Shahidul Alam on photography for change

Shahidul Alam walked on stage on Thursday wearing a marigold-colored salwar kameez, a camera over his left shoulder, and a beltpack slung around his hips. There was no mistaking his calling. The Bangladeshi photographer, activist and social entrepreneur has almost single-handedly rebalanced the world of photojournalism, long dominated by Western photographers and their worldview. He has shifted its lens eastward and southward by training legions of photographers in his homeland, creating an award-winning photo agency to sell their work and founding a prestigious international photography festival to showcase their talent. And this fall, he published a book, My Journey as a Witness, telling the story of Bangladeshi photography as an instrument of social justice. He serves as an ambassador of this movement, in the words of PopTech’s executive director, Andrew Zolli, “travelling the world leaving new cultures of art makers in his wake.” We sat down with Alam backstage in Camden, Maine.

PopTech: You founded Drik, a photo agency, and the Chobi MelaInternational Festival of Photography. Why did you feel it was important for Bangladeshi photographers, as well as their peers, to have these outlets for their work?
Shahidul Alam: Firstly, it was a question of addressing this very distorted perception people have of what I call the “majority world” countries. Our poverty is a reality, but that is not the only identity that we have. Secondly, I wanted to challenge a very unidirectional form of storytelling that has — to a large extent — been propagated by the West. The richness and diversity of human life gets lost in a very agenda-led information distribution system. So that was the beginning.

We also wanted to celebrate our own culture. It’s not that I am against white, Western photographers producing work in Bangladesh — I think our ideas need to be challenged just as much. It’s the monopoly of dissemination that I was against. So we wanted to create a space for diversity — for both Western work and our own work. That’s where the Chobi Mela festival came in — to facilitate that cultural infusion.

Yesterday morning, in your presentation at PopTech, you showed a few examples of mobile photography exhibits — on rickshaws and tuk tuks — going places where that kind of exhibit has never been before. You called it “Taking the Gallery to the People.” Why was it important to you to get photographs out of galleries and out of the city?
In some ways, I am part of the problem I’ve been describing. I’m a middle-class male photographer. If I were in a slum, photographing a woman who probably doesn’t have a door to slam in my face in the first place, the power relationship between the two of us would not be very different than the power relationship between her and a Western photographer. We are perpetuating a situation in which the disenfranchised do not have the opportunity to tell their stories. To address this, we started doing two things: One was training women photographers; the other thing was teaching working-class children photography. I’ve very happy that today our agency has a large number of women and people who have come from a middle-class background. And they have a very different story to tell.

What kind of challenges do photojournalists in Bangladesh face today, and have they changed since you started out?
There are differences in terms of degree, but in principle they’re still the same. Let me give you an example. Several years ago there was an exhibit in London about the Millennium Development Goals, put together by Oxfam, Christian Aid, Save the Children — several major NGOs. All the work was produced by white, European photographers. So I asked one of the organizers why this was the case, and he replied to me that the curator had mentioned to him that “they” — meaning us — “did not have ‘the eye.’” A statement like that about women, people of color, people with handicaps of any form would be completely unacceptable in this day and age, yet here was a curator dismissing an entire group of cultural producers from what I call “the majority world”. In response, we collected work by majority world photographers, and they produced a calendar called “Having the Eye.”

Why did you put together your new book, My Journey As A Witness?
I thought it was important to document the phenomenal shift — the marvelous revolution that had taken place in Bangladesh. The book is also challenging in a very tactile way the fact that, still today, for many news organizations, the only answer is to send out a photographer to countries like Bangladesh.

Does the book itself chronicle your career?
It chronicles the movement — and my career as part of that. But it talks much more about political and social environment in which we’ve evolved. It’s not simply about photography, but about the geopolitical space we live in.

Do you think digital photography and the access to digital photography is democratizing the kind of storytelling you’ve been doing all your life?
I think the fact that so many people have digital tools certainly will change the predatory nature of media. But that’s only a small part of it. If I am photographing a farmer in a field in Bangladesh for, let’s say, the New York Times, the person who’s probably most knowledgeable about the situation is the farmer. Through my proximity, I know a little bit less. The person who probably knows the least is the editor at the New York Times. He or she is the most powerful person in the chain and the farmer probably has no say in how that story is told. So I think that the publishing process needs to be subverted, and until that is done, I don’t think simply producing more imagery will change things.

