With indefinite detention bill, has Congress also expanded rendition of U.S. citizens abroad?
Monthly Archives: December 2011
Why did Lacoste try to suppress a Palestinian artist’s science fictional art project?
io9.com reports: Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour uses science fictional imagery to discuss her people’s stateless condition, so her work was always bound to cause some controversy. She’s done a host of short films playing with science fiction movie themes, and commenting on Middle Eastern politics.
But after Sansour’s “sci-fi photo series” Nation Estate became one of the finalists for the Lacoste Elysée Prize 2011 — a prestigious award that carries a payment of over $30,000 — the contest’s sponsor, Lacoste, insisted that her work be disqualified. (Yes, the company that makes those funny alligator shirts.) Sansour’s name was removed from the prize’s website, and the photos were removed from an upcoming issue of the magazine ArtReview.
The Nation Estate Project imagines the entire Palestinian people living in one giant high-rise building, sort of like a J.G. Ballard novel, with each floor representing a different city. It’s an offshoot of one of her science fictional short films. Sansour told the Daily Star:
I think the most shocking thing about this development, is that I didn’t apply for this prize… They nominated [me] only to revoke my nomination later on grounds that my work is ‘too pro-Palestinian.’
The Swiss gallery hosting the prize later issued a statement [PDF] explaining its decision to suspend the contest and disassociate itself from Lacoste’s choice:
The Musée de l’Elysée has based its decision on the private partner’s wish to exclude Larissa Sansour, one of the prize nominees. We reaffirm our support to Larissa Sansour for the artistic quality of her work and her dedication. The Musée de l’Elysée has already proposed to her to present at the museum the series of photographs “Nation Estate”, which she submitted in the framework of the contest.
For 25 years, the Musée de l’Elysée has defended with strength artists, their work, freedom of the arts and of speech. With the decision it has taken today, the Musée de l’Elysée repeats its commitment to its fundamental values.
Drone warfare and the stress induced by premeditated murder
A recent study by the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine assessed the level of stress involved in remote warfare being conducted by Air Force drone operators. The New York Times reports:
4 percent or less of operators were at high risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, the severe anxiety disorder that can include flashbacks, nightmares, anger, hypervigilance or avoidance of people, places or situations. In those cases, the authors suggested, the operators had seen close-up video of what the military calls collateral damage, casualties of women, children or other civilians. “Collateral damage is unnerving or unsettling to these guys,” Colonel McDonald said.
The percentage of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan at risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder was 12 to 17 percent, the authors said.
In contrast to nearly half of drone operators’ reporting “high operational stress,” 36 percent of a control group of 600 Air Force members in logistics or support jobs reported stress. The Air Force did not compare the stress levels of the drone operators with military pilots who fly planes in the air.
The biggest sources of stress for drone operators remained long hours and frequent shift changes because of staff shortages.
Glenn Greenwald comments:
[A]t least some of these drone pilots have enough of a conscience to be seriously disturbed by the horrific results of these strikes. If only the general citizenry — who are typically kept blissfully unaware of the human devastation their government is causing — were as affected.
But to suggest that a measure of conscience is the way these pilots react to the unintended effects of their actions, doesn’t really say much about what is going on here.
In a recent edition of “The Stream” on Al Jazeera, former CentCom spokesman Josh Rushing, made these observations. (Watch the following video from 20min 22 sec till 21min 22sec.)
As unprecedented as it might seem for a killer to so closely study his target, this really isn’t new. Indeed, there is a commonly used term we associate with this kind of planning: premeditation.
Murder of the worst kind involves cold calculation and emotional detachment. The idea that a drone operator might end up with PTSD simply as a result of seeing innocent people get killed, ignores the effect of his spending hours or days anticipating an intentional killing.
The military precursor of the drone operator is the sniper and the non-military correlate of both is the hitman.
Randall Collins notes that inside the military, the sniper stands apart.
