Ægypten-ekspert Shadi Hamid om Det Muslimske Broderskab

While there are legitimate concerns about the group's positions on both domestic and foreign policy, the Brotherhood of today is not the Brotherhood of yesterday. Decades ago, it renounced violence. More recently, the group has publicly committed itself, in Arabic, to many of the foundational components of democratic life, including alternation of power, popular sovereignty, and judicial independence. In its political programs, the Brotherhood has largely stripped its programs of traditional Islamist content. Where the Brotherhood once talked endlessly about "application of shariah law" (tatbiq al-shariah), it now settles for vague expressions promoting Islamic values and morals. Meanwhile, its vocabulary has shifted from favoring an "Islamic state" to a "civil, democratic state with an Islamic reference."

The Brotherhood, to be sure, is not a force for liberalism, nor is it likely to become so anytime soon. The group holds views that most Americans would be uncomfortable with, including on women's rights and segregation of the sexes. But we're not voting in Egyptian elections; Egyptians are.

Ultimately, though, American fears about the Brotherhood are not about gender equality or religious freedom. After all, one of America's closest allies is the most theocratic country in the world. Saudi Arabia, as conservative as it is, supports U.S. security objectives in the region. The real concern is whether the Brotherhood, known for its inflammatory rhetoric against Israel and the United States, would work against U.S. regional interests. Crucially, would it attempt to cancel the peace treaty with Israel—long the cornerstone of the U.S.-Egypt relationship? Such an outcome is unlikely; the Brotherhood is well aware that this is a red line for the international community. Any new, transitional government—which will be tasked with rebuilding a battered country—will not want to harm its relationship with Washington and risk losing billions of dollars in much-needed assistance.

Slate: Should We Fear The Muslim Brotherhood.

Robert Fisk live fra Ægypten på Democracy Now.

Den legendariske journalist Robert Fisk gav i går et interview til det progressive amerikanske nyhedsmedie Democracy Now.

"One of the blights of history will now involve a U.S. president who held out his hand to the Islamic world and then clenched his fist when it fought a dictatorship and demanded democracy"

Democracy Now.

USAs diktatorvenner.

PÅ Salon.com kan man læse om USAs øvrige diktatorvenner, nærmere bestemt Saudi-Arabiens konge Abdullah, Jordans konge Abdullah II, Guineas Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Uzbekistans Islam Karimov og Turkmenistans Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.

Salon.com: What other dictators does the U.S. support?

Shamir Hamid: "Two models of democratic change are emerging."

Mellemøstekspert Shamir Hamid: "...Two models of democratic change are emerging. One is the Tunisia-Egypt-Yemen model of overturning the regime. This would seem to apply in republics, where protesters have one simple, overarching demand – that the president give up power. The person of the president, because of his dominating, partisan role, provides a rallying point for protesters. This is conducive to opposition unity. They disagree on a lot, but last they can agree on the most important thing.

The other model of change focuses around constitutional reform in the Arab monarchies. In countries like Jordan and Morocco, there are reasonably free elections. But elections have limited relevance because it’s the king who has final decision-making authority. The problem here is not necessarily the king himself but the institution of the monarchy and its disproportionate power. The solution, then, is constitutional reform that shifts power away from the king toward an elected parliament and an independent judiciary. This is what opposition groups are calling for in Jordan.

While different, both models are about altering political structures rather than gradual, slow reform. Leaders have not caught on. They seem to still think they can offer half-measures to appease their people. But the lesson of Tunisia and Egypt – as well as Yemen, Jordan, and many others – is that Arab populations, after waiting and waiting, have run out of patience."

Noam Chomsky: “This is the Most Remarkable Regional Uprising that I Can Remember”

In recent weeks, popular uprisings in the Arab world have led to the ouster of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the imminent end of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, a new Jordanian government, and a pledge by Yemen’s longtime dictator to leave office at the end of his term. We speak to MIT Professor Noam Chomsky about what this means for the future of the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy in the region. When asked about President Obama’s remarks last night on Mubarak, Chomsky said: "Obama very carefully didn’t say anything... He’s doing what U.S. leaders regularly do. As I said, there is a playbook: whenever a favored dictator is in trouble, try to sustain him, hold on; if at some point it becomes impossible, switch sides."

Source: Democracy Now.

