Scenes from Syria

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The BBC reports on the outburst of violence by Assad's brutal regime:

At least 72 protesters have been killed by security forces in Syria, rights groups say -- the highest reported death toll in five weeks of unrest there.

Demonstrators were shot, witnesses say, as thousands rallied across the country, a day after a decades-long state of emergency was lifted.

Many deaths reportedly occurred in a village near Deraa in the south, and in a suburb of the capital, Damascus.

US President Barack Obama called for a halt to the "outrageous" violence.

"This outrageous use of violence to quell protests must come to an end now," the president said in a statement.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said he was "extremely concerned" by reports of deaths and casualties across Syria and urged restraint on the country's authorities.

"Political reforms should be brought forward and implemented without delay," he said. "The Emergency Law should be lifted in practice, not just in word."

That would be a start, but I just don't see that happening anytime soon. Syria isn't Egypt, where the military wanted Mubarak out after his position become untenable, and which in any event is more westernized than Syria.

Just consider what's happened: Assad lifted the state of emergency, essentially encouraging more protests, and then responded by murdering demonstrators critical of his regime.

Obama and Hague and other world leaders can say all they want. What are they actually going to do about the situation in Syria? Likely, nothing. Nothing beyond saying the right things, which is something but certainly not nearly enough. (Although Aljazeera reports that U.S. has been supporting/funding the Syrian opposition.)

The demonstrators are largely on their own, I fear. And they likely won't get far.

Here's an Aljazeera report on the protests and crackdown:

Slow train coming

By Capt. Fogg

One of the most frequently recurring themes echoing inside the bubble of Obamahate culture is that the President, although handily elected, was somehow thrust upon us by mistake and is an unelected tyrant.

It takes a special kind of person to believe that. It takes a special kind of person to attempt to profit by that belief and it takes a special kind of specialness not to be able to smell the boot polish and Cordite when reading about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's plan to take over municipal governments (duly elected) as part of his plan for prosperity through penury.

Forbes' Rick Ungar calls it Financial Martial Law. The Walker plan: 

would empower the governor to insert a financial manager of his choosing into local government with the ability to cancel union contracts, push aside duly elected local government officials and school board members and take control of Wisconsin cities and towns whenever he sees fit to do so.

I have no doubt that's just what the Tea-Shirts would like and little doubt that they will be able to reconcile that with their flimsy facade of Constitutional reverence. 

Such a law would additionally give Walker unchallenged power to end municipal services of which he disapproves, including safety net assistance to those in need.

That's not tyranny, that's not the kind constitution shredding the baggery would love to attribute to the President: at least it's not to the Tea-drunk masses longing to break free of any remaining bonds of civilization.

It'll never happen? It's liberal hyperbole? Think a state government can't simply strip a municipality's elected government of all power by gubernatorial fiat? You say this isn't possible in America? It's already happened in Michigan. Perhaps it's coming soon, to a state near you.

I'll spare you a rant about Fascism and Mussolini, the perils of "special emergency powers" and Orwell's eternal boot heel, I suspect you've read enough 20th-Century history to know what I'm talking about, but I suspect too that the years I have left to me will be years of counting up the mounting victories of barbarism, and the steady descent of our empire. Perhaps it's high time that I got back to studying Chinese.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

The crackdown in Libya and the end of tyranny

By Michael J.W. Stickings

UPDATE (11:06 pm) According to Aljazeera and The Guardian, the protests have spread to Tripoli. In Benghazi, a military unit has allegedly joined the protesters. And Gaddafi's son is warning of imminent civil war. The crackdown continues, but all the Gaddafi regime has is brute force. It's the protesters who have justice, and the righteousness of a noble cause, on their side.

**********

Updating my post from yesterday, the Libyan "government" (and I put that in quotes because Gaddafi's regime is really just an oppressive tyranny) continues to crack down on opposition demonstrations, even targeting funerals.

Here's the BBC:

Details have emerged of huge casualty figures in the Libyan city of Benghazi, where troops have launched a brutal crackdown on protesters.