Snipers tend to be disliked even by their fellow soldiers, or at least regarded with uneasiness. A British sniper officer in World War I noted that infantrymen did not like to mingle with the snipers “for there was something about them that set them apart from ordinary men and made the soldiers uncomfortable”… World War II soldiers sometimes jeered at them. U.S. snipers in Vietnam were met with the comment: “Here comes Murder Incorporated.”
Josh Rushing notes that the Pentagon’s shift in favor of remote warfare is a reflection of a political reality: that if Americans are not taxed to support this country’s wars, and if wars can be fought without American soldiers getting killed, then Washington faces few political constraints in starting new wars about which the public will show little interest.
The Air Force is now recruiting more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined, but the continued success in recruitment requires that the job of these armchair pilots be glamorized and tied into a traditional warfighting culture. Hence the creation of commercials like this:
But note the irony: the stated target in this portrayal of 21st century warfare is the “enemy sniper” and the role of the drone pilot is to protect ordinary American soldiers.
In the battlefields that the Pentagon prefers however, there are no American soldiers, death comes by decree and those getting killed — however they might be labelled — are utterly defenseless.
Don’t stop at Iraq: Why the U.S. should withdraw from the entire Persian Gulf
Toby C. Jones writes: The U.S. is finally drawing down its military presence from Iraq, but why stop there? Why not reduce or outright remove our military presence from the entire Persian Gulf? The U.S. has been waging war in the Gulf for more than two and a half decades, since it took up arms against in Iran in the closing stages of the Iran-Iraq war. The human and environmental costs have been catastrophic. The presumptive gains of what has amounted to one long war have proven elusive at best. More often that not, the justifications for war have been either ill-conceived or manufactured. The Persian Gulf today is hardly stable or secure. But permanent war, and our militarization of the Gulf, isn’t so much a reflection of regional instability as it is the cause.
Today, it’s still not clear what the United States’ strategic priorities are in the Gulf. Are we there to secure access to oil? Protect friendly regimes from unfriendly ones? American policymaking is muddled, a combination of concern about energy security, Iranian aggression, and terrorism. This uncertainty is perilous. And the reality is that none of these challenges really require a significant military presence. Indeed, if recent history is any guide, a large military footprint in the Gulf will generate more rather than less risk.
Historically, oil and “energy security” have been at the heart of American strategy in the Gulf. It is home to the richest oil and natural gas deposits on the planet. It was President Jimmy Carter who most clearly made protecting the flow of oil to global markets a national priority. Carter declared oil a “vital interest” and that any assault on it would “be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” Protecting oil meant protecting its producers. Indeed, much of the war-fighting of the last two decades has been rationalized as necessary to defend Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and their oil, from neighborhood threats. The economic logic that has underpinned all this is based mostly on an assumption that oil is a scarce resource, that there is a tight gap between supply and demand, that ensuring supply is essential to stabilize prices and to protect the global economy from potentially devastating disruptions.
None of that is really true. For most of the 20th century, oil companies and oil producing states regularly collaborated to regulate supply in order to limit competition and control prices. There never has been a global oil market. Instead, oil’s production and delivery has been managed by a small network of corporate and national energy elites, whose primary concern has been serving their own interests and maintaining their bottom line.
Pity the elf slaves of online shipping
Mac McClelland writes: Since June, I’ve been ruining my friends’ online-shopping lives. Back then, I reported on a vast warehouse in Ohio where goods bought from online retailers are sorted, boxed, and shipped to consumers. Unsurprisingly, this job does not pay well. A little more surprisingly, this job seems designed to crush employees’ spirits. During my visit, two people got fired within 10 minutes, one for talking to someone while he was working—"Where are you from?" was the offending comment—and one for going to the bathroom too much. So occasionally, and now more that it’s the holidays, my friends and family will call to complain that "Bleh, I want to order something from Amazon/Walmart/Staples/whatever, but I feel guilty about helping oppress workers."
