Syria, Libya and Middle East unrest

Guardian Sunday 17 July 2011

Syria

• Troops backed by tanks entered the town of Zabadani near the border with Lebanon and are carrying out a campaign of arrests, according to activists, the Independent reports.
• Tens of thousands of Syrians took to the streets on Saturday, shouting "we want freedom" while carrying caskets of of some of the protesters killed during protest rallies on Friday, al-Jazeera reports.
• Activists claim nine people were killed on Saturday, including two in the central city of Homs and four in Boukamal in the east.

Libya

• Muammar Gaddafi has again vowed never to leave Libya, the BBC reports.

They're asking me to leave. I will never leave the land of my ancestors or the people who have sacrificed themselves for me.

• Libyan fighters claim they are close to surrounding the key government-held oil town of Brega. Radio reports said that after three days of heavy fighting, aided by substantial Nato bombing, rebel units had bypassed the town – cutting off the garrison from its supply lines.

Egypt

• Egypt's prime minister Essam Sharaf is expected to announce a cabinet reshuffle today. He has accepted the resignation of his foreign minister Mohammed El-Orabi, Reuters reports.

Tunisia

• Tunisian police fired in the air and used teargas early on Sunday to disperse a crowd of about 200 people who had set fire to a police station in a suburb of the capital, Reuters reports.

10.53am: The United Arab Emirates should drop charges against five activists detained since April after they called for democratic reforms, four human rights organisations said today.

R. James Woolsey spells out Doom & Gloom for Egypt

We will probably see a follow up soon...by Paul Wolfowitz.
I believe that John Bolton, Cheney, and probably Rummy have already put their 2 cents in.

To be fair, james Woolsey is also the president of Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense contractor, and a member of the PNAC. So, here is another opinion, also by an ex CIA man…


RAY McGOVERN

McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, whose duties included preparing the President’s Daily Brief and chairing National Intelligence Estimates. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He said today: “Relatively little attention has been paid to the major factor in play with respect to the crisis in Egypt. That factor involves the stakes for Israel, which stands to lose what has become an ally in Egypt, and might have to revert to worrying about security in additional border areas and in Gaza, not to mention elsewhere in the Arab world.

“Egypt can be expected to do all it can to keep Suleiman or another official from the old regime in power. And, for that to happen, strong U.S. support will be indispensable. Israeli pressure on Washington probably accounts largely for the vagaries in Washington’s recent statements and positions. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak just met with Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates in Washington to coordinate the Israeli-U.S. response. If the Obama administration continues to keep itself joined at the hip with Israel, both countries stand eventually to lose out in Egypt and in other Arab countries — and lose big time.”

Source...Common Dreams

Chris Hedges: US & Israel policies inMiddle East

What Corruption and Force Have Wrought in Egypt


truthdig Posted on Jan 30, 2011

By Chris Hedges

The uprising in Egypt, although united around the nearly universal desire to rid the country of the military dictator Hosni Mubarak, also presages the inevitable shift within the Arab world away from secular regimes toward an embrace of Islamic rule. Don’t be fooled by the glib sloganeering about democracy or the facile reporting by Western reporters—few of whom speak Arabic or have experience in the region. Egyptians are not Americans. They have their own culture, their own sets of grievances and their own history. And it is not ours. They want, as we do, to have a say in their own governance, but that say will include widespread support—especially among Egypt’s poor, who make up more than half the country and live on about two dollars a day—for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties. Any real opening of the political system in the Arab world’s most populated nation will see an empowering of these Islamic movements. And any attempt to close the system further—say a replacement of Mubarak with another military dictator—will ensure a deeper radicalization in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

The only way opposition to the U.S.-backed regime of Mubarak could be expressed for the past three decades was through Islamic movements, from the Muslim Brotherhood to more radical Islamic groups, some of which embrace violence. And any replacement of Mubarak (which now seems almost certain) while it may initially be dominated by moderate, secular leaders will, once elections are held and popular will is expressed, have an Islamic coloring. A new government, to maintain credibility with the Egyptian population, will have to more actively defy demands from Washington and be more openly antagonistic to Israel. What is happening in Egypt, like what happened in Tunisia, tightens the noose that will—unless Israel and Washington radically change their policies toward the Palestinians and the Muslim world—threaten to strangle the Jewish state as well as dramatically curtail American influence in the Middle East.

Read the whole article at truthdig

Chris Hedges, standing to the right of Daniel Ellsberg at the demonstration that didn't happen. Probably the most important news in recent times, because it  involved people, who were once in government, the CIA, and the media. They were here at the White House to give us a message and it was not to be found in the main stream media, not even in the NY Times, where Hedges was once the Middle East bureau chief. In 2002, Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism, and was a  foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005).

This was reported in OpEdNews

Dec 16, 2010 ... Today, 131 rebels were arrested for civil disobedience at the snow covered ... Ray McGovern, Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Margaret Flowers, Coleen Rowley.

US Defense Dept.urges restraint as Egyptian military officials return from Pentagon

U.S. tests its influence with Egypt's military

By ELISABETH BUMILLER The New York Times

Herald Tribune


Published: Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, January 29, 2011 at 10:34 p.m.

WASHINGTON - The officer corps of Egypt's powerful military has been educated at defense colleges in the United States for 30 years. The Egyptian armed forces have about 1,000 American M1A1 Abrams tanks, which the United States allows to be built on Egyptian soil. Egypt permits the American military to stage major operations from its bases, and has always guaranteed the Americans passage through the Suez Canal.

The relationship between the Egyptian and American militaries is, in fact, so close that it was no surprise Friday to find two dozen senior Egyptian military officials at the Pentagon, halfway through an annual week of meetings, lunches and dinners with their American counterparts.

By the afternoon, the Egyptians had cut short the talks to return to Cairo, but not before a U.S. Defense Department official urged them to exercise "restraint," the Pentagon said.

It remained unclear Saturday, as the Egyptian Army was deployed on the streets of Cairo for the first time in decades, to what degree the military would remain loyal to the embattled president, Hosni Mubarak.

The crisis has left the Obama administration to try to navigate a peaceful outcome and remain close to an important ally, and the military relationship could be crucial in that effort. One fear is the possibility that, despite the army's seemingly passive stance Saturday, the Egyptian armed forces would begin firing on the protesters -- an action that would probably be seen as leading to an end to the army's legitimacy.

"If they shoot on the crowd, they could win tomorrow, and then there will be a revolt that will sweep them away," said Bruce O. Riedel, an expert on the Middle East and Asia at the Brookings Institution, who predicts that in any event, Mubarak will step down.

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