Antony Loewenstein

Peter Van Buren, an American diplomat just back from a year running a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Iraq, writes about the talking heads that appear daily in our media praising the glorious US army:

I’m neither a soldier nor a journalist. I’m a diplomat, just back from 12 months as a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) leader, embedded with the military in Iraq, and let me tell you that nobody laughed harder at the turgid prose reporters used to describe their lives than the soldiers themselves. They knew they were trading hours of boredom for maybe minutes of craziness that only in retrospect seemed “exciting,” as opposed to scary, confusing, and chaotic. That said, the laziest private knew from growing up watching TV exactly what flavor to feed a visiting reporter.

In trying to figure out why journalists and assorted militarized intellectuals from inside the Beltway lose it around the military, I remembered a long afternoon spent with a gaggle of “fellows” from a prominent national security think tank who had flown into Iraq. These scholars wrote serious articles and books that important people read; they appeared on important Sunday morning talk shows; and they served as consultants to even more important people who made decisions about the Iraq War and assumedly other conflicts to come.

One of them had been on the staff of a general whose name he dropped more often than Jesus’s at a Southern Baptist A.A. meeting. He was a real live neocon. A quick Google search showed he had strongly supported going to war in Iraq, wrote apology pieces after no one could find any weapons of mass destruction there (“It was still the right thing to do”), and was now back to check out just how well democracy was working out for a paper he was writing to further justify the war. He liked military high-tech, wielded words like “awesome,” “superb,” and “extraordinary” (pronounced EXTRA-ordinary) without irony to describe tanks and guns, and said in reference to the Israeli Army, “They give me a hard-on.”

Bombing Libya is welcomed across the world from so many supposedly well-meaning types who haven’t a clue about what the country is like or what they’re really backing. But hey, Gaddafi is a bad man!

This Haaretz editorial weighs the risks:

While the joint Western and Arab action against Libya’s dictatorial regime has widespread support, it raises a complicated dilemma. Up to now, the populations of Arab states such as Tunisia and Egypt managed on their own to topple their regimes, and set the stage for democratic reform. Furthermore, the revolutionary developments in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and (two years ago in ) Iran won public legitimacy because they were viewed as authentic civil uprisings which were not assisted by foreign elements.

In Libya, however, the Facebook revolution is liable to turn into the Tomahawk revolution: The intervention of forces from Western states is liable to undermine the legitimacy of civilian movements there and perhaps in other states.

The Israel Lobby co-author Steve Walt blogs eloquently about the now default position of the American establishment. As for “liberals” who hear a few Libyan rebels calling for Western air-strikes and don’t recognise the inherent problems with rushing into a military conflict with no true end goals, get real and learn from history:

Last Wednesday I spoke at an event at Hofstra University, on the subject of “Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy.” The other panelists were former DNC chair and 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean and longtime Republican campaign guru Ed Rollins. The organizers at Hofstra were efficient and friendly, the audience asked good questions, and I thought both Dean and Rollins were gracious and insightful in their comments. All in all, it was a very successful session.

During the Q & A, I talked about the narrowness of foreign policy debate in Washington and the close political kinship between the liberal interventionists of the Democratic Party and the neoconservatives that dominate the GOP. At one point, I said that “liberal inteventionists are just ‘kinder, gentler’ neocons, and neocons are just liberal interventionsts on steroids.”

Dean challenged me rather forcefully on this point, declaring that there was simply no similarity whatsoever between a smart and sensible person like U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and a “crazy guy” like Paul Wolfowitz. (I didn’t write down Dean’s exact words, but I am certain that he portrayed Wolfowitz in more-or-less those terms). I responded by listing all the similarites between the two schools of thought, and the discussion went on from there.

I mention this anecdote because I wonder what Dean would say now. In case you hadn’t noticed, over the weekend President Obama took the nation to war against Libya, largely on the advice of liberal interventionists like Ambassador Rice, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and NSC aides Samantha Power and Michael McFaul. According to several news reports I’ve read, he did this despite objections from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon.

