Hear the one about the Arab Spring in Saudi Arabia that nobody noticed?No, this is not a joke. With the Syrian regime, long out of favor with the West, we heard about the uprising from the beginning. In the case of Libya, run by the fiercely independent and eccentric Qaddafi, much of the world’s press credulously rushed to print every rumor about regime excesses.

In the case of the mother of all petro-allies, Saudi Arabia, however, protests have been met with near silence by the media and no expressions of sympathy for the dissenters by Western governments.

Here’s the background: On November 21, government troops opened fire on demonstrators in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, killing at least four and injuring more. Given the general paucity of demonstrations in a country where dissent is dealt with fiercely, the unrest and violence seemed a highly newsworthy development.

The next day, the Middle-East-based Al Jazeera English, the “best” Western source of news from the region, punted. Instead of getting direct eyewitness accounts that might anger the Saudi leadership (close allies of the Emir of Qatar, who owns Al Jazeera), the network used an old trick. It quoted a Western news agency, the French outfit Agence France Press, which merely reported the Saudi government’s version of events.

Two days after Al Jazeera, the Associated Press had its own report, also based on the Saudi spokesman. The article did note “a series of clashes between police and protesters in the country’s Shiite-dominated eastern region, starting in the spring.” The purported context comes in the final paragraph:

“There is a long history of discord between the kingdom’s Sunni rulers and the Shiite minority concentrated in the east, Saudi Arabia’s key oil-producing region. Shiites make up 10 percent of the kingdom’s 23 million citizens and complain of discrimination, saying they are barred from key positions in the military and government and are not given a proportionate share of the country’s wealth.”

The salient point in Saudi Arabia, however, is not really ethnic discrimination, which exists throughout the world. It is the story of the avarice and brutality through which one extended family dominates a country.

In Libya, the uprising was dominated by a distinct tribal opposition, yet it was quickly characterized as representing broad national sentiment, with a kind of nobility and inevitability. Not so (up to now) with reporting on the Saudi protests. In truth, dissatisfaction with the Saudi royal family is hardly limited to the Shiites, and the levels of anger are probably as great and perhaps greater than that felt by the average Libyan toward Qaddafi.

Those wanting a closer look at what is going on in Saudi Arabia can go to the site Liveleak, where there’s highly disturbing video accompanied by this text: “Qatif—Firing live bullets at the demonstrators November 21, 2011: Video shows the brutal style Saudi security forces in dealing with the demonstrators by firing live bullets.” Another source is a blog called Angry Arab News Service, which features video in which a large and vocal group in Qatif are apparently chanting “Death to the House of Saud.”

That kind of material seems to warrant worldwide attention. And with that, we might reasonably expect the protests to grow. But the coverage has not come, nor the greater uprising.

Who’s to blame? Everyone, really. But based on its claim to be the gold standard, we focus on The New York Times. According to a search of the database Nexis-Lexis, the Times ran nothing at all on Qatif until Sunday November 27, when it featured a survey of turmoil throughout the region.

Yet the Times should have realizing that it was looking at a pattern. After all, the paper did cover a previous incident in Qatif—back in March. It was a single article, with a Beirut dateline: “Saudi police officers opened fire at a protest march in a restive, oil-rich province on Thursday, wounding at least three people, according to witnesses and a Saudi government official.”

Could it have something to do with Saudi Arabia’s indispensability as an ally and supplier of oil? In which case, traditional news reporting standards do not apply?

And did anyone ask the U.S. government, so quick to condemn Qaddafi for his crackdown on demonstrators, if it had any reaction to the Saudi crackdown on demonstrators? Doesn’t look like it.

Meanwhile, what of this scapegoating of Iran for what seems to be authentic Saudi dissent? How does this dovetail with the overall western effort to characterize Iran as behind every nefarious act, even the ludicrous-sounding plot announced months ago by the White House, in which the Iranians were purportedly trying to recruit Mexican drug gangs to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.?

Egypt’s antiquities authority closed the largest of the Giza pyramids Friday following rumors that groups would try to hold spiritual ceremonies on the site at 11:11 on Nov. 11, 2011.

The authority’s head Mustafa Amin said in a statement Friday that the pyramid of Khufu, also known as Cheops or the Great Pyramid, would be closed to visitors until Saturday morning for “necessary maintenance.”

The closure follows a string of unconfirmed reports in local media that unidentified groups would try to hold “Jewish” or “Masonic” rites on the site to take advantage of mysterious powers coming from the pyramid on the rare date.

Amin called all reports of planned ceremonies at the site “completely lacking in truth.”

The director of the complex, Ali al-Asfar, said Friday that an Egyptian company requested permission last month to hold an event called “hug the pyramid,” in which 120 people would join hands around the ancient burial structure.

More: AP via MSNBC

Anonymous targets Muslim Brotherhood In Egypt, claims Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to Egyptian revolution, plans a coordinated Distributed Denial of Service attack on Nov. 11. Those claiming to represent the nebulous and notorious international Internet hacktivist collective known as Anonymous released a YouTube video announcing an operation directed at the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to the announcement, the Muslim Brotherhood is a “corrupt” organization “bent on taking over sovereign Arab states in its quest to seize power.” The announcement goes on to compare the Muslim Brotherhood to the Church of Scientology, and declares the Brotherhood to be “a threat to the people.”

