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Reality and Mirages in Egypt and the Arab world! |
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by K. Gajendra Singh |
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Mirages are quite common occurrences in deserts i.e. distorted images caused by atmospheric refractions by hot air. Or political mirages by populist orchestrations, by media and diplomatic manipulations from Washington and Brussels! The spontaneous but subtly well-organized people’s revolt in Egypt could but be a politically infiltrated if not orchestrated mirage by Washington to achieve its objectives by latest internet tools of Facebook, Twitter etc . . . . Certainly like US aim to control Iraq, its oil and the region, the current US led Western effort to maintain domination in the region, it would as well misfire. The western cacophony led by its aggressive propaganda machine against Mubarak, who, perhaps as some reports indicate is terminally ill, is to install a new obedient client. US has no friends, allies only puppets and convenient chess pieces, which can be sacrificed if needed. The campaign for regime change in Tunisia and Egypt so far has borrowed some elements from what I had then described US franchised (like standardized Macdonald outlets) street revolutions, also called ‘color’ revolutions in Serbia, Georgia. Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and the failed ones in Belarus and Uzbekistan. The US led insistent western demand for democracy in Egypt now as well as in Asia. Africa and elsewhere appears quite contrary to Western history, beginning with Philippines, pre-Castro Cuba and elsewhere, the last two being ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ in Iraq, where it is caught in a quagmire and an unwinnable ‘Operation enduring freedom in Afghanistan “How Americans love the word freedom for others. Let us see how the ‘operation Egypt freedom’ ends up. Peoples Revolt in Egypt; Birth Pangs of a New Middle East! This Arab revolt is against Washington unlike the WWI British engineered against Istanbul But I had felt that there was something amiss. Too contrived! It was confirmed by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, in her piece Who's Behind The Uprising In Egypt? And then by F. William Engdahl in his even better researched piece Egypt's Revolution: I am reproducing both the articles, which are a must if you want to understand the complex unfolding situation in Egypt in general and Tehris Square in particular as the main stage of this TV covered revolution. Russia’s RIA NOVOSTI has also confirmed suspicions, stating that Clearly, we no longer suffer from short term memory in this country -- we suffer from a total loss of memory. Who would be the wiser for it? It seems the public has fallen for the plan. Media 'pundits' are eager to blame the timing of the protests in Egypt on economic hardships. Citing Egypt's jobless and inordinate poverty, they would have us believe that the American 'social media', Tweeter in particular, has prompted and aided the protests. They would have us believe that in spite of the fact that the Egyptians cry over the price of wheat, they have cell phones and access to social media. We are to accept that the poor, hungry, and jobless Egyptians are revolting against their lot by 'tweeting' in English. Their access to modern technology aside, we are told to accept that the knowledge of English among 80 million Egyptians is so strong that they can 'tweet' -- fully comfortable with tweeter abbreviations and acronyms. Else, we are to believe that Egypt is busy 'tweeting' in Arabic even if Twitter does not lend itself to Arabic any more than it does to Persian. When Iran's opposition leader, Mir-Hossein Mousavi compared the Egypt uprising to the 2009 post-election protests in Iran, he had a point. Both had an outside source. During the 2009 protests in Iran, 'tweets' were traced back to Israel (see link). The rumors and support for the "opposition" initiated in the West though Tehran Bureau -- partnered with the American PBS. A CNN desk was created to give the protests full coverage. America has been attempting to undermine Iran's government for over 30 years. The media has helped to demonize the regime. Why would the media treat this obedient tyrant the same way? The mainstream media, as well as the 'left' are reporting on Egypt's protests round the clock. It is important to ask why. For decades, the American government and allies have snuffed nationalist sentiments in the region in favor of dictators. Iran's Mossadegh, a fierce secular nationalist, who was democratically elected to be prime minister of Iran, was removed by a CIA-backed coup when he nationalized Iran’s oil and the oppressive Shah put in power. This political action led to the 1979 revolution. America lost a valuable puppet in the