We don't know where the current revolts in the Arab world will lead but some conclusions can already be drawn:
1. There is no going back to dictatorships, even though the road ahead will be difficult and long;
2. Current Arab rulers are wary of the public sentiment against Israel, so they will be inclined, not only to stop cosying up to Israel and the West but also to be belligerent against Israel, hoping to gain some favor from their people;
3. Even the US seems wary right now (despite its unflinching support for Israeli settlements). My guess is the US will be carefully watching events in the Arab world as they unfold and try to curry the favors of the new rulers who will emerge from the revolts, and as they will be changing more quickly than before and unstable regimes will be in place, the US will be less certain of its influence in the Arab world and will be less willing to go along Israel's adventurous politics like waging wars in the name of regime change in the Middle East. However, this does not mean that the US will change its attitude toward the illegal Israeli settlements. This matter may even get worse in the near future as israel tries to grab as much land as possible... The US is also trying to influence what is happening now in the Arab world but my bet is that this influence will not find an auspicious reception given the amount of mistrust between the Arab public and the US;
4. This will reinforce on one side Israel's feeling of insecurity and isolation, and Israel's stubbornness on settlements on the other side stemming from a false sense that facts on the ground and US veto are all what it takes to continue building settlements and de facto blocking peace. This sentiment of false insecurity on the foreign policy side and false security on the internal policy side will push Israel to become more belligerent, therefore realizing Nasrallah's bet on the demise of the Jewish state in the next few years, either by war or by peace (about this read the analysis of Nicholas Noe on his blog);
5. As always, the EU will be the follower of the US in changing the direction of its policy in the middle east. We have seen how the EU's leaders were out of touch in reacting to the current Arab revolts. This is why Israeli FM Lieberman was discussing current events in the Arab world at the EU parliament today, where he incurred a citizen arrest made by journalist David Cronin.
Currently, Israel cannot impose any direct influence on US foreign policy in the Arab world and it is trying to do so through the EU. But, as the US is watching and the EU becoming a minor player in the ME, this can only give Israel time and nothing else...
Israel has reason to worry and we have reasons to celebrate...Arab public opinion will be dictating and imposing its agenda on Israel and the West from now on...
18.2.11
Sarkozy: A Banana Republic Dictator?
At least this is what many are starting to say including Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes.
Because I love France, I must post sometimes on this country's continual demise under the rule of Sarkozy 1er.
Lately, Sarko, as he is known in France, has espoused vigorously and bullishly the case of a French woman imprisoned in Mexico for her contribution to the Mexico based kidnapping business of her boyfriend Israel Vallarta. Nobody knows why.
I say, French must go to the streets demanding the immediate resignation of Sarkozy.
Lately, the republic of Liberté, Égalité, Justice, has appeared also a little more Banana Republic then usual with its foreign minister spending her Christmas holidays in Tunisia, dlying the Ben Ali clan private jets and suggesting at the French assembly that France can send its savoir-faire to help Ben Ali against the uprising. And it was also revealed by the French press that this minister parents had business dealings with corrupted Tunisian businessmen close to ben Ali.
Lately also, it was discovered that French prime minister spent his Christmas holidays with his family in Egypt as guests of the Mubaraks, few weeks before the uprising that sweet the corrupt Egyptian dictator!
I say there is enough reasons here for the french to descend the streets and ask for her resignation of these Banana politicians...
Because I love France, I must post sometimes on this country's continual demise under the rule of Sarkozy 1er.
Lately, Sarko, as he is known in France, has espoused vigorously and bullishly the case of a French woman imprisoned in Mexico for her contribution to the Mexico based kidnapping business of her boyfriend Israel Vallarta. Nobody knows why.
I say, French must go to the streets demanding the immediate resignation of Sarkozy.
