Anxiety on all sides of upcoming House hearing on radicalization of U.S. Muslims

By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 26, 2011; 5:31 PM

In some ways, Zuhdi Jasser doesn't match the profile of the typical Muslim American. He's an active Republican who has supported U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, advocates for Israel and says his faith harbors "an insidious supremacism."

Yet the prominent Scottsdale, Ariz., doctor is the face of American Islam for a Capitol Hill moment. Other than members of Congress, Jasser is the only witness New York Rep. Peter T. King has identified so far for his upcoming hearings on the radicalization of U.S. Muslims.

King, the Long Island Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, has called the hearings to start March 9. Although he initially spoke out to promote them, his decision in recent weeks to lie low (he declined to comment for this article) and to keep the witness list and precise questions quiet reflects the complexities of debating the problem, experts say.

Should the hearings focus strictly on hard data about American Muslim cooperation with law enforcement? Should they explore whether American foreign policy helps breed radicalism? Can a congressional hearing in a secular nation explore whether Islam needs a reformation?

That final point is the core tenet of Jasser, a father of three, Navy veteran and a former doctor to Congress.

Through his nonprofit group, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, he debates other Muslims and appears on mostly conservative media to press Muslim leaders to aggressively oppose a "culture of separatism." He wants clerics to disavaow scripture that belittles non-Muslims and women and to renounce a role for Islam in government.

As the only non-legislator name King has announced he will call, Jasser is drawing a lopsided amount of attention.

King will have a separate panel of congressional witnesses, and he has said he will call Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). The Democrats on the committee will call Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who has disputed King's contention that Muslims don't cooperate with law enforcement.

With a mostly top-secret list and the first hearing in a few days, anxiety is building among Muslim Americans and national security experts alike. Although some hope that it will improve dialogue, others fear it could set off more prejudice.

National security people "are holding their breath that it doesn't explode. I've heard that from people on all sides," said Juan C. Zarate, a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former security adviser to President George W. Bush.

Muslim leaders initially lobbied for King to halt hearings but are now are debating whether to try to get on the witness list. Long-standing critics of Muslim American organizations have blasted King for including "apologists" such as Ellison, one of two Muslims elected to Congress. Some national security experts say King's plan could exacerbate terrorism overseas by making U.S. Muslims appear persecuted, while others say King's reputation for criticizing Muslims makes him a problematic moderator. Others say King has needlessly courted controversy.

"The U.S. government should investigate domestic Islamist radicalization," Daniel Pipes, the Middle East Forum director who has written extensively on the threat posed by radical Islamists, said in an e-mail. "Unfortunately, Rep. Peter King has proven himself unsuited for this important task, as shown by the gratuitous controversy he has generated over the mere selection of witnesses."

Into the void comes Jasser, who sits on the board of a nonprofit group that made two controversial films about the dangers of radical Islam. The Clarion Fund says on its Web site that the growth of the American Muslim population "is raising eyebrows from sea to shining sea. . . . And if you think that a growing Muslim population cannot threaten America, just look at Europe."

The former head of the American Medical Association's Arizona chapter, Jasser is the personal physician to prominent Arizonans (including former congressman J.D. Hayworth). Despite his work on conservative causes, Jasser says he has walked out of his mosque when politicians were brought in to speak.

Jasser has always been affiliated with a local mosque, and briefly served as a spokesman for the Islamic Center of North East Valley in Scottsdale, where his children attend classes. He was involved in interfaith work in Phoenix, where some activists say he is an outlier among Muslims.

So what expertise or constituency justifies this medical doctor being the only non-congressman King has named? "A lifetime of practicing my faith," he said in a telephone interview.

To Heather Hurlburt, executive director of the National Security Network, a progressive foreign policy think tank, Jasser's resume lacks any community leadership roles, any policy or academic expertise.

"These aren't people who we normally expect the policy process to produce," she said.

King faced criticism as soon as he announced in December that he'd hold hearings on the threat of homegrown terrorism from Muslims.

Faith leaders, Muslim American organizations, the ranking Democrat on the committee - Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson - and some law enforcement leaders challenged the idea that Muslims should be the focus.

The subject is fraught with sensitivities on all sides. Some are horrified at Islam being singled out while others want to make sure the religious aspect of terrorism is not ignored. The potential for giving offense has led to some clunky language. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who conducted 14 hearings on everything from Internet radicalization to the Fort Hood, Tex., shootings without major controversy, said it was exploring "homegrown terrorism and domestic radicalization inspired by violent Islamist extremism."

Zarate, who praises Jasser as "fantastic" because he offers an alternative, non-institutional voice, said the hearings could do damage if they create a sense that there is a divide between Muslim organizations and mainstream America.

"It would be a shame if the hearings didn't move the debate the country is having, both on how to combat violent extremism and also on Islamophobia."

How Qaddafi started losing Libya

The Christian Science Monitor
By Dan Murphy Dan Murphy Fri Feb 25, 4:50 pm ET

Benghazi, Libya – The ruins of the sprawling military barracks in Benghazi, where a group of angry youths took on Libyan troops and won, will likely be remembered as the place where Muammar Qaddafi's downfall became inevitable.

Charred barracks and interrogation buildings, dozens of burned cars, and holes punched through the base's cement perimeter by backhoes and trucks tell the story of two fierce days of fighting that saw the bulk of Colonel Qaddafi's mixed force of foreign mercenaries and loyalists driven from Libya's second-largest city.

The rout of Qaddafi's supporters here on the Mediterranean, and the defections of almost every local Air Force and Army unit, certainly seems a harbinger of his downfall.

There were credible reports Friday that military bases at Tajura and Misratah, near the capital of Tripoli, had also defected. If true, the remainder of Qaddafi's 41-year reign will probably be measured in days.

IN PICTURES: Libya uprising

The fall of BenghaziFaraj al-Nafi was one of the young men in Benghazi who took up stones, Molotov cocktails, and homemade bombs against pro-Qaddafi forces and their heavy caliber weapons on the evening of Feb. 17. A week later, he explains how he had gotten a call from relatives in Benghazi saying that change – real change – was possible. After making the 40-mile trip from his small farming town, he was soon on the front lines.

"We had the feeling that if Benghazi fell, then the whole stinking house of cards would come down," says Mr. Nafi, helping to search for survivors in the charred hulk of Qaddafi's personal guesthouse on the base, where deep bunkers housed torture and interrogation centers. "And now we're very, very close."

Nafi describes chaos and explosions for hours on Feb. 17. Others fell around him. He was untouched, but is still shaken by the experience. He estimates about 200 members of the revolt fell here in two days of fighting, against 22 casualties for Qaddafi's forces. Nafi and others insist the Qaddafi loyalists were a blend of members of the feared Revolutionary Guard and poor mercenaries hired from places like Chad and Nigeria.

The fall of the Benghazi barracks and the liberation of the city by Feb. 20 – together with the entire eastern third of the country – wasn't due only to the bravery of young demonstrators. After an assault by the protesters on Qaddafi's guesthouse was held off by determined resistance, a unit of Libyan special forces mutinied and joined in.

It also appears that while the ranks of protesters were swelling with trained soldiers – and getting stronger themselves with weapons raided from arms dumps at the barracks and other parts of the city – a tactical retreat was called by Qaddafi as fighting broke out in Tripoli.

Muammar Qaddafi: Five ways Libya's leader has held onto power

How Qaddafi braced for the storm

Col. Hussein al-Murfali, the head of the air wing at Benina Airfield on the outskirts of Benghazi, says it seems that Qaddafi knew a storm was coming. Early on Feb. 17, a Thursday, an order was sent to fly fighter planes and helicopters in Murfali's command to Sirte – Qaddafi's hometown and his second major stronghold after Tripoli.

