Interview with Hossam el-Hamalawy

Mark LeVine
Uprooted Palestinians

Professor Mark LeVine interviews journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy on the situation in Egypt. Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian journalist and blogger.

Mark LeVine: Why did it take a revolution in Tunisia to get Egyptians onto the streets in unprecedented numbers?

Hossam el-Hamalawy: In Egypt we say that Tunis was more or less a catalyst, not an instigator, because the objective conditions for an uprising existed in Egypt, and revolt has been in the air over the past few years. Indeed, we already managed to have 2 mini-intifadas or "mini Tunisias" in 2008. The first was the April 2008 uprising in Mahalla, followed by another one in Borollos, in the north of the country.

Revolutions don't happen out of the blue. It's not because of Tunisia yesterday that we have one in Egypt mechanically the next day. You can't isolate these protests from the last four years of labour strikes in Egypt, or from international events such as the al-Aqsa intifada and the US invasion of Iraq. The outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada was especially important because in the 1980s-90s, street activism had been effectively shut down by the government as part of the fight against Islamist insurgents. It only continued to exist inside university campuses or party headquarters. But when the 2000 intifada erupted and Al Jazeera started airing images of it, it inspired our youth to take to the streets, in the same way we've been inspired by Tunisia today.

Mark LeVine: How are the protests evolving?

Hossam el-Hamalawy: It's too early to say how they will go. It's a miracle how they continued past midnight yesterday in the face of fear and repression. But having said that, the situation has reached a level that everyone is fed up, seriously fed up. And even if security forces manage to put down protests today they will fail to put down the ones that happen next week, or next month or later this year. There is definitely a change in the level of courage of the people. The state was helped by the excuse of fighting terrorism in 1990s in order to fight all sorts of dissent in the country, which is a trick all governments use, including the US. But once formal opposition to a regime turns from guns to mass protests, it's very difficult to confront such dissent. You can plan to take out a group of terrorists fighting in the sugar cane fields, but what are you going to do with thousands of protesters on the streets? You can't kill them all. You can't even guarantee that troops will do it, will fire on the poor.


Bradley Manning's Torture Commonplace In U.S. Prisons

Sherwood Ross
CounterCurrents

The corrosive, solitary confinement being inflicted upon PFC Bradley Manning in the Quantico, Va., brig is no exceptional torture devised exclusively for him. Across the length and breadth of the Great American Prison State, the world's largest, with its 2.4-million captives stuffed into 5,000 overcrowded lock-ups, some 25,000 other inmates are suffering a like fate of sadistic isolation in so-called supermax prisons, where they are being systematically reduced to veritable human vegetables.

To destroy Manning as a human being, the Pentagon for the past seven months has barred him from exercising in his cell, and to inhibit his sleep denies him a pillow and sheet and allows him only a scratchy blanket, according to Heather Brooke of “Common Dreams” (January 26th.) He is awakened each day at five a.m. and may not sleep until 8 p.m. The lights of his cell are always on and he is harassed every five minutes by guards who ask him if he is okay and to which he must respond verbally. Stalin's goons called this sort of endless torture the “conveyor belt.”

Not surprisingly, Manning is attracting global attention to the Pentagon's sadism. If anyone did not believe the Pentagon's ruthless treatment of Iraqi prisoners when the Abu Ghraib torture photos were released, they believe it now that it is torturing one of its own. In this assault upon the body and mind of a 23-year-old American soldier, all of the Pentagon's arrogance and clumsiness is revealed to the world. Perhaps not even the French military---when its frame-up on treason charges of Jewish Colonel Alfred Dreyfus was exposed---attracted to itself the global searchlights of opprobrium now bathing the walls of a Marine Corps brig at Quantico.

The kind of isolation torture Manning is enduring in recent years has spread itself quietly throughout U.S. correctional facilities like a deadly gangrene. According to one reliable report, by 2003 between five and eight percent of the prison populations of Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia were rotting in isolation. In some federal prisons the cells are referred to euphemistically as “Communications Management Units” and are, incidentally, “disproportionately inhabited by Muslim prisoners,” according to an American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) law suit challenging them. In another suit, the ACLU has accused the Texas Youth Commission of "throwing children (girls) into cold, bare solitary confinement cells...” and told the TYC bluntly its “reliance on solitary confinement has to stop."


Chicago's Mayoral Race: Rahm Emanuel's Eligibility At Issue

Stephen Lendman

"It's not (a) slam dunk for either side. Smart money [has] picked Emanuel who'll likely be Chicago's next mayor, the office he's long sought."

