Tunisia heading towards a constitution based on Sharia

(EOZ) From Egypt Independent:

The third-largest party in Tunisia's constituent assembly, charged with writing a new constitution, proposed on Monday a draft document based on Islamic law which will likely alarm the country's secularists.
The moderate Islamist Ennahda party won a 40 percent share in the assembly, or 89 seats, in Tunisia's first election since the ouster of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali a year ago sparked the Arab Spring uprisings across the region.
The non-religious Conference for the Republic won 29 seats in the 217-seat assembly and Aridha Chaabia, or Popular List, came in third. Should the proposal win the support of more than 60 percent of parliamentarians, it would pass without a referendum.
Popular List said in a statement that its draft document "stipulates in its first article that Tunisia is a free, independent and sovereign country, Islam is its religion and the principal source of its legislation, Arabic is its language and its system is a republic."
"Using Islamic Sharia as a principal source of legislation will guarantee freedom, justice, social equality, consultation, human rights and the dignity of all its people, men and women."
The proposal is certain to inflame political tensions in Tunisia, where secularists already fear that the Ennahda-led government will slowly Islamize Tunisian law and society.
Ennahda has sought to assure secularists that it has no intention of enforcing Islamic rules, but it has struggled to control more conservative Islamists who have been outspoken in their demands that religion play a greater role in public life.
The Arab Spring is catapulting the Arab world into the seventh century.

(cia.gov) The country's first president, Habib BOURGUIBA, established a strict one-party state. He dominated the country for 31 years, repressing Islamic fundamentalism and establishing rights for women unmatched by any other Arab nation. In November 1987, BOURGUIBA was removed from office and replaced by Zine el Abidine BEN ALI in a bloodless coup. Street protests that began in Tunis in December 2010 over high unemployment, corruption, widespread poverty, and high food prices escalated in January 2011, culminating in rioting that led to hundreds of deaths. On 14 January 2011, the same day BEN ALI dismissed the government, he fled the country, and by late January 2011, a "national unity government" was formed. In late October 2011, elections for a Constituent Assembly were held. The Constituent Assembly is charged with appointing a new interim government, drafting a new constitution, and preparing for legislative and presidential elections.

I'm getting a bit tired of pointing out how Obama's foregin policy is crap. It isn't fun always being right.

David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Ideas Used in Iraq and Afghanistan

(TabletMag) Every Berber I have met has told me that Amazigh were the original inhabitants of North Africa and that all of that land was once theirs. As one Libyan Amazigh told me, “I’m tired of hearing about the Palestinians and how the Jews took their land. What about how the Arabs took our land?”
There is also the fact that the official language of all the North African countries is Arabic—yet in Morocco 60 percent of the population are Tamazight or Berber-speaking, in Algeria 30 percent, and in Libya perhaps 10 percent. In most of North Africa, the Arabophone majority has suppressed or (in the case of Qaddafi’s Libya) outright prohibited the use of Tamazight, a language that is estimated to be anywhere from 2,200 to 3,000 years old; its tiffinagh script has more than 30 letters, differing somewhat from region to region, and some of them look like ancient Greek.(MORE @ Tablet)

Ann Marlowe uses conjecture to assume that the supposed father of workable counterinsurgency warfare through propaganda was less successful because he did not talk about his own North African Jewish background. I'm not so sure Ann is right about this (She seems to believe in the fiction of "Moderate Islam"), but the history here is interesting.

Tunisia's President Calls Jews to Return

(israelnationalnews.com)  ( h/t @TheJewess ) Tunisia’s newly elected president on Monday called the country’s Jewish population to return, The Associated Press reported.

During a meeting with the country’s Grand Rabbi Haim Bittan, President Moncef Marzouki said that Tunisia’s Jews are full citizens and those who had left the country were welcome to return.
Today, Tunisia has a Jewish population of 1,500 but in the 1960s there were 100,000 Jews in the country. Most left following the 1967 Six Day War.
Most Tunisian Jews now live on the resort island of Djerba, near the country’s border with Libya.
Marzouki’s remarks come in response to a call by Cabinet Minster and Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom for Tunisian Jews to move to Israel.
Shalom, who is of Tunisian origin and who made an official visit to the country in 2005, recently said that Jews in Tunisia should "settle in Israel as soon as possible.”
Shalom’s call was rejected by Muslim leaders in Tunisia. The Islamist Ennahda party, which recently won the country’s first post-Arab Spring election, said that “Tunisia remains, today and tomorrow, a democratic state that respects its citizens and looks after them regardless of their religion…. Members of the Jewish community in Tunisia are citizens enjoying all their rights and duties.”
The Islamic party said Shalom’s remarks were “irresponsible” and “irrational,” and it criticized the timing of his comments.

The Arab Spring just doesn't sound like a nice invite for those outside of the Islamic faith. Maybe in ten years or maybe never.

Tunisia lifts warrant summoning Arafat's widow // hmmm why?

(h/t ChallahHuAkbar / ynetnews.com) The Justice Ministry says Tunisia has lifted a warrant summoning the widow of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat over a corruption scandal. Ministry spokesman Kadhem Zine El Abidine said Friday that the investigating judge who had issued the warrant against Suha Arafat in October has since reversed that order. The case centered on alleged embezzlement linked to the creation of The International School of Carthage outside Tunis, which she founded in 2006 with Leila Trabelsi, the wife of former longtime Tunisia President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. (AP)

The government was overthrown... remember? who controls North Africa now? you can expect all judicial process to end.