Soon, members of the Revolutionary Guard (the "revolution" referring to is the 1969 coup led by Qaddafi and a few hundred soldiers) arrived to take small arms away from the base. The Air Force officers and men were then placed under armed guard and kept in a small set of offices for three days. "We were told if any of us came outside, we'd be shot," says the colonel.

He says many of the pilots who took off for Sirte instead diverted to eastern Libya and defected. On Friday, when a man arrived to tell Murfali that his remaining helicopters should start flying missions against demonstrators – he relayed the orders to his men, but with the proviso, "I wouldn't obey this order and suggest you do the same."

It was a dangerous moment; the day before, Revolutionary Guards had executed six officers who refused orders at the Benghazi barracks. "We knew about the officers at the barracks. But it wasn't really a choice," says Murfali. "We're supposed to obey orders. But orders to shoot our sons, our daughters, our family? No. There was no way any of us were going to do it."

He says two pilots who'd been dispatched from Benghazi to Sirte on Feb. 17 later ejected from their plane over the desert after receiving orders to strafe the resistance here.

In eastern Libya, fear of air power remains strong. But the Air Force officers here say those in the uprising shouldn't worry. "Sanctions, Qaddafi's own stupidity bled the force," says Col. Khalil Daraji, in charge of the base's helicopters. "Our planes are in bad condition and the pilots are with the people. Those pilots who ejected prove it. Qaddafi was losing Benghazi and he only had one plane to send."

IN PICTURES: Libya uprising

How the barracks fell

The Benghazi barracks fell in the early morning of Sunday, as foreign mercenaries and Revolutionary Guards withdrew and made their way out of town – many to the airport.

Along the line of their retreat, apartment block walls are pockmarked from what residents say was indiscriminate fire from Qaddafi loyalists.

Anyone caught out in the street was shot, and about five area people were killed, says one resident who asked that his name not be used.

By midday Sunday, Daraji says, about 300 Qaddafi fighters were mustered on the tarmac, waiting for the civilian planes to fly them out to Sirte. He says the largest group of them was disarmed. He believed them to be foreigners – a detail borne out by folders they left behind in haste, which show photos of African men described as being from Nigeria and Chad.

A ring of armed men he took to be Revolutionary Guards surrounded them. Soon they were gone, and mixed units of Libyan soldiers and youths armed with rifles arrived. The airfield had fallen.

For the resistance now, it's "win or die," says Murfali, quoting Libyan hero Omar Mukhtar, who led a 20-year insurgency against Italian forces before being killed in 1931. "We know that we'll all be executed if this revolution fails, and we're not going to let that happen."

Muammar Qaddafi: Five ways Libya's leader has held onto power

Gaddafi Pictures

Egyptian military police use violence to break up anniversary protest in Tahrir Square

By Kathy Lally and William Wan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 26, 2011; 7:45 AM

CAIRO - A demonstration to celebrate the one-month anniversary of the Egyptian uprising turned violent early Saturday as authorities beat, arrested and tasered protesters, forcing them out of Tahrir Square.

With their faces covered by masks, authorities began pushing protesters out of the square at midnight, saying they were imposing a curfew. They beat protesters with sticks and fired shots in the air.

The clash highlighted ongoing tensions in Egypt as some protesters press demands for democratic reforms and the dismissal of the prime minister and cabinet members from the government of ousted president Hosni Mubarak. At the same time, military leaders now in charge have urged protesters to go home and allow the country to return to normal.

By Saturday morning, military leaders issued a statement through their newly created Facebook page apologizing to protesters for the late-night crackdown by military police and saying it was not authorized. The Supreme Council of Armed Forced also issued a decision for the immediate release of all protesters detained during the violence.

The protest began on Friday with a mood of celebration and reflection. Tens of thousands of Egyptians gathered in the square where their unexpected journey originated, taking stock of what they have accomplished and affirming what they want next.

Banners, chants and conversations made clear that the crowds in Tahrir Square were of a single mind: Freedom has been won but not yet guaranteed. The generals ruling the country remain trusted, but they must replace the prime minister and his cabinet, lift a long-standing emergency law and put the Interior Ministry police under civilian control.

More than anything, the demonstrators seemed proud. Not only had they deposed Hosni Mubarak, their president of 30 years, but the example they provided, along with that of Tunisia, also has inspired their neighbors to pursue their own quests for freedom.

On Friday, that call resounded across the region, in some places at high cost. A "Day of Rage" in Iraq sent tens of thousands rallying nationwide for government reform and an end to corruption. At least 23 people were killed.

In Yemen, rent by recent deadly protests, tens of thousands of people gathered peacefully in the southern city of Taiz to demand that President Ali Abdullah Saleh step down.

Many had come from outside Taiz, suggesting that the clamor for Saleh's resignation might be widening.

In the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, anti-government demonstrators and Saleh supporters staged rival rallies under heavy security. Saleh had instructed security forces to protect demonstrators and prevent clashes, after the deaths of at least 19 people nationwide over the past nine days.

The dead include two activists killed Friday in clashes between protesters and security forces in the restive southern city of Aden, where more than 10,000 people took to the streets, according to Reuters.

Seven people have died since Feb. 14 in the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, home to the U.S. 5th Fleet. On Friday, authorities allowed tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators to converge unimpeded on the capital's Pearl Square, now a raucous encampment. Some Bahrainis seek a greater voice in their government, but elements of the majority Shiite population want the Sunni king and rulers to go.

Bahrain's foreign minister, Khalid bin Ahmad al-Khalifa, sounded a conciliatory note in an interview, describing protesters' grievances as "legitimate." But he said the longer it takes for negotiations to start, the more he worries. "There are hardheaded people on both sides that could do something," he said.

Meanwhile, in Amman, to Egypt's east, about 6,000 Jordanians pressed their king for political and economic reforms. Organizers said that the turnout - the largest yet - was a response to an attack on protesters last week by government supporters in which eight people were injured.

But it was the plight of Egypt's Libyan neighbors that resonated most deeply among the demonstrators in Cairo. Scores of young men carrying - or wearing - Egyptian flags coursed through the crowd chanting, "With our blood and with our hearts we are united." Others bore a 40-foot-long banner proclaiming "Libya and Egypt are one."One man held a sign: "Gaddafi is a serial killer."

Describing their Jan. 25 revolution as unfinished, they appeared to have come to Tahrir Square to communicate their intent to see it through on their terms. From morning until well into the night, the protest was peaceful, but after midnight the military began ordering demonstrators to leave, resulting in violent scuffles.

"All of a sudden the police came in wearing masks. You couldn't see anything except for eyes," said Dina Abouelsoud, 35, adding that she was beaten but escaped arrest. "They did not talk or anything. They just started grabbing people and throwing them backward. ... There were gunshots fired into the air. They were taking cameras from people. I saw people on the floor."

From midnight to around 3 a.m., authorities clashed with protesters, eventually forcing them out of Tahrir Square and into another nearby square. But by 6 a.m., the demonstrators regrouped and were heading back into Tahrir.

The Supreme Council of Armed Forced issued a statement through the state news agency Mena, saying, "What happened yesterday during the demonstrations is an unintentional result of friction between military police and the sons of the revolution and that there has not been and will not be any orders given to violate the sons of this great people and that all necessary precautions will be taken to ensure that this does not happen again in the future."

Earlier on Friday, before things grew violent, protesters explained what they were trying to accomplish. "This is a revolution of the people, not the army," said George Ishaq, a founder of the 2005-era Kifaya protest movement. "We trust the army, but we have our demands."

Gray-haired and distinguished in bearing, Ishaq drew an admiring entourage eager to hear his thoughts as he walked among the people.

