In the fourth episode of The World Tomorrow Julian Assange speaks with two leading Arab revolutionaries in the middle of conflict, Alaa Abd El-Fattah from Egypt and Nabeel Rajab from Bahrain. Alaa Abd El-Fattah is a long time Egyptian blogger, programmer and political activist. His parents were human rights campaigners under Anwar Sadat; his sister Mona Seif became a Twitter star during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, and is a founder of the No Military Trials for Civilians group formed under the post-Mubarak military junta. El-Fattah was imprisoned for 45 days in 2006 for protesting under the Mubarak regime, and released after “Free Alaa” solidarity protests in Egypt and around the world. In 2011, from abroad, El-Fattah helped route around Mubarak’s internet blockade. Nabeel Rajab is a lifelong Bahraini activist and critic of the Al Khalifa regime. A member of a staunch pro-regime family, Rajab has agitated for reform in Bahrain since his return from university in 1988. Along with the Bahraini-Danish human rights defender Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, he helped establish the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights in 2002. Rajab is reasonably new to the limelight — becoming a face for the Bahrain uprising of February 14 2011, after the sit-in at Pearl Roundabout. Since then, he has been a public face for the revolution, waging a social media war on Twitter with PR companies working for the regime. After al-Khawaja was imprisoned, he led protests for his release. He has endured beatings, arrests and legal harrassment for engaging in pro-democracy demonstrations. On Saturday 5th of May, he was arrested atManama airport , and charged the next day with encouraging and engaging in “illegal protests.” Nabeel Rajab remains in detention at the time of broadcast (8 May 2012).
The Arab Awakening has been rocking global television screens for months now . . . Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria . . . but apart from such seeming success stories, there are also some notable narrative failures: namely Yemen and Bahrain. In Yemen some things seem to have changed, but it seems far from certain given its proximity to oil shipping routes and its employment in the U.S. War-on-Terror as a handy drone base. Bahrain, on the other hand, has completely disappeared into oblivion, as can be seen on Al Jazeera’s mind-provoking programme “Shouting in the Dark”.[1] And now, the Canadian independent TRNN gives us another view behind the scenes of Manama’s successful suppression of dissent: ‘Robert Naiman: the U.S. plans $53 million arms sale as suppression of democracy movement gets a “seal of approval” (7 February 2012)’.
One year on from the beginning of the Arab revolutions which began in Tunisia and continued to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria, people continue to struggle. But analysts argue that these revolutions have been manipulated by the west especially in countries like Syria. The Arab league is also showing what many call double standards in the situation of Syria with countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar who have oppressed the free will of their people for so long and with supporting an armed revolt in Syria which has led to the death of many military personnel and civilians. With hope and skepticism intermingled, this edition of Middle East Today takes a closer look at the prospects of the people’s revolutions in the Arab world (28 Jan 2012).
And, as such, I think that this would be a good opportunity to repeat what I said last year in Hürriyet Daily News: ‘Following the breakup of the Soviet Empire, the proliferation of color revolutions throughout former Communist countries also appeared spontaneous and driven by the popular will. In hindsight, however, it has come to light that their organization and planning was funded by the West. Rather than spontaneous and popular, nowadays these “revolutions” have often been called “orchestrated.” 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 pro-Russian leadership. So, what about the recent events in Egypt? Is the Middle East now being remade in the shadow of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “arc of crisis”? In this context, Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution appear crucial. 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, such as “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” are available for free download in many languages, including Arabic. The protestors in Tahrir Square time and again stressed the peaceful 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 favor of regime-change more amenable to NATO and U.S. interests, WikiLeaks has revealed something altogether much more sinister. 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 Dec. 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 cables 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 Dec. 3-5, 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: “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 furthering America’s cause across the world. 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’.
