The manoeuvres at the top of the regime have transparently been choreographed in Washington. Mubarak’s declaration on Tuesday night followed hard on the heels of a visit from the Obama administration’s envoy, Frank Wisner, a paid lobbyist of the Egyptian government, who was reported to have “urged” the Egyptian president not to stand again.
Frank G. Wisner Jr. is not known to the U.S. public either as a diplomat or as a master spy, but as an unscrupulous financier. He was part of the Enron power elite involved in the fraudulent bankrupcy of the corporation that ruined countless small investors and, later, as Vice Chairman of American International Group whose share prices plummeted by 95% during the 2008 financial crisis before its bailout with taxpayers’ money.
From the Guardian:
11.31pm GMT: Frank Wisner, the US special envoy sent by Obama to talk to Egypt’s government, is on his way back to the US, empty-handed it would appear. AP reports:
The White House had attempted to nudge Mubarak to the exits, dispatching former US Ambassador Frank Wisner as a special envoy to deliver the message to him. But by Wednesday, Wisner was on his way back to the United States.
A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the delicacy of the matter, suggested Wisner had been seeking specific pledges from Mubarak beyond just a promise not to stand for re-election. The official would not elaborate, but the administration has made no secret of the fact that it wants the state of emergency lifted and would prefer to see Mubarak’s son, Gamal, not try to succeed his father. Mubarak mentioned neither in his address Tuesday night.
Wisner is a veteran of “economic espionage” and is believed to have used his diplomatic cover to advance US governmental and corporate economic interests while he served as a diplomat to Asia. A member of Wisner’s staff told InterPress Services in 1997 that “if anybody asked the CIA to help promote US business in India, it was probably Frank”.
I understand if they expect a domestic audience to swoon for this sort of rhetoric, but do they actually expect that there is anyone in the Middle East, anywhere, who will take seriously the righteous objections of Hilary Clinton — the American Secretary of State and close Mubarak family friend — to the rise of an oppressive military dictatorship in the Middle East? Is anyone there really going to believe that it’s that government’s lack of respect for human rights — rather than its refusal to serve American interests and heed its various dictates — that is motivating the hostility and threats?
Egypt protests – live updates What lay behind Obama’s friendship with Mubarak? Erdogan is Brilliant Egypt: much too early to celebrate Google, Facebook, Twitter sound off on Egypt
RT @ArabRevolution: @VodafoneEgypt actively supporting Mubarak regime. SMS sent to Egyptians http://yfrog.com/gzhf7fvj BOYCOTT @VodafoneUK #
RT @jeremyscahill URGENT Cairo #journalists reporters GET OUT of your HOTEL ROOMS NOW http://bit.ly/gFRvZg #Jan25 RT NOW @chrislhayes #
@PJCrowley The perpetrators of today’s violence in #Egypt must be held accountable, and the government should tell its supporters to eschew violence. #
. @PJCrowley Take careful note ‘Pro-Mubarak supporters are recognizably police, says Peter Beaumont. ‘ http://tinyurl.com/4a8urur #
. @PJCrowley Some of the attackers caught. Their IDs showed them to be policemen dressed in civilians clothes.’ http://tinyurl.com/4nuvurn #
. @PJCrowley RT @alaa: Further proof there is police among the thugs, they’re now shooting tear gas #Jan25 # Protestor consoles Egyptian army officer
For all practical purpose, Mubarak is history. It will take no less of a miracle or terrible bloodshed to keep him in office any longer.
The cosmetic changes he has carried out over the last few days are meaningless, no less because they have been carried through presidential decrees – this underlines his insistence to micro manage urgent state matters without any role or attention to parliament, the party, or the people in the street.
An orderly and peaceful transition is better off without him, or his new vice, Omar Sulieman, reportedly, among others, the CIA’s point counterpart in Egypt that partnered in the rendition programs that led to terrible torture of innocent people.
The longer they remain in power the messier the transition would be in Egypt. On the other hand, Mubarak and company could be offered assurances that if they agreed to step aside promptly and peacefully, that they would not be prosecuted.