As they vowed earlier this week to do, Egyptian protesters marched from Tahrir square to the U.S. Embassy [on Friday] in support of Occupy Oakland—and against police brutality witnessed in Oakland on Tuesday night, and commonly experienced in Egypt.

Until recently Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s antiquities minister, was a global symbol of Egyptian national pride. A famous archaeologist in an Indiana Jones hat, he was virtually unassailable in the old Egypt, protected by his success in boosting tourism, his efforts to reclaim lost artifacts and his closeness to the country’s first lady, Suzanne Mubarak.

But the revolution changed all that.

Now demonstrators in Cairo are calling for his resignation as the interim government faces disaffected crowds in Tahrir Square.

Their primary complaint is his association with the Mubaraks, whom he defended in the early days of the revolution. But the upheaval has also drawn attention to the ways he has increased his profile over the years, often with the help of organizations and companies with which he has done business as a government official.

He receives, for example, an honorarium each year of as much as $200,000 from National Geographic to be an explorer-in-residence even as he controls access to the ancient sites it often features in its reports.

He has relationships — albeit ones he says he does not profit from — with two American companies that do business in Egypt.

One, Arts and Exhibitions International, secured Mr. Hawass’s permission several years ago to take some of the country’s most precious treasures, the artifacts of King Tut, on a world tour; its top executives recently started a separate venture to market a Zahi Hawass line of clothing.

A second company, Exhibit Merchandising, has been selling replicas of Mr. Hawass’s hat for several years. Last year that company was hired to operate a new store in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Mr. Hawass says his share of the profits from those products goes directly to Egyptian charities. But the fact that both charities, a children’s cancer hospital and a children’s museum, were overseen by Ms. Mubarak before the revolution has angered some critics…

[continues in the New York Times ]

Flag of Al-Qaeda in Iraq

Hindustan Times reports:

A fierce succession battle appears to be gripping the senior ranks of al Qaeda in the wake of the death of leader Osama bin Laden, pitting regional affiliates against the central “hardcore” of the organisation. Reports from Pakistan have named an Egyptian former special forces officer, ,as the acting leader of al Qaeda.

Adel, who is in his late 40s, is a veteran militant who was close to bin Laden in the 1990s. He was detained in Iran after fleeing Afghanistan following the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. According to Noman Benotman, a former Libyan militant now living in London, al-Adel, also known as Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi, was released from Iranian detention and returned to Pakistan last year.

The report in the News newspaper of Pakistan identified al-Adel as having been chosen as “interim leader” after a meeting at “an undisclosed location”. It said none of the sons of bin Laden had shown willingness to take up a formal position within the organisation.

If confirmed, the appointment of al-Adel is a major blow to bin Laden’s close associate Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian extremist who has long been seen as the group’s number two and key strategist.

[Continues at Hindustan Times]

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s minister of state for antiquities, said he will appeal a one-year jail sentence imposed on him yesterday.

The sentence is related to a lawsuit accusing him of refusing to carry out a court ruling, the state-run Middle East News Agency said today. The court had ordered a halt to bidding from companies to run a bookstore in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Hawass said today in his blog.

“Tomorrow, the head of the legal affairs department at the Ministry of Antiquities will go to the court to file our appeal,” Hawass said in the Web log. “He will present evidence that the bid for the bookstore contract was finished before the original court ruling, so therefore we could not follow the ruling to stop the bidding.”…

[continues at Bloomberg]

A military court in Egypt has sentenced an internet activist to three years in jail for criticising the armed forces. Maikel Nabil was arrested last month for blogs that criticised the army’s role during anti-government protests.

The 26-year-old is thought to be the first blogger jailed in Egypt since the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak.

Activists said the trial set a dangerous precedent at a time when Egypt was trying to move away from the alleged abuses of the Mubarak era. Lawyers representing Maikel Nabil have criticised the conduct of the military court.

“We are in a state of shock because [on Sunday] they told us the decision would be on Tuesday, so the family and lawyer left. Afterwards the court announced its decision,” said Gamal Eid, a lawyer who heads the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.

Mr Eid said the trial was unfair because the court did not even consider the content of Mr Nabil’s blog posts.

For more information, see original article.

To listen to the hype about social networking websites and the Egyptian revolution, one would think it was Silicon Valley and not the Egyptian people who overthrew Mubarak.

Via its technologies, the West imagines itself to have been the real agent in the uprising. Since the internet developed out of a US Defense Department research project, it could be said the Pentagon did it, along with Egyptian youth imitating wired hipsters from London and Los Angeles.

Most narratives of globalisation are fantastically Eurocentric, stories of Western white men burdened with responsibility for interconnecting the world, by colonising it, providing it with economic theories and finance, and inventing communications technologies. Of course globalisation is about flows of people as well, about diasporas and cultural fusion.