Why would online retailers be so mean? Well, in the case of many, they have helpfully outsourced interaction with workers. When Walmart started selling its merchandise on the internet, it turned to third-party logistics contractors, or 3PLs, experts who could handle the, uh, logistics, like warehousing and transportation, of online sales. Take Exel, for example, the largest 3PL in the country, and a subsidiary of Deutsche Post DHL, one of the largest companies in the world. Exel alone has 86 million square feet of warehouse all over North America and processes literally millions of goods every single day. Other retailers directly perpetrate the oppression. Amazon.com made headlines earlier this year when 20 current and former employees of its Breinigville, Pennsylvania, warehouse told the local Morning Call that workers were fainting in stifling heat and getting yelled at for not meeting ridiculously high productivity goals and generally being "treated like a piece of crap." Employees who were sent home with heat exhaustion were disciplined; a local ER doc eventually called OSHA and reported "an unsafe environment."
Either way, many of the people actually loading and unloading trucks, packing boxes, and pasting labels work not for retailers, or for 3PLs, but for yet another company: temporary staffing agencies. When an online retailer (especially one that doesn’t actually make anything) wants to wring out the most profit possible, it helps to have a labor pool that is on demand, so it can order the exact number of humans it needs to fill that day’s number of orders if the humans are working at top capacity. That way, workers can’t unionize or be legally entitled to decent benefits. That way, the online retailer can give them outlandish productivity goals, like hundreds of orders and thousands of items per day apiece—and when workers burn out, just replace them with the next temp, who can join the rest of the ranks living in fear that they won’t make their numbers and might be incessantly berated for it, or simply fired. Even if you meet the outlandish goals, don’t necessarily expect to be rewarded by say, a real job. As with so many in the industry, the warehouse in Ohio are mostly "temps"—even though some of them have been working in the same place for more than a year.
Hamas responds to the Arab Spring
The Washington Post reports: Buoyed by the success of Islamist movements in countries swept by the Arab Spring, Hamas, the militant Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, is showing signs of pragmatism as its sense of isolation fades.
The organization is jockeying to reposition itself amid shifting terrain in the Arab world. It is reported to be scaling down its presence in Syria, where its long-time patron, President Bashar al-Assad, is facing a popular uprising. At the same time, it is seeking to strengthen ties with Arab countries where moderate Islamists have made political gains.
Hamas officials are holding talks in Cairo this week with the rival Palestinian faction, Fatah, on implementing a reconciliation accord reached earlier this year, as some leaders of the organization suggest that it is ready for political pluralism at home and limiting violence against Israel.
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, is planning his first official trip outside the territory since the militant group seized power there in 2007. According to an aide, Haniyeh plans to visit Turkey, Bahrain, Qatar and Tunisia.
The Islamist surge, say Hamas officials and analysts, has boosted the group’s confidence, giving it more room to maneuver.
“This is an Islamic area, and once people are given a fair chance to vote for their real representatives, they vote for the Islamists,” said Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, referring to the ascendance of Islamist parties in recent elections in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. “We feel strengthened by popular support.”
For Hamas, a sense of validation has replaced a siege mentality after years of international boycott and blockade by Israel and by Egypt under former president Hosni Mubarak.
“The rise of the Islamists could be seen as game-changer for Hamas,” said Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. “Hamas no longer sees itself as a besieged island in a sea of hostility. This goes to the very psychology of the movement. . . . They feel that they have strategic depth now.”
On the domestic front, this has translated into a declared intention of following the model of the Islamist parties abroad, which have shown readiness to share power with secular and liberal parties in governing coalitions, and, in the case of Tunisia, have already struck such a deal.
The Islamists’ message of pluralism is now being echoed by officials of Hamas, which has mostly stifled dissent in the Gaza Strip since it took over the territory.
The example of the Islamist parties has had an impact on Hamas leaders and “opened their eyes to make coalitions with other Palestinian factions,” said Ghazi Hamad, deputy foreign minister of the government in Gaza. “This will create a new political Islam in which a coalition is the main goal, not to monopolize the regime. No one accepts one political color. The time of one-party rule has passed.”
