The Summer of Muslim Discontent: It’s Not “The Amateur Film” Stupid

Global Research
Prof. James Petras

The so-called “Arab Spring:” is a distant and bitter memory to those who fought and struggled for a better world, not to speak of the thousands who lost, life and limb.  In its place, throughout the Muslim world, a new wave of reactionaries, corrupt and servile politicians have taken the reins of power buttressed by the same military, secret police and judicial power who sustained the previous rulers.[2]

*      *      *

Introduction

Death and destruction is rampant, poverty and misery has multiplied, law and order has broken down, retrograde  thugs have seized political power, where previously they were a marginal force.  Living standards have plunged, cities are devastated and commerce is paralyzed.  And presiding over this “Arab Winter” are the Western powers, the US and EU, – with the aid of the despotic Gulf absolutist monarchies, their Turkish ally and a motley army of mercenary Islamic terrorists and their would-be exile spokespeople.

The legacy of imperial intervention in the Muslim world during the first decade of the 21^st century, in terms of lives lost, in people displaced, in economies destroyed, in perpetual warfare, exceeds any previous decade, including 19^th and 20^th century colonial conquests.  Much of the latest Western mayhem and violence has been compressed in the period dubbed the “Arab Spring” between 2011 – 2012.  Moreover, the worst is to come.  The Western overseers have gained strategic positions of power in some countries( Egypt ), are engaged in prolonged ruinous wars in others ( Syria ) and are preparing for even bigger and more destructive military intervention in still others ( Iran ).

The “Winter of Muslim Discontent” covers an entire arc from Pakistan , Afghanistan in South Asia, through the Gulf region and the Middle East to North Africa .  In the throes of the worst economic crises to hit the West since the 1930’s, the Western imperialist regimes have squeezed their people, mobilized personnel, arms and money to engage in simultaneous wars in five regions and two continents – in pursuit of overthrowing political adversaries and installing clients, even if it results in the destruction of the economy and uprooting of millions.

Let us begin with Egypt , where the Arab Spring has become a case study in the making of the New Imperial Order in the Muslim world.  To attribute the mass violent rebellions across two continents and two dozen Muslim countries to a US made film which desecrates the Prophet Mohammed is the height of superficiality.  At most the film was the trigger that set off deeply rooted hostilities resulting from two decades of US led ravaging and destruction of the Muslim world and more particularly, rage flows from Washington ’s crude intervention against the promise of the Arab Spring.

Egypt:  The Making of a Client State

From day one, in February 2011, Washington sought in every way to prop up the Mubarak dictatorship as thousands of protestors fighting for freedom were killed, wounded or jailed in the major plazas and streets of Egypt .  When Mubarak was forced out of power, Washington sought to retain its influence by turning to his Generals, and backed the military junta which seized power.  As the military dictatorship became the target of huge pro-democracy demonstrations, Washington backed a political power sharing agreement between the dominant pro-Western neo-liberal sector of the Muslim Brotherhood and the military, excluding any but the most superficial democratic and socio-economic reforms demanded by the poor and the working and middle classes.

With the election of President Mohamed Morsi, Washington secured the most fervent advocate of savage “free market” capitalism and the second best (after Mubarak) advocate of retaining Egypt’s status as a US client state in the Middle East.  Morsi, following in the footsteps of Mubarak and in accordance with the Washington and Tel Aviv, closed the trade routes between Gaza and Sinai, traveled to the Non-Aligned Movement in Teheran to deliver the Saudi-Gulf message calling for support of the Western backed armed mercenaries ravaging Syria .  Later he announced plans to privatize publicly-owned enterprises, reduce the deficit via elimination of basic subsidies to the poor, de-regulate the economy to increase the flow of foreign capital and end labor strikes^[3].  As a reward for his servility and to ease the process of remaking Egypt as a pliable Western client state, Washington, Saudi Arabia, the IMF, Qatar and the EU have offered Morsi over $20 billion in loans, debt relief and grants^[4].  Morsi’s rule depends on playing the ‘spiritual card’ to retain the support of the impoverished Muslim masses, while pursuing a staunch neo-liberal economic strategy and neo-colonial foreign policy.

Given the recent revolutionary pro-democracy and nationalist fervor, Morsi looks for ways to deflect rising socio-economic discontent with his neo-liberal economic policies by adopting an apparently pious Muslim posture – condemning “the film” ridiculing the Prophet and tolerating assaults on the US Embassy in Cairo … which angered Clinton and Obama, who expect total subservience, especially
toward the symbols and substance of everything US^[5].

War on Syria and Imperial Hubris: Clinton Demands Russia And China to “Pay The Price”

Global Research

Rick Rozoff

At the third meeting of the so-called Friends of Syria in Paris on July 6, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proved once again that diplomacy is to the United States what refined dining etiquette is to a jackal.

The third such meeting, earlier versions were held in “post-revolution” Tunisia and in Turkey, a NATO member with military forces massed on Syria’s border, was opened by French President Francois Hollande (who already is making his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy appear less anomalously egregious), who declaimed, “Bashir al Assad must go... a transitional government must be set up.”

The head of state of Syria’s former colonial master also engaged in comic opera theatrics by observing a moment of silence for – some – of the victims in Syria and insisted that the Syrian government’s “fall is inevitable.” Just as Sarkozy had done last year with the governments of Ivory Coast and Libya. Just as Clinton had done with both as well and now with Syria.

But Hollande was only the compère who warmed up the audience for the true personification of 21st century imperial hubris – Clinton.

She, who in February referred to Russia and China as being despicable for blocking a resolution in the United Nations Security Council aimed at the regime change in Syria mentioned above, abandoned any remaining element of restraint – a quality she has never been noted for, any more than for subtlety, judgment, humility, fairness and other seemingly outdated virtues – and exploited the Syrian crisis to crudely excoriate Russia and China once again.

Her shrill diatribe included an attempt to incite attendees from over 100 countries and organizations against the two alleged villains: “I ask you to reach out to Russia and China and to not only urge, but demand that they get off the sidelines and begin to support the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people.”

The operative word is demand. As in démarche. As in diktat.

However, if the above suggests that she accused Russia and China of what is the international equivalent of criminal negligence, the following demonstrates that she intended something far more severe:

“I don’t think Russia and China believe they are paying any price at all, nothing at all, for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime. The only way that will change is if every nation represented here directly and urgently makes it clear that Russia and China will pay a price, because they are holding up progress.”

Clinton was born in a hospital on the North Side of Chicago and clearly knows cardinal rule number one of Machine politics there: Reward your friends and punish your enemies. Especially the second. Smite them ruthlessly and remorselessly. Crush them if possible. Teach them a lesson they – and others tempted to pursue a less than completely obedient path – will never forget. Make them “pay a price.”

Her commander-in-chief President Barack Obama, his Cardinal Richelieu, David Axelrod, and his first two White House chiefs of staff, Rahm Emanuel and William Daley (son of one long-term mayor and brother of another), all matriculated in the school of Chicago power politics where compromise is a foreign concept and negotiation isn’t a word in the dictionary.

For the past 81 years Chicago’s chief executive, the mayor, has belonged to the same political party, Clinton’s, and currently all fifty members of the legislative body, the City Council, do as well.

Bills and city budgets are regularly passed unanimously, often with little discussion, less debate and no public input.

To be recalled the next time Clinton launches into a tirade against the government of or elections in other nations, as she did in relation to parliamentary elections in Russia last December, which she denounced as “neither free nor fair.”

Following the all too brief reprieve provided by the mayoralty of Harold Washington (1983-1987), the city reverted to top-down, autocratic rule, with near-absolute power wielded from the mayor’s office on the 5th Floor of City Hall.

Ben Ali, allies lose appeal of torture conviction

Oman Daily Observer

TUNIS — A military appeals court in Tunis yesterday upheld the convictions of Tunisia’s ousted president and his top officials for torturing army officers over an alleged coup plot, judicial sources said. “The verdict was pronounced on Saturday in a closed door session,” said one of the defence lawyers, Abada Kefi, who said he would take the case to a higher court.