The good people at Wikipedia provide this insight: in ‘the United States Federal Budget for 2010, entitled ‘A New Era of responsibility’, the DoD [or Department of Defense] was allocated a base budget of $533.7 billion, with a further $75.5 billion adjustment in respect of 2009, and $130 billion for overseas contingencies. The subsequent 2010 DoD Financial Report shows DoD total budgetary resources for fiscal year 2010 were $1.2 trillion. Of these resources, $1.1 trillion were obligated and $994 billion were disbursed, with the remaining resources relating to multi-year modernization projects requiring additional time to procure. Budgeted DoD expenditure for 2009 represented approximately 43% of global military spending, the U.S. ranking second in terms of per capita military spending behind The United Arab Emirates. In FY 2010 DoD budgeted spending accounted for 21% of the U.S. Federal Budget, and 53% of federal discretionary spending, which represents funds not accounted for by pre-existing obligations. As a percentage of its GDP, the U.S. spent 3% of GDP on military in the year 2000, ranking it 28th in the world. Budgeted 2010 expenditure (including the GWOT supplemental) had risen to 4.5 % of Assumed Nominal GDP’.[1] Or, as I posted last June: ‘Turns out that money does make the world go round, and money well spent is money no longer available for anything else. So, here is goes: “America spends more on its military than THE NEXT 15 COUNTRIES COMBINED”, “In 2007, the amount of money labeled ‘wasted’ or ‘lost’ in Iraq — $11 billion — could pay 220,000 teachers salaries [in the U.S.]”, “America’s defense spending doubled in the same period that its economy shrunk from 32 to 23 percent of global output”, “The yearly cost of stationing one soldier in Iraq could feed 60 American families”, “The total known land area occupied by U.S. bases and facilities is 15,654 square miles — bigger than D.C., Massachusetts, and New Jersey combined”, “Each day in Afghanistan costs the [U.S.] government more than it did to build the entire Pentagon”, “In 2008, the Pentagon spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earned in a year”, “The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population — but almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure”’.[2] And the above map shows us where all that money goes to . . . NORTHCOM, SOUTHCOM, EUCOM, CENTCOM, AFRICOM, and PACOM.
Looking at that map, one cannot but understand fully all those people talking about the American Empire (and its imminent demise due to overstretch). As such, in addition to the command structure pictured higher, there are U.S. Army installations in Bulgaria, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Kosovo, and South Korea. Whereas the U.S. Air Force has bases in Afghanistan, Australia, Germany, Greenland, Guam, Italy, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, and the UK. Last but not least, there is also the U.S. Navy which can avail itself of installations in these locations: Bahrain, the British Indian Ocean Territories, Egypt, Cuba, Djibouti, Greece, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, South Korea, Singapore, Spain, and the UAE.[3] This giant military footprint is a leftover from the Cold War, when the U.S. was fighting for the preservation of ‘freedom, democracy and the American Way’. On the other side of the fence, or rather the Iron Curtain was the Soviet Union and its client states. Josef Stalin’s long shadow is thus still able to motivate American policy- and lawmakers in the 21st century. During the early years of the Cold War, Curtis Lemay (1906-90) ensured that the U.S. Air Force received top priority in America’s war plans, prior to the adoption of the MAD strategy and the universal endorsement of producing ever more ICBM – Mutually Assured Destruction as a result of deploying Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles. As a result, today the U.S. Air Force is literally ubiquitous around the world, while successive administrations seem eager to pay for the continued upkeep of bases and manpower and machinery Here is a clip showing this year’s defense budget hearing. The HASC or House Armed Services Committee, firmly controlled by the Republicans, met to receive testimony on the fiscal year 2012 national defense authorization budget requests from the U.S. Central Command and the U.S. Special Operations Command (3 March 2011).
A new report by the Congressional Research Service has revealed that the military pact between the United States and Bahrain has been extended until 2016.