More than 200 people are known to have died, doctors say, with 900 injured.

The most bloody attacks were reported over the weekend, as funeral marches were said to have come under machine-gun and heavy weapons fire.

One doctor, speaking amid the sound of fresh gunfire on Sunday, told the BBC that "a real massacre" had happened.

Human Rights Watch says at least 173 people have been killed in Libya since demonstrations began on Wednesday.

And here's the NYT:

Libyan security forces opened fire again Sunday on residents of Benghazi as they attended a funeral procession for the dozens of protesters killed there the day before, and quickly crushed three smaller uprisings in working-class suburbs of the capital, Tripoli.

*****

The escalating violence in Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city and the center of the protests, appeared to mark a decisive turn in the protests that have shaken Libya, a North African nation rich in oil.

The shooting at the funeral, where the number of casualties could not immediately be confirmed, reinforced what seems to have become a deadly cycle in a city where thousands have gathered in antigovernment demonstrations: security forces fire on funeral marches, killing more protesters, creating more funerals. 

As I wrote yesterday, while there appears to be a certain domino effect going on, with anti-regime protests in one country picking up on protests elsewhere, it's not like this will be an easy transition to liberal democracy. What has happened in Egypt, where it's still not clear what will happen under military rule, or in Bahrain, where there is reason for optimism, may not be replicated elsewhere, including in Libya. These regimes are responding in vastly different ways to efforts to overthrow them, and some, like Gaddafi's, are apparently resorting to extreme violence to thwart them.

Just consider how long it took Europe to throw off the yoke of tyranny and oppression, albeit long before the days of Facebook and Twitter, and even then much of Europe was under authoritarian fascist rule even towards the end of the last century. We must stand behind the courageous men and women who are standing up against the regimes that for decades (if not centuries, in terms of social and political oppression) are kept them down, but we cannot expect meaningful change overnight.

I am encouraged by what I am seeing, by the reports I am reading, but I realize that it's going to take a long time, during which much blood will be spilled, before liberty, democracy, and human rights triumph in places where they have few, if any, roots. It is inspiring, though, what we are witnessing, and for once there is hope for a better future.

People power in Bahrain

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The NYT's Nicholas Kristof reports from the ground (Manama, Bahrain) on some encouraging developments in the tyrannical Middle Eastern state:

There's delirious joy in the center of Bahrain right now. People power has prevailed, at least temporarily, over a regime that repeatedly used deadly force to try to crush a democracy movement. Pro-democracy protesters have retaken the Pearl Roundabout – the local version of Tahrir Square – from the government. On a spot where blood was shed several days ago there are now vast throngs kissing the earth, chanting slogans, cheering, honking and celebrating. People handed me flowers and the most common quotation I heard was: "It's unbelievable!"

When protesters announced that they were going to try to march on the Pearl Roundabout this afternoon, I had a terrible feeling. King Hamad of Bahrain has repeatedly shown he is willing to use brutal force to crush protesters, including live fire just yesterday on unarmed, peaceful protesters who were given no warning. I worried the same thing would happen today. I felt sick as I saw the first group cross into the circle.

But, perhaps on orders of the crown prince, the army troops had been withdrawn, and the police were more restrained today. Police fired many rounds of tear gas on the south side of the roundabout to keep protesters away, but that didn't work and the police eventually fled. People began pouring into the roundabout from every direction, some even bringing their children and celebrating with an almost indescribable joy. It's amazing to see a site of such tragedy a few days ago become a center of jubilation right now. It's like a huge party. I asked one businessman, Yasser, how he was feeling, and he stretched out his arms and screamed: "GREAT!!!!"

Many here tell me that this is a turning point, and that democracy will now come to Bahrain – in the form of a constitutional monarchy in which the king reigns but does not rule – and eventually to the rest of the Gulf and Arab world as well. But some people are still very, very wary and fear that the government will again send in troops to reclaim the roundabout. I just don't know what will happen, and it’s certainly not over yet. But it does feel as if this just might be a milestone on the road to Arab democracy.