The appeals court confirmed the five-year prison sentence handed down in absentia against Tunisia’s ex-strongman Zine al Abidine Ben Ali, who fled the country in January 2011 after a popular revolt and has been living in exile in Saudi Arabia, a military judicial source said. Ben Ali’s ex-collaborators, including former interior minister Abdallah Kallel and head of state security Mohamed Ali Ganzoui, had their four-year prison sentences reduced by half.

Defence lawyers had argued that the accusations were baseless and charged that the trial was politically motivated. “There is no evidence. The case touches on what was a state security issue in 1991 and Ben Ali would not allow anyone close,” Kallel’s lawyer Kefi said. The case is known as the “Bakaret Essahel affair”, named after a village 45 km south of the capital Tunis where officers were accused of holding secret meetings in 1991 with a view to toppling Ben Ali.

They were handed over to the interior ministry by their superior and are alleged to have been severely tortured in cells of the state security services. Most leading figures in Ben Ali’s government either fled or were arrested after last year’s uprising and Tunisia is now governed by a coalition of former opposition parties. — AFP

IMF Banksters worst fear: Egyptians launch campaign to repudiate Mubarak's debt's

Islamist
Samer Attallah

Mubarak contracted the debt so Mubarak should pay. Let the international banksters like IMF and WB who lent the money to Mubarak go collect it from him. Third world debt repudiation is the criminal banksters worst nightmare. Argentina did it successfully in the 90 and now there are Egypt, Pakistan Philippians even India is a possible candidate for debt repudiation

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts
8 November 2011 by Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debt

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts has the honour to announce the formation of a joint Egyptian-Tunisian committee for the Dropping of Debts in coordination with the campaign in Tunisia. The Campaign to Drop Tunisia’s Debt aims at auditing and dropping the debts of the dictator Bin Ali and was launched in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution. This coordination between two popular Arab movements is a practical translation of the achievements of the Arab Spring.

The joint committee shall work on the exchange of experience in the reviewing and auditing of debts; coordinating the two campaigns’ activities and organising relations globally. Such cooperation aims to cause the dropping of all odious, illegitimate external debts; which were amassed with foreign governments and international financial institutions by the corrupt regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Zine Al-Abidine Bin Ali.


Founding Statement

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts was conceived as part of the January 25th Revolution, and affirms the right of the Egyptian people to assert collective control over all matters related to their life and the future of coming generations. This is a popular movement that aims to facilitate Egypt’s economic independence from the many forms of exploitation, subordination and resource misappropriation that were imposed upon the people of Egypt during the past decades by the regime of the ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak and his collaborators abroad.

Arab Writers 'Should Not Be Invisible Anymore'

Der Spiegel

'People now, finally, are free and we are seeing an upsurge in creativity,' Jelloun says.

In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Moroccan-born author and poet Ben Taher Jelloun talks about the Arab Spring and the burgeoning creativity in post-dictatorship countries. He also describes the challenge of writing from the perspective of Libya's former leader Moammar Gadhafi.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Your recently published essay collection deals with the Arab Spring. Are you worried what will happen once the euphoria dies down?

Jelloun: Yes. These countries have been abused and scarred by dictators. Now the pieces have to be picked up slowly. The changes and reforms needed will take a long time, many years. But citizens are impatient. Their impatience is understandable -- they have fought for reform and now they want to see swift changes.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is there a way to settle this sense of urgency?

Jelloun: Many young Tunisians, for example, want to emigrate to Europe because things are not changing fast enough for them. How can you tell young people that the transition needs at least another generation to become properly established? How can you tell them to sit back and wait for the change which they fought and risked their lives for? This is very hard. It is a painstaking process to construct a post-dictatorship system and the question is whether people's impatience can hold out.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What other major challenges do you anticipate?

Jelloun: Until now the individual was not recognized in the region. Tribes or ethnic groups were recognized but not the individual. In Libya, Moammar Gadhafi exploited the conflict between ethnic groups and played one tribe off against another. But now Arab revolts have been driven by individuals' urgency for change. The concept of the 'individual' has been born during these revolts. At the same time, tribal structures and ethnic traditions will not simply disappear. Tribal culture will have to enter into a modern framework and that is very complicated but individualism is here to stay.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What needs to change politically?

Jelloun: Changing people's mentalities is a major challenge. These countries need to face up to entrenched corruption. People are used to living with corruption, it is a habit for both the corrupted and those who corrupt others. It is very difficult to change this culture overnight.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How has the revolt reflected in the literary scene?

Jelloun: I think there will be a creative boom. The fact that people are finally free means that we are seeing a surge in creativity of all sorts.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What was the situation for writers during the dictatorships?

Jelloun: There was a lot of state censorship but there was also the powerful force of auto-censorship. Even those who lived in exile were very, very cautious. Exiled writers from Iraq and Syria, for example, could not talk or write freely out of fear for the safety of family members still in their home countries. For instance, Lebanese writers who criticized Syria and its role in Lebanon have received death threats. Samir Kassir, a Lebanese writer who published articles speaking out against the Syrian dictatorship, was assassinated in June 2005. It is widely thought that the Syrians killed him.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Will there now be a wave of writers in exile returning to their countries?

Jelloun: Yes, that is happening already, for example, in Egypt. This trend is not restricted to intellectuals. We are also seeing a wave of entrepreneurs and high-level businesspeople returning to their native countries because they see new opportunities there. There is reason to be hopeful, but our hopes may be disappointed in the long run.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How do you think European governments could best support Arab writers?

Jelloun: More support would be a good opportunity for European governments to make amends for the inexcusable things they did during the dictatorships. Arab writers' voices should be heard in Europe. They should be invited to address people and their work should be translated. They should not be invisible anymore. But their assistance should extend beyond the arts. They need to help the countries reconstruct themselves materially and politically too.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You mention the 'inexcusable' role of Europe politicians in their relations with the dictatorships. Are you angry about the cozy ties?

Jelloun: No, I'm not astonished by how Europe behaved. Hasn't it always been like that in Europe? Haven't Europe's economic and material and energy interests always been put before their principles?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You addressed hundreds of teenagers during the Berlin Literature Festival. What was your main message to young people?

Jelloun: To read! Reading is under threat by young people's attachment to computers. Those machines are everywhere, but reading is essential. It can help them understand other cultures. Reading can open their eyes. There is still too much confusion between Islam and terrorism. Young people shouldn't mix this up. They should learn that Islam is a monotheistic religion like Christianity and Judaism -- and, like Christianity and Judaism, it has fanatics, but that doesn't mean the fanatic element is at the core of the religion.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you like the media catchphrase 'Arab Spring?'

Jelloun: I like the term Arab Spring as it is the first time in years that the international media is reporting something positive about the Arab world. On the other hand, the word 'revolution' is being misused by the media. It is an Arabic revolt, not a revolution. Revolutions have to be prepared. They are carried out by a movement, a party and an ideology, it's about constructing something new in the medium or long-term. A revolt is a spontaneous expression of anger. Tunisia, for instance, has long had a vibrant civil society. That helped the revolt, but what really effected change, in Tunisia and elsewhere, was the population's spontaneous expression of anger.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In your book Arab Spring, you write from Moammar Gadhafi's perspective. Was this hard?

Jelloun: Quite the contrary, I like to climb into people's heads, even if dictators give me a headache. I like the process and you discover extraordinary things. It is like being an actor, you try and get inside the person, see how they tick. You can play at being someone else. Others who have read these essays have said they recognize the portrayal. I couldn't do the same about Angela Merkel as she seems to be an ordinary woman doing usual things. I am interested in writing from the point of view of people who are far from the norm, people who do extravagant things. Angela Merkel doesn't apply to that criteria.
Interview conducted by Jess Smee

Arab Spring: Revolutions, Lies, and Intervention

Global Research
Devon DB

In 2011, the United States had its dominance of the Middle East seriously threatened due to massive peaceful protests that were sweeping the Arab world. No longer were people going to put up with corrupt and oppressive regimes that were backed by Washington. No longer would they put up with horrid dictatorships in which the only freedom they had was to obey. In 2011 began what would be known as the Arab Spring.