Image: Kris Krug for PopTech

This interview has been edited and condensed.

As government faces increasing criticism over its controversial deal with ConnocoPhillips and pressure mounts to force the government to reveal the contract, an oil spill in China lends weight to the protesters claims that the company has a poor safety record.

ConocoPhillips Halts Oil Operations In Bohai Bay, China

China said Wednesday it had ordered ConocoPhillips to immediately stop operations at several rigs in an area off the nation’s eastern coast polluted by a huge slick.

The 336-square-mile slick emanating from the oil field in Bohai Bay — which ConocoPhillips operates with China’s state-run oil giant CNOOC – has sparked outrage amid allegations of a cover-up.

On Wednesday, the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said operations would not be allowed to resume before the source of the spill was fully plugged and “risks eliminated,” as fears over the long-term impact on the environment grow.

“There has been oil seeping continuously into the sea for days from platforms B and C in the Penglai 19-3 oil field and there is still a slick in the surrounding marine areas,” the SOA said in a statement.

“Another spill could happen at any time, which has posed a huge threat to the oceanic ecological environment,” it said, adding it had ordered Houston-based ConocoPhillips to stop operations at those platforms.

Spill ‘Basically Under Control’

CNOOC last week said the spill — which was detected on June 4 but only made public at the beginning of July — was “basically under control” while ConocoPhillips told reporters the leaks had been plugged.

The official China Daily newspaper last week said that dead seaweed and rotting fish could be seen in waters around Nanhuangcheng Island near the site of the slick.

It quoted a local fisheries association official as saying the oil leak would have a “long-term” impact on the environment.

CNOOC has been slammed by state media and green groups over the spill, and it emerged on Tuesday that the firm was cleaning up another slick after a breakdown at a rig off the northeast coast.

The state-run giant said the leak was “minor”.

In a separate incident, a CNOOC refinery in the southern province of Guangdong caught fire Monday but there were no casualties, the company said, adding that the cause of the blaze was still under investigation.

The refinery is located about 25 miles from the Daya Bay nuclear power plant, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2011

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The regular weekly “Solidarity for Limon” rally had been steadily attracting bigger crowds, despite the monsoon rains. The gathering this Friday the 24th June 2011 was especially large. The street plays were popular and since this was not an event aligned to either of the main political parties, it attracted ordinary people who came to express solidarity, or merely to enjoy the performance.

This week’s performance, a drama called Khekshial (Jackal), performed by Aranyak Natyadal in front of the National Museum at around 4:30pm, was however disrupted when two men burst through the surrounding crowd and began wrecking the props.

Attack visible from 8 mins 58 secs onwards.

The audience, intially slow to react, as they thought it was part of the play, soon went after the men, but they disappeared into the crowd. Later a young man called Al-Amin was caught by the crowd and accused of being one of the attackers. The man was taken away by Shahbag police, who arrived sometime after the event. The police are reported to have released Al-Amin as he was an innocent by-stander.

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Solidarity Rally for Limon

Friday June 17, 2011
4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Outside the National Museum (Shahbagh)

It was the third rally in support of Limon Hossein—a 16 year old Jhalokathi college student, the son of an agricultural day-labourer, who was shot by RAB personnel on March 23, 2011, leading to the amputation of his left leg.

The false cases in which Limon has been implicated — possessing illegal arms, obstructing law-enforcement agencies in the pursuance of their duties — still stand; high-up government officials have stated that not only is Limon a `criminal’, his father too, is a `criminal.’

State harassment and persecution of Limon MUST be resisted because it affects all of us, he is our son, he symbolises the nation’s future. He has become a test case, and we must put our foot down and insist, Too many lives have been lost! No More!

We collected signatures in support of our demands (see below) The human chain was joined by passersby. A young theatre group from the nearby town Narayanganj Ei Bangla’y performed their street play, `Shobuj Pori.’ We were encouraged by the fact that every week ever bigger numbers of spectators gathered (see video below).

