simply, the permanence of Zionism, and, more specifically, the impregnability of the state of Israel. And, beyond that, and, even more important, the invisibility of the Palestinians themselves, their lack of a historical agency that would enable them to ascend the stage and challenge the interrelated historical processes of capitalism and imperialism that had reduced them to marginality. Much as Marxists and anarchists have challenged capitalism, while considering its demise generations, if not centuries, into the future, anti-Zionists, with exceptions like As'ad Abukhalil and Hossam el-Hamalawy, characterized the dissolution of Israel as a Zionist state in utopian terms, something for which we should aspire to achieve without any expectation that we should expect to live to see it. Of course, I speak as someone at the intersection of engaged people and activists and the bourgeois world, so I am willing to concede that I may have possessed a pessimism that activists like Max Ajl and others, such as those involved in the International Solidarity Movement, have already overcome.

Certainly, the Palestinians have done so. And their Egyptian allies sense the historical opportunity as well, as it was necessary for Egyptian security forces to disperse Egyptians who attempted to storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo last night with tear gas and projectiles. Hossam el-Hamalawy has several posts, with video, about the confrontation. Naturally, as with any political movement in which the masses become engaged, those in power, regardless of their purported ideological identity, act to contain it. Hence, the efforts of the Egyptian security forces, the militaries of Lebanon and Syria and the political functionaires of Hamas, to suppress it, to insist that the participants act within the boundaries imposed by established authority. March to the border, but no further. Chant, hold up some signs and throw a few stones, but no more. Stand in front of the embassy and chant slogans, but don't try to breach the compound. In other words, stay within the acceptable confines of innocuous, non-violent, stage managed protest so adored by American liberals, thus the enabling existing regimes to perpetuate the social order while appearing as if they oppose it. Predictably, US and European media, such as the New York Times and the Guardian, looked for the usual suspects behind the protests, Hizbullah, Hamas and the Syrian government, as the alternative, acknowledging the mass base of the effort was too frightening to contemplate.

But, as they used to say long ago, the jig is up, and, if the movement is successful, it may result in the overthrow of other governments in the region, mostly American client states, in addition to the defeat of Zionism. Accordingly, a substantial escalation of violence, including a military conflict on the scale of the 2003 invasion of Iraq or greater, is not out of the question. Of course, as to the movement itself, we shouldn't romanticize. As in any such situation, there are many fissures amongst the Palestinians and those who support them around the world. The Palestinians live in conditions of severe poverty and state repression, represented by governments in the West Bank and Gaza insistent upon brokering away their revolutionary potential in return for the preservation of a dominant position in society. But, yesterday, the Palestinians refused to let any of that deter them, as they have been doing to a lesser, unpublicized degree for quite awhile. For those of us who advocated for them from the safe distance of utopianism, we will have to accept that they are likely to succeed much sooner than we ever anticipated, if we ever believed that they would at all. And, for some of us, this will be discomforting, as we will now have to address the future of Palestine as a real world transformation, with all of the messiness that it will invariably entail. Just as there were civil rights advocates who championed the rights of African Americans, but subsequently had problems when African Americans subsequently exercised their independent power and judgment, we can expect something similar here.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Gaza, Lebanon, Palestine, Zionism

From Haaretz:

Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces General Sami Anan warned Israel against interfering with Egypt's plan to open the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on a permanent basis, saying it was not a matter of Israel's concern, Army Radio reported on Saturday.

Egypt announced this week that it intended to permanently open the border crossing with Gaza within the next few days.

Palestinians take part in a protest at the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, April 27, 2011.

The announcement indicates a significant change in the policy on Gaza, which before Egypt's uprising, was operated in conjunction with Israel. The opening of Rafah will allow the flow of people and goods in and out of Gaza without Israeli permission or supervision, which has not been the case up until now.

Obviously, if this happens, it is a significant development. And, then there are the spontaneous actions of Egyptians to impair the delivery of Egyptian natural gas to Israel through the Sinai, as demonstrated by this explosion along the pipeline a few days ago. As explained by Yolande Knell of the BBC:

Egypt's agreement to supply gas to Israel, built on the 1979 peace accord, has long been controversial. A former energy minister and other officials face trial for allegedly agreeing below market prices. Recent protests outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo called for supplies to be cut.