The only important intellectual difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on U.S. power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance. Both groups extol the virtues of democracy, both groups believe that U.S. power — and especially its military power — can be a highly effective tool of statecraft. Both groups are deeply alarmed at the prospect that WMD might be in the hands of anybody but the United States and its closest allies, and both groups think it is America’s right and responsibility to fix lots of problems all over the world. Both groups consistently over-estimate how easy it will be to do this, however, which is why each has a propensity to get us involved in conflicts where our vital interests are not engaged and that end up costing a lot more than they initially expect.

So if you’re baffled by how Mr. “Change You Can Believe In” morphed into Mr. “More of the Same,” you shouldn’t really be surprised. George Bush left in disgrace and Barack Obama took his place, but he brought with him a group of foreign policy advisors whose basic world views were not that different from the people they were replacing. I’m not saying their attitudes were identical, but the similarities are probably more important than the areas of disagreement. Most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has become addicted to empire, it seems, and it doesn’t really matter which party happens to be occupying Pennsylvania Avenue.

Times are changing, Jewish neo-cons are furious and the long overdue conversation inside the American Jewish community is happening; do they back illegal colonies in the West Bank and if not what are they going to do about it?

As the Jewish community struggles to combat efforts to delegitimize Israel and still retain a “big-tent” strategy, a mainstream consensus appears to have taken shape in recent weeks that boils down to this: one can support a targeted boycott of Israeli settlements and even a cultural ban against the West Bank settlement of Ariel — as long as one also supports Israel as a democratic Jewish state.

Helping to crystallize the issue was the Oakland, Calif.-based organization Jewish Voice for Peace, which last week was rebuffed by the Hillel chapter at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. Hillel’s board voted to reject the group’s application to come under its umbrella of Jewish organizations because JVP’s support of a boycott of Israeli settlement goods runs counter to a position adopted by it and its parent, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.

Although the boycott issue was sufficient to place JVP beyond the pale for Hillel, that alone would not have been sufficient for most other Jewish groups, according to Martin Raffel, who is overseeing a multimillion-dollar Jewish communal effort (dubbed the Israel Action Network) to counter Israel delegitimization efforts.

…

Raffel’s thinking on the issue of “settlements-only” boycotts seems to have evolved since the Israel Action Network was formed in December. At the time, he told The Jewish Week, “I don’t know that a consensus has crystallized on this subject.

“If a person believes that Israel ought to do more to achieve peace based on a two-state formula, the question is, will boycotting a settlement advance the day that there will be peace? I’d argue that no, it will only harden positions and be counterproductive,” he said in December, “but being misguided in one’s policies doesn’t mean one necessarily has become part of the ranks of the delegitimizers.”

This week Raffel cited Meretz USA as a group that, though it might fit his earlier description of “misguided,” is safely in the tent, so to speak. The group supports the targeted boycott of Israeli settlement products and the cultural boycott of Ariel, but, Raffel said, “it is fully supportive of the Jewish state and it repudiates the BDS movement.”

The good old days of America just invading, bombing and regime changing when she wanted. The days of empire are wonderful for armchair generals directing the carnage.

And then you have neo-con hacks like Michael Ledeen (the great man detailed here) who simply want to use American weaponary to kill people.

Here’s his latest advice over Libya:

Since our leaders evidently have no clue what to do in Libya, let’s give them a few ideas. The basic rules are easy: don’t do anything that is likely to make things worse, and you can forget about “negotiated settlements” once the bloodshed has reached the dimensions now engulfing Libya. Finally, forget the UN (see point 1).

The first thing to do is deprive Qadaffi of as many instruments of mass murder as possible. The most obvious of these is the Libyan Air Force, which is a small and outdated collection of aircraft, many of which belong in a museum. More specifically: some French F-1 fighters; some old Sukhoi’s, some old MIGs, and some helicopter gunships. (h/t Steve Bryen)

Destroy them. It’s easy. Our Air Force can probably wipe them out in less than half an hour. If we want to play “good ally” we can invite other NATO countries to join in. It seems the Brits are available (as they should be, after their disgusting liberation of the Lockerbie bomber), and I’ll bet you anything that the French and Italians, both of whom have decades of complicity with Qadaffi, will be happy to participate. And the French have the Foreign Legion in the area, if memory serves.

That won’t “solve” the problem, but it will ease the people’s pain, and it might lessen the dreadful impression we have created, especially during the Obama years, that we only talk or negotiate slow-acting sanctions; we don’t go in for decisive action (that is so Bush).