Tunisia

On December 17th, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi was selling fruit without a license and when the authorities confiscated his scale, he became enraged. When Bouazizi confronted the police, he was slapped in the face. This led him to plead his case in the town’s government office, but when it was rebuffed, he went and lit himself aflame. This small act became noticed by the populace at large and the anger “spread to other towns in the interior of the country, where unemployment among university graduates was approaching 50 percent.” [1] Mass protests soon began with calls to end dictator Ben Ali’s rule and democratic elections, however, Ali turned to the police and the slaughtering of protesters began in earnest.

The organization Wikileaks also played a role in starting up the protests, as files were released just days before Bouazizi lit himself aflame, which confirmed suspicions that many Tunisians already had: that Ben Ali was a corrupt dictator, that his family was extremely corrupt, and that life was incredibly difficult for the Tunisian poor and unemployed.

When this occurred, the US was deeply worried as Tunisia had significant military ties to the US. Tunisia cooperated “in NATO’s Operation Active Endeavor, which provides counter-terrorism surveillance in the Mediterranean,” participated in NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue, “and allow[ed] NATO ships to make port calls at Tunis.” [2] Every now and then the US would criticize Tunisia for its record on political rights and freedom of expression, yet “In parallel with these expressions of concern, the United States continued to provide military and economic assistance to the Tunisian government.” [3] Thus, the US began to play both sides. About two weeks after Ben Ali had fled the nation, America sent their top Middle East envoy to Tunisia and tried “to press its advantage to push for democratic reforms in the country and further afield.” [4] While it may have appeared that the US was quickly trying to position itself on Tunisia’s good side, they may have had a hand in Ali’s ousting as “According to some rumors in Tunis, the country's army chief consulted with Washington before withdrawing his support from Ben Ali -- a move which sealed the ousted president's fate.” [5]

Almost as soon as the US was finished in Tunisia, they had even bigger problems on their hands with the protests in Egypt.

Egypt

Due to being inspired by the success of the Tunisian protests, the Egyptian people launched their own protest movement, calling for the overthrow of US puppet Hosni Mubarak. However, the US was busy co-opting the protest movement.

The US used the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as a cover to help co-opt the protest movement. Ironically, the NED is not used for the spreading of democracy, rather it was established by the Reagan administration to aid in the overthrow of foreign governments, after the CIA’s covert operations were revealed. The NED was supported “As a bipartisan endowment, with participation from the two major parties, as well as the AFL-CIO and US Chamber of Commerce, the NED took over the financing of foreign overthrow movements, but overtly and under the rubric of ‘democracy promotion.’” [6] Thus, the US supported both Mubarak and the protesters, in a bid to make sure that no matter what occurred, America would still get its way.

The civil society groups had a major influence on Egyptian activists as in May 2009 the activists

    "spent a week in Washington receiving training in advocacy and getting an inside look at the way U.S. democracy works. After their training, the fellows were matched with civil society organizations throughout the country where they shared experiences with U.S. counterparts. The activists [wrapped]  up their program this week by visiting U.S. government officials, members of Congress, media outlets and think tanks." [7] (emphasis added)

Thus, due to the US aiding the activists, the Americans ensured that the protesters owed them a debt and that US interests would be secure even if Mubarak was ousted.

The US also had deep military ties to Egypt, seeing as how they were the largest recipient of US foreign aid next to Israel. Also, the US wanted to make sure that Israel wasn’t threatened, as both nations were worried that a new government in Egypt might cancel the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

While the Egyptian military is currently in control until elections, no matter what occurs, America will still have its way.

Bahrain

Protests also began taking place in Bahrain. The people were tired of a government which “ failed to abide by their own constitution, refused to investigate the crimes of torture and continued to expropriate more than half of the land of the country.” [8] The Bahrani government was controlled by the Al Khalifa family, which has ruled Bahrain for over 300 years and has created an economy where there is a powerful and wealthy Sunni minority while the Shiite majority constantly faces discrimination in jobs and education, has little political representation, and are barred from many government and military positions.

The US was deeply troubled because of the protests as the Al Khalifa regime allowed for the Americans to station their Fifth Fleet in the country, which allows the US to patrol “the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the east coast of Africa,” “keep an eye on – and, if necessary, rattle sabers – close to oil shipping lanes, Iran, and the increasing activity of pirates,” and “ [provide] basing and overflight clearances for US aircraft engaged in Afghanistan and [help] cut off money supplies to suspected Islamic terrorists.” [9] Thus, the Bahraini regime was of major importance to US regional interests.

The US showed that it would do anything to make sure that its puppet stayed in power when they backed the Saudi military intervention in Bahrain. The Saudis intervened on the behalf of the Bahraini government and began shooting into crowds of Bahraini protesters. [10] However, even though the protesters were being gunned down, they still were determined to fight for their rights against America’s puppets.

Libya

The Arab Spring movement also reached all the way to Libya, however, things were quite different as instead of having peaceful protests, opposition forces were picking up arms and fighting the Libyan military. Due to the then-leader of Libya, Col. Mummar Gaddafi, having never truly been a Western puppet, America launched a propaganda war to allow the US-NATO war machine to intervene in Libya on the grounds of “humanitarian intervention.”

The question that must first be asked is why the West even wanted to intervene in Libya. The answer is because Libya has Africa’s largest oil reserves and Western oil companies wanted access to them. However, there are also larger economic reasons. Months prior to the intervention, Gaddafi had called upon African and Muslims nations to adopt a single currency: the gold dinar. This would have excluded the dollar as the gold dinar would have been used to purchase goods, thus threatening the economies of Western nations. However, the creation of a gold dinar may have also empowered the people of Africa, something black activists say the US wants to avoid at all costs.

    “The US have denied self-determination to Africans inside the US, so we are not surprised by anything the US would do to hinder the self-determination of Africans on the continent,” says Cynthia Ann McKinney, a former US Congresswoman. [11]

There was also geopolitics at work as during the war, Gaddafi “vowed to expel Western energy companies from the country and replace them with oil firms from China, India, and Russia.” [12] This would have effectively excluded the West from ever getting at Libya’s oil. By ousting Gaddafi, the West would be able to have a puppet regime to counter Chinese and Russian moves in North Africa as well as access to Libyan oil.

What many of the media never asked until the conflict was nearing its end was who exactly were the rebels. In the Iraq war, most of the foreign fighters came from Libya and in that,“almost all of them came from eastern Libya, the center of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion.” [13] (emphasis added) A Libyan rebel commander even admitted that some of his soldiers had links to Al Qaeda:

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".

Mr al-Hasidi insisted his fighters "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists,"but added that the "members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader". [14] (emphasis added)

Thus, the US and NATO were backing terrorists, yet they may have known seeing as how a 2007 West Point Study revealed that the Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk area was a world leader in Al Qaeda suicide bomber recruitment. [15]

Due to the US and its NATO allies not wanting to look like the imperialists they truly were, Obama pressured the UN to pass a resolution allowing for the establishment of a no fly zone over Libya and an arms embargo on the nation. However, both were broken quite soon. The UN resolution clearly allowed all member states “acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, to take all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.” [16] However, the imperialists admitted that they wanted to overthrow Gaddafi in an op-ed piece, when Cameron, Sarkozy, and Obama stated: “Our duty and our mandate under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove [G]addafi by force. But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with [G]addafi in power.” [17] (emphasis added)The US and NATO clearly stated that their main goal was to overthrow Gaddafi.

The hypocrisy of the West ran deep as they found an excuse to intervene in Libya, but not in Egypt, Bahrain, Palestine, or any other location where people were being oppressed by local regimes. However, Western hypocrisy was shown near the outset of the conflict when it was reported that Egypt’s military had begun to ship arms to the rebels with Washington’s knowledge. [18] This clearly shows that supposed arms embargo on Libya was in reality, an embargo on Gaddafi’s forces.

