Monday, February 28, 2011

Pete Seeger Still Gowing Strong!

Subject: Folk music legend Pete Seeger endorses boycott of Israel


Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel &
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
Pete Seeger endorses the boycott of Israel 
(pictured with ICAHD's Jeff Halper)
Pete Seeger endorses the boycott of Israel (pictured with ICAHD's Jeff Halper)
Folk music legend Pete Seeger
endorses boycott of Israel
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Folk music legend Pete Seeger has come out in support of the growing Palestinian movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel as a program for justice for Palestinians and a route to peace in the Middle East.
Seeger, 92, participated in last November's online virtual rally "With Earth and Each Other," sponsored by the Arava Institute, an Israeli environmental organization, and by the Friends of the Arava Institute. The Arava Institute counts among its close partners and major funders the Jewish National Fund, responsible since 1901 for securing land in Palestine for the use of Jews only while dispossessing Palestinians. Although groups in the worldwide BDS movement had requested that he quit the event, Seeger felt that he could make a strong statement for peace and justice during the event.
During a January meeting at his Beacon, NY, home with representatives from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and Adalah-NY, Pete Seeger explained, "I appeared on that virtual rally because for many years I've felt that people should talk with people they disagree with. But it ended up looking like I supported the Jewish National Fund. I misunderstood the leaders of the Arava Institute because I didn't realize to what degree the Jewish National Fund was supporting Arava. Now that I know more, I support the BDS movement as much as I can."
Jeff Halper, the Coordinator of ICAHD, added, "Pete did extensive research on this. He read historical and current material and spoke to neighbors, friends, and three rabbis before making his decision to support the boycott movement against Israel." Seeger has for some time given some of the royalties from his famous Bible-based song from the 1960s, "Turn, Turn, Turn," to ICAHD for their work in rebuilding demolished homes and exposing Israel's practice of pushing Palestinians in Israel off their land in favor of the development of Jewish villages and cities.
The November virtual rally "With Earth and Each Other" was billed as an apolitical effort to bring Israelis and Palestinians together to work for the environment. Dave Lippman from Adalah-NY noted, "Arava's online event obfuscated basic facts about Israel's occupation and systematic seizure of land and water from Palestinians. Arava's partner and funder, the JNF, is notorious for planting forests to hide Palestinian villages demolished by Israel in order to seize land. Arava was revealed as a sterling practitioner of Israeli government efforts to 'Rebrand Israel' through greenwashing and the arts."
Currently, the JNF is supporting an Israeli government effort to demolish the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib in order to plant trees from the JNF that were paid for by the international evangelical group GOD-TV. The Friends of the Arava Institute's new board chair recently published an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post that only cautiously questions some activities of the JNF, an organization whose very raison-d'etre is to take over land for Jews at the expense of the Palestinian Arab population.
Pete Seeger's long-time colleague Theodore Bikel, an Israeli-American known for his life-long involvement with Israeli culture, recently supported the Israeli artists who have refused to perform in a new concert hall in Ariel, a large illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
Seeger joins a growing roster of international performers who have declined to whitewash, greenwash, or in any way enable Israel's colonial project, including Elvis Costello, Gil Scott-Heron, Roger Waters, Devendra Banhart, and the Pixies.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Gaddafi -- They *WILL* not understand.

I am quite amazed at the systematic misunderstanding of Gaddfi as displayed in our media.  I doubt seriously if anyone there even wants to understand him.

In fact, he is the one world leader that we *WILL* not understand.  If rather reminds me of the maxim, I think H.G. Wells used it first, that "There are none so blind as those who WILL not see."  I'm going to give it a shot anyway.

The most important thing to accept is that he is a phenomenon left over from the 20th Century, probably one of the last.  He is a revolutionary.  He is like Lenin, not Stalin; like Che Guevara, not Fidel Castro, and so on.  We could have made a good deal with Fidel back then, but chose not to.  Che left him because of the deal he made with the Russians.  He overthrew a monarchy managed by the Italian colonialists and liberated his country.  He never abandoned the rank of Colonel -- titles for for the selfish.

Most of the people in his country now never experienced life under a colonial power.  Many never experienced life before the huge oil revenues, so even they do not get it.

He certainly is not this clown who fled Tunisia after deposing Bourgehba and gutting his Code of Personal Status, a set of laws that gave great liberties and rights to the people.  He is not Mubarak -- the closest you can get is Gamal Nasser. 

The point I am making is that when he says he will fight to the "Last drop of his blood," he means it quite literally.  He will not go gently into that good night.  Even some media commentators have pointed this out in the last few hours.

Many, if not most, if not all, of those fleeing the country are Tunisians, Egyptians, and other foreign nationals.  They made a much better living in Libya under him.  Note also that some of those holding up Arabic signs can not be Arabs or literate as some of those signs are upside down.  Now, I can not read Arabic script, but I can tell up from down.

Yes, he drove many U.S. Presidents mad.  I had often thought he was on hashish when being interviewed, and finally, Fareed Zak***** of GPS on CNN confirmed that he had the same impression.  Another who interviewed him was Barbara Walters who asked him if it bothered him that many people thought he was insane.  It was the first time I had seen him laugh out loud with a twinkle of delight in his eyes.  He then said it did because it meant they did not understand him.  Well, they didn't.

There was a great deal of anger at him for encouraging terrorism, but his response was that he did support the IRA.  He believed in their goals.  [The Irish have been occupied by England for over 400 years, after all.]

There have been claims that he is in league with Islamic extremists.  That is nuts.  They hate him even more than the "West" does.  He has no use for them, either.  Never did.

Well, anyway, that is the problem.  He is a true revolutionary whether you like it or not and will remain one.  His children are different -- they will deal with you, but not him.  He is ready and willing to die and take as many enemies of the revolution with him as possible and there is nothing that will change that.

That's it.    

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Speech to the UN

This is a summaru of Gaddafi's Speech to the UN in 2009:


MUAMMAR AL-QADHAFI, Leader of the Revolution of Libya, speaking also on behalf of the African Union, said he hoped this gathering would be a historic one.  He also congratulated United States President Barack Obama on his first address to the General Assembly.  This year’s debate was being held in the midst of many challenges and the world should unite and defeat these challenges, which included climate change, the economic crisis and the food crisis.

He said many Member States were not present when the United Nations was created by three countries years ago.  They created the Charter but the Preamble was different from the provisions and articles.  No one objected to the Preamble, but he rejected everything that came after.  The Preamble of the United Nations Charter said nations were equal, whether large or small.  The veto power bestowed upon the five permanent members of the Security Council was, therefore, against the Charter, and he neither accepted nor recognized it.

Continuing, he said the Charter’s Preamble stated that military force should not be used unless there was a common interest.  But 65 wars, with millions of victims, had broken out since the creation of the United Nations.  Moreover, the Preamble said if there was aggression against any country, the United Nations together would check such actions.  Despite that, countries which held the veto used aggressive force against “the people”, even as the Charter said no nation had the right to intervene in the internal affairs of another.

He went on to express concern that right now, calls for reforming the Organization focused only on increasing the number of Member States.  That would only make things worse.  For instance, adding more Security Council seats would “give rise to more super-Powers, crush the small people and create more poverty”.  Such an impractical move would also generate more competition among countries.  In any case, the Council should act according to the rules of the United Nations.  The solution was to close the admission of new Member States and provide equality among those already belonging to the Organization, he said.

Currently, the Assembly was like a decor without any substance.  “You just make a speech and then you disappear...that’s who you are right now,” he said.  Setting that right would mean that the Security Council could serve as a tool for implementing resolutions adopted by the Assembly.  The Council should represent the interests of all countries, through individual seats or seats held by unions that represented each region of the world.  There were equal votes in the Assembly and there should be equal votes next door in the Security Council, he declared, adding that ultimately, for a united and peaceful world, serious Organizational reform was needed.