But neither version is particularly useful for organising resistance to the local dictatorship. In any case, the internet was turned off at decisive moments in the Egyptian uprising, and it was ordinary Egyptians, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, who toppled the regime, not the hybrid youth of the global professional classes.

For more information, see original article.

Over 1 million protestors in Tahrir Square demanded the removal of the Mubarak regime on February 8, 2011. Photo: Jonathan Rashad (CC)

Ahram Online reports:

The Egyptian cabinet approved yesterday a decree-law that criminalises strikes, protests, demonstrations and sit-ins that interrupt private or state owned businesses or affect the economy in any way.

The decree-law also assigns severe punishment to those who call for or incite action, with the maximum sentence one year in prison and fines of up to half a million pounds.

The new law, which still needs to be approved by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, will be in force as long as the emergency law is still in force. Egypt has been in a state of emergency since the assassination of former president Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Since former president Hosni Mubarak stepped down on 11 February, Egypt has witnessed escalating nationwide labour strikes and political protests. Amongst those protesting have been university students, political activists, railway workers, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, journalists, pensioners and the police force.

Many labourers have expressed their shock at the decree. “We really had hopes that the new government will support us and look into our demands. We expected them to say we have all of your legal demands on our desks and there is a timeline of a month or two within which they will be achieved,” said Ali Fotouh, a driver in the public transportation sector.

“I don’t understand what they mean by protests that affect the traffic and the business. This is not fair, why don’t you solve our demands so that we don’t go on strikes. This tone reminds me of the old days of Mubarak, threats and oppression used by the regime. This is no longer valid after January 25 Revolution.”

For more information, see original article.

In November, 1990 a man set himself on fire in front of the U.S. capitol, the news reports from the time say that the reasons for the man’s act were unknown, no riots were forthcoming. Last year the cultural shifts in Egypt, Yemen and Algeria proved a different outcome in light of similar self-immolation. As individuals express their anger, alienation and rejection in self willed conflagration it is igniting their communities into violent uprisings shaking the foundations of global culture.

As I’m writing this a young man sits in protest in a Palestinian Mosque, part of the March 15 Youth Coalition who set up tents in the Bethlehem municipality to demand a new Palestinian national council and a unified Palestine. He is threatening to set himself on fire if the Coalition’s demands are not taken seriously. Unlike the young gunmen we have seen emerge in the United States, whose outward acts of inflamed anxiety cause communities to hold vigils and encourage greater controls, these self sacrificial immolations “change the quality of the substance,” of the estrangement, isolation and abuse, to open up the opportunity for cultural change.

Article by David Metcalfe via Modern Mythology.

Women in line to vote at 2011 Egyptian constitution referendum. Photo: Mona (CC)

Via Amnesty International:

Amnesty International has today called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month.

After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges.

‘Virginity tests’ are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced.

“Forcing women to have ‘virginity tests’ is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women,” said Amnesty International. “All members of the medical profession must refuse to take part in such so-called ‘tests’.”

[Continues at Amnesty International]

The protesters who stormed the offices of Egyptian state security this weekend say the buildings are proof of “the greatest privacy invasion in history”, filled with transcripts of phone conversations, surveillance reports and stark reminders of the torture carried out inside.

Hundreds of protesters seized the state security building – a prominent symbol of the Egyptian government’s brutality – after hours of protests in 6th of October City on Saturday night. The takeover was the climax of several days of protests outside other state security buildings.

One photo from inside the state security building showed a room full of shredded papers, the pile reaching almost to the ceiling. Egyptians who entered the building also found computers and hard drives that had been destroyed. And a video posted on YouTube shows the charred remains of a massive pile of documents that state security apparently set on fire in the courtyard of the building. Fires have also been reported at other state security offices in recent days.

Thousands of documents were intact, though, and many have now been handed over to the public prosecutor. Some of them show surveillance of prominent Egyptians: There are transcripts of phone calls made by Mohamed ElBaradei, for example, or by Hamdi Kandil, a journalist who was a fierce critic of Mubarak’s regime. Other files documented the lives of ordinary citizens.

Documents described by protesters also showed evidence of vote rigging during last year’s parliamentary elections in Egypt (which many observers at the time called fraudulent). The documents contained lists of candidates from particular districts, and the number of votes each candidate would receive.

Several Egyptians reported finding a whole room full of what appeared to be sex tapes. A photo posted on Twitter showed one tape labelled: “Sexual encounter between a Kuwaiti princess and an Egyptian man.”

The building also contained stark evidence of the torture and abuse many detainees suffered inside. One photograph from Twitter showed a man holding up an electric baton and a cache of handcuffs. Another photo showed a barren cell, with nothing but a toilet in the floor and a tap against the wall for drinking and washing.

There was another side to Dr. Hawass, however, and his reactionary and sometimes capricious rulings on who could visit and research the sites were the stuff of legend among Egyptologists outside of his approved, establishment allies.

I’m a little skeptical that his resignation is anything more than a power play and suspect that he may very well make a well-staged, dramatic comeback — but if he really has gone for good, I’m hopeful that we may enter into a new era of breakthrough research in Egypt (perhaps from some of the great alternative researchers such as Andrew Collins, Ahmed Osman, John Anthony West and Robert Bauval).