Last week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil el-Araby told the BBC that gas exports are going on. Now though, it appears saboteurs have had their way.

Opposition to the exports is also reportedly related to Bedouin resentment over poor treatment in the area traversed by the pipeline as well. One of the interesting things that has happened since the removal of Mubarak has been increased public criticism of Israel, even by those associated with the military leadership, as evidenced here. One gets the impression that the military is attempting to preserve its economic preeminence within Egypt by cosmetically aligning itself with public displeasure with Israel. But, if so, the announcement of the opening of the Rafah crossing is an indication that Egyptians are insistent upon more concrete action. Protests at the Israeli embassy in Cairo are becoming an ongoing feature of Egyptian political activity, after being consistently suppressed by Mubarak, violently, if necessary.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Zionism

UPDATE 1: The Arabist has another account of the attack. Interestingly, the person who provided it also says that a sit-in at the Israeli embassy was attacked brutally. David Dietz has also provided a description of the attack that confirms that it appears to have been prompted by the participation of Egyptian military officers in the protest:

The desperation turned to delight when 15 army officers joined one of the many stages set up around the square to protest against their own organization.

A few hours later delight turned to sheer panic. Not long after the 15 rogue army officers took the podium, the military moved in to arrest the defectors.

Worried for their safety the crowd sprang to action. Linked arm-to-arm the protesters formed a human wall to defend their compatriots. Human might however was no match for the guns and tasers of the army.

Shortly after nightfall the military encircled Tahrir Square systematically dispersing the crowd. According to several protesters who acted more like bodyguards, they where able to save six of the soldiers. The others were not as lucky. They were captured and taken away, their fate unknown.

His account is worth reading in its entirely for the graphic presentation of the violence of the assault.

INITIAL POST: Egyptian troops attack hundreds of protesters in Tahrir Square:

The military appears to have responded to a large protest where people criticized military control of the country:

Demonstrators burned cars and barricaded themselves with barbed wire inside a central Cairo square demanding the resignation of the military's head after troops violently dispersed an overnight protest killing one and injuring 71.

Hundreds of soldiers beat protesters with clubs and fired into the air in the pre-dawn raid on Cairo's central Tahrir Square in a sign of the rising tensions between Egypt's ruling military and protesters.

Armed with sticks and other makeshift weapons, the protesters vowed not to leave until the defense minister, the titular head of state, has resigned.

The soldiers swept into the square around 3 a.m. and waded into a tent camp in the center where protesters had formed a human cordon to protect several army officers who had joined their demonstration in defiance of their superiors.

An article just posted by the Guardian provides a provocative first person account:

Tamer el-Said, an Egyptian film-maker who was in the square, described what happened.

There was a huge demonstration that started at about 11 o'clock [on Friday]. There were some military officers who joined it who were dissatisfied with what the supreme military council was doing. There were between 15 and 20 of them. Obviously it was really dangerous for them so the other protesters decided that they would protect them from being arrested by the military police.

At about 11 o'clock last night the security forces, who had surrounded the square, tried to enter it to try and catch these soldiers but the protesters would not allow them to come in. There were army and police and special forces. At 3 o'clock they attacked the square. They were firing bullets in the air: at first rubber bullets and then live rounds. They pushed all the demonstrators out of the square. Then they started to chase the protesters into the surrounding streets and the downtown area using tear gas and bullets. I have a friend who was there who said there was continuous shooting.

The huge turnout in the square has followed growing fears in some sections of Egyptian society that the army has hijacked the revolution.

According to eyewitnesses, the raid was led by a mixture of army, police and internal security forces in 20-30 military trucks. They said the firing continued in the square until about 5.30am.

