Welcome to the New Syria

By Michael Collins

The assault on Damascus by Syrian rebels and terrorist murder of the Syrian Defense Minister occurred just as the Red Cross announced that the fighting in Syria was officially a civil war. This is an odd reward system for military action by the Free Syria Army. Commit enough acts of violence and you’re rewarded with special protections that apply in times of war. (Image)

The rebel Free Syria Army attacks cities and villages, disrupts the Syrian economy, and is in the business of suicide bombing. It has the material and diplomatic support of Saudi Arabia and the other oil oligarchies plus the big guns in NATO. So-called Syrian experts supporting the carnage are amply funded by United States sponsored nongovernment organizations.

Equal and Opposite Lunacy

[Image]

By Robert C. Koehler

As crashing economies and austerity measures slap ever more ferociously at the lives of the vulnerable and disenfranchised, the Western world, with all its hidden poverty and institutional racism, may continue to convulse.

The riots that broke out in London over the weekend and spread throughout Great Britain, triggered by the controversial police killing of a 29-year-old man, have sent shockwaves in all directions. Who knew things were so unstable, that Britain’s struggling neighborhoods were just one incident away from such destructive lunacy?

Libya’s Palestinian Refugees and the current crisis

Smoke rises from explosions as NATO airstrikes hit Tripoli. The alliance is stepping up their air campaign in the country. [More images here.]

Guest blogged by Franklin Lamb
Tripoli

As Tripoli’s Palestinian Refugees awakened the morning of 7/17/11, like the rest of us here, they saw in the western sky over the Mediterranean a vast swatch of black stratocumulus clouds of acrid smoke from last night’s NATO bombing.
This latest attack, in the Ain Zara and Tajoura districts in the eastern suburbs of Tripoli killed 3 more civilians increasing the more than 1,100 total civilian deaths by NATO, according to Libyan Ministry of Health statistics. This latest attack is believed to have employed four US MK-83, 1000 lb. guided bombs and four US hell fire missiles.

Two weeks ago, on June 23rd, the Abdullah Muhammad Ash-Shihab Palestinian refugee family of four which included Abdullah, his wife Karime and their six-month-old twins Khalid and Juanah were among civilians killed in a NATO bombing attack. The family had lived in the Yarmouk camp in Damascus, Syria but came here seeking Libya’s well known security and quiet life.

Egypt lifts blockade: Gaza gets gateway to the world

By Nasser Najjar
Gulf News

Gaza: Hundreds of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip flocked to enter Egypt via the Rafah border crossing as it reopened Saturday after a four-year closure.

Among the first to cross the coastal enclave’s only border post not controlled by Israel were two ambulances ferrying patients from the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip for treatment in Egypt, as well as a bus carrying 50 visitors.

The West Is Trapped in Its Own Propaganda

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research

One of the wishes that readers often express to me came true today (May 11). I was on the mainstream media. It was a program with a worldwide reach–the BBC World Service. There were others on the program as well, and the topic was Hillary Clinton’s remarks (May 10) about the lack of democracy and human rights in China.

I startled the program’s host when I compared Hillary’s remarks to the pot calling the kettle black. I was somewhat taken aback myself by the British BBC program host’s rush to America’s defense and wondered about it as the program continued. Surely, he had heard about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo detainees, CIA secret torture prisons sprinkled around the world, invasion and destruction of Iraq on the basis of lies and deceptions, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya. Surely, he was aware of Hillary’s hypocrisy as she demonized China but turned a blind eye to Israel, Mubarak, Bahrain and the Saudis. China’s record is not perfect, but is it this bad? Why wasn’t the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs criticizing America’s human rights abuses and rigged elections? How come China minds its own business and we don’t?

Living Wage: From Egypt to Canada

The Real News Network covers Egyptian demand for a living wage, while the Victoria Labour Council recently sponsored an evening of discussion about a very important issue: reducing poverty and child poverty, by bringing in a living wage.

Max Keiser reports from Cairo

IMF Rates Up Dictatorships Just Before Revolutions

By Michael Collins

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an embarrassing error just two days before the start of the Libyan people’s revolution on February 17. This quote from an IMF country study appeared in a previous article: “The outlook for Libya’s economy remains favorable.” IMF Feb 15 This advice was 180 degrees off target. The Libyan economy has ceased functioning as protests and popular demands imploded the Gaddafi regime. (Image)

Further investigation unearthed a specific pattern of positive IMF endorsements for each of the nations experiencing popular uprisings that are sweeping the region. When the IMF blesses a nation’s progress for conforming to the economic policies underlying globalism, watch out! There is a popular rebellion in the wings.