He drew nods of agreement as he called for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to replace itself with a triumvirate of a judge, civilian and general until elections can be held. And those new rulers should dismiss the prime minister and cabinet, mostly appointed by the old regime, and replace them with seasoned managers, he said.

"Right now, we're in intensive care," Ishaq said, "and we need excellent people to get us out."

The military rulers, led by 76-year-old Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, stepped into the void left by Mubarak's Feb. 11 departure displaying neither familiarity with nor affinity for the political arts.

Their preferred medium is the communique, with Communique No. 1, issued Feb. 10, read by a stone-faced officer who assured the nation that the army would "support the legitimate demands of the people."

Gradually, the generals have come to realize that the medium is the message. On Friday, they issued Communique No. 19 - "The Egyptian ruling military Council pledged its continued efforts related to the return of Egyptian nationals from Libya" - on their Facebook page.

The page - whose design nods to the Egyptian flag, with its official eagle and black background with red or white writing - has the dissonance of hieroglyphics tapped out on a BlackBerry. Such as Communique No. 17: "The council calls upon the great people to cooperate and collaborate with the armed forces on these many duties and in these historic times so that our efforts are not deviated in a manner affecting our local and national security."

But who's going to argue with 6,617 likes and 8,193 comments?

Last weekend, Tantawi appeared on a talk show on a privately owned television channel, speaking directly to young people in the studio with him. The younger generation loved it, declaring themselves reassured about the army's intentions.

"Now we want podcasts of their meetings," said Noha Wigah, a young activist.

Protest has been woven into the fabric of daily life remarkably quickly for a country where informants once lurked at every elbow.Now, the frequently gathering crowds have become a favored market for street vendors - the young ones striding along the crazy-quilt lanes with triangular fig-filled pastries on their heads, the old and lame offering pocket-size packets of tissues.

When arsonists set fire to an Interior Ministry building Wednesday, three sellers of roasted sweet potatoes were on the scene almost before the flames had died out.

"When I hear of a demonstration, I rush there," said Hassan Salah, 19. He was pushing his cart through the square Friday, baking sweet potatoes in a makeshift roaster with a wood fire underneath.

Friday's demonstration had a joyful and entrepreneurial air, with face-painters emblazoning the Egyptian flag on takers young and old, carts with fresh popcorn, and women offering hard-boiled eggs and koshary, the national dish of lentils, rice and pasta topped with a spicy tomato sauce. Even Twinkies could be had.

But beneath the festive atmosphere lay a deep sense of purpose.

"We have to trust the army," said Shaden Abdel Hak, a 43-year-old woman who runs a furniture and decorating business. "If we start doubting them now, we're lost.

"But I want the government out," she added, crushing a cigarette butt underfoot, "and I want them out now."

Correspondents Michael Birnbaum in Manama, Bahrain, and Sudarsan Raghavan in Taiz, Yemen, contributed to this report.

Gaddafi forces fire on protesters in Tripoli; defiant leader urges thousands of supporters to take up arms

By Leila Fadel and Liz Sly
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 25, 2011; 7:59 PM

BENGHAZI, LIBYA - Government paramilitary forces opened fire Friday on protesters who swarmed the streets of Tripoli in what opponents hoped would be a final push to topple Moammar Gaddafi's regime. Witnesses described multiple casualties from the fiercest violence yet in the Libyan capital.

It appeared that the regime had retained control, for now, of its major remaining stronghold. After the clashes, a defiant Gaddafi urged thousands of his supporters at a rally in the heart of the city to take up arms on his behalf.

Yet even as the Libyan leader spoke, his 41-year grip on power seemed to loosen further. There were reports that rebels had gained control of at least one key suburb of Tripoli, and several other towns, including heavily contested Zawiya, 20 miles west of the capital, were said to have fallen to the opposition.

High-level defections continued to weaken Gaddafi's regime, and the world community stiffened its response. The United States said it would impose sanctions, and the United Nations advanced a process that could lead to a war crimes prosecution.

Some Tripoli residents expressed fears of a prolonged siege in which rebels control towns and cities around the country while Gaddafi's forces in Tripoli dig in.

"We know the whole country is with us, but we don't know how long this is going to take," said a trader who joined the protests but went home after the gunfire became too intense. "The security forces have the upper hand, and there's so many of them, because he's concentrating all his effort on Tripoli."

While Gaddafi and his remaining allies - including his son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi - promised a fight to the death, much of the country has celebrated the spreading collapse of the regime, with some taking steps to support protesters in the capital.

The day's fighting in Tripoli began shortly after midday prayers, when residents poured out of mosques to revive their protests, only to be met by gunfire from soldiers and armed pro-Gaddafi civilians.

For several hours, the protesters pressed ahead in their attempt to converge on the city's central Green Square, chanting "God is great" and anti-Gaddafi slogans. Videos posted on YouTube and Facebook showed scenes of citizens scattering under volleys of fire in several neighborhoods, then attempting to regroup.

But by nightfall the pro-government forces, including militias and paramilitary forces, appeared to gain the upper hand. Most protesters retreated indoors, witnesses said.

It was Gaddafi, wearing a Russian-style fur hat, who assembled thousands of cheering supporters in the square. Standing on the ramparts of a castle and shaking his fist, he vowed to open state arsenals and distribute weapons to protect his regime.

"Every Libyan individual will be armed, every Libyan tribe will be armed. So Libya will turn to hell," he said, the square packed with people waving green flags.

"People who don't love me don't deserve to live," he said.

The address was broadcast on state television and appeared to be live, with the camera zooming in on the clock looming over the square to show the time.

Tripoli residents huddled despondently indoors, watching the broadcast, checking on friends and wondering how many more times they would have to brave the streets before the regime falls, according to accounts from individuals reached by phone or through the Internet. News agencies said that from two to seven people had been killed, but witnesses said they feared that many more were dead.

One resident described in an e-mail seeing six bodies in one neighborhood and said pro-government forces were using heavy automatic weapons.

After seeing ambulances ferrying gunmen around the city, residents lost trust in local medical services and took the injured into their homes for treatment, said one businessman who participated in the protests.

"Everyone is very devastated," said another resident who lives near the square and watched from her window as men in sport-utility vehicles opened fire on protesters in the street below. She said she thought that as many as 60 people had been killed and knew of three who died when pro-Gaddafi gunmen stormed a mosque and opened fire on worshipers.

"We are just hearing about people dying, and it's like this isn't going to end," she said. "This guy will kill until the last day of his life."

Yet even as Gaddafi vowed he would triumph, eyewitnesses said that several areas in western Libya had fallen to the opposition and that rebels in the east were closing in on the capital.

Demonstrators claimed they had won control of the western Tripoli suburb of Janzour, nine miles from the city center, after several hours of fierce fighting.

In the Tunisian town of Ras Jdir, near the border with Libya, Libyan refugees and Egyptians escaping the violence said that the town of Zuwarah, 24 miles from the border, was also under opposition control and that citizen committees were being formed to govern.

An engineer from Zuwarah, Amar Wifati, 42, said residents were frightened by the possibility that Gaddafi loyalists could try to retake control. "But we cannot change our path now," he said. "We are finally free to express ourselves openly. This is a totally new experience for us."

The town of Zawiya, 20 miles west of Tripoli, also appeared to be under rebel control after fierce clashes there Thursday between pro- and anti-government forces, refugees said. But the nearby town of Surman appeared to remain with the government after battles were reported there, they said.

In the eastern city of Benghazi, one of the first to be controlled by opponents of the regime, huge crowds gathered to celebrate their victory and show solidarity with those still battling Gaddafi.

Before Friday prayers in Benghazi, three coffins bearing the bodies of people who had died in clashes this week were carried above the crowds. Men shouted and women wept for the dead.