Keeping his focus squarely on Security Council dynamics, he said that the 15-member body practised “security feudalism” for those who had a protected seat.  “It should be called the terror council”, he said, underscoring that terrorism could exist in many forms.  The super-Powers had complicated interests and used the United Nations for their own purposes.  Indeed, the Security Council did not provide the world with security, but gave it “terror and sanctions”.  He was not committed to adhere to the Council’s resolutions, which were used to commit war crimes and genocides.  He reiterated that the Council did not provide security and the world did not have to obey the rules or orders it decreed, especially as it was currently constituted.

Regarding Africa, the African Union deserved a permanent seat in the Security Council for the suffering it had endured for many years.  This had nothing to do with reform, he said, declaring that Africa deserved compensation, amounting to some $77.7 trillion for the resources and wealth that had been stolen in the past.  Colonization should be criminalized and people should be compensated for the suffering endured during the reign of colonial power.

Africans were proud and happy that a son of Africa was now governing the United States of America and it was a great thing -- it was a glimmer of light in the dark of the past eight years, he said.

However, he noted the money spent by the United States and the city to secure United Nations Headquarters during the annual Assembly.  While thanking the United States for its efforts in hosting the Organization for the past 50 years, he said the United Nations should hold its annual debate in another hemisphere for the next 50 years.  He complained about the trouble some diplomats and their staff had in securing visas from the United States Government.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Gaddafi, #Libya, Socialism, and Colonialism




Illustration: There is nothing like a landscape of what is really before you to make you appreciate what a real, sincere, living, and valuable gift life of this planet is.  What wonders we have created!


Sorry, but we are NOT going to the Royal wedding.  We sent a letter to the Royal family by way of the BBC to the effect that if Fergie was not invited, we were not going -- count us out.  So there.  So shut up about it.  I have heard enough about them.

You probably won't read this in any other forum, so here it is.  Gaddafi drives leaders in the west nuts, and that is why you will not get a straight answer on the situation in Libya right now. 

Gaddafi's number 2 son appeared on state television, carried by Al Jazeera English, and spoke for about 45 minutes on the situation.  He was matter-of-fact, somewhat apologetic, and explained, mainly to his own people, the situation.  It has been a long time since a politician seemed honest, lacking in bullshit, and accurate.  This is probably another reason why Gaddafi himself so irritates politicians in the rest of the world, especially the Capitalist world.

To follow this, you need to know about the Green Book, more or less an extended pamphlet or essay, on the rights of Man as he sees it.  From reading it, you know full well that he is NOT a Muslim fanatic, NOT a dictator, and NOT a stooge of the west.  In fact, the Green Book, if it was symbolically smashed, was smashed by Al Quaeda types or religious zealots, not the oppressed masses.  The book reads as if it were written by the Fabian Society, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, H. G. Wells, or, yes, Bernard Shaw (if you don't believe he would write something like that, I refer you to The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Capitalism.  In short, it espouses a mild and rational form of socialism.

Gaddafi long ago abdicated much of his major decision making involvement to people's councils, and they actually do make decisions, especially involving education and other social welfare issues.  They may be somewhat strange in their expectations and administrative capabilities, but they do have the final word.

Libya has the largest per capital income in all of Africa.  It is hardly Egypt, although I heard some blathering idiot saying that two thirds of the population lived on less than two dollars a day.  In Egypt we were told it was half.  Also, there are 80 million people in Egypt and only 5 million in Libya.  So why the unrest?  Where the parallels?

Libya was a territory occupied by Italy as a colonial power and Italy simply took the several tribes and put them all under the name of one state.  That's it.  There are three main areas and I do not know specifically what they were called.  This publication might help:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6511/is_4_44/ai_n28948866/

I can't vouch for it, but it sounds reasonable and is consistent with what I know.

At any rate, Gaddafi overthrew and expelled the Italians with the army, but only kept the rank of Colonel.  He could have given himself any rank he wanted, but it is in keeping with his philosophy that rank is meaningless and should not come between a state and its people.  He gave it the name of the Libyan People's Socialist Jamaharia, or something like that.  Anyway, it means the people's democracy.

Right now, some clown in the west part of the country has declared himself Calif of an Arab State and people in the mongrel east think of themselves as autonomous. 

As I mentioned, his number two son, Saif El Islam Gaddafi, spoke and pointed all of this out, fairly clearly.  He also called for a council to meet and construct a new constitution of a new state of Libya that everyone could agree on rather than allowing the country to disintegrate into all different segments.  If it did, who would control the oil?  It is located right in the middle of all this.  Furthermore, he said, you know very well that the colonial powers [now consolidated into the EU and the US] will come and take things over. 

Now this is an offer that Mubarak never made.  Tunisia never even considered it.  We are not going to let anything happen to Bahrain because our fifth fleet is there.  Screw the people.  In Algeria, the army took over when they didn't like who was elected.  Sort of what happened in Palestine when we demanded elections and "our" side lost.  Israel is threatening violence in the Suez canal because Iran has two destroyers passing through.  Only Libya so far has even paid lip service to what the people want.  In fact, the people should run their own countries, says Saif Gaddafi, so why not get them together and decide?

They will also point the finger because of a rise in oil prices.  Do you really think our government gives and damn when every time oil prices rise, profits, both absolute and margins rise for big oil?  If you do, you are a moron -- worse, you are also a clod, a lower-clod.

The highlight of one newscast here was that BP had withdrawn its workers from Libya.  Well now, why not ask the people of Louisiana and Mississippi whether they wish BP had withdrawn their operation from the gulf of Mexico? 

Which segment gets the oil revenue if this rioting manages to overthrow what is left of the regime.  Well, the west probably will simply come in and take it. 

Usually, I will go to Twitter and type, say in this case #Libya, and there would be a great deal of specific information.  In fact, that article liked about came from there.  But otherwise, all I see are wild complaints, as of yesterday a thousand were killed (even we only estimated it at 300), Gaddafi has been there too long, and so on.  With #Egypt at least people talked about unemployment and the price of food.

And while we are thinking about it, haven't we had the same two political parties, essentially two wings of the corporate party, in this country too long?  Certainly longer than Gaddafi has been around.

I think someone is trying to slip this one in amongst all the legitimate rebellions.

As a very irritating umpire during my time as a paid baseball player once said, "I just call them as I see them."  I have a reply for him, but it is not appropriate here.  It probably occurred to some of you.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Egypt, Gaza, Chomsky


Illustration: A great, timely one from www.whatnowtoons.com

With all that has been going one, it's time to catch up.  Actually, we are very happy to see Wisconsin finally learning something about Democracy from Cairo.  Now the Democratic members of the house have left the state so a vote can not be taken by the Republican owned rulers.  Finally, some decency while teachers and firemen occupy the legislator in protest against union busting.  Our powers that be really want to undo every vestige of FDR which, at the same time, saved capitalism from socialism.

Some other notes: A member of Veterans for Peace and a former CIA briefer for Bush I was manhandled and bloodied while Hillary was speaking about the right to "peaceful protest". 

We support rulers in Bahrain, Algeria, and Yemen, but how dare they repress protestors in Iran and Lybia?