A French minister of Arab origin says ‘there is no such thing as moderate Islam’

Jeannette Bougrab, who is originally from Algeria, is a French junior minister with responsibility for youth. She said that any legislation based on Islamic sharia law “inevitably” imposed restrictions on rights and freedoms. (Reuters)(Al Arabiya/ AFP) A French minister said there was no such thing as moderate Islam, calling recent election successes by Islamic parties in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia “worrying” in an interview published Saturday.
Jeannette Bougrab, a junior minister with responsibility for youth, told Le Parisien newspaper that legislation based on Islamic sharia law “inevitably” imposed restrictions on rights and freedoms.
Bougrab is of Algerian origin, whose father fought on the French colonial side during Algeria’s war of independence, and said she was speaking as “a French woman of Arab origin.”
“It’s very worrying,” she was quoted as saying. “I don’t know of any moderate Islam.”
“There are no half measures with sharia,” she added. “I am a lawyer and you can make all the theological, literal or fundamental interpretations of it that you like but law based on sharia is inevitably a restriction on freedom, especially freedom of conscience.”
She was reacting to electoral successes scored by the Ennahda party in Tunisia, the Justice and Development Party in Morocco and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has called for dialogue with such parties as long as they respect certain criteria, including the rule of law and women's rights.
Bougrab conceded that ousted Tunisian and Egyptian rulers Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak had used the Islamist “threat” to win backing from Western countries, but she added, “We shouldn’t go to the other extreme.”
And she hit out at the 30 percent of Tunisians living in France who had voted for Ennahda in last month's polls. “I am shocked that those who have rights and freedoms here gave their votes to a religious party,” she said.

US would be 'satisfied' with Brotherhood win in Egypt

The United States will judge elected parties in the MidEast based "on what they do and not what they're called," AFP reports.

The United States would be "satisfied" should free elections in Egypt produce a victory for the Muslim Brotherhood, AFP reported Friday according to the US's special coordinator for transitions in the Middle East, William Taylor. Taylor said the US would judge elected parties in the Middle East based "on what they do, and not what they're called," AFP quoted him as saying. He added that he did not meet with Brotherhood officials in his latest visit to Cairo, but would have had he been given the chance. The point man on Middle East transitions said that so-called Arab Spring revolutions and a desire for democratic elections create an environment in which groups like the Muslim Brotherhood are able to shed associations with terror. Taylor's comments came the week after Tunisia - widely seen as the birthplace of Arab Spring revolutions - elected its own Islamist Ennahda party to form a governing coalition.

Ennahda emerged the victor in the nation's first ever free elections. The party, banned before the revolution that ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, won 90 of the 217 seats in the new assembly. It was not, however, an outright win. The party is expected to form a coalition with two of the secularist runners-up. Ennahda's leader is pledging a new dawn for Tunisians. Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the Ennahda party, said, "We give our promise to them to continue to realize the aims of the revolution in a Tunisia that is free, independent, developing and prosperous, and where the rights of God, the Prophet, women, men, the religious and non-religious, are assured because Tunisia is for everybody."

...and of course the liberal media will believe this.

From an Arab Spring to an Islamist Winter: Demonstrators Dispatched by Mosques

(Hudson) The "revolutionaries" who sodomized and lynched Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi chanted the famous Islamic battle cry "Allahu Akbar!" [Allah is Greater].
When the leaders of the revolution announced Gaddafi's death at a press conference, even secular Muslim journalists started chanting "Allahu Akbar!"
A few days later, the leader of Libya's National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, declared at a rally in Benghazi that his country would now become an Islamic state.
"As a Muslim country, we have adopted the Islamic Sharia as the main source of law. Accordingly, any law that contradicts Islamic principles with the Islamic Sharia is ineffective legally."
At this stage, it is still not clear what version of Islamic law the new rulers of Libya are planning to enforce.
Will Libya take example from Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia where adulterers are stoned to death and convicted thieves have their hands cut off and beheaded in public squares?
Or will Libya endorse a more "moderate" version of Islam, as is the case in many Arab and Islamic countries?
Either way, what is clear by now is that the post-Gaddafi Libya will be anything but a secular and democratic country, but one where there is no room for liberals and moderates.
Those who thought the Arab Spring would bring moderation and secularism to the Arab world are in for a big disappointment.
The results of the first free elections held under the umbrella of the Arab Spring have now brought the Islamists to power in Tunisia.
But the Islamists who won the election in Tunisia are already being accused by their rivals of being too "moderate" because they do not endorse jihad and terrorism against the "infidels."
What happened to all those young and charismatic Facebook representatives who told everyone that the uprisings would bring the Western values and democracy to the Arab countries? Some of the secular parties that ran in the Tunisian elections did not even win one seat in parliament.
What many Western observers have failed to notice is that most of the antigovernment demonstrations that have been sweeping the Arab world over the past ten months were often launched from mosques following Friday prayers.
This is especially true regarding Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Jordan.
Thanks to the Arab Spring, the Islamists in these countries are beginning to emerge from their hiding places to become legitimate players in the political scene.
The writing on the wall is very big and clear. In a free and democratic election, those who carry the banner of "Islam is the Solution" will score major victories in most, if not all, the Arab countries.
The Palestinians were the first to experience this new trend back in 2006, when Hamas defeated the secular Fatah faction in a free and fair parliamentary election held at the request of the US and the EU.
The leaders of the Arab Spring have failed to offer themselves to their people as a better alternative to the Islamists. As far as many Arabs are concerned, this is a faceless Facebook revolution that has failed to produce new leaders. The Arab Spring is becoming the Islamist winter.

Erdogan to Tunisians: Israel will not be able to move in the eastern Mediterranean as it wishes.

