Libya Update
Colonel Ghaddafi has long been a thorn in the West’s side . . . Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Libya . . . are they dry runs for the big one in Iran???
Archive for February, 2011
Bahrain Blues, & Libya and Yemen Too: The Middle East after Mubarak
17 February 2011
The ‘virus of democracy’, to paraphrase John McCain, has now also infected tiny Bahrain. The Daily Telegraph’s Middle East Correspondent Richard Spencer explains why this is a major development from the West’s point of view: “Bahrain is an island in one of the world’s most important shipping lanes – The Gulf – and plays a key role in Western security policy. It is home to the United States’s Fifth Fleet, which is dedicated to keeping the Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz, through which 40 per cent of the world’s oil tankers pass – open to traffic. It is a short hop also from Iran, and connected to Saudi Arabia by a causeway. Since American troops were withdrawn from Saudi Arabia, other US bases in the region have assumed an even greater importance”. Spencer then goes on to say that the demonstrators “and opposition parties have so far not called for an end to the monarchy but are demanding full democracy. They want the prime minister to be replaced by an elected politician, and for the royal family to retreat to a ceremonial position. They are also calling for an end to what they say is a tradition of police brutality, and for improved living conditions, particularly for the poorer Shia majority”.[1] The always-trustworthy BBC adds that ‘[s]ecurity forces have dispersed protesters in Bahrain with tear gas and batons, killing at least three people. Protests are still going on outside a hospital in Bahrain. In Libya, a security official has reportedly been sacked because of his handling of an earlier protest, and unconfirmed reports suggest widespread anti-government rallies have taken place in the regions. Clashes have broken out in the Yemeni capital Sanaa between anti-government protesters and supporters of the regime’.[2] The BBC’s Middle East analyst Roger Hardy summarises the past weeks events in four points: “First, President Mubarak’s resignation and his departure from Cairo do not mean that the Egyptian crisis is moving towards an early resolution. On the contrary, Mr Mubarak has simply dumped his dilemmas into the lap of the military top brass. Whether they can do a better job of dealing with them than he did – and whether the military can even retain its own cohesion – are far from certain . . . Second, the success of ‘people power’ in Egypt is far more significant for Arabs everywhere than its success in Tunisia. Egypt is the biggest and most powerful Arab state. Mr Mubarak had ruled it for three decades. The Egyptian example has already electrified public opinion throughout a region where a similar set of ills – autocracy, corruption, unemployment, the dignity deficit – prevail. Autocrats whose security services are smaller and weaker than Egypt’s are more vulnerable to the chill wind of popular anger . . . Third, the impact of the crisis on regional economies – in such obvious areas as oil prices, tourism, the ability to attract foreign investment – has already been severe. Fourth, the fall of Mubarak will affect a host of regional issues – the Arab-Israeli peace process, the growing influence of Iran, the battle against Muslim extremism – in ways that are hard, if not impossible, to predict”, and then he adds, in an way arguably meant to placate worries as expressed by McCain’s viral phrase: “Fears of Islamic revolutions everywhere are misplaced. Most of the current dissent seems driven by nationalist rather than religious sentiment”.[3]
As I have indicated elsewhere, there are good indications that the U.S. government has been preparing these events since the early days of December 2008, at least as far as Egypt was concerned apparently.[4] In other words, one could argue that these “revolutions” are but the outcome of the Bush Freedom Agenda. Lee Smith, senior editor at The Weekly Standard, an American neoconservative opinion magazine published by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, opines that “President George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda was based on the notion that around the world all men share the desire for liberty. It was our founding fathers who put forth the idea that this was not merely a human aspiration but a natural right, and it was the many generations of our forefathers who fought for that right, both at home and abroad. The Arabs had not been born with that privilege. Instead, they were ruled by princes and presidents for life whose governance amounted to little more than repression and the instruments of torture used by the various regimes’ so-called security apparatuses. With no room to act freely in their political lives, it was little wonder that Arabs turned to violence and extremism. In the wake of Sept. 11, Bush believed that freedom was not only best for the Arabs, but also a vital national interest that would keep Americans, U.S. allies and interests around the world safe from terrorism. The Freedom Agenda became the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s Middle East policy”.[5] Today’s Obama Administration prefers to keep its distance in public however. White House Spokesman Jay Carney says the U.S. has stayed consistent on its message to denounce Mideast violence.
