February 2011

Engaging the Islamists

by News Sources 02.10.2011

Shadi Hamid writes: Whether we like it or not, the Muslim Brotherhood – Egypt’s major Islamist group – is going to play a significant, perhaps crucial role in a post-Mubarak Egypt. Too often, American policy makers fall under the illusion that they can somehow have Arab democracy without having the largest opposition groups participate. A [...]

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Rural Egyptians support the revolution

by News Sources 02.10.2011

Reuters reports: Beyond Tahrir Square, beyond the boundaries of the sprawling capital, beyond even the provincial cities where protesters joined the call to topple President Hosni Mubarak, rural Egypt is restless for change. Scraping a meagre living from the land, farmers and rural workers in Egypt’s agricultural heartland have watched the largely urban uprising that [...]

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Marwan Bishara with Rashid Khalidi, Seymour Hersh and Thomas Pickering

by News Sources 02.10.2011

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The American-Israeli led anti-democratic alliance

by Paul Woodward 02.09.2011

“Never insult the Arabs,” advised Amos Gilead, former head of Israel’s Political-Military Bureau, speaking on Monday at the influential Herzliya national security conference. But he wasn’t appealing for an improvement in Israeli-Arab relations since he only had a few Arabs in mind — Hosni Mubarak and other leaders “that are supporting stability and are coping [...]

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Omar Suleiman: Egypt’s torturer-in-chief threatens to unleash “dark bats of the night… to terrorize the people”

by Paul Woodward 02.09.2011

Lisa Hajjar writes: Under the Bush administration, in the context of “the global war on terror”, US renditions became “extraordinary”, meaning the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer to bring a suspect to trial – but rather for interrogation to seek actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA [...]

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“Keep giving us our oil”

by Paul Woodward 02.09.2011

Venice Beach, California, might not be the best place to take the pulse of American opinion. Or is it? Would Geena and Jenna be relieved or disappointed to learn that Egypt now consumes about as much oil as it produces and that most of the relatively small volume it exports goes to Italy? Maybe Egypt [...]

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The Jewish ultra-nationalists at the heart of the Middle East conflict

by News Sources 02.09.2011

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#Jan25 Egypt – Omar Offendum, The Narcicyst, Freeway, Ayah, Amir Sulaiman

by News Sources 02.09.2011

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Time for the United States to stop poisoning the Middle East

by Paul Woodward 02.08.2011

To assert that the United States has been poisoning the Middle East for decades might sound like too strong language to the ears of many Americans. Yet what kind of effect can we expect from the long-standing practice of supporting rulers who habitually torture their own people, other than a poisonous effect? Much as we [...]

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Omar Suleiman: Tel Aviv’s man in Cairo

by News Sources 02.08.2011

The Daily Telegraph reports: The new vice-president of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, is a long-standing favourite of Israel’s who spoke daily to the Tel Aviv government via a secret “hotline” to Cairo, leaked documents disclose. Mr Suleiman, who is widely tipped to take over from Hosni Mubarak as president, was named as Israel’s preferred candidate for [...]

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Muslim Brotherhood rejects Khamenei’s attempt to hijack the revolution

by Paul Woodward 02.08.2011

“The Iranian nation has become a model for the other nations through its resistance and insistence on Islam and Islamic establishment and due to the eye-catching progress it has made on this path throughout the last 32 years,” Ayatollah Khamenei said while addressing a military gathering in Tehran today. But the Muslim Brotherhood is more [...]

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Wael Ghonim interview – updated again

by News Sources 02.08.2011

The Guardian reports: An emotional television interview given by a young Egyptian Google executive who was arrested after playing a key role in using the internet to spark the uprising against Hosni Mubarak is being hailed as a landmark moment in the ongoing revolt after it struck a chord across Egypt and beyond. Wael Ghonim, [...]

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Interview with Sandmonkey

by Paul Woodward 02.08.2011

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The death of Israeli democracy

by News Sources 02.08.2011

Mya Guarnieri writes: As Egyptians demand their freedom, I ask a Muslim in Jaffa if we will see the same in Israel. “I don’t think so,” he answers. “Even with all the mess here, we have democracy.” But, do we? And for how much longer? As we speak, the Knesset is debating one of a [...]

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Tom Engelhardt: Pox Americana

by TomDispatch 02.08.2011

Driving through the gates of hell and other American pastimes in the Greater Middle East By Tom Engelhardt As we’ve watched the dramatic events in the Middle East, you would hardly know that we had a thing to do with them.  Oh yes, in the name of its War on Terror, Washington had for years [...]

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Hezbollah backs Egypt protests

by News Sources 02.08.2011

Al Jazeera reports: Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has said that protesters calling for the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, are changing the region with their battle for “Arab dignity”. In his first comments since unrest began in Egypt almost two weeks ago, Nasrallah said on Monday that his Shia movement [...]

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Exile in Germany for Mubarak?

by News Sources 02.07.2011

Der Spiegel reports: Will Hosni Mubarak travel to Germany as a patient as part of a graceful exit strategy for the Egyptian president? Plans for a possible hospital stay here appear to be more concrete than previously believed. SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that a luxury clinic near Baden-Baden is being favored. The United States government’s [...]

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A regime with no intention of stepping aside

by News Sources 02.07.2011

Robert Mackey: As Egypt’s government tries to minimize the importance of the protests, Girish Juneja, a producer for Britain’s Channel 4 News in Cairo, spotted a remarkable symbol of the ruling National Democratic Party’s determination to hang on to power on Monday. The burned-out ruins of the party’s headquarters in Cairo, which was torched during [...]

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The Egyptian iron fist

by Paul Woodward 02.07.2011

Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin describes his experience while held in detention yesterday by the Egyptian military: The following video shows Egypt’s much-feared secret police in operation on January 26, the day after the first mass protests took place. At 1 minute 15 seconds into the report a gang of plain-clothes policemen can be seen advancing [...]

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America’s feudal friends

by Paul Woodward 02.07.2011

As the saying goes, a man is known by the company he keeps. President Obama’s choice of Frank Wisner as his special envoy to Cairo shows that corruption has become so deeply institutionalized in Washington that it cannot be exposed — it is so commonplace, so much regarded as an inherent dimension of politics that [...]

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Wallace Shawn: Why I call myself a socialist

by TomDispatch 02.07.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com A message from the road: I’m traveling this week, having the odd adventure along the way.  While I’m gone, I thought I might offer you a little adventure as well by leaving you in the capably unsettling hands of Wally Shawn.  If you’re my age, you know him from the [...]

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A chanted revolution

by Paul Woodward 02.07.2011

Much has been made of the role of the internet and social media in the revolutions in Tunisia and Egpyt, but even more potent has been the human voice, unmediated, led in chants. This video, posted on January 15, was taken at a protest by political opposition activists and citizens at the Press Syndicate in [...]

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Nick Turse: Making mahem (it’s spelled correctly!)

by TomDispatch 02.07.2011

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com In his State of the Union address, President Obama lauded two fruits that fell from the tree of government support for the basic research of “cutting-edge scientists and inventors”: the Internet and GPS.  Though he didn’t mention it, that wasn’t just any old “government support” and they weren’t just any [...]

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WikiLeaks cables reveal Suleiman’s efforts to demonize the Muslim Brotherhood

by Paul Woodward 02.06.2011

Reuters reports: Egypt’s new vice president, Omar Suleiman, has long sought to demonize the opposition Muslim Brotherhood in his contacts with skeptical U.S. officials, leaked diplomatic cables show, raising questions whether he can act as an honest broker in the country’s political crisis. U.S. Embassy messages from the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks cache of 250,000 State Department [...]

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