Egypt may find that orderly transitions are sometimes disorderly | Michael White
January 31, 2011 No Comment
By virtue of its size, its sense of itself and its extraordinary past, Egypt is different. So it’s hard to know how things will work out Click here for live updates of the Egypt protests I saw Hosni Mubarak once. Tony Blair had dropped by for a brief chat on the way home from a flying visit to Iraq and they staged a joint quasi-press conference in one of the Egyptian president’s Cairo palaces. Built like a brick loo, Mubarak exuded that strutting, invulnerable sense of power that dictators acquire over time. Blair looked flimsy and transient by comparison, as indeed he was. That’s the point, isn’t it? The circumstances in which a politician acquires power often dictates the way he or she loses power. Seize it without legitimacy and it immediately becomes difficult to relinquish it. Get elected and it’s easier to be un-elected by party or the electorate. In fairness to Egypt, one of history’s great dramas, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who overthrew the monarchy (1952) and ejected the British from the Suez Canal zone, did offer to resign after his military’s humiliation in the 1967 Six Day War with Israel. The masses wouldn’t have it. That’s rare, but Colonel Nasser was a charismatic leader, whose failure to ease the poverty of those same masses – the Egyptian middle class he so despised did quite well – did not prevent 4 million people turning out for his funeral when he died of a heart attack three years later at 52. Would that Mubarak had acquired such a popularity, he must be thinking now when it is too late. The former fighter pilot turned air force commander was Egypt’s vice president when a 24-year-old army lieutenant called Khalid Islamibouli and co-conspirators gunned down Anwar Sadat at a military parade in October 1981. Mubarak inherited the presidency and ran the country as Nasser, Sadat and – before them – King Farouk, the British puppet, did. When pressure rose for reform, from intellectuals, from the middle class, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood or the long-suffering masses, he pulled the levers of repression. Enraged by Sadat’s peace deal with Egypt’s Islambouli acted in the name of an Islamist group, and among the 24 people tried for the murder was the blind cleric, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. He was accused (and acquitted) of issuing the fatwah which incited the young men to their crime. When he got out of jail – and torture – three years later the “blind sheikh” was expelled and ended up in Peshawar, organising the anti-Soviet mujahideen. Where is he now? Glad you asked. Being anti-Soviet allowed him into the US, few questions asked, and he used the opportunity to incite Muslims to acts of violence against their hosts. I have a vague notion that this sort of conduct breaches basic principles of Islam, but what do I know? When the Yanks wised up and got Arabic-speakers on his case, the first, failed attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre in 1993 was only one of the jihadi incitements on 78-year-old Rahman’s file. He ended up with a life sentence which he is currently serving in a medical facility at the Butner federal slammer in North Carolina. When – and if — Mubarak (even older at 82) heads for exile in Saudi Arabia, Rahman will probably raise a celebratory glass of water. I mention this because it may help explain the cack-handed caution of the Obama administration in response to the street violence since Tuesday, despite the reassuring presence as transitional-leader-on-offer, of Nobel peace prize winner, Mohamed ElBaradei, and the “it’s going to be OK” remarks of wholesome Egyptians with perfect English who can be heard on the BBC. We just don’t know how it will work out. By virtue of its size (80 million), sense of itself and its extraordinary past, Egypt is different. But there’s no guarantee that secular forces will prevail, let alone without a fresh wave of repression which snuffs out hope again, or that the Muslim Brotherhood – increasingly moderate and not behind the current unrest, we keep being told – would behave, let alone be able to control more radical forces. Hillary Clinton initially called Mubarak’s regime “stable”, but that line didn’t hold. America has pumped billions into Egypt as Israel’s key partner for peace and stability in the Middle East and – as usual – much of the money has been diverted from development to the military and the apparatus of a police state. We can blame the US for that – a reflex response – or we can say that Egyptians did it to fellow Egyptians in an independent Egypt, ignoring US advice in the process. It’s hard work with few rewards. After all, for all its billions worth of aid the US doesn’t have much clout with Israel – or other places – does it? So the new line from Washington this weekend speaks of “an orderly transition to democracy”, a formula which sidesteps the delicate matter of Mubarak’s survival while backing reformist elements which currently appear to have momentum. Thirty years is a long time without a decent general election and shake-up. As someone once remarked of Jacques Chirac’s long survival at the top of French politics: “How would you feel if Harold Wilson and Ted Heath were still in charge instead of Tony Blair?” At least Chirac had to fight elections. From my armchair this one could go either way, but will probably go towards a regime change, if not now then soon. Orderly transitions are sometimes disorderly and take time. Remember, it may be tempting to dispatch some unsavoury