Here’s the story on his resignation, in the New York Times:

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s powerful and controversial antiquities chief, resigned on Thursday along with the prime minister, after posting on his Web site for the first time a list of dozens of sites that have been looted since the beginning of the uprising that led to the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.

Reached by telephone, Mr. Hawass said he was happy that he had made the “right decision” in resigning and lashed out at colleagues who have criticized him, including one who has accused him of smuggling antiquities.

Among the places Mr. Hawass named as having been looted were the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s storerooms at its excavation site in Dahshur, south of Cairo. In a statement the Met’s director, Thomas P. Campbell, described that incident as having taken place several weeks ago…

[continues in the New York Times]

However meanly and grudgingly, even the new Republican speaker has now conceded that the president is Hawaiian-born and some kind of Christian. So let’s hope that’s the end of all that. A more pressing question now obtrudes itself: Is Barack Obama secretly Swiss?

Let me explain what I mean. A Middle Eastern despot now knows for sure when his time in power is well and truly up. He knows it when his bankers in Zurich or Geneva cease accepting his transfers and responding to his confidential communications and instead begin the process of “freezing” his assets and disclosing their extent and their whereabouts to investigators in his long-exploited country. And, at precisely that moment, the U.S. government also announces that it no longer recognizes the said depositor as the duly constituted head of state. Occasionally, there is a little bit of “raggedness” in the coordination. CIA Director Leon Panetta testified to Congress that Hosni Mubarak would “step down” a day before he actually did so. But the whole charm of the CIA is that its intelligence-gathering is always a few beats off when compared with widespread general knowledge. Generally, though, the White House and the State Department have their timepieces and reactions set to Swiss coordinates.

Read More on Slate

Leonardo da Vinci, "Il Condottiero", 1480.

It’s not that easy to get soldiers to shoot at their own people. Ishaan Tharoor writes in TIME via Yahoo News:

While the protests convulsing Bahrain and Libya this past week occurred in vastly different contexts – and will likely produce very different results — both were met with conspicuously swift crackdowns.

And in both cases, reports suggest the Libyan and Bahraini regimes deployed foreign fighters and mercenaries against their own citizens, lethal clashes that left scores wounded and many dead.

Though difficult to substantiate in the current chaos, reports from eastern Libya, in particular from the city of Benghazi, claim that snipers and militiamen from sub-Saharan Africa gunned down residents on the streets. The Dubai-based al-Arabiya network says some of the guerrillas were Francophone mercenaries recruited by one of the sons of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Qatar-based al-Jazeera detailed pamphlets circulated to mercenary recruits from Guinea and Nigeria, offering them $2,000 per day to crack down on the Libyan uprising. And, as further reports of defections from the Libyan military filter in, the cornered Gaddafi regime may turn more and more to hired guns from abroad. On television channels and Twitter, frantic rumors circulated about Gaddafi preparing for a mercenary-backed counteroffensive against his opponents.

While the violence appears to have pushed Libya to a tipping point, protests in Bahrain slackened after a week of bloody confrontations between demonstrators and the country’s security forces. Sectarian tensions underlie the unrest, with the tiny island kingdom’s Sunni Muslim monarchy pitted against the country’s predominantly Shi’ite population. A significant segment of the state’s security personnel are Sunnis brought in from countries like Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Pakistan to buttress the ruling dynasty’s authority. It’s a policy that Shi’ites say is symbolic of widespread institutional discrimination in Bahrain, and it played a key role in clashes earlier this month when uncompromising — and often foreign — security forces violently dispersed protesting crowds, killing at least six.

Read More: TIME via Yahoo News

The wave of revolutions sweeping the Arab world started in a forgotten town in the flatlands of Tunisia. It was an unlikely place for history to be made. But so was Tunisia itself, the smallest country in North Africa, strategically irrelevant, with no oil and not much of an army.

It has been an oasis of tranquility in this tumultuous part of the world, famous for its beaches, its couscous and its wonderful weather. But there was a dark side to paradise: for 23 years, Tunisia was ruled by a corrupt and ruthless dictator named Zine Ben Ali, who filled his prisons with anyone who spoke out against him.

A man in Egypt has named his newborn daughter “Facebook” in honor of the role the social media network played in bringing about a revolution, according to a new report.

Gamal Ibrahim, a 20-something, gave his daughter the name “to express his joy at the achievements made by the January 25 youth,” according to a report in Al-Ahram, one of Egypt’s most popular newspapers.

Many young people used Facebook and other social media networks to organize the protests, which began January 25 and ultimately led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power.

Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who organized a Facebook page on his own time, became a central figure of the revolution.

More on CNN

Lara Logan in Iraq.

There is always a dark element to herd behavior, be it “authoritarian” or “revolutionary.” Melissa Maerz reports in the LA Times:

Lara Logan is recovering in an American hospital this week after being sexually assaulted and beaten by a mob in Egypt’s Tahrir Square late on Friday.