Wikileaks: U.S. intelligence collaboration with Omar Suleiman “most successful”

New cables released by Wikileaks reveal that the U.S. government has been quietly anticipating as well as cultivating Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian spy chief, as the top candidate to take over the country should anything happen to President Hosni Mubarak. On Saturday, this expectation was proved correct when Mubarak named Suleiman to the post of vice-president making him the first in line to assume power.

An intelligence official who trained at the U.S. Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, Suleiman became head of the spy agency in 1993 which brought him into close contact with the Central Intelligence Agency. Recently he took up a more public role as chief Egyptian interlocuter with Israel to discuss the peace process with Hamas and Fatah, the rival Palestinian factions.

Wikileaks: Egypt - U.S. intelligence collaboration with Omar Suleiman “most successful”

Om Amerikansk-produceret tåregas mod oprørene.

Pensioneret CIA-veteran om USAs udenrigspolitik i Mellemøsten.

Tidligere CIA-mand Robert Grenier kommenterer på oprøret i Ægypten og irrelevansen af den amerikanske administrations udmeldinger.

"...the US's entire frame of reference in the region is hopelessly outdated, and no longer has meaning: As if the street protesters in Tunis and Cairo could possibly care what the US thinks or says; as if the political and economic reform which president Obama stubbornly urges on Mubarak while Cairo burns could possibly satisfy those risking their lives to overcome nearly three decades of his repression; as if the two-state solution in Palestine for which the US has so thoroughly compromised itself, and for whose support the US administration still praises Mubarak, has even the slightest hope of realisation; as if the exercise in brutal and demeaning collective punishment inflicted upon Gaza, and for whose enforcement the US, again, still credits Mubarak could possibly produce a decent or just outcome; as if the US refusal to deal with Hezbollah as anything but a terrorist organisation bore any relation to current political realities in the Levant."

Al-Jazeera: The Triviality of US Mideast Policy.

Why the Army Won’t Shoot Protesters

"Khalid Ibrahim Al-Laisi has been a soldier in the Egyptian army for 20 years. Today, far from shooting protesters, he says the time has come "to revolt against oppression."

"A high-ranking Egyptian official confirmed that the Egyptian Army will not shoot at protesting people. The officers are expressing the sentiment of the soldiers, says Al-Laisi. "Who are we going to shoot? Our brothers and sisters?"

IPS News: Why the Army Won’t Shoot Protesters.

Žižek: Why fear the Arab revolutionary spirit?

Den slovenske filosof og samfundsrevser, Slavoj Žižek, kommenterer på den revolutionære arabiske ånd i The Guardian:

What cannot but strike the eye in the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt is the conspicuous absence of Muslim fundamentalism. In the best secular democratic tradition, people simply revolted against an oppressive regime, its corruption and poverty, and demanded freedom and economic hope. The cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal elites while the vast majority can only be mobilised through religious fundamentalism or nationalism, has been proven wrong.

Juan Cole: Why Egypt 2011 is not Iran 1979.

Den amerikanske professor i Mellemøstens historie Juan Cole har en interessant komparativ analyse af den iranske revolution og det ægyptiske oprør på sin blog.

"Egypt is, unlike Iran, not primarily an oil state. Its sources of revenue are tourism, Suez Canal tolls, manufactured and agricultural exports, and strategic rent (the $1.5 bn. or so in aid from the US comes under this heading). Egypt depends on the rest of the world for grain imports. Were it to adopt a radical and defiant ideology like that of Iran, all its major sources of income would suddenly evaporate, and it might have trouble even just getting enough imported food. Moreover, the social forces making the revolution in Egypt have a significantly different profile and different dynamics than in Iran. [...] The white collar and labor activists are far more central to the organization of the Egyptian protests than had been their counterparts in the Iranian Revolution. The Egyptian “bazaar” is much less tied to the Muslim clergy than was the case in Iran, and far less likely to fund clerical politicians. Whereas Iran’s bazaar merchants often suffered from Western competition, Egypt’s bazaar depends centrally on Western tourism. Secular parties, if we count the NDP, have an organizational advantage over the religious ones, since they have been freer to meet and act under Mubarak. It is not clear that the law banning religious parties will be changed, in which case the Brotherhood would again be stuck with running its candidates under other rubrics. And, Sunni Muslims don’t have a doctrine of owing implicit obedience to their clergy, and the clergy are not as important in Sunni religious life as the Shiite Ayatollahs are in Iran. The Muslim Brotherhood, a largely lay organization, has a lot of support, but it is not clear that they could gain more than about a third of seats even if they were able to run in free elections."