I hope so, I really do. Certainly the recent developments in Egypt suggest that even the most entrenched tyrants can be overthrown (or at least forced out), even if so much uncertainty remains -- like, in Egypt, will there actually be liberalization and democracy or military rule and another strongman?

But there's reason to be optimistic. This isn't Islamism on the rise, after all. These pro-democracy movements -- in Egypt, in Tunisia, in Bahrain, and elsewhere -- are generally liberal/progressive and somewhat Western-oriented, and they might just manage to reshape the entire Middle East, if not the Muslim world generally. And it's not happening because Bush called for regime change and invaded Iraq, as the neocons would have us believe, but because courageous men and women have had enough and are standing up for their freedom, and what we're witnessing may very well be a sort of domino effect as the recognition that now is the time is spreading from one country to another.

It won't be easy. There will be a lot more bloodshed and it may take a long time for liberal democracy to take hold in some of these places. Consider how long it took in Europe, albeit long before the days of Facebook and Twitter. But these steps are necessary, the first steps to shed the yoke of tyranny, and this could well be an amazing moment in the history of freedom.

(You can find more at CNN, Aljazeera, the NYT (photo below), and the BBC.)

Dictatorships 101, in 2011

Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar

Ali Ezzatyar is a journalist and American attorney practising in Paris, France.

(Ed. note: This is Ali's second guest post at The Reaction. In January 2010, he co-wrote a post on Iran with Bryan Tollin. -- MJWS)

As Egypt moves ever closer to life without Hosni Mubarak, governments and analysts everywhere ponder the important question of what will come next. The conventional and clichéd wisdom pronounced by pundits and politicians the world over focuses on the risk of a dramatic rise to power for the Muslim Brotherhood and the inevitability of a new Islamist, and implicitly dictatorial, ruling establishment. Disaster for the U.S., for Israel, and for the future of Egypt, right? If the events of recent weeks demonstrate anything, however, it is that dictatorship is increasingly difficult to manufacture in the age of modern communications.

Let's take a step back and acknowledge exactly what these Twitter and Facebook "revolutions" have managed to overcome in just Tunisia and Egypt so far (bearing in mind events in Jordan and Yemen as well). Former president Ben-Ali ruled over Tunisia, with the help of a highly-trained secret police force (among other levers of control), for over 20 years. Just weeks before he fled the country, few a Tunisian would have ever imagined a day where he and his cronies would not dominate the landscape of politics and life in Tunisia for as long as he lived. What had largely been considered one of the most stable and pacified populations in the Arab world, however, took to the streets in large numbers, rendering the president's apparatus of control inoperable against the masses of people from which it was drawn. Increasingly facing the possibility of internal betrayal and what that would mean for his own head, Ben-Ali fled. What happened afterwards, however, was in many ways more remarkable than his being deposed.

The government that immediately replaced the Ben-Ali regime was largely made up of his associates. And while that new government immediately pledged and took concrete steps to dismantle the means of censorship and develop democratic institutions, the Tunisian population, well-informed, continued to protest. Staging demonstrations and continuing to put pressure on a still-infant government, remaining elements from the old guard were purged from the new interim regime. All the evidence suggests that Tunisia is on its way to democratic institution-building and free elections. From communication to coordination, it is hard to imagine how such an historic sequence of events could have happened without the Internet tools that have only become widely used in the region in the last few years.

Events in Egypt are, in the most important ways, following a similar trajectory. While such events are impossible to predict, it is reasonable to hypothesize that, as in Tunisia, no group that fills the potential power vacuum in Egypt will have the clout, influence, or muscle that Mubarak developed over the last 30 years to implement his dictatorial rule. With the tools at the disposal of the world's citizens today, the fear of new dictatorships springing out of such well-established ones -- former dictatorships that had decades to harness accountability from their repressive systems -- seems almost far-fetched. The protesters and the press, emboldened by the information and images they see and transmit in seconds, are already focusing their rhetoric on a post-Mubarak era and the avoidance of a failed transition to democracy.