“Israel will not be able to move in the eastern Mediterranean as it wishes,” Erdogan said at a joint news conference with his counterpart, Interim Prime Minister Beji Caid el Sebsi. “It will see our determination in this regard.”

Anonymous Hackers Claim Retaliatory Attack On Spain Police

One member said the group's "command and control" centers are invite-only, adding: "It's to protect people, but if you have proven trustworthy you get invited – it's not hard to do. It's not some elitist structure but a way to keep the press and the odd bit of law enforcement seeing who issues commands."

"Our project has no leader structure, only different roles. The degree of leadership and organization in the various projects various a lot," one long-term insider explained. "It's all very chaotic, but we communicate and co-operate with each other. I see us as different cells of the same organism."

MADRID (Dow Jones)--A group of hackers tied to a series of security breaches on websites across the world said Sunday it attacked the Spanish police's main website in retaliation for the recent arrest of three alleged members of the group.
In a statement sent to local media and posted on several websites, alleged representatives of the "Anonymous" group said they plan to keep the fight against Spain's "corrupt" state.
They also rejected police claims that the three who were detained across Spain are in any way leaders of the movement, saying "Anonymous" has no leadership. Police released the three after being charged Friday.
"Our minds, ideas and words are our weapons. Police has no other obligation than protecting the people," the statement written in Spanish said. "And the people can't be protected from itself."
The statement added that "Anonymous" attacked the police website at 2230 GMT, in a denial-of-service attempt to put the website offline. That attack came after police said it has no evidence that the detained were tied to a high-profile theft of Sony customers' data earlier this year, but added the three tried to steal and publish what it called "sensitive data" about Spanish politicians and policemen.
Police also said the trio was looking to release the data on Web pages set up by sympathizers of ETA, the terrorist group that has been seeking Basque independence and suspected to have killed over 800 people over the last four decades. Earlier claims said that the three who were detained had helped to coordinate massive attacks on international websites.
In response, Anonymous said Sunday that it seeks to defend freedom of expression and transparency, from a pacifist standpoint. "We are not terrorists. We are citizens fighting for rights that have been coerced," the statement said.
The detentions have caused a controversy in Spain, where many messages in support of the hackers have been posted in social networks and chat rooms. Many of these supporters criticized the police's description of the detainees, mocking the idea that they are in any way leading Anonymous' activities. The most prominent of these expressions of support came from Real Democracy Now, a loosely organized group that has been coordinating protests against political corruption and economic austerity measures.
In a statement on its website, the group said it is "outraged by media manipulation and the actions of security forces" regarding the Anonymous detentions, and asked for charges to be dropped against the three who were arrested.

via online.wsj.com

Anonymous Hackers

Anonymous has carried out web attacks to help Wikileaks. The group [ANONYMOUS], which made headlines in December 2010 after it used software freely available over the internet to temporarily bring down the sites of MasterCard and Visa, said that its members were not credit card thieves.

they are still out there Anonymous

Anonymous Hackers Claim Retaliatory Attack On Spanish Police Website

A flag conveying symbolism associated with Anonymous. The symbolism of the "suit without a head" represents leaderless organization and anonymity.

Individuals appearing in public as Anonymous, wearing the Guy Fawkes masks popularized by the comic book and film V for Vendetta, Los Angeles, February 2008 via en.wikipedia.org

Online vigilante group Anonymous has denied being behind an attack that led to the theft of personal data from around 77 million PlayStation users. "Whoever broke into Sony's servers to steal the credit card info and left a document blaming Anonymous clearly wanted Anonymous to be blamed for the most significant digital theft in history," the statement read.

More than a million users have been affected by the security breach

Three suspected members of the Anonymous hacking group have been arrested in Spain.

The trio are said to have been involved in co-ordinating the group's activity in that country.

The arrests were made simultaneously in three Spanish cities - Barcelona, Valencia and Almeria.

Anonymous has claimed responsibility for attacks on Sony, Spanish banks and co-ordinated action in defence of whistle-blowing site Wikileaks.

A statement from the Spanish national police force said that a computer seized in the home of one person it arrested was used in the hacks.

The arrests were the culmination of an investigation that began in October 2010.

It involved Spanish cyber police combing through millions of lines of chat logs to identify who was behind the group's activities.

Some of the attacks made by Anonymous members used a web-based tool called Loic to bombard target sites with data. The websites of PayPal, Mastercard and Amazon were all targeted using this tool.

It seems that Loic did a poor job of hiding the identity of the people using it. It is believed that some police forces have already moved against the group based on this information.

Arrests have been made in the US, UK and Holland of Anonymous members, prior to the raids in Spain.

Anonymous grew out of the online picture sharing site 4Chan and describes itself as a group of concerned internet citizens.

As well as attacking sites that it perceives as not supporting Wikileaks. The loosely organised collective has also attacked government sites in Tunisia and Egypt to aid popular protest movements.

Anonymous has issued a warning to Viacom

After publishing its statement regarding Sony, Anonymous also issued a warning to entertainment giant Viacom.
The group said that because of Viacom, "thousands of people have undergone the unfortunate experience of receiving falsely-claimed copyright infringements".
Viacom is known for taking aggressive legal action to get its content removed from video sharing websites.
In 2007, the company attempted to sue YouTube for $1bn (£608m).
As part of its counter-action, YouTube's parent company Google accused Viacom of uploading some videos itself and manipulating them to look like amateur copies.
The case against YouTube was eventually thrown out.
In its statement, Anonymous wrote: "Anonymous demands from Viacom a public press release to admit and apologise for the fraud and crimes that they have committed.
"Anonymous also demands that Viacom allows everyone throughout the internet full rights to be able to express themselves.
"Lastly, we, the citizens of the world, demand that Viacom stops their attempts to gather personally identifying information such as IPs, which are of no relevance to them."

via bbc.co.uk

I doubt Viacom did this... it was merely Youtube's hypothetical to convince the judge of Viacom's own possibly suspicion because the argument became a matter of possibility. claiming the hypothetical as a truth is merely a tool. yes it is a lie, but that is the way the law works.  sometimes it is merely to get a judge's attention as to the concept.

