Celebrate: They Are Meeting Again Sunday....
Only 233 Summit Meetings With Brother Abu Mazen (who is authorized by Hamas to "negotiate") Remain Until The West Bank is Fully Negotiated Away...

Noam Chomsky Connects the Dots

War, Neoliberalism and Empire in the 21st Century

By SAMEER DOSSANI

"Sameer Dossani: Let's talk about the recently passed Iraqi oil law. It's well known that the law was drafted in the U.S. and then consulted on by very few Iraqis all loyal to Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki, then finally pushed through the Iraqi parliament. This law paves the way for regionalization and privatization of Iraqi oil. What's the U.S. economic agenda in Iraq and will it be able to carry that agenda out, given the disastrous nature of the occupation so far?

.....

SD: The difficulties surround the occupation Iraq has deflected the U.S.'s attention away from other parts of the world, including Latin America. Recently, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and others such as Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, have been talking about regional trade agreements such as ALBA and, in the case of Venezuela, aid packages that are supposedly designed to actually benefit local populations as opposed to transnational companies. Critics claim that these policies are a) unsustainable, because they depend on revenues from Venezuela's oil wealth, and b) self serving for the government of Hugo Chavez. What is your response to these criticisms?.....

SD: In Latin America, Venezuela is only one part of the general discontent that is driving governments away from the IMF. But in other parts of the world, notably Africa, the IMF and its neoliberal diktaats are as strong as ever, and the predictable result is that extreme poverty is still on the rise. Other countries -- for example India -- are not under this pressure but still are wildly pursuing neoliberal economic policies. What hope do you see for citizens and movements in these places? Are there lessons to be learned from the case of Latin America? How can we in the U.S. be supportive of struggles for economic justice in these places?......"

By Mike Lane.

Bush's Reception in Brazil

A protestor wearing a T-shirt with the image of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, fixes billboards that read "Get out Bush" at the entrance of a state-owned oil company Petrobras facility visited by US President George W. Bush in Guarulhos, east of Sao Paulo, Friday, March 9, 2007. (AP Photo)

The Saudi Minister of Palestinian Finance, Celebrate!

دول الخليج تربط مساعداتها بتولي فياض وزارة المالية الفلسطينية

"وذكر أن حركة فتح ستسمي وزيرين مستقلين أحدهما هو زياد أبو عمرو للخارجية، بينما ستسمي حماس ثلاثة مستقلين من ضمنهم وزير الداخلية.
واكدت مصادر فلسطينية لـ القدس العربي ان دول الخليج طالبت الرئيس عباس بتعيين فياض للمالية، وانها لن تحول اي اموال للسلطة الا من خلال فياض. ونسبت مصادر فلسطينية موثوقة الي الرئيس عباس قوله ان دول الخليج بما في ذلك السعودية ودولة الامارات طلبت منه تعيين فياض وزيرا للمالية. واما بالنسبة لوزارة الداخلية قالت مصادر فلسطينية ان اللواء جمال أبو زايد هو المرشح الأقوي لتولي الحقيبة بعد ان تم تفضيله علي اللواء المتقاعد خضر معروف.
"

***

Reliable Palestinian sources have told Al-Quds Al-Arabi that the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, told Abbas to install Salam Fayad as the "finance minister," and that any financial support from these countries to the PA will go only through Fayad.

Fayad so happens to be Washington's as well as the World Bank's favorite and a personal friend of Bush. Just connect the dots to see where this "unity government" is going and don't forget to congratulate Habila about such a wise "choice."

Bush arrives to Brazilian protest

"Police have clashed with thousands of Brazilians protesting at a visit by the US president and his push for an ethanol energy alliance with the Latin American country.

Riot police used tear gas and batons to disperse more than 6,000 protesters holding a largely peaceful march through Sao Paulo's financial heart just before George Bush arrived.

In Porto Alegre, more than 500 people chanted "Get out, imperialist!" as they marched to a Citigroup bank and burned an effigy of the US president.

Brazil has mounted its biggest ever security operation in Sao Paulo with about 4,000 officers on hand during Bush's visit......

Brazil is the world's biggest exporter and consumer of ethanol as an alternative fuel.

It has been enthusiastic about proposals to join forces with the US and create a world wide market for ethanol.

But not everyone is optimistic.

Mariana Schwarz, a 25-year-old publicist said: "We know that Bush and the United States are known for exploiting weaker countries into deals that will only benefit themselves without worrying about the environment."