The same day that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, Logan was surveying the mood of anti-Mubarak protesters for a “60 Minutes” story when she and her team “were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration,” CBS said in a statement Tuesday. The network said that a group of 200 people were then “whipped into a frenzy,” pulling Logan away from her crew and attacking her until a group of women and Egyptian soldiers intervened …

During her time in Egypt, Logan had been outspoken about the Mubarak regime’s efforts to intimidate foreign journalists. “We’re being prevented from telling this story,” Logan said during a recent CBS broadcast. “People are increasingly afraid to talk to us.” Earlier this month, she was detained, accused of being an Israeli spy, and told to leave Egypt. She returned to the U.S. after her release, but came back to Cairo not long before Mubarak fled his office.

Read more here.

FMF funds totalled 1.8 B in FY 2009, who do you think is in charge?

Is this move towards military rule a remnant of the previous administration’s new domino theory in the middle east or the first decisive step in the new administration’s new “plan” for the region? The Project for the New American Century spent many years strong-arming an already pliant Bush administration into increasing military aid to regions like the middle east, but only to regimes it could “work with“.

Consider this excerpt from diplomatic cables addressed to a General Schwartz from 2009:

Your visit will fall on the anniversary of the April 6, 2008 nation-wide strike protesting political and economic conditions. At least one opposition group has called for another April 6 strike this year. We have requested meetings for you with Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Sami Anan and Air Marshal Reda.

The mainstream U.S. media on the left and right are breathlessly declaring that President Obama and the enitirety of the American government and diplomatic corp have “no control” over the events in Egypt, but to believe that a foreign government that already enjoys full flyover privileges and expedited transport through the Suez Canal has no sway in a military where they have donated almost 1.8 billion dollars (2009 FY, source.) is beyond naive.

In fact, if a major ally the size and importance of Egypt were teetering on the brink of collapse as an American taxpayer, I would want the administration to do as much as it could to safeguard our interests and investment — but in a classic example of Disinformation, the media is not emphasizing this aspect of the story because this “angle” is a non-story because it’s been so clear from the beginning of time that the Egyptian military will not make any abrupt moves against the United States interests, because the Egyptian military is and has been a de facto branch of the American military for decades.

So instead of a more thorough discussion of the continuing effect of the United States military’s impact on the sovereignty of the Egyptian people, we are instead force-fed endlessly the story of the attractive female newsreader who suddenly changed teams as it looked like her side was about to lose. Once again the message becomes clear “YOU ARE BEING LIED TO”.

News outlets and “independent” mass media reporting is over — don’t fool yourself. Do your own research, source your opinions and engage in dialogue!

A most modern and insane revolt

The following description, I believe, sums up what Egypt faces today as well as, if not better, than most:

“It is not a revolution, not in the literal sense of the term, not a way of standing up and straightening things out. It is the insurrection of men with bare hands who want to lift the fearful weight, the weight of the entire world order that bears down on each of us — but more specifically on them, these … workers and peasants at the frontiers of empires. It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.

One can understand the difficulties facing the politicians. They outline solutions, which are easier to find than people say … All of them are based on the elimination of the [president]. What is it that the people want? Do they really want nothing more? Everybody is quite aware that they want something completely different. This is why the politicians hesitate to offer them simply that, which is why the situation is at an impasse. Indeed, what place can be given, within the calculations of politics, to such a movement, to a movement through which blows the breath of a religion that speaks less of the hereafter than of the transfiguration of this world?”

The thing is, it was offered not by some astute commentator of the current moment, but rather by the legendary French philosopher Michel Foucault, after his return from Iran, where he witnessed firsthand the intensity of the revolution which, in late 1978, before Khomeini’s return, really did seem to herald the dawn of a new era.

Foucault was roundly criticised by many people after Khomeini hijacked the revolution for not seeing the writing on the wall. But the reality was that, in those heady days where the shackles of oppression were literally being shattered, the writing was not on the wall. Foucault understood that it was precisely a form of “insanity” that was necessary to risk everything for freedom, not just against one’s government, but against the global system that has nuzzled him in its bosom for so long.

What was clear, however, was that the powers that most supported the Shah, including the US, dawdled on throwing their support behind the masses who were toppling him. While this is by no means the principal reason for Khomeini’s successful hijacking of the revolution, it certainly played an important role in the rise of a militantly anti-American government social force, with disastrous results.

Read more here.

Tahrir Square, Feb. 10, 2011.

All of Egypt was at fever pitch in anticipation that President Hosni Mubarak would resign in a televised speech this evening. Instead he refused to move and set himself up for massive conflict with a broad mass of Egyptians who want a real democracy in this large, civilized, educated but desperately poor country. What happens next is anyone’s guess. Al Jazeera continues to have the best coverage of any media service; here’s their latest report:

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, has refused to step down from his post, saying that he will not bow to “foreign pressure” in a televised address to the nation.

Mubarak announced that he had put into place a framework that would lead to the amendment of six constitutional articles in the address late on Thursday night.

“I can not and will not accept to be dictated orders from outside, no matter what the source is,” Mubarak said.

He said he was addressing his people with a “speech from the heart”.

Mubarak said that he is “totally committed to fulfilling all the promises” that he has earlier made regarding constituional and political reform.