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports: The Hamas militant group has agreed to join the Palestine Liberation Organization — a key step toward unifying the long-divided Palestinian leadership.
Hamas’ leader Khaled Mashaal on Thursday joined a committee that will prepare for elections to the PLO leadership.
Those elections are likely years away but Mashaal’s move means he will work with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah party.
The PLO is the umbrella group of the Palestinian independence movement.
Thursday’s development is an important step toward reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah — which have been split since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Separate elections in the West Bank and Gaza for a unified parliament are tentatively set for next year.
Syrian rebels take the fight to Bashar al-Assad’s heartland
The Daily Telegraph reports: Military trucks stood parked at the end of the dark empty street. The electricity was cut, the phone signals out and apartment windows boarded up with whatever wood or metal people could find. It was to stop the bullets, activists explained.
Shouting and chanting of “down down Bashar al Assad” could be heard in the distance, interspersed with the crackle of gunfire.
This is not Homs, Idlib, or any of those Syrian towns that for months have been in the throes of rebellious unrest and violent crackdown. This is Douma, a large satellite town on the edge of Damascus, the heartland of support for President Assad’s regime.
Damascus Old City continues in relative normality with the bustle of daily life. Occasional power cuts and a shortage of gas are the principal signs that all is not well.
But less than seven miles away, Douma is in lockdown. Every Friday – when protests traditionally take place after prayers in the mosques, the suburb is under a military siege.
“Do you see the army?” said Ali, an activist who risked arrest and much more to show The Daily Telegraph the situation in his home town. “This is Douma, not Kandahar or Baghdad,” he added still incredulous at the scenes before him.
At the bottom of the street, locals had put up flaming barricades to halt the advance of military vehicles. Regime soldiers were positioned on the tops of the building.
Men huddled in the doorway of the Obeid mosque. Mustering courage, they leapt out in groups, hurling themselves across the central avenue that was in the snipers’ “kill zone”, and into the relative safety of the alleyway opposite. Those who had made it encouraged the others, adrenalin high, shouting “Freedom” and “down down down with the regime” at the top of their voices.
The New York Times reports: Syrian rights activists and opposition groups said on Wednesday that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had killed at least 160 defecting soldiers, civilians and antigovernment activists over the last three days in northwestern Syria. If confirmed, the killings would constitute one of the worst spasms of violence in the nine-month-old uprising.
The killings, which the activists and opposition groups said had taken place near the city of Idlib in the Turkish border region, were reported a day before observers from the Arab League are to visit Syria for the first time to monitor pledges by Mr. Assad’s government to withdraw its troops from besieged areas.
Explosions rock Baghdad amid Iraqi political crisis
The New York Times reports: A wave of coordinated explosions ripped across Baghdad early on Thursday, killing at least 63 people, wounding more than 180 and jolting a country already unsettled by a deepening political crisis and the absence of American troops.
Using car bombs and improvised explosives, insurgents attacked markets, grocery stores, schools and government buildings in a dozen neighborhoods in the central and eastern parts of the capital.
The attacks were the most significant violence in Iraq since the last American troops pulled out of the country earlier this week. So far, the withdrawal and the bitter fighting between Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, and his political foes in Parliament have not been accompanied by a rise in violence. But Thursday’s attacks raised the specter that the crisis inside the government could spill into the streets.
The attacks came a day after Mr. Maliki threatened to abandon an American-backed power-sharing government created a year ago. The prime minister’s words at a televised news conference on Wednesday threw a fragile democracy into further turmoil after the departure of American troops, potentially tarnishing what has been cast as a major foreign policy achievement for President Obama.
BBC News reports: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has urged Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq to hand over Iraq’s Sunni Vice-President, Tariq al-Hashemi.
An arrest warrant was issued for Mr Hashemi on Monday over terror charges.
Tariq al-Hashemi is Iraq’s most senior Sunni Arab politician. He says the allegations are “fabricated”.