The destruction of the Libyan aircraft is a good start, but it would be nice to do more. Once upon a time, the CIA cultivated ambitious military officers (typically colonels) in such places for emergencies such as this. We’d give the word and they’d execute a coup.

I am not up to speed on the capabilities of the clandestine service, but I doubt they have any colonels on the shelf ready to move. I’d love to be wrong, needless to say, and I’m rooting for them, in the unlikely event the president pushes that button. Even if CIA can’t do it, maybe our military guys have someone.

Yes, I know it’s meddling in another country’s “internal affairs,” and a strike against the Libyan Air Force may be considered an act of war in some lawyers’ offices. But if we did those things we’d save a lot of innocent lives and enhance our chances of being more effective in the future.

We should have done it in Sudan years ago, by the way. We’d have saved a lot of southerners and speeded up the whole process.

Finally, the president should issue an executive order requiring the removal of all those bumper stickers that read “war never solved anything.” As the Marines say, except for fascism, Nazism, communism and warlordism.

My following article is published by leading Indian magazine Tehelka:

The Middle East is the region where global empires lavishly exercise their chequebook. Since the Second World War, America has bribed, cajoled and backed autocratic regimes in the name of stability.

Israel, self-described as the only democracy in the area, has been insulated from the vagaries of democratic politics by simply colluding with dictatorships across its various borders.

Zionism has thrived due to Arab leader corruption and silence in the face of occupation against Palestinian lands.

But the mass uprisings across Egypt are threatening these cosy arrangements.

The Israeli mainstream is fearful of what Arab democracy may mean, but for the majority in Egypt decades of repression may be coming to an end.

The resignation of President Hosni Mubarak is the first necessary step in restoring dignity to the Egyptian political process, though it is only the beginning.

The millions of demonstrators won’t tolerate a military coup simply replacing one tyrant with another.

We can marvel at the success of a peaceful protest movement and wonder which other western-backed thugs may be next.

Today, the Muslim world sees what is possible with weeks of determined protest; America and Israel no longer control the agenda of who rules the Arab street.

Tel Aviv is already fearful of what true democracy may mean for its position.

While there is no unified message of the protesters for the future, a few key demands are clear; free and fair elections, an orderly transition, an end to torture, better employment opportunities and an end to being manipulated by foreign powers.

Sadly and predictably, many neo-conservative and Jewish commentators in America are whipping up fear of an Islamist take-over of Egypt while the situation remains incredibly fluid.

Besides, the western world has consistently refused to accept to its own detriment the legitimate positions of many Muslims since 11 September 2001 who wants their religion integrated into a democratic system.

Turkey is a model here, an imperfect example of an Islamic democracy.

Former Egyptian President Mubarak, wholly supported by Washington and Tel Aviv for three decades and much of the US corporate press, has shaped a state that routinely tortured its own citizens as well as suspects in the American-led “war on terror.”

New Vice-President Omar Suleiman is implicated in a range of crimes committed since 9/11, including overseeing torture himself against alleged terror suspects.

The New Yorker’s Jane Meyer wrote last week:

“Technically, U.S. law required the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn’t face torture. But under Suleiman’s reign at the intelligence service, such assurances were considered close to worthless.

As Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. officer who helped set up the practice of rendition, later testified before Congress, even if such “assurances” were written in indelible ink, “they weren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.””

In the last weeks, Egyptians authorities blocked Internet access and mobile phone services in an attempt to stop information getting out to the world.

It failed spectacularly but far too many western commentators were quick to jump to conclusions and claim this was a Facebook revolution or Twitter revolution.

But, despite Facebook playing a key role in initially organising outrage, the vast majority of Egyptians didn’t need a website to register their anger.

It was pleasing to read Google and Twitter joining forces to launch SpeaktoTweet, a service allowing Egyptians to call an international number and record a voice message that would then be tweeted from a Twitter account.

It is increasingly difficult to silence the masses in a globalised age, though we shouldn’t be seduced by the false belief that free Internet access automatically brings western-style democracy.

The western reaction to the Egyptian protests has been a mixture of awe and confusion.

The internal logic of many westerners is contradictory and hypocritical.