“I have laid down a vision … to exit the current crisis, and to realise the demands voiced by the youth and citizens … without undermining the constitution in a manner that ensures the stability of our society,” he said.

He said he would stick by his earlier announcment of not seeking re-election in September, though he did delegate some powers to Omar Suleiman, the vice-president.

“I will remain adamant to shoulder my responsibility, protecting the constitution and safeguarding the interests of Egyptians [until the next elections].

“This is the oath I have taken before God and the nation, and I will continue to keep this oath,” he said.

Mubarak said the current “moment was not against my personality, against Hosni Mubarak”, and concluded by saying that he would not leave Egyptian soil until he was “buried under it”.

Mubarak’s comments were not well-received by hundreds of thousands gathered at Cairo’s Tahrir Square and in other cities, who erupted into angry chants against him. Pro-democracy protesters had been expecting Mubarak to resign, and their mood of celebration quickly turned to extreme anger as they heard the president’s speech…

[continues at Al Jazeera]

Photo: Jerry Jackson (CC)

After Amnesty raised concerns that the Egyptian executive of Google was being held without reason, he was released today, 10 days after his disappearance. CNN reports:

Google executive Wael Ghonim was released Monday in Egypt, the company announced.

“Huge relief — Wael Ghonim has been released. Our love to him and his family,” the company tweeted shortly after 8 p.m. in Cairo (1 p.m. ET).

Ghonim’s Twitter account, which had not had a posting since he went missing January 28, carried a tweet around the same time.

“Freedom is a bless (sic) that deserves fighting for it,” the tweet said, ending with the hashtag “#Jan25,” a reference to the Egypt protests.

Minutes later, Ghonim added this tweet: “Gave my 2 cents to Dr. Hosam Badrawy. who was reason why I am out today. Asked him resign cause that’s the only way I’ll respect him.”

Hossam Badrawi, often described as a relatively liberal politician, was recently elevated to become secretary general of the ruling National Democratic Party.

[Continues at CNN]

The tomb may be the appropriate metaphor not only for wannabe President for forever Hosni Mubarak but also for the 30 plus year neo-colonial economic system that he has presided over.  Not surprisingly Frank Wisner Jr., the former U.S. Ambassador and son of a CIA dirty trickster, wants the President to stick around—in the country’s interest, of course.

Battle of the Pyramids by Francois Watteau, 1798-1799.

And Western countries are now aligning with the people in the suites—not the streets. So much for the bottom-up democracy that President Obama has appeared to support. We want freedom there—but we can wait!

What’s next for Egypt?

The 82 year old President seems stuck in the final stages of his own mummification. At the same time we might consider the decisions he ratified that in a sense “dummified” the world.

• He didn’t appear to have seen the crisis coming in the same way so-called “intelligence” agencies from the CIA to the Mossad missed it too. as they had the Iranian Revolution before it, and as the wise men of finance missed the financial crisis.

• He hasn’t paid attention to Egypt’s imploding economy, firing an internationally respected finance mister and replacing him with Samir Radwan who is expected to turn the economy around miraculously amidst the chaos and uncertainty.

• He reacted with a series of self-defeating (and country-destroying) measures from shutting down the Internet crippling commerce to sending in an army of thugs that revealed just how brutal his critics insisted he always was. Not only is Mubarak still in power but his secret police, The Mukhabarat, are torturing away.

• His violent overreaction against the world media—the arrests and clubbing of journalists in public—insured more coverage, not less, and that the world would be glued to the dramatic confrontation—the very thing TV cameras live for as Egypt showcased its own superbowl of confrontation.

We all saw these events despite the efforts to muzzle the media.

But another scene went largely unseen: the crippling of Egypt’s economy that may prove to be more dangerous for the country’s future.

While Mubarak did not depart on his hoped for “day of departure,” something else did—currency and investments.  It’s been estimated that the country is losing $310 million a day. That already adds up to several billion dollars as the demonstrations enter their 12th day.

Stock Market Digital reports, Egyptians and foreign investors have transferred hundreds of millions. many to South East Asia or Australia. Its assets are at risk, says John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi. “If it does fail to compress this rioting situation the assets might get depleted soon enough.”

All of this has had a global impact, too, with stock markets battered worldwide and crude prices going up. Many experts fear a run on the banks when they reopen shortly.  It is significant that foreign interests now own more than half of Egypt’s banks. They were to open Sunday but fears of a bank run kept most closed. The Egyptian pound was down at its lowest level since 2005.

Former Goldman Sachs Managing Director Nomi Prins writes about this banking sector, “From 2004 to 2008, as the world economic crisis was being stoked by the U.S. banking system and its rapacious toxic asset machine, Mubarak’s regime was participating in a different way. Mubarak wasn’t pushing subprime loans onto Egyptians; instead, he was embarking on an economic strategy that entailed selling large pieces of Egypt’s banks to the highest international bidder. The result was a veritable grab-fest of foreign bank takeovers in the heart of Cairo…

Egypt attracted $42 billion worth of foreign capital into its borders, as one of the top investment “destinations” in the Middle East and Africa. “Hot” money entry was made easy, with no restrictions on foreign investment or repatriation of profits, and no taxes on dividends, capital gains or corporate bond interest…

Not surprisingly, those foreign speculation strategies didn’t bring less poverty or more jobs either. Indeed, the insatiable hunt for great deals, whether by banks, hedge funds, or private equity funds, as it inevitably does, had the opposite effect.”