Rush Transcript

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JUAN GONZALEZ: Inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, a rolling rebellion continues to unfold across North [Africa] and the Middle East, often amid violent repression by state security forces. During an overnight raid in the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain, heavily armed riot police surrounded thousands of demonstrators who were sleeping in the central square in the nation’s capital. Without warning, police fired tear gas and concussion grenades into the crowd of pro-democracy activists that included women and children. The Associated Press reports four people were killed and hundreds beaten or suffocated by tear gas. Bahrain’s main Shia opposition group called the storming of the central square by police "real terrorism."
Early this morning, Democracy Now! reached Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab. He spoke to us from outside a hospital where the wounded were being treated. It is very hard to get through to people in Bahrain right now. Rajab’s cell phone connection was poor, so listen closely.
NABEEL RAJAB: The past two days, people were protesting in Pearl Square, tens of thousands of people, children, men and women, calling for reform and democracy and respect for human rights. Unfortunately, today, morning, at 3:00, 3:30 in the morning, the riot police and special forces attacked the protesters. And many of the protesters, as you know, are children and old men and women and young people. So, among those people, we have many, many injuries. At least two dead confirmed so far, but we expect to see more.
And I see many injuries coming. The people are protesting outside the main hospital, which is Salmaniya Hospital, and were attacked 15 minutes ago. And I see a lot of doctors going out of the main Bahrain hospital to treat people in the street, as there are no places to get them in. And many, many of them are inside, so there is not enough space for them. So doctors are treating the people in the street. And I could see the trolley beds of the hospital taken out to the street to carry as many people as possible.
A lot of people—now, this woman is shouting here beside me. She’s saying, "We need blood! We need blood!" because a lot of people have lost blood. And [inaudible] front of hospital, tens of thousands of people are standing. They want to make sure that their children are not dead. A lot of injured people are still in the scene in the Pearl [inaudible] but cannot be carried because the government, they stopped all the ambulance to go inside. They stopped all the people to go inside to carry the injured people. So, a lot of people don’t know about their kids, don’t know about their people, if they’re alive or dead. So people here around me are crying, they are shouting, they say, "We want to see our children!" They want to go inside the hospital. Doctors are banning them. They say, "You can’t go. A thousand of people inside the hospital." People in the street are bleeding in the street, and some doctors are treating them.
Governments and international governments and all international organizations should voice—we need to hear their voice at this moment—countries like United States, countries like England and Europe. I know how my country is rich. I know why I’m victim of being a rich country, that the United States and other European countries don’t want to make them angry, because as their interests, economic interests, and oil is low. But yes, but there are human beings here. They want to live like your people in the United States. They want to see democracy. They want to see human rights. They want to see that. So, if Barack Obama could come out and speak about other countries like Egypt and Iran, so he could speak about Bahrain. Especially we have more dead people here than they had in Iran, that he should come out and speak and say to the Bahrain government, they should stop this. Barack Obama and the United States are a very influential country here. They are the big brother here. They are the people who could voice. They are the people who could speak. But so far, unfortunately, we have not seen any positive statement made by the United States government.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab speaking to us from Democracy Now! just after Bahrain security forces attacked a gathering of sleeping protesters last night, killing at least four people, injuring hundreds, among them an NBC reporter.
Meanwhile, in Libya, after hundreds protested across the country Wednesday, thousands more filled the streets today again in what’s being called a "Day of Rage." Human rights observers say snipers on rooftops have killed as many as 13 protesters and wounded dozens more. The protests fall on the second anniversary of protests in Benghazi, where security forces killed several people.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In Yemen, two people were killed Wednesday when police opened fire on protesters in the southern city of Aden. At least four people were wounded in the capital Sana’a when student protesters clashed with supporters of U.S.-backed President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
In Iran, violence broke out Wednesday at the funeral of a student killed during an opposition protest earlier this week.
And in Iraq, state forces killed three people Wednesday after a large crowd rallied in the city of Kut over a lack of government services. Hundreds of protesters have gathered in the southern city of Basra today demanding the ouster of the local governor.
AMY GOODMAN: To discuss these events, we’re joined by Marwan Bishara, senior political analyst at Al Jazeera and host and editor of the TV show Empire, and MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, author of, well, more than a hundred books, including, most recently, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians, also Hopes and Prospects, both published by Haymarket Books.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Wonderful to have you both in our studio this week on this 15th anniversary week of Democracy Now!
Just a correction, it was an ABC News reporter, Miguel Marquez, not NBC, who was among those—you know?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, I know Miguel.
AMY GOODMAN: You know him?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: He was in Manama, in Bahrain, part of this rolling rebellion in the Middle East.
Noam, talk about the significance. I feel like we talked a revolution ago. We were speaking just as the rebellion was unfolding in Egypt, and that was just, what, 18 days ago.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Eighteen days ago, yeah. Well, it’s a startling event. I mean, I don’t think one can predict where it’s going, but it’s obviously creating at least the basis for major changes in the region. And for the moment, the regimes are more or less holding. So, in Tunisia and Egypt, it’s essentially the same regime without changes. But the public protests are so vibrant and energetic that it’s hard to believe they’re going to be able to hold.
Bahrain, which was just talked about, is a particularly sensitive place. As you mentioned, it hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet, the major fleet in the region. But also, it’s a majority Shiite country with a Sunni leadership. And right across on the mainland, the population in Saudi Arabia is also mainly Shiite, and Saudi Arabia has been concerned about them for years. It’s a repressed population. They’re concerned about possible influences from the Shiite regions nearby—Iran, southern Iraq—and also that happens to be where most of Saudi Arabian oil is. So it’s a very sensitive area.
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve been studying the Middle East, also traveling there for decades. Marwan Bishara, you live there. I think you don’t live in any one place, but for Al Jazeera, you travel the world. Talk about the significance of this.
MARWAN BISHARA: Well, I think we are living—I’m not sure if it’s a 1989 moment or something else, but certainly the Arab world has been quite delayed from those transformations that took place in Eastern Europe or, for that matter, in Latin America. And I think perhaps the Arab moment has come. It’s clear that the genie is out of the bottle. Now, some people, some cynics, would like to see it as a temporary uprising and everything will go back as it were. I don’t think so. I think change is coming to the Middle East, to the Arab world, in general. And in a sense, we know that the way back is not the way forward.
But what is the way forward exactly? As Professor Chomsky said, we’re not exactly sure. But certainly, it is a work in progress. And I’m not as skeptical as many that, although Ben Ali has gone in Tunisia and although Mubarak has gone in Egypt, that the Mubarak regime and the Ben Ali regime is going to stay. I think it’s a work in progress, and I think, sooner rather than later, we will see also the regimes being swept away after their symbols, their faces, have already been—have already left the scenes.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’d like to ask you particularly about Saudi Arabia, the bastion of conservatism and authoritarianism in the region. Now Saudi Arabia is faced with Bahrain—explosion in Bahrain to its east, Yemen to its south, Egypt to its west, and basically all the countries around Saudi Arabia now are on fire. And the impact on the monarchy, and of course on U.S. interests in the area—what do you think will be the impact within Saudi Arabia itself?
MARWAN BISHARA: I think the impact is going to differ from one country to another, but there’s a certain commonality to all of it. See, there is this thing that’s been absent in the mind of many, not only in Washington, but also in the U.S. media. There is something called an Arab. There is an Arab nation. You can fly—you can take a seven-hour flight from Morocco to Iraq, passing through an Arab region that speaks the same language, that has the same heritage. But it has been invisible to American media and to American decision makers. We’ve seen the Arab world. We’ve seen Saudi Arabia, we’ve seen Bahrain, through the lenses of military strategy, oil, prisms of Israel, and certainly terrorism and jihad. But what we’ve seen over the last six weeks has been completely absence. And hence, it caught everyone by surprise. Everyone was caught in the headlights—What is going on? Who are these people?—not realizing that in places like Bahrain, places like Yemen, certainly Egypt, Tunisia and so on and so forth, a pent-up tension has been building up for years. This is not a new thing that’s gone on on Facebook. So, in Saudi Arabia, like in the rest of the Arab world, we’re going to see what has been building up for years. In Bahrain, they used to call it, for the last 30 years, attempts to topple the government, attempts to topple the regime. In fact, they were community organizers. They’re not exactly like Chicago; the risks are far higher in the Arab world. But these are community organizers in Egypt and Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain and other places, trying to live—or trying to root for decent living, but always being called terrorists or always been oppressed under the pretext of terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: Marwan Bishara, you just came back from Washington, D.C., where you were meeting with think tanks. What is your sense of the Washington consensus understanding versus what you are experiencing in the Middle East?