[1] Richard Spencer, “Bahrain protests: Q&A” Daily Telegraph (17 February 2011). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/bahrain/8331536/Bahrain-protests-QandA.html.
[2] “Protests across the Middle East and North Africa” BBC News (17 February 2011). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12492706.
[3] Roger Hardy, “Middle East after Hosni Mubarak: impact of a revolution” BBC News (11 February 2011). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12437147.
[4] Cfr. “Op-Ed on Egypt: Revolution or Orchestrated Regime Change?” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog.
[5] Lee Smith, “In Egypt, More Proof That George W. Bush Was Right” NPR (11 February 2011). http://www.npr.org/2011/02/11/133659238/egypt-shows-george-w-bush-was-right.
Op-Ed on Egypt: Revolution or Orchestrated Regime Change?
The recent events in Egypt have justifiably grabbed the headlines as “unprecedented”. Ever since Sadat’s assassination in 1981, Egypt has been ruled by Hosni Mubarak who has been acting like a latter-day Pharaoh for the past 30 years. During his firm rule Mubarak brought “stability” to Egypt, albeit that it was a kind of stability that primarily benefited the ruling classes and not the man-and-woman in the street. And now, after “Eighteen Days That Shook the Middle East”, to quote the Associated Press in a reference to John Reed’s book on the Russian Revolution, Mubarak has left the scene in the wake of 300 dead Egyptians. The army is in charge now, and has even vowed to lead the way to democratic elections in six months’ time but has in the meantime suspended the constitution.
But, how did this wave of public dismay suddenly pop up across North Africa and the Middle East? Can it be true that the internet and such websites like WikiLeaks and various social media have emboldened younger generations to such an extent that they have now literally taken to the streets or is there more than meets the eye? Some commentators appear to believe that the Egyptian Revolution was a genuine popular uprising that brought an end to decades of unpopular rule. Even the veteran critic of U.S. interventionism Tariq Ali has called it a “genuine, popular upheaval”, adding: “I think the mass movement in Egypt is a movement for national independence, [an] end to neo-colonialism and for democracy”. Speaking on the Russian state-sponsored international broadcaster RT, he even compared the event in Egypt and the wider Middle East to the European revolutions of 1848. Tariq Ali put forward that the people of Europe then opposed the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Czar of Russia, which he compares to the U.S. in the contemporary context.
Still, a little bit of caution and critical sense seems appropriate. Following the break up of the Soviet Empire, the proliferation of colour revolutions throughout former Communist countries also appeared spontaneous and driven by the popular will. In hindsight, however, their organisation and planning funded by the West has come to light and rather than spontaneous and popular nowadays these “revolutions” have been called “orchestrated” on more than one occasion. The people of Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan were manipulated by U.S. intelligence agencies and NGOs like Freedom House and the Albert Einstein Institution to overthrow their ex-Soviet and pro-Russia leadership. So, what about the events in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt? Is the Middle East now being remade in the shadow of Brzezinski’s “arc of crisis”? In this context, Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution appear highly significant. Sharp, also known as the “Machiavelli of nonviolence” or the “Clausewitz of nonviolent warfare”, has written a great many books on “Civilian-Based Defense” and democracy that can serve as blueprints for popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes. On the institution’s website many books are available for free download in a great variety of languages. Sharp’s ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy’ can be accessed in such languages as “Amharic, Arabic, Azeri, Belarusian, Burmese, Chin (Burma), Jing-paw (Burma), Karen (Burma), Mon (Burma)”.