Our demands are:

Ä Stop fabricating cases against Limon and his family members.
Ä Ensure the security of Limon, and his family members
Ä Punish the perpetrators

Masud Imran (Mannu), asst professor, archaeology, Jahangirnagar university
Naseem Akhter Hussain, professor, govt and politics, Jahangirnagar university
Sayema Khatun, asst professor, anthropology, Jahangirnagar university
Mahmudul Shumon, asst professor, anthropology, Jahangirnagar university
Nasrin Khondkar, asst professor, anthropology, Jahangirnagar university
and, rahnuma ahmed, writer

Mubarak’s Ignominious Departure and the Fear Factor

by rahnuma ahmed

Mubarak is gone! Egypt is free!

Equally true is the fact that power has been assumed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. That the 30 year-old state of emergency has not yet been lifted, neither has any time frame been set, nothing beyond the invocation, “as soon as the current circumstances are over.”  Equally true is the fact that Egypt’s new, transitional (military) rulers have been quick to affirm Egypt’s commitment to all regional and international obligations and treaties, an implicit signal that the treaty of all treaties, Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel—propagated as a bulwark for peace and stability in the region, but in reality, one which helps sustain Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and the seige of Gaza—is not under threat. An affirmation swiftly welcomed by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who described the treaty as “having greatly contributed to both countries,” as “the cornerstone for peace and stability in the entire Middle East”; close at his heels was US president Barack Obama who welcomed the Egyptian pledge to “stand by” its international obligations.

But, it is also true that while Egyptian demonstrators, both young and old, rallied to scrub off slogans and graffiti from walls, to clean up the streets of Cairo of rocks, debris of violence, charred remains of Mubarak’s effigy (“Clearing the streets is just a start. It is our country now”), protestors still camped out in Tahrir square, refusing to leave until the military issued official statements on their next steps. It is also true that pro-democracy activists insist that their revolt was not against one man but against the whole regime, which Mubarak and his predecessors, had instituted. It is also true that their invincible strength prevented Omar Suleiman—the CIA’s man in Cairo who devised and implemented the programme for renditioning and torturing terrorist suspects, in whom Mubarak transferred authorities while still clinging to power—from taking charge. Pro-democracy activists insist that the revolution will not be over until all responsible for the hundreds of deaths will be investigated, tried and punished. It will not be over until Egypt’s stolen funds are restored.

Swiss banks have frozen assets of the ousted president, who is currently hunkered down in his residence at the Red Sea tourist resort, Sharm al-Sheikh. Former interior minister Habib El Adly, former prime minister Ahmed Nazif have been banned from travelling, their assets have been frozen. Former information minister Anna El Feqy has been placed under house arrest while rumors fly of business tycoons fleeing. But it is also true that while figures are totted up of how much the former president, his Welsh wife and their son fleeced Egypt, that while the huge personal wealth amassed by other members of the corrupt coterie are calculated, one does not hear of corruption within the army. That these stories are silenced.

But it is undeniable that the mass uprising was organic. One that persisted after Mubarak’s ouster, attested to by scenes of youths in Alexandria, the mainstay of the uprising, stopping cars and telling their occupants, abide by traffic rules. Of telling pedestrians, do not give bribes, read up the constitution.

It is also true that the mass uprising did not occur overnight but was, as Marwan Bishara reminds us, “the culmination of countless sit-ins, strikes, pickets, and demonstrations.”
That behind the 18 day popular revolt lies long years of grassroots mobilisation, the tireless efforts of scores of coalition builders who worked with labour unions and opposition parties, both old and new, including the Muslim Brotherhood. That we must not forget people such as, says Bishara, the late Mohammad El-Sayed Said who helped to found the Cairo Institute of Human Rights Studies and, the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights. Who underwent arrest and torture for writing the “much-acclaimed report about the punishment of dissidents by torture” (Al-Ahram). Who died last year after a long period of ill-treatment at the hands of the Mubarak regime, and a 2-year struggle with cancer. Who was “much missed in Tahrir Square.” There were many others.