Backing the US-led invasion of Iraq, currently run as a Tehran-friendly police state, was seen as a noble gesture to liberate the oppressed masses but when the citizens agitate themselves without our help they’re lectured about remaining ‘moderate’.

Famed Slavoj Zizek wrote last week in the UK Guardian that the West so rarely sees a revolutionary spirit in its own countries that there is automatic suspicion when it occurs somewhere else, such as Egypt.

Ironically, post 9/11 paranoia about Islamic fundamentalism is due to its presence in nations the West has supposedly ‘liberated’, namely Iraq and Afghanistan.

Neither nation has a long history of religious extremism; foreign meddling has allowed these forces to incubate.

Dictatorships in the Arab world don’t just materialise, they are created and sustained over decades.

Washington funds Cairo to the tunes of billions annually (second only to Israel) and yet the results are clear to see; stagnation and political corruption on a vast scale.

This arrangement suits America, Israel and the West just fine; client states aren’t independent thinkers and that’s how their funders like it.

Take former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who told CNN that Mubarak had been ‘immensely courageous and a force for good’ in the Middle East over the Israel-Palestine ‘peace process’.

Blair was merely echoing the standard post 9/11 view of the region; political Islam must never be engaged, even if parties win legitimate elections (witness Hamas after its victory in Palestine in 2006).

But what comes after Mubarak? His infrastructure of terror must be dismantled but this can’t happen unless Western policy fundamentally reviews its attitude toward the Middle East.

Why should only Israeli Jews be allowed freedom in the region? Must Arabs be suppressed for the pleasure of the Zionist state?

Sixty years is more than enough of this paradigm. And Arab people-power has loudly announced that it won’t tolerate decades more living under autocracy.

Egypt provides salutary lessons for other nations, including India.

Mubarak created a highly centralised state of control allowing him to crush potential rivals. But the voice of the people has been bubbling beneath the surface for years – I witnessed it during various visits there, from bloggers, union members and dissidents.

Cairo, however, refused to listen, believing brute force would allow the status-quo to survive.

Responsive, democratic governments work best when the interests of the people, especially minorities, aren’t ignored but acted upon.

Blocking the Internet in a large country is almost impossible in the 21st century due to the economy’s reliance on it but Egypt joins an increasingly long list of nations attempting to shut out modernity (including Myanmar and North Korea).

Although the central government in New Delhi is unlikely to administer such a draconian plan, leaders should be open to robust debate on the most controversial subjects, including Kashmir and the Naxalites.

Mature democracies are ones that welcome disagreement and don’t threaten prosecution for those who dare challenge the mainstream view.

There are disturbing signs in many western nations of overzealous officials wanting to regulate the openness of the Internet in the fight against ‘terrorism’.

This must be resisted.

Likewise in India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be well advised to listen to dissent due to the decentralised nature of his country; ignoring such difficult questions is not the sign of a leader who consults but a man who relies on harsh counter-terrorism techniques to quash dissent.

Hosni Mubarak could inform him of the dangers of this path.

Australian journalist and author Antony Loewenstein, 36, has published a best-selling book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question, and has spent time working and travelling across the Middle East and beyond. His book, The Blogging Revolution, examines the role of the internet in repressive regimes, including Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China. He has written for publications such as the Guardian, Haaretz and the BBC World and regularly appears in the local and global media discussing human rights and politics.

My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey:

While the Egyptian masses are uprising in unprecedented ways across the country against a Western-backed dictator, Israel fears the worst.

The country’s President Shimon Peres said last week that, “no matter what they say, we owe Mubarak true gratitude for being as steadfast as a rock and for working towards peace and stability in the Middle East.”

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told CNN that Mubarak was “immensely courageous and a force for good” for the Israeli/Palestinian “peace process.”

The Israeli mainstream media is filled with apocalyptic visions. Ben Caspit writes in Maariv that, “Al-Jazeera has become the greatest enemy of the old world, the world of stability and moderate Middle Eastern regimes.”

Truly free speech in the Arab world threatens Israel because a wide diversity of views, including Islamists and critics of Zionism, will be more loudly heard and necessarily incorporated into the political mainstream.

The American media and our own are filled with neo-conservative doomsayers who argue the Muslim Brotherhood is on the verge of taking over Egypt though there is no evidence for this.