Dagens citat: Tony Blair om Mubarak.

"Where you stand on him depends on whether you've worked with him from the outside or on the inside. I've worked with him on the Middle East peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians so this is somebody I'm constantly in contact with and working with and on that issue, I have to say, he's been immensely courageous and a force for good"

Kilde.

Venstres udenrigspolitiske ordfører: Vi skal takke Bush for frihedskamp i Mellemøsten

Venstres udenrigspolitiske ordfører forsøger i et interview i Berlingske Tidende, at hvidvaske Bush og mener, at "demokratiseringen" af Irak - læs: det statsterroristiske massemord på Iraks befolkning - er blandt årsagerne til at man nu ser oprør i Ægypten og Tunesien.

En ret interessant holdning i lys af, at Bush-administrationerne aktivt støttede diktatorerne i både Tunesien og Ægypten. Desværre er det næppe blot mangel på viden der ligger til grund for hans udtalelse, for han er trods alt næppe så ignorant, så der er sandsynligvis tale om noget så fuldstændig utilgiveligt som et bevidst forsøg på at legitimere en amerikansk præsident som har forvoldt hundredetusinders død og ødelæggelsen af mange fleres liv. Ikke dermed sagt at det er specielt overraskende, for legitimering af statslige voldshandlinger er vel desværre hvad man kan forvente af en udenrigspolitisk ordfører som selv stemte for at Danmark skulle deltage i angrebskrigen mod Irak.

Futuristic Design: Floating City for Climate Refugees.

Read more on Inhabitat.com

Breakthrough promises $1.50 per gallon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions

UK-based Cella Energy has developed a synthetic fuel that could lead to US$1.50 per gallon gasoline. Apart from promising a future transportation fuel with a stable price regardless of oil prices, the fuel is hydrogen based and produces no carbon emissions when burned. The technology is based on complex hydrides, and has been developed over a four year top secret program at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford. Early indications are that the fuel can be used in existing internal combustion engined vehicles without engine modification.

According to Stephen Voller CEO at Cella Energy, the technology was developed using advanced materials science, taking high energy materials and encapsulating them using a nanostructuring technique called coaxial electrospraying.

“We have developed new micro-beads that can be used in an existing gasoline or petrol vehicle to replace oil-based fuels,” said Voller. “Early indications are that the micro-beads can be used in existing vehicles without engine modification.”

“The materials are hydrogen-based, and so when used produce no carbon emissions at the point of use, in a similar way to electric vehicles”, said Voller.

The technology has been developed over a four-year top secret programme at the prestigious Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, UK.

The development team is led by Professor Stephen Bennington in collaboration with scientists from University College London and Oxford University.

Professor Bennington, Chief Scientific Officer at Cella Energy said, “our technology is based on materials called complex hydrides that contain hydrogen. When encapsulated using our unique patented process, they are safer to handle than regular gasoline.”

Source.

Anbefaling af mediekritisk analyse.

Hermed de varmeste anbefalinger af en fremragende mediekritisk analyse med titlen "Krig er..." af mediekritikeren Uffe Kaels Auring som driver Medieoplysning.dk.

Erich Fromm on doubt.

“To ‛doubt’ [..] does not imply a psychological state of inability to arrive at decisions or convictions, as is the case in obsessional doubt, but the readiness and capacity for crititical questioning of the assumptions and institutions which have become idols under the name of common sense, logic, and what is supposed to be ‛natural’. This radical questioning is possible only if one does not take the concepts of one's society or even of an entire historical period – like Western culture since the Renaissance - for granted, and furthermore if one enlarges the scope of one's awareness and penetrates into the unconscious aspects of one's thinking. Radical doubt is an act of uncovering and discovering; it is the dawning of the awareness that the Emperor is naked, and that his splendid garments are nothing but the product of one's fantasy.”

Erich Fromm i sit forord til Ivan Illich “Celebration of Awareness”.

ACLU: ‘Unjustified homicides’ go unpunished at military prisons.