MARWAN BISHARA: You know, sometimes I forget exactly what are the concepts that are allowed on television or not, but let me just put it this way: they were caught with their pants down, completely. I mean, people in Washington, until today, have not realized exactly what is going on. They’re still trying to play catch-up with what’s going on in the Arab world.
So, for example, I was in one of those brainstorming sessions that tried to talk about what’s next for Palestine and Israel. And what amazes me is that everything that they speak about has an Israel reference to it, because that’s where the correspondents for their main networks are, that’s where their people are, and that’s how they’ve seen the region—Egypt, Palestine and so on—from Israel’s prisms. So, every point of reference is, what did Netanyahu say, or what does Israel think, what would the Israeli lobby consider. Would now, for example, President Obama do this and that, and will the Israeli lobby allow him? What does that mean for our strategic interests in the Middle East? Not understanding that there is a complete sweep that requires not only a change of mindset and, if you allow me here, a change of decision makers, perhaps, or a change of aides in Washington. There’s a complete class of bureaucrats in Washington that are not only not in touch with what’s going on in America, they certainly are not in touch with what’s going on in the Arab world.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Noam Chomsky, I’d like you to follow up on that. The Times had an interesting article today, apparently an Obama administration leak, that the administration had—the President, for more than a year, had requested this study that predicted the possible outbreak of popular movements throughout the region—Samantha Power was involved in preparing this report—as if to say, "Well, we were on top of the situation, even though we weren’t. We knew that this was coming." And your sense of to what degree Washington is able to respond or even is really aware of what’s going on in the region?
NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s hard to believe that they’re not aware of it. I mean, you can read it in the newspapers. There have been demonstrations and protests going on for years. A big protest in 2005, you know, they keep being repressed, then there are more. In fact, the current wave of protests actually began last November in Western Sahara, which is under Moroccan rule after a brutal invasion and occupation. The Moroccan forces came in, carried out—destroyed tent cities, a lot of killed and wounded and so on. And then it spread. You have to be pretty—all the—
AMY GOODMAN: Western Sahara is hardly known about, the rebellion there and the occupation there.
NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s hardly known about, but that’s—I mean, it’s a major atrocity. It’s kind of like East Timor—in fact, pretty much the same, even the same time. But it’s blowing up. And also, they must read the studies of Arab public opinion. I mean, you can’t imagine an intelligence service that doesn’t read the regular studies by Western polling agencies of Arab public opinion. And if you look at them, you can see why democracy is such a frightening concept. The latest major study last August released by the Brookings Institute, so not very obscure, showed that almost nobody in the Arab world regards Iran as a threat—10 percent. What they regard as a threat is the United States and Israel, like 80 and 90 percent. In fact, a majority even favor Iran having nuclear weapons, to balance U.S.-Israeli power, which is the real threat in the Arab world. You take a look at when they list people who are respected, Erdogan in Turkey is way up on top. Obama isn’t even listed. You know, you get down to Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, no Obama. Now, these are the opinions of people in the Arab world. What you said about the bureaucrats and the aides is absolutely correct. I mean, after all, there have been 60 years in which explicit policy, you know, in writing, has been—internal records—has been to disregard the Arab population, as long as they can be kept under control.
JUAN GONZALEZ: So, is, perhaps, the reticence of the administration in the case of Egypt, let’s say, or right now in Bahrain, more geared to the fact that they know that public opinion and they understand that real democracy in the region would mean another Latin America, another region totally out of U.S. ability to dominate?
NOAM CHOMSKY: I don’t talk to anybody in Washington, so I can only guess, but it is simply inconceivable that at least the intelligence services don’t go as far as reading polls that I can read.
AMY GOODMAN: Before Marwan goes, we can’t not talk about the Palestine Papers, because Al Jazeera has released them, and you’re the senior political analyst for Al Jazeera. The Palestine Papers, the leaked documents obtained by Al Jazeera that show how Palestinian leaders offered sweeping concessions to Israel on a number of key issues but received little in return. The U.N. Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace, Robert Serry, has said the papers highlight the Israeli government’s rejection of serious negotiations in its attempt to retain control over the West Bank.
ROBERT SERRY: What you have seen is, in my view, an earnest, genuine Palestinian attempt to actually show readiness for a two-state solution, and maybe we haven’t seen that same readiness on the other side, given also the fact that all of what happened hasn’t led to an agreement.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Robert Serry. Marwan Bishara, I want to have you explain the significance of this—it’s hardly talked about in the United States; we all know about the WikiLeaks documents, but not the Palestine Papers—and again, get Professor Chomsky to respond.
MARWAN BISHARA: Well, look, it’s very simple. There’s been this notion for the last 20 years that, from Arafat onwards, that the Palestinians were not serious partners for peace, that the Palestinians were not forthcoming, that they’re not willing to compromise, that they were set in their ways. What we found out from the Palestine Papers, 1,600 documents detailing session after sessions with the Americans, with the Israelis and so on and so forth, that the Palestinian delegation was not only making incredible compromises that I’m not sure that they will pass through the public opinion in Palestine, but they were making acrobatic attempts just to please their Israeli partners and their American partners. They were almost playing in the American role of trying to bridge between America and Israel and between Palestine and Israel themselves. And yet, they’ve been met with rejection after rejection after rejection, not only from the so-called hawkish bits of the Israeli politics, but actually from the so-called moderate parts of the Israeli policy or the Israeli delegation. So we would see sessions after session, for example, with then-Foreign Minister Livni, where the Palestinians are offering one possibility after another, and the Israelis coming back and saying something so condescending, such as, "Oh, this is very interesting, but I don’t think this will work. Why don’t you come up with something different?" And it just goes on and on for years.
Now, as Professor Chomsky was saying, the problem with much of that, Amy, is that there is information out there, but it does not come together in some understanding of some sort. So we know for 20 years the Palestinians have made historic compromises on the question of the territory, on the question of borders, even on the question of Jerusalem, a question of right of return of refugees, but they have always been met with rejection from the Israeli side and complicity from the American side.
AMY GOODMAN: And Al Jazeera’s role here? And the significance, before you go, of Al Jazeera in this entire uprising? I mean, Saeb Erekat first was really fiercely going after Al Jazeera, and then, before you know it, he, the longtime Palestinian negotiator, had resigned. You, yourself, Marwan, are Palestinian.
MARWAN BISHARA: Well, you know, there was an article out a couple of days ago—I think it was in the Washington Post—by Robert Malley, who was a former aide at the Clinton administration. He said, "Well, today we showed, you know, that Al Jazeera is the Arab leader." And what does that really mean? What it means is that Al Jazeera is a transparent, open forum for Arabs to come and speak, and they have been for the last decade and a half, almost as long as you’ve been on air, Amy, except that they’ve given Arabs from various parts of the Arab world the capacity to come on air and speak. And I think the way we’ve covered places like Palestine—for example, we were the only ones, Amy, in Gaza during the Israeli bombardment and war and invasion of Gaza, last one in 2008.
AMY GOODMAN: And that was Ayman—right?—who now is in Cairo, is the Cairo bureau chief.
MARWAN BISHARA: Yes, Ayman Mohyeldin, that’s correct. And, of course, in Cairo, we’ve been there in a very substantial way. I think we had like eight roving reporters in Egypt alone when things broke out. So, we are there, we listen to the people, and we report the story as is. Of course, before, we’ve been accused, because we report those things that Noam spoke about, the sentiments of people—there is a pent-up tension in that area. The fact that Washington sees people as terrorists, as jihadists, as radicals, as extremists, and the most autocratic and the worst of kleptocracies in the world as moderate, as allies, as friends of the United States, is an insult to the American people. But that’s how Washington has been viewing these things.
AMY GOODMAN: We are going to break and then come back. Marwan Bishara, I want to thank you very much for being with us, senior political analyst at Al Jazeera English and host and editor of Empire. You can see Al Jazeera English on the web. In fact, we did a very interesting forum that you moderated, Marwan, at Columbia Journalism School, with Carl Bernstein and Clay Shirky and others, about WikiLeaks, about a number of issues, about what’s happening. It was happening all—about an hour after Mubarak had resigned. You can go, unfortunately, I’ll say, online, until this is all over the United States. In Toledo, Ohio, and Burlington, Vermont, you can see Al Jazeera English, actually, on Free Speech TV and on Link TV, satellite networks who are giving over some of their time to the programming. We’ll see what happens. Al Jazeera English is waging a huge campaign in the United States, full-page articles in the New York Times ads, saying to people to call for their networks, to cable stations, to bring Al Jazeera just as one of the panoply of networks that people can see. Marwan, thanks so much, Marwan Bishara.
This is Democracy Now! We’ll continue with Noam Chomsky for the hour. Stay with us.