To whip up support for their “intervention,” a massive media propaganda campaign was conducted against Gaddafi. The mainstream media were reporting things such as Gaddafi gave his troops Viagra to rape women, bombed civilians, and that Libyan troops gunned down civilians. Despite these claims being false, the mainstream media still reported it. However, what many people ignored was the fact that the rebel and NATO war crimes. In mid-August, “a NATO bombing campaign near the Libyan city of Zlitan earlier this month reportedly killed almost 100 civilians — more than half of them women and children.” [19] However, NATO denied all claims arguing that they had struck legitimate targets. This is just one example of many NATO war crimes in Libya, ranging from killing civilians to bombing the rebels themselves. There were also reports that Libyan rebels were targeting and killing black Africans. All across eastern Libya the rebels “and their supporters [were] detaining, intimidating and frequently beating African immigrants and black Libyans, accusing them of fighting as mercenaries on behalf of [Gaddafi],” in some cases “executed suspected mercenaries captured in battle, according to Human Rights Watch and local Libyans,” and “arbitrarily killed some mercenaries and in others cases failed to distinguish between them and non-combatants.” [20] Yet, despite these and other numerous reports, the Libyan rebels excused their war crimes, saying that they didn’t have the structures in place to deal with matters such as these.

What was also somewhat ignored was the fact that the rebels were extremely fractured, only united in their goal to overthrow Gaddafi. This was clearly seen after the assassination ofGeneral Al-Younes and two top military commanders aides. Their deaths “resulted in internal fighting within the Transitional Council” with “Factional divisions [developing] within rebel forces.” [21] This factional divide may soon play itself out in the creation of a new Libyan government.

Finally, there was the fact that Western special forces were on the ground. The initial appearance of Western special forces was when British SAS troops were captured near Benghazi in March. However, US CIA agents were in Libya [22] and there may have been French and US special forces in Libya aiding the rebels. In a March interview on the O’Reilly Show, retired Colonel David Hunt of the US Army and Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a former Army intelligence officer were interviewed about the situation in Libya. Hunt stated the following when asked about special forces being in Libya:

Analysis: Arab spring likely to leave oil firms unscathed

LONDON (Reuters) - Western oil firms are unlikely to face widespread asset seizures or contract revisions as a result of Arab uprisings, thanks to deft diplomacy, legal protections and efforts to depict themselves as partners of the local citizenry.

In the past, big political shifts in the Middle East have often been followed by the eviction of foreign oil producers -- Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran to cite a few examples.

This time around, upheaval has hit Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Syria -- not the biggest oil producers in the Arab world but among the most open to foreign investment. Companies including BP Plc, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell have spent billions there.

"I wouldn't describe us as worried. We're being vigilant," said Bob Dudley, chief executive of BP, echoing comments from other companies.

The new governments that have emerged, or may emerge, are expected by and large to remain supportive of foreign investment, because they will wish to maintain output and government revenues.

"I don't see there being a large nationalistic wave," said Richard Quin, Middle East analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

In the past popular anger toward a regime has spilled over to the companies that supported it, but oil companies say that over the past two decades, they have positioned themselves on the side of communities, rather than as agents of government.

"Companies now are not so closely aligned with governments," said Mahdi Sajjad, president of Syria-focused Gulfsands Petroleum, whose shares have been hit by investor fears about the unrest.

In part this has been achieved by investing in community engagement projects. Oil contracts that are more transparent and more favorable toward host nations also play a big role.

CONTRACT CHANGES

Up to the 1970s, oil contracts were opaque and seen as beneficial to companies and the region's frequently corrupt governments -- at the expense of citizens. Now contracts usually follow internationally accepted models.

This will help oil executives argue they are giving host nations the best deal that a new leadership could hope to get and, therefore, that existing contracts should be respected.

"We look at it (investment) from a perspective of the fundamental stakeholders, the population of the country .. rather than through the lens of the current incumbent government," said Frank Chapman, chief executive of British Gas producer BG Group.

"What we are doing in Tunisia and Egypt is sustainable," he added.

Oil companies have beaten a path to new leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, and, an Italian ministerial source told Reuters last month, even to Libyan rebel leaders. Companies say the signals received so far do not point to widespread asset seizures.

If new governments do seek to expropriate oil fields or to rewrite contracts, companies will find they have greater legal protection than they did when the last wave of nationalization swept through the Arab world in the 1970s.

Modern contracts bar governments from taking unilateral action to seize assets and can limit their ability to hike taxes. And if there is a dispute over whether the government has overstepped its authority, companies don't have to worry about arguing their cases in front of potentially biased local courts.

"Contracts usually provide for arbitration in a neutral venue," Anthony Sinclair, a partner with law firm Allen & Overy said.

Arab revolutions mask economic status quo

Al Jazeera
Mark Levine

Despite talk of a "new social contract", financial powers seek to maintain their grip on the poor of the Middle East.

The World Bank and IMF have been restructuring the economies of the Middle East for decades, with largely negative results. Yet they are poised to play a major role in the post-revolutionary efforts to stabilise Egypt, Tunisia and other post-authoritarian states.

The post-1967 era of the Middle East can, in many ways, be defined by the turn towards market liberalisation across the region, although the attempts by Western lending institutions to pressure local governments to initiate structural reforms goes back to the Nasser period. From the start of the 1970s-era infitah, or opening, under Anwar Sadat, there have been over a dozen episodes of mass protest and even revolt against IMF and World Bank-imposed austerity measures. Not just in Egypt, which has had at least four such episodes, but in Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey as well.

At times local governments made some effort to resist the imposition of what is today referred to as "Washington Consensus" policies, which advocate trade liberalisation, privatisation, opening economies to foreign goods and investment, stabilising budgets and exchange rates, and cutting government expenditures and presence in the economy. As one left-wing paper headlined a story in 1978: "Egypt puts the IMF on notice, heralding new era of economic development."

But the new era was stillborn; Egypt would soon be far too tightly enmeshed within the US-led order to pursue an independent path towards development, continuing a history of frustrated economic development that stretches from the mid-19th century, when Muhammad Ali's attempt at independent modernisation was met by a joint European-Ottoman front that ultimately forced Egypt - and the Ottoman state - into a European-dominated economic fold that, within three decades, led both states to bankruptcy (and soon thereafter, for Egypt, to more than half a century of British occupation).

Today, some Egyptian observers argue that one of the main reasons the army was willing to sacrifice Mubarak was because of its anger at the increasing power of his son Gamal and his colleagues, such as former - and recently convicted - IMF official Youssef Boutros-Ghali, who were accruing significant power through the financialisation of the economy and other policies that weaken the power of the army and the more traditional national capitalist elite.

In short, resentment against the kind of neoliberal policies championed by the IMF and World Bank runs deep in Egypt and other Arab countries. Today, even senior officials of the Bank and Fund blame the imposition of "Washington Consensus" models of restructuring developing economies for helping create the situation of economic hopelessness that sparked the Tunisian revolution.

While few people are making the link today, such policies also helped torpedo the Oslo peace process. They justified the economic integration through physical separation and isolation of Palestinians within the Occupied Territories that became a defining motif of the so-called peace process, reinforcing Israeli economic dominance over Palestinians in the same manner that its territorial footprint in the West Bank grew wider rather than trimming down, which is what most people assumed would happen on the way to a final status agreement.

Lessons learned?

Despite the less than encouraging history of involvement in the region, the World Bank, IMF and other mainstream institutions have all sought to insert themselves into the economic reform process that most observers believe must accompany political reform in order for the latter to succeed. At least, at the leadership level, officials are saying the right words. Bank head Robert Zoellick argues that "we must act now ... In revolutionary moments, the status quo is not a winning hand".

Zoellick has declared that the Bank understands that "we need a new social contract where governments listen to their people and include them in their development process". Similarly, incoming IMF chief Christine Lagarde admitted that one of the lessons of the region's uprisings is that "if priority is to be accorded to inclusive and sustainable growth, issues of justice, security and employment, particularly in the private sector, can no longer be addressed separately".

