Islamic Societies Review WEEKLY

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Tunisia opposition starts week of protests calling for resignation of Islamist-led government

Sunday, August 25, 2013 No comments

TUNIS, Tunisia — Thousands of Tunisians have demonstrated in front of the national assembly calling for the resignation of the Islamist-led government.

Saturday night's demonstration kicked off a planned week of protests by a coalition of opposition parties calling for the departure of the government because of what they say is its inability to guarantee security and the economy of the country.

The National Salvation Front includes right- and left-wing political parties demanding the current Islamist-led government be replaced by a technocratic cabinet to organize new elections.

Protesters chanted "we tried you, you failed, now leave."

Tunisia's main labor union has been mediating between the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party running the government and the opposition.

Report: Syrian soldiers find chemical agents in rebel tunnels

Sunday, August 25, 2013 No comments

According to Reuters, Syrian state television reported that some soldiers were overcome by fumes after coming across the chemical agents in the tunnels while patroling Jobar.

The soldiers were taken away by ambulance, and government forces were preparing to bomb the insurgent-held suburb, according to state TV.

Some called the claim a thinly-veiled attempt to strengthen the government's denials of responsibility for the reported nerve gas attack that killed hundreds earlier this week.

Obama and his security team met Saturday to discuss those reports and weigh possible military options.
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Polls: Americans strongly oppose U.S. intervention in Syria's civil war and believe Washington should stay out of the conflict even if reports that Syria's government used deadly chemicals to attack civilians are confirmed

Sunday, August 25, 2013 No comments

About 60 percent of Americans surveyed said the United States should not intervene in Syria's civil war, while just 9 percent thought President Barack Obama should act.

More Americans would back intervention if it is established that chemical weapons have been used, but even that support has dipped in recent days - just as Syria's civil war has escalated and the images of hundreds of civilians allegedly killed by chemicals appeared on television screens and the Internet.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken August 19-23, found that 25 percent of Americans would support U.S. intervention if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces used chemicals to attack civilians, while 46 percent would oppose it. That represented a decline in backing for U.S. action since August 13, when Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls found that 30.2 percent of Americans supported intervention in Syria if chemicals had been used, while 41.6 percent did not.

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Saturday, August 24, 2013

POV | The Law in These Parts

Saturday, August 24, 2013 No comments

Acclaimed Israeli filmmaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz has pulled off a tour-de-force examination of the system of military administration used by Israel since the Six Day War of 1967 - featuring the system's leading creators. In a series of thoughtful and candid interviews, Israeli judges, prosecutors and legal advisers paint a complex picture of the Middle East conflict.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Saudis give Egypt ‘blank cheque’: Saudi Arabia and several conservative Gulf Emirates have pledged to support Egypt’s interim authorities as they continue their crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood

Friday, August 23, 2013 No comments

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates – with the notable exception of Qatar – remain unfazed by last week’s bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, events that left around 1,000 people dead and many more wounded.

These conservative monarchies have voiced their support for the country’s army since it deposed the democratically-elected Islamist leader on July 3 and are maintaining their promise of financial support for the interim authorities despite severe international misgivings, especially in the West.

The European Union and the United States are pondering cutting off their financial aid to Egypt. But the Authorities in Cairo have the luxury of a blank cheque from the Saudis who say they are prepared to make up the shortfall of any drop in Western cash.

This promise follows a commitment, made well before the brutal crackdown on pro-Morsi sit-in camps across Egypt, by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates to give the interim authorities in Cairo two billion dollars.

Not having to rely on Western support gives the Egyptian authorities far more leeway in continuing its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

“If General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi [head of the Egyptian army] has a sense of impunity in his dealings with the Brotherhood, this is all down to the blank cheque given him by the Saudis and the Gulf Emirates [ with the exception of Qatar]," Karim Sader, a political scientist and consultant on the Gulf states, told FRANCE 24. “It could wholly substitute any aid withdrawn or frozen by the EU.”

Last week, Saudi King Abdullah voiced his personal support for Egypt’s interim authorities in its battle against “terrorism and foreign influences”.

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Thursday, August 22, 2013

When anti-terrorism laws are used to harass journalists (and/or their partners)

Thursday, August 22, 2013 No comments

David Miranda, partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald who broke the NSA sruvelance story in June, was detained by British intelligence authorities to pressure the Guardian into ceasing its reporting on British and American surveillance activities. Miranda was interrogated under a law meant to aid the pursuit of terrorists.