...I guess they got Anonymous, but there are obviously a lot of potential suspects out there that could of framed Anonymous. hackers like to set each other up. They are also very aware of things. They are often already in positions of power.

The personal details of thousands of people have been stolen after hackers targeted British games developer Codemasters.

The firm described the data theft as "significant" saying names, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth were all taken on 3 June.

However, it said that payment details were not compromised.

The latest security breach comes in the midst of a spate of hacker attacks, including several against Sony.

Codemasters said it took the compromised website offline as "as soon as the intrusion was detected". via bbc.co.uk

Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is an Internet meme that originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, representing the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain.^[2] It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known.^[3]
In its early form, the concept has been adopted by a decentralized on-line community acting anonymously in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal, and primarily focused on entertainment. Beginning with 2008, the Anonymous collective has become increasingly associated with collaborative, international hacktivism, undertaking protests and other actions, often with the goal of promoting internet freedom and freedom of speech. Actions credited to "Anonymous" are undertaken by unidentified individuals who apply the Anonymous label to themselves as attribution.^[4]
Although not necessarily tied to a single on-line entity, many websites are strongly associated with Anonymous. This includes notable imageboards such as 4chan, Futaba, their associated wikis, Encyclopædia Dramatica, and a number of forums.^[5] After a series of controversial, widely-publicized protests and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by Anonymous in 2008, incidents linked to its cadre members have increased.^[6] In consideration of its capabilities, Anonymous has been posited by CNN to be one of the three major successors to WikiLeaks.^[7]

via en.wikipedia.org

Anonymous' organization

Anonymous isn’t truly an organization; not in any traditional sense. They are a large, decentralized group of individuals who share common interests and web haunts. There are no official members, guidelines, leaders, representatives or unifying principles. Rather, Anonymous is a word that identifies the millions of people, groups, and individuals on and off of the internet who, without disclosing their identities, express diverse opinions on many topics.

Being "Anonymous" is much more a quality or a self-definition than a membership. Each project under the Anonymous banner may have a whole different set of instigators. Leadership, when it exists, is informal and carried out in chat channels, forums, IM and public calls to action online. No one's meeting in a board room.

The name Anonymous itself is inspired by the perceived anonymity under which users post images and comments on the Internet. Usage of the term Anonymous in the sense of a shared identity began on imageboards.


Origin of Anonymous

They are loosely affiliated with 4chan and other smaller "chan" boards (like 7chan, 2chan and 711chan) due to these sites' anonymous posting feature, which allows them to plan attacks without revealing any identifying information.

A tag of Anonymous is assigned to visitors who leave comments without identifying the originator of the posted content. Users of imageboards sometimes jokingly acted as if Anonymous were a real person. As the popularity of imageboards increased, the idea of Anonymous as a collective of unnamed individuals became an internet meme.

They coordinate raids on forums like 4chan.org and ICQ chat rooms, among other venues. 4chan.org is a major hub, but I wouldn’t call it Anonymous’ home. Anonops.net was as close to an HQ as they had, but it has been shut down.

Some claim Anonymous to be the first internet-based superconsciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're travelling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely.

Anonymous doesn't like to be called a 'group'. And much less do its members like to be called 'hackers'. They are, to use the manifesto's excitable, sci-fi-tinged terminology, an "Online Living Consciousness"

Anonymous hierarchy

They have been described as a leaderless, anarchic group of "hacktivists" but inside Anonymous, some have found that the organization is more hierarchical – with a hidden cabal of around a dozen highly skilled hackers coordinating attacks across the web.

One member said the group's "command and control" centers are invite-only, adding: "It's to protect people, but if you have proven trustworthy you get invited – it's not hard to do. It's not some elitist structure but a way to keep the press and the odd bit of law enforcement seeing who issues commands."

"Our project has no leader structure, only different roles. The degree of leadership and organization in the various projects various a lot," one long-term insider explained. "It's all very chaotic, but we communicate and co-operate with each other. I see us as different cells of the same organism."

The leaders of the group use internet relay chat (IRC) technology, which can allow groups of people to communicate clandestinely. Some in the upper echelons are understood to have control over "botnets" comprising more than 1,000 Windows PCs that have been infected with a virus and can be controlled without the user's knowledge to direct "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks against target organizations.

via tremblinguterus.blogspot.com

FBI Counter-Terror Official: Al Qaeda 'Thrives' After Dictators Fall

But who cares? Obama has a vision...

(ABC) On the same day reports emerged of a new al Qaeda video that praised the revolutions sweeping the Arab world, one the U.S.'s top counter-terror officials warned the terror organization "thrives" in the political unrest that follows.

"The governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen have drastically changed in the last six months," FBI Assistant Director of Counter-Terrorism Mark Giuliano said Thursday. "They are now led by transitional or interim governments, military regimes, or democratic alliances with no established track record on counterterrorism efforts. Al Qaeda thrives in such conditions and countries of weak governance and political instability -- countries in which governments may be sympathetic to their campaign of violence."