Similarly, in a heated exchange with Egyptian pro-democracy activist Wael Ghonim, then IMF head Dominique Strauss Kahn admitted that the Bank had erred in helping to prop up the Mubarak regime and offering analyses which celebrated policies of the government which clearly were harming the interests of most Egyptians.

Both the IMF and the Bank now state loudly that the Arab Spring has taught them the appropriate "lessons" and that they now realise that "we have to listen to people" and help ensure that wealth is now "for everyone" and not just the privileged few.

Such language - of inclusiveness and accountability to the broader population, of focusing on human development rather than merely aggregate economic indicators - is laudable, and reflects the commitment of the Bank specifically to support the millennium development goals. Yet it runs hard into almost insurmountable obstacles.

First, the entrenched institutional ideology and policies of the Fund and Bank. Thus, for example, increasing "productivity" and "efficiency" in the Egyptian or Tunisian economies would demand trimming supposedly bloated workforces, at a time when the institutions' leaders have admitted that joblessness is among the most difficult problems faced by Egypt and its neighbours. Similar problems occur with opening economies too far towards foreign investment and export-oriented growth, when the strengthening of locally based production, consumption and credit would be more beneficial.

Second, the desire to change course runs into the problem that the larger structural imbalances in economies such as Egypt - rampant corruption and concentration of wealth tied to long-term authoritarian rule - are globally systemic in nature. They mirror (in fact amplify) problems that plague the most market-devoted advanced industrial countries, such as the United States. But at the same time they are exacerbated by the fact that US policy has long had little interest in encouraging the kind of autonomous development that the Bank and Fund now say they support.

In the case of Egypt (and the Middle East more broadly), the US supported Mubarak and other dictators because he backed US policies which were antithetical to the desires and interests of most Egyptians. Neither authoritarian governments nor their patrons have any interest in encouraging the development of a robust civil society and autonomous middle-class led economy, now named among the chief goals of the Bank and Fund. Rather, keeping civil societies relatively weak (or at least disempowered) and individual citizens dependent on the state are among the few tools governments have left to maintain some form of control, or at least power, over populations.

Despite this obvious reality, it remains almost impossible to find officials or researchers associated with the Bank or Fund acknowledging that disparities in economic and political power within developing countries and between their nations and more powerful countries impacts the way policies are experienced on the ground.

A more realistic portrayal of the view of Washington Consensus insiders to the Arab Spring comes from a recent report issued by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Written by two former senior Bank officials, Uri Dadush and Marwan Muasher, it called on the Fund and Bank to step in to ensure that political changes sweeping the region didn't encourage governments to abandon Washington Consensus policies.
Bluntly, the authors warn that "there is a significant possibility that the government that ultimately emerges out of this crisis will renounce previous economic reforms as misguided and argue that they contributed to the region's plight ... It is in the large economies' own interest to insure that economic reforms continue apace with political reforms." Worse, they fear, local governments might "lose faith in liberal economic reform" and "essentially 'buy' peace with domestic handouts and new spending packages".

Roots of de-development

The roots of the neoliberal policies against which not merely "ordinary" Arabs, but even the leaders of the Bank and Fund would seem to be pushing run extremely deep, to the emergence of a global capitalist system in the 16th century that was inextricably tied to the rapid development of European empires and all the violence and exploitation they wrought - through centuries of imperial power, colonial rule, and enforced exploitation and slavery.

Equally important was the rise of nation-state ideologies and institutions that helped manage the increasingly globalised economic order. When colonised peoples finally achieved independence and sought to create autonomous institutions and networks, they were met with concerted efforts to frustrate their drive towards independent development, setting up a showdown between Arab "socialism" and Western capitalism that lasted for the better part of the 1950s and 1960s.

Despite the conflict with the United States and other Western powers, this period was in fact marked by unprecedented levels of both economic growth and relative economic equality within ostensibly socialist-inspired societies such as Egypt, Syria or Iraq. But by the 1970s, and especially in the 1980s, leaders of these countries began to integrate themselves into the Western political-economic fold, and such growth and egalitarian distribution of wealth changed for the worse.

I explored this trend and the experience of globalisation more broadly in the Middle East in my 2005 book Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil. What was striking about the data I collected was both how often growth was the result of following policies at odds with the Washington Consensus model, and how following this model produced greater inequality and poverty in countries where there was economic growth. For this and other reasons, it's not surprising that the region was largely left completely out of mainstream analyses of economic globalisation in the 1990s and first half of the 2000s, as if the world did not include the Middle East.

Instead, analyses by the IMF and World Bank "extensively praised this stabilisation success in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco", ignoring the social costs of policies such as reducing the size of the public sector through privatisation, removing controls over investment, eliminating subsidies and most tariffs on imports and  liberalising trade regimes. Nor was there significant analysis of the "conditions" attached to loans granted by the Fund or Bank, which demanded that recipient governments engage in significant "structural adjustments" of their fiscal and monetary policies that could go against the interests of the majority of a population, especially during periods of economic downturn - when people are already living at the margins.

Such policies of "conditionality" made loans into tools of policy by Western governments. Such policies could afford sides being based on very inaccurate modelling of how real life economies function or have no appreciation for political circumstances or economic realities of poor people, because their main function was to help pry open developing economies to foreign control. In the process, across the region, structural adjustment encouraged the destruction of existing industries and even deindustrialisation more broadly.

At best, more critical scholars have observed, IMF and World Bank loans have often been used as if they were remittances, being distributed to the population in "inefficient" ways to maintain social peace while strategic public sector investment was significantly reduced (particularly in Egypt). At the same time, the negative impact of the structural adjustment policies attached to them have forced Western donors, such as Sweden, to redirect aid away from encouraging local development and towards ameliorating the worst negative effects of the adjustments forced upon local economies.

Recutting the pie

In a recent article for al Jazeera, Oxford University Egypt expert Walter Armbrust makes two key points that need to be borne in mind as the World Bank, IMF and other international financial institutions seek to reorder the economies of the region for a supposedly post-revolutionary political economic landscape. First, he points out that the corruption that everyone now laments was, in fact, "a conflation of politics and business under the guise of privatisation" that was "less a violation of the system than business as usual".

Not only that, such practises were not just endemic to Egypt. They are "as American as apple pie" - part of the larger global system I mentioned above. As Armbrust points out, in sheer scale, audacity, and - incredibly - legality, the conflation of business and government in the US makes the same process in Egypt look like amateur hour by comparison.

Ultimately, what this analysis reminds us is that even if IMF or Bank officials might have gone a bit soft, the US under President Obama, as under his predecessors, has as little interest or ability to change a system it has profited from enormously over the past half century. Ultimately, neither the generals of Egypt's Supreme Military Council, nor the barons of Wall Street (and their allies among the generals in the Pentagon) will willingly allow anything more than "cosmetic changes" to the political economy of either country.

And so when Egypt's finance minister, Samir Mohamed Radwan, exclaims to a Chamber of Commerce audience that, "it's very simple, I need cash" to keep the economy functioning - while Egypt struggles with billions in debt and lost revenues from the uprising, it is still quite difficult to imagine the "I" he mentions representing the "we", of all of Egypt, Mr Radwan officially represents. With tens of billions of dollars in loans, aid and investment slotted to enter Egypt in the next few years, a system which has been nourished by industrial scale corruption for decades will find it hard to suddenly function efficiently and for the good of the average Egyptian rather than the economic elite which still controls the country - even if that elite has had to sacrifice a few of its own to maintain power.

The struggle for these billions, far more than inter- or intra-religious conflict, changes in Egypt's foreign policy orientation, or the power of the youth movement that toppled a dictator, will likely decide the future of the country for the next generation.

Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. He has authored several books including Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine (University of California Press, 2005) and An Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books, 2009).

Gaza: A View From the Ground

Global Research

Here in Palestine, disgust expressed by civil society reformers about Barack Obama's May 19 policy speech on the Middle East and North Africa confirms that political reconciliation between Washington and fast-rising Arab democrats is impossible.