Mr Hashemi is currently in the region of northern Iraq controlled by Kurdish authorities. The warrant was issued a day after US troops pulled out.
US Vice-President Joe Biden has urged Iraqi leaders to work together to avert renewed sectarian strife.
At a news conference broadcast live on Iraqi television, Mr Maliki, a Shia, said he would dismiss ministers belonging to the main Sunni political grouping, Iraqiyya, if they did not lift their boycott of parliament and cabinet.
Iraqiyya – which has been boycotting parliament in protest at Mr Maliki’s alleged authoritarian manner – has suspended its ministers’ participation in cabinet in response to the arrest warrant for Mr Hashemi.
Obama and the rule of law
Jeff Connaughton writes: Long silent and now contradictory, President Obama needs to deliver a clarifying speech about our financial markets and the rule of law. Speaking in Kansas on December 6, he said, “Too often, we’ve seen Wall Street firms violating major anti-fraud laws because the penalties are too weak and there’s no price for being a repeat offender.” Just five days later on 60 Minutes, he said, “Some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street wasn’t illegal.” Which is it? Have there been no prosecutions because Wall Street acted legally (albeit unethically)? Or did Wall Street repeatedly violate major anti-fraud laws (and should thus find itself in the dock)?
The President is confusing “legal” with “difficult to prosecute successfully.” The Justice Department’s repeated decisions not to risk losing at trial against Wall Street executives don’t make these person’s actions legal. (If a district attorney can’t prove the actual thief stole your wallet, that doesn’t make stealing legal. It simply means that, regrettably, a malefactor goes unpunished.) As Securities and Exchange Commission Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in Senate testimony in 2009, Wall Street perpetrators “are smart people who understand that they are crossing the line” and “are plotting their defense at the same time they’re committing their crime.”
Moreover, the President is misleading us when he says that Wall Street firms violate anti-fraud law because the penalties are too weak. Repeat financial fraudsters don’t pay relatively paltry — and therefore painless — penalties because of statutory caps on such penalties. Rather, regulatory officials, appointed by Obama, negotiated these comparatively trifling fines. This week, the F.D.I.C. settled a suit against Washington Mutual officials for just $64 million, an amount that will be covered mostly by insurance policies WaMu took out on behalf of executives, who themselves will pay just $400,000. And recently a federal judge rejected the S.E.C.’s latest settlement with Citigroup, an action even the Wall Street Journal called “a rebuke of the cozy relationship between regulators and the regulated that too often leaves justice as an orphan.”
The Obama Justice Department hasn’t tried a single Wall Street executive in a criminal court. Against a handful, it decided to let the S.E.C. bring civil charges of fraud, which are easier to prove. So if defendants’ wrists are merely being slapped by the S.E.C. instead of cuffed by the Justice Department, Obama has only his appointees to blame.
For three important reasons, the President needs to explain why the Justice Department has filed away its investigations of big banks and Wall Street firms without indicting anyone. First, American confidence in the system is deeply shaken. Second, it strains credulity for millions of Americans — and has impelled thousands of them to occupy public places in protest — that no banking or insurance executive deserves criminal prosecution for the actions that brought on the financial crisis. Third, by failing to prosecute a single high-profile Wall Street actor today, the Administration is failing to deter financial fraud tomorrow.
Hardline Zionist casino boss Sheldon Adelson: the deep pockets behind Newt Gingrich
Think Progress reports: The funding behind Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions for Winning the Future, an independent political committee, offers an intriguing clue into the financial deep pockets backing Gingrich’s candidacy. This week, McClatchy revealed that American Solutions footed the $8 million bill for private jet charters while Gingrich weighed whether to enter the 2008 and 2012 presidential races. Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson was the biggest funder of American Solutions, contributing $7.65 million and rumored to have committed $20 million to a pro-Gingrich super PAC, a report denied by an Adelson spokesperson. Whether the report is true or not, the facts increasingly show that the billionaire casino magnate is a central figure in Newt Gingrich’s political career.