The American Civil Liberties Union has said it identified 25 to 30 cases of "unjustified homicide" in US-run prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

After filing a Freedom of Information request in 2009, the civil rights group last week obtained 2,624 pages of documents from the US military detailing investigations into 190 deaths in custody at prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the detention center in Guantanamo Bay.

The Defense Department says many of those deaths were due to illness, natural causes or inmate-on-inmate violence, but the ACLU alleges it has identified more than two dozen deaths it sees as being unjustified.

"So far, the documents released by the government raise more questions than they answer, but they do confirm one troubling fact: that no senior officials have been held to account for the widespread abuse of detainees," the ACLU said in a statement, as quoted at CNN. "Without real accountability for these abuses, we risk inviting more abuse in the future."

The ACLU noted that heart problems accounted for more than 25 percent of deaths, an unusually high number that "could potentially raise serious questions about the conditions of confinement or interrogation of the detainees."

The civil rights group says that while many of the deaths were previously known, some had never been revealed publicly. CNN reports:

In one such case, a detainee was killed by an unnamed sergeant who walked into a room where the detainee was lying wounded "and assaulted him ... then shot him twice thus killing him," one of the investigating documents says. The sergeant than instructed the other soldiers present to lie about the incident. Later, the document says an unnamed corporal then shot the deceased detainee in the head after finding his corpse.
In another example, documents note a soldier "committed the offense of murder when he shot and killed an unarmed Afghan male." But, according to the ACLU, the individual was found not guilty of murder by general court-martial.
The Defense Department defended its record, saying that the very existence of the thousands of pages of documents shows it takes in-custody deaths seriously. Army spokesman Lt. Col. David H. Patterson said that of the 190 deaths, 43 had US soldiers or personnel as suspects, resulting in 13 findings of probable cause for murder, and 19 separate convictions.

The ACLU's document release came the same week as the Obama administration let it be known it plans to resume the use of military commissions to try terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, a move the ACLU described "strik[ing] a major blow to any efforts to restore the rule of law."

"The decision to proceed with commissions ... raises serious questions about whether commissions are being used as a forum to hide the use of torture and base convictions on evidence that would be too untrustworthy to be admitted in any real court," said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project.

"Unlike federal courts, which have well-established rules of procedure and evidence, the military commissions rules do not comply with US and international law," Shamsi added.

Source.

Fødevarespekulanternes hazardspil med andres liv.

I en forhåbentlig opsigtsvækkende artikel i den britiske avis The Guardian kunne man i går læse en forstyrrende artikel om hvordan fødevarespekulanter spiller hazard med fattige menneskers liv.

Just under three years ago, people in the village of Gumbi in western Malawi went unexpectedly hungry. Not like Europeans do if they miss a meal or two, but that deep, gnawing hunger that prevents sleep and dulls the senses when there has been no food for weeks.

Oddly, there had been no drought, the usual cause of malnutrition and hunger in southern Africa, and there was plenty of food in the markets. For no obvious reason the price of staple foods such as maize and rice nearly doubled in a few months. Unusually, too, there was no evidence that the local merchants were hoarding food. It was the same story in 100 other developing countries. There were food riots in more than 20 countries and governments had to ban food exports and subsidise staples heavily.

The explanation offered by the UN and food experts was that a "perfect storm" of natural and human factors had combined to hyper-inflate prices. US farmers, UN agencies said, had taken millions of acres of land out of production to grow biofuels for vehicles, oil and fertiliser prices had risen steeply, the Chinese were shifting to meat-eating from a vegetarian diet, and climate-change linked droughts were affecting major crop-growing areas. The UN said that an extra 75m people became malnourished because of the price rises.

But a new theory is emerging among traders and economists. The same banks, hedge funds and financiers whose speculation on the global money markets caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis are thought to be causing food prices to yo-yo and inflate. The charge against them is that by taking advantage of the deregulation of global commodity markets they are making billions from speculating on food and causing misery around the world.

As food prices soar again to beyond 2008 levels, it becomes clear that everyone is now being affected. Food prices are now rising by up to 10% a year in Britain and Europe. What is more, says the UN, prices can be expected to rise at least 40% in the next decade.

læs resten her.

The Palestine Papers

The biggest leak of confidential material in the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is shedding new light on the status of the peace talks. Over the next couple of weeks the British newspaper The Guardian will break stories based upon the leakage. This may prove to be very interesting. Be sure to follow the developments on either The Guardians homepage or on Al Jazeera.