old tyrant off to international court at the Hague or string them up. But an escape route is often the smarter option. Thus Nasser and General Mohammed Neguib, his front man in 1952, overruled those demanding the execution of King Farouk, the lecherous 32-year-old fat boy whose family had ruled Egypt since the modernising Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769-1849, he was actually an Albanian) effectively expelled the decaying Ottoman empire in the wake of Napoleon’s defeat. With 65 trunks stuffed with loot Farouk and his famous fez departed for exile in Europe on his yacht. He died in Italy at 45 but not before his sister had married the Shah of Iran, the one expelled by the 1979 revolution. What goes round comes round again. One of Muhammad Ali’s projects (Turks prefer to think of him as Mehmet) was a greater Egypt embracing the upper Nile ie Sudan. Both eventually became British protectorates and Sudan is unravelling – via that peaceful referendum – this very month. Two particular factors are encouraging. It looks as if the White House is now supporting change – albeit the “orderly” kind — which may be concentrating minds inside the Egyptian military and corporate elite which will want to save as much as they can. Poland, the Philippines, Panama, Uganda, there’s always a tipping point where treason prospers and none dare call it treason. Second, in ElBaradei, the former UN weapons inspector, the reformists have a figurehead with serious standing in the wider outside world which makes it hard for Mubarak’s apparatus to imprison or kill – though I heard that they’d water-cannoned him at the weekend, just to make a point. He’s unlikely to be more than a temporary figure – international bureaucrats rarely have the skill set for politics . But the space provided by that immunity could matter, as it conspicuously did for Poland after the College of Cardinals in Rome – for selfish reasons of their own – elected a Polish Pope. The Russians couldn’t bump off John Paul II, though conspiracy theorists suggest they tried. As Mubarak urges his new prime minister to embark on reform while sending jet fighters screaming over Cairo, I heard suggestions from Egyptians over the weekend that Britain, Europe and – primarily, of course – the US are responsible for Egypt’s plight. Well, up to a point. European colonial regimes were often complacent and reactionary, though what came after has often proved worse, not least across north Africa, and it was the French who built the Suez canal – and couldn’t pack it in a suitcase to take home. Egypt was under the control of foreigners from the fall of the pharoahs – when Queen Cleopatra cut a deal with the rising power of Rome but was unlucky with her men – until Nasser’s coup. Historians say it fell so quickly to Islam in the 7th century precisely because the new religion came from anywhere but the hated Graeco-Roman regime in Byzantium. What goes round comes round again. That goes for WikiLeak’s contribution. In his Observer interview yesterday – ahead of the Guardian’s publication today of its account of the WikiLeaks affair – Julian Assange sees himself as making reality of the western doctrine of “universal connectivity” which extols the virtues of openness, but does not always practice what it preaches. As with the Tunisian popular coup, fingers crossed there too, Assange seems pleased to count the Egyptian upheaval as a win for his campaign. In the Observer he even concedes a “relative honesty and directness” in the US diplomatic cables that the Guardian and others published at the end of last year. Quite so. Let’s hope it all turns out for the best in Cairo and Alexandria this week. Egypt Middle East Michael White guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …In Egypt and Tunisia the will of the people is not a hollow cliche | Peter Hallward
January 31, 2011 No CommentFrom revolutionary France and America to modern north Africa, this is a concept that can topple governments The day after popular pressure forced Tunisia’s autocratic president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali from power on 14 January, Egypt’s government declared that it “respects the will of the Tunisian people”. So did the governments of Yemen and Iran, and so did the Arab League. Jordan’s government followed suit the next day. In his state of the union address on 25 January, Obama also celebrated Tunisia as a place “where the will of the people proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator”, before reminding the world that “the United States of America supports the democratic aspirations of all people”. Routine reference to “the will of the people” has long been one of the most formulaic turns of phrase in the modern political lexicon. The actual mobilisation of such a will, however, is less easily dismissed. Ongoing protests in Egypt – and in Algeria, and Yemen, and Jordan, indeed throughout the Middle East – may well oblige their governments to decide fairly soon whether they mean what they say. So may renewed mobilisations here in the UK and across Europe, against the latest phase in the long neoliberal assault on public services and welfare. Needless to say, the US and its far-flung clients have never hesitated – in Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Palestine, Haiti, Turkey – to undermine or crush those people whose wills did not dovetail with their own. But however facile its diplomatic invocations might seem, the “will of the people” remains in both theory and practice a profoundly transformative notion, and even a superficial consideration of its history should be