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Rush Transcript

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AMY GOODMAN: This month is the 15th anniversary of Democracy Now! on the air, and it’s a real privilege to have MIT professor, analyst, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, Noam Chomsky with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez, and we’ve been together for this whole 15 years, Juan. It’s really been quite an amazing journey.
As we talk about this revolution that’s rolling across the Middle East, we put out to our listeners and viewers on Facebook last night that, Noam, you were going to be in. And so, people were sending in their comments and questions. We asked, on Facebook and Twitter, to send us questions. Here is one of the questions.
RYAN ADSERIAS: Hello, Professor Chomsky. My name is Ryan Adserias, and I’m a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and also the child of a long line of working-class union folks. I don’t know if you’ve been noticing, but we’ve been holding a lot of protests and rallies here in our capital to protest Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to break collective bargaining rights that Wisconsin workers worked hard for over 50 years ago and have enjoyed ever since. We closed all the schools around here for tomorrow—today and tomorrow, actually. The teaching assistants here at the university are staging teach-outs. The undergraduates are walking out of class to show solidarity. And all of this is because our governor and governors all around the country are proposing legislation that’s going to end collective bargaining and really break the unions. I’ve also been noticing that there’s not a whole lot of national representation of our struggle and our movement, and it’s really been troubling me. So my question to you is, how exactly is it that we can get the attention of our national Democratic and progressive leaders to speak out against these measures and to help end union busting here in the United States?
AMY GOODMAN: That was a question from Ryan Adserias in Madison, Wisconsin, where more than 10,000—some say tens of thousands of people, teachers, students, are protesting in the Capitol building, schools closed, as Ryan said. So, from Manama to Madison, from Manama, Bahrain, to Madison, Wisconsin, Noam Chomsky?
NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s very interesting. The reason why you can’t get Democratic leaders to join is because they agree. They are also trying to destroy the unions. In fact, if you take a look at—take, say, the lame-duck session. The great achievement in the lame-duck session for which Obama is greatly praised by Democratic Party leaders is that they achieved bipartisan agreement on several measures. The most important one was the tax cut. And the issue in the tax cut—there was only one issue—should there be a tax cut for the very rich? The population was overwhelmingly against it, I think about two to one. There wasn’t even a discussion of it, they just gave it away. And the very same time, the less noticed was that Obama declared a tax increase for federal workers. Now, it wasn’t called a "tax increase"; it’s called a "freeze." But if you think for 30 seconds, a freeze on pay for a federal workers is fiscally identical to a tax increase for federal workers. And when you extend it for five years, as he said later, that means a decrease, because of population growth, inflation and so on. So he basically declared an increase in taxes for federal workers at the same time that there’s a tax decrease for the very rich.
And there’s been a wave of propaganda over the last couple of months, which is pretty impressive to watch, trying to deflect attention away from those who actually created the economic crisis, like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, their associates in the government who—Federal Reserve and others—let all this go on and helped it. There’s a—to switch attention away from them to the people really responsible for the crisis—teachers, police, firefighters, sanitation workers, their huge pensions, their incredible healthcare benefits, Cadillac healthcare benefits, and their unions, who are the real villains, the ones who are robbing the taxpayer by making sure that policemen may not starve when they retire. And this is pretty amazing, like right in the middle of the Madison affair, which is critical.
The CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, got a $12.5 million bonus, and his base pay was more than tripled. Well, that means he—the rules of corporate governments have been modified in the last 30 years by the U.S. government to allow the chief executive officer to pretty much set their own salaries. There’s various ways in which this has been done, but it’s government policy. And one of the effects of it is—people talk about inequality, but what’s a little less recognized is that although there is extreme inequality, it’s mostly because of the top tiny fraction of the population, so like a fraction of one percent of the population, their wealth has just shot through the stratosphere. You go down to the—you know, the next 10 percent are doing pretty well, but it’s not off the spectrum. And this is by design.
AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times coverage of Madison?
NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, that was very interesting. In fact, I urge people to take a look at the February 12th issue of the New York Times, the big front-page headline, you know, banner headline, "Mubarak Leaves," its kind of subheadings say, "Army Takes Over." They’re about 60 years late on that; it took over in 1952, but—and it has held power ever since.
But then if you go to an inside page—I don’t know what page it is—there’s an article on the Governor of Wisconsin. And he’s pretty clear about what he wants to do. I mean, certainly he is aware of and senses this attack on public workers, on unions and so on, and he wants to be upfront, so he announced a sharp attack on public service workers and unions, as the questioner said, to ban collective bargaining, take away their pensions. And he also said that he’d call out the National Guard if there was any disruption about this. Now, that’s happening now to Wisconsin. In Egypt, public protests have driven out the president. There’s a lot of problems about what will happen next, but an overwhelming reaction there.
And I was—it was heartening to see that there are tens of thousands of people protesting in Madison day after day, in fact. I mean, that’s the beginning, maybe, of what we really need here: a democracy uprising. Democracy has almost been eviscerated. Take a look at the front-page headlines today, this morning, Financial Times at least. They predict—the big headline, the big story—that the next election is going to break all campaign spending records, and they predict $2 billion of campaign spending. Well, you know, a couple of weeks ago, the Obama administration selected somebody to be in charge of what they call "jobs." "Jobs" is a funny word in the English language. It’s the way of pronouncing an unpronounceable word. I’ll spell it: P-R-O-F-I-T-S. You’re not allowed to say that word, so the way you pronounce that is "jobs." The person he selected to be in charge of creating jobs is Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, which has more than half their workforce overseas. And, you know, I’m sure he’s deeply interested in jobs in the United States. But what he has is deep pockets, and also, not just him, but connections to the tiny sector of the ultra-rich corporate elite, which is going to provide that billion or billion-and-a-half dollars for the campaign. Well, that’s what’s going on.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I’d like to ask you about this whole issue of the assault on unions. Clearly, it has arisen in the last few months in a coordinated way. Here in New York State, all the major business people have gotten together, raised $10 million to begin an ad campaign, and they’re being supported by both the Democratic new governor, Andrew Cuomo, and as well as the Republican-Independent Mayor Bloomberg. But they seem to be going after the public sector unions after having essentially destroyed most of the private sector union movement in the United States. They realize that the public sector unions are still the only vibrant section of the American labor movement, so now they’re really going after them in particular. Yet, you’ve got these labor leaders who helped get Obama elected and who helped get Andy Cuomo elected, and they’re not yet making the stand in a strong enough way to mobilize people against these policies.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. There has been a huge attack against private sector unions. Actually, that’s been going on since the Second World War. After the Second World War, business was terrified about the radicalization of the country during the Depression and then the war, and it started right off—Taft-Hartley was 1947—huge propaganda campaigns to demonize unions. It really—and it continued until you get to the Reagan administration.
Reagan was extreme. Beginning of his administration, one of the first things was to call in scabs—hadn’t been done for a long time, and it’s illegal in most countries—in the air controller strike. Reagan essentially—by "Reagan," I mean his administration; I don’t know what he knew—but they basically told the business world that they’re not going to apply the labor laws. So, that means you can break unions any way you like. And in fact, the number of firing of union organizers, illegal firing, I think probably tripled during the Reagan years.
Then, in fact, by the early '90s, Caterpillar Corporation, first major industrial corporation, called in scabs to break a strike of industrial workers, UAW. That's—I think the only country that allowed that was South Africa. And then it spread.
When Clinton came along, he had another way of destroying unions. It’s called NAFTA. One of the predicted consequences of NAFTA, which in fact worked out, was it would be used as a way to undermine unions—illegally, of course. But when you have a criminal state, it doesn’t matter. So, there was actually a study, under NAFTA rules, that investigated illegal strike breaking organizing efforts by threats, illegal threats, to transfer to Mexico. So, if union organizers are trying to organize, you put up a sign saying, you know, "Transfer operation Mexico." In other words, you shut up, or you’re going to lose your jobs. That’s illegal. But again, if you have a criminal state, it doesn’t matter.
Well, by measures like this, private sector unions have been reduced to, I think, maybe seven percent of the workforce. Now, it’s not that workers don’t want to join unions. In fact, many studies of this, there’s a huge pool of workers who want to join unions, but they can’t. And they’re getting no support from the political system. And part of the reason, not all of it, is these $2 billion campaigns. Now, this really took off in the late '70s and the ’80s. You want to run for office, then you're going to have to dig into very deep pockets. And as the income distribution gets more and more skewed, that means you’re going to have to go after Jeffrey Immelt and Lloyd Blankfein, and so on and so forth, if you want to even be in office. Take a look at the 2008 campaign spending. Obama way outspent McCain. He was funded—his main source of funding was the financial institutions.
AMY GOODMAN: Now they’re saying he’s going to raise, Obama is going to raise $1 billion for the next campaign.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, and it’ll probably be more than that, because they’re predicting $2 billion for the whole campaign, and the incumbent usually has advantages.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, we have to break. We’re going to come right back.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, world-renowned political dissident. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest for the hour is Noam Chomsky. He has authored over a hundred books; his latest, Hopes and Prospects, among others.
Professor Chomsky, I want to ask you about former President Ronald Reagan. A very big deal is made of him now on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Last year President Obama signed legislation establishing a commission to mark the centennial.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: President Reagan helped, as much as any president, to restore a sense of optimism in our country, a spirit that transcended politics, that transcended even the most heated arguments of the day.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, your response?
NOAM CHOMSKY: This deification of Reagan is extremely interesting and a very—it’s scandalous, but it tells a lot about the country. I mean, when Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy. When he came into office, the United States was the world’s leading creditor. By the time he left, it was the world’s leading debtor. He was fiscally totally irresponsible—wild spending, no fiscal responsibility. Government actually grew during the Reagan years.
He was also a passionate opponent of the free market. I mean, the way he’s being presented is astonishing. He was the most protectionist president in post-war American history. He essentially virtually doubled protective barriers to try to preserve incompetent U.S. management, which was being driven out by superior Japanese production.
During his years, we had the first major fiscal crises. During the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the New Deal regulations were still in effect, and that prevented financial crises. The financialization of the economy began to take off in the ’70s, but with the deregulation, of course you start getting crises. Reagan left office with the biggest financial crisis since the Depression: the home savings and loan.
I won’t even talk about his international behavior. I mean, it was just abominable. I mean, if we gained our optimism by killing hundreds of thousands of people in Central America and destroying any hope for democracy and freedom and supporting South Africa while it killed about a million-and-a-half people in neighboring countries, and on and on, if that’s the way we get back our optimism, we’re in bad trouble.
Well, what happened after Reagan left office is that there was the beginnings of an effort to carry out a kind of—this Reagan legacy, you know, to try to create from this really quite miserable creature some kind of deity. And amazingly, it succeeded. I mean, Kim Il-sung would have been impressed. The events that took place when Reagan died, you know, the Reagan legacy, this Obama business, you don’t get that in free societies. It would be ridiculed. What you get it is in totalitarian states. And I’m waiting to see what comes next. This morning, North Korea announced that on the birthday of the current god, a halo appeared over his birthplace. That will probably happen tomorrow over Reagan’s birthplace. But when we go in—I mean, this is connected with what we were talking about before. If you want to control a population, keep them passive, keep beating them over the head and let them look somewhere else, one way to do it is to give them a god to worship.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, you’ve written about, over the years, COINTELPRO, FBI raids. We’re seeing that today. There’s almost no attention given to what we have focused on a good deal on Democracy Now!, from Minneapolis to Chicago, the FBI raids, activists being subpoenaed to speak about in various cases.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, that’s a pretty—it’s not just—the raids are serious enough, but what’s more significant is what lies behind them. These are the first actions taken under new rulings by the Supreme Court. A very important case was six or eight months ago, I guess, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project. It was initiated by the Obama administration. It was argued by Elena Kagan, Obama’s new court appointment. And they won, with the support of the far-right justices. The case is extremely significant. It’s the worst attack on freedom of speech since the Smith Act 70 years ago. The case determined that any material support to organizations that the government lists on the terrorist list is criminalized, but they interpreted "material support"—in fact, the issue at stake was speech. Humanitarian Law Project was giving advice—speech—to a group on that’s on the terrorist list, Turkish PKK. And they were also advising them on legal advice and also advising them to move towards nonviolence. That means if you and I, let’s say, talk to Hamas leaders and say, "Look, you ought to move towards nonviolent resistance," we’re giving material support to a group on the terrorist list.
Incidentally, the terrorist list is totally illegitimate. That shouldn’t exist in a free society. Terrorist list is an arbitrary list established by the executive with no basis whatsoever, by whim, for example, but no supervision. And if you take a look at the record of the terrorist list, it’s almost comical. So, take Reagan again. In 1982, the Reagan administration decided it wanted to aid their friend Saddam Hussein. He had been—Iraq had been on the terrorist list. They took it off the terrorist list. They had a gap. They had to put someone in.
AMY GOODMAN: South Africa, ANC.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Put in Cuba. They put in Cuba, and I suppose in honor of the fact that, in preceding several years Cuba had been the target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined. So, Saddam Hussein goes off, Cuba goes on, no review, no comment. And now, with the new Obama principle, giving—advising groups that are arbitrarily put on this group is criminal. And that was the background for those raids.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, we’re going to continue this conversation online and play it on the show again. Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Friday, February 11, 2011