The protestors on Tahrir Square time and again stressed the peaceful and non-violent nature of their actions, only to be violently disrupted by pro-Mubarak or “pro-stability” activists on horseback and mounted on camels one day, leading to significant casualties and fatalities. But, quite apart from NGOs and their encouragements of non-violent protest in favour of regime-change more amenable to NATO and U.S. interests, the whistle-blower WikiLeaks has revealed something altogether much more sinister and calculated. The broadcaster RT reports that the “‘U.S. government had been planning to topple the Egyptian President for the past three years – that’s according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. The files show Washington had been secretly backing leading figures behind the uprising”. A cable dated December 30, 2008 indicates that a leader of the April 6 Youth Movement – a Facebook-driven opposition group – informed U.S. officials that opposition groups had come up with a plan to topple Hosni Mubarak before scheduled elections in September 2011. The cable further elaborates that the anonymous leader quoted listed the liberal Waft Party, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Revolutionary Socialists as well as Kefaya, a broad-based reform movement, as part of a planned rising. The WikiLeaks revelations also indicate that the U.S. authorities helped an April 6-leader to attend an “Alliance of Youth Movements” summit at Columbia University in New York on 3-5 December 2008. In November 2008, the U.S. government promoted this event as an occasion bringing together “Facebook, Google, YouTube, MTV, Howcast, Columbia Law School and the U.S. Department of State . . . to Find Best Ways to Use Digital Media to Promote Freedom and Justice, Counter Violence, Extremism and Oppression”. The participating youth leaders were expected to “produce a field manual for youth empowerment”, adding that this document “will stand in stark contrast to the Al-Qaeda manual on the basics of terrorism, found by Coalition Forces in Iraq”. Matthew Waxman, a Columbia associate professor of law, said that “We at Columbia are excited about helping, designing, and studying innovative public-private partnerships that leverage new technologies to tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges. This summit is a great opportunity to do this”. In this way, using fashionable buzzwords and jargon Dr Waxman tacitly provided academic credibility to this summit so clearly aimed at surreptitiously furthering America’s cause across the world. In addition to the April 6 Youth Movement leader, the summit was also attended by such luminaries as Whoopi Goldberg, actress and host of ABC’s “The View”, Dustin Moskovitz, Co-Founder of Facebook and James K. Glassman, Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State.
Now that the Egyptian Revolution has come to a happy conclusion, it seems possible to identify the anonymous April-6 member who was surreptitiously flown to New York and back. On 27 January, the Egyptian authorities arrested Google’s head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa. Wael Ghonim is also a prominent member of the already mentioned April-6 movement – a Facebook-driven opposition group. Two days after the protests erupted he was snatched off the street, but then he was released from jail on Monday, 7 February. While he was in prison, April-6 even named him their official spokesman. As a result, it seems very likely that Ghonim was the anonymous activist flown to New York two years ago to attend an event intended “to Find Best Ways to Use Digital Media to Promote Freedom and Justice, Counter Violence, Extremism and Oppression”. Far from being a spontaneous popular rising which supposedly emulates events in Tunisia, the earlier groundwork behind the scenes allowed Egyptians to take to the streets in an organised and peaceful fashion. America’s preparations have apparently come to fruition, and the world was watching the events in Cairo awestruck and full of trepidation and concern. Can it really be the case that a video message (or vlog) posted on a Facebook profile by the young Egyptian Asmaa Mahfouz proved to be the impetus needed for the protests on Tahrir Square to explode?