During prayers, a cleric named Salem Jaber delivered an emotional sermon calling for unity and peace. He also warned that Libyans do not want foreign military intervention.

"In God's name, we've taken our step in peace," he said.

Others echoed the view that foreigners should not directly intervene on the ground during Libya's uprising. But they said they would like a no-fly zone to be implemented over Benghazi to keep Gaddafi from sending war planes to attack.

Gamiyeh al-Oreibi, 60, held a picture of his son, who he said was shot and killed Sunday. "I want Moammar Gaddafi to die in front of me," Oreibi said as he clutched a picture of his son, Muftah, 27.

fadell@washpost.com slyl@washpost.com

Sly reported from Cairo. Correspondent Anthony Faiola in Ras Jdir, Tunisia, and staff writer Howard Schneider in Washington contributed to this report.

Could the next Mideast uprising happen in Saudi Arabia?

By Rachel Bronson
The Washington Post
Friday, February 25, 2011; 1:00 PM

Tunisia. Egypt. Yemen. Bahrain. And now the uprising and brutality in Libya. Could Saudi Arabia be next?

The notion of a revolution in the Saudi kingdom seems unthinkable. Yet, a Facebook page is calling for a "day of rage" protest on March 11. Prominent Saudis are urging political and social reforms. And the aging monarch, King Abdullah, has announced new economic assistance to the population, possibly to preempt any unrest.

Is the immovable Saudi regime, a linchpin of U.S. security interests in the region, actually movable?

Revolutions are contagious in the Middle East - and not just in the past few weeks. In the 1950s, when Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser swept into power, nationalist protests ignited across the region, challenging the leadership in Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and eventually Libya and beyond.

A shocked Saudi royal family watched helplessly as one of its members, directly in line to become king, claimed solidarity with the revolution and took up residence in Egypt for a few years. That prince, Talal bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, a son of the kingdom's founder and a half-brother of the king, is now reintegrated into the Saudi elite - and on hand to remind the monarchy that it is not immune to regional revolts. "Unless problems facing Saudi Arabia are solved, what happened and is still happening in some Arab countries, including Bahrain, could spread to Saudi Arabia, even worse," Prince Talal recently told the BBC.

The unrest in Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen (to the kingdom's west, east and south) plays on the Saudis' greatest fear: encirclement. The Saudis aligned with the United States instead of colonial Britain in the early 20th century in part to defend against creeping British hegemony. During the Cold War the monarchy hunkered down against its Soviet-backed neighbors out of fear of being surrounded by communist regimes. And since the end of the Cold War, the overarching goal of Saudi foreign policy has been countering the spread of Iranian influence in all directions - Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Yemen.

When King Abdullah returned to Saudi Arabia last week after three months of convalescence in the United States and Morocco, one of the first meetings he took was with his ally King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain to discuss the turmoil in his tiny nation. Sunni-ruled Bahrain, less than 20 miles from Saudi Arabia's oil- and Shiite-rich Eastern Province, has been a longtime recipient of Saudi aid. It has also been a focus of Iranian interests. The meeting was a clear signal of support for reigning monarchs, and an indication that the Saudi leadership is concerned about the events unfolding in Bahrain and throughout the region.

Further emphasizing that concern, Saudi leaders were reportedly furious that the Obama administration ultimately supported regime change in Egypt, because of the precedent it could set. Before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak left office, the Saudis offered to compensate his faltering regime for any withdrawal of U.S. economic assistance - aiming to undermine Washington's influence in Egypt and reduce its leverage.

As Saudi leaders look across the region, they have reason to believe that they won't find themselves confronting revolutionaries at their own doorstep. The upheaval in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and elsewhere is driven by popular revulsion with sclerotic, corrupt leadership. These countries do not have clear succession plans in place. They do have organized opposition movements, both inside and outside their borders, that are exploiting new means and technologies to challenge the governments. Their leaders are vulnerable to independent militaries. Their economies are weak, and educational opportunities are few.

These conditions seem to be present in Saudi Arabia, too, but the country is different in some important ways. First, its economic situation is far better. Egypt's per capita gross domestic product is slightly more than $6,000, and Tunisia's is closer to $9,000. For Saudi Arabia, it is roughly $24,000 and climbing (up from $9,000 a little more than a decade ago). The Saudi regime also has resources to spend on its people. Oil prices are high and rising. On Wednesday, the king announced massive social benefits packages totaling more than $35 billion and including unemployment relief, housing subsidies, funds to support study abroad and a raft of new job opportunities created by the state. Clearly the king is nervous, but he has goodies to spread around.

Poverty is real in Saudi Arabia, but higher oil prices and slowly liberalizing economic policies help mask it. When I met then-Crown Prince Abdullah in 1999, he told a group of us that unemployment was "the number one national security problem that Saudi Arabia faced." He was right then and remains right now. According to an analysis by Banque Saudi Fransi, joblessness among Saudis under age 30 hovered around 30 percent in 2009. Still, many of the king's key policy decisions - joining the World Trade Organization, creating new cities with more liberal values, promoting education and particularly study abroad - have sought to solve these problems. The country may be on a very slow path toward modernization, but it is not sliding backward like many others in the Middle East.

Another difference between Saudi Arabia and its neighbors is that the opposition has been largely co-opted or destroyed. For the past 10 years, the Saudi government has systematically gone after al-Qaeda cells on its territory and has rooted out suspected supporters in the military and the national guard, especially after a series of attacks in 2003. Key opposition clerics have been slowly brought under the wing of the regime. This has involved some cozying up to unsavory people, but the threat from the radical fringe is lower now than it has been in the recent past. And the Saudis have been quite clever about convincing the country's liberal elites that the regime is their best hope for a successful future.

The loyalty of the security services is always an important predictor of a regime's stability, and here the Saudis again have reason for some confidence. Senior members of the royal family and their sons are in control of all the security forces - the military, the national guard and the religious police. They will survive or fall together. There can be no equivalent to the Egyptian military taking over as a credible, independent institution. In Saudi Arabia, the government has a monopoly on violence. Indeed, the Saudis are taking no chances and have arrested people trying to establish a new political party calling for greater democracy and protections for human rights.

Finally, a succession plan is in place. Saudi Arabia has had five monarchs in the past six decades, since the death of its founder. There is not a succession vacuum as there was in Egypt and Tunisia. Many Saudis may not like Prince Nayaf, the interior minister, but they know he is likely to follow King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan on the throne. And there is a process, if somewhat opaque, for choosing the king after him.

The United States has a great deal at stake in Saudi Arabia, though Americans often look at the Saudis with distaste. As one senior Saudi government official once asked me: "What does the United States share with a country where women can't drive, the Koran is the constitution and beheadings are commonplace?" It's a tough question, but the answer, quite simply, is geopolitics - and that we know and like Saudi's U.S.-educated liberal elites.

The Saudis have been helpful to us. They are reasonably peaceful stalwarts. They don't attack their neighbors, although they do try to influence them, often by funding allies in local competitions for power. They are generally committed to reasonable oil prices. For example, although their oil is not a direct substitute for Libyan sweet crude, the Saudis have offered to increase their supply to offset any reduction in Libyan production due to the violence there. We work closely with them on counterterrorism operations. And the Saudis are a counterbalance to Iran. We disagree on the Israel-Palestinian issue, but we don't let it get in the way of other key interests.

Washington does not want the Saudi monarchy to fall. The Obama administration would like it to change over time and should encourage a better system of governance with more representation and liberal policies and laws. But revolutions aren't necessarily going to help those we hope will win.