Iran is Not Egypt (Yet)

By Brian M Downing

Demonstrations and uprisings against authoritarian rulers are moving across the Middle East. Tunisia and Egypt have driven longtime strong men from office, Libya and Bahrain are in tumult, and Iran is experiencing a return of the demonstrations that took place after the elections of 2009. As much as one might wish to see regime change in Tehran, it might not come nearly as easily and relatively bloodlessly as it did in the Maghreb.

Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was an artless figure who over his many years of power managed to alienate a large majority of his subjects. Urban middle classes, rural dwellers, secular intellectuals, and religious scholars could agree on few things in public life, but on the matter of Mubarak’s corruption and brutality they could find a great deal of common ground. Further, all could agree that the future did not bode well for young people.

The Tunisia Effect

Please see information about purchasing my new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, following this week’s column.

By Robert C. Koehler

On one weekend in February of 2003, an estimated 10 million people in 60 countries took to the streets to protest the looming Iraq war. Never before in history had there been such massive, public opposition to a war before it began. But the war began anyway and the people — their numbers misreported in much of the media by a factor of ten, their opposition seemingly irrelevant — went away.

Are they back now?

Discovering Fire

Please see info about purchasing my new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, following this week’s column.

By Robert C. Koehler

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Egyptians lock arms, a dictator tumbles. Let’s think about this, shall we? How could such a thing have happened? I ask this knowing the hard part is just beginning. The hard part is always just beginning.

Egypt — brutal dictatorship now under military rule, key caretaker of Western interests in the Middle East — has yet to transform itself institutionally into the type of society its people have indicated over an extraordinary 18 days that they want and deserve; and much could happen in the coming weeks and months, from pressures both internal and international, to thwart, co-opt and derail the January 25 Revolution.

Egypt and Iran After Mubarak

By Brian Downing

The remarkable rising against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has roused interest throughout the world. Interest is especially keen in Iran, where official statements and propaganda have been aimed at the so-called Arab Street for many years now. Egyptians did not need a foreign agit-prop campaign to know Mubarak was brutal and corrupt, that he had acquiesced to various US and Israeli policies, and that their futures were not bright. Nonetheless, Iran will seek to take advantage of the new situation, and interaction between the two countries will be critical for years to come.

The Conflict With Sunni-Arab States
For decades now, there has been a low-level conflict between Iran and several Sunni-Arab states. The origin of the conflict goes back centuries and involves both sectarian and geopolitical elements. Its more immediate cause was Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for Islamic revolution in 1979 and Iraq’s invasion the following year, which was backed by many Sunni Arab states.

Egyptian Labor Uprising Against Rubinites

By Matt Stoller
Naked Capitalism

Via Wikileaks, we learned that the son of the former President of Egypt, Gamal Mubarak, had an interesting conversation in 2009 with Senator Joe Lieberman on the banking crisis. Gamal is a key figure in the forces buffeting Egypt, global forces of labor arbitrage, torture, and financial corruption. Gamal believed that the bailouts of the banks weren’t big enough – “you need to inject even more money into the system than you have”. Gamal, a former investment banker trained at Bank of America, helped craft Egypt’s industrial policy earlier in the decade.

Well if George Bush Wasn’t Behind the Egyptian Revolution, What About Robert Rubin?

By Numerian

The forces of globalization are increasingly and in surprising places and ways under attack. Globalization did not happen by accident; it was the result of policies put in place by people with a particular agenda.

Matt Stoller, a former policy advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson, has posted this morning his insights into the Egyptian Revolution – insights that are quite different from the usual take on these events. They can be found here at the Naked Capitalism blog managed by Yves Smith.

Stoller dismisses the fanciful praise of social networks as a driving force behind the revolution – a story the mainstream media are plugging rigorously. He focuses instead on the participation of young men and women who labor anonymously in the new cheap-labor factory mills set up in Egypt under the direction of Gamal Mubarak, the president’s son and anointed successor. These are the workers who organized the first protests – who responded at great risk to the call for demonstrations, who continued to occupy Tahrir Square despite the provocations from the government, and whose focus on civil liberties was motivated by the repressive police tactics used by the government to enforce the discipline demanded by the mostly-foreign corporations that run the labor mills.

The Emerging Counter-Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research

Omar Suleiman, CIA Torture Chief in Egypt

“President Hosni Mubarak has decided to step down as president of Egypt and has assigned the higher council of the armed forces to run the affairs of the country,” Suleiman said in a brief televised address. “May God help everybody.”