According Asmaa’s virtual friend Iyad El-Baghdadi, her vlog, recorded on 18 January was “so powerful and so popular, that it drove Egyptians by the thousands into Tahrir Square, and drove the Egyptian government to block Facebook”. In her vlog message, Miss Mafouz uses all the techniques employed in viral marketing – the use of “pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of virus or computer viruses”, as explained on Wikipedia. In her vlog, Asmaa Mahfouz starts off by evoking the self-immolation of four anonymous Egyptians in protest of thirty year of oppression. She claims that these young men’s actions were undertaken to spark a popular uprising, similar to the one that had recently rocked Tunisia. After one of them died, Miss Mahfouz relates how she alone, as a “girl”, staged a protest, and was joined by but a “few guys”. Similar to the way that then-Candidate Obama strategically repeated the phrase “Yes, we can” during his 2008 election campaign speeches, Asmaa Mahfouz then reiterates the word “Kifaya” (‘Enough’) that has become the slogan for the resistance against the Mubarak regime and the unofficial name for the grassroots resistance coalition known as the Egyptian Movement for Change (or ‘el-Haraka el-Masreyya men agl el-Taghyeer’). Wearing a chaste headscarf in the clip, the young Asmaa Mahfouz finishes her vlog message by calling for people “to go down to Tahrir Square on 25 January”, she urges people to protest for “honour and dignity” and for “human rights”. Employing a slight form of emotional blackmail and appealing to male pride and Muslim righteousness to achieve maximum impact, she addresses the listener directly: “If you have honour and dignity as a man, come. Come and protect me, and other girls in the protest”, urging her viewers to use SMS messages, the internet, their friends and family connections to spread the word. Asmaa Mahfouz adds that they will not set themselves alight but protest peacefully against the regime that has oppressed Egypt and its population for the past 30 years. Can this cunning use of the internet’s social networks really be the doing of one single “girl” acting on her own? Did Asmaa Mahfouz really single-handedly manage to shake up Egypt, acting in a chaste (her headscarf) yet provocative (her words) manner to shame the Egyptian people into staging peaceful demonstrations? Did the U.S. State Department under George W. Bush play a role in promoting the Albert Einstein Institution and Gene Sharp’s agenda of encouraging peaceful popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes by means of new media, social networks and viral marketing?
Again looking at the events of the recent past might prove to be enlightening. In July 2008, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an important piece of investigative journalism in The New Yorker magazine. In the article, Hersh details the covert operations the Bush Administration had initiated in Iran, with a view to precipitating regime change. Hersh says that late in 2007 “Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership”. Where did all that money go and what was the outcome of that spending? The economist and columnist Paul Craig Roberts explains this in the following detailed way: the “claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election [on 12 June 2009], because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, [Mir Hossein] Mousavi [, Ahmadinejad’s main rival,] declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the announcement of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick. As for the grand ayatollah Montazeri’s charge that the election was stolen, he was the initial choice to succeed Khomeini, but lost out to the current Supreme Leader [, Ali Khamenei]. He sees in the protests an opportunity to settle the score with Khamenei. Montazeri has the incentive to challenge the election whether or not he is being manipulated by the CIA, which has a successful history of manipulating disgruntled politicians. There is a power struggle among the ayatollahs. Many are aligned against Ahmadinejad because he accuses them of corruption, thus playing to the Iranian countryside where Iranians believe the ayatollahs’ lifestyles indicate an excess of power and money”. And these machinations then led to the peaceful protests that became known as the Green Revolution, a popular movement that was meant to bring Mousavi to power and Iran back to the fold of civilised nations. In the end, however, the people’s peaceful uprising failed and Ahmadinejad is still in power today.
In addition to Hersh and Roberts’s interpretations, there is the fact that the journalist, political writer, and conservative Republican activist Ken Timmerman wrote on 11 June 2009, one day prior to the Iranian elections: “And then, there’s the talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran, named for the omnipresent green scarves and banners that fill the air at Mousavi campaign events”. Did Mister Timmerman have access to a magic crystal ball or were his ears so finely tuned to Iranian whispers as to pick up “the talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran” back in his home in Maryland, where he lives with his wife and five kids? Was Timmerman just another U.S. observer or did he have a stake in what was going down in Iran? On his personal website, one can read this boastful statement: “For his work in exposing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, he was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize by former Swedish deputy Prime Minister Per Ahlmark”. I would say that the fact that he received a Nobel nomination for uncovering a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons’ programme qualifies Timmerman as a stakeholder. The 2005 National Intelligence Estimate clearly states that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapons’ programme, but that Tehran was “about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon”, as reported by the Washington Post’s Dafna Linzer.