She reveals that Goldman Sachs invested in a major real estate company for the luxury market with millions living on $2 a day.

Now, a financial crisis threatens.

Reuters reports optimistically,

“An exodus of foreign investors would probably be manageable. The central bank says its official reserves are $36 billion. Additional assets held with commercial banks – regarded as unofficial reserves – are estimated at around $20 billion. Before the crisis, foreigners held just 7 percent of Egypt’s total public debt, equivalent to a little over $11 billion.

The bigger worry is if Egyptians also take fright. The rich could decide to shift their money into gold, dollars or overseas markets. The poor, many of whom are relatively new to banking, may choose to stash their life savings under mattresses instead, There is a serious danger of out of control inflation, Robin Amlot, managing editor of Banker Middle East, says people are starting to “run out of the basics, which will feed into inflation”.

Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded Egypt’s government bond ratings to Ba2 from Ba1. Its outlook went to negative from stable. This will cost the country a significant amount of money,

Why is this happening? Clearly, financial interests put their own interests before the public interest. The US government may want to stabilize Egypt but the private sector and Wall Street have no compunctions about destabilizing it if they think that is the best way to profit.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick admitted to a conference in Germany that rising unemployment and food prices critical to “the instability in the region.” He did not discuss how World Bank policies had made conditions worse over the years.

Mumbarak’s model of economic growth had helped fund a small middle class without dealing with persistently high unemployment, rising food prices, inflation and deepening poverty.

Canada’s CTV reports,

“one-in-five Egyptians lives below the poverty line with little hope of rising above it as unemployment hovers around 10 per cent. And those with jobs can do little to combat inflation soaring at a rate of more 12 per cent a year.

Egyptian-born Montrealer Mohamed Kamel says when you factor in his homeland’s inadequate healthcare and a neglected education system combined with a rampant culture of corruption it’s easy to see where the frustration is coming from.”

The Guardian reports that one person who has not suffered from these policies is none other than Hosni Mubarak:

“President Hosni Mubarak’s family fortune could be as much as $70bn (£43.5bn) according to analysis by Middle East experts, with much of his wealth in British and Swiss banks or tied up in real estate in London, New York, Los Angeles and along expensive tracts of the Red Sea coast.”

These problems and inequalites have long been urgent issues in Egypt, but in the last weeks they were overshadowed by the high-profile protests to oust the President.  These economic issues have been almost invisible in the world media but will not be easily resolved with or without Mubarak.

The West now wants to put the brakes on the campaign to oust what many consider a modern Pharaoh” They want to replace him with someone like him. But as the Lebanese editor Rami Khouri puts it; “Just changing generals is not freedom.”

Any real revolution inevevitibly demands a transformation—not just a transfer of power of the strong man at the top. The Egyptian peoples fight for political and economic justice has a long way to go.

Filmmaker and News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org.

For more on his film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time and companion book The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big To Jail, visit plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.

Thoughts…?

You talked earlier about anti-American sentiment and a lot of that has been because the United States while today the Press Secretary is saying how they’ve been talking about Egypt and the need for reform and bringing up this at every meeting that’s not the way many Egyptians see it. Most Egyptians see the United States as having stood solidly by President Mubarak while the government here grew more and more corrupt.

And they see the Americans as complicit in it. And just today, for example, when we were out on streets this is what a lot of people were showing us about American involvement. If you can see in my hands this is one of the tear gas canisters and very clearly written in English on it, it says “Made in the USA by Combined Tactical Systems from Jamestown, Pennsylvania”. And they say this is the kind of support that the United States has been giving to the Egyptian government and bears some responsibility, although today it it trying to say that it never backed Mubarak so much, it has been calling for reforms for a long time, Egyptians don’t see it that way.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Barack Obama, Sept. 2010.

Elad Pressman, editor of a major Israeli political website, was my guest on my radio show and did he have news! The Daily Telegraph had dug into WikiLeaks documents and pieced together a report that convincingly proves the United States was behind the violent Egyptian protests:

The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.

On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011. He has already been arrested by Egyptian security in connection with the demonstrations and his identity is being protected by The Daily Telegraph. The disclosures, contained in previously secret US diplomatic dispatches released by the WikiLeaks website, show American officials pressed the Egyptian government to release other dissidents who had been detained by the police.

At least five people were killed in Cairo alone yesterday and 870 injured, several with bullet wounds. Mohamed ElBaradei, the pro-reform leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was placed under house arrest after returning to Egypt to join the dissidents. Riots also took place in Suez, Alexandria and other major cities across the country.

The US government has previously been a supporter of Mr Mubarak’s regime. But the leaked documents show the extent to which America was offering support to pro-democracy activists in Egypt while publicly praising Mr Mubarak as an important ally in the Middle East. In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year.