Giuliano made the comments at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy just hours before the first reports emerged of the new al Qaeda video, which features separate appearances by al Qaeda's number two commander, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and American-born key commander in al Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula (AQAP), Anwar al-Awlaki, each praising the recent uprisings. In the hour-plus long video, al-Zawahiri orders Muslims in Egypt to create an Islamic state there and calls for the Arab armies of the Middle East to intervene in Libya to oust dictator Moammar Gadhafi before "Western aid... turns into invasions." More...via eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com

Déjà vu: Syria, the U.N. "Human Rights" Council, and the Obama Administration

As if Obama Administration's attempt wasn't as big a failure as it was a sham, Obama has announced his decision to seek a reelection, just as Syria made its move to seek a seat on the Council

The Obama administration’s effort to draw an artificial distinction between the butchers in Damascus and the gangsters in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, has taken a bizarre twist: Syria is seeking a seat on the U.N.’s top human rights body, the Human Rights Council. And, as part of the process leading up to the May 20, 2011 elections, the U.N. published a Syria’s “pledge” to protect human rights on Thursday.
For context, this is the same pledge system that Muammar Qaddafi’s regime used to get a seat on the Council last May. Rather than refusing to legitimize a scheme that makes a mockery of the institution, the Obama administration announced hours before that it has decided to seek a second term on the U.N. Human Rights Council.
The announcement comes a whopping 14 months before the U.S. term on the Council expires, making the declaration totally unnecessary to guarantee American reelection. Instead, it seems, President Obama aims to preempt mounting criticism of his decision to participate, as well as to minimize the serious menace posed by Syria’s ambitions. The move comes at precisely the wrong moment in time. (TWS)
More... via eye-on-the-world.blogspot.comimage of Syria's first couple, Asma and Bashar al-Assad, at their private office overlooking Damascus.from "Hating Israel isn't enough"

Hating Israel isn't enough

Syria's first couple, Asma and Bashar al-Assad, at their private office overlooking Damascus.

In yet another Arab country it becomes apparent that
hating Israel isn't the only thing that's important.

That country is Syria.

.....To Paris Match she was "the element of light in a country full of shadow zones"; to French Elle, the most stylish woman in world politics. Even the Sun was moved to coo over "the sexy Brit bringing Syria in from the cold".  But when American Vogue last month published a glittering profile of Asma al-Assad, calling her "a rose in the desert … glamorous, young and very chic", it seemed the world's patience with fawning paeans to Syria's British-born first lady was beginning to wear thin. The former banker, 35, who grew up in Acton, west London, has been married for more than a decade to the country's president, Bashar al-Assad, with whom she has three children. She is, said Vogue, "the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies," who combines her passion for Christian Louboutin shoes with a mission "to create a beacon of culture and secularism in a powder-keg region".

According to many observers, Assad was supposed to be immune to this kind of popular movement. His anti-American policies and enmity toward Israel were thought to boost his legitimacy in the eyes of his people. Compared the advanced age of Egypt’s former president, 82-year-old Hosni Mubarak, and Tunisia’s ex-president, 74-year-old Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Assad’s relative youth at 45 was also thought to be an asset. One Syria specialist, Joshua Landis, noted that unlike the aging Mubarak, the young Assad was “popular among young people” who “tend to blame [corruption] on . . . the ‘old guard.’” An unfortunately timed puff piece on Asma al-Assad, the president’s glamorous wife, in the current issue of Vogue, spoke of the “first lady’s central mission . . . to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen [and] encourage them to engage in what she calls ‘active citizenship.’” It gave plausibility to the claim that the Assads are a fresh breeze blowing through a decrepit house.
Ironically, the basis for such arguments was Assad’s own public relations strategy. When Assad inherited power from his father in 2000, he adopted the “old versus new guard” theme to cultivate his image as a reformer and bolster his legitimacy at home and abroad. For a brief period, he allowed dissidents to criticize corruption openly. But this so-called Damascus Spring was a cynical mirage. In the past decade, Syria has not seen a single meaningful act of reform.

Hafez el Assad

The truth is that Assad could not have pursued such reform even if he had wanted to, as this would have meant taking on the corruption of his immediate family. Assad’s cousin, the billionaire Makhlouf, is widely considered to be the second-most powerful man in the country, even though he holds no official title. He is essentially the economic arm of the regime, using his business empire to co-opt the Sunni merchant class. (Makhlouf, Assad, and most of the ruling elite and high-ranking officers are Alawites, a minority sect.) When the people of Deraa set fire to the Syriatel office, they were not targeting the old guard; they were targeting the very heart of the current regime, or, as one Syrian activist in Deraa told Reuters, the very symbols of oppression and corruption.
The idea that Assad’s anti-Western ideology is popular enough to shield him from public discontent comes from him as well: in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in late January, he explained that the Mubarak regime was unpopular due to its alliance with the United States and its peace treaty with Israel. By contrast, he suggested, the Syrian regime was ideologically united with the people. As Assad put it, Syrians “do not go into an uprising,” because “it is not only about [their] needs and not only about the reform. It is about the ideology.” Assad’s foreign policy and ideology of “resistance” may indeed be popular in Syria. But the protests are driven by concerns over domestic issues. The idea that ideology and foreign policy trump concerns about lack of freedom, economic opportunity, and political participation has proved wrong.

Unfortunately, that does not mean that the Assad regime is likely to fall.