Lately, the republic of Liberté, Égalité, Justice, has appeared also a little more Banana Republic then usual with its foreign minister spending her Christmas holidays in Tunisia, dlying the Ben Ali clan private jets and suggesting at the French assembly that France can send its savoir-faire to help Ben Ali against the uprising. And it was also revealed by the French press that this minister parents had business dealings with corrupted Tunisian businessmen close to ben Ali.
Lately also, it was discovered that French prime minister spent his Christmas holidays with his family in Egypt as guests of the Mubaraks, few weeks before the uprising that sweet the corrupt Egyptian dictator!
I say there is enough reasons here for the french to descend the streets and ask for her resignation of these Banana politicians...
14.2.11
The grey areas of post 9/11 terrorism: Jihadi who helped 7/7 bombers freed by the US
Just in, from the Guardian: Claims Islamist was US informant while assisting London terrorist.
Court transcripts.
The 7/7 question that remained unanswered.
Notice how converts to Islam can be found in most terror plots. Follow the trials of the plotters, those who get the lighter sentences are informants who, most of the time, instigated, trained, and helped terror operations with logistics and more... Was Babar one of the few real Muslims willing to work with the US against other Muslims in such a way teaching them how to plot, bomb and then be caught? Was this the reason why most terror plots had to rely on converts?
UPDATE: Freed NY terrorist advocated violence
A remark from the sentencing judge that Babar "began co-operating even before his arrest", has raised the possibility, supported by other circumstantial evidence obtained by the Guardian, that he may have been an informant for the US government before his detention by the FBI in April 2004.
Babar facilitated the London bombers' knowledge of bomb-making when he invited around a dozen British jihadists to attend a camp that he had helped set up in north-west Pakistan in the summer of 2003.
In a debriefing with US law enforcement agents in 2004, Babar told US prosecutors about Khan, whom he knew as "Ibrahim". British terrorism investigators showed Babar an unclear surveillance photo of Khan in August 2004, but Babar failed to identify him.
He has said that when he saw pictures of Khan in newspapers after the bombings he alerted the US authorities straight away: "I told them [the American authorities] that was the person that was Ibrahim. I had mentioned Ibrahim before July 2005."
After his guilty plea in 2004, Babar spent a good proportion of his four and a half years outside the regular prison system. He flew to testify in trials in the UK and in Canada and met law enforcement officers from around the world.
Court transcripts.
The 7/7 question that remained unanswered.
It is after September 2001 that Babar's story begins to fray at the edges. What kind of person would fly to Pakistan to support the Taliban just after an al-Qaida operation nearly killed their own mother? As one lawyer in a 2006 British terrorism trial put to Babar while he was in the witness box: "Someone who does that either is so appalled by the acts of al-Qaida that they are going to go and spy for America on jihadis – or they are a very hardline jihadi indeed."
There are also questions about how he was able to fly from the UK to Pakistan and then on to the US without being stopped or questioned, even though his ITN interview about killing Americans, which offered US security officials plenty of identifying details, had been syndicated on television stations around the world.
During the various trials at which Babar made an appearance, it was also revealed he was able to visit a US consulate in Pakistan many times and apply for a green card for the Pakistani wife he married while on jihad duty in 2002, without a question being asked.
Notice how converts to Islam can be found in most terror plots. Follow the trials of the plotters, those who get the lighter sentences are informants who, most of the time, instigated, trained, and helped terror operations with logistics and more... Was Babar one of the few real Muslims willing to work with the US against other Muslims in such a way teaching them how to plot, bomb and then be caught? Was this the reason why most terror plots had to rely on converts?
UPDATE: Freed NY terrorist advocated violence
12.2.11
11.2.11
Sticky Mubarak
He won't go.
The US was first to speak of an 'orderly transition'. I want to scream when I hear this word. 'Orderly' like military maybe...Or 'orderly' like giving Mubarak some time to organize his assets...Or 'orderly' like giving USrael some time to think of an Israel friendly alternative...They won't find it. They only have dictators on their side...