Suzanne Pereira dos Santos, an activist with Brazil's Landless Workers Movement said: "Bush and the United States go to war to control oil reserves, and now Bush and his pals are trying to control the production of ethanol in Brazil. And that has to be stopped,"


Graffiti reading "Get Out, Bush! Assassin!" appeared on walls near the locations that Bush will drive past as he begins a Latin American tour that also includes stops in Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico......

Despite concerns over unity in Latin America, if Bush's plan is to counter the Chavez charm offensive in the region, Washington may have its work cut out.

Lula Da Silva, Brazil's president, has made it clear that his priority is unity between Latin American states, which includes, rather than isolates, Venezuela."

The Other War

Afghanistan – worse than Iraq
By Justin Raimondo

"......The real war, the Democrats argue, is not in Iraq – which never had anything to do with Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, or 9/11 – but in Afghanistan. This is their big critique of the Iraq war: not that it's wrong, immoral, a murderous disaster that surely indicts us in the eyes of the whole world – only that it is diverting resources away from another military occupation that shows no signs of winding down.

Yet the war in Afghanistan is being played exactly as the occupation of Iraq is being played – as if we are trying to establish a semi-permanent presence. In both countries we have held elections, and used our military to prop up a government that has very little actual power. In Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, our nation-building efforts are doomed to fail.

As Michael Scheuer points out, the Afghans have been badly underestimated by the US-NATO coalition, and they are even now in the process of repeating history and driving out the invaders, just as they drove out the Soviets, the Brits, and the legions of Alexander the Great.

The Taliban and their allies are returning to Afghanistan, having received additional training and an influx of aid from around the Muslim world: Scheuer estimates their numbers are at least equal to the coalition forces. And these aren't just new recruits, although there are more than enough of those, but seasoned veterans of the Afghan wars who are eager to get on with the fight......"

A predator becomes more dangerous when wounded

Washington's escalation of threats against Iran is driven by a determination to secure control of the region's energy resources

Noam Chomsky
Friday March 9, 2007
The Guardian

"In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington's basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq - a country otherwise free from any foreign interference - on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world......

For the US, the primary issue in the Middle East has been, and remains, effective control of its unparalleled energy resources. Access is a secondary matter. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. Control is understood to be an instrument of global dominance. Iranian influence in the "crescent" challenges US control. By an accident of geography, the world's major oil resources are in largely Shia areas of the Middle East: southern Iraq, adjacent regions of Saudi Arabia and Iran, with some of the major reserves of natural gas as well. Washington's worst nightmare would be a loose Shia alliance controlling most of the world's oil and independent of the US.

Such a bloc, if it emerges, might even join the Asian Energy Security Grid based in China. Iran could be a lynchpin. If the Bush planners bring that about, they will have seriously undermined the US position of power in the world......

Last July, Israel invaded Lebanon, the fifth invasion since 1978. As before, US support was a critical factor, the pretexts quickly collapse on inspection, and the consequences for the people of Lebanon are severe. Among the reasons for the US-Israel invasion is that Hizbullah's rockets could be a deterrent to a US-Israeli attack on Iran. Despite the sabre-rattling it is, I suspect, unlikely that the Bush administration will attack Iran. Public opinion in the US and around the world is overwhelmingly opposed. It appears that the US military and intelligence community is also opposed. Iran cannot defend itself against US attack, but it can respond in other ways, among them by inciting even more havoc in Iraq. Some issue warnings that are far more grave, among them the British military historian Corelli Barnett, who writes that "an attack on Iran would effectively launch world war three".

Then again, a predator becomes even more dangerous, and less predictable, when wounded. In desperation to salvage something, the administration might risk even greater disasters. The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. It has been unable to establish a reliable client state within, and cannot withdraw without facing the possible loss of control of the Middle East's energy resources......."

IOF Hiding Behind Palestinian Children

B'Tselem: IDF used Palestinian girl as human shield in Nablus

By Reuters

"Israel Defense Forces soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian girl as a "human shield" during an operation against militants in the West Bank town of Nablus last week, an Israeli human rights group said on Thursday.

The IDF said it was checking the information from the B'Tselem group, which monitors Israeli actions in the occupied territory. Israeli law bans the military from using human shields.