Amidst many examples, consider the longstanding U.S. tradition of blind, self-destructive support for Israel, which Obama has just amplified. Recognizing a so-called ‘Jewish state’ as a matter of U.S. policy, he introduced a new twist that denies foundational democratic rights for 1.4 million Palestinians living within Israel. For a Harvard-trained constitutional lawyer to sink so low on behalf of Zionist discrimination is shocking. For although Obama mentioned the “1967 lines” as the basis for two states and thereby appeared to annoy arch-Zionist leader Benjamin Netanyahu, this minimalist United Nations position was amended with a huge caveat: ‘with land swaps.’

Obama thus implicitly endorses illegal Israeli settlements (with their half-million reactionary residents) that pock the West Bank, confirming its status as a Bantustan for 2.5 million people, far more fragmented than even the old South African homelands. Another 1.6 million suffer in the isolated Gaza Strip.


Map of Israel.

Obama also claimed, “America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator,” stretching credulity.

The Arab Spring Gets In The Way

“He was with the dictators until the very last minute,” rebuts Ramallah-based liberation activist Omar Barghouti, regarding both Tunisia's Ben-Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. “He's missed the point of the Arab Spring. It's not just about the street vendor, it is about social justice. The pillage of the resources of the region by the U.S. has to come to an end.”

Resource extraction and Israeli empowerment explain Obama's recent flirtation with unreformable Libyan and Syrian tyrannies, as well as ongoing U.S. sponsorship of brutal regimes in Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. So it was impossible for the U.S. president to avoid a subtle confession: “There will be times when our short-term interests don't align perfectly with our long-term vision of the region.”

“There will be times”? That's the understatement of the year, considering “short-term interests” reflect the corrupted character of corporate-purchased U.S. politicians. (Obama needs to raise $1-billion to finance his re-election campaign next year.) Pursuit of such narrow interests gets Washington into perpetual trouble, including bolstering Israeli aggression, becoming dependent upon oil from despotic regimes, and dogmatically imposing free-market ideology on behalf of U.S.-dominated multinational capital.

I am witnessing the results firsthand in Gaza and the West Bank, and was lucky to even get here, for last Tuesday, the day after I arrived at the main regional airport in TelAviv (with my white skin, multiple passports and non-Muslim surname), my friend Na'eem Jeenah also tried to enter Israel en route to Palestine with South African papers. For four hours the Israeli border police detained Jeenah, a Johannesburg leader of the Palestine Solidarity Committee. Intervention by concerned SA diplomats couldn't appease immigration officials, who forced him to board a flight to Istanbul where he waited for another day before returning home.

Apartheid – Israeli Style

South Africans who get through immigration invariably confirm conditions here that deserve the label ‘Israeli apartheid.’ Last month, Judge Richard Goldstone's reputation-wrecking reversal on the UN Goldstone report, regarding the Israeli army's intentional killing of Gaza civilians during the January 2009 “Operation Cast Lead” invasion, cannot disguise 1400 dead, of which no more than half were Hamas-aligned officials.

That massacre was, according to Israeli journalist Amira Hass, a chance for the army to practice high-tech urban warfare against a caged populace, replete with white phosphorous, combat robots, drones and other terror weapons.


Erez (Gaza border) protest on Nakba day, 15 May 2011.
Just as I crossed Gaza's northern Erez border post last Friday, Israeli Defense Force soldiers fired on unarmed marchers who are Palestine's unique contribution to the Arab Spring, leaving two wounded. The Sunday before, tens of thousands of these brave people, especially refugees, mobilized using FaceBook and walked to several 1967 lines, resulting in fifteen murders by trigger-happy Israeli soldiers.

Along with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions non-violent struggle against Israeli power, this Satyagraha-style movement, adopting strategies and tactics pioneered in Durban, South Africa by Mahatma Gandhi a century ago, must strike fear in the hearts of TelAviv securocrats. No longer can they portray their enemies as rocket-launching Islamic fundamentalists who worship Osama bin Laden.

What I also learned from Palestinian civil society activists is that the pillaging of this region by the West is being planned by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, following similar support to dictators last year – though with unintended consequences! – in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

Evidence includes two documents presented by the IMF and World Bank to an April 13 Brussels donor conference, spelling out Palestine's wretched economic fate in technocratic terms. The IMF insists on lower civil service wages, electricity privatization, subsidy cuts and a higher retirement age. The World Bank advocates a free-trade regime which will demolish the tiny manufacturing base.

In his speech last Thursday, Obama endorsed an IMF/Bank document on the regional economy to be tabled at this week's G8 meeting of industrial powers in France. Although Washington promised $1-billion in debt relief, it comes with conditions such as “supporting financial stability, supporting financial modernization and developing a framework for trade and investment relations with the EU and the USA.”

Go ahead and snigger, but absurd as this sounds in the wake of the recent U.S.-centred world financial meltdown, Obama's gift is actually an “attempted bribe of the Egyptian democratic revolution,” says Barghouti. In any case there is another $33-billion of Mubarak's “Odious Debt” yet to be cancelled, and reparations to be paid.

Concludes Barghouti, “If anything, the U.S. has played a very negative role. The best thing Obama can do for the region is leave it alone. We've seen U.S. democracy-building in Afghanistan and Iraq, so no thank you.” •

Patrick Bond is based at the UKZN Centre for Civil Society, Durban, South Africa, and traveled to Palestine courtesy of TIDA-Gaza and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. His full report on the dangers of neoliberal influence in Palestine is available on the palestine.rosalux.org website.

Middle East is turning its back on Obama. Its future will be shaped without US influence

Belfast Telegraph
Robert Fisk

This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States.
More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of the US in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945.

While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed.

Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America's new role in the region. It was pathetic. "What is this 'role' thing?" an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. "Do they still believe we care about what they think?"

And it is true. Obama's failure to support the Arab revolutions until they were all but over lost the US most of its surviving credit in the region. Obama was silent on the overthrow of Ben Ali, only joined in the chorus of contempt for Mubarak two days before his flight, condemned the Syrian regime – which has killed more of its people than any other dynasty in this Arab "spring", save for the frightful Gaddafi – but makes it clear that he would be happy to see Assad survive, waves his puny fist at puny Bahrain's cruelty and remains absolutely, stunningly silent over Saudi Arabia.

And he goes on his knees before Israel. Is it any wonder, then, that Arabs are turning their backs on America, not out of fury or anger, nor with threats or violence, but with contempt? It is the Arabs and their fellow Muslims of the Middle East who are themselves now making the decisions.

Turkey is furious with Assad because he twice promised to speak of reform and democratic elections – and then failed to honour his word. The Turkish government has twice flown delegations to Damascus and, according to the Turks, Assad lied to the foreign minister on the second visit, baldly insisting that he would recall his brother Maher's legions from the streets of Syrian cities. He failed to do so. The torturers continue their work.

Watching the hundreds of refugees pouring from Syria across the northern border of Lebanon, the Turkish government is now so fearful of a repeat of the great mass Iraqi Kurdish refugee tide that overwhelmed their border in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war that it has drawn up its own secret plans to prevent the Kurds of Syria moving in their thousands into the Kurdish areas of south-eastern Turkey.

Turkish generals have thus prepared an operation that would send several battalions of Turkish troops into Syria itself to carve out a "safe area" for Syrian refugees inside Assad's caliphate.

The Turks are prepared to advance well beyond the Syrian border town of Al Qamishli – perhaps half way to Deir el-Zour (the old desert killing fields of the 1915 Armenian Holocaust, though speak it not) – to provide a "safe haven" for those fleeing the slaughter in Syria's cities.