Slavoj Zizek: Miracle in Tahrir square
The US was first to speak of an 'orderly transition'. I want to scream when I hear this word. 'Orderly' like military maybe...Or 'orderly' like giving Mubarak some time to organize his assets...Or 'orderly' like giving USrael some time to think of an Israel friendly alternative...They won't find it. They only have dictators on their side...
Slavoj Zizek: Miracle in Tahrir square
Either the entire Mubarak power edifice falls down, or the uprising is co-opted and betrayed.
6.2.11
USrael really hearts Arab dictators and torturers-in-chief
Israeli government officials started out urging the Obama administration to back Mr. Mubarak, administration officials said, and were initially angry at Mr. Obama for publicly calling on the Egyptian leader to agree to a transition.
“The Israelis are saying, après Mubarak, le deluge,” said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. And that, in turn, Mr. Levy said, “gets to the core of what is the American interest in this. It’s Israel. It’s not worry about whether the Egyptians are going to close down the Suez Canal, or even the narrower terror issue. It really can be distilled down to one thing, and that’s Israel.”
A White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor, said on Friday that administration officials were reassuring the Israelis that “we fully understand Israel’s security concerns, and we’re making clear that our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable.”
More obscenely, the US seems to be backing Omar Suleiman, newly appointed vice-president and torturer-in-chief, as a gesture toward protesters...
A portrait of Omar Suleiman form The Atlantic showing that Suleiman is no newcomer in the Mubarak regime (october 2003).
4.2.11
Tyrannology: a short guide with Egypt on my mind
Tyrants come in two major varieties, external and internal, belonging to the same dream hater, blood loving, species.
In today's globalized and monolithically ideological world, external tyrants are few. Usually they are heads of big and powerful economic nations with past and present colonialist aspirations. They usually like to claim that democracy inspires their principles and actions but they only apply these principles and actions rather poorly on their citizens and as nations. They claim to export these principles when faced with a sudden desire of invading a country or changing its regime. They like to think that they are on an important mission in their lives of the sort of the 'yes we can'. They never suspect how little they can nor are they willing to 'can'. Once elected, they bury this beautiful story in the back of their head and do business as usual. But in their heart, they know, and they feel miserable. In order to boost their morals, they preach to the other variety of tyrants, internal tyrants, whom they secretly despise.
Internal tyrants are the ones who do the dirty job on behalf of external tyrants. In exchange they get material rewards, the security of the office for many many years, until their people get exhausted. Both varieties of tyrants are connected by an invisible thread. Internal tyrants are useful idiots. They cannot fool people. They get no respect, no love, neither from their people nor from their fellow external tyrants who like to think that they are of a different species. Once they are asked out, they cry for the love and the respect of their people whom they tortured, bloodied and humiliated so they can feel important. When they are asked out, they become very angry and vindictive. They become even threatening. They don't mind the blood on the street or the families who cannot eat or the youth who have no future or the crushed dreams of many, they want to be loved, kept and recognized. When they are asked out, instead of becoming suddenly wise and smart by opening their long closed eyes, they become even dumber, they turn to their external tyrants: they are in fact very weak without the support and the 'love' and 'admiration' and the flattery of their external tyrants who, by starting to look for their replacement, cannot provide them with the love they crave at this difficult moment in their lives.
Internal tyrants are many, there are as many of them as much as there are countries and societies, and families. They are very difficult to eliminate, but when one of them is eliminated, depending on his influence and the number of people that he tyrannizes, one can feel the sweet murmur of freedom, the early spring, the flower that can't wait to bloom, the happiness, the impatience, and the dreams again, the same dreams and aspirations that brought the downfall of the tyrant. This is why tyrants hate dreams and love blood, because for every dead and bloodied person there are many who despair, and despair is the enemy of dreams...