B'Tselem said the girl, Jihan Daadush, told its interviewers that IDF soldiers had entered her family home and questioned her and her relatives about the whereabouts of gunmen who had fired at them during the raid.

The soldiers, she said, threatened to arrest her unless she led them to a nearby house.

"[A soldier] ordered me to go towards the house," B'Tselem quoted the girl as saying. "Three soldiers walked behind me. When we reached the house, there were a lot of soldiers. The soldiers ordered me to go inside the house and I went inside."

B'Tselem said Jihan told them the soldiers shone flashlights and asked about the rooms of the house. There was no mention in the report of whether troops found militants inside. The girl said two soldiers then returned her home.

"[One of the soldiers] told me, 'Thank you, but don't tell anyone,'" the girl said, according to B'Tselem. "I was afraid they would kill me or put me in jail. I am still afraid the soldiers will invade the city again and take me away."

B'tselem also said the army had used a 15-year-old Palestinian boy and a Palestinian man for a similar purpose during the five-day raid of Nablus, a militant stronghold.

The IDF ended the operation on March 1. During the incursion, troops shot dead a Palestinian civilian who had observed the raid from his rooftop. Soldiers also detained 11 suspected militants."

The Mecca Charity Show

An Excellent Article
By Roni Ben Efrat, Challenge, 8 March 2007

"......As for the bloody strife between Hamas and Fatah, here the Saudis mounted the best show in town. The Mecca Summit based its format on Camp David and Shepherdstown; each were billed as a last ditch effort, with terrific momentum leading up to them. They failed, however, whereas in Mecca no hint of possible failure was allowed. The final terms were established in advance. Even Syria blessed the outcome, hoping that the Saudis would put in a good word for it with the West.

The agreement itself, which is the basis for a Palestinian unity government, is extremely misleading. At the head of the unity government will be the present PM, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, but his deputy will be from Fatah. Hamas will have 9 ministers and Fatah 6, but there will also be 5 independents and 4 from other parties. The Finance Minister will be the universally respected Salam Fayyad. The Interior Minister, who has yet to be agreed on, will be from Hamas's list of independent candidates. Hamas retained its position of not recognizing Israel, but it accepted the earlier agreements signed by the PLO. It refused to say it would adhere to them, as Fatah wanted, but on the other hand it gave up a clause it had always included before: that it would only recognize those agreements "which serve the Palestinian people." Both sides promised not to slide again into conflict. Both felt the harsh criticism coming from the Palestinian street.

On the surface - but only there - it looked as if Hamas had come out ahead:

1. From the moment of its election in January 2006, Hamas wanted a national unity government with Fatah, but the latter refused, thinking it could undermine the Hamas regime by getting the West to withhold funds. Now Fatah has given up this ambition.

2. The formulas of the Mecca agreement contain no essential concessions by Hamas. (Israel can claim that the Quartet's demands have not been met.)

3. Because the accord was signed at Mecca, Hamas receives pan-Arab legitimacy for its position. The Saudis will pressure the West to recognize the new government. Moreover, the latter can now receive a billion dollars in funds from the Arab league.
All this, as said, is appearance. In Mecca both sides swept differences under the rug. The real test of their unity will come when their government is pressed to accept the conditions set by the Quartet and Israel. It must do so to unfreeze the West's donations. Hamas cannot govern without this money, the lack of which triggered the clashes. To get it, however, Hamas will have to go along with the line that seeks accommodation.

Here, once again, Hamas reveals a characteristic lack of consistency. We saw this first a year ago, when it chose to take part in elections that were based on an infrastructure provided by the Oslo Accords. It accepted the Oslo framework without the content. Now it deepens its entrapment by entering a unity government, hoping to gain Western funds without accepting Western conditions. Saudi Arabia has won a brief span of glory, but what about the Palestinian people?

Certainly, there's no question as to the horror of the bloody scenes we witnessed between Fatah and Hamas. They occurred in utter opposition to the popular will. The Palestinian street rejoiced sincerely over the Mecca Agreement.

The problem, however, is: unity for the sake of what? The Oslo Accords did not establish the basis for a true Palestinian state, rather the mold for a state dependent on handouts: a donations state, which would serve Western and Israeli interests. From the beginning, the donations were intended to finance a political entity composed of corruptible, docile elitists like those in other Arab regimes. The Palestinian Authority, under Fatah leadership, wasted a whole decade without establishing an infrastructure and without creating real jobs. It purchased quiet by handing out cash in paper bags to the workers of a bloated public sector.