enough to remind us of its revolutionary inflection. In the 18th century, no less than today, to affirm the rational will of the people as the source of sovereign power was to reject conceptions of politics premised on either the mutual exclusion of society and will (a politics determined by natural, historical or economic “necessity”) or on the primacy of another sort of will (the will of a monarch, a priest, an elite). Conceived in terms that frame it as both inclusive and decisive, Rousseau and the Jacobins forced evocation of a popular or “general” will to the divisive centre of modern politics. Reference to la volonté du peuple underlay the French revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens in 1789 and Robespierre’s constitution of 1793. Jefferson anticipated much of the subsequent history of his newly independent nation when he emphasised the struggle between “those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes”, and “those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them” and consider them the “safest depository of their rights”. Clarification and concentration of the people’s will would remain the guiding thread of Bolshevik strategy in the run-up to 1917, and Lenin’s main concern, early and late, was to achieve a militant and tenacious “unanimity of will” powerful enough to overcome the defences of an indefensible status quo. For Mao, likewise, the goal was to unify and intensify the people’s “will to fight” against their oppressors, before establishing a form of government that might most “fully express the will of all the revolutionary people”. Mao’s revolutionary contemporaries (Giap, Castro, Che Guevara, Mandela) adopted similarly militant and “universalisable” priorities. So did, in a different context, the more radical partisans of the US civil rights movement. The ANC summarised this whole line of thought when it insisted in its 1955 Freedom Charter that “no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people”, and posed as its first demand: “The people shall govern!” Around the same time, one of north Africa’s most influential writers and activists, Frantz Fanon , conceived of political practice along comparable lines. The whole of Fanon’s contribution to Algeria’s liberation struggle (1954-1962) is oriented by a popular “will to independence”, the “national will of the oppressed peoples”, their “will to break with exploitation and contempt”. The outcome of the Algerian revolution would be decided, he argued, by “the will of 12 million people; that is the only reality”. Rejecting all distraction through “negotiation” or “development”, Fanon insisted on decisive action here and now – the goal was not to reform an intolerable colonial situation over an interminable series of steps, but to abolish it. The “fundamental characteristic of the struggle of the Algerian people”, Fanon maintained, is suggested by their “refusal of progressive solutions, their contempt for the ‘stages’ that might break the revolutionary torrent, and induce them to abandon the unshakable will to take everything into their hands at once”. The fate of their revolution depends on the people’s “co-ordinated and conscious” participation in their ongoing self-emancipation. In today’s Tunisia and Egypt, as in 1950s Algeria, to affirm the will of the people is not to invoke an empty phrase. Will and people: rejecting the merely “formal” conceptions of democracy that disguise our status quo, an actively democratic politics will think one term through the other. A will of the people, on the one hand, must involve association and collective action, and will depend on a capacity to invent and preserve forms of inclusive assembly (through demonstrations, meetings, unions, parties, websites, networks). If an action is prescribed by popular will, on the other hand, then what’s at stake is a free or voluntary course of action, decided on the basis of informed and reasoned deliberation. Determination of the people’s will is a matter of popular participation and empowerment before it is a matter of representation, sanctioned authority or stability. Unlike mere “wish”, if it is to persist and prevail then a popular will must remain united in the face of its opponents, and find ways of overcoming their resistance to its aims. Whether it takes place in Tunis or Cairo , Caracas or Port-au-Prince, Athens or London, to ground political action in the will of the people is to reassert a collective capacity for deliberate and revolutionary transformation. As the people who are defying the governments of north Africa demonstrate, there are circumstances in which collective courage and enthusiasm can be more than a match for coercive state power. The cliche remains hollow until adopted in practice: “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” Egypt Tunisia Protest Algeria Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali France Middle East United States Peter Hallward guardian.co.uk