It is dangerous business to predict events in the Middle East, especially in times of regional crisis. It's hard to block out flashbacks of President Jimmy Carter's 1977 New Year's Eve statement that Iran under the shah was an island of stability in a troubled region - only months before that stability was shattered. Still, the key components of rapid, massive, revolutionary change are not present in Saudi Arabia. At least, not yet.

Rachel Bronson is the author of "Thicker Than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia" and is the vice president of programs and studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Obama signs temporary extension of Patriot Act

The Associated Press
Friday, February 25, 2011; 5:21 PM

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama has signed a three-month extension of key surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act.

The law extends two areas of the 2001 act. One provision allows law enforcement officials to set roving wiretaps to monitor multiple communication devices. The other allows them to ask a special court for access to business and library records that could be relevant to a terrorist threat.

A third provision gives the FBI court-approved rights for surveillance of non-American "lone wolf" suspects - those not known to be tied to specific terrorist groups.

Obama signed the three-month extension of the provisions Friday. They were to expire Monday.

Lawmakers will soon start debating a multiple-year extension of the provisions, which have drawn fire from defenders of privacy rights.

The Year of Revolution: The “War on Tyranny” Replaces the “War on Terror”

Published on Thursday, February 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Andy Worthington

Ten years ago, in July 2001, 200,000 protestors converged on Genova, Italy, to disrupt the 27th G8 Summit, at which the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US — plus the President of the European Commission — were meeting to discuss issues of global significance, including the debt burden of poor countries, world health issues, the environment and food security.

The 1990s in the West: The rise of the anti-globalization movement

For the protestors, gatherings of the world’s most powerful countries — or other organizations supporting the status quo on a global scale — were symbols of the dark forces of globalization, and meetings had been the focus of huge protests since June 18, 1999, when a Carnival Against Capital (also known as J18) was held in the City of London to coincide with a G8 summit in Köln, Germany. The J18 drew on a long tradition of protest dating back to the 1960s, but with particular reference to the anti-road protests, the Reclaim the Streets movement, and the protests against the Criminal Justice Act, which had galvanized dissenters in large numbers from the early 1990s, and which, in turn, were influenced by the travellers’ movement in the 1970s and the 1980s, and the anti-nuclear protests focused on Greenham Common and Molesworth.

While these movements had dealt with environmental issues, land reform, the seizure of public spaces and freedom from State oppression, they were largely national in focus. The J18, however, building on preliminary events in 1998 (an international meeting of grassroots activists in Geneva in February 1998, a Global Street Party in 20 different countries during the G8 summit in Birmingham in May, and an anti-World Trade Organization protest in Geneva that same month, when, elsewhere, 50,000 Brazilians participated in a “Cry of the Excluded” march, and 200,000 Indian farmers and fishermen took to the streets of Hyderabad demanding India’s withdrawal from the WTO), widened the scope of the protests, with actions taking place simultaneously in 43 countries around the world, and it crystallized into what became known as the anti-globalization movement, fundamentally challenging the unfettered transnational capitalism that underpinned State control and exploitation, and immediately becoming global in scale when protestors from all around the world converged on the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Seattle, in November 1999.

Between November 1999 and July 2001, protestors from around the world took aim at a succession of international meetings, including protests at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2000, at an IMF and World Bank summit in Prague in September 2000, at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April 2001, and in London on May Day 2001, when the British police first introduced “kettling.”

At Genova, however, the authorities fought back with lethal force. Three protestors had been shot and injured at protests outside a EU summit in Gothenburg in June 2001, but in Genova an Italian policeman shot and killed a 23-year-old activist, Carlo Giuliani, and the authorities’ determination to clamp down violently on the protests was also revealed through a series of nighttime raids on buildings housing protesters. At the Diaz Pascoli and Diaz Pertini schools, where protestors had established media centres that also provided medical and legal support, police raids left three activists, including British journalist Mark Covell, in comas. In total, over 60 people were severely injured, although a parliamentary inquiry later concluded that there had been no wrongdoing on the part of police.

However, elsewhere in the late 1990s and the start of the 21st century, the focus was not, as in the West, on an emerging youth movement challenging the financial status quo, and the continuing exploitation of the developing world by the world’s most powerful countries.

The 1990s in the Middle East: After the Communist “threat,” the West supports dictators against the Islamist “threat”

Across the Middle East, for example, a different narrative, with its roots in the colonial legacy and the Cold War, was developing. Fearful of socialist movements that would threaten their financial interests, the countries of the West had supported — or had helped install — brutal dictatorships whose continued oppression of their people prompted the rise of new resistance movements in which Communism gave way to militant offshoots of Islam. The West was particularly terrified by the Iranian revolution in 1979, which reinforced its determination to keep hardline Islamists at bay, but was generally less aware of how other factors were playing a major part in reshaping dissent throughout the Middle East.

Central to these new movements was the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s (bankrolled, ironically, by the US, as well as by Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf countries), as battle-hardened mujahideen returned to their home countries and saw the appeal of overthrowing their own dictators. However, they were also reinforced by violent clampdowns — in Egypt, for example, during the same period, and in Algeria in the 1990s, where the West precipitated an almost unbelievably bloody civil war by backing the military when Islamists threatened to win electoral victory in 1991 — and were also fed by the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel, and, from 1991 onwards, by the presence on Saudi soil of US forces who refused to leave after helping to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.

By 1996, Islamist dissent found its own almost unspeakably bloody reworking of the anti-globalization movement when al-Qaeda, a core movement of mujahideen, who, in the wake of the Afghan conflict, had become focused on the overthrow of regimes oppressing Muslims anywhere in the world, shifted its focus to the United States, under the leadershp of Osama bin Laden, and, perhaps most crucially, members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, who, like Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, seemed to have become unquenchably vengeful after being tortured in Egypt in the 1980s.

After attacking US interests in 1998 and 2000 (in the US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, and the attack on the USS Cole), al-Qaeda achieved its aim of drawing the US into a global war through the terrorist attacks on the US mainland on September 11, 2001.

The 2000s: The “War on Terror” and the complete demonization of Islamists — and of Islam

Overnight, the global landscape changed. Terrorism became the obsession of the first decade of the 21st century, an ill-defined war was launched in Afghanistan, another entirely illegal war followed in Iraq, and the US drew on the vilest detention policies of its brutal allies in the Middle East by establishing a global network of secret torture prisons, specifically utilizing the expertise of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria and Uzbekistan, and also establishing its own torture prisons in Thailand, Poland, Romania and Lithuania, and in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ironically, the US appears only to have fulfilled bin Laden’s aims, establishing a “clash of civilizations” that suited al-Qaeda’s global jihadists, with all their talk of infidel crusaders and Jews, and that also played on the worst instincts of supposedly Christian nations, who found that their old bogeyman — the Soviet Union — could effortlessly be replaced with a new one — fundamenalist Islam, or, more generally, Islam itself, with a timeline stretching back to the Crusades for those inclined to revel in a Manichean struggle between two branches of the Abrahamic religious tradition.

This has been a disaster for relations between Christians and Muslims worldwide, leading to widespread Islamophobia in Western countries and a rewriting of history, in which liberation struggles in Bosnia and Chechnya, for example, have been recast as terrorism, and any opposition to the dictators of the Middle East has also been regarded as terrorism — even when, as with Libya, for example, opponents of Gaddafi’s regime used to be considered as victims of oppression until Gaddafi strategically decided to become an ally in the “War on Terror.”

The impact of the “War on Terror” has been no less ruinous in Muslim countries, where there has been widespread anger and indignation, and untold numbers of Muslims have, correctly, perceived that the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the thousands of people brutalized in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere are — or were — all Muslims, and that, therefore, something akin to a modern Crusade must indeed be taking place.