On January 15, the US mobilised the Connecticut National Guard Detachment 2, Company I, 185th Aviation Regiment of Groton to be deployed to the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, “to support the Multinational Force and Observers”.
The unit left Connecticut Jan. 15 for Fort Benning, Ga., for further training and validation. The unit operates C-23C Sherpa aircraft and has deployed three times in the last seven years in support of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The unit will provide an on-demand aviation asset to the Multinational Force and Observers commander to support its mission of supervising the security provisions of the Egypt/ Israel Peace Treaty.
Chief Warrant Officer Four James Smith of Ivoryton commands the aviation unit.
Here’s a list of US deployments in the Sinai and a breakdown of the constituency of the multinational force.
The US contributes three units collectively known as Task Force Sinai:[8]
* Force HQ – 40 personnel
* Infantry Battalion (USBATT – drawn from National Guard units)- 425 personnel currently members of the Illinois Army National Guard to be replaced in early 2011 by the Maryland National Guard[9]
* Support Battalion – 235 personnel consisting of:
o Headquarters
o Medical Company consisting of Dental, Medical, Physical Therapy, Veterinarian, and Preventative Medicine.
o Explosive Ordnance Disposal Detachment (EOD)
o Aviation Company
As far as I can discover, the deployment has yet to reach its eventual destination and was routine.
The entrance of Egyptian military forces into Sinai is prohibited by the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, to which the US is a guarantor. Lisa Goldman and myself tried to get a reply from the IDF Spokesman, to no avail. The spokesman of the Foreign Ministry, Yigal Palmor, gave Goldman the following response: “We will have to analyze the situation. We are under clear instructions not to make any comment on the Egyptian situation, no matter what. So it’s not as though we’ll have an answer later on. You’ll just have to wait and see, okay?”
Several foreign policy scholars and former officials have been urging the U.S. administration for months to prepare for the end of the Hosni Mubarak era and the instability that would accompany it.
The United States has no plans to redeploy troops or ships in response to the unrest roiling Egypt and the instability in Tunisia and Jordan, the head of the U.S. Central Command said Tuesday.
On a visit to London, Gen. James Mattis said military leaders and lawmakers were closely watching developments, but stressed that he had no orders to rearrange his forces in response.
“These issues do not call for a military solution right now,” Mattis said. “There’s no reason right now for any shift in military forces, or anything like that. I’ve not received any orders.”
Mattis spells out the primary US strategic interest:
… he said it was unlikely events in Egypt would lead to difficulties for ships passing through the Suez Canal – another major concern for lawmakers and businesses.
The canal is the key route to the Mediterranean and used to avoid the longer and perilous path around Africa to the Atlantic Ocean.
“When you look at the fiscal impact of that on whoever is in a position of authority in Egypt, I just can’t imagine a motive to shut that down,” said Mattis, who succeeded Gen. David Petraeus as head of the military’s Central Command in August.
President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the USD 1.3 billion in annual FMF as “untouchable compensation” for making and maintaining peace with Israel. The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the U.S. military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace. We believe, however, that our relationship can accomplish much more. Over the last year, we have engaged MOD leaders on developing shared strategic objectives to address current and emerging threats, including border security, counter terrorism, civil defense, and peacekeeping. Our efforts thus far have met with limited success.
The key question is, will the localized incident in
Mahalla spark a wider movement? The government is clearly
focused on containing unrest. Even while the riots were
still winding down, PM Nazif traveled to Mahalla, paid
bonuses to factory workers and praised those who did not join
in the riots (ref D). The government has also accelerated
arrests of activists in Cairo (ref E). The organizers of the
April 6 strike — distinct from Mahalla — have already
called, via Facebook, for a follow-on national strike on May
4, Mubarak’s eightieth birthday. Even regime insiders have
acknowledged the political savvy behind this tactic —
channeling current outrage towards the next big event. The
GOE responded with a press release announcing that President
Mubarak will give a May 5 speech to “underline Egypt’s keen
to desire to protect the rights of laborers and accentuate
the role they can play in the development process …. and to
reiterate the government’s commitment to safeguard the
interests of workers against any backlashes they might face
as a result of the economic reform program.” More broadly,
the government continues to address the shortage of
subsidized bread by using military bakeries and distribution
Another strain of this criticism, articulated most forcefully by Yediot Aharonot columnist Eitan Haber, who was a top aide to Yitzhak Rabin, is that this sends a dreadful message to Israel.