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Analysts believe the Middle East has now replaced the eurozone debt crisis as the primary concern in investors’ minds The political protests in Egypt have sent world stock markets falling and pushed up the oil price again. In London, the FTSE fell by 37 points to 0.6% to 5843 this morning, a seven-week low. International Airlines Group, formed by the merger of British Airways and Iberia, fell by nearly 4%, and holiday firms including Tui Travel and Thomas Cook also dropped. The Japanese stock market had earlier fallen by 1.18% to close at its lowest level in a month. There were also losses in Hong Kong and South Korea as the prospect of widespread disruption hit the markets. Gary Jenkins, head of fixed income research at Evolution Securities, believes the Middle East has now replaced the eurozone debt crisis as the primary concern in investors’ minds. The situation in Egypt, where thousands of protesters continue to demand an end to Hosni Mubarak’s rule , also prompted ratings agency Moody’s to cut its rating on the country by one notch to Ba2. Moody’s also maintained a negative outlook on Egypt, citing “the recent significant rise in political event risk”. Middle Eastern stock markets had already registered hefty falls when they traded yesterday. The Dubai Financial Market dropped by more than 4%, led by property companies and the port operator Dubai World. Ben Potter, research analyst at IG Markets, predicted that the current geopolitical uncertainties could send shares lower in the days ahead. “After Friday’s sharp drop in US equities, Asian traders had their turn to focus on the uneasy and tense situation unwinding in Egypt with protests continuing despite a cabinet reshuffle and additional army presence,” said Potter. The Dow Jones index had fallen 1.4% on Friday, with the Nasdaq down by almost 2.5%. Fears that the Suez Canal might be closed sent the cost of a barrel of Brent crude oil to a new 28-month high of $99.97. US crude also rose, to $90.80. If the canal was unavailable oil tankers would have to sail around Africa to transport oil from the Middle East to America – an extra 6,000 miles. Energy experts have argued that there is little chance of disruption to the crucial waterway linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. It is reportedly secured by armed guards – but this has not eliminated concerns over the region. “We cannot ignore the possibility that the chaos will spill over from Egypt into oil-producing nations,” Kenji Sekiguchi of Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management told Bloomberg. Market turmoil Global economy Stock markets Egypt Middle East Oil Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk
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The main headlines on Al Jazeera English, featuring the latest news and reports from around the world.
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Scores of prisoners, possibly in their thousands, have managed to escape from Egyptian jails in the chaos caused by mass protests across the country. Among those escaped prisoners are some Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston speaks to one of the escapees – a member of the Army of Islam. He is back at home in Gaza after spending three years at a prison in Cairo.
Continue reading …John McCain Advocates For Democracy in Egypt: "We Need To Be On The Right Side Of History"
January 31, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Sen. John McCain exemplifies the thin line that United States foreign policy must tread and the careful selective memory we must employ in terms of what’s happening in Egypt. Choosing to mimic the careful parsing earlier offered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mr. Sunday Talk Show Circuit voices support for the Egyptian people (not the Egyptian rioters, not Mubarek, not El Baradei, just the generic people of Egypt). But he also ignores the irony of both our myopic foreign policy and our own international reputation: I think one of the lessons here is that we need to be on the right side of history in these countries and we need to do a better job of emphasizing and arguing strenuously for human rights. I understand how important — and I hope we all understand how important Egypt is as an ally, as a center of culture. And one out of every four Arabs in the Middle East live in Egypt and how important they are. But it was clear for a long time that the kind of repressive regime sooner or — that Mubarak controls, sooner or later there is going to be great difficulties. Yes, let’s talk about the importance of human rights when the Egyptians know only too well our killing of hundreds of thousands Iraqi civilians and displacement of a million more; our stealth war in Pakistan, killing wedding parties with drone strikes; our refusal to even count how many Afghan casualties we’re responsible for; our blind eye to the human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Yemen, etc. Especially since we’ve been using the repressive aspect of Egypt’s government to do our dirty work with rendition and torture , something that is not unknown to the general citizenry. Yup, we’re really on the right side of history for this one. It’s also hard for the Egyptian people to forget that we’ve enabled that repressive regime for 30 years, as Crowley points out: CROWLEY: And — but we are talking about other U.S. allies in the area who we have joined forces with and they are not exactly democracies — Jordan, Saudi Arabia, places like that. Now what? I mean, on Capitol Hill you all have the ability to cut aid to these countries, but Egypt is number two in foreign aid after Israel. At least McCain is making lip service to aspiring to a free and fair democracy for Egypt. John Bolton and Rep. Thaddeus McCotter don’t even pretend to care about it, demanding that the US unconditionally support Mubarak. Transcripts below the fold CROWLEY: Joining me now in Washington, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona. We are at the point in foreign policy where our values are just running headlong into our strategic interests. I asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who do we back? Do we back Mubarak or do we back the people on the street. She said, well, we