2011: The “War Against Tyranny”; People Power banishes the Islamist threat, anti-globalization returns, and the West and the Middle East have a common enemy

Suddenly, however, the landscape has changed again, as popular uprisings across the Middle East fundamentally challenge the assumptions of the “War on Terror” — that dictators are needed more than ever to restrain the fundamentalists who, otherwise, would be establishing their own barbarous regimes and, of course, threatening Western interests.

In Tunisia and Egypt, where the dictators Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak were deposed, and in other countries where the people are rising up against their long-established dictators — primarily Libya, where Gaddafi has responded with typical brutality, and Algeria and Yemen, plus Iran, where the regime may not technically be a dictatorship, although it exhibits all the brutality associated with unaccountable authoritarian regimes — the movements that were triggered by the single self-immolation of a Tunisian man, Mohamed Bouazizi, on December 19 last year, are driven not by Islamist groups, but by the people, who are demonstrating that dictatorships can be toppled by sheer numbers.

Throughout the region, young people, who have known nothing but dictatorship, are rising up, forming alliances with trade unionists and disgruntled professionals, while the Islamists have either been content to stay in the background (as with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) or, like Ennahdha in Tunisia, were largely imprisoned or in exile when the revolution that toppled Ben Ali took place.

If the Islamists had been centre-stage, I have no doubt that the West’s response to the popular revolutionary movements spreading throughout the Middle East would have been very different, as Western leaders would have been able to insert them into their tired “War on Terror” narrative. As it is, however, Western leaders have generally had to mouth platitudes about democracy and the will of the people, while refusing to become too engaged, as they are presumably aware that, for decades, their actions have actually demonstrated that they have no interest whatsoever in the welfare of the people of the Middle East, and that they have, instead, supported the very dictators who have either fallen or are now clinging onto power.

Moreover, the revolutionary zeal in the Middle East, which is inspired by economic desperation and the enduring misery of living in police states run by Western-backed torturers, is also reflected in the stirrings of popular dissent in the West. Just as an economic tipping point may have been reached in the Middle East through the manipulation of global food prices by Western speculators, protestors in the West are also beginning to revolt against the criminals of the unfettered financial markets, who have been allowed to continue their disgraceful global pillaging, despite causing the economic meltdown of 2008, and despite being bailed out by taxpayers. In some ways, the revolt in the West has involved young people picking up the baton of the anti-globalization movement, which has only sporadically made its presence felt in the last ten years.

Leading the way is the UK, prompted in particular by the activities of the Tory-led coalition government, which, despite having no mandate (with the Tories obliged to forge an aliance with the Liberal Democrats) and despite both parties having lied or omitted to mention their policies on the election trail, is now pampering the financial markets to an unprecedented degree, aiming to make the UK into the world’s largest tax haven, while introducing swingeing cuts to government spending, using the financial crisis as an excuse.

In its attacks on welfare, on university funding, on the NHS, and on almost every aspect of the British state that has not been privatized in the last 30 years, the government seems to delight in its plans to make as many people unemployed as possible, while cushioning its friends — and funders — in the City and in big business. However, although the response so far has generally been muted (with the exception of the students and schoolchildren who took to the streets last November and December), a widespread anger is just below the surface, and the rise of new protest groups — in particular UK Uncut, a direct action group that is focused unerringly on corporate tax avoiders and the banking sector, and that has just spawned a rapidly spreading offshoot in the US — indicates that the British government’s vile, ideological assault on the British people (with the exception of the rich and the super-rich) is likely to meet with increasing resistance.

I don’t mean to suggest that there will be revolutions in the West — as I think citizens of Western countries are too self-absorbed or diverted from the truth to notice what is happening until it is too late — but I do believe that, perhaps for the first time in living memory (or at least since 1990’s Poll Tax Riot), a substantial number of people believe that the government should be forced from power rather than be allowed to pursue its destructive agenda until the next election in 2015.

Moreover, with variations on the British story taking place throughout the West — with bankers unpunished, corporations systematically avoiding tax, austerity measures introduced that will only impact on those who had nothing to do with the economic crisis, and the gap between the rich and the poor widening still further from its current historic levels — all the elements are in place for the people of the West and the Middle East — and wherever else popular dissent erupts — to find that they share a common narrative, one which involves resistance to the relentless exploitation by the few, to enrich themselves still further at everyone else’s expense, and, when these forces are challenged, repression, be it through military means, arbitary detention and torture, or supposedly legitimate legislation, in which the magic words “choice” and “fairness” are meant to disguise the last push of a privatization agenda that seeks to destroy the final vestiges of the State’s responsibility for its people.

By now, with its lies and unaccountability exposed time and again, the push to privatize everything by playing on aging scare stories about the dangers of socialism ought to have been thoroughly discredited and replaced with new political movements that focus on the needs of society and of the people — a new socialism, if you like — and not on the further enrichment of Prime Ministers, Presidents, CEOs and dictators.

As the “War on Tyranny” undermines the tired clichés and distortions of the “War on Terror,” I hope for nothing less than a contagion of revolutionary impulses that spreads throughout the world, as without it, I fear, we are rapidly returning to the middle ages.
Andy Worthington

Andy Worthington is a journalist and historian, based in London. He is the author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 759 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison, the first book to tell the stories of all the detainees in America's illegal prison. For more information, visit his blog here.

All-American Decline in a New World

Published on Thursday, February 24, 2011 by TomDispatch.com

Wars, Vampires, Burned Children, and Indelicate Imbalances
by Tom Engelhardt

This is a global moment unlike any in memory, perhaps in history. Yes, comparisons can be made to the wave of people power that swept Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-91. For those with longer memories, perhaps 1968 might come to mind, that abortive moment when, in the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere, including Eastern Europe, masses of people mysteriously inspired by each other took to the streets of global cities to proclaim that change was on the way.

For those searching the history books, perhaps you’ve focused on the year 1848 when, in a time that also mixed economic gloom with novel means of disseminating the news, the winds of freedom seemed briefly to sweep across Europe. And, of course, if enough regimes fall and the turmoil goes deep enough, there’s always 1776, the American Revolution, or 1789, the French one, to consider. Both shook up the world for decades after.

But here’s the truth of it: you have to strain to fit this Middle Eastern moment into any previous paradigm, even as -- from Wisconsin to China -- it already threatens to break out of the Arab world and spread like a fever across the planet. Never in memory have so many unjust or simply despicable rulers felt quite so nervous -- or possibly quite so helpless (despite being armed to the teeth) -- in the presence of unarmed humanity. And there has to be joy and hope in that alone.

Even now, without understanding what it is we face, watching staggering numbers of people, many young and dissatisfied, take to the streets in Morocco, Mauritania, Djibouti, Oman, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Yemen, and Libya, not to mention Bahrain, Tunisia, and Egypt, would be inspirational. Watching them face security forces using batons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and in all too many cases, real bullets (in Libya, even helicopters and planes) and somehow grow stronger is little short of unbelievable. Seeing Arabs demanding something we were convinced was the birthright and property of the West, of the United States in particular, has to send a shiver down anyone’s spine.

The nature of this potentially world-shaking phenomenon remains unknown and probably, at this point, unknowable. Are freedom and democracy about to break out all over? And if so, what will that turn out to mean? If not, what exactly are we seeing? What light bulb was it that so unexpectedly turned on in millions of Twittered and Facebooked brains -- and why now? I doubt those who are protesting, and in some cases dying, know themselves. And that’s good news. That the future remains -- always -- the land of the unknown should offer us hope, not least because that's the bane of ruling elites who want to, but never can, take possession of it.

Nonetheless, you would expect that a ruling elite, observing such earth-shaking developments, might rethink its situation, as should the rest of us. After all, if humanity can suddenly rouse itself this way in the face of the armed power of state after state, then what's really possible on this planet of ours?

