Tag: us

It’s the thought that counts

The American State Dept just released its list of gifts given by foreign heads of state to visiting American regime big wigs. Most of it’s pretty by-the-numbers stuff—Tayyip Erdogan gave George Bush a desk set sort of thing. Yaaaawn. But a couple of these things make you wonder what the message was. Abdullah II gave him a sniper rifle, I guess we’d have to read the note to find out if this was a jab at his foreign policy (anybody remember Ari Fleischer’s “one bullet� crack about regime change in Iraq?) or encouragement to become a better shot. The best one, though, has to be the Sultan of Brunei, who apparently handed over a copy of The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook. No need to listen for a double entendre here. This little gem, published by Chronicle Books back in 1999, offers (supposedly carefully researched) advice on how to get out of various sticky situations: Crocodile got your arm? Tap on its nose. Trapped in a sinking car? Open the window. Presidency in a tailspin? Well, maybe that’s where the sniper rifle comes in…

Oddly, there’s nothing listed there from Hosni. Is that because they don’t have to list stuff they paid for?

MERIP on Iran, twice

MERIP has published two interesting articles on Iran in the last week. The first looked at the strategic Iran-Israel rivalry, arguing that posturing in both countries had to do with their self-image as the region’s only real powers and their need to be counted as a player by the region’s superpower, the US. The article contains some interesting info on the Iranian position on Palestine, for instance, where despite much posturing there has been relatively little real help (an anecdote of a 1979 meeting between Khomeini and Arafat is quite enlightening in this regard.) Continue reading MERIP on Iran, twice

The politics of hypocrisy

Washington has decided not to “kick sand in the face� of a strategic ally… but has instead kicked dirt in the face of democracy activists once more. Thanks Washington, keep those dollars coming baby…

House Narrowly Rejects Punitive Cut In Aid To Egypt
Friday, June 9, 2006
The Wall Street Journal
By David Rogers
WASHINGTON — Amid conflicting signals from the Bush administration, the Republican-led House narrowly rejected a bid to cut $100 million from U.S. aid to Egypt as a protest of its suppression of political dissent. Continue reading The politics of hypocrisy

Renditions exposed

The Council of Europe today came out with a bashing report on the US “ghost flights” in Europe, identifying a “spider’s web” of landing points around the world airports, used by the CIA for its “extraordinary rendition” program, whereby Islamist suspects are moved around the world to secret detention and interrogation centers. The report also exposed 14 European countries, which are either “involved in or complicit” in the suspects’ illegal transfer and detention.

Washington and several European capitals, stand accused, have rejected the report, saying it’s solely based on “allegations.” Continue reading Renditions exposed

Trouble ahead

So Bush wants a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. You know that means things are even more fucked up than we know with US policy the Middle East. If he ever calls for a constitutional ban on abortion, I predict global nuclear warfare.

On a related note: Robert Kennedy Jr. in this month’s Rolling Stone becomes the second prominent personality to allege the 2004 presidential election was stolen in the mainstream media. The first, as far as I know, was our old contrarian friend Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair.

Fox News on Arab democratization

Arabist reader SP emailed:

I just watched a one hour Fox special on democracy in the Arab world with Brit Hume and Dennis Ross that had interviews with Rice as well as Albright and thought Egypt-watchers might be interested in knowing that they talked about Nour and made reference to Mubarak’s recent crackdowns, and showed scenes of Kefaya protests. The program also touched on Lebanon and its anti Syria mobilizations, even though there was a predictable weightage in favour of talking about Hamas, Israel-Palestine, much agonizing about Why They Don’t Like Us and whether more democracy would mean more anti-Americanism and more Islamists with power. The Fox take on these issues was predictable, Hamas had lots of unsavoury adjectives and violent images attached to it, but there was a good deal of discussion about how Hamas had had to tone down the rhetoric after being elected and would have to become more pragmatic if they didn’t want to be voted out again.

What I found really ironic was that Democrats like Dennis Ross, who was the Featured Expert Commentator, and Albright were both rather more ambivalent about free elections than Rice (at least verbally). Ross went back to the Islamist one man one vote one time problem like clockwork every couple of minutes and Albright talked about the importance of safeguards and how it was better to encourage civil society and the “infrastructure” of democracy before “rushing” to elections, and said something about how people in the Middle East were more concerned with their livelihoods than with the right to vote, Hamas had been successful because of its ability to provide grassroots services, and any efforts to counter the appeal of Islamists must focus on economics first – perhaps implying that it was better to help existing modernizing authoritarian regimes give their people a better life than to risk elections? Ross, after making a few sensible statements about the need for the US to speak out in favour of reformers in the Arab world and encourage a free media (Al Arabiya received special mention), came up with the following brilliant policy recommendation – US funded after school programs to teach kids English and computer skills in order to lay the basis for a secular opposition. He also talked about imposing “conditionalities” on political groups before allowing them to compete in elections – no violence, promise to govern democratically, etc – in short, hold the opposition to a higher standard than the Americans have ever held repressive Arab regimes to. Rice repeated her statements from last year about the “freedom deficit” in the Arab world and how US policy could no longer focus narrowly on stability, insisted that the only way to promote democracy was by doing, i.e. start with elections and show that you are committed to following through with the process. Of course, no mention of concrete US steps to promote this, though she paid lip service to the need to press ahead with calling on repressive allies to reform even though they didn’t like the idea.

