US president says he told Hosni Mubarak to take ‘concrete steps’ – without violence – to advance the rights of the Egyptian public
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Robert Gibbs calls on President Hosni Mubarak to address ‘legitimate grievances’ of protesters Barack Obama has warned the Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak, that he must reform his regime and refrain from violence against protesters. But the US president’s message suggested that Washington will go on supporting its longstanding ally for now. Obama said that he spoke to Mubarak and asked him to turn “a moment of volatility in to a moment of promise,” after the Egyptian leader addressed his nation to say he would replace his government but not tolerate what he called a continued threat to the security of the country from protesters demanding his resignation. “When President Mubarak addressed the Egyptian people tonight he pledged a better democracy and greater economic opportunity,” said Obama. “I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words. To take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise. Violence will not address the grievances of the Egyptian people and suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. “What’s needed right now are concrete steps that advance the rights of the Egyptian people; a meaningful dialogue between the government and its citizens and a path of political change that leads to a future of greater freedom and greater opportunity and justice for the Egyptian people.” Obama demanded an end to violence against the protesters after a day of clashes on the streets of Cairo, Suez and other cities left 25 people dead and hundreds wounded. The US president also called on the Egyptian government to restore mobile phone and internet connections it has severed apparently in an attempt to hinder the protesters from organising. But Obama, while pressing for political reform, held back from a call for legitimate elections amid fears in the US and among its allies in other parts of the Middle East, including Israel and Jordan, of political power shifting to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, the White House appears to be looking for reform that will keep the present power structure in place. But it has added to the pressure on Mubarak by saying it is reviewing its $1.5bn (£946m) in annual aid to Egypt, most of it military. The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said continued assistance would in part depend on how the military behaves in the face of the protests. “We will be reviewing our assistance posture based on the outcome of events, now and in the coming days,” he said. Asked if the US government had condemned the placing of the opposition activist, Mohamed ElBaradei, under house arrest, Gibbs said: “Obviously, this goes in to our concern about expression, association and assembly.” Gibbs was also asked about reports that the British company, Vodafone, was responsible for cutting mobile phone access in Egypt on government orders. He said repeated a call for mobile and internet services to be restored but would not be drawn on whether the US would pressure Vodafone directly. “I don’t want to speak about the specific company because I want a little more information,” he said. Egypt US foreign policy Protest Middle East United States Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
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Egyptian army appears on streets of Cairo in attempt to quell uprising after curfew imposed by Hosni Mubarak is ignored
Continue reading …Mohamed ElBaradei must be free to give political leadership It was the day on which Egyptians lost their fear: of green armoured personnel carriers, which swayed and toppled before the unstoppable tide of human wrath; of plainclothes thugs who had plagued their lives; of the ruling party’s headquarters, from where elections were rigged and parliamentary seats managed – it too went up in flames; of military curfews; of the entire apparatus of a regime which had crushed all political dissent for nearly three decades. “Even if the dogs could speak,” one of the hundreds of thousands who flocked the streets told our reporter, “they would tell you that they are fed up with [Hosni] Mubarak. We have to have change.” This was a transformative day. The Arab world’s largest power had just lost control of the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Giza, Suez. The regime shut down the internet and unplugged the mobile phone network, a desperate move to stop the protests. It only propelled thousands more on to the streets. As darkness fell, shots were heard in Cairo and tanks were seen in Suez. And still the roar of protest continued. The revolution threatens not only Hosni Mubarak’s regime but the strategy the US and Britain have constructed in the Middle East. The hesitancy with which President Mubarak reacted last night was matched only by the perceptible shift in the emphasis of the statements by the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Only two days ago she said the US assessment was that the Egyptian government was stable and was looking for ways to respond to the legitimate interests of the Egyptian people. The primary importance of keeping a key Arab ally and Middle East interlocutor stable was also emphasised yesterday by Tony Blair, the Quartet’s envoy. Faced with the conflicting needs to keep an Arab partner of Israel afloat and to respond to demands for democratic reform, the US would choose the first every time. After yesterday’s events, Ms Clinton’s calls to lift internet controls and respond to the grievances of Egyptians became more strident. But it was too little, too late. Ms Clinton’s initial support for the Mubarak regime had not been lost on Egyptians battling for their freedoms. This is not to say that a post-Mubarak regime would tear up Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel or in the short term be any less cordial in its official relations with its neighbour. But in the longer term a government which reflected the popular will of the people of Egypt would surely open the country’s land border with Gaza and not block unity talks between Fatah and Hamas. If Mubarak’s regime fell, the Palestinian Authority would also lose a vital backer and ally. The domino that toppled Egypt could also topple less secure regimes like Jordan and Yemen, in which smaller but no less significant demonstrations were taking place yesterday. As Mr Mubarak last night imposed a nationwide curfew, the biggest question hung over what role, if any, the army would play. Compared to the interior ministry, it is popular. Protesters initially cheered the arrival of troops on the streets, in the hope that they would be protected from the police. This is the world’s 10th largest army, from which all four Egyptian presidents since the fall of the monarchy have come. It has formed the core of the elite that has sustained the president’s rule. Will it enforce an increasingly bloody security crackdown or act as an invaluable mediator between the people and a regime they are demanding must go? It is impossible to predict. What the president has to do now is to announce that he will release the people he has locked up. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog, who was briefly detained yesterday, must be free to give political leadership. Mr Mubarak must rule out a sixth term as president, and set up a council to rewrite the constitution. Even those measures might not be sufficient to stop the crowds. This revolt has a momentum of its own. Egypt Middle East Protest US foreign policy Foreign policy guardian.co.uk