Seeing such scenes repeatedly, who wouldn’t rethink the basics? Who wouldn’t feel the urge to reimagine our world?

Let me offer as my nominee of choice not various desperate or dying Middle Eastern regimes, but Washington.

Life in the Echo Chamber

So much of what Washington did imagine in these last years proved laughable, even before this moment swept it away. Just take any old phrase from the Bush years. How about “You’re either with us or against us”? What’s striking is how little it means today. Looking back on Washington’s desperately mistaken assumptions about how our globe works, this might seem like the perfect moment to show some humility in the face of what nobody could have predicted.

It would seem like a good moment for Washington -- which, since September 12, 2001, has been remarkably clueless about real developments on this planet and repeatedly miscalculated the nature of global power -- to step back and recalibrate.

As it happens, there's no evidence it's doing so. In fact, that may be beyond Washington’s present capabilities, no matter how many billions of dollars it pours into “intelligence.” And by “Washington,” I mean not just the Obama administration, or the Pentagon, or our military commanders, or the vast intelligence bureaucracy, but all those pundits and think-tankers who swarm the capital, and the media that reports on them all. It’s as if the cast of characters that makes up “Washington” now lives in some kind of echo chamber in which it can only hear itself talking.

As a result, Washington still seems remarkably determined to play out the string on an era that is all too swiftly passing into the history books. While many have noticed the Obama administration's hapless struggle to catch up to events in the Middle East, even as it clings to a familiar coterie of grim autocrats and oil sheiks, let me illustrate this point in another area entirely -- the largely forgotten war in Afghanistan. After all, hardly noticed, buried beneath 24/7 news from Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and elsewhere in the Middle East, that war continues on its destructive, costly course with nary a blink.

Five Ways to Be Tone Deaf in Washington

You might think that, as vast swathes of the Greater Middle East are set ablaze, someone in Washington would take a new look at our Af/Pak War and wonder whether it isn’t simply beside the point. No such luck, as the following five tiny but telling examples that caught my attention indicate. Consider them proof of the well-being of the American echo chamber and evidence of the way Washington is proving incapable of rethinking its longest, most futile, and most bizarre war.

1. Let’s start with a recent New York Times op-ed, “The ‘Long War’ May Be Getting Shorter.” Published last Tuesday as Libya was passing through “the gates of hell,” it was an upbeat account of Afghan War commander General David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency operations in southern Afghanistan. Its authors, Nathaniel Flick and John Nagl, members of an increasingly militarized Washington intelligentsia, jointly head the Center for a New American Security in Washington. Nagl was part of the team that wrote the 2006 revised Army counterinsurgency manual for which Petraeus is given credit and was an advisor to the general in Iraq. Flick, a former Marine officer who led troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and then was a civilian instructor at the Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy in Kabul, recently paid a first-hand visit to the country (under whose auspices we do not know).

The two of them are typical of many of Washington’s war experts who tend to develop incestuous relationships with the military, moonlighting as enablers or cheerleaders for our war commanders, and still remain go-to sources for the media.

In another society, their op-ed would simply have been considered propaganda. Here’s its money paragraph:

“It is hard to tell when momentum shifts in a counterinsurgency campaign, but there is increasing evidence that Afghanistan is moving in a more positive direction than many analysts think. It now seems more likely than not that the country can achieve the modest level of stability and self-reliance necessary to allow the United States to responsibly draw down its forces from 100,000 to 25,000 troops over the next four years.”

This is a classic Washington example of moving the goalposts. What our two experts are really announcing is that, even if all goes well in our Afghan War, 2014 will not be its end date. Not by a long shot.

Of course, this is a position that Petraeus has supported. Four years from now our “withdrawal” plans, according to Nagl and Flick, will leave 25,000 troops in place. If truth-telling or accuracy were the point of their exercise, their piece would have been titled, “The ‘Long War’ Grows Longer.”

Even as the Middle East explodes and the U.S. plunges into a budget “debate” significantly powered by our stunningly expensive wars that won’t end, these two experts implicitly propose that General Petraeus and his successors fight on in Afghanistan at more than $100 billion a year into the distant reaches of time, as if nothing in the world were changing. This already seems like the definition of obliviousness and one day will undoubtedly look delusional, but it’s the business-as-usual mentality with which Washington faces a new world.

2. Or consider two striking comments General Petraeus himself made that bracket our new historical moment. At a morning briefing on January 19th, according to New York Times reporter Rod Nordland, the general was in an exultant, even triumphalist, mood about his war. It was just days before the first Egyptian demonstrators would take to the streets, and only days after Tunisian autocrat Zine Ben Ali had met the massed power of nonviolent demonstrators and fled his country. And here’s what Petraeus so exuberantly told his staff: “We’ve got our teeth in the enemy’s jugular now, and we’re not going to let go.”

It’s true that the general had, for months, not only been sending new American troops south, but ratcheting up the use of air power, increasing Special Operations night raids, and generally intensifying the war in the Taliban’s home territory. Still, under the best of circumstances, his was an exultantly odd image. It obviously called up the idea of a predator sinking its teeth into the throat of its prey, but surely somewhere in the military unconscious lurked a more classic American pop-cultural image -- the werewolf or vampire. Evidently, the general’s idea of an American future involves an extended blood feast in the Afghan version of Transylvania, for like Nagl and Flick he clearly plans to have those teeth in that jugular for a long, long time to come.

A month later, on February 19th, just as all hell was breaking loose in Bahrain and Libya, the general visited the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul and, in dismissing Afghan claims that recent American air raids in the country’s northeast had killed scores of civilians, including children, he made a comment that shocked President Hamid Karzai’s aides. We don’t have it verbatim, but the Washington Post reports that, according to “participants,” Petraeus suggested “Afghans caught up in a coalition attack in northeastern Afghanistan might have burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties.”

One Afghan at the meeting responded: "I was dizzy. My head was spinning. This was shocking. Would any father do this to his children? This is really absurd."

In the American echo-chamber, the general’s comments may sound, if not reasonable, then understandably exuberant and emphatic: We’ve got the enemy by the throat! We didn’t create Afghan casualties; they did it to themselves! Elsewhere, they surely sound obtusely tone deaf or simply vampiric, evidence that those inside the echo chamber have no sense of how they look in a shape-shifting world.

3. Now, let’s step across an ill-defined Afghan-Pakistan border into another world of American obtuseness. On February 15th, only four days after Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president of Egypt, Barack Obama decided to address a growing problem in Pakistan. Raymond Davis, a former U.S. Special Forces soldier armed with a Glock semi-automatic pistol and alone in a vehicle cruising a poor neighborhood of Pakistan’s second largest city, Lahore, shot and killed two Pakistanis he claimed had menaced him at gunpoint. (One was evidently shot in the back.)

Davis reportedly got out of the vehicle firing his pistol, then photographed the dead bodies and called for backup. The responding vehicle, racing to the scene the wrong way in traffic, ran over a motorcyclist, killing him before fleeing. (Subsequently, the wife of one of the Pakistanis Davis killed committed suicide by ingesting rat poison.)

The Pakistani police took Davis into custody with a carful of strange equipment. No one should be surprised that this was not a set of circumstances likely to endear an already alienated population to its supposed American allies. In fact, it created a popular furor as Pakistanis reacted to what seemed like the definition of imperial impunity, especially when the U.S. government, claiming Davis was an “administrative and technical official” attached to its Lahore consulate, demanded his release on grounds of diplomatic immunity and promptly began pressuring an already weak, unpopular government with loss of aid and support.