Sands Corporation CEO Sheldon Adelson is based in Las Vegas but has business and political interests in Macau, China and Israel. In Israel, Adelson’s importance stems from his close friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ownership of Israel HaYom, a free daily newspaper which supports Netanyahu’s Likud party. Back in the U.S., Adelson sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition and is outspoken about his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
During the George W. Bush presidency, Adelson opposed efforts to jump start peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians and even took sides against the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when the organization supported peace talks. “I don’t continue to support organizations that help friends committing suicide just because they say they want to jump,” Adelson told the Jewish Telegraph Agency.
The undeniable Palestinian right to resist occupation
Noam Sheizaf writes: Following the killing of Mustafa Tamimi in his village Nabi Saleh, Spokesperson for the IDF presented pictures of a slingshot Tamimi had on him when he was brought to the hospital. This was to be the indicting evidence that the protester was taking part in hostile action against the army – i.e. throwing stones – and therefore responsible for his own death.
Only in the context of the occupation can throwing stones at a bullet-proof army jeep be seen as an offense deserving the death penalty, carried out on the spot (clearly, the soldiers weren’t acting in self-defense). Furthermore, as recent attacks by settlers on soldiers – including a brick thrown from close range on the IDF regional commander – demonstrated, the army’s treatment of Jews is very different (to be clear, I don’t call for shooting Jewish stone-throwers either). But there is a larger issue here, concerning the whole notion of “legitimate” resistance to the occupation.
Facts and context are important: Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza more than 44 years ago. Since then, the Palestinians have been under military occupation, which denies their basic human and civil rights. The Palestinians can’t vote. They are tried in military court, where the conviction rate is astonishing. They don’t enjoy due process. Their property rights are limited, and their lands – including private lands – are regularly seized by Israel. All this is well-known and well-documented.
As far as Israel is concerned, this situation can go on forever. Israel is not attempting to leave the West Bank – it actually strengthens its hold on the territory – and it doesn’t plan to give the Palestinians equal rights within the state of Israel.
The Palestinians therefore have a moral right to resist the occupation. It’s as simple as that.
The top 1 percent whining selfish bastards
Bloomberg reports: Jamie Dimon, the highest-paid chief executive officer among the heads of the six biggest U.S. banks, turned a question at an investors’ conference in New York this month into an occasion to defend wealth.
“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it,” the JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO told an audience member who asked about hostility toward bankers. “Sometimes there’s a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole.”
Dimon, 55, whose 2010 compensation was $23 million, joined billionaires including hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Home Depot Inc. (HD) co-founder Bernard Marcus in using speeches, open letters and television appearances to defend themselves and the richest 1 percent of the population targeted by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.
If successful businesspeople don’t go public to share their stories and talk about their troubles, “they deserve what they’re going to get,” said Marcus, 82, a founding member of Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit that develops talking points and op-ed pieces aimed at “shaping the national agenda,” according to the group’s website. He said he isn’t worried that speaking out might make him a target of protesters.
“Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”
‘Feels Lonely’The organization assisted John A. Allison IV, a director of BB&T Corp. (BBT), the ninth-largest U.S. bank, and Staples Inc. co- founder Thomas Stemberg with media appearances this month.
“It still feels lonely, but the chorus is definitely increased,” Allison, 63, a former CEO of the Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based bank and now a professor at Wake Forest University’s business school, said in an interview.
At a lunch in New York, Stemberg and Allison shared their disdain for Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires public companies to disclose the ratio between the compensation of their CEOs and employee medians, according to Allison. The rule, still being fine-tuned by the Securities and Exchange Commission, is “incredibly wasteful” because it takes up time and resources, he said. Stemberg called the rule “insane” in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.
“Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive,” Allison said. “This attack is destructive.”