A splinter group of protesters broke away and marched to the Israeli embassy, demanding the closure of the embassy in support of the Palestinians:

Feeling against Zionism appear to be getting more and more intense, as one of the presidential candidates, El Baradei, expressed the intention to explore ways of militarily supporting the people of Gaza earlier in the week. According to As'ad Abukhalil:

The lousy military council is digging its own grave. It is in a terrible bind: they can only control the people by resorting to Mubarak's style repression, but they know they cant: they minute they emulate Mubarak rule, they will go down. Tantawi is already a chant in Tahrir square. The worst for Arab regimes, and Israel, is yet to come. Keep watching.

The US, Saudi and Israeli response will, of course, be escalation. Personally, I believe that we are entering a very dangerous period. The US and the Saudis now appear willing to export the violence and suppression on display in Libya and Bahrain to Egypt, with the military council as its instrument. Of course, suppression, on the Bahrain model, is the preferred option, but, if necessary, the transformation of Egypt into a failed state, with perpetual violence and unrest, if not civil war, as in Libya, is acceptable. They will rely upon their historic method of manipulating sectarian conflict, as they have done in Lebanon and Iraq, and, now, Bahrain. The ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods in Bahrain has already begun. The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia rightly perceive the revolutionary movement throughout North Africa and the Middle East as a mortal peril to their continued hegemony.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Neoliberalism, Palestine, YouTube

UPDATE 3: In this New York Times article from yesterday, we get an insight into the class conflict in Bahrain:

The days of protest and repression have mostly been about the Shiites speaking up and the Sunnis cracking down. But on Monday night, in the wealthy neighborhood of Juffair, tens of thousands of pro-government demonstrators poured into Al Fateh Grand Mosque to express their support for the embattled king.

The pro-government crowd borrowed some of the opposition’s slogans, including no Sunni, no Shia, only Bahraini. But that was where the call for unity started and ended.

This was an affluent crowd, far different from the mostly low-income Shiites who took to the streets to demand a constitutional monarchy, an elected government and a representative Parliament. The air was scented with perfume, and people drove expensive cars. In a visceral demonstration of the distance between Sunni and Shiite, the crowd cheered a police helicopter that swooped low, a symbol of the heavy-handed tactics that have been used to intimidate the Shiites.

We love King Hamad and we hate chaos, said Hannan al-Abdallah, 22, as she joined the pro-government rally. This is our country and we’re looking after it.

Ali al-Yaffi, 29, drove to the pro-government demonstration with friends in his shiny white sport utility vehicle. He was angry and distrustful. The democracy they have been asking for is already here, he said. But the Shias, they have their ayatollahs, and whatever they say, they will run and do it. If they tell them to burn a house, they will. I think they have a clear intention to disrupt this country.

In their hostility towards the poorer Shia, the Bahraini Sunnis remind me of the hatred that the people of the wealthier neighborhoods of Caracas have for the poorer, suburbio supporters of Hugo Chavez.

UPDATE 2: There was a strike of 3,000 construction workers in Saudi Arabia last week:

The police force couldn’t control the workers. When a police officer told the workers that they need to return to their accommodation and their issue will be solved later, the workers replied by throwing stones at him, and they managed to frighten all the police officers around him. The stones missed the police officer, but unfortunately it did not miss his car! It was the first time in my life I saw a police car smashed in Saudi Arabia.

Hat tip to t at Pink Scare.

UPDATE 1: Starting with Pinochet in Chile in the 1970s, neoliberalism has always flourished in countries with dictatorial regimes, as most recently demonstrated in North Africa and the Middle East:

Less than two weeks ago, the International Monetary Fund’s executive board, its highest authority, assessed a North African country’s economy and commended its government for its ambitious reform agenda. The I.M.F. also welcomed its strong macroeconomic performance and the progress on enhancing the role of the private sector, and encouraged the authorities to continue on that promising path.

By unfortunate timing, that country was Libya. The fund’s mission to Tripoli had somehow omitted to check whether the ambitious reform agenda was based on any kind of popular support.

Libya is not an isolated case. And the I.M.F. doesn’t look good after it gave glowing reviews to many of the countries shaken by popular revolts in recent weeks. Tunisia was hailed last September for its wide-ranging structural reforms and prudent macroeconomic management.