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About 13% of high school biology teachers nationwide push creationism as the process by which humans came to exist on Earth, LiveScience reports. A Penn State survey found that the majority of bio teachers—about 60%—take a soft stance on the contentious issue, avoiding definitive statements about either creationism…
Continue reading …The FBI is looking for a man suspected of trying to incriminate Planned Parenthood in a scam that resembles the hidden-camera sting that took down ACORN , reports TPM Muckraker . Eight clinics across five states had similar experiences over a single week: a young man came in looking for treatment for…
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US secretary of state says Egyptian government needs to engage with the Egyptian people in implementing reforms
Continue reading …Arabs are rebelling not just against decrepit autocrats but the foreign backers who kept them in power We are witnessing the breakdown of the Arab state after decades of failure and mounting crises. The Arab political establishment has never looked weaker than it does today. It is either dying a protracted silent death, corroded from within, or collapsing in thunderous explosions. Tunisia, which toppled its dictator through popular revolution two weeks ago, is by no means an exception. The symptoms are evident throughout the region, from the accelerating movement of protest in Egypt , Algeria and Jordan, or the increasing polarisation of Lebanon’s sectarian politics, to the near-collapse of the state in Yemen and Sudan, and its complete disintegration in Somalia. The postcolonial Arab state has always carried deficiency as part of its genetic make-up. It had emerged as a substitute for the complex network of local elites, tribal chieftains and religious groupings through which the imperial authorities had maintained their grip; and its mission was the regulation of the indigenous population. This system of indirect control over the region, which assumed its present shape in the aftermath of the first world war, specifically required a “state” that is capable of keeping the local populations under check and maintaining “stability” at home, but too weak to disrupt foreign influence or disturb the regional balance of powers. The first generation of post-colonial Arab leaders, the likes of Egypt’s Nasser and Tunisia’s Bourguiba , had been able to soften the repressive nature of the Arab state by virtue of their personal charisma, and promises of progress. With their exit from the stage, and the entry of a new class of colourless autocrats and crude generals, the Arab state lost any cover of legitimacy, and became synonymous with violence and oppression. Much of the turmoil plaguing the region today is traceable to its diseased political order. Its degeneration has wrought havoc on the social sphere too. It has led to weaker national identities, and to individuals reverting to their narrower sectarian affiliations, sparking conflicts between Sunnis and Shias, Arabs and Kurds, Copts and Muslims. The result has been a growth in extremism, self-insulation, and what the French Lebanese novelist Amin Maalouf calls “killer identities”. Beyond the Arab state’s aura of physical might – embodied in its terrifying coercion apparatus – lurks a moral vulnerability and an abysmal dearth of popular allegiance. This paradox has been laid bare by protesters in Tunisia and is in the process of being exposed in Egypt today. These demonstrators are discovering the extreme frailty of the instruments of repression that have long crushed and suffocated them simultaneously, with the staggering power of their collective action on the street. The ousting of Tunisia’s tyrant after no more than a month of perpetual protests has handed millions of Arabs the magical key out of the prison of fear behind whose walls they have been incarcerated for decades. Events in Tunisia, Egypt and – to a lesser extent – Algeria are harbingers of a change long impeded and postponed. Were it not for the international will to maintain the worn out status quo, what happened in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s could have occurred in the Arab region too. Its decrepit autocrats were allowed to stagger on, shedding their old skins and riding on the wave of rampant economic liberalism, which benefited the narrow interests of ruling families and their associates alone, and thrust the rest into a bottomless pit of poverty and marginalisation. Arab rulers – aided by their foreign allies – have been able to steal over two decades of their societies’ political life. Today they face the hour of truth: either radically transform the structure of authoritarian Arab rule, or depart for ever. The trouble is that an entity that has made coercion its raison d’etre and violence its sole means of survival has left itself no option but to sink deeper in the quagmire of tyranny. And the trouble for its sponsors, who have made its preservation the cornerstone of their “stability” strategy in the region, is that they have now tied their own hands, with no choice but to blindly stick with their “friends” to the last breath. That is why those demonstrating on Arab streets today feel that they are not only rebelling against a band of corrupt local despots, but against their foreign backers too. And though we cannot predict the future, the likelihood is that just as Latin Americans had seen the fall of many Pinochets in the 1980s, Arabs will witness more Ben Alis before the close of this decade. Egypt Tunisia Protest Yemen Algeria Middle East Soumaya Ghannoushi guardian.co.uk
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