The world's governments that have been criticized for becoming more dictatorial in the last decade seem to have done so through reform, not revolution. Take Venezuela, for example. The specter of an Iranian-type genuine revolution turned radical Islamic regime also seems unlikely in the Egyptian context. The lack of a unified and charismatic Islamic front (with the Muslim Brotherhood being rather late to the game), coupled with the modern means of communication that are helping to topple Mubarak, will threaten to make the consolidation of power for a new dictatorial regime untenable unless it is extremely popular.

Most importantly, though, let's acknowledge that democracy's growing pains, whatever they may be, deserve the opportunity to play themselves out. It is not the business of entities foreign to Egypt to try and divine the potential makeup of a future government, and then exercise preference over whether or not Egyptians have a right to their own destiny. Foreign influence (short of intervention) should be designed to help strengthen populations and countries that seek to take destiny into their own hands, in the model of Tunisia (with the U.S.' encouragement of Ben-Ali's stepping down), and not in the old model of Iran. Note that the undermining of Iran's popular and democratic movements of yesterday are thought to have contributed to the radicalism and anti-Americanism of its revolution and its government today.

U.S. policy suggests it is frantically trying not to be on the wrong side in Egypt, and in the region generally. We should consider, though, the monumental reputational damage the U.S. will sustain if it stands on the side of autocracy or even ambiguity as it has done in the last two weeks. The specter of loss of interests should yield to the realization that only democratic partners in the region can protect our interests permanently, and that those democratic partners had better be our friends.

You're a good man, Hosni Mubarak

By Capt. Fogg

"I also think there comes a time for everybody when it's time to hang it up and move on,"

Said Former Vice President Dick Cheney. It would seem that he didn't feel the end of his term in office was such a time for him, smoothly transitioning from denouncing all critics in an official and perhaps illegal fashion to doing as much as a private citizen. He's only moved out, not moved on.

He was of course referring to the apparent end game of Hosni Mubarak, a "Good man" says he.

"he's been a good friend and ally to the United States, and we need to remember that"

That's a statement hard to remark upon so I won't. I'll only add the good Mr. Mubarak to the list of rogues our government has supported for similar reasons through the years, choosing "stability" over every other consideration. Like many administrations from Reagan, whose anniversary he was celebrating, to that of Cheney and Bush, we've provided weapons to tyrants while the people suffered from want. We've overthrown democratic choices and prevented elections and installed monsters and looked the other way at nauseating atrocities simply to serve our appetites.

Yes, Mubarak did what we paid him to do and you'll note that those are American tanks patrolling the streets, American jets overhead. He maintained an uncomfortable peace with Israel and helped us punish oil-rich Iraq. He did resist the pressure from fundamentalist Theocrats and he helped us to apply torture methods even our own flimsy consciences wouldn't allow -- and we paid him to do it and didn't place many strings on our largess. He was a good man.

Cheney as an unhealthy old man, younger but much sicker than Mubarak and I'm sure we can look ahead to other, not too distant days and the gathering of other people telling us Dick Cheney was a "good man" just like the other good and bloody handed friends and allies. Let the circle be unbroken.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

The self-aggrandizing bullshit of Hosni Mubarak

By Michael J.W. Stickings

ABC News's Christiane Amanpour sat down yesterday with the Tyrant of Cairo, Hosni Mubarak. Here were some of the highlights of the interview:

He told me, "I was very unhappy about yesterday. I do not want to see Egyptians fighting each other." 

Then stop sending your thugs out into the streets to attack the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators, as well as journalists. We get what you're trying to do. You're creating "chaos" so as to be able to justify a crackdown -- or at least to secure your position for the time being, until you leave on your own terms. And perhaps you're also trying to goad the pro-democracy protesters into committing retaliatory violence so as to discredit them in the eyes of the rest of the world.

But it's you, Mubarak, who has no credibility.

When I asked him what he thought seeing the people shouting insults about him and wanting him gone, he said, "I don't care what people say about me. Right now I care about my country, I care about Egypt." 