Occupy Albany’s demand
We have joined together to Occupy as an affirmation of the future of democracy where each person has an equal voice in shaping our common future. While we come from diverse backgrounds and worldviews, we stand united in the recognition that our current system of governance is failing us- the voice of the People is drowned out by the corrupting influence that concentrated economic power exerts on the government. The interests of those who purchase influence are rewarded at the expense of the People, from whom the government’s just power is derived. We believe that this failure in our system is at the core of many interconnected issues we face as a society, and its resolution is key to a just future. We therefore demand true democracy, unshackled from the corrosive influence of concentrated economic power, and call all who share in this common goal to stand with us and take action toward this end.
What can prevent state failure for Egypt?
An editorial in Al-Masry Al-Youm says: Downtown Cairo is once again a battlefield, and this time, the military is not just a silent facilitator, but an active participant — beating, dragging, shooting, and assaulting civilians. The latest round of brutality has led us to not only question the military’s handling of the transition period, but also the nature of the modern Egyptian state, which is associated with a strong military.
We are at a juncture whereby the revolution has begun to challenge the centrality of the military to the modern state, a legacy dating back to Mohammed Ali’s rule.
When the ruling military junta presented its own version of recent events at a press conference on Monday, the generals, yet again, raised the terrifying prospect of “state failure,” saying that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the army are the sole protectors of the state and everything they do is justified in the name of preventing its dissolution at the hands of those who want to undermine it.
This self-assigned supremacy is rapidly losing even the pretense of legitimacy.
The army’s violence and cruelty has been thoroughly documented by eyewitnesses, in photos and videos. We will not soon forget the image of two soldiers dragging a woman, half naked, by her clothes while a third stands ready to stomp on her chest. When skeptics condemn descriptions of soldiers resorting to violence, they cite how the army was provoked, or how paid infiltrators are allegedly plotting chaos and instability for Egypt. But what can provoke an organized professional army to engage in disorganized, unprofessional street fighting against civilian protesters?
The SCAF claims that “thuggery” and “chaos” have marred the purity of the 25 January revolution. After watching the events of the past five days, we have to agree. The state’s prestige has been irreparably undermined by soldiers urinating on protesters from atop a government building, sexually assaulting women, throwing furniture and flatware from government offices, making lewd sexual gestures, and turning sites of heritage and democracy — such as the Egyptian Museum and the parliament building — into temporary torture centers.
How Egypt’s prime minister tries to cover up state brutality
Parallel Dimensions from arabist on Vimeo.
Meanwhile, AFP reports: A US official voiced outrage Tuesday after an adviser to Egypt’s military said that some protesters facing down troops in Cairo should be “thrown into Hitler’s incinerators.”
Retired general Abdelmoneim Kato’s “anti-Semitic comments are outrageous, offensive and clearly unacceptable,” Hannah Rosenthal, the US special envoy against anti-Semitism, wrote on Twitter.
Kato, who advises the military, faced criticism from human rights groups and dissidents after saying that some protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square were “street kids who deserve to be thrown into Hitler’s incinerators.”
Presidential hopeful and former UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said such statements showed “a deranged and criminal state of mind.”
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said Kato’s comments “incite hatred and justify violence against citizens.”
Arms suppliers urged to halt transfers to the Egyptian army
Global arms suppliers must halt the transfer of small arms, ammunition and other repressive equipment to the Egyptian military and security forces, Amnesty International said today after the army again violently dispersed protests in Cairo.
The organization condemned the excessive use of force against protesters and called for a cessation of all transfers of small arms, light weapons and related munitions and equipment to Egypt, as well as a halt to all internal security equipment that could be used to violently suppress human rights, such as tear gas, rubber and plastic bullets and armoured vehicles.
“It can no longer be considered acceptable to supply the Egyptian army with the types of weaponry, munitions and other equipment that are being used to help carry out the brutal acts we have seen used against protesters,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.
“It is clear that either the military police has been given orders to disperse demonstrators at any cost, or the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces does not control the army and security forces. Either scenario is equally worrying.”
‘Massacre’ in Syrian opposition stronghold
Monika Bulaj: The hidden light of Afghanistan