All in all, good to see some attention being paid and an acknowledgment of democratization as a live issue, the usual blind spots notwithstanding.

You can find out more about the show at the Fox website, along with a short video clip.

Deja vu at Foggy Bottom

Blah blah blah… deeply concerned… blah blah blah… troubled… blah blah blah:

QUESTION: On Egypt. Do you have an update on the case of Mr. Sharkawi? Have you talked to the Egyptian Government about his situation?

MR. CASEY: Yeah. I do have a little bit. I know this is a subject that we talked about briefly the other day. And as you know as a matter of general principle, we’re deeply concerned by reports of continuing arrests and repression of civil society activists by the Egyptian Government. But we are troubled by the recent reports that Mohammed el-Sharkawi as well as Karim Shaer, another civil society activist, were arrested. And during their arrest and detention were tortured in custody and then denied independent medical treatment. If those allegations are true, that would certainly be a violation of Egypt’s own laws as well as accepted international human rights standards and practices.

The Embassy in Cairo has raised this issue with Egyptian officials. And first and foremost, we’re urging them to provide any and all necessary medical treatment to Mr. Sharkawi and Mr. Shaer and to thoroughly investigate these cases and any others like them. Certainly, if the allegations are true, what we want to see happen is that the Egyptian Government should take immediate steps to punish those responsible and put into place institutional measures to prevent those kinds of incidents from occurring. And as you know, we continue not only in these cases but in others as well to urge the Egyptian Government to protect the rights of their citizens to assemble and speak out peacefully. And we’ve noted our concerns about, as you know, a number of the other cases as well.

I’m deeply concerned my neighbor may be torturing his son with those tools I lent him. I wonder if I should do anything about it. Oh no wait, maybe he’ll stop if I lend him my lawnmower too.

The ashes of the Bush doctrine

There was a fire today at a community center started by Ayman Nour. There is no reason to believe the fire was anything more than accidental, but this was a good line by Nour’s wife, Gameela Ismail:

The board of the Nour Association, which ran the centre, has decided to send ashes from the fire to US President George W Bush “as a gift for his announced support for democracy in Egypt”, Ismail said.

Ismail and Nour’s two sons, now in their early teenage years, will have graduated high school by the time their father is released from jail. They must be really appreciative of US support for democracy in Egypt.

Iran would have accepted Beirut Declaration

Did Iran offer recognition of Israel according to the Beirut Declaration in 2003? Some top experts on Iran at no less an establishment institution as Johns Hopkins’ SAIS think so:

WASHINGTON, May 24 (IPS) – Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and to cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel’s 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States.

The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-U.S. agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003. Trita Parsi, a specialist on Iranian foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies who provided the document to IPS, says he got it from an Iranian official earlier this year but is not at liberty to reveal the source.

The two-page document contradicts the official line of the George W. Bush administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region.

Parsi says the document is a summary of an even more detailed Iranian negotiating proposal which he learned about in 2003 from the U.S. intermediary who carried it to the State Department on behalf of the Swiss Embassy in late April or early May 2003. The intermediary has not yet agreed to be identified, according to Parsi.

The Iranian negotiating proposal indicated clearly that Iran was prepared to give up its role as a supporter of armed groups in the region in return for a larger bargain with the United States. What the Iranians wanted in return, as suggested by the document itself as well as expert observers of Iranian policy, was an end to U.S. hostility and recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region.

Before the 2003 proposal, Iran had attacked Arab governments which had supported the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The negotiating document, however, offered “acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration”, which it also referred to as the “Saudi initiative, two-states approach.”

The Beirut Declaration, which when you think about it was a really landmark proposal from the Arab League, was always ignored by Israel. Why? Because Israel wants to annex part of the West Bank, against all UN resolutions and principles of international law. And this is why we risk another war in the Middle East rather than a solution to the crisis. I’m sure the Iranian proposal probably included other demand, and perhaps negotiations would have led nowhere, but the point was that they were ready to talk before the recent election brought back that nutcase Ahmedinejad. The article makes for good reading to put things in perspective — the Iran regime may be nasty, but it is neither automatically belligerent nor unwilling to negotiate on something as fundamental as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process according to the generous terms of the Beirut Declaration. If there is no partner for peace, it’s on the Israeli side.