Sure you don't. Which is why you have a history of silencing your critics.

Sure you do. Which is why you have a history of oppressing its people.

He told me that he is fed up with being president and would like to leave office now, but cannot, he says, for fear that the country would sink into chaos.

Well, maybe you're tired, sure, but the rest is pretty much what all authoritarian dictators say, isn't it? And of course it might only descend into chaos because of those thugs of yours. (Do you really think so little of your fellow Egyptians that it would be chaos and not peaceful democratic governance?)

Let me repeat: You have no credibility. Period.

Good riddance -- whenever you do finally leave office. Or are forceably removed.

If this be treason...

By Capt. Fogg

The Republicans like to use the word "tyrant" a lot. Perhaps it's the same sort of tendency you find in liars and cheats and thieves of other types who use those words to describe those who threaten to expose them. Perhaps not, but I've noticed of late that there have been a lot of calls for summary and extra-legal executions coming from right-wing writers and hate-shouters like good ol' love thy neighbor Mike Huckabee or Foxboy Tucker Carlson, who "personally" would like to have had Michael Vick put up against a wall and shot even though dear justice loving Tucker professes to be -- you guessed it -- a Christian. Pardon me, but I'm confused.

If you find it hard to reconcile what you think you know about Jesus and non-judgmentalism and forgiveness with summary executions for animal cruelty, perhaps you're unaware of the overriding moral imperative of the Values Party: anything we do to undermine Obama and the Democrats is patriotic and is justified through patriotism because our word is law, not your damned Constitution. Barack Obama praised the NFL's Eagles for giving quarterback Michael Vick a second chance and of course Barack Obama is the Tyrant Prince of Darkness so if he does anything, it's a bad thing. Vick must die, even if those animal rights people are bleeding heart liberals and even if you don't give a damn about dogs.

Last Wednesday in my local paper, I suffered through a tortuous justification of summary execution for treason of the fellow who leaked those diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, the essence of which was that had he leaked different information under different circumstances at a different time, some terrible thing might have happened. That's the basis of Mike Huckabee's equally loathsome demand for twisting the treason definition to allow the Republicans to kill their critics for the crime of informing the public that our allies aren't our allies and the government doesn't know what it's doing.

Of course if someone were lying about the failures of our government, that would be different. They'd get a regular show on Fox like Huckabee and Beck, make the big bucks and none would dare call it treason. The truth is what makes it bad, you see.

Never mind that something is exposed that would cause us to hang a foreigner the way we did an Nuremberg for, if we do it, it's not a crime. A bit like saying that if your aunt had had wheels instead of legs she'd have been a bus and so she can be sued for not picking you up at the bus stop this morning even if you don't ride the bus and she has legs anyway -- and you'd see the logic of that if you weren't a damned Libtard lover of tyranny.

Pfc. Bradley Manning, the fellow who embarrassed the military with his Afghanistan videos of course should be put up against the same wall for revealing the incompetence of government, the lies, the cover ups, and perhaps the slaughter of innocents, because, after all, anything that doesn't cover up our misdeeds is treason unless the deeds have political importance for Republicans -- then anything is fair game and lawbreakers are heroes and patriots. Are you starting to get it? Criticizing the government is treason because it helps the enemy and there's always an enemy, don't you know -- except when the elite does it, of course, and you know who they are.

Yes, the government is corrupt, incompetent and can't do anything and so we're against it as long as that's actually false. If it's true and you prove it, you're a traitor and should be shot without due process. That's not tyranny -- a middle class tax cut is tyranny, ending insurance company abuse is tyranny, taking deadly contaminated meat off the shelves is tyranny, ending bigotry against law abiding citizens is tyranny, addressing schoolchildren on TV is tyranny as bad as anything Pol Pot ever did. Making BP pay for its incompetence is tyranny, and, if you don't agree, the unelected leaders at Fox want you dead and aren't embarrassed to suggest that you be killed. Sic semper tyrannis.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)