Other commentators who dismissed the likelihood of the Assad regime falling pointed to solidarity among the Alawite elite. Unlike the Egyptian army, which functioned independently of Mubarak and broke with him at a key moment, the Syrian brass, as part of a small religious minority, views its fate and safety as inextricably linked to Assad’s and therefore will not fail to crack down on protests.

image via manilafashionobserver.com

I can't see the 'international community' getting involved in Syria the way it has in Libya. First, they can't get involved with every country in the Arab world. And second, Assad is considered more 'one of the club' than Gadhafi (who is widely regarded as a lunatic) and even Ahmadinejad.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com
Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP via guardian.co.uk
Taryn Simon via nytimes.com

...which means the hypocrisy of the Clinton foreign police continues

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Mr. Burns Explains U.S. Middle East Policy

UPDATED... Hillary decided not to resign..., but what is the chance of Obama winning another election?

Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William J. Burns

For a comprehensive statement of current U.S. Middle East policy you can’t do better than the testimony of Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William J. Burns at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on March 17, 2011.

It’s horrifying. Here’s my summary of the key point:

The United States will press for political reform and urge governments to talk to the opposition in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia. The United States will NOT press for political reform or urge governments to talk to the opposition in the Gaza Strip, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan, and Syria.

What do the governments in the first paragraph have in common? They have been friendly to the United States.
What do the governments in the second paragraph have in common? They are currently unfriendly to the United States.
In other words, the policy is to pressure your friends (they become weaker); engage your enemies (they become stronger). It is the exact opposite of what U.S. policy should be at this time.
There is a carefully thought out rationale for this policy. It is this:
If relatively moderate countries open their political process (even if it gives Islamists a chance to take power), they will become stronger and less likely to have radical revolutions. Their success will then show that the radical regimes have failed and everyone will see democracy works better. So the radicals will all decide to become moderate or be overthrown by their own people.
The above paragraph is not a joke or satire. This idea is very clearly expressed in the testimony and in other administration statements. This is a historical theme in U.S. foreign policy.
For example, this was precisely the idea regarding the Palestinians. The United States and others would pour money into the West Bank, making the Palestinian Authority a success. Meanwhile, Gaza would sink into stagnation and the people there would want to have a good life, like those on the West Bank.
Of course, the Obama Administration then pressed Israel to drop the sanctions and pumped money (indirectly) into the Gaza Strip.
What else is wrong with this policy? A lot, but briefly:
– It ignores the fact that radical dictators will kill people to stay in power.
– Reform can do more to weaken regimes than the subversion of radical oppositionists.
– Ideology is a powerful factor sometimes transcending material well-being.
– The radicals think they’re winning so why should they change? The moderates think they’re losing and are more likely to change sides or appease the radicals.
– Radical nationalists or Islamists can use the opening in politics to win power and then transform the state into an aggressive, anti-American country. To some extent, this is what happened in Iran.
A more realistic U.S. government would have put some tough language into Burns’ testimony to cover itself by saying, for example, that it would back the democratic opposition in Iran. But the Obama administration is so ideologically blinded and has been given such a free pass by the mass media that it doesn’t realize how obviously far-out it behaves.
In giving this testimony — and this is only my opinion — Burns must have been the most horrified person in the Senate hearing room. After all, not only is he the highest-ranking career person in the State Department, he’s also a veteran of three decades of policymaking on the Middle East.
Much of what he said — expressing U.S. (i.e., White House) policy runs directly counter to everything he’s believed, advocated, and implemented in his career. Let’s go through it in detail, keeping in mind that Burns is just President Barack Obama’s messenger here.
His testimony expresses wild enthusiasm for recent Arab political upheavals. There’s no hint about throwing out a 32-year-old alliance with Egypt’s regime. Nor is there any whisper of an Islamist threat (no mention of Islamism or of the Muslim Brotherhood), or of an Iranian strategic threat (except for a phrase at the very end), much less from the radicalism of the Syrian regime, Hamas, and Hizballah. There’s no mention of Turkey’s change of sides or of any strategic problems whatsoever.
In a competent administration, if only to cover itself, the testimony would have included real warnings; reservations; strategic considerations; concerns over protecting U.S. interests, stress on the need to maintain U.S. leadership and credibility; and the importance of helping allies protect themselves.
Instead we get this community organizer-style rhetoric:

“The revolutions…are about the brave, proud, and determined people of Arab societies, intent upon better governance and more economic opportunities, intent upon erasing the disconnect between the rulers and the ruled that for so long has been so stifling for so many. And they’re about the universal values that the President spoke about two years ago in Cairo–the right of peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, and the right to determine one’s own destiny….”
“It is a moment of great possibility for American policy and help; a moment when the peaceful, homegrown, non-ideological movement surging out of Tahrir Square offers a powerful repudiation of al-Qaida’s false narrative that violence and extremism are the only ways to effect change.”

Here we see another administration theme: America’s only enemy is a tiny group called al-Qaida. America’s enemy is not revolutionary Islamism, which already controls entire countries and animates movements that mobilize millions of people.
Strange, but neither al-Qaida nor any other radical Islamist force (Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, the Taliban, the Iraqi insurgents, or the Muslim Brotherhoods, as well as al-Qaida) seem the least bit worried about these upheavals. Perhaps the Obama Administration’s naive ideologues understand these things better than those who actually are Muslims, Arabs, speak the languages, and live in the Middle East.
Here is about all the lip service Burns’ testimony gives to the risks of Obama policy:

“But it is also a moment of considerable risk, because there is nothing automatic or foreordained about the success of such transitions. Helping to get them right is as important a challenge for American foreign policy as any we have faced since the end of the Cold War.”

“Helping to get them right!” Aside from being ungrammatical, do you think the Obama Administration is going to be able to help make Egypt into a moderate, stable, wealthy, happy, democratic state?
But there’s more. The administration’s policy then goes on to discredit the “war on terrorism” and battle with Islamism:

“The long-held conceit of many Arab leaders was that there were really only two political choices — the autocrats you know or the Islamic extremists you fear. That provided a convenient rationale for blocking real political outlets or broadened participation, and it ultimately produced the spontaneous combustion of Tahrir Square.”