Bahrain was credited in December with a favorable near-term outlook after the economy managed the global crisis well. Algeria’s prudent macroeconomic policies helped it to build a sound financial position with a very low level of debt. And in Cairo, the I.M.F. directors last April praised the authorities’ response to the crisis as well as their sound macroeconomic management.

Of course, only reporters with the New York Times, in this instance Pierre Briancon and John Foley, could present this information with the requisite credulity. According to them, the IMF somehow failed to determine if Libya's reform agenda was based on any kind of popular support. They fail to acknowledge the obvious, that IMF policies of privatization and structural adjustment have never been based upon popular support, they have always been proposed by transnational economic elites for their benefit, so why should it be any different in Libya? If there had been popular support for these policies, the IMF might well have considered such support as a negative indication that they were not being implemented with sufficient rigor.

INITIAL POST: An excerpt from an excellent article by Walter Armbrust about the neoliberal structure of Egyptian society that remains in place despite the departure of Mubarak:

Two observations about Egypt’s history as a neoliberal state are in order. First, Mubarak’s Egypt was considered to be at the forefront of instituting neoliberal policies in the Middle East (not un-coincidentally, so was Ben Ali’s Tunisia). Secondly, the reality of Egypt’s political economy during the Mubarak era was very different than the rhetoric, as was the case in every other neoliberal state from Chile to Indonesia. Political scientist Timothy Mitchell published a revealing essay about Egypt’s brand of neoliberalism in Rule of Experts (the chapter titled Dreamland — named after a housing development built by Ahmad Bahgat, one of the Mubarak cronies now discredited by the fall of the regime; a version of this was also published in Merip). The gist of Mitchell’s portrait of Egyptian neoliberalism was that while Egypt was lauded by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund as a beacon of free-market success, the standard tools for measuring economies gave a grossly inadequate picture of the Egyptian economy. In reality the unfettering of markets and agenda of privatization were applied unevenly at best. The only people for whom Egyptian neoliberalism worked by the book were the most vulnerable members of society, and their experience with neoliberalism was not a pretty picture. Organized labor was fiercely suppressed. The public education and the health care systems were gutted by a combination of neglect and privatization. Much of the population suffered stagnant or falling wages relative to inflation. Official unemployment was estimated at approximately 9.4% last year (and much higher for the youth who spearheaded the January 25th Revolution), and about 20% of the population is said to live below a poverty line defined as $2 per day per person.

For the wealthy, the rules were very different. Egypt did not so much shrink its public sector, as neoliberal doctrine would have it, as it reallocated public resources for the benefit of a small and already affluent elite. Privatization provided windfalls for politically well-connected individuals who could purchase state-owned assets for much less than their market value, or monopolize rents from such diverse sources as tourism and foreign aid. Huge proportions of the profits made by companies that supplied basic construction materials like steel and cement came from government contracts, a proportion of which in turn were related to aid from foreign governments. Most importantly, the very limited function for the state recommended by neoliberal doctrine in the abstract was turned on its head in reality. In Mubarak’s Egypt business and government were so tightly intertwined that it was often difficult for an outside observer to tease them apart. Since political connections were the surest route to astronomical profits, businessmen had powerful incentives to buy political office in the phony elections run by the ruling National Democratic Party. Whatever competition there was for seats in the Peoples’ Assembly and Consultative Council took place mainly within the NDP. Non-NDP representation in parliament by opposition parties was strictly a matter of the political calculations made for a given elections: let in a few independent candidates known to be affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood in 2005 (and set off tremors of fear in Washington); dictate total NDP domination in 2010 (and clear the path for an expected new round of distributing public assets to private investors).

No wonder the Egyptian military is threatening to suppress strikes that disrupt the economy.

Hat tip to the Angry Arab.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, IMF, Neoliberalism, Poverty

As mentioned by Hossam el-Hamalawy the other day, the Egyptian working class labors under harsh conditions, as indicated by these two people interviewed by Guardian reporter Chris McGreal the other day:

Striking workers in the state-owned Cairo transport authority took to the streets to demand a pay increase and benefits such as free hospital care.