The Qataris are meanwhile trying to prevent Algeria from resupplying Gaddafi with tanks and armoured vehicles – this was one of the reasons why the Emir of Qatar, the wisest bird in the Arabian Gulf, visited the Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, last week. Qatar is committed to the Libyan rebels in Benghazi; its planes are flying over Libya from Crete and – undisclosed until now – it has Qatari officers advising the rebels inside the city of Misrata in western Libya; but if Algerian armour is indeed being handed over to Gaddafi to replace the material that has been destroyed in air strikes, it would account for the ridiculously slow progress which the Nato campaign is making against Gaddafi.
Of course, it all depends on whether Bouteflika really controls his army – or whether the Algerian "pouvoir", which includes plenty of secretive and corrupt generals, are doing the deals. Algerian equipment is superior to Gaddafi's and thus for every tank he loses, Ghaddafi might be getting an improved model to replace it. Below Tunisia, Algeria and Libya share a 750-mile desert frontier, an easy access route for weapons to pass across the border.

But the Qataris are also attracting Assad's venom. Al Jazeera's concentration on the Syrian uprising – its graphic images of the dead and wounded far more devastating than anything our soft western television news shows would dare broadcast – has Syrian state television nightly spitting at the Emir and at the state of Qatar. The Syrian government has now suspended up to £4 billion of Qatari investment projects, including one belonging to the Qatar Electricity and Water Company.

Amid all these vast and epic events – Yemen itself may yet prove to be the biggest bloodbath of all, while the number of Syria's "martyrs" have now exceeded the victims of Mubarak's death squads five months ago – is it any surprise that the frolics of Messrs Netanyahu and Obama appear so irrelevant?
Indeed, Obama's policy towards the Middle East – whatever it is – sometimes appears so muddled that it is scarcely worthy of study. He supports, of course, democracy – then admits that this may conflict with America's interests.

In that wonderful democracy called Saudi Arabia, the US is now pushing ahead with a £40 billion arms deal and helping the Saudis to develop a new "elite" force to protect the kingdom's oil and future nuclear sites. Hence Obama's fear of upsetting Saudi Arabia, two of whose three leading brothers are now so incapacitated that they can no longer make sane decisions – unfortunately, one of these two happens to be King Abdullah – and his willingness to allow the Assad family's atrocity-prone regime to survive.

Of course, the Israelis would far prefer the "stability" of the Syrian dictatorship to continue; better the dark caliphate you know than the hateful Islamists who might emerge from the ruins. But is this argument really good enough for Obama to support when the people of Syria are dying in the streets for the kind of democracy that the US president says he wants to see in the region?

One of the vainest elements of American foreign policy towards the Middle East is the foundational idea that the Arabs are somehow more stupid than the rest of us, certainly than the Israelis, more out of touch with reality than the West, that they don't understand their own history.

Thus they have to be preached at, lectured, and cajoled by La Clinton and her ilk – much as their dictators did and do, father figures guiding their children through life. But Arabs are far more literate than they were a generation ago; millions speak perfect English and can understand all too well the political weakness and irrelevance in the president's words.

Listening to Obama's 45-minute speech this month – the "kick off' to four whole days of weasel words and puffery by the man who tried to reach out to the Muslim world in Cairo two years ago, and then did nothing – one might have thought that the American President had initiated the Arab revolts, rather than sat on the sidelines in fear.

There was an interesting linguistic collapse in the president's language over those critical four days. On Thursday 19 May, he referred to the continuation of Israeli "settlements". A day later, Netanyahu was lecturing him on "certain demographic changes that have taken place on the ground".

Then when Obama addressed the American Aipac lobby group (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) on the Sunday, he had cravenly adopted Netanyahu's own preposterous expression. Now he, too, spoke of "new demographic realities on the ground." Who would believe that he was talking about internationally illegal Jewish colonies built on land stolen from Arabs in one of the biggest property heists in the history of "Palestine"?

Delay in peace-making will undermine Israeli security, Obama announced – apparently unaware that Netanyahu's project is to go on delaying and delaying and delaying until there is no land left for the "viable" Palestinian state which the United States and the European Union supposedly wish to see.
Then we had the endless waffle about the 1967 borders. Netanyahu called them "defenceless" (though they seemed to have been pretty defendable for the 18 years prior to the Six Day War) and Obama – oblivious to the fact that Israel must be the only country in the world to have an eastern land frontier but doesn't know where it is – then says he was misunderstood when he talked about 1967. It doesn't matter what he says.

George W Bush caved in years ago when he gave Ariel Sharon a letter which stated America's acceptance of "already existing major Israeli population centres" beyond the 1967 lines. To those Arabs prepared to listen to Obama's spineless oration, this was a grovel too far. They simply could not understand the reaction of Netanyahu's address to Congress. How could American politicians rise and applaud Netanyahu 55 times – 55 times – with more enthusiasm than one of the rubber parliaments of Assad, Saleh and the rest?

And what on earth did the Great Speechifier mean when he said that "every country has the right to self-defence" but that Palestine would be "demilitarised"? What he meant was that Israel could go on attacking the Palestinians (as in 2009, for example, when Obama was treacherously silent) while the Palestinians would have to take what was coming to them if they did not behave according to the rules – because they would have no weapons to defend themselves.

As for Netanyahu, the Palestinians must choose between unity with Hamas or peace with Israel. All of which was very odd. When there was no unity, Netanyahu told us all that he had no Palestinian interlocutor because the Palestinians were disunited. Yet when they unite, they are disqualified from peace talks.

Of course, cynicism grows the longer you live in the Middle East. I recall, for example, travelling to Gaza in the early 1980s when Yasser Arafat was running his PLO statelet in Beirut. Anxious to destroy Arafat's prestige in the occupied territories, the Israeli government decided to give its support to an Islamist group in Gaza called Hamas. In fact, I actually saw with my own eyes the head of the Israeli army's Southern Command negotiating with bearded Hamas officials, giving them permission to build more mosques. It's only fair to say, of course, that we were also busy at the time, encouraging a certain Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

But the Israelis did not give up on Hamas. They later held another meeting with the organisation in the West Bank; the story was on the front page of the Jerusalem Post the next day. But there wasn't a whimper from the Americans.

Then another moment that I can recall over the long years. Hamas and Islamic Jihad members – all Palestinians – were, in the early 1990s, thrown across the Israeli border into southern Lebanon where they spent more than a year camping on a freezing mountainside. I would visit them from time to time and on one occasion mentioned that I would be travelling to Israel next day. Immediately, one of the Hamas men ran to his tent and returned with a notebook.

He then proceeded to give me the home telephone numbers of three senior Israeli politicians – two of whom are still prominent today – and, when I reached Jerusalem and called the numbers, they all turned out to be correct. In other words, the Israeli government had been in personal and direct contact with Hamas.

But now the narrative has been twisted out of all recognition. Hamas are the super-terrorists, the "al-Qa'ida" representatives in the unified Palestinian leadership, the men of evil who will ensure that no peace ever takes place between Palestinians and Israeli. If only this were true, the real al-Qa'ida would be more than happy to take responsibility. But it is not true. In the same context, Obama stated that the Palestinians would have to answer questions about Hamas.

But why should they? What Obama and Netanyahu think about Hamas is now irrelevant to them. Obama warns the Palestinians not to ask for statehood at the United Nations in September. But why on earth not? If the people of Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen and Libya and Syria – we are all waiting for the next revolution (Jordan? Bahrain again? Morocco?) – can fight for freedom and dignity, why shouldn't the Palestinians? Lectured for decades on the need for non-violent protest, the Palestinians elect to go to the UN with their cry for legitimacy – only to be slapped down by Obama.

Having read all of the "Palestine Papers" which Al-Jazeera revealed, there is no doubt that "Palestine's" official negotiators will go to any lengths to produce some kind of statelet. Mahmoud Abbas, who managed to write a 600-page book on the "peace process" without once mentioning the word "occupation", could even cave in over the UN project, fearful of Obama's warning that it would be an attempt to "isolate" Israel and thus de-legitimise the Israeli state – or "the Jewish state" as the US president now calls it.

But Netanyahu is doing more than anyone to delegitimise his own state; indeed, he is looking more and more like the Arab buffoons who have hitherto littered the Middle East. Mubarak saw a "foreign hand" in the Egyptian revolution (Iran, of course). So did the Crown Prince of Bahrain (Iran again). So did Gaddafi (al-Qa'ida, western imperialism, you name it), So did Saleh of Yemen (al-Qa'ida, Mossad and America). So did Assad of Syria (Islamism, probably Mossad, etc). And so does Netanyahu (Iran, naturally enough, Syria, Lebanon, just about anyone you can think of except for Israel itself).