In today's globalized and monolithically ideological world, external tyrants are few. Usually they are heads of big and powerful economic nations with past and present colonialist aspirations. They usually like to claim that democracy inspires their principles and actions but they only apply these principles and actions rather poorly on their citizens and as nations. They claim to export these principles when faced with a sudden desire of invading a country or changing its regime. They like to think that they are on an important mission in their lives of the sort of the 'yes we can'. They never suspect how little they can nor are they willing to 'can'. Once elected, they bury this beautiful story in the back of their head and do business as usual. But in their heart, they know, and they feel miserable. In order to boost their morals, they preach to the other variety of tyrants, internal tyrants, whom they secretly despise.
Internal tyrants are the ones who do the dirty job on behalf of external tyrants. In exchange they get material rewards, the security of the office for many many years, until their people get exhausted. Both varieties of tyrants are connected by an invisible thread. Internal tyrants are useful idiots. They cannot fool people. They get no respect, no love, neither from their people nor from their fellow external tyrants who like to think that they are of a different species. Once they are asked out, they cry for the love and the respect of their people whom they tortured, bloodied and humiliated so they can feel important. When they are asked out, they become very angry and vindictive. They become even threatening. They don't mind the blood on the street or the families who cannot eat or the youth who have no future or the crushed dreams of many, they want to be loved, kept and recognized. When they are asked out, instead of becoming suddenly wise and smart by opening their long closed eyes, they become even dumber, they turn to their external tyrants: they are in fact very weak without the support and the 'love' and 'admiration' and the flattery of their external tyrants who, by starting to look for their replacement, cannot provide them with the love they crave at this difficult moment in their lives.
Internal tyrants are many, there are as many of them as much as there are countries and societies, and families. They are very difficult to eliminate, but when one of them is eliminated, depending on his influence and the number of people that he tyrannizes, one can feel the sweet murmur of freedom, the early spring, the flower that can't wait to bloom, the happiness, the impatience, and the dreams again, the same dreams and aspirations that brought the downfall of the tyrant. This is why tyrants hate dreams and love blood, because for every dead and bloodied person there are many who despair, and despair is the enemy of dreams...
2.2.11
Mubarak's masters are trying to buy time
If Mubarak has any dignity left at all, he should resign now and give the power to the people of Egypt. But he is still listening too much to his Israeli and US masters who want an 'orderly transition'.
His speech today promising not to run for reelection in September is simply made to give the US and Israel more time to influence the process.
Dictators who spend their political life terrifying others are in fact very weak people and, from the beginning, Mubarak, USrael's 'strong' man, showed only his weak side. These people have no compass to guide them through moral dilemmas. After all, they are puppets...
The US is definitely cooking something. Israel is freaking out at the prospect of Egypt without Mubaraks. The interests of the small Israeli nation are at the heart of the US self-suicidal and murderous policy in the region, not the hundred millions of Arabs, not the hundred millions of US citizens.
His speech today promising not to run for reelection in September is simply made to give the US and Israel more time to influence the process.
Dictators who spend their political life terrifying others are in fact very weak people and, from the beginning, Mubarak, USrael's 'strong' man, showed only his weak side. These people have no compass to guide them through moral dilemmas. After all, they are puppets...
The US is definitely cooking something. Israel is freaking out at the prospect of Egypt without Mubaraks. The interests of the small Israeli nation are at the heart of the US self-suicidal and murderous policy in the region, not the hundred millions of Arabs, not the hundred millions of US citizens.
1.2.11
Why fear Arab revolutionary spirit?
By Slavoj Zizek.
''The inevitable conclusion to be drawn is that the rise of radical Islamism was always the other side of the disappearance of the secular left in Muslim countries.''
And vice versa, I must say. The fact that the Muslim brotherhood concerned itself with policing the private lives and conduct of egyptians while neglecting social justice made this movement and other islamist movements in Egypt irrelevant...
''The inevitable conclusion to be drawn is that the rise of radical Islamism was always the other side of the disappearance of the secular left in Muslim countries.''
And vice versa, I must say. The fact that the Muslim brotherhood concerned itself with policing the private lives and conduct of egyptians while neglecting social justice made this movement and other islamist movements in Egypt irrelevant...
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