Extra #Egypt #Jan 25 #fok

Robert Gibb's last day in office -- he arranged for it all.  Egypt revolts and wins.  Happy 32nd Anniversary Iranian Revolution.  Mubarak to join CPAC.  KFC Triumps!  Comcast, Time-Warner, and Rubert Murdock consolodate Ratings Triumph.  Wolfgang Blitzkrieg woken up to appear.  Anderson Cooper Triumphant as Mastermind.  Al-Jazeera on national networks Link and FSTV.  

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Egypt, Cognitive Dissonance, Keith, and Fisk

Illustration:  Rather nicely explains what is going on in Egypt.  From www.whatnowtoons.com.





Egypt and Cognitive Dissonance

For about three weeks now, media has been focused on Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo as hundreds of thousands of Egyptians gather to protest Hosni Mubarak's rule.  We can add those in Alexandria, Suez, and a dozen other cities and get a total of over a million average and up to three million on specific days.

Hosni has dealt with the situation by naming a Vice president, Mr. Suleiman, our contact in Egypt in charge of extraordinary rendition and other fine democratic services.  One might say he has serviced us, to use a term from animal husbandry. 

A great many disparate elements are at work here.  First, Hosni says he is "fed up" with being President which puts him in agreement with the people of the country.  Second, the VEEP has announced that the demonstrations are supported and inspired from outside Egypt, that the people themselves have little to do with it.  Why they couldn't think of it on their own, don't you see. 