Bahrain: An island kingdom in the Arabian Gulf where the Shia Muslim majority are ruled by a family from the Sunni minority. Where people fighting for democratic rights broke the barriers of fear, only to find themselves alone and crushed. This is their story and Al Jazeera is their witness – the only TV journalists who remained to follow their journey of hope to the carnage that followed. This is the Arab revolution that was abandoned by the Arabs, forsaken by the West and forgotten by the world. “Shouting in the dark” can be seen from Thursday, August 4, at the following times GMT: Thursday: 2000; Friday: 1200; Saturday: 0100; Sunday: 0600; Monday: 2000; Tuesday: 1200; Wednesday: 0100; Thursday: 0600.
Fighting intensified Friday around the Middle East as governments tried to overpower uprisings around the region. Jeffrey Brown discusses what’s next for the people and governments of Syria, Yemen and Bahrain with author and foreign policy analyst Robin Wright (3 June 2011).
USIP-Woodrow Wilson Center Distinguished Scholar Robin Wright will publish her next book, Rock the Casbah: Rage and evolution Across the Islamic World, with Simon & Schuster on July 12, 2011. Wright, the acclaimed foreign correspondent and television commentator, was well into her work on the many political, social, cultural, young, grassroots, and female forces changing the Islamic world when protests erupted across the Middle East. Many characters in Wright’s book have been involved in the upheavals. The publication date has been accelerated to July because of the extraordinary history now unfolding. Wright has reported on Islamic militancy for four decades. In this book, she tells the stunning personal stories behind the rejection of both autocrats and extremists in the Muslim world. Wright profiles young techies mobilizing political uprisings, clerics publicly repudiating Osama bin Laden, Muslim comedians ridiculing militancy, hip hop artists rapping against guns and bombs, laywrights and poets redefining jihad, feminists reinterpreting the Koran, and militants denouncing violence. She describes the new phase of the Islamic activism as a counter-jihad. For some, it’s about reforming the faith. For others, it’s overhauling political systems. For all, it is about basic rights—on their own terms and not necessarily based on Western models. Muslims are now confronting extremism and rescuing their faith from a virulent minority, thereby taking charge of history and doing what the West cannot. Robin Wright has reported from more than a 140 countries on six continents for The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Sunday Times of London, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, the International Herald Tribune and others. Her foreign tours include the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia. She has appeared on Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation, Charlie Rose, Stephen Colbert and morning and evening newscasts on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN and MSNBC. Wright has been a fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Brookings Institution, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Yale, Duke, Stanford and others. Among many awards, she won the U.N. Correspondents Association Gold Medal for coverage of foreign affairs, the National Magazine Award, and the Overseas Press Club Award for “best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative.” The American Academy of Diplomacy selected her as the journalist of the year in 2004. She has authored five books.[1]
Secretary of State Clinton introduces President Obama to give his speech on the current events in the Middle East in the Benjamin Franklin Room in the State Department, as a kind of up-to-date counter-piece to his 2009 Cairo speech. Quite naturally, the President at first deals with the execution of Bin Laden and the fate of that shadowy organisation known as Al Qaeda, before delving into the recent events in the Middle East and North Africa that have now been termed the Arab Awakening or Arab Spring. Barack Obama employs these events as a way to reiterate his theme of change and hope, and how America will now deal with the rest of the world in the multi-polar world of the 21st century.
“There must be no doubt the U.S. welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity. . . . We have a chance to pursue the world as it should be . . . It was the people themselves who launched these movements, and it’s the people who must ultimately determine their outcome”.
And here is Megan Murphy presenting multiple-sourced stories on the Obama speech and other relavent events occurring simultaneously.