region. Similarly, the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egypt's patriotic Nasser led to his demise, paving the way for the eventual installation of a puppet regime - Mubarak. But Mubarak is dying. Fearful of losing an important ally in Egypt's Mubarak, the political elite in America have undertaken a calculated risk: siding with the Egyptians to promote 'democracy' - hoping to help put in place one of their own. How likely is it that they will prevail in Egypt where they failed in Iran? Could it be that apprehensive about the future of Egypt, more importantly, its alliance with and subordination to Israel, the Noble Laureate option is being played? Amongst the neoliberals, a new wave of thinking emerged which endorsed the idea of promoting ‘democracy’ ("liberal Imperialism") in order to evolve hegemonism to imperialism. Their thinking emphasized the 'character of the political leadership'. A wave of books centered on 'democratic transitions' that focused on the character of the leader with the right ideas appeared. They planned to emphasis new successful leaders such as Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, and Lech Walesa in order to promote their own in places of interest. These neoliberals believed that "transition to 'democracy' required focusing on "political strategies" and introducing "indeterminancy" and "uncertainty" into the process of political change which they believed would be ground for cautious optimism that 'democracy' could catch on. Laureates were appointed: Shirin Ebadi, El Baradei, Obama, Liu Xiaobo... Mr. ElBaradei, the Nobel Laureate and former chief of IAEA, applauded the violation of the NNPT with his acceptance speech as he praised the Bush-India nuclear deal - an NPT violation. Ally S. Korea's NPT violations were given a pass under his supervision, as well as that of Egypt's. In violation of the spirit of the NPT, he allowed the illegal referral of Iran to the UN Security Council. Mr. ElBaradei had proven himself worthy of American trust - he could be relied on and deserved a Nobel prize. He announced his readiness to run for president of Egypt. Sadly, the American political elite love Einstein's science but ignore his wisdom. When Einstein alerted FDR to the possibility of a nuclear weapon by the Germans, he was listened to and the way was paved for the Manhattan Project. America developed the heinous weapons of mass murder and dropped it on hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizen in the name of peace. Regrettably, as the Middle East and Africa react to America's decades of neocolonialist policies, Einstein's definition of insanity --"doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" -- is more apt than ever. America (and her allies) has practiced the same damning foreign policy for several decades, each time expecting a new result. This political insanity manifests itself as the decision makers interfere in sovereignty of other countries - believing that they can continue to fool all the people all the time. Their controlled chaos may get out of hand and following the painful 'pangs' of neocolonial rule, we may witness the birth of a new world order. Egypt's Revolution: The template for such covert regime change has been developed by the Pentagon, US intelligence agencies and various think-tanks such as RAND Corporation over decades, beginning with the May 1968 destabilization of the de Gaulle presidency in France. This is the first time since the US-backed regime changes in Eastern Europe some two decades back that Washington has initiated simultaneous operations in many countries in a region. It is a strategy born of a certain desperation and one not without significant risk for the Pentagon and for the long-term Wall Street agenda. What the outcome will be for the peoples of the region and for the world is as yet unclear. The strategy had been in various State Department and Pentagon files since at least a decade or longer. After George W. Bush declared a War on Terror in 2001 it was called the Greater Middle East Project. Today it is known as the less threatening-sounding “New Middle East” project. It is a strategy to break open the states of the region from Morocco to Afghanistan, the region defined by David Rockefeller's friend Samuel Huntington in his infamous Clash of Civilizations essay in Foreign Affairs. Some background on the actors on the ground is useful before looking at what Washington's long-term strategic plan might be for the Islamic world from North Africa to the Persian Gulf and ultimately into the Islamic populations of Central Asia, to the borders of China and Russia. Washington 'soft' revolutions: The protests that led to the abrupt firing of the entire Egyptian government by President Mubarak on the heels of the panicked flight of Tunisia's Ben Ali into a Saudi exile are not at all as "spontaneous" as the