The election of Hamas did not bring a change of direction. Even if we acknowledge that the movement is not corrupt, it offered no alternative to the donations state. On the contrary, the notion of charity rather than work is a principle of the Hamas movement. Now this notion has become the basis of the entire unity government. Unless the latter can thaw Western coffers, the streets will again erupt.

Thanks to Mecca, then, the situation of the Palestinian people has become even more entangled: its leaders in both Hamas and Fatah have bound it more strongly to the regional interests of the US, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The particular Palestinian problems will have to wait for a different balance of forces.

The war between Fatah and Hamas created a superfluous conflict, whose settlement puts the ball in Hamas's court. The demands will now be on Hamas, not Israel, especially the demand to release abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and to stop the Qassam rockets. Furthermore, Israel and the US can now apply all their weight in getting Hamas to meet the Quartet's conditions: to disband terrorist organizations, to abide by former agreements, and to recognize Israel.

These things happen at a time when many of the senior leaders in Israel are mired in scandals of sex or corruption. The tie between money and politics is deepening social gaps. The immorality of Occupation has spread to all walks of life. The last shadow of a political agenda (the Convergence Plan) disappeared in the summer's Lebanon war.

We should not wonder that Israel, having bound its fate to America, would display political shortsightedness and a lack of social sensitivity. What is worrisome, rather, is that the Palestinian people, having suffered so long, hitches its interests to the wagon of the Saudi kingdom, instead of cultivating, from within itself, an alternative voice that will reflect its needs. Between the corrupt Arab regimes and the path of Islam, a third way must be found, secular and realistic, that will rebuild the society on a new class basis. National unity, yes, but not for the sake of a donations state, rather for the sake of a state that can achieve Palestinian rights! Only a self-reliant state, based on a viable economy, will pull the rug from beneath the feet of the bully next door. "

Bush Trip to Counter Chavez is Destined to Fail

Negroponte as Tour Director

By ROGER BURBACH
CounterPunch

"Bush's trip to Latin America is a calculated effort to counter Hugo Chavez's growing influence in the region and to separate the "bad left" from the "good left", namely Uruguay and to some extent Brazil. He hopes to add them to the dwindling bloc of pro-US nations, including Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico which he is visiting.

From the beginning the trip is provoking wide spread opposition. He will be greeted by demonstrators in Montevideo, Uruguay who are opposed to the special trade agreements being negotiated with the government of Tabare Vasquez. Even members of his ruling party, the Broad Front, are active in organizing the demonstration.

Across the border in Argentina, which Bush will not visit, massive demonstrations are being organized to coincide with his stay in Uruguay. And to add insult to injury, Hugo Chavez, is flying in to take part. While President Nestor Kirchner will not be participating, lower level government officials are. This comes on the heels of a series of commercial and economic accords that Kirchner just signed with Chavez on a trip to Caracas, including the founding of the Bank of the South, which is seen as an alternative to US dominated institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank......

All three countries are raising the banner of socialism. In Venezuela Hugo Chavez is intent on leading the country to a "new socialism for the twenty-first century." In Bolivia Evo Morales governing party is called Movement Towards Socialism, a "party of a new type" comprised largely of social movements. And in Ecuador, Rafael Correa in his inaugural address in January called for an opening to the "new socialism for the twenty-first century" and declared that Ecuador has to end "the perverse system that has destroyed our democracy, our economy and our society."

When Bush returns and finds out that his trip has done little to alter the growing leftist trend of Latin America, the iron fist of the new Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, will take control of US policy. Negroponte as ambassador to Honduras helped run the contra war in Nicaragua in the 1980's, which murdered thousands of innocent civilians in Honduras as well as Nicaragua, and he is known to believe that more aggressive measures have to be taken against Chavez and the gathering storm in Latin America. He comes to his new post after serving as Director of National Intelligence, and prior to that ambassador in Bagdhad. Given that Condoleezza Rice has little expertise in Latin America, Negroponte will set policy for the region, overriding the few remaining moderates in the State Department's office of Hemispheric Affairs.

With Negroponte we can expect a marked increase in US covert operations, aimed not only at Chavez in Venezuela, but also at the other governments and the popular movements in the region that are leading the charge against the historic US domination of Latin America and are bent on constructing more equitable societies."