Indeed, Washington and Britain have a history of working alongside Islamists in their battles against Communism and the years after September 11, 2001.

Israeli-connected “experts” routinely feature in our media despite having no success in bringing peace to the Middle East. Here in Australia, last week’s ABC TV’s Lateline interviewed former American ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk though he wasn’t once asked about Israel.

What we are seeing is nothing less than a profound identity crisis for the Zionist state. The region is awake and Israel fears losing its mantle as the “Middle East’s Only Democracy” Inc.

Naomi Klein tweeted last Wednesday: “Israel, call your brand managers, the whole world sees your claim to being ‘only democracy in ME’ relies on supporting dictatorship.”

Jewish Israeli blogger Magnes Zionist articulated the sentiment well a few days ago :

“For if the price to pay for a Jewish state is acquiescing in tyranny and injustice for reasons of realpolitik – as Israel did with apartheid South Africa – then arguably that price is too high…”

Washington, via its mouthpiece the New York Times, has essentially acknowledged that the Egyptian crisis for them is all about Israel.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, told The New York Times what was keeping Washington up through the night: “It really can be distilled down to one thing, and that’s Israel.”

For decades Israel has maintained regional hegemony through a combination of US protection and bribery. Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are relied upon to take American money to maintain the fiction of peace with the Jewish state while abusing the Palestinians living within their borders.

Indeed, mainstream Jewish writers in the US have been continuing this delusion, stating that Egypt’s “moderation” under Mubarak allowed Israeli/Arab peace to develop. Leslie Susser wrote in JTA that President Obama was sending the wrong message to “moderate” Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia that they “might be as peremptorily abandoned in time of need.”

Women can’t work or drive in “moderate” Saudi Arabia.

Middle East “stability” has led to this: the West Bank occupation has deepened, fascism has gone mainstream within Israel, the siege on Gaza continues (with Egyptian help) and Israel’s Jewish mainstream increasingly turns away from democratic norms (a new study found more than half polled would limit media freedom if Israel’s image was being threatened).

Mubarak has provided false comfort for too long. He was feted by every Israeli Prime Minister since the 1980s, happy to collude with the ongoing degradation of the Palestinian population because he was paid to do so. He wasn’t an independent actor – alongside Jordan and Saudi Arabia’s leaders – because he knew his role and received countless billions to fulfil his mission.

Egypt has been the second highest recipient of US aid after Israel for years and money has bought him Western political elite legitimacy. But his people largely loathed him (something I heard time and time again during my various visits to Egypt).

The brutal siege on Gaza, maintained by Israel and Cairo, is a discriminatory policy designed to crush the Hamas party that rules there. But the opposite has happened; the Islamist group has been strengthened. Israel is now even demanding that whatever new Egyptian government may emerge must recognise the peace treaty with the Jewish state, regardless of what it has done to the Palestinians under occupation.

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times is urging the Israelis to do a deal with the Palestinians in light of the Egyptian uprisings, as a way to save the Jewish state. The wishes of the Palestinian people are clearly secondary. Egyptians (or Palestinians for that matter) can never see the West as an honest broker when their opponents are funded and armed to oppress them.

Some in Israel are realising an opportunity. Haaretz has editorialised that Benjamin Netanyahu should prepare for a “new regional order…in which the citizens of Arab states, and not just tyrants and their cronies, influence the trajectory of their countries’ development.”

Anshel Pfeffer argued in Haaretz that Israel’s image, by so closely backing a brutal Arab regime, is shown to be saying that only the Jewish state deserves choice and freedom from authoritarianism:

“But even if it is difficult for us to accept it, Israel was simply not a factor in the whole Egyptian saga of the past week. And there is no reason that it should be. True, they don’t like us, and why should they? They are Arabs and Muslims, and rightfully or not, they see Israel as an occupying country, and they want an Egyptian government to do more to right the wrong. Been to Europe lately? They don’t like us much there either, for precisely the same reasons — but the Europeans apparently deserve democracy more than Egypt. After all, we were happy when the Berlin Wall fell.”

Israel fears losing its status as the Middle East’s brave island of democracy. The threat of a true Arab democracy, writes Yoav Fromer in Tablet, is “the chance that a genuine Arab democracy might raise the bar for Israel and prompt international calls for it to get its own democracy in order, end the occupation of Palestinian territories, and amend its discriminatory policies toward its Arab minority.”

*Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist and author of My Israel Question

Part 7653:

Mainstream media coverage, especially in the United States, has been filled with misleading tales. With help from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pro-Israel commentators, the regime has distracted many outlets with the arrant nonsense that the popular protests presage a takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brothers. The Muslim Brothers, yes, are the largest and best-organized political force in the country, and their cadres are indeed present among the crowds, even serving as marshals in places. But the Islamist party was late to join the protest movement, having declined to endorse the January 25 Police Day gatherings that inaugurated it, and has subsequently made no attempt to lead it or shape its discourse. Tellingly, the Brothers endorsed a secular figure, ElBaradei, as a possible interlocutor between the protesters and the regime. Speculation about the Brothers’ future role is just that — speculation.

Lee Smith in Tablet shows why his ideology is about as relevant to the Arab world as rabies:

Maybe this should be one of the tests for Egypt’s democrats in the streets: Where do you stand on Israel? If they are really democrats, or just pragmatists, the young among them protesting for higher pay would answer that warmer relations with an advanced, European-style economy—like, say, Israel’s—would provide jobs for the millions of Egypt’s unemployed.

Burn, baby, burn. Israel and America are scurrying for some kind of response to the Egyptian uprising. The poor lambs. What on earth will they do if a compliant dictatorship actually falls? For example, the siege on Gaza may well be about to change. I hope. And so do the people of Gaza. They deserve nothing less.

US neo-con Eli Lake, who spent the last decade backing every US-led war in the Middle East, is offering free advice to Barack Obama. Thanks, Eli, your understanding of the world seems about as nuanced as the “liberation” of Iraq.

Robert Fisk is on the ground in Cairo:

It might be the end. It is certainly the beginning of the end. Across Egypt, tens of thousands of Arabs braved tear gas, water cannons, stun grenades and live fire yesterday to demand the removal of Hosni Mubarak after more than 30 years of dictatorship.

And as Cairo lay drenched under clouds of tear gas from thousands of canisters fired into dense crowds by riot police, it looked as if his rule was nearing its finish. None of us on the streets of Cairo yesterday even knew where Mubarak – who would later appear on television to dismiss his cabinet – was. And I didn’t find anyone who cared.

They were brave, largely peaceful, these tens of thousands, but the shocking behaviour of Mubarak’s plainclothes battagi – the word does literally mean “thugs” in Arabic – who beat, bashed and assaulted demonstrators while the cops watched and did nothing, was a disgrace. These men, many of them ex-policemen who are drug addicts, were last night the front line of the Egyptian state. The true representatives of Hosni Mubarak as uniformed cops showered gas on to the crowds.

Such average citizens are exactly the ones Mubarak, Israel and the US have ignored for decades.

Blocking the internet entirely appears to have had little effect on information getting out.

The Guardian’s Brian Whitaker believes Washington is working out a post-Mubarak period:

With his plans to attend the Cairo Book Fair today regrettably disrupted, President Mubarak will instead spend the day choosing a new cabinet to replace the one he dismissed on television last night.

But his sudden offer of “dialogue” after 30 years in power is not going to cut any ice with the protesters on the streets whom he laughably accused in his TV broadcast of being “part of a bigger plot to shake the stability and destroy the legitimacy” of Egypt’s political system. Nor will his promise that “We will not backtrack on reforms”. The people want him to go and will not be satisfied until he does, but he is not listening yet.

Mass arrests are allegedly taking place, including against the Muslim Brotherhood.

Editor Ahmad Shokr provides interesting background:

Well, the people who initiated the protest call are largely a group of youth activists that have been organizing through social media, mostly through Facebook. They started a Facebook page to call for this demonstration, which immediately received just an outpouring of support. Tens of thousands of people signed up and expressed support for the demonstration, inspired largely by the events of Tunisia a few weeks ago. So this was a youth-led spontaneous movement that’s being fueled by the anger of young people across Egypt at all of the things that I listed before.

“Egypt is a Praetorian regime”, says Juan Cole.