back the Egyptian people which was a little different to her from the people on the street. Is it time to cut him loose? MCCAIN: Not cut him loose, but also I think one of the lessons here is that we need to be on the right side of history in these countries and we need to do a better job of emphasizing and arguing strenuously for human rights. I understand how important — and I hope we all understand how important Egypt is as an ally, as a center of culture. And one out of every four Arabs in the Middle East live in Egypt and how important they are. But it was clear for a long time that the kind of repressive regime sooner or — that Mubarak controls, sooner or later there is going to be great difficulties. Good news I think is that the army is playing a very constructive role. So I think what we need to do now is to lay out a plan for Mubarak to lift the state of emergency, announce that elections — free and fair — will be held in September, which were already planned, allow an open and free democratic process, which I think we could have some confidence if it was an open process that you would see a free and fair election and that we make sure that the aspirations of the Egyptian people are realized finally. And it’s fraught with danger, as you earlier guessed: the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian example and others, but there is also a good chance for a real functioning democracy and arguably the most important nation in the middle east. CROWLEY: But, you know, for 30 years Republican and Democratic presidents have publicly at times, most privately as we saw in some of those leaked WikiLeak cables from the diplomatic cables, they said, you have to do something here, you can’t be an authoritarian. It didn’t work. It was 30 years of — I mean, he’d do something and we’d say, okay, thanks and then we’d sort of retreat. So what else could have been done? Isn’t he too important to us? MCCAIN: Madeleine Albright and I sent a letter before the last election saying allow observers in. Russ Feingold and I sponsored a resolution calling for more respected human rights. You can’t — you cannot over — isn’t it a lesson of history you cannot have autocratic, regimes last forever. And the longer they last, the more explosive the results. And that’s a lesson we have to learn that all of these rights that individuals have is not confined to the United States of America and our allies. And so I still think we have a real opportunity to see a democratic transition. And by the way, could I also mention, Jordan is a very serious situation. Yemen is a country that’s fraught with more problems than we can take the time to describe on this program. Even as far away as Libya. So this is a very critical time. MCCAIN: What happens in Egypt will directly and dramatically effect what happens in these other countries. There is a real awakening going on. CROWLEY: And — but we are talking about other U.S. allies in the area who we have joined forces with and they are not exactly democracies — Jordan, Saudi Arabia, places like that. Now what? I mean, on Capitol Hill you all have the ability to cut aid to these countries, but Egypt is number two in foreign aid after Israel. MCCAIN: Yes. And I think that we have to say that everything is on the table and encourage and help and assist, you know, a process that leads to a free and fair election. I have confidence in the Egyptian people that they are not going to elect an extremist. They are not going to allow an extremist group to hijack their country and that can be prevented if we have a fair, open process beginning now between now and September, you could have the rise of political parties. You could have a real democratic process that could be celebrated throughout the region and a model for the rest of the region. The other is, of course is hang on, more demonstrations. The army turns one way — there is all kinds of bad scenarios here and really only one good one. But I would say I think the president’s statement was correct. Now we need to take it a step further and we’ve got to be on the right side of history here. CROWLEY: I guess the problem is that if we have been at them for 30 years to change, I wonder why they would listen to us now — why Mubarak would listen to us now? MCCAIN: Well, obviously he’s in an extremist position. The army is now the critical institution. The police, as we all know, have disappeared. It’s the only real stabilizing force in the country right now. Fortunately, we have had close relations with the Egyptian military. There are a lot of very good, strong people there. So — and also I think that President Mubarak, he knows what’s going on in his own country. It’s up to the United States to be a helpful, assisting but insisting partner. And by the way, we cannot afford a Tiananmen Square in Cairo. CROWLEY: And that’s the question, I guess. When you look at these streets throughout Egypt, not just in Cairo, do you see a group willing to wait until September to get rid of Hosni Mubarak? MCCAIN: I think that the group — and I don’t know the sentiment on the street, but it seems to me logic if Mubarak said, I’m not going to run again. I am turning over this government to a caretaker that you can trust probably with the army involved, they are not going to have any further political aspirations and we’ll set up a process for a free, open, transparent election in September. I think you could do that. But this is a narrow window of opportunity. The longer the unrest exists, the more likely it is to become extreme. CROWLEY: Tell me how you think the president has done so far. Sounds like you