But as this nonsense continues, so the tectonic plates shudder. I doubt very much if the Palestinians will remain silent. If there's an "intifada" in Syria, why not a Third Intifada in "Palestine"? Not a struggle of suicide bombers but of mass, million-strong protests.

If the Israelis have to shoot down a mere few hundred demonstrators who tried – and in some cases succeeded – in crossing the Israeli border almost two weeks ago, what will they do if confronted by thousands or a million.

Obama says no Palestinian state must be declared at the UN. But why not? Who cares in the Middle East what Obama says? Not even, it seems, the Israelis. The Arab spring will soon become a hot summer and there will be an Arab autumn, too.

By then, the Middle East may have changed forever. What America says will matter nothing.

Swiss: Gadhafi clique stashed $416 million

MSNBC

GENEVA — Switzerland has found 360 million Swiss francs, nearly $416 million, of potentially illegal assets linked to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and his circle stashed in the Alpine country, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday. 

Some 410 million Swiss francs ($474 million) traced to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and 60 million Swiss francs ($69 million) linked to former Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali have also been identified, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lars Knuchel said.

"In the case of Libya, it was 360 million Swiss francs," Knuchel told Reuters. "These amounts are frozen in Switzerland following blocking orders by the Swiss government related to potentially illegal assets in Switzerland."

Both Tunisia and Egypt — where unrest led to the ousting of Ben Ali and Mubarak — are in touch with Swiss judicial authorities regarding their formal requests for legal assistance to seek return of the funds, according to Knuchel.

No such discussions are underway with authorities in Libya, where Gadhafi is clinging to power in the face of an uprising and NATO air strikes.

Neutral Switzerland had previously announced that it was freezing any assets linked to the three North African leaders, thereby requiring financial and other institutions to report any suspicious funds.
The respective amounts were fairly "stable," based on information provided by Swiss-based financial institutions to authorities, Knuchel said. He declined to name the banks or the regions in which the accounts or properties are held.

Tunisia and Egypt haven't yet provided information about possible criminal wrongdoing that is required to start unblocking the frozen assets of ousted presidents Ben Ali and Mubarak, the Swiss government said.

The Swiss government sent diplomatic cables to Tunisia and Egypt in late March explaining that those governments must submit evidence of any criminal wrongdoing involving the money so Swiss authorities can decide whether the offenses also would be punished in Switzerland.
Switzerland froze assets linked to Tunisia's ousted president and 40 people in his entourage on Jan. 19, less than a week after Ben Ali was toppled. Then on Feb. 11, the Swiss froze assets of Mubarak and his associates.

In both cases, the money is locked up for three years while Tunisia and Egypt satisfy Swiss legal requirements by providing information on any financial crimes that could be prosecuted on Swiss soil.
Swiss authorities also froze assets belonging to Ivory Coast's now deposed President Laurent Gbagbo in January.

Switzerland has worked hard in recent years to improve its image as a haven for ill-gotten assets.
Its cabinet has previously taken blocked funds in accounts held by deposed leaders including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Nigeria's Sani Abacha, buying time for foreign prosecutors to build a case for restitution of funds.

Knuchel said that Switzerland had returned $800 million, held by Abacha, to Nigeria, although it took some 4-5 years to complete legal proceedings.

"It was a good example of restitution," he said.

The Swiss Finance Ministry said earlier on Monday it had started proceedings to return assets of former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, frozen since 1986, to the Haitian government.

Tunisia furious as Libya fighting spills over border (VIDEO)

Global Post
Tunisia expresses "extreme indignation" after fighting spills over the border.

A Libyan photographer wounded by shrapnel is wheeled
into a hospital on the western front of Misurata on April 28, 2011.

Fighting between forces loyal to embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and rebels spilled over into Tunisia Thursday, infuriating the Tunisian government.

Gaddafi's forces drove rebels from an outpost near the western Libyan town of Wazen, shut off one of their supply lines and chased them across the border with Tunisia, the Wall Street Journal reports. The two sides exchanged artillery fire Thursday night near Wazen, causing more civilians to flee into Tunisia.

Tunisia authorities said they were furious with Gaddafi for the incursion by his forces as well as for the firing of Grad rockets across the border.

"Given the gravity of what has happened," a Tunisian Foreign Ministry statement said, as reported by Reuters, "the Tunisian authorities have informed the Libyans of their extreme indignation and demand measures to put an immediate stop to these violations."

Gaddafi's troops apologized after briefly crossing the border.

Rebels, who have been fighting Gaddafi's forces for the past two months, captured the strategic border post last week, enabling them to bring supplies into the country. The crossing between Dehiba in Tunisia and Wazen on the Libyan side has been critical because it serves as the only road link for Libya's rebels in the west with the outside world.

The wave of protests that have swept the Arab world began in Tunisia, leading to the overthrow of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January.

Meanwhile, Gaddafi's forces have intensified their assault on Misurata, the city in western Libya that has seen some of the worst fighting.

And a NATO air strike Wednesday reportedly killed at least 11 rebel fighters in Misurata.

The White Elephant in the Room

Rudaw
By David Romano

Last week Turkish President Abdullah Gul published an op-ed in the New York Times. He argued that the “Arab Spring” can not result in democratization without a resolution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, adding that “The plight of the Palestinians has been a root cause of unrest and conflict in the region...”

President Gul’s op-ed reminded me of a joke someone once told me: “The United Nations asked a Frenchman, a German and a Palestinian to prepare a study on elephants. After a year of work on the topic, they returned to the U.N. with their manuscripts. The Frenchman held aloft an elegantly bound, slim volume of some thirty pages – ‘The Elephant in Poetry.’ Next, the German presented a thick, hardcover tome with 600 pages of authoritative scientific findings – ‘Das Elephant.’ Finally, the Palestinian came forward with a 300-page book -- ‘The Elephant: As It Relates to the Palestine Question.”

Given the trauma they suffered and their continuing statelessness and insecurity, most of us can understand the Palestinians’ obsession. It’s a bit more difficult to understand, however, why leaders of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party seem to obsess about Palestine. For decades, the Palestine issue was used by Arab autocrats to distract their population from domestic tyranny and injustice. They used the “Zionist threat” to justify the establishment of police states, failed development plans and all kinds of government abuses. Even long after national independence, frustrated Arab masses vented their anger at the whipping post of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism.

The beauty of this year’s Arab Spring comes from the popular realization that Palestine is not the root cause of unrest and conflict in the region – not for Tunisians, Egyptians or Libyans anymore than for the Kurds, Berbers or Baluchis. When the people decided they had enough of blaming all their societies’ ills on Western powers and Israel, their emperors suddenly stood naked before them. Although Tunisians and Egyptians still yearn for justice on behalf of the Palestinians, they also finally demanded freedom for themselves, no matter what happens in Israel or Palestine.

So just as much of the Arab world is finally curing itself of an unhealthy obsession (if not abandoning a popular cause), today’s leaders in Ankara seem determined to catch this very same affliction for the first time. Following every loss of Palestinian life in the cycle of fighting with Israelis, Prime Minister Erdogan and some of his ministers explode into public rages and level the worst possible accusations against Israelis. Now that the Syrian regime busily massacres completely unarmed peaceful demonstrators, yet the most they can seem to muster in Ankara is a private phone call to Damascus “urging restraint.”

It may prove difficult for a rising Turkey to build an aura of principled diplomacy and regional leadership in this way. Turkey stopped being a valuable mediator between Israelis and Arabs when its Prime Minister adopted Palestine as his pet elephant. Although I think President Gul may have meant well with his op-ed and possibly friendly advice to Israelis, it’s as if the Justice and Development Party leadership imagines a Palestinian elephant in every room of the house.  When it’s always about Palestine, it becomes a white elephant and very hard to get rid of.