Two Windbags for the Price of One

This is How Palestinians Observed Women's Day
Palestinians hold Palestinian flags during a demonstration on International Women's Day at the Qalandiya checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah March 8, 2007. REUTERS

German Bishops See Racist Israel First Hand

By Genevieve Cora Fraser

"After visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem recently, a group of German bishops crossed over into Occupied Palestine and compared Israeli treatment of Palestinians to Nazis treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust.

Bishop Gregor Hanke of Eichstaett reported, “This morning we saw pictures of the bestial Warsaw Ghetto at Yad Vashem, and in the evening we were in the ghetto of Ramallah. It gives one the creeps,” he said.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who served as bishop of Berlin when it was divided by the Communist-built Berlin Wall, commented when crossing a checkpoint into eastern Jerusalem, “This is something that is done to animals, not people.” He later explained to reporters, “I never thought I would see something like this again in my life.”

Walter Mixa, the bishop of Augsburg spoke of Palestinians facing "ghettoization with almost racist characteristics.” When asked to clarify his comment he replied, “I wanted to say that building the wall between Israel and the Palestinian autonomous areas, as well as the many Israeli settlements, amounts to a degree of provocation from the point of view of the Palestinian population.”

As might be expected, the bishop’s statements have been condemned as anti-Semitic, just as President Jimmy Carter has been accused of anti-Semitism for daring to tell the truth about Israeli-American policies in his best seller, “Palestine - Peace Not Apartheid.”

Israel’s killing, maiming, imprisonment, torture and abuse of Palestinian men, women, children and elders is supported by Congress with US tax dollars. "

The Washington Dodgers

By William S. Lind

"......Then, the lead story in today's Washington Post begins with this paragraph:

"Senior House Democrats, seeking to placate members of their party from Republican-leaning districts, are pushing a plan that would place restrictions on President Bush's ability to wage the war in Iraq but would allow him to waive them if he publicly justifies his position."

That's not pushing a plan, it is pushing on a rope, and the House Democratic leadership knows it. You can almost hear their giggles as they offer the antiwar voters who gave them their majority one of Washington's oldest dodges, "requirements" the Executive Branch can waive if it wants to.

The kabuki script currently goes like this. Congressional Democrats huff and puff about ending the war; the White House and Congressional Republicans accuse them of "not supporting the troops;" and the Democrats pretend to be stopped cold, plaintively mewing that "Well, we all agree we have to support the troops, don't we?"

"Supporting the troops" is just another dodge. The only way to support the troops when a war is lost is to end the war and bring them home. Nor is it a challenge to design legislative language that both ends the war and supports the troops. All the Democratic majorities in Congress have to do is condition the funding for the Iraq war with the words, "No funds may be obligated or expended except for the withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq, and for such force protection actions as may be necessary during that withdrawal." If Bush vetoes the bill, he vetoes continued funding for the war. If he signs the bill, ignores the legislative language and keeps fighting the war in the same old way, he sets himself up for impeachment.

What's not to like?

For the Democrats, what's not to like is anything that might actually end the war before the 2008 elections. The Republicans have 21 Senate seats up in 2008, and if the Iraq war is still going on, they can count on losing most of them, along with the Presidency and maybe 100 more seats in the House. 2008 could be the new 1932, leaving the Republican Party a permanent minority for twenty years. From the standpoint of the Democratic Party's leadership, a few thousand more dead American troops is a small price to pay for so glowing a political victory......

The likely result of all this Washington dodging is that events on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere will outrun the political process. That in turn means a systemic crisis, the abandonment of both parties by their bases and a possible left-right grass roots alliance against the corrupt and incompetent center. In that possibility may lie the nation's best hope."

A catalogue of errors in Afghanistan

By Michael Scheuer
Asia Times

"Afghanistan is again being lost to the West, even as a coalition force of more than 5,000 troops launches a major spring offensive in the south of the country. The insurgency may drag on for many months or several years, but the tide has turned. Like Alexander's Greeks, the British and the Soviets before the US-led coalition, inferior Afghan insurgents have forced far superior Western military forces on to a path that leads toward evacuation. What has caused this scenario to occur repeatedly throughout history?

In the most general sense, the defeat of Western forces in Afghanistan occurs repeatedly because the West has not developed an appreciation for the Afghans' toughness, patience, resourcefulness and pride in their history. Although foreign forces in Afghanistan are always more modern and better armed and trained, they are continuously ground down by the same kinds of small-scale but unrelenting hit-and-run attacks and ambushes, as well as by the country's impenetrable topography that allows the Afghans to retreat, hide, and attack another day.