Among them was Ahmed Said, who has worked as a driver for the company for 18 years. His take-home pay is about £60 a month, of which more than half goes on rent. He feeds a family of five on the rest.

There is just enough money for food. We have meat once a week but not all weeks. Some days we do not eat dinner. If a child goes to the hospital and we have to pay for that, then me and my wife do not have a meal, he said. This is wrong. How can Mubarak be worth so much and we have so little?

He said that after years of staying silent out of fear of the pervasive secret police under Mubarak's rule, he would not now be intimidated. Before, we had to be careful. We would be arrested. But now we can talk. We need food. We have been on strike four days. The army cannot stop us, he said.

Another transport worker, Hatem Saleh, waved a wage slip that showed he earned E£238 (£25) in basic pay last month, with E£225 (£24) in overtime and bonuses. Again, more than half goes on rent.

Saleh entered the flat he shares with his wife and two teenage daughters, and opened the fridge.

We have a big fridge, but look, it is empty. What is there? Some vegetables. Not enough vegetables for more than two days. We have some bread. We have not had meat in two weeks because we had to pay some money for my daughter's school. If we buy clothes, we eat less. How can this be when I have worked for nearly 20 years? he said.

Note that Said and Saleh are probably considered relatively privileged in terms of their employment, as both have held their jobs for many years. If conditions for them are this bad, one can only imagine what life is like for the millions of other Egyptians relegated to the informal sector.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Neoliberalism, Unions

From Reuters:

The Higher Military Council will also ban meetings by labour unions or professional syndicates, effectively forbidding strikes, and tell all Egyptians to get back to work after the unrest that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

From Hossam el-Hamalawy yesterday:

From day 1 of our uprising, the working class has been taking part in the protests. Who do you think were the protesters in Mahalla, Suez and Kafr el-Dawwar for example? However, the workers were taking part as demonstratorsand not necessarily as workers– meaning, they were not moving independently. The govt had brought the economy to halt, not the protesters by its curfew, shutting down of banks and business. It was a capitalist strike, aiming at terrorizing the Egyptian people. Only when the govt tried to bring the country back to normal on Sunday that workers returned to their factories, discussed the current situation, and started to organize en masse, moving as a block.

The strikes waged by the workers this week were both economic and political fused together. In some of the locations the workers did not list the regime’s fall among their demands, but they used the same slogans as those protesting in Tahrir and in many cases, at least those I managed to learn about and I’m sure there are others, the workers put forward a list of political demands in solidarity with the revolution.

These workers are not going home anytime soon. They started strikes because they couldn’t feed their families anymore. They have been emboldened by Mubarak’s overthrowal, and cannot go back to their children and tell them the army has promised to bring them food and their rights in I don’t know how many months. Many of the strikers have already started raising additional demands of establishing free trade unions away from the corrupt, state backed Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions.

Today, I’ve already started receiving news that thousands of Public Transport workers are staging protests in el-Gabal el-Ahmar. The temporary workers at Helwan Steel Mills are also protesting. The Railway technicians continue to bring trains to halt. Thousands of el-Hawamdiya Sugar Factory are protesting and oil workers will start a strike tomorrow over economic demands and also to impeach Minister Sameh Fahmy and halt gas exports to Israel. And more reports are coming from other industrial centers.

Both the Reuters report and the Hossam el-Hamalawy post confirm something that As'ad Abukhalil stated in his guide as to how to anticipate future developments, which I recommend that you read in its entirety:

The role of the middle classes will recede on the streets, and that of peasants and workers will rise.

lenin has an excellent post on this subject as well.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Neoliberalism, Unions

UPDATE 1: Just got done watching President Obama's brief statement about the departure of Mubarak. His body language was in marked contrast to his words, conveying a sense of fatigue, of defeat, of the realization that he was not able to shape events in Egypt in a way consistent with perceived US interests.