About a week ago, Scahill told Amy Goodman the following: “Right, well, I mean, first of all, the no-fly zone has always been a recipe for disaster. It was a disaster in Iraq, where it resulted in a strengthening of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The U.S. has bombed Gaddafi’s house. The U.S. is bombing targets that have no aerial value whatsoever. You know, I’m against the U.S. policy in Libya for tactical and strategic reasons. I think that it could end up backfiring in a tremendous way and keeping Gaddafi in power even longer. And if the United States is going to start intervening in every failed rebellion or insurrection around the world, it’s going to be very, very busy. I think this was a reactionary policy with very little sight of an endgame. This morning we heard that an F-15 went down inside of Libya. Remember Donald Rumsfeld said in November of 2002, “Iraq might be five days, five weeks or five months, but no longer than that,” and 50,000 U.S. troops and an equal number of private contractors remain there. So, I don’t see an endgame here. I think this is a classic case of knee-jerk “we need to remain relevant in the world so we’re going to take military action,” while propping up ruthless dictators elsewhere that have conducted the same kinds of operations, or ignoring far worse humanitarian crises and far worse mass slaughter on the part of dictators around the world”.[1]
CNN’s Mary Snow looks at some of the anxiety in Saudi Arabia as its neighbors are engulfed in unrest.
9 March 2011
Whereas it seems to me that the Big Prize in the Offing has to be Iran, with a possible redux of 2009’s Green Revolution to be staged. Still, America’s big ally Saudi Arabia seems somewhat worried about a transnational movement developing its own momentum, irrespective of international support or behind the scenes’ planning. Already last month, Robert Worth declared in the New York Times that “the rulers of Saudi Arabia — the region’s great bulwark of religious and political conservatism — are feeling increasingly isolated and concerned that the United States may no longer be a reliable backer, officials and diplomats say” “[a]s pro-democracy uprisings spread across the Middle East”.[1] At the same time, Worth downplays King Abdullah’s worries, saying that “Saudi Arabia is far less vulnerable to democracy movements than other countries in the region, thanks to its vast oil wealth, its powerful religious establishment and the popularity of its king”.[2] An anonymous Arab diplomat made the following declaration over the telephone: “The Saudis are completely encircled by the problem, from Jordan to Iraq to Bahrain to Yemen. Saudi Arabia is the last heavyweight U.S. ally in the region facing Iran”.[3] Worth adds that the “Saudis tend to see any threat to the established order in the region as a gain for their nemesis Iran, and its allies Syria and Hezbollah. They have grown increasingly worried that the Obama administration is drifting away from this perspective and supporting movements for change whose outcome cannot be guaranteed. Those worries were heightened by the crisis in Egypt, where the Saudis felt that Mr. Mubarak should have been allowed to stay on and make a more “dignified” exit, Saudi officials say. King Abdullah had at least two phone conversations with President Obama to convey his concerns in the weeks before Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, and the last conversation ended in sharp disagreement, according to officials familiar with the calls”.[4]
A former long-time CIA officer and now a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, Bruce Riedel also opines that the “Saudis have no love for Libya’s Gaddafi, who tried to assassinate King Abdullah only a few years ago, but they are worried by the contagion of unrest that is rolling across North Africa and into the Arabian Peninsula. The unrest in tiny Bahrain next door is particularly alarming as it threatens a fellow Sunni Muslim kingdom linked by a causeway to the Saudi Eastern Province where most of the royals’ oil is located. The Eastern Province is also the home of the Kingdom’s small (10-15%) Shia minority. Unrest among the Shia is endemic, and protests have already begun this month. Shia protests are inevitably seen through the prism of Persian-Arab rivalry with Iran across the Persian Gulf. For the Saudis Shia gains are seen as Iranian gains and thus bad news. The bad news extends to the south as well for the Saudis. They have never been fond of Yemen’s dictator Ali Abdallah Salih. They tried to overthrow him in 1994 by encouraging a revolt in southern Yemen which only united with the north in 1990. The Saudis lost out in the subsequent civil war to Salih and the north. But Salih is the devil they know and has been the recipient of billions in Saudi aid since the 1990s. Unrest in Yemen threatens to give more room for operation to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is dedicated to the overthrow of the Kingdom and the death of the family princes. Salih is now in deep trouble, he has lost the backing of the south, many key tribes and some senior Muslim clerics. But the Saudis have few if any options for buttressing him in power”.