It is also true that Mubarak was suffering from severe delusions when he confided in a 20 minute telephone conversation to former Israeli defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a close friend and ally, that he was looking for “an honorable way out” (Press TV, February 12, 2011).  This was on Thursday, February 10, the day he refused to step down as anticipated, offering his “children” constitutional changes instead, and transfer of authorities to Suleiman. It was the speech greeted with raised shoes, the ultimate sign of dishonor for leaders and politicians in our parts of the world. One that was globally iconised by Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoe at George Bush in 2008. A farewell parting.

It is also true that the US, Israel and western allies are the greatest obstacles to democratisation and peace in the Middle East. That the US now has to toe a careful line, that it should not appear too hasty in consigning puppet dictators—whose political use has rapidly expired in the face of mass uprisings—to (past) “history” as (present) “history unfolds” (Obama, the world was “witnessing history unfold [in Egypt]“, February 10).  As other Middle Eastern dictators, close allies and friends of the US, closely watch every move of the administration while they themselves scurry around and offer handouts to their people, as they wonder what the future holds for them.

For, despite the fact that we do not know which deals have been struck in the corridors of power, which new ones are being negotiated now, right now, as I write, it is undeniable that storms of change are blowing over Egypt. Over the entire Middle East as Arabs rise in the thousands, in the millions in Egypt, in revolt against autocrats. For democracy. For freedom.

Some call it the domino effect, but this blunts awareness of other issues. It deflects attention from the long-propagated western myth that Arabs are not capable of achieving democracy. In other words, that political subjection is natural to them. A myth manufactured to hide the reality of autocrats either installed, and/or bolstered by US intervention, both politically and militarily. “We are now proud to be Egyptians, we have gained back our dignity as human beings” declared a woman excitedly to al-Jazeera, a sentiment voiced by millions of other Egyptians. A sentiment shared the world over, We are all Egyptians now. We are all Tunisians now.

“This revolution,” says Irish-American activist, former US marine, passenger on the MV Mavi Marmara Kenneth O’Keefe rightly, “is not a revolution for Tunisia and Egypt, it is a global revolution.” But he couldn’t be more right when he adds, “what the people in Tunisia and Egypt are doing is what we should be doing in the West but we haven’t done while our corrupt governments have sat by and allowed the Israeli blockade to continue, to torture all those who stand up against the Tunisian and Egyptian tyrannies, supported by the Western governments, in particular the US, Britain, the EU, all of them” (recorded in Gaza, January 27, 2011).

As Egyptians declared their pride in being Egyptian, US commentators dished out “the Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy theory” (Justin Raimondo, February 3, 2011).  In the words of America’s former ambassador to the UN John Bolton, “I think the question is whether and to what extent the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamists have infiltrated the leadership…I don’t think we have evidence yet that these demonstrations are necessarily about democracy. You know the old saying, ‘one person, one vote, one time.’ The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t care about democracy, if they get into power you’re not going to have free and fair elections either.” But the Muslim Brotherhood, undoubtedly the largest and best organised opposition force in the country, had abstained January 25 demonstrations, had belatedly endorsed January 28 demonstrations.

The tone of the demonstrations has been nationalist and secular. Ibrahim Hodeibi, one of the new generation Brotherhood members and an important blogger, had earlier suggested that the Brotherhood slogan “Islam is the solution” should be replaced by the religiously neutral one, “Egypt is for all Egyptians” (Charles Hirschkind, The road to Tahrir), and this is what resounded from Tahrir square. Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority joined in the million-strong demonstrations too; it was more urgent, said many, to end Mubarak’s three decade rule than “any fears that a change of power might empower Islamist groups” (Reuters, February 1, 2011). No doubt the Brotherhood will be “a factor in post-Mubarak Egypt” but hardly decisive, for they will be a “part of the democratic mosaic” as will be other parties bearing other visions and agendas of political change (Raimondo).

But if these changes set a precedent that could be repeated in other countries, says Deputy Israeli prime minister Silvan Shalom, “Israeli national security might significantly be threatened.”  Undeniably true, for democratic governments in the Middle East would see no reason to give precedence to Israeli national interests over and above their own. There may no longer be any close coordination between Israel and Arab regimes over intelligence and security. Over renditions and torture. On the contrary, it is quite likely that a democratically-elected government would want the Rafah border to be re-opened. And, could possibly want the Egypt-Israel peace treaty to be abrogated..?