On February 22, Chicago's mayoral primary will be held. If no candidate gets over 50% of the vote, an April 5 runoff will be held, the winner's term running from May 16, 2011 - May 18, 2015. Democrats dominate city politics. The last Republican mayor ("Big Bill" Thompson) left office in 1931. The Great Depression ended their rule when Anton Cermak took over, built a strong constituency among African Americans, and consigned Republicans to small pockets on the city's far northwest side and suburban areas post-war.

Richard J. Daley and his son Richard M. (current incumbent leaving office after six terms) ran Chicago like Republicans for over 43 of the last 55 years. If elected, so will Emanuel as a previous article explained, accessed through this link.


Stop US torture of Bradley Manning!

Patrick Martin
WSWS

Thirty miles from downtown Washington DC, the US military is engaged in the torture of an American citizen. Army Private Bradley Manning, jailed on suspicion of leaking classified documents to the whistleblower web site WikiLeaks, is being held at the Quantico Marine Corps base under conditions that approximate those at Guantanamo Bay.

Manning has been in solitary confinement for more than seven months. He is confined to his cell 23 hours a day, allowed out for one hour of solitary exercise—he is not allowed to exercise in his cell, and guards intervene if he attempts to do so. His pillow and bedding are removed during the day to prevent him from sleeping, and under the “prevention of injury” [POI] regime imposed on him throughout his imprisonment, jailers look in on him every five minutes and require him to make an affirmative response that he is “OK.”

The 23-year-old soldier is allowed only one book or magazine at a time, and may use his prescription glasses only when he is actually reading. The rest of the time he goes without them, and is “effectively blind,” he told visitors.

In some ways, the conditions in which Manning is held are worse than those in Guantanamo, or in a maximum security US prison, because solitary confinement is used largely as a disciplinary measure, or to protect those who may be at risk from other prisoners. There is no legal precedent for the indefinite solitary confinement of a prisoner who is awaiting trial, has not been convicted of any offense, and has no history of violence.

On Monday, Amnesty International issued a statement criticizing the “inhumane treatment” of Manning. Reports of the abusive conditions in which he is held have now begun to appear in the US corporate media. ABC correspondent Jake Tapper asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs Monday whether the conditions of Manning’s imprisonment were “appropriate.” Gibbs would only refer him to the authorities at Quantico.

NBC News reported the same day that US military officials were denying charges that Manning was being tortured or held in solitary confinement without due process—the first time that NBC or any other US television network has made reference to the controversy over Manning’s treatment in prison.


The Chabadization of America

Nahida Izzat
Exiled Palestinian

The Deadly Ideology: Who is up for the challenge?

The Talmudists, supremacist, murderers chabad Lubavitch: "casually" become famous, charitable, lovely and friendly. Watch the promoting of and raising funds for the chabad in the Main Stream Media!

So... how do you pronounce 'Chabad'?


The Road to National Suicide

Philip Giraldi
Antiwar

It is not often that one sees an entire nation marching in lockstep to go over a cliff into an abyss, but that is essentially what the United States is doing at the moment. Not only have there been strong hints from the Obama Administration that the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan will go on into the dim future, but there is also no sign of any necessary course correction in other areas. Israel, backed by Washington, continues its reckless policies and may be cranking up for a new war against Lebanon and Syria with the ultimate objective of involving its American patron in fighting against Iran. Clearly President Obama is unwilling to take any risks by challenging existing policies. He is edging towards what he perceives as the political center and is preparing to ride the status quo to electoral victory in 2012.

Consider the central dynamic of what the United States is engaged in. Washington is committed to a series of asymmetrical wars that are literally taking place all over the world. This is what the Obamaites now refer to as "overseas contingency operations." One might well ask contingent on what, but the words themselves quite likely are not considered to be really meaningful and are rather designed to constitute a reassuring euphemism. One of these wars, in Afghanistan, is costing the US taxpayer $10 billion a month and is tying up more than 100,000 American soldiers. Casualties are rising, most of Afghanistan has become insecure in spite of the effort, corruption and drug cultivation are rampant, and there is no end in sight. To put the cost of the war in some kind of perspective, Afghanistan’s gross domestic product for 2009 was $22 billion, meaning that it is costing nearly six times more to "defend" each year than its total economic activity. Asymmetrical indeed. Colonial empires of the past would have at least figured out how to turn a buck from their imperial endeavors, highlighting the cluelessness of Washington. If there has ever been an example of a war that makes no sense, Afghanistan is it.


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