The memo, which Ambassador Scobey sent to the US Secretary of State in Washington DC, was marked “confidential” and headed: “April 6 activist on his US visit and regime change in Egypt.”

It said the activist claimed “several opposition forces” had “agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections.” The embassy‚s source said the plan was “so sensitive it cannot be written down.”

Ambassador Scobey questioned whether such an “unrealistic” plot could work, or ever even existed. However, the documents showed that the activist had been approached by US diplomats and received extensive support for his pro-democracy campaign from officials in Washington. The embassy helped the campaigner attend a “summit” for youth activists in New York, which was organized by the US State Department.

Cairo embassy officials warned Washington that the activist‚s identity must be kept secret because he could face “retribution” when he returned to Egypt. He had already allegedly been tortured for three days by Egyptian state security after he was arrested for taking part in a protest some years earlier.

The protests in Egypt are being driven by the April 6 youth movement, a group on Facebook that has attracted mainly young and educated members opposed to Mr Mubarak. The group has about 70,000 members and uses social networking sites to orchestrate protests and report on their activities. The documents released by WikiLeaks reveal US Embassy officials were in regular contact with the activist throughout 2008 and 2009, considering him one of their most reliable sources for information about human rights abuses.

Elad strongly suggested that I investigate who was behind Mohammed ElBaradei. Look what I discovered! Just a few months ago, Mohammed ElBaradei was paraded on the front cover of the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) rag, Foreign Affairs, with a headline asking if he could be Egypt’s savior. What uncanny foresight, for on the second day of Egyptian protests he showed up in Cairo and was named as the negotiator of The Muslim Brotherhood. So where did he come from? It turns out from the board of an NGO run by CFR muckrakers George Soros and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Against the regime, the opposition groups – of which there are at least ten – are just as hamstrung by their failure to produce a leader able to stand up and challenge the president. For lack of any representative figure, they picked the retired nuclear watchdog director Dr. Mohamed ElBaradi to speak for them in negotiations over the transfer of power. Hardly anyone in Egypt knows him: He is better known outside the country having spent many years abroad. Yet, at the same time, ElBaradei sits on the board of a Soros/Brzezinski foundation.

Go to the George Soros/Zbigniew Brzezinski Crisis Groups Website and you will see that the Egyptian clashes have hit surprisingly close to home for them. That’s because none other than their own Mohamed ElBaradei, sitting on their board of trustees, is the self-proclaimed leader of the unrest unfolding across the streets of Cairo. The International Crisis Group’s recent condemnation of ElBaradei’s detention and admission of his membership amongst “the Group” is accompanied by calls for the government to stop using violence against the protesters.

A few board members:

George Soros, Chairman, Open Society Institute

Mohamed ElBaradei, Director-General Emeritus, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); Nobel Peace Prize (2005)

Javier Solana, Former EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, NATO Secretary-General and Foreign Affairs Minister of Spain

And then, we have The Muslim Brotherhood meeting with Obama. From the Egyptian press: ‘Obama met Muslim Brotherhood members in U.S.’

U.S. President Barack Obama met with members of Egypt’s Islamist opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, earlier this year, according to a report in Thursday editions of the Egyptian daily newspaper Almasry Alyoum. The newspaper reported that Obama met the group’s members, who reside in the U.S. and Europe, in Washington two months ago.

As for Israel, which should be terrified of a potential Muslim Brotherhood government, who else is pushing for one but President Shimon “Mad Dog” Peres? Mubarak appointed Peres’ buddy Omar Suleiman (search for pics of the two all over the internet) as his Vice-President, meaning upcoming interim President when Hosni climbs down from the post. And look who Peres got to say what Peres can’t, his rabbi and Vatican representative, David “Mad Man” Rosen. From EU Observer:

Rabbi David Rosen, a prominent commentator on religious affairs, has said that EU diplomats should start talking to Islamic faith leaders in Egypt in order to keep the revolution on a peaceful path.

Yes, Israel’s President thinks it would be terrific to begin negotiations with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Israel’s issues are the same as Egypt’s but are hidden behind a charade of democracy. This year’s figures reveal that 25% of all Israelis, including over 850,000 children, live beneath the poverty line. The middle class has all but disappeared at 15%, leaving a vast number of poor and unemployed to be ruled by a tiny group of immensely wealthy oligarchs. If you thought

Cairo had a big turnout for its protests, Israel with 1/5 of Cairo’s population, drew over 200,000 to protest the Oslo “peace” and the evacuation of Gaza’s Jews…to no avail. The government had flipped the organizers with names like Wallerstein and Leiberman and the protests were harmless steam blowing.

It’s time Israel joined the Middle East. Get those 200,000 back, led by homeless Gazan Jews and joined by all who live in daily fear of the Shabak (Secret Service), the police, the courts and get them to the President’s House to physically oust Shimon Peres from his office.

After that, on to the Knesset.

For Rabbi Samuel Cywiak’s new Holocaust memoir, Flight From Fear, just write me or send $28 to my addresses.

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Elad Pressman’s site: http://conspil.com/2011/01/29/egyptcrack-up-boom/