INITIAL POST: For my perspective, accidentally written in advance, please consider reading my initial post from yesterday if you have not already done so. As I said, the removal of Mubarak, and the failure of the US to replace him with Suleiman, is a significant anti-imperialist event comparable to the people of Venezuela coming out into the streets in April 2002 to reverse the US supported coup against President Hugo Chavez. One of the most monstrous dictatorships in the world, one constructed with billions of US dollars to facilitate US hegemony in North Africa and the Middle East, has come to an end. We can only hope that the Egyptian people will soon act to end the economic strangulation of Gaza by opening the Rafah crossings. Perhaps, wikileaks, or some future variant thereof, will reveal the disparity between what the US government said in public and what it did in private in response to the Egyptian revolution.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Gaza, Neoliberalism, YouTube

UPDATE 9: From Al Jazeera:

3:14am Al Jazeera Arabic reports roughly 10,000 protesters are surrounding the state TV building in Cairo. The protesters are planning to spend the night there.

In China, protesters would have already cut off power to the building and attempted to burn it down. Whether that would be a good thing or not in this context, I really can't say.

UPDATE 8: At last, the White House issues a statement. Click on the link, and read it carefully, even though it is a bit verbose. No insistence that Mubarak and Suleiman resign, just a regurgitation of their objections as to how they are managing the process, with an insistence that the state of emergency be lifted. They are sticking with their policy that only Mubarak or Suleiman can administer an orderly transition.

UPDATE 7: From the BBC:

Robert Springborg, from the US Naval Postgraduate School tells Reuters Egypt's leaders are desperate men. He says: The speeches tonight are not intended to bring an end to the crisis in a peaceful way but to inflame the situation so there is justification for the imposition of direct military rule. They are risking not only the coherence of the military, but even indeed - and I use this term with advisement here - civil war.

All with the connivance of the US. There are now reports that Mubarak has delegated all meaningful powers to Suleiman, which is what the US has been urging for quite some time.

UPDATE 6: Oh, by the way, did you notice that President Obama's brief remarks were, as they were last week, entirely consistent with the content of Mubarak's speech? Meanwhile, there is this from Alexandria, according to the New York Times:

Ahmed Mekkawy, a blogger in Alexandria, reported on Twitter in the past 40 minutes:

Rage is extreme in Alexandria. Very large protest moving from Sidi Gaber to the sea. I can feel the hate in the air. Very worried about what will happen.

Protest stopped at the army command center in Sidi Gaber. People are sitting on the ground. The rage is going to the army now, calls to them to remove Hosny.

Chants: people want to execute the president.

North area military command center is getting totally surrounded by protesters.

Events may be proceeding a little faster than Bradley anticipated.

UPDATE 5: Crowds in Cairo and Alexandria are incensed. Suleiman speaks briefly on Egyptian state television, maligns Al Jazeera, insists upon the need to restore order and urges everyone to go home to revive the Egyptian economy. His remarks are a clear provocation, an incitement to violence so as to justify a crackdown and the continuation of the state of emergency. Is this why Secretary of State Clinton is so supportive of him?

John Bradley, the author of a recent book about the potential for revolutionary change witihn Egypt, Inside Egypt, speaks from Al Jazeera's London studio. He says that the revolution starts tomorrow, and, agreeing with Abukhalil, bluntly states: They are saying one thing in Washington and doing another. Indeed. The mendacity of the Obama administration is breathtaking. It will consign Egypt to an indeterminate period of out of control violence if necessary to prevent the success of the movement. Predictably, the US response to the speeches of Mubarak and Suleiman is silence.

UPDATE 4: Wow! Not even a lifting of the state of emergency! I've come around to accepting what As'ad Abukhalil has consistently said. The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia will not let him go. The speech sounded like it was written by Frank Wisner. The empire has dug in for the long haul. It looks like things are going to start getting really violent. As Abukhalil posted a few minutes ago, Mubarak is begging the protesters to storm the Bastille.

UPDATE 3: The celebration began about 5 hours ago after the reading of this statement on Egyptian state television:

Statement Number One, issued by the Higher Council of the Armed Forces,

Stemming from the armed forces' responsibility and committing to the protection of the people, safeguarding their interest and security, and keen on the safety of the homeland, the citizens and the achievements of the great Egyptian people, and asserting the legitimate rights of the people,

The Higher Council of the Armed Forces convened today, Thursday, 10 February 2011, to deliberate on the latest developments of the situation and decided to remain in continuous session to discuss what measures and arrangements could be taken to safeguard the homeland and its achievements, and the aspirations of the great Egyptian people.