As news of the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen’s visit to Israel and Jordan to “discuss security issues of mutual concern,” to reassure these “key partners of the US military’s commitment to that partnership” (February 13-14) filters through, I feel apprehensive. I can only ask, why are people in the West not rising up against their war criminal rulers? Against colonial occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine? Against drone attacks that kill and maim civilians in Pakistan?

They need lessons in democracy and freedom. From the Egyptians. Tunisians. Yemenis. Jordanians…In short, from the Arabs.

Published in New Age Monday February 14, 2011

By Johann Hari
The Independent
Friday, 4 February 2011

Very few British people would beat up a poor person to get cheaper petrol. But our governments do it all the time. Why?

The old slogan from the 1960s has come true: the revolution has been televised. The world is watching the Bastille fall on 24/7 rolling news. An elderly thug is trying to buy and beat and tear-gas himself enough time to smuggle his family’s estimated $25bn in loot out of the country, and to install a successor friendly to his interests. The Egyptian people – half of whom live on less than $2 a day – seem determined to prevent the pillage and not to wait until September to drive out a dictator dripping in blood and bad hair dye.

The great Czech dissident Vaclav Havel outlined the “as if” principle. He said people trapped under a dictatorship need to act “as if they are free”. They need to act as if the dictator has no power over them. The Egyptians are trying – and however many of them Mubarak murders on his way out the door, the direction in which fear flows has been successfully reversed. The tyrant has become terrified of “his” people.

Of course, there is a danger that what follows will be worse. My family lived for a time under the torturing tyranny of the Shah of Iran, and cheered the revolution in 1979. Yet he was replaced by the even more vicious Ayatollahs. But this is not the only model, nor the most likely. Events in Egypt look more like the Indonesian revolution, where in 1998 a popular uprising toppled a US-backed tyrant after 32 years of oppression – and went on to build the largest and most plural democracy in the Muslim world.

But the discussion here in the West should focus on the factor we are responsible for and can influence – the role our governments have played in suppressing the Egyptian people. Your taxes have been used to arm, fund and fuel this dictatorship. You have unwittingly helped to keep these people down. The tear-gas canisters fired at pro-democracy protesters have “Made in America” stamped on them, with British machine guns and grenade launchers held in the background.

Very few British people would praise a murderer and sell him weapons. Very few British people would beat up a poor person to get cheaper petrol. But our governments do it all the time. Why? British foreign policy does not follow the everyday moral principles of the British people, because it is not formulated by us. This might sound like an odd thing to say about a country that prides itself on being a democracy, but it is true.

The former Labour MP Lorna Fitzsimons spoke at a conference for Israel’s leaders last year and assured them they didn’t have to worry about the British people’s growing opposition to their policies because “public opinion does not influence foreign policy in Britain. Foreign policy is an elite issue”. This is repellent but right. It is formulated in the interests of big business and their demand for access to resources, and influential sectional interest groups.

You can see this most clearly if you go through the three reasons our governments give, sometimes publicly, sometimes privately, for their behavior in the Middle East. Explanation One: Oil. Some 60 per cent of the world’s remaining petrol is in the Middle East. We are all addicted to it, so our governments support strongmen and murderers who will keep the oil-taps gushing without interruption. Egypt doesn’t have oil, but it has crucial oil pipelines and supply routes, and it is part of a chain of regional dictators we don’t want broken in case they all fall taking the petrol pump with it. Addicts don’t stand up to their dealers: they fawn before them.

There is an obvious medium-term solution: break our addiction. The technology exists – wind, wave and especially solar power – to fuel our societies without oil. It would free us from our support for dictators and horrific wars of plunder like Iraq. It’s our society’s route to rehab – but it is being blocked by the hugely influential oil companies, who would lose a fortune. Like everybody who needs to go to rehab, the first step is to come out of denial about why we are still hooked.

Explanation Two: Israel and the “peace process”. Over the past week, we have persistently been told that Mubarak was a key plank in supporting “peace in the Middle East”. The opposite is the truth. Mubarak has been at the forefront of waging war on the Palestinian population. There are 1.5 million people imprisoned on the Gaza Strip denied access to necessities like food and centrifuges for their blood transfusion service. They are being punished for voting “the wrong way” in a democratic election.