Do these machinations concerning Iran, which is a major preoccupation of the U.S. government, have any bearing on the Tahrir Square protests and Mubarak’s departure on 11 February 2011? In order for that question to be answered satisfactorily, the exact roles played by Wael Ghonim and Asmaa Mahfouz will need to be determined. Are the present events really the outcome of plans hatched during the much-maligned Bush years? As long ago as 2003, then-President George W. Bush famously stated that “Our commitment to democracy is being tested in the Middle East . . . The good and capable people of the Middle East all deserve responsible leadership. For too long, many people in that region have been victims and subjects. They deserve to be active citizens”. Mubarak has long been a trusted ally of the U.S. in the region, but his autocratic rule and the rampant corruption present in his government have turned him into a liability, and thus one could argue that, under the guise of bringing democracy to the Middle East, the U.S. might very well favour a new leader in Egypt, preferably one with a popular mandate and connections to Washington.
The Egyptian army’s leadership seems to have taken the initiative forcing Mubarak to quit the day after he emphatically declared his intention to stay in power till the September elections. Tariq Ali has indicated that Washington will be involved in the upcoming elections, as Israel is a primary concern for the U.S. In addition, one could argue that the U.S. would want to protect its investment, keeping in mind that last year Egypt received a total of $1.55 billion in aid from the U.S. Will the elections confirm the rapidly appointed Soleiman as the new President of Egypt or will a popular candidate emerge representing the will of the population of Egypt?
Five Days that Shake Yemen, and Unrest in Iran and Bahrain
The Associated Press’ Ahmed Al-Haj reports that around “3,000 people are protesting in Yemen for a fifth consecutive day to demand political reforms and the ouster of the country’s U.S.-allied president. A small contingent of police tried to disperse the demonstrators using tear gas and batons but the protesters have continued their march Tuesday [, 15 February] from Sanaa University toward the city center. The demonstrators — mainly university students and rights activists — are chanting slogans against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, including “down with the president’s thugs.” A heavy police force and about 2,000 pro-government supporters are waiting for the protesters in the city center. The demonstration is expected to get larger as hundreds of people, students and rights activists are joining it as it moves through the city”.[1]
Professor Juan Cole relates in a detailed manner that last ‘Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressed support for Egyptian protesters. “Despite all the [West's] complicated and satanic designs . . . a new Middle East is emerging without the Zionist regime and U.S. interference, a place where the arrogant powers will have no place”. Yet on Monday [, 14 February], Iran reacted to its own street protests in a manner only the worst of the Egyptian secret police tried, on one or two days. The Iranian security forces deployed tear gas, pepper spray and batons against the demonstrators. In some instances they opened fire, wounding protesters. Thousands of Iranians demonstrated in the streets of Tehran on Monday, with a handful being wounded and at least one dead in the course of the regime’s crackdown. Protesters were attempting to revive the excitement and anti-government feeling of summer-fall 2009, when millions objected to the announced vote tallies that affirmed the victory of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad . . . Unlike in Egypt, where except for a day or two the Mubarak regime avoided direct physical confrontation of the demonstrators, in Iran the Basij, or volunteers for the Islamic Republic, attacked protesters on motorcycle and repressed them. Eyewitnesses said that dozens were jailed. Meanwhile clerics in parliament called for the death penalty for demonstrators arrested at the scene. Opposition leader, Mehdi Karroubi had been placed under house arrest last week for calling for further demonstrations. Meanwhile, protests also broke out in Bahrain, where Shiite activists are protesting their marginalization by a Sunni monarchy, even though Shiites form two-thirds of Bahrain’s population. The US Fifth Fleet is based at Bahrain in the Gulf . . . And in Yemen, 3,000 students, attorneys and activists demonstrated in the capital of Sanaa, demanding that long time strong man Ali Abdallah Saleh step down. In Egypt, which inspired the current round of demonstrations, the martial law government pledged to have the constitution amended within 10 days, with the changes put to a national referendum within 2 months. Demonstrators had demanded that clauses disadvantageous to free and fair elections be removed or changed before polls are held, sometime before October. In Algeria, where there have also been small demonstrations, the government is now saying it will lift the emergency laws through which it has ruled with an iron fist’.[2]
[1] Ahmed Al-Haj, “Yemenis protest against president for 5th day” AP (15 February 2011). http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/633c954da7d9434f9de7ed15f38075aa/Article_2011-02-15-Yemen/id-fd30b545ff29468e9f72be26b90df1b7.