Honesty is such a rare beast in journalism. Perhaps that’s why it takes a master who doesn’t fear a corporate overlord to silence/intimidate (ignore the petty intro):

DOHA, Qatar—David Remnick, call your office.

In a speech billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden diatribe here Monday expressing his disappointment with President Barack Obama and his dissatisfaction with the direction of U.S. foreign policy.

“Just when we needed an angry black man,” he began, his arm perched jauntily on the podium, “we didn’t get one.”

It quickly went downhill from there.

Hersh, whose exposés of gross abuses by members of the U.S. military in Vietnam and Iraq have earned him worldwide fame and high journalistic honors, said he was writing a book on what he called the “Cheney-Bush years” and saw little difference between that period and the Obama administration.

He said that he was keeping a “checklist” of aggressive U.S. policies that remained in place, including torture and “rendition” of terrorist suspects to allied countries, which he alleged was ongoing.

He also charged that U.S. foreign policy had been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative “crusaders” in the former vice president’s office and now in the special operations community.

“What I’m really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over,” he said of his forthcoming book. “It’s not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it — how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced.”

Hersh then brought up the widespread looting that took place in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. “In the Cheney shop, the attitude was, ‘What’s this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they’re all worried about some looting? … Don’t they get it? We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody’s gonna give a damn.’”

“That’s the attitude,” he continued. “We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command.”

He then alleged that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before briefly becoming the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many within JSOC, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.”

Hersh may have been referring to the Sovereign Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic organization commited to “defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor and the suffering,” according to its website.

“Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh continued. “They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”

“They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins,” he continued. “They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.””

Hersh relayed that he had recently spoken with “a man in the intelligence community… somebody in the joint special operations business” about the downfall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. “He said, ‘Oh my God, he was such a good ally.’”

“Tunisia’s going to change the game,” Hersh added later. “It’s going to scare the hell out of a lot of people.”

Moving to Pakistan, where Hersh noted he had been friendly with Benazir Bhutto, the journalist told of a dinner meeting with Asif Ali Zardari, the late prime minister’s husband, in which Hersh said the Pakistani president was brutally disdainful of his own people.

Hersh described a trip he made to Swat, where the Pakistani military had just dislodged Taliban insurgents who had taken over the scenic valley, a traditional vacation area for the urban middle class. Hersh said he asked Zardari about the tent cities he saw along the road, where people were living in harsh, unsanitary conditions.

“Well, those people there in Swat, that’s what they deserve,” the Pakistani president replied, according to Hersh. Asked why, Hersh said Zardari responded, “Because they supported the Taliban.” (Note: Hersh’s conversation is not recounted in his 2009 New Yorker article on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, presumably because it coudn’t be verified.)

The veteran journalist also alleged that the CIA station chief in Islamabad, who was recently recalled after his name surfaced in Pakistani court documents and in the lively Pakistani press, had actually been fired for disputing the plans of Gen. David Petraeus, who took over the Afghan war last summer after General McChrystal was summarily dismissed.

“When Petraeus issued a very optimistic report about the war in December that he gave to the president,” Hersh said, the station chief “just declared it was bankrupt… internally. He just said ‘This is completely wrongheaded. The policy’s wrongheaded.’ Off he goes. Out he goes.”

“I’ve given up being disillusioned about the CIA,” Hersh said. “They’re trained to lie, period. They will lie to their president, they will lie certainly to the Congress, and they will lie to the American people. That’s all there is to it.”

Hersh was speaking on the invitation of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, which operates a branch campus in Qatar.

A reader sent me this incisive post:

Last Wednesday, a group of prominent Bush-era Republicans, including former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former White House adviser Frances Townsend and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, flew to Paris to speak in support of a Marxist Iranian exile group there – one that’s been designated an official terrorist organization by the U.S. (Frankly I’m more surprised they’re supporting Marxists).

Now, recall how Octavia Nasr was fired for an impolitic tweet offering condolences to Fadlallah. Double standards at CNN?

Townsend is CNN’s resident terrorism expert. Yet she is often billed as a neutral National Security expert and her ties to Bush are rarely shown on the screen when she’s asked for her expertise. But she’s part of this group literally providing MATERIAL support to Iranian Marxists that the US government has labeled as an official terrorist organization.

Here is the US Government’s legal definition of “material support” for a terrorist group.