Israel blockades Gaza to one side, and Mubarak blockades it to the other. I’ve stood in Gaza and watched Egyptian soldiers refusing to let sick and dying people out for treatment they can’t get in Gaza’s collapsing hospitals. In return for this, Mubarak receives $1.5bn a year from the US. Far from contributing to peace, this is marinating the Gazan people in understandable hatred and dreams of vengeance. This is bad even for Israel herself – but we are so servile to the demands of the country’s self-harming government, and to its loudest and angriest lobbyists here, that our governments obey.

Explanation Three: Strongmen suppress jihadism. Our governments claim that without dictators to suppress, torture and disappear Islamic fundamentalists, they will be unleashed and come after us. Indeed, they often outsourced torture to the Egyptian regime, sending suspects there to face things that would be illegal at home. Robert Baer, once a senior figure in black ops at the CIA, said: “If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear, you send them to Egypt.”

Western governments claim all this makes us safer. The opposite is the truth. In his acclaimed history of al-Qa’ida, The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright explains: “America’s tragedy on September 11th was born in the prisons of Egypt.” Modern jihadism was invented by Sayeed Qutb as he was electrocuted and lashed in Egyptian jails and grew under successive tyrannies. Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, was Egyptian, and named US backing for his country’s tyrant as one of the main reasons for the massacre.

When we fund the violent suppression of people, they hate us, and want to fight back. None of these factors that drove our governments to back Mubarak’s dictatorship in Egypt have changed. So we should strongly suspect they will now talk sweet words about democracy in public, and try to secure a more PR-friendly Mubarak in private.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We could make our governments as moral as we, the British people, are in our everyday lives. We could stop them trampling on the weak, and fattening thugs. But to achieve it, we have to democratise our own societies and claim control of our foreign policy. We would have to monitor and campaign over it, and let our governments know there is a price for behaving viciously abroad. The Egyptian people have shown this week they will risk everything to stop being abused. What will we risk to stop our governments being abusers?

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-we-all-helped-suppress-the-egyptians-so-how-do-we-change-2203579.html

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By Suheir Hammad

I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin break for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you or dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain’t
louder than this breath.

`Go, Mubarak go!’  USA’s tottering user-friendly tyrants…

By Rahnuma Ahmed

Having grown up amidst popular uprisings, such as the Civil Disobedience movement in 1969, and much later, having participated in mass uprisings, foremost among them, the one against general HM Ershad’s regime in 1990, witnessing scenes of the unfolding peoples’ revolt against the US-bolstered 30-year old Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt, relayed live, courtesy of al-Jazeera television, is, well…, just great!

Every passing moment contributes to our history on earth, but some moments are crucial for they change history, writes Ashraf Ezzat, medical doctor and political analyst, from Alexandria. What the world now witnesses in Egypt, is not only the crumbling down of a dictatorship that stifled Egyptians for decades but “a whole age of authoritarianism in the Arab world.”

It all began in Tunisia. Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, a vegetable-seller, set himself on fire on December 17, 2010 after police confiscated his unlicensed produce stand; he died on Jan 3. Protests against unemployment, police brutality and the regime’s corruption increased, leading to the toppling of president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s regime, a dictator who had ruled for 23 years, was re-elected president five times, each time winning 99.9%-89.62% votes, who amended the constitution in 2002 to allow the president (read, himself) to stay in power until the age of 75, to be re-elected unlimited times. After a 29 day popular uprising, Ben Ali, who headed “one of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes” (Guardian, January 15, 2011),  who was a “stalwart US ally” (Foreign Policy, February 5, 2011) was forced to flee, to take refuge in Saudi Arabia. Prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi took over as interim president as soldiers guarded ministries, public buildings and the state TV building, as security forces were authorised to fire live rounds.

“Freedom is expensive and my brother paid the price of freedom,” said Salem, Bouazizi’s brother. “My brother has become a symbol of resistance in the Arab world.”