The new twist to this pattern faced by the Soviets and now by the US-led coalition is the safe haven the Afghans have found in Pakistan. This is the basic answer to why history has found so many defeated foreign armies littering what Rudyard Kipling called Afghanistan's plains.

The latest episode in this historical tradition has several distinguishing characteristics. First, Western forces - while better armed and technologically superior - are far too few in number. Today's Western force totals about 40,000 troops. After subtracting support troops and North Atlantic Treaty Organization contingents that are restricted to non-combat, reconstruction roles - building schools, digging wells, repairing irrigation systems - the actual combat force that can be fielded on any given day is far smaller, and yet has the task of controlling a country the size of Texas that is home to some of the highest mountains on Earth.

Second, the West underestimated the strength of the Taliban and its acceptability to the Afghan people. When invading in 2001, the West's main targets were al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar and their senior lieutenants, and because the operation specifically targeted a group of top leaders, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was not sealed, and so not only did the pursued troika escape, so did most of their foot soldiers......

The future for the West in Afghanistan is bleak, and it is made more discouraging by the fact that much of the West's defeat will be self-inflicted because it did not adequately study the lessons of history......"

The brotherhood is gathering outside the pharaoh's palace

The Mubarak regime is heading for a succession crisis. By trying to strangle Egypt's Islamists, it has strengthened them

Timothy Garton Ash in Aswan
Thursday March 8, 2007
The Guardian

"In front of the towering golden sandstone entrance to the temple of Edfu stands an imposing granite statue of a falcon, some 12ft tall, representing Horus, a premier league Egyptian god. Sculpted into his chest is a small figure of one of the Greek rulers of Egypt at the time when the temple was built. To buttress his political legitimacy, the alien neo-pharaoh had not merely wrapped himself in the flag but carved himself into the stone of a powerful god. The rulers of Egypt have been playing this game for thousands of years - and they are at it again today......

Later, there was Allah, of course, and his messenger Muhammad. For the 19th-century Albanian-born Muhammad Ali Pasha, the new divinity was European-style modernity. For Napoleon and Lord Cromer there were the western gods of progress and civilisation, carried by the bayonet and the Gatling gun. For Nasser, the architect of post-colonial Egypt, there was pan-Arabism but also socialism, with added Islam.

Now they're changing gods again at the pharaoh's palace. Twenty-six years into the reign of President Mubarak, amendments are proposed to the constitution.......

Politics, seen from this perspective of 5,000 years of Egyptian history, is something very different from what you find in US civics textbooks. It's not about the installation of this or that logically and legally constructed political system, based on this or that ideology. It's about rulers borrowing, bending and merging gods, ideologies and legal systems, adapting to internal and external forces, mixing coercion and patronage, sharing some of the spoils where necessary, but always with the goal of maximising your own power and wealth, and hanging on to it for as long as possible - for yourself, and your children, and your children's children. Those who take the legitimating religion or ideology too seriously - be it Osirisism or socialism - are missing the point. The gods come and go; what endures over the millenia is men's lust for power and wealth, and their vain quest for immortality......

For many of those who live 10 to one room in the poorer quarters of Cairo, the great myth remains that of the Muslim Brotherhood, with its brilliantly simple slogan "Islam is the solution". So long as it is banned, the Brotherhood does not need to demonstrate how exactly Islam is the solution. It can hardly be expected to produce detailed, specific policies, let alone to deliver on them. In fact, the Mubarak regime is performing the Brotherhood a great service by continuing to persecute it. Trying to strangle Islamism, it feeds its growth.....

Whatever happens in the transition from Hosni Mubarak over the next decade - whether we get President Mubarak II, or a candidate supported by the military, or someone else - I would bet on one thing: the Islamic component in the legitimating god-mix of Egyptian politics is likely to grow stronger, not weaker. If you find that worrying, I can suggest only one faint consolation: in time, it will pass. The process may take decades, but one day Islamism, too, will join the 5,000-year line of the gods that failed."

Steve Bell on Iraq and the CIA leak trial.
The Guardian

The Palestinians under military, political and economic siege are calling for help....
Arab official: just wait for the next two or three summits and we will solve your problem.
By Hamid Najib

The Little King Reporting to His Bosses