[2] Juan Cole “Iran, Bahrain Crack down on Protesters, as Rallies Held in Yemen” Informed Comment (15 February 2011). http://www.juancole.com/2011/02/iran-bahrain-crack-down-on-protesters-as-rallies-held-in-yemen.html.
Indigenous Easter Island Protesters Evicted
In my op-ed “Easter Island as a metaphor”, I also hint at the problems faced by the indigenous inhabitants of the island.[1]
The Schiess family runs one of Chile’s most powerful private holding companies, Empresas Transoceanica. On its website, the holding declares that ‘Empresas Transoceánica [, which was (e)stablished in 1954], is an investment company of private equities. Our fields of interest are Real Estate, Hotel Industry and Tourism, Agro Industry and Logistics. We are also motivated by contributing to the community through investment in the social and cultural areas’.[2] Compounding the issue, exposing its hypocrisy and double-standards, the Schiess family’s website unashamedly goes on describing Empresas Transoceánica’s mission as follows: ‘To create value not only for the shareholders but also for the community in where the company unfolds, through investment, creating new business and helping develop the countries in where we work in . . . One of the main objectives of Empresas Transoceánica is the development of projects that generate a social, cultural and educational contribution to the community where they are immersed’.[3]
[1] C. Erimtan, “Easter Island as a metaphor: resource depletion, climate change and the word of God” Today’s Zaman (15 December 2010). http://tiny.cc/7570b.
[2] “INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL DESCRIPTION” Empresas Transoceánica. http://www.transoceanica.cl/ingles/home/quienes_somos.html.
[3] “”MISSION; Introduction” Empresas Transoceánica. http://www.transoceanica.cl/ingles/home/social.html.
Egyptian Revolution: Stolen Antiquities
The Egyptian Museum releases images of artefacts looted during mass protests that ended President Hosni Mubarak’s rule.
Martin Fletcher from The Times explains that “EIGHTEEN treasures, including two statues of Tutankhamun, were stolen from the Egyptian Museum during the turmoil in Cairo, the country’s leading Egyptologist disclosed yesterday [, Sunday, 13 February]. The priceless antiquities, some dating from the 13th century BC, are believed to have been taken when looters broke into the museum through a skylight while pro-democracy protesters fought pitched battles with the police during the “day of rage” on January 28”.[1]
[1] Martin Fletcher, “Antiquities looted as battle raged outside” The Times (14 February 2011). http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/antiquities-looted-as-battle-raged-outside/story-e6frg6so-1226005563893.
Reset: Stephen Kinzer on Iran, Turkey, and the U.S.