Obama White House, Clinton State Department or CNN, BBC and other major media in the West make them to be. At this point the anti-Mubarak movement looks like anything but a threat to US influence in the region, quite the opposite. It has all the footprints of another US-backed regime change along the model of the 2003-2004 Color Revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine and the failed Green Revolution against Iran's Ahmedinejad in 2009. The call for an Egyptian general strike and a January 25 Day of Anger that sparked the mass protests demanding Mubarak resign was issued by a Facebook-based organization calling itself the April 6 Movement. The protests were so substantial and well-organized that it forced Mubarak to ask his cabinet to resign and appoint a new vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman, former Minister of Intelligence. April 6 is headed by one Ahmed Maher Ibrahim, a 29-year-old civil engineer, who set up the Facebook site to support a workers' call for a strike on April 6, 2008. According to a New York Times account from 2009, some 800,000 Egyptians, most youth, were already then Facebook or Twitter members. In an interview with the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment, April 6 Movement head Maher stated, "Being the first youth movement in Egypt to use internet-based modes of communication like Facebook and Twitter, we aim to promote democracy by encouraging public involvement in the political process." [4]Maher also announced that his April 6 Movement backs former UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head and declared Egyptian Presidential candidate, ElBaradei along with ElBaradei's National Association for Change (NAC) coalition. The NAC includes among others George Ishak, a leader in Kefaya Movement, and Mohamed Saad El-Katatni, president of the parliamentary bloc of the controversial Ikhwan or Muslim Brotherhood. [5] Today Kefaya is at the center of the unfolding Egyptian events. Not far in the background is the more discreet Muslim Brotherhood. ElBaradei at this point is being projected as the central figure in a future Egyptian parliamentary democratic change. Curiously, though he has not lived in Egypt for the past thirty years, he has won the backing of every imaginable part of the Egyptian political spectrum from communists to Muslim Brotherhood to Kefaya and April 6 young activists. [6] Judging from the calm demeanor ElBaradei presents these days to CNN interviewers, he also likely has the backing of leading Egyptian generals opposed to the Mubarak rule for whatever reasons as well as some very influential persons in Washington. Kefaya—Pentagon 'non-violent warfare' Kefaya is at the heart of mobilizing the Egyptian protest demonstrations that back ElBaradei's candidacy. The word Curiously, the planners at the Washington National Endowment for Democracy (NED) [7] and related color revolution NGOs apparently were bereft of creative new catchy names for their Egyptian Color Revolution. In their November 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the US-financed NGOs chose the catch word, Kmara! In order to identify the youth-based regime change movement. Kmara in Georgian also means "enough!" Like Kefaya, Kmara in Georgia was also built by the Washington-financed trainers from the NED and other groups such as Gene Sharp's misleadingly-named Albert Einstein Institution which uses what Sharp once identified as "non-violence as a method of warfare." [8]The various youth networks in Georgia as in Kefaya were carefully trained as a loose, decentralized network of cells, deliberately avoiding a central organization that could be broken and could have brought the movement to a halt. Training of activists in techniques of non-violent resistance was done at sports facilities, making it appear innocuous. Activists were also given training in political marketing, media relations, mobilization and recruiting skills. The formal name of Kefaya is Egyptian Movement for Change. It was founded in 2004 by select Egyptian intellectuals at the home of Abu ‘l-Ala Madi, leader of the al-Wasat party, a party reportedly created by the Muslim Brotherhood. [9] Kefaya was created as a coalition movement united only by the call for an end Mubarak’s rule. Kefaya as part of the amorphous April 6 Movement capitalized early on new social media and digital technology as its main means of mobilization. In particular, political blogging, posting uncensored YouTube shorts and photographic images were skillfully and extremely professionally used. At a rally already back in December 2009 Kefaya had announced support for the candidacy of Mohammed ElBaradei for the 2011 Egyptian elections. [10] |
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09-Feb-2011 | ||
More by : K. Gajendra Singh | ||
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