The Guardian has been on the front lines of exposing vast surveillance undertaken by the US and the UK -- and has been targeted by the authorities as a result. In an interview, Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger talks about his confrontation with the government and why the scandal isn't making waves in Britain.

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Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Israel was behind the military coup that ousted Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi

Tuesday, August 20, 2013 No comments

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has stated that Israel was behind the military coup that ousted Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, in early July, adding that the Turkish government has evidence to prove the Israeli hand in it.
“Israel is behind the coup in Egypt. We have evidence,” Erdoğan told members of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) at a meeting in Ankara on Tuesday.

With regards to his evidence, Erdoğan noted a French intellectual, without mentioning his name, who, according to Erdoğan, said at a 2011 meeting in France that the Muslim Brotherhood would never be in power even if elected because “democracy is not the ballot box.” Erdoğan stressed the Jewish identity of the French intellectual.

“If we stay silent in the face of the coup in Egypt, we will not have the right to say something if they set the same trap for us in the future,” said Erdoğan.

The Israeli Consulate in İstanbul released a statement on Tuesday, quoting Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor's comments on Erdoğan's remarks regarding Israel. Palmor reportedly said, “This is one of those statements that is well worth not commenting on.”

The Turkish prime minister also stepped up his criticisms of Muslim countries, saying: “The Islamic world is like the brothers of the Prophet Yusuf, who threw him down the well. As in the case of the brothers of the Prophet Yusuf, Allah will shame those in the Islamic world betraying their brothers and sisters in Egypt.”

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10 biggest US Defense contracts involving direct military aid to Egypt from 2009 to 2011

Tuesday, August 20, 2013 No comments

The irony is thick: Obama calls on Egypt’s interim government to stop its bloody crackdown on protesters, but continues to give it $1.3 billion a year in military aid.

 For decades, Egypt has been one of the largest recipients of US foreign military aid, receiving everything from F-16s to teargas grenades.

So who are the companies reaping the benefits?

The list below were the 10 biggest US Defense contracts involving direct military aid to Egypt from 2009 to 2011, according to The Institute for Southern Studies.

 See the table at the bottom of the page for full details of the contracts.

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PORTRAIT OF A CAIRO LIBERAL AS A MILITARY BACKER

Tuesday, August 20, 2013 No comments

In Cairo Friday morning, before the midday call to prayer and an afternoon of protest marches that resolved in violence, chaos, and the overnight siege of a mosque, I jumped into a taxi and slipped across the Nile into the quiet, semi-suburban neighborhood of Dokki. I was there to meet with Mohammed Aboul-Ghar, a seventy-three-year-old academic and politician who has been a leading figure in Egypt’s liberal establishment, and now represents one of the most confounding elements of the country’s current crisis: the wholesale alignment of old-guard liberals with the military.

Aboul-Ghar’s reputation in pro-democracy politics is well earned. In 2004, during the era of Hosni Mubarak, Aboul-Ghar co-founded the March 9th organization, a group of professors who bravely fought against the interference of state-security services into the operations of Egypt’s universities. In the run up to the 2011 revolution, he was an organizer and spokesman for the National Association for Change, an anti-authoritarian organization led by Mohammed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize Winner and Egypt’s most prominent liberal politician. And after Mubarak finally fell, he helped create what many viewed as the most substantial political party for liberals, the Social Democratic Party. That fall, as a temporary military regime ruled Egypt, I had met with Aboul-Ghar, who happily assured me that the military would soon be leaving the management of the country to civilians. “My feeling is that the military wants to have a safe retreat,” he said then. “A safe retreat and all their previous privileges.”

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Monday, August 19, 2013

The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq

Monday, August 19, 2013 No comments

The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also show how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow.

On the 60th anniversary of an event often invoked by Iranians as evidence of western meddling, the US national security archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified CIA documents.

"[T]he military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.

The documents, published on the archive's website under freedom of information laws, describe in detail how the US – with British help – engineered the coup, codenamed TPAJAX by the CIA and Operation Boot by Britain's MI6.

Britain, and in particular Sir Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, regarded Mosaddeq as a serious threat to its strategic and economic interests after the Iranian leader nationalised the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, latterly known as BP. But the UK needed US support. The Eisenhower administration in Washington was easily persuaded.

British documents show how senior officials in the 1970s tried to stop Washington from releasing documents that would be "very embarrassing" to the UK.