But doesn’t that remain to be seen? That “spontaneous” combustion including a lot of anti-American far leftists and Muslim Brotherhood cadre. Those Arab leaders haven’t yet been proven wrong.
Imagine for the moment that you are a Saudi or Jordanian leader reading this. What would you say to the Obama Administration?:
You think the “Islamic extremists” are a mirage? You think Iran and its power is a conceit? Have you seen how many people were killed in Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan in such internal conflicts? They want to kill us as well. You Americans are idiots! Why should we pay attention to you?
Burns continues with phrases like “remarkable sense of public empowerment” and “a communications revolution that stripped governments of their old monopoly on the flow of information, made people more aware of what others had in other societies that they didn’t, and helped them mobilize without central leadership or conventional political organizations.”
Let’s be frank here: the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt succeeded for one reason ultimately — that the armies supported them. They failed in Iran, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and elsewhere because the security forces supported the regime. Let’s not get carried away with “public empowerment” and Facebook as the twenty-first century equivalent of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book!
Burns continues with a lecture on political theory:

“Political systems and leaderships that fail to respond to the legitimate aspirations of their people become more brittle, not more stable. Popular pressures to realize universal values will take different shapes in different societies, but no society is immune from them. Political systems are a little like bicycles — unless they’re peddled forward, they tend to fall over.”

You see, weakening a friendly regime is always good! Change is always good! The people always want to realize “universal values” and merely do so in different ways (terrorism perhaps?).
Nobody could possibly be a radical nationalist, an Islamist, a militant anti-American or antisemite. They all want what Americans want. And unless you give the masses what they want, you fall from power, so you better give them what they want. It’s just a matter of negotiating the surrender terms.
There’s no way that Burns could really believe this stuff after three decades’ work on the Middle East.
He even calls this maxim an “inconvenient truth,” a reference to former Vice-President Al Gore’s global warming film. Yet despite Burns’ expression of guilt that past U.S. policy failed to recognize this building explosion of reformism and rebellion, the actual history of that policy shows something different. I participated in discussions with U.S. policymakers starting in the 1980s about the new generation, demographic shift, failure of Arab regimes, and other such factors. They weren’t so ignorant at all but understood the dangers involved, too.
Most obviously, there were attempts by President George W. Bush’s administration to push reform. But the current administration can’t say anything nice about its predecessor. And what about President Jimmy Carter’s push on democracy and human rights, including pressure on Iran’s shah to do precisely what the administration wants Arab leaders to do now? Oops. Better not mention that precedent or president.
But there’s more kumbaya babble instead of national interests’ diplomacy here. Burns says:

“It is in our long-term interest to support the emergence of more transparent and more responsive governments, who will ultimately make stronger and more stable partners….”

While he admits that “the short-term is likely to be pretty complicated and unsettling” Burns is basically saying that nothing can go wrong.
He refers to “a danger of authoritarian retrenchment….” In other words, the region can go “back” to a Mubarak-style regime. But how about change leading to a brand new type of totalitarianism like what happened in Iran?
Remember, no administration official can say the word “Islamism.” So instead Burns refers to how “predatory extremists” might take advantage of the situation, as if these are burglars rather than movements with an attractive ideology and mass base far stronger than the Facebook crowd.
Burns names “economic stagnation” and failure to improve people’s lives as factors which might help these unnamed extremists take over. Burns then makes solving these problems sound easy. “We can help produce private sector jobs desperately needed to keep pace with demography and expectations.” Really? They can’t even do that in America!
It’s all very well to say that an “independent media to hold people accountable” is absolutely necessary. But the media is likely to be highly partisan and often controlled by radicals.
Here’s my favorite sentence:

“Popularly elected governments sometimes taking sharper issue with American policies than their autocratic predecessors did, and elections sometimes producing uncomfortable results.”

You mean like Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hizballah in Lebanon? Might the “uncomfortable results” include throwing out U.S. bases, sponsoring terrorism, starting wars, promoting hysterical anti-Americanism, little things like that?
Yet what is most shocking of all in the new American policy is the failure even to mention support for democratic movements against the governments of Iran and Syria. Democratic reform is presented as managing the collapse of America’s Arab friends rather than an American asset to use against those who are both its enemies and the enemies of freedom.
How can the U.S. government make promoting democracy its main priority without even mentioning the idea of vigorously promoting democracy in Iran or Syria or supporting the oppositions in those countries? Why does the Obama Administration engage its enemies (Syria, Hizballah, and even the Taliban) and enrage its friends?
This is a policy that supports “serious political reform” and dialogue with the opposition only in countries friendly to the United States! Have they thought about what this means: Jordan’s government being pushed into a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian Authority pressed to set up a coalition with Hamas?
Only at the very end of Burns’ testimony, briefly and as an afterthought, comes the stuff that used to be U.S. Middle East policy before the triumph of Facebook democracy:

“Regional security: strengthening ties to the GCC states; in fighting terrorism; in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and setting off a catastrophic regional arms race; in not losing sight of Iraq’s own crucial democratic transition and reintegration into the Arab world.”

Oh yes, almost forgot about that obsolete stuff. Is Burns’ statement the best America — the best even Obama — can do as the Middle East burns?
Perhaps Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to resign after reading Burns’ draft testimony. I sure would have done so if I were her.