Peace, mercy and the blessings of God.

UPDATE 2: From As'ad Abukhalil:

A most reliable source sent me this: D.C is striving to transfer the president's power to omri shlomo [`umar sulayman]. anan & most senior officers are against. only the commanders of the air force & republican guard are [in favor]. tantawi is in the middle. anan will win

Still waiting for the Mubarak speech. Is the US holding it up? Al Jazeera reported that the military council had agreed to conduct meetings in public. Was this the reason for it? To expose those in the Egyptian military unwilling to break with the US?

UPDATE 1: It is expected that Mubarak will give a televised speech within minutes at around noon Pacific time. Meanwhile, the crowds in central Cairo are enormous, filing the entirety of Tahrir Square and the streets that flow into it. Egyptian state television is now providing favorable, live coverage of the protests. Follow events live on Al Jazeera. There are also good live news blogs on the Al Jazeera, Guardian and BBC websites. And don't forget Issandr El-Amrani at The Arabist, Hossam el-Hamalawy at 3arabawy and Zeinobia at Egyptian Chronicles.

INITIAL POST: We are on the verge one of the most significant anti-imperialist international events since the people of Venezuela poured out into the streets in April 2002 to reverse the US supported coup against President Hugo Chavez. President Hosni Mubarak was our Ceaucescu, a man sufficiently merciless that he created one of the harshed, most hermetically sealed dictatorial societies in the world. His country was consistently one of the top 5 recipients of US financial assistance, much of it directed to the military and the security services. Despite knowledge that torture was so pervasive that middle class Egyptians refused to report thefts, the US never pressured the Mubarak regime to stop brutalizing its people. Instead, US officials frequently praised him as one of our most steadfast allies. For the US, as with the Israelis, the suppression of the Egyptian people was an essential requirement for their control over the region. As As'ad Abukhalil has said, the architects of the Camp David accords should be ashamed, as they facilitated the creation of a monstrous dictatorship.

It is unclear how the country will be governed in light of Mubarak's impending departure. Al Jazeera has reported that the army refused to let Mubarak transfer power to Vice President Suleiman. It appears that, for all practical purposes, the military has already seized power, as the Egyptian military council has met without Mubarak and issued a public statement to the effect that it has moved to safeguard the country without his authorization. Faced with strikes spreading throughout the country, and the likelihood that many of their troops would refuse to use force against protests and strikes, the military finally intervened irreversibly on the side of the people. For the State Department and the Pentagon, the refusal of the military to facilitate an orderly transition, despite having received billions of dollars of US assistance, must be a grave disappointment, a geopolitical catastrophe. While, as a leftist of an anti-authoritarian kind, I am ambivalent about the intensity of the nationalist dimensions of the movement, the celebratory waving of Egyptian flags throughout Tahrir Square is, paradoxically, nothing less than the rebirth of pan-Arabism, something that the US and Israel thought had been interred with Nasser.

No doubt, it is, as evildoer has said in a comment to Rojo's post, a bourgeois revolution, but even that degree of political transformation is a disaster for the US and its allies in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. The dictatorial suppression of the populace has been a necessary precondition for not only the so-called war on terror, but US hegemony since the late 1970s, when the US, Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David accords, and Zia was subsequently assassinated in Pakistan in the following decade after crossing Henry Kissinger. It cannot tolerate the slightest expression of political autonomy. Policies like renditions, the economic strangulation of Gaza and drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan require the subjugation of the peoples of these regions. As a consequence, the US accepted the creation of kleptocratic dictatorships from Morocco to Pakistan. In return for maintaining strict social controls on their people, the rulers of these countries were allowed to become obscenely wealthy. The perils associated with such a mendacious foreign policy have finally come home to roost.