think he’s done pretty well. And what do you want him to do next? MCCAIN: I think the president should get a little bit more out ahead. I think his statement that he made day before yesterday was good. CROWLEY: How? Ahead of… MCCAIN: Well, I think in other words lay out a scenario of what we think the Egyptian people should have every right to expect, the kind that I just described. The past performance of this administration hasn’t been great. They cut off some of the money for democratization, et cetera. But we can review that at a later time. The important thing is I think the president made the right statement. I think that the secretary of state made a good presentation to you. I just want to see her go a little bit further. And let’s get out in front on this issue on behalf of the things we have always stood for and believed in. And every time we have been on the right side of history it’s usually turned out okay. CROWLEY: What is your — I asked Negroponte and Walker before you, what do you fear the most watching this? Because there is so much uncertainty right now that we really don’t know which way it’s going to go. MCCAIN: My great fear is, obviously, a radical Islamic extremist — the Iran scenario versus the Philippines or other scenario. That’s all of our greatest fear, but the longer this unrest, the more likely the radicals see openings to take power — the Lenin scenario. So that’s my greatest fear. My second greatest fear, of course, started in Tunisia. Egypt, we see problems in Yemen; Jordan, our dearest, most important — very important ally. This could be a really seminal moment in history of the Middle East. And the question is, is does that turn out good or does it turn out to the advantage of radical Islamic extremism? And I don’t know the answer yet. CROWLEY: I don’t know either… MCCAIN: Egypt will be key though. CROWLEY: We will have you back when the answers become clearer. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
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Click here to view this media Is anyone else as tired of this latest talking points by Republicans that continually goes unchallenged by the media — spending cuts are going to create jobs. John Boehner claims he’s got hundreds of economists who agree with him after Chris Wallace points out that a lot of economists don’t agree with him, but of course Wallace didn’t bother to ask him what some of their names were. How about we fix our trade laws and quit rewarding companies for outsourcing American jobs? Heaven forbid that never seems to be part of the conversation from our politicians when the topic of jobs comes up. Nicole: Anyone wish that Wallace the Lesser would have asked him for just one or two of the names of those “200 economists” that Boehner insisted agree with this ridiculous meme? It’s one that Rep. Robert Hurt (R-VA05) also repeated in a widely-disseminated op-ed this weekend : As the failed trillion dollar stimulus proved, increased government spending did not create the millions of jobs promised and only added to our record-breaking deficits and over $14 trillion in debt. The new projection that this year’s deficit will reach nearly $1.5 million only reinforces the need to cut up Washington’s credit cards once and for all. That is why I have been proud to support many measures that have come before the House that will rein in out of control government spending and help put Central and Southside Virginia on a true path towards a long-lasting economy recovery. Those measures include voting to cut non-security discretionary government spending back to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels and voting to repeal the budget-busting government takeover of health care, cutting $2.6 trillion over ten years and reducing the deficit by $700 billion. The House has also voted to cut Congressional budgets, to end the wasteful mandatory printing of bills, and to end the taxpayer funding of presidential election campaigns and party conventions, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Failed stimulus? Are we in the midst of another Great Depression? No? Wasn’t that the purpose of the stimulus, to pull us back from the brink? The only reason it didn’t do better were all the stupid concessions added to get the Republicans to sign off on it. And as far as jobs are concerned, the unemployment rate is still bleak, but to ignore that the Obama administration — even with all the obstruction placed before them by the Republican Party — managed to create more jobs in 2010 than Bush did in all eight years of his term put together is fundamentally disinforming the public. But that’s the plan for the GOP. If you get enough right wing people on traditional media and right wing blogs repeating ad nauseam that the stimulus didn’t work, well, then no one challenges these failed ideas that Boehner advocates. And it may backfire on them in the end : Obama felt the need to push health reform while at the height of his influence. GOP activists may feel the same way about spending. They should be wary. This isn’t to say that some immediate well-targeted spending reductions are a bad idea. They are not. But the mindless across-the-board cuts (excluding, of course, defense, veterans benefits, homeland security, and Medicare), the GOP has in mind seem both clumsy and counterproductive in today’s economy. Just as Democrats paid a steep price for pursuing health reform at a time of high unemployment, so may Republicans pay dearly if they try to rapidly shrink government while the economy remains weak. Ideological purity is one thing. But it rarely trumps bad timing.