So true he was, as instances of self-immolation followed soon. An Egyptian man set himself alight near the parliament, a Mauritanian in front of the presidential palace in Nouakchott, the capital, while four unemployed young men reportedly immolated themselves in Algeria.

America’s bout with democracy in the Middle East (and also, in Asia, Africa and Latin America) since World War II has led to nations being ruled by “user-friendly tyrants” (George E. Irani, April 29, 2003). Since the Tunisian revolution, some Middle Eastern and North African tyrants are busy declaring measures aimed at pre-empting civil unrest.

On February 2, president Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen who has ruled for 32 years, announced that he would step down in 2013, that his son Ahmed would not succeed him. But that did not quell the protests, demonstrators gathered for a “day of rage” on Friday February 4. US military aid to Yemen had averaged $20 million a year during the Bush era,

but under the Obama administration, US intelligence and security roles have expanded, military aid to Yemen is expected to reach $250 million this year. (Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2011).

In Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president since 1999, on February 3 promised to end the state of emergency “in the very near future,” to adopt measures for job creation, to lift restrictions on state-controlled media. Opposition leaders, human rights groups, unions, students and unemployed workers however, plan a march on February 12. Algeria forged “intimate links” with the US after September 11, 2001 voicing support for the US-led international `coalition against terror.’ Close cooperation reportedly exists between Algeria’s counter-terrorism and intelligence networks and the FBI and CIA. According to Israeli security experts, they were working with the Algerian military and national security sector (2002).

The Algerian parliamentary elections held at the end of May 2002 were, according to the US, evidence of the “development of democracy.”

In Jordan, despite the Financial Times’ optimism that “internal tensions between different factions in society” make a unified uprising “less likely” (January 17, 2011),  thousands of demonstrators took to the streets recently shouting, “Rifai go away, prices are on fire and so are the Jordanians,” and banners, “Send the corrupt guys to court.” It has led King Abdullah—who has the power to appoint governments, approve legislation and dissolve parliament—to dismiss his cabinet, to appoint Marouf Bakhit as prime minister in place of Samir Rifai. But Bakhit, a retired major-general, prime minister from 2005-2007, earlier, national security advisor and ambassador to Israel, has not been welcomed by many, including the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing and Jordan’s largest opposition party. Bakhit, deemed to have “a history of oppression and corruption” was the mastermind behind the rigged 2007 elections. ”There is no reason to stop the protests now,” says IAF head Hamzah Mansur. Public anger at high inflation, unemployment and rampant poverty is coupled with resentment at a “rubber stamp parliament.” Rifai’s recent announcements of a $550 million package of new subsidies for fuel and staple products (rice, sugar, livestock, liquefied gas), pay rise for civil servants and security forces were swept aside by rising protests including the right to directly elect the prime minister, to a demand for changes in “how the country is now run.” Jordan, a key CIA counter-terrorism ally, is the second-largest recipient of US foreign aid on a per-capita basis, it has received more than $6 billion in development aid since 1952, the reward for having “pursued one of the most consistently pro-American foreign policies in the Middle East” (Foreign Policy, January 31, 2011).

While the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, at a high-level security conference in Munich warns of a “perfect storm” enveloping the Middle East if leaders do not implement political and social reforms to meet the demands of their people (al-Jazeera, February 5, 2011), tensions have emerged within the US administration and on Capitol Hill over the CIA and other spy agencies failure to warn president Obama adequately (Washington Post, February 3, 2011). Intelligence officials insist they had warned of “instability” but did not know what the “trigger mechanism” would be. As the National Security Council spokesman put it, “Did anyone in the world know in advance that a fruit vendor in Tunisia was going to light himself on fire and start a revolution? No.”

President Obama’s high-sounding advice to Mubarak to listen to what is “being voiced by the Egyptian people,”l his own message to the Egyptian people (a televised address following Mubarak’s address to the nation), “We hear your voices“ is nothing more than a rhetorical ploy, one that evades the unequivocal language in which Tahreer square protestors speak, “Obama needs to be clear…either he stands with Mubarak, or he stands with the Egyptian people” (al-Jazeera, February 4, 2011).