Of course, the Egyptian military has become economically powerful because of their relationship to President Mubarak. Accordingly, it has also intervened to preserve its economic privileges. For that reason, we can expect an intensification of class conflict within Egypt in the aftermath of Mubarak's departure. Labor activism laid the groundwork for challenging the dictatorship, and strike actions are likely to persist going forward. With the lifting of the state of emergency (which is now of limited utility, anyway), the way is now open for labor activists and leftists to openly organize within Egyptian society. Perhaps, there will be an effort by the military to stigmatize such activity in an anti-nationalist fashion, but, compared to the repression of Mubarak, such an effort would be less repressive. The most obvious, most immmediate consequence of Mubarak's departure will be an explosion of political activism among Egyptians. Maybe, President Chavez can be invited to Egypt soon to advise the military on how to most effectively manage this challenging political transition.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Neoliberalism, Unions

UPDATE 3: Hossam el-Hamalawy of 3arabawy describes the positive impact of the spreading strikes:

UPDATE 2: Hundreds of thousands of workers have gone on strike across Egypt today, and more are threatening to join the action tomorrow. Please consider reading this post from Global Voices in its entirety.

UPDATE 1: More on the the violent confrontations in Wadi al-Jadid, linked in the initial post, as well as Ismailiya, from Al Jazeera:

7:18pm The situation seems to have heated up in Ismailiya, where protesters stormed a government building and set fire to the governor's car. AFP reports that the protesters, angry that their requests for better housing had been ignored, came from a nearby slum where they'd lived in makeshift huts for 15 years. Police, notes the agency, have largely disappeared from the town since the protests started more than two weeks ago.

6:47pm There are reports of continuing crackdowns in Wadi al-Jadid.

Attributing the information to Egyptian security officials, Reuters reports that several protesters suffered gunshot wounds and one was killed when 3,000 protesters took to the streets.

AFP news agency reportes three dead and 100 are wounded in the clashes that have been going on for two days. The protesters, said the report, retaliated:

The furious mob responded by burning seven official buildings, including two police stations and a police barracks, a court house and the local headquarters of President Hosni Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party.

Social conflict in cities near the Suez Canal appears to be particularly intense given the violence in Ismailiya and nearby Port Said. In the first days of protest, there were particularly violent protests in Suez, another city near the canal.

INITIAL POST: Reports during the course of the day suggest that this phase of the political struggle in Egypt is approaching a conclusion:

There's a growing sense tonight that – with new cabinet appointees resigning, strikes multiplying, state media employees walking out and street protests maintaining their momentum – Egypt's government is fragmenting fast, particularly as their 'negotiations' strategy is rapidly unravelling.

As Wael Ghoneim said on CNN today:

This is no longer the time to negotiate, unfortunately. We went on the streets on the 25th and we wanted to negotiate, we wanted to talk to our government, we were knocking on the door. They decided to negotiate with us at night, with rubber bullets, with police sticks, with water hoses, with tear gas, and with arresting about 500 people. Thanks, we got the message. Now, when we escalated this and it became really big, they started listening to us.

Long time readers of this blog will find it humorous that Ghoneim cited the film V for Vendetta as a source of inspiration.

As you have probably guessed, negotiations between the regime and opposition figures are on the verge of collapse. Threatening the opposition with increased repression in order to avert a coup hasn't been received very well. Meanwhile, strikes are breaking out all over, so much so that neither the Guardian nor Hossam el-Hamalawy can keep up with them. By now, this New York Times report is surely outdated. And, there's also the fact there are still violent confrontations between the regime and the populace in cities away from Cairo, such as here and here.

Finally, this is this disturbing information about the response of the Egyptian military to the protests:

The Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian.

The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart. But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.

The Guardian has spoken to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organised campaign of intimidation. Human rights groups have documented the use of electric shocks on some of those held by the army.

Keep that in the back of your mind next time you hear about how the Pentagon is staying in close communication with its contacts in the Egyptian military. As with the attacks last week, this is just another manifestation of the process by which the US hopes that its allies in Egypt can sufficiently discipline Egyptians so as to induce them to accept a orderly transition administered by the people who have brutalized them for 30 years.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Egypt, Neoliberalism