Obama threw Mubarak “to the dogs,” Haber wrote in a column that appeared on Monday.
“America, which waves the banner of ‘citizens rights,’ ‘democracy,’ and ‘freedom of information,’ turned its back in a day on one of its most important allies in the Middle East.
Obama sold Mubarak for the pot of lentils of popularity among the Egyptian masses,” Haber wrote, adding that the US president did this without a true understanding of the Middle East.
“Our conclusion in Israel needs to be that the man sitting in the White House is liable to ‘sell’ us over night.
The thought that the US might not stand by our side in the day of need causes chills. God help us.”
This theme was also picked up by former Mossad head Danny Yatom, who said in an Israel Radio interview that the US treatment of Mubarak was a dangerous message to Washington’s allies in the region – including Israel – that they could not rely on America.
Yatom said Washington’s first error was not in more aggressively supporting the opposition in Iran when it took to the streets against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the summer of 2009.
By contrast, Yatom said, “there is an important relationship” between the US and Egypt, with Egypt an important layer in Washington’s regional policy.
“The way Obama and Hillary Clinton abandoned Mubarak at once is very problematic, and I think hints to other allies – for instance Israel – that these things can happen under certain grave circumstances to us as well, and to others.”
Yatom said the US erred in talking – as Clinton did on Sunday – of an orderly transition to lasting democracy, and should have instead sufficed with demanding reform.
They should have supported him [Mubarak], but demand more reform,” he said. “I think he would have responded.”
By those they choose to silence, one knows the leaders’ pathology and measure of their cowardice. Stand down, Mubarak, stand down! This is revolution:
This is the story that got Al Jazeera banned by Mubarak – live ammunition used on protestors, 2 children, aged 7 and 4 amongst those murdered by the regime.
Mr. Hadley said that given the choice, Egyptians might well settle on a hybrid government that might include the Muslim Brotherhood and a secular majority willing to continue to live by the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
Some officials have clearly begun to think about the many possibilities that could emerge should Mr. Mubarak depart from the presidential palace, including a government led by his newly installed vice president, Omar Suleiman, the country’s intelligence chief. American officials say that Mr. Suleiman has been described as more opposed to wide-ranging reforms than Mr. Mubarak. “Shifting the chairs for longtime supporters of Mubarak is not the kind of ‘concrete reform’ that the president is talking about,” one senior official said.
Another possibility, American officials say, would be a transitional government led by an outsider, perhaps Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who flew back to Cairo several days ago.
Mr. ElBaradei, who has not lived in Egypt for years, has little connection to the protesters. A frequent critic of United States policy, he could form a caretaker government in preparation for an election. As one American official said, “He’s shown an independence from us that will squelch any argument that he’s doing our bidding.”
My father, who knew several of the neocon standard bearers at Harvard, always insisted to me that, with such obvious exceptions as Marty Peretz and Ruth Wisse, the neocons were ultimately not so deeply committed to Israel but rather simply saw it as a means to an end. I understood his argument academically, but never quite bought into it until the last couple of years. The first time I realized he was right was when I attended the J Street Conference in October 2009, where I had the most emotionally draining experience of actually encountering people who were deeply committed to the point of emotional investment in saving Israel as a Jewish state, only to behold the untrammeled fury set against them by the neocons.
‘The primary source for the Lamo-Manning chatlog is the ex-hacker Adrian Lamo, who claims that it is a record of a sequence of instant message discussions he had with Bradley Manning. In recent months, a concerted investigation was carried out into the trustworthiness of Adrian Lamo, in the light of serious discrepancies in the narrative he had given to various media about the content of the chatlogs. The results of this investigation are to be found on FDL.