Or, as Hasan Mohammad, Egyptian living in the US, demonstrating outside the White House and the Egyptian embassy in Washington put it, the US should ask Mubarak to “get out now” for Egyptians can do “everything else themselves.” He added, “He [Mubarak] wants to destroy Egypt before he leaves. He thinks he inherited Egypt from his parents, he thinks Egypt is his. No, Egypt is everybody. Egypt is Egyptian; it is not Mubarak.” Other protestors want an end to US military aid to Mubarak, a placard outside the White House read, “Dictator made in the USA.” Another bore a sign equalling $30 billion in military assistance to Egypt with 30 years of dictatorship.

The US, writes Paul J Balle, has kept Mubarak in power, it gave his regime $1.5 billion in aid last year “mainly because he supported America’s pro-Israel policies, especially by helping Israel to maintain its stranglehold on Gaza” (`The Peoples Revolt,’ February 6, 2011).

Israel blockades Gaza on one side, while Mobarak blockades it on the other. Johan Hari writes of watching Egyptian soldiers refusing to let out sick and dying Palestinians for treatment which they cannot get in Gaza’s collapsing hospitals (The Independent, February 4, 2011).

But there is no reason for the US administration to begrudge the huge amounts of aid as much of it goes back to American defence contractors : Lockheed Martin has taken $3.8 billion from Egypt in the last few years, General Dynamics $2.5 billion, Boeing $1.7 billion (Pratap Chatterjee, Egypt’s Military-Industrial Complex, February 4, 2011). For the Egyptian people, however, there are solid grounds for resentment : US economic aid to Egypt in 2007 amounted to $455 million but translated to only $6 per capita. The total economic aid in 2010 of $200 million provided less than $3 per capita income.

Further, injury is heaped on these insults as tear gas canisters fired by Egyptian security officials in Cairo last week reveal they are manufactured in the US (ABC TV), as 12-gauge shotgun shells show “Made in USA” stamped on their brass heads (Sydney Morning Herald). Hillary Clinton’s “perfect storm” brewing warning conveniently overlooks these when she intones, we condemn in the “strongest terms [the Egyptian government's] attacks on peaceful demonstrators.”

Her slick denunciations also overlook allegations that Egypt’s near-total internet blackout was enabled by a California-based technology company’s sale of equipment which allows the Mubarak government to track online activity, as she urged the Egyptian government to “ensure journalists ability to report on these events to the people in Egypt and to the world,” to not “violate international norms that guarantee freedom of the press.”

And, as the US resists calls to cut military aid to Egypt, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, in an ABC TV interview, speaks of “plenty of [US] military presence throughout the region,” of the defense department’s “higher state of awareness.” The military, he said, is ready to provide any “response or support” in the crisis. This was later clarified, the four-star admiral had meant the US military’s readiness to evacuate American nationals.

As for Mubarak, he too, he says, is “fed up.” “After 62 years in public service, I have had enough. I want to go.” It is only the fear of Egypt falling into chaos which prevents him.

Fed in corruption over and above his head and ears is more accurate. Tyrants user-friendly toward the US are known to amass huge personal fortunes, and, as Pepe Escobar writes, “According to a mix of United States, Syrian and Algerian sources [Mubarak's] personal fortune amounts to no less than US$40 billion – stolen from the public treasury in the form of “commissions”, on weapons sales, for instance. The Pharaoh controls loads of real estate, especially in the US; accounts in US, German, British and Swiss banks; and has “links” with corporations such as MacDonald’s, Vodafone, Hyundai and Hermes. Suzanne, the British-Irish Pharaoh’s wife, is worth at least $5 billion. And son Gamal – the one that may have fled to London, now stripped of his role as dynastic heir – also boasts a personal fortune of $17 billion” (Asia Times, February 4, 2011).

Kaan tanle matha ashe, a Bangla proverb, meaning if you pull the ear, along comes the head. Egyptian calls for putting Mubarak on trial, must be supported globally. For pulling the dictator’s ear, will serve us the military-industrial head that breeds and furbishes authoritarianism in the Middle East.

More, next week…

– a video by Ken O’Keefe

An inspiring soliloquy by Chris Hedges to those preparing for arrest in front of the White House protesting the continuous wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, intercut with interviews with Daniel Ellsberg and returning war veterans