(24 June 2010)
As I pointed out in Today’s Zaman, “Turkey’s foreign minister [, Ahmed Davutoğlu,] is trying to shine a light on regions and areas previously located in the darkness beyond Turkish recognition and comprehension. A case in point would be Turkey’s recent rapprochement to Iran. Trade between the countries is at an all-time high. Last year, the oddly named periodical Journal of Turkish Weekly claimed that “Turkey and Iran set the goal of doubling their $10 billion in trade to $20 billion by 2011.” In addition, Turkey’s attempts to mediate between Washington and Tehran and the joint Turco-Brazilian proposal to resolve Iran’s nuclear fuel issue indicate that Davutoğlu’s pseudo-Ottoman aims go well beyond traditional Ottoman lines. One should not forget that under the Safavids (1501-1722), Iran represented the strongest challenge to Ottoman primacy in the Islamic world and was a source of constant enmity, rivalry and intermittent warfare”. But now, “Turkey is pursuing “zero problems with neighbors” and partners further afield, and is thereby bridging the East-West divide in deft pseudo-Ottoman fashion — even trying to get Iran involved in supplying the EU with energy security in the years to come”, even though the idea to involve Tehran in the Nabocco project has since been shelved by the shareholders.[1]
[1] C. Erimtan, “A pseudo-Ottoman policy: Turkey’s new station in the world” Today’s Zaman (04 November 2010). http://tiny.cc/6qkki.
Yemen Unrest
Protestors have once again clashed with police in the capital of Yemen. Hundreds of anti-government demonstrators marched through Sanaa demanding that President Ali Abdullah Saleh step down. Police wielding batons blocked the road leading to the Presidential Palace. Witnesses say several people were hurt. The protests have gathered momentum in the wake of events in Egypt. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. It has caught the attention of the West having also become a regional base for al Qaeda militants.
Tariq Ali on Egypt: RT
Mubarak’s steely determination not to resign was broken as he stepped down as president on Friday, 11 February 2001. Egyptians spent all night celebrating the end of his 30-year regime. The renowned author and Middle East expert Tariq Ali believes the U.S. was playing a risky game during the days of the Egyptian unrest.
Poverty in the USA 2011, Part 2
In continuation of an earlier post which dealt with President Obama’s seeming swing to the Conservatives,[1] I would now like to post a video made by the Punk Patriot talking about this very issue: “Obama: Worse than Bush?”.
‘So today, February 13th, it’s been reported in the AP, that an administration official says that Barack Obama is proposing to cut $100 billion over ten years from Pell Grants. What happened to the state of the union? What happened to “investing in our future?” How is it that Barack Obama is still being supported by Democrats, liberals, and progressives? Well, here’s how this is all going to go down: First, actual progressives are going to raise a red flag and say, “WHAT THE FUCK?! THIS IS BULLSHIT!” Second, the conservatives with step in and say, “OBAMA ISN”T GOING FAR ENOUGH! WE need to cut pell grants entirely. Let the free market decide who needs an education and who doesn’t.” Third, with this new conservative foil to play against, mindless DNC apologists are going to step into the fray and defend Obama and thus defend these massive cuts to college education. They’ll try to tell you that it’s not as bad as it seems, or that it would be worse if Palin was president, so we should just shut up and be happy with what we have, and that actual progressives are just a fringe minority who don’t know what we’re talking about. This dialogue will play out in the media so that the national dialogue becomes whether we should cut Pell Grants by $100 billion over ten years, or cut them entirely. The progressive position of “why the fuck aren’t we raising taxes on the rich, and cutting military spending?” Doesn’t fit into the dichotomous narrative of liberal vs conservative, and so it doesn’t get heard. Because it’s a position that’s only advocated for by “fringe wackos who don’t know what they’re talking about.” When it ends up being “only $100 billion” that’s cut, the DNC apologists will say, “phew! It was a tough battle, but we won! Let’s pat ourselves on the back for this victory!” And the rich will continue to to get richer, just like under the Republican. And the middle class will become working poor, just like under the Republican. And the number of the poor will continue to grow, just like under the Republicans’.[2]
[1] “Poverty in the USA 2011” A Pseudo-Ottoman Blog (10 February 2011). http://sitanbul.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/poverty-in-the-usa-2011/.
[2] “Obama: Worse than Bush?” The Punk Patriot (13 February 2011). http://punkpatriot.blogspot.com/2011/02/obama-worse-than-bush.html.
Category:
Americana, Current Affairs, Democracy, Financial Crisis, Obama, Political Commentary