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Click here to view this media (h/t David ) Nobel Laureate and former IAEA head Mohammed El-Baradei spoke to throngs in Egypt’s Tahrir Square earlier today, calling for Hosni Mubarak to step down as President of Egypt. “Today, I have come to share with you the most beautiful day for Egypt,” he told the demonstrators. “Today, I look into the eyes of each and every one of you. Each of us is a different Egyptian. Today, we are proud of Egyptians.” “We have restored our rights, restored our freedoms, and what we have begun cannot be reversed,” ElBaradei continued. “And as we mentioned before, we have a key demand, and that’s for the regime to step down, and to start a new era,” he concluded. El Baradei returned to Egypt on January 25th, the same day protests began against the Egyptian government, and has been under house arrest since January 26th. Today was the first day he was seen in public. Al Jazeera reports : The protesters in Cairo, joined by hundreds of judges, had collected again in Tahrir Square in the afternoon to demand the resignation of Hosni Mubarak. Al Jazeera’s correspondent, reporting from the scene, said that demonstrators confronted a fire truck, at which point army troops fired into the air in a bid to disperse them. He said the protesters did not move back, and a tank commander then ordered the fire truck to leave. When the truck moved away from the square, the thousands of protesters erupted into applause and climbed onto the tank in celebration, hugging soldiers. Mubarak’s regime is crumbling as it continues to lose support from the West. In a series of telephone calls this morning, President Obama called for an orderly transition from the Mubarak regime to a government elected through free and fair elections. This is not to say Mubarak is without support. The Saudi government has condemned the protests as being the work of “infiltrators”. However, the Saudi government has condemned the protests, saying many of them were “infiltrators” who seek to destabilise their country. King Abdullah called Mubarak and, according to the Saudi Press Agency, “was reassured” about the situation in Egypt. “During the call, the king said, ‘Egypt is a country of Arabism and Islam. No Arab and Muslim human being can bear that some infiltrators, in the name of freedom of expression, have infiltrated into the brotherly people of Egypt, to destabilise its security and stability and they have been exploited to spew out their hatred in destruction, intimidation, burning, looting and inciting a malicious sedition ,’” the news agency said. Saudi Arabia “strongly condemns” the protest, it said. Despite the measured calls for reform, beginning with free and fair elections, it’s clear that the people of Egypt are fighting for an end to the Mubarak regime, starting now. Ayman Nour, leader of the El-Ghad Liberal Party spoke on Al-Jazeera earlier today. These quotes from Nour from the Twitter stream of Sultan Al Qassemi , columnist for The National, who has been sending updates constantly since the protests began. “We have formed an opposition committee for change that involves ten members, represented by El Baradei.” “Today was the first session of the People’s Popular Parliament which includes El Baradei, Mohammed El Beltaji, myself..” “(other members) Justice Mahmoud El Khodairi, George Ishaq, Mr Abu Al Ezz, it is a ten member committee.” “Our key demand is for Mubarak to step down, we will negotiate with the army, we will negotiate with other opposition members We are not negotiating with Mubarak since our main demand is for him to step down. We will negotiate with the army. “We are not asking for an (army) coup. We are asking the army to take the side of the people not the side of the tyrant” “This govt has not communicated with the opposition party until the last minute, they will be forced to negotiate with us” This committee will have the duty to manage the crisis. We will negotiate in order to improve the security conditions in the country” We want all the resolutions issued by Mubarak since January to be revoked & invalidated” (doesn’t say which date exactly). The army’s duty is to defend the country not the oppressor who has been ruling by an iron fist. All the rallies ask him to step down. We ask the army not to play a political role. We ask it to defend & safeguard the security, stability of the country.” “People were wreaking havoc, chaos & looting around including the undercover police personnel. We have arrested many of them..& found that they were carrying police identity cards. They were looting around, intimidating people.” Therefore people are now adamant about toppling of the regime. We will negotiate a peaceful exit for Mubarak for the sake of Egypt. Today will be a key day in these protests, because Mubarak has indicated the police will be on the streets tomorrow. If their previous behavior is any indication, there will be much more bloodshed than there has already.