Some of those accused include a troika of Israel, Hamas, and Anderson Cooper of CNN.  Anderson Cooper, as you know, has long been involved with such uprisings, even to the extent of being in New Orleans a few years ago.  Another possible co-conspirator is KFC, attempting to expand its market.  No, I'm not making any of this up.

Early on, Mubarak sent thugs into the square to try to break this up, something we are told would never happen here.  I believe some Egyptians pointed out that "you Americans don't know what it's like to be attacked by the police." 

Oh no?  You might look up accounts of the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago when mayor Daley gave the order to "shoot to kill or main" any demonstrators to his police.  He then pointed out that "the police are not there to create disorder.  The police are there to preserve disorder." 

There were also the Kent state killings.  Before this last series of war, millions of US citizens marched against it, but it went on anyway.  So, if the Egyptans are trying to emulate our system, wherein we vote, good luck to them.

I should mention that 300 were killed in the police riot in Cairo.

Some were detained, kept blindfolded for 12 days.  On the other hand, we keep Bradley Manning's eyes open.  At any rate, those in Liberation square make it clear that they do not need help from Americans.  Not even KFC?

A short time ago, I was stuck in a waiting room and Fox TV was on.  At first, I didn’t even notice it.  In fact, nobody paid the slightest attention to it.  I had the impression that no one would notice unless someone turned it off.  At any rate, some lunatic was explaining how George Bush, both of them, forbade the bombing of Ancient Babylon so as to facilitate the Twelfth Caliphate that would stretch from Japan to England.  The Muslim Brotherhood was part of this conspiracy.  Since this brotherhood is so benign, and the idea of the Bushes behind such a take over, I found this very laughable – until I realized that lots of people actually watch and listen to these guys and believe it!  Such people are running loose in our country!

