The Muslim Brotherhood has not had as large a role in the protests as some expected them to. Reporter Sharif Kouddous reported on Twitter earlier Saturday: In Tahrir Square, “Muslim Brotherhood chanting Allah Akbar. Crowd stopped them chanting louder: Muslim, Christian, we're all Egyptian.”
However, the Associated Press reports that the leader of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood, Hammam Saeed, said Arabs will topple any Middle Eastern leader backed by the United States.
“The Americans and [President] Obama must be losing sleep over the popular revolt in Egypt,” he said. “Now, Obama must understand that the people have woken up and are ready to unseat the tyrant leaders who remained in power because of U.S. backing.”
Phi Beta Iota: The anti-US theme is going to carry this revolution beyond the Middle East, and could possibly be a foundation for inter-faith dialog at the Assisi Peace Summit. The over-riding theme emergent side by side with anti-US is that of anti-corruption. We reiterate our view that 2012 will not be a year of apocalypse but rather a year of Awakening.
LONDON, Jan 29 (APP)- Founder of Minhaj-ul-Quran International Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri speaking at the World Economic Forum in Swiss resort town of Davos has underscored promoting of inter-faith harmony for tackling terrorism.
As the #jan25 revolution continues in Egypt, many people are finding that some of the oldest tricks in the book are working to get them connected, which authorities have tried to stop from happening with enforced curfews and cuts to Internet service.
IDG News Service – “When countries block, we evolve,” an activist with the group We Rebuild wrote in a Twitter message Friday.
That's just what many Egyptians have been doing this week, as groups like We Rebuild scramble to keep the country connected to the outside world, turning to landline telephones, fax machines and even ham radio to keep information flowing in and out of the country.
The toppling of Tunisia's president is having a ricochet effect across the Arab world with demonstrators trading fear for solidarity.
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The uprisings are having a ricochet effect across the Arab world. People are watching the events unfolding on television and Facebook and identifying with the people in the streets.
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“It's political challenge to autocratic systems that have degraded and dehumanized people and humiliated them to the point where they just can't take it anymore and they finally started to erupt,” said Rami Khouri, a commentator and analyst affiliated with the American University of Beirut. “That's combined with intense social and economic pressures and disparities which are accentuated by the lavish lifestyles of the rich who made their money by being close to the regime.”
January 29, 2011 — The Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM) would like to express its solidarity with the revolutionary masses in Egypt, as well as in Tunisia and other countries in North Africa and the Middle East, for their courageous struggle against repressive regimes which are mostly backed by US-led imperialist powers.
January 29, 2011 — The progressive movement and peoples of the Philippines stands in solidarity with the Egyptian people and the mass movement in the streets in these critical moments in their struggle for the ouster of the dictatorial Mubarak regime. We salute them for their tremendous courage in fighting a vicious regime, which has an infamous reputation for the brutality of its police and security forces, and that has been responsible for arbitrarily arresting and cruelly torturing government opponents. We support the people’s message that Mubarak must go and that the people no longer want his government and system.
We also salute the upsurge of the Tunisian peoples in overthrowing the US-backed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, and how their victory has electrified and inspired the people of Egypt and the Middle East, while dictators shake with fear.
Phi Beta Iota: The repeated refrain associated with the regime change movements singles out the USA for its decades of support for oppressive regimes. Two things are happening here: the public has lost its fear and found its solidarity; and the public is now thinking in historical context and holding the USA accountable for its role in supporting Israeli genocide against the Palestinians, and dictators all over the world (less North Korea and Cuba).
CAIRO (AP) — For Gamal Hassanein, it began with a slap.
The unemployed 24-year-old was arguing with a police officer when the man struck him across the face — a blow that seemed to sting for months.
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“He stole my dignity with that slap,” said Hassanein, who does odd jobs to make money. “We could never stand up to those officers before because we were afraid. But we're no longer willing to be silenced by our fear.”
The tens of thousands of protesters who have thrown Egypt's 30-year-old regime into tumult come from all walks of life — conservative Muslims and Christians, yuppies and the unemployed, young and old. For many, the protests demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down were a catalyst for years or decades of repressed anger at mistreatment at the hands of the state.
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One after another, they describe a moment buried in their memory that came gushing to the surface as they saw others taking to the streets.
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“They are taking us lightly and they don't feel our frustration,” she said. “This is a uprising of the people and we will not shut up again.”
Phi Beta Iota: Especially noteworthy in this professional piece is the observation that the Muslim Brotherhood, while a key player, is not the whole enchilada–the public has been mobilized across the board by a whole range of preconditions and personal experiences.
Worth a look.Activists and concerned citizens in the USA should be ramping up ham radio as well as OpenBTS and OpenMoney. Facebook credits might be an intermediate solution. As we saw in relation to Wikileaks with Amazon, MasterCard, and PayPal, corporations cannot be trusted to honor their contracts in the face of the slightest pressure and without a court order and the US Government is perfectly capable of shutting down the Internet without a court order. US activists should plan a “dead hand” response to any shutdown, i.e. into the streets, burning tires, non-violence, and general strike until all public systems are restored.
The widely respected Sunni Muslim cleric who holds Egyptian and Qatari nationalities, also encouraged Egyptians to keep up peaceful protests, in an interview with Al-Jazeera television. “President Mubarak … I advise you to depart from Egypt … There is no other solution to this problem but for Mubarak to go,” Qaradawi said on Saturday.
Phi Beta Iota: Turkey is making its move. This has been years if not decades in the making, and what we are seeing in an extraordinary coming together of the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey, and a wide variety of interested parties who see in Israel, the Arab dictators, and the USA's military presence in the region all they believe to be the Great Satan. The fall of the dictators and the exit of the US from this region are, in our collective view, inevitable. The fate of Israel hangs in the balance–they will be lucky to end up with a small separate state after giving up half the waterfront, the occupied lands, and all presence in and around Gaza. Interestingly, because secular corruption has played so prominent a role in the region, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is virtually assured, taking “blow-back” to the next level. In this context, the Assisi Peace Summit and the prospects for inter-faith agreement on the need for multinational information-sharing and sense-making take on even more importance.
The ghost of the 1979 Iranian revolution is very much on the minds of veteran intelligence officials as Egypt explodes in street protests.
Most historians agree that the CIA was largely in the dark when anti-American students, radical Islamists and mullahs ignited street protests in Tehran because the U.S.-backed shah had forbidden the CIA to have contact with opposition groups.
Phi Beta Iota: Stein is a low-rent version of Ignatius, and most of his sources rarely have anything substantive to contribute. This is puffery. CIA is in the liaison business, not the espionage or the analytics business. The Safari Club (the fifth CIA that does rendition and torture) is built around Egyptian intelligence officers whose idea of a good time is sodomizing drugged kids and taking photos to turn the kids against their fathers. Not only is CIA worthless in Egypt and across the region, but the minute they are asked to do something they will out-source it because they have no internal bench–indeed, the place looks like a geriatric ward now, with annuitants all over the place.