Continue reading …It seems that western powers are slowly beginning to realise that the days of promoting freedom at home and subjugation abroad is becoming unsustainable. Statements proclaiming displeasure with the way their dictator friend in Cairo is treating his compatriots started to emanate from Washington, Berlin, Paris and London. Your report ( Polic e crackdown as protesters defy ban and take to streets , 27 January) quotes statements of world leaders. One word is common in all statements and reveals the west’s priority. We would be fooling ourselves if we think that word could be “democracy”. No, the word on the lips of all world leaders is “stability”. The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton – rather then criticising the Egyptian government – said that the country was stable and Egyptians had the right to protest. Expressing his “extreme concern”, the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, said that “a country’s stability is not endangered by granting civil rights”. And the British foreign secretary, William Hague, said: “Openness, transparency and political freedom are important tenets of stability.” They are not wrong, the dictionary meaning of “stable” includes phrases such as “perpetual”. We know Mubarak rules the country of the Pharaohs, but the long-suffering people of Egypt must be wondering what could be more perpetual for a world leader than 30 years? Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin London • Like a giant that’s just come back from slumber-land, Egypt is rubbing its eyes and stretching its muscles. This uprising will prove to be a turning point in Egypt’s history and that of the whole of the Middle East ( Report , 29 January). Egypt has been taken out of the power equation in the Arab-Israeli conflict; first by Sadat and then by Mubarak. He pursued policies that were consistent with the American project for the Middle East – complete alignment with Israeli interest and scant regard to the rights of the Palestinian people. The departure of Egypt from the progressive camp created an imbalance in the equilibrium of peace that allowed Israel to act with impunity and to leave the Palestinian Authority pleading for the famous “fig leaf”. Now that the nightmare is nearly over perhaps more level-headed policies will be pursued. Jamal Sheri London • More than 30 years since the Iranian revolution, western governments have still not learned that support for despots in the Middle East is a no-win policy. All the fine words about democracy are lost when the possibility of governments hostile to Israel being elected is faced. And yet we are repeatedly told that, as Israel is the only democracy in the region, it is worthy of our support. It is the only democracy because our governments make sure it is. Until the US abandons its policy of unconditional support for Israel there will be no genuine peace. Ian O’Neill Warlingham, Surrey • After Mubarak the biggest threat to Egyptian democracy is the US relationship with the Egyptian military. In 2010 the US gave Egypt $1.3bn in military aid, plus equipment. The Obama administration has requested similar sums for 2011. An Egyptian government that deviated from the present policy of good relations with Israel would not be given one cent. The failure of the Middle East process and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan guarantee that a freely elected Egyptian government would not have a similar foreign policy. After Mubarak, will the generals support a government whose policies threaten the loss of their aid package? It is doubtful. George D Lewis Brackley, Northamptonshire • After nearly 30 years of supporting Egypt’s Mubarak dynasty, suddenly the US and UK speak of democratic rights and reform. These are the voices of slave owners seeking to salvage influence when the end of tyranny is close. Egyptians are far beyond platitudes. Surely the western powers remain active behind the scenes, continuing to provide police and armed forces with weapons and counterinsurgency support. Bruce Lambert Stockholm, Sweden Egypt Middle East Israel Palestinian territories US foreign policy guardian.co.uk
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