Still, we are more interested in Julian Assange of Wikileaks.  He is “suspected” of rape, during consensual sexual intercourse, in Sweden.  Say what?  Anyway, we want him extradited to Sweden from England so he can be executed in the United States to make us safe from, uh, the Caliphate?  Hardly anyone noticed that Assange is nominated for a Nobel Prize which might help restore some of that prize’s distinction.  If you wonder how that could be possible, remember that Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Remember Keith Olbermann?  He will now become New Director at Current TV.  If he has the power to hire and fire, he might consider recruiting Rick Sanchez, fired by CNN,(who is doing a nice collection of new article on Twitter), Ottavia Nasr, also fired by CNN, and David Schuster, fired by MSNBC.  They would all be great additions.  I doubt if Helen Thomas would be available.
Below is a nice discussion of the situation in the MidEast by Robert Fisk:
Guest:
Robert Fisk, Legendary Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Robert Fisk of The Independent newspaper. He, too, is in Cairo. I asked him about the U.S. role in Egypt and the Middle East.
ROBERT FISK: What they’re calling out for are everything which ordinary Americans would agree with: multi-party democracy; a new constitution which gives equal rights to everyone; an end to fraudulent elections, which have allowed, of course, Mubarak to carry on year after year for three decades until the age of 83, based on elections that gave 97.8, 97.9 percent of the victory; and an end, in fact, to long presidential periods of six years in office, bringing it down to four years; and they want a maximum two terms for a president, rather than indefinite presidency or presidency for life, which is effectively what Mubarak got. These people are therefore asking for nothing less than Americans accept in their own lives.
And the great tragedy is that at this critical moment, Obama chose not to hold out his hand to the democrats and to say, "We support you, and Mubarak must go." He chose to support, effectively, Mubarak by saying orderly transition. You know, he wants another general—he’s already got one, Omar Suleiman, the Vice President—to take over. The army, which receives $1.3 billions of American taxpayers’ money every year, is going to be called upon to try and make this transition, even though Mubarak himself, of course, was the head of the air force. He was a general, too. Omar Suleiman, the Vice President, is a general, head of intelligence, a very ruthless man. His people carried out a lot of tortures in the past against Islamist uprisings in Egypt. And for many of the people on the street, there was deep disappointment that at this critical moment the President of the United States, who came here to Cairo just under 18 months ago to tell the Muslim world—he held up their hand, and he said, "Do not clench your fists in response." When the democrats came onto the streets of Cairo and wanted what Obama had advertised to them, it was Obama who clenched his fist and Hillary Clinton who said that it’s a stable regime.
Only now, when they realize that perhaps Mubarak is going to go, mainly because the army want to get rid of him, not the protesters—and another part of the tragedy—are they beginning to say, "Well, we’ve got to get rid of this old man," but not, of course, to replace him with real democrats but to replace him with an army-backed regime, which is effectively Mubarak part two.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, what about the U.S. relationship with the military? I was talking to someone in a government agency in Washington, and they were deeply concerned, saying, "How do we counter the image that we’ve actually been supporting this despot for 30 years?" And someone else replied, "We can’t, because we have been supporting him."
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, and I think, in a way, you see, what happens is it becomes a sort of osmotic relationship. First of all, the Egyptians are wooed from the Soviet side under Sadat, who basically left the Soviet Union to the American side. Then the Americans arm them, feed them, clothe them, uniform them, after which, however independent they want to be, in order to feed, they’ve got to go to Washington.
It was interesting that when Tantawi, the commander-in-chief of the army, was coping with this crisis here, the Pentagon snapped its fingers, and he flew straight away to Washington for the serious consultations at the Pentagon—in other words, to get his instructions. I mean, he wouldn’t say that. It’ll be "advise," "Where are things going, General? You know, fill this out here. Give us a briefing," etc. But at the end of the day, he’d be left in no doubt that if he wanted to get more Abrams tanks and extra missiles, he’s got to do what America wants, which primarily now is get rid of Mubarak, but don’t make it look as if it’s our fault.
You see, American—the problem with the Americans is that when you—the moral values of the United States become disentangled from the national interest at critical moments like this. You know, we all want democracy, but not if we lose Mubarak, who is Israel’s man, etc., etc. And this, of course, doesn’t come as a great surprise to the Arabs, although, as I wrote in the paper, had Obama decided to say, "Look, I’m with the democrats; they’re doing what I talked about in Cairo 18 months ago, 17 months ago," there would have been American flags all over Cairo, all over Egypt. And indeed, it would have solved, in many Arab minds, all the wounds that the Arab and Muslim world has sustained from the United States, and particularly Britain as well, over the last 10 years.
AMY GOODMAN: In fact, there’s the current U.S. ambassador to Egypt, right? Margaret Scobey.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah. Well, I mean, there is, although she doesn’t seem to move around very much. One of the interesting things is that the one group of people you do not see on the streets of Cairo are American diplomats. Presumably they get their information from Egyptians who come and tell them what’s going on.
And there was, by the way, slightly to tangent, a very odd episode on the 28th of January, when a vehicle identified by the crowds as a U.S. armored limousine crashed through anti-Mubarak demonstrators, running many of them down, and went out the end of the street. They identified it as an American embassy vehicle. And the embassy then came out, unattributably, as saying, "Our diplomats don’t go out in the streets in such circumstances," which is clearly true. And then they suddenly said, "Several of our vehicles were stolen that day." They didn’t tell us that on the 28th of January; they waited until February to tell us. Well, how did they get those vehicles stolen? Did they lend them to the Mubarak government, perhaps? Or did they know the police had taken them and therefore chose to keep silent about it? There are many things like that.
I mean, another example is when the first M1 Abrams tanks came into the square on the Friday. I’m talking about when they were ordered to attack the crowds. I noticed that the coding on the front of the vehicle—it had Egyptian codings for the brigades and parachute units on the side, in Arabic and Arabic numerals. But on the front of the vehicle was a coding, which began MFR and then a series of numbers of each vehicle. And I actually took it down, and a parachute officer started shouting at me and told two soldiers to arrest me. And I actually ran away into the crowd to get away from them. And they chased me and then stopped, and obviously, confronted by about 10,000 demonstrators, decided better of it. And it seems that MFR stands for Mobile Force Reserve. And these are American-owned vehicles. These are American tactical deployment matériel, which is stored in Egypt, as it is also stored of course in Kuwait and now in Iraq for use in emergencies in the Gulf. Now, these vehicles, these tanks, which were threatening at that point the demonstrators, appear to have been vehicles that actually belong to the American military, not to the Egyptian military, but which were obviously used by the Egyptians in this instance. The Egyptians do make the Abrams tank and also have some of their own, but these vehicles appear to be vehicles that effectively belong to you or the Pentagon or whatever. The question is, did the Americans know they were being taken? Did they give permission for this? But none of the soldiers minded pictures being taken of their vehicles or the coding on the side in Arabic, but the moment I took down letters in the Roman letters and the Roman numeral, or rather, modern numerals, they didn’t like it at all. So I have a feeling these were actually reserve vehicles belonging to your country which were being used by Mubarak’s government.
So there’s a whole series of unanswered questions that we don’t really know the answer to, and I don’t suppose we’ll find out yet. But like the tortures in police stations, which are now coming to light, I think that if this regime does crumble—and I think it is steadily crumbling; I mean, the whole National Democratic Party is now just a cardboard facade, especially since the burning of its headquarters—we’re going to learn a lot more of what went on behind the scenes. And it won’t be nice, and it won’t be something that U.S. governments will want to associate themselves with.
AMY GOODMAN: The implications of this for other countries, for a kind of pan-Arab rebellion? Of course, Tunisia, then Egypt. What do you see happening in Israel, Palestine, in Jordan?
ROBERT FISK: Clearly, we have maintained—first the British and the French, and then after the Second World War, with the Americans—we have maintained a system of patronage for ruthless, anti-democratic dictators across the region. We’ve called them kings, we’ve called them emirs, we’ve called them princes, we’ve called them generals, we’ve called them all kinds of presidents, and in Bahrain, for example, you’ve got His Supreme Majesty the King, who rules over an island about half the size of, I suppose, Detroit, if that. But because of this, you know, inevitably, when you have one country suddenly breaking through to freedom, through watching Al Jazeera, for example, the other people in the region, in Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, Mauritania, then begin—Algeria, especially—then begin to say, "Well, you know, we demand the same rights. We have a right to live. We have a right to oxygen."
But, you know, I think that in some ways the uprising here has more in common with the revolt of Iranians against the results of the Iranian elections in 2009, which, remember, the opposition was crushed after, than it does with sort of the Iranian Revolution or something on a bigger scale. And I’m not entirely certain—you know, these may be tribes with flags, as a Crusader historian or historian of the Crusades once described the Arab world, but these are not all the same people. For example, the opposition to King Abdullah in Jordan actually really comes from elements of the army who feel the Palestinians have become too strong in Jordan. The opposition in Syria would be Sunnis who object to the Alawite minority leadership of the country, where it becomes a more sectarian issue rather than an issue of democracy, which is the case in Egypt, because [inaudible] virtually everybody here is a Sunni Muslim, including of course our dear President Mubarak—or their dear President Mubarak. So I think that, you know, I’m a bit suspicious of the idea that just because the Tunisians have a revolution and it spreads to Egypt, therefore, you know—true, there are food demonstrations or high-price demonstrations and protests against the economy in Jordan and certainly protests against Saleh, the president of Yemen, but I’m not sure it’s all the same.
And remember that Tunisia, the famous Jasmine Revolution—this, I gather, is going to be called the Papyrus Revolution, heaven help us, in Egypt—in Tunisia, the revolution has actually only replaced so far Ben Ali with his mates. I mean, Ghannouchi is a friend of Ben Ali. He was one of his schoolmates, I believe. And here, you’ve got to remember that Omar Suleiman, the new savior of Egypt, with whom all these people are supposed to negotiate, he is a very close, personal, lifelong friend of Mubarak, and he was a general. So, while at the same time on the surface you’ve got this democratic uprising, and suddenly we’re going to have all these new countries, and they’re all going to be lovely and believe in our secular values, at the end of the day, the fear is not the Muslim Brotherhood Islamicism; it’s the fear that more generals will be appointed to work for the West. And that is basically what is happening. And, you know, if, say, King Abdullah were in some way persuaded to leave his country, the Jordanian army will be persuaded to find another member of the royal family to take over the job, but perhaps more constitutionally. So the idea that there’s going to be this massive sort of overthrow of dictators, yes, there might be, but there will be more dictators ready to take the role, but playing a sort of softer role and then gently introducing more emergency laws and restrictions on crowds gathering, and so on and so forth, and you’re back to square one.
Corruption has become so much part of the economy, the oil that makes the economy work—and corruption, of course, is the way in which dictators control their people—that the whole system, the whole functioning of society in the Middle East, has been almost irreparably damaged over the decades by the way in which we in the West have encouraged it to function and which the dictators are very happy to function, either on our behalf and of course financially on their own.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think President Obama should do?
ROBERT FISK: Well, it’s always the same case when you or anyone else asks me about U.S. policy. The question is what he should have done.
You know, I never really believed quite in Obama. I was very struck by his reference in the Cairo speech, the famous reach-out-my-hand-to-the-Muslims speech, when he referred to the relocation of the Palestinians in 1948, as if the Palestinians suddenly got up and said, "Oh, let’s all go skiing in Lebanon today and never quite go home again," rather than being driven from their homes or fleeing in terror from the new Israeli army at the time. And I think that, you know, because of his weakness vis-à-vis the Republicans and of course the recent midterm elections and because of his vanity—I mean, Obama should never have taken the Nobel Prize; Nobel Prize of Public Speaking, maybe, but, I mean, he should have said, "Look, I’m not worthy of it, but thank you"—he’s missed so many steps he could have taken to show that the moral values which he claimed to espouse in that famous Cairo speech, which I attended at Cairo University a few—just about a mile from where I’m talking to you now, and only two miles from Tahrir Square, actually. You know, if only he had stuck to those moral values in the Arab world, the warmth of the Arab world towards America, which was there in the '50s and ’60s even after the establishment of Israel and was certainly there in the ’20s and ’30s, might have been reestablished. But it was a critical moment. And because of Israel's wishes—you know, the Israelis have made it fairly clear they don’t think, you know, these Arabs really should have these elections; I mean, keep Mubarak, you know? or keep some version of Mubarak—and because of his domestic critics—you know, "Are you going to lose Egypt now, Mr. President?"—I know that’s already coming up in editorials—he did blew it. He blinked. He was weak. He was vain. He chose not to support the good guys.
People say, well, you know—someone said to me on a radio show in Ireland yesterday, "Oh, come on, Robert, you’re always saying America should keep its nose out of other countries. Now you want it to interfere." But the fact is, it does interfere. It’s paying $1.3 billion to the regime every year. Therefore, it is time for it to take the right side in Egypt, and it failed to do so. And that failure will cost America yet again. It’s a tragedy in many ways. You know, here was an opportunity suddenly to get it right, and he flunked it. And he’s seen as being a very weak man in the Arab world. You know, Bush was seen as—in a sense, people preferred Bush, because they saw him as an intemperate bully, which is pretty much what he was out here, whereas Obama came forward with—you know, as a man who seemed to have something to offer of moral value. And at the end of the day, the moral values have gone out of the window, and we’re back with "Oh, the Egyptian people must decide, but it must be an orderly transition," where "orderly" can mean another six or seven months of Mubarak.
And, of course, the nightmare here is that if the demonstrators go home—whether they get arrested or not, and beaten and tortured afterwards is not the point—then there will be more stability, tourists will come back, the army will be happy, and then Mubarak will suddenly discover that, for the good of Egypt, he would like another six-year term starting in September this year. That, I think, is probably the nightmare scenario and not one that’s entirely, you know, without credibility.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, speaking to us from Cairo, the longtime Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper of London, author of a number of books, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

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