The investigation recommends the conclusion that Adrian Lamo is not a trustworthy source, and casts doubt on the provenance of the Lamo-Manning chatlog.
Worryingly, the Guardian editorial position appears, according to the Telegraph, to be that the Lamo-Manning chatlog can be treated as the testimony of Bradley Manning himself.
Last night Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, defended the decision to name Mr Manning as the source of the material, saying it was a matter of record that the soldier had openly admitted to being the source of the data.
If The Guardian has no new information, it is exceptionally irresponsible to treat the Lamo-Manning chatlog as sufficient evidence to speak of Bradley Manning as Wikileaks’ source. It appears, from the Telegraph’s quotation, that Leigh and Harding have used the chatlog as a source to present a reconstructed narrative – a move which is likely to present a seductive version of events for the general public wherein Manning was in fact the source.
The leaked minutes of a meeting in 2008 between Palestinian, U.S. and Israeli officials show a senior Palestinian proposing that Israel annex all but one of its major Jerusalem settlements as part of a broad deal to end their decades-old conflict.
Ah, to be a ‘democracy’- apartheid Israel can flaunt international law and steal land, sponsor Palestinian ‘leaders’ without a mandate of the people from whom Israel steals, who then give away even more land behind Palestinians’ backs. How could Israel then be accused of stealing?
The Palestinian Papers blow the cover off the iniquitous deals which Abbas and his cohorts have done on the sly with their Israeli bosses. What chance for the end of the gross indignity of Israeli apartheid when the perpetrators of this discrimination are covertly and not so covertly assisted by those who shill as ‘Palestinian leaders’?
“Even during the days of negotiations, our own experience taught us that the pursuit of human fraternity and equality — irrespective of race or religion — should stand at the centre of our peaceful endeavours. The choice is not between freedom and justice, on the one hand, and their opposite, on the other. Peace and prosperity; tranquility and security are only possible if these are enjoyed by all without discrimination.”
One remembers also the second point in the preamble of the United Nations Charter:
“to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small”
‘… it is sickening to see the Israeli consensus demanding that when Arabs think of their future, they should imagine a hobnailed boot crushing their faces forever, in order to protect Israelis from their own fears. This concept demonstrates, again, how much Israelis view Arabs as savages who can neither govern themselves, nor develop. They always need a strongman to keep them down. This concept tells us much more about Israelis than about their neighbours.’
Israel’s friend, Mubarak is a nice chappie, really …
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak rejected calls from protesters to resign and said he would name a new government to promote democracy as protesters clashed with police into the night, setting buildings on fire and swarming armored cars.
Kevin Rudd is milquetoast, omitting condemnation of Mubarak’s outrageous oppression and police violence against peaceful protestors and journalists.
Well the political situation is highly fluid, as a number of my colleagues from elsewhere around the world have said. We have long supported democratic transformation across the Middle East. We have equally strongly argued that this transformation should occur peacefully and without violence. That remains our view in terms of recent developments in Egypt as well.
“We are deeply concerned about the use of violence by Egyptian police and security forces against protesters, and we call on the Egyptian government to do everything in its power to restrain the security forces,”
Mubarak is in power in Cairo with the west’s blessing, approval, support, sponsorship, funding and arms. Democrat and Republican presidents, Labour and Conservative prime ministers, have all cosied up to Egypt’s “secular” tyrant, a self-proclaimed but ineffective bulwark against “Islamic extremism”, since he assumed the presidency in 1981.
‘There was an old despot called Hosni
whose mind was suspicious and lazy,
for when poems are writ,
he quivers his lip,
and looks for the poet not meaning.’
‘There was an old fool called Mubarak
who hated all literary dialect
while his back was turned,
Hosni’s ears would burn,
as poets would cleverly paint him black’
Ah, to be a ‘democracy’- apartheid Israel can flaunt international law and steal land, sponsor Palestinian ‘leaders’ without a mandate of the people from whom Israel steals, who then give away even more land behind Palestinians’ backs. How could Israel then be accused of stealing?