[5] The international Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera reports now that ‘[a]nti-government unrest continued in Yemen on Tuesday [, 8 March] with three people reported dead in a prison riot in support of protests and dozens reported injured when police opened fire on crowds in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. Policemen and security agents in civilian clothes opened fire as they tried to prevent people from joining thousands of protesters camped out in front of Sanaa University, witnesses told the Reuters news agency. Three of the injured were said to be in a serious condition. Meanwhile, three prisoners at a Sanaa prison were reported killed and four others injured, Sharif Mobley, an inmate, told Al Jazeera via phone from within the prison. Officials said at least one inmate was dead and dozens more injured as a consequence of the unrest which began on Monday [, 7 March] when around 2,000 prisoners staged, taking a dozen guards hostage. The inmates set their blankets and mattresses on fire before occupying the prison’s main courtyard, an official who declined to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media said’.[6] On Tuesday, 8 March, then ‘[s]ecurity forces in Yemen have opened fire on peaceful protesters in the capital Sanaa . . . wounding at least 75 people demonstrating for an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 32-year rule. Three of the wounded were in a serious condition, according to medical sources. Policemen and security agents in civilian clothes opened fire as they tried to prevent people from joining thousands of protesters who have camped out for weeks in front of Sanaa University, the epicentre of the demonstrations’.[7]
All around King Abdullah unrest is spreading, while in Egypt sectarian violence has erupted as well now: ‘At least six Coptic Christians have been killed and 57 others injured in religious clashes with Muslims in the Egyptian capital Cairo, a hospital official has told Al Jazeera. An official death toll has yet to be released by the country’s ministry of interior. The deaths on Tuesday [, 8 March] occurred in the working-class district of Moqattam after at least 1,000 Copts gathered to protest the burning of a church last week. It was the second burst of sectarian fighting in as many days and the latest in a string of violent protests over a variety of topics as simmering unrest continues nearly a month after mass protests led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. Al Jazeera‘s Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from the capital Cairo, said that Christians were demanding “an end to what they describe as discrimination by the state.” “The military intervened to prevent further clashes, but the episode underscores the simmering tension between the two communities,” he said’.[8]
The Arab Awakening: One Year On
One year on from the beginning of the Arab revolutions which began in Tunisia and continued to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria, people continue to struggle. But analysts argue that these revolutions have been manipulated by the west especially in countries like Syria. The Arab league is also showing what many call double standards in the situation of Syria with countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar who have oppressed the free will of their people for so long and with supporting an armed revolt in Syria which has led to the death of many military personnel and civilians. With hope and skepticism intermingled, this edition of Middle East Today takes a closer look at the prospects of the people’s revolutions in the Arab world (28 Jan 2012).
And, as such, I think that this would be a good opportunity to repeat what I said last year in Hürriyet Daily News: ‘Following the breakup of the Soviet Empire, the proliferation of color revolutions throughout former Communist countries also appeared spontaneous and driven by the popular will. In hindsight, however, it has come to light that their organization and planning was funded by the West. Rather than spontaneous and popular, nowadays these “revolutions” have often been called “orchestrated.” 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 pro-Russian leadership. So, what about the recent events in Egypt? Is the Middle East now being remade in the shadow of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “arc of crisis”? In this context, Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution appear crucial. 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, such as “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” are available for free download in many languages, including Arabic. The protestors in Tahrir Square time and again stressed the peaceful 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 favor of regime-change more amenable to NATO and U.S. interests, WikiLeaks has revealed something altogether much more sinister. 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 Dec. 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 cables 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 Dec. 3-5, 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: “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 furthering America’s cause across the world. 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’.
(1) C. Erimtan, “Behind the scenes of Egypt’s revolution” Hürriyet Daily News (27 February 2011).
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