---

About the author,


Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His books include Islamic Fundamentalists in Egyptian Politics and The Muslim Brotherhood (Palgrave-Macmillan); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, a study of Arab reform movements (Wiley). GLORIA Center site: http://www.gloria-center.org His blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.

via crethiplethi.com
image via alwatan.com.sa
h/t IFindTerror

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Every analyst loves the day when policymakers and national leaders start echoing precisely what he's been writing for weeks, months, and years. In this case, unfortunately, it's about bad things happening.

Read this article in the new mainstream, establishment Internet newspaper, The Daily,  interviewing people around Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Insiders love to give  anonymous quotes about what's really going on within government, especially when they see the water rising up to the top of the portholes (the ship is sinking, echoing the Titanic imagery of this article's title); they are horrified by what's happening; and they see a catastrophe they don't want to be associated with (read: blamed for).

Guess what? They're saying that President Barack Obama and most of his team are dangerously incompetent and ideologically deluded--"amateur night" is one memorable phrase used. This is what I've been warning about since the summer of 2008 and pointing out in detail since January 20, 2009, on a daily basis.

I'm not writing this article for the purpose of saying I told you so, Well, okay, yes, I'm doing that also since it's one of the few pleasures of my craft. But what's most important is that there's no excuse now for anyone failing to understand that this is true.

Most of what I have written is based on material available with some understanding of the issues, good judgment, and serious research. Yet the most basic points have been missed by those far higher paid (that doesn't say much), with big budgets (ditto), large staffs (ditto), and the prestige that opens doors (ditto).

The main reason I'm writing this article is to declare, solemnly and seriously, that as of now, March 2011, nobody can say that they didn't know the U.S. government is set on a disastrous course internationally, throwing away American credibility, subverting U.S. allies, and helping America's foes (and the enemies of democracy and freedom).

This is not a matter of liberal and conservative or of Democrat and Republican. It is a national emergency. One can only hope that those within the government bureaucracy, Congress, the media, opinionmakers, and the general public (also known as: voters) wake up right now this minute and take appropriate action.

The alarm bell is going off in your ears.

via rubinreports.blogspot.com

Dictators' Wives

Bashar Al-Assad's wife, Asma...

Elena Ceauses

During the last few weeks, much has been said about dictators in the Arab world, but not as much about their wives. All of them have been living, and still do, next to their husbands, and playing a role similar to that of some European dictators' wives of the past, such as Elena Ceausescu, who, under her husband's regime, became a major Romanian political figure and, to prop up her image, even pretended to have made new scientific discoveries.

The wave of protests that shook the Middle East has put under the spotlight some first ladies of the region, many of whom, until recently, competed in who was the most elegant and the most socially engaged. Now, however, some of them have been forced to flee (taking with them tons of gold); others continue to live their golden lives, although with the fear that street protests might topple their husbands' regimes.

Bashar Al-Assad's wife, Asma, in Syria has been recently been crowned with a controversial article in Vogue magazine as an outstanding "glamorous, young and chic" woman. Notwithstanding her trendy status, she never showed any uneasiness about being the wife of a dictator who succeeded his father power in 2000, and is responsible for the torture and death of countless political opponents.

Libya’s first lady owns 20 tons of gold: reports via alarabiya.net

In Qatar, the beautiful Emir's wife, Sheikha Moza,

Sheikha Moza

is travelling throughout the Middle East and to New York to speak about democracy and reforms, when her own country does not even have an elected Parliament.

After the fall of the 23 year old Tunisian regime of Ben Ali, the international media have spoken at length about the former rais's wife, Leila Trabelsi, who started as a hairdresser,

Leila Trabelsi

and eventually reached stardom as "Carthage's Regent". While many of her countrymen do not have the means even to buy the daily bread, she bought a coat at Dior's in 2000 for 30.000 Euros and had the bill sent to the Tunisian Embassy in Paris as if it was her office.

Suzanne Mubarak

Sa'ad Eddin Ibrahim

Losing the title of First Lady just after Leila, was the Pharaoh's wife, Suzanne Mubarak. She has always tried to portray herself as an intellectual and socially engaged woman; she studied with Sa'ad Eddin Ibrahim, an eminent Egyptian sociologist, and an opponent to the regime. Even though she did not hold any official position, Suzanne Mubarak headed various "charitable" organization;. however, no public figure could become part of this sector without her consent. According to the French magazine Paris Match, Mrs. Mubarak received annually from the Egyptian for her activities US $5 billion, part of which – as reported by the French weekly – went directly into her personal bank account.
Egyptians contend that Suzanne Mubarak's campaigns were only meant to give her good publicity, particularly in the West, where she was widely celebrated. The most prominent Egyptian activist for Women's Rights, Nawal Saadawi, a medical doctor and a political dissident, said that Suzanne Mubarak, just like other dictators' wives, suffers from the same complex as her husband: she would like be the leader. According to Saadawi, Mrs. Mubarak killed the feminist movement in order to lead it, thereby impeding any possible progress for women's rights. During the uprising of Tahrir Square, she was often compared to Queen Marie Antoinette of France for her lavish lifestyle and for failing to be in touch with the reality of her country.
In the meanwhile, on YouTube, can be found a parody of a phone call from Leila Trabelsi in Saudi Arabia to Suzanne Mubarak: "We are one family," says Leila. "Take your stuff and come over here. But, before leaving, don't forget to stop at your bank; you will need some cash to save your bottom.".
Abdelmajid Mahmoud, the Egyptian General Public Prosecutor, must have taken this call seriously: he decided to forbid the Mubarak family to leave the country, froze their real estate assets, their bank accounts and their stocks. However, this satiric invitation of Lelila's may come handy for other first ladies in the Middle East, who may soon have to face the revolt of their chauffeurs and servants.

via hudson-ny.org

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