Cheers could be heard in the streets of Cairo even before Suleiman stopped speaking. And while there was no way to know whether the army would make good on its previous pledges to safeguard democratic elections, the crowds were euphoric at the news that Mubarak’s 30 years of authoritarian rule were over.

“Egypt is free! Egypt is free!” they shouted in Tahrir Square. “The regime has fallen!”
-The Washington Post (February 11, 2011)

An arrogant pharaoh has fallen. Egyptians may be chanting that their country is free, but their struggle is far from over. The United Arab Republic of Egypt is not free yet. The old regime and its apparatus are still very much in place and waiting for the dust to settle. The Egyptian military is officially in control of Egypt and the counter-revolution is emerging. A new phase of the struggle for liberty has started.

TSA’s John Pistole oversaw Egypt’s torture, sexual abuse program

Made in America: Mubarak’s Most Brutal Thugs Trained With FBI

By Jason Ditz
Antiwar.com

WikiLeaks cables, including  07CAIRO3348, released today by the Daily Telegraph, detail the Bush and Obama Administrations were providing training to Egypt’s secret police, the SSIS, which cables and human rights NGOs have repeatedly cited for routine torture of detainees.

The cable details SSIS chief Hassan Abdul Rahman describing Egypt’s political rivals as “terrorists, not political oppositionists.” The FBI’s deputy director John Pistole appears to have been at the center of training, and was praised for his “excellent and strong” cooperation with the SSIS.

The details of exactly what training the SSIS received was not revealed in the cables, but one can only imagine that Pistole, now infamous for his role as the chief of the TSA, probably gave them details on more than simply enhanced pat-downs.

Mubarak steps down amid mass shooting at protesters

By Lori Price
Citizens for Legitimate Government

Mubarak steps down after 3 decades PressTV, 11 Feb 2011 Egyptian vice President Omar Suleiman says President Hosni Mubarak has “abandoned the presidency,” after millions of Egyptians demonstrated for 18 days. Suleiman made the announcement on Friday during a televised address. The resignation has triggered celebration among millions of protesters in Cairo and other cities across Egypt.

America’s Strategic Repression of the ‘Arab Awakening’

By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Global Research

Taking the position that everything is organized from on high in the corridors of power is a flawed analysis, as is taking the position that America was caught entirely unaware.  We must not see this as an either-or development, but rather a congruence of over-lapping and inter-twining developments. American strategic objectives are aimed at ultimately repressing and co-opting the organic revolutionary uprisings in the Arab world. For the past six years or so, America has been developing and starting to implement a strategy to manage the ‘Arab Awakening’ by promoting “democratization” in a process of “evolution, not revolution.” The need to ‘control’ the ‘Global Political Awakening’ is the most prescient problem in American foreign policy. However, the evolution was evidently not fast enough for the people living under the Arab regimes, and revolution is in the air, writes Andrew Gavin Marshall.

US sends its own thugs to Egypt: Marines deployed

Senior US Marine Says “Multiple Platoons” Are Headed To Egypt

By Nicholas Carlson
Business Insider

A senior member of the US Marine corps is telling people “multiple platoons” are deploying to Egypt, a source tells us.

There is a system within the US Marines that alerts the immediate families of high-ranking marines when their marine will soon be deployed to an emergency situation where they will not be able to talk to their spouses or families.

That alert just went out, says our source.

A Truth More Powerful than an Army

Dear readers, for those of you who live near Appleton, Wisconsin, I will be reading from my book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 2600 Philip Lane (just south of East Calumet Street), on Sunday, 2-13, at 6:30 p.m.

By Robert C. Koehler

It was just a routine murder.

Last June, police accosted a young man at an Internet café in the city of Alexandria.  He had just filmed their drug deal, or he simply refused to show them his ID.  Whatever the provocation — accounts vary — they slammed his head against the table, dragged him outside as he screamed, beat him viciously for 20 minutes.  That was that.  You can pick up the body later.

In a thug society, power is as power does. And in Egypt, power flowed from the top — from, indeed, beyond the top.  It flowed from the superpower that had been a cornucopia of military aid, nearly $2 billion a year, to President Hosni Mubarak for the last 30 years.  In return, Mubarak had to be a useful friend to that superpower: open his prisons for secret torture operations, acquiesce to Israel’s blockade of Gaza and, of course, keep the oil flowing from Saudi Arabia. Otherwise, his only obligation was to stay in power, and he did so with a simple and basic brutality.  Do what we say or we’ll kill you.