Senator John Kerry paid a hasty visit, calls were made, and threats to cut off U.S. funds were raised in the halls of Congress. Despite what was happening elsewhere and in tumultuous Pakistan, American officials found it hard to imagine that beholden Pakistanis wouldn’t buckle.

On February 15th, with the Middle East in flames, President Obama weighed in, undoubtedly making matters worse: “With respect to Mr. Davis, our diplomat in Pakistan,” he said, “we've got a very simple principle here that every country in the world that is party to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations has upheld in the past and should uphold in the future, and that is if our diplomats are in another country, then they are not subject to that country's local prosecution."

The Pakistanis refused to give way to that “very simple principle” and not long after, “our diplomat in Pakistan” was identified by the British Guardian as a former Blackwater employee and present employee of the CIA. He was, the publication reported, involved in the Agency’s secret war in Pakistan. That war, especially much-ballyhooed and expensive “covert” drone attacks in the Pakistani tribal borderlands whose returns have been overhyped in Washington, continues to generate blowback in ways that Americans prefer not to grasp.

Of course, the president knew that Davis was a CIA agent, even when he called him “our diplomat.” As it turned out, so did the New York Times and other U.S. publications, which refrained from writing about his real position at the request of the Obama administration, even as they continued to report (evasively, if not simply untruthfully) on the case.

Given what’s happening in the region, this represents neither reasonable policy-making nor reasonable journalism. If the late Chalmers Johnson, who made the word “blowback” part of our everyday language, happens to be looking down on American policy from some niche in heaven, he must be grimly amused by the brain-dead way our top officials blithely continue to try to bulldoze the Pakistanis.

4. Meanwhile, on February 18th back in Afghanistan, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on one of that country’s “largest money exchange houses,” charging “that it used billions of dollars transferred in and out of the country to help hide proceeds from illegal drug sales.”

Here’s how Ginger Thompson and Alissa J. Rubin of the New York Times contextualized that act: “The move is part of a delicate balancing act by the Obama administration, which aims to crack down on the corruption that reaches the highest levels of the Afghan government without derailing the counterinsurgency efforts that are dependent on Mr. Karzai’s cooperation."

In a world in which Washington’s word seems to travel ever less far with ever less authority, the response to this echo-chamber-style description, and especially its central image -- “a delicate balancing act” -- would be: no, not by a long shot.

In relation to a country that’s the prime narco-state on the planet, what could really be “delicate”? If you wanted to describe the Obama administration’s bizarre, pretzled relationship with President Karzai and his people, words like “contorted,” “confused,” and “hypocritical” would have to be trotted out. If realism prevailed, the phrase “indelicate imbalance” might be a more appropriate one to use.

5. Finally, journalist Dexter Filkins recently wrote a striking piece, “The Afghan Bank Heist,” in the New Yorker magazine on the shenanigans that brought Kabul Bank, one of Afghanistan's top financial institutions, to the edge of collapse. While bankrolling Hamid Karzai and his cronies by slipping them staggering sums of cash, the bank’s officials essentially ran off with the deposits of its customers. (Think of Kabul Bank as the institutional Bernie Madoff of Afghanistan.) In his piece, Filkins quotes an anonymous American official this way on the crooked goings-on he observed: “If this were America, fifty people would have been arrested by now.”

Consider that line the echo-chamber version of stand-up comedy as well as a reminder that only mad dogs and Americans stay out in the Afghan sun. Like a lot of Americans now in Afghanistan, that poor diplomat needs to be brought home -- and soon. He’s lost touch with the changing nature of his own country. While we claim it as our duty to bring “nation-building” and “good governance” to the benighted Afghans, at home the U.S. is being unbuilt, democracy is essentially gone with the wind, the oligarchs are having a field day, the Supreme Court has insured that massive influxes of money will rule any future elections, and the biggest crooks of all get to play their get-out-of-jail-free cards whenever they want. In fact, the Kabul Bank racket -- a big deal in an utterly impoverished society -- is a minor sideshow compared to what American banks, brokerages, mortgage and insurance companies, and other financial institutions did via their “ponzi schemes of securitization” when, in 2008, they drove the U.S. and global economies into meltdown mode.

And none of the individuals responsible went to prison, just old-fashioned Ponzi schemers like Madoff. Not one of them was even put on trial.

Just the other day, federal prosecutors dropped one of the last possible cases from the 2008 meltdown. Angelo R. Mozilo, the former chairman of Countrywide Financial Corp., once the nation’s top mortgage company, did have to settle a civil suit focused on his “ill-gotten gains” in the subprime mortgage debacle for $67.5 million, but as with his peers, no criminal charges will be filed.

We’re Not the Good Guys

Imagine this: for the first time in history, a movement of Arabs is inspiring Americans in Wisconsin and possibly elsewhere. Right now, in other words, there is something new under the sun and we didn’t invent it. It’s not ours. We’re not -- catch your breath here -- even the good guys. They were the ones calling for freedom and democracy in the streets of Middle Eastern cities, while the U.S. performed another of those indelicate imbalances in favor of the thugs we’ve long supported in the Middle East.

History is now being reshaped in such a way that the previously major events of the latter years of the foreshortened American century -- the Vietnam War, the end of the Cold War, even 9/11 -- may all be dwarfed by this new moment. And yet, inside the Washington echo chamber, new thoughts about such developments dawn slowly. Meanwhile, our beleaguered, confused, disturbed country, with its aging, disintegrating infrastructure, is ever less the model for anyone anywhere (though again you wouldn’t know that here).

Oblivious to events, Washington clearly intends to fight its perpetual wars and garrison its perpetual bases, creating yet more blowback and destabilizing yet more places, until it eats itself alive. This is the definition of all-American decline in an unexpectedly new world. Yes, teeth may be in jugulars, but whose teeth in whose jugulars remains open to speculation, whatever General Petraeus thinks.

As the sun peeks over the horizon of the Arab world, dusk is descending on America. In the penumbra, Washington plays out the cards it once dealt itself, some from the bottom of the deck, even as other players are leaving the table. Meanwhile, somewhere out there in the land, you can just hear the faint howls. It’s feeding time and the scent of blood is in the air. Beware!
Copyright 2011 Tom Engelhardt
Tom Engelhardt

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His most recent book is The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books).

CentCom: Government Not Using Persona Management Software in United States

February 25, 2011

According to a spokesperson for US Central Command, Persona Management Software is not being used by the US government inside the United States and that the program is limited to “foreign, non-English speaking” websites.

Lt. Cmdr. Bill H. Speaks, spokesperson for US Central Command, said the program “supports classified activities outside the [United States]” on “non-English speaking websites.”

When asked if the program could be used by private security firms for domestic operations, Speaks declined to comment, saying only that the program did not exclusively belong to the US government.

According to Speaks, the contract was awarded in August of 2010 to software and contracting companies, not HBGary as previously insinuated by other outlets. HBGary Federal was one of the parties interested in applying for the contract in July of last year. However, the software is not necessary to create fake profiles on social media sites. The software only allows individuals to shield their identities with greater ease.

UPDATE: 3/17/11 – Speaks also indicated that the winner of the contract was a company called Intrepid Inc and Anonymizer owned by Abraxis Corporation, which according to its website, “develops special technology and implements trusted unique technical solutions to address the global challenges faced by the National Security community.”

The private security firm HBGary Federal was attacked by internet hacker group Anonymous earlier this month in which over 70,000 emails were copied and posted to the internet. The posted emails seemed to indicate that the company was planning to use “fake people” on social media sites to infiltrate and discredit their perceived political enemies.

A Path to Transition and Reform in Egypt

February 25 - 26, 2011
Less Haste, More Speed
CounterPunch
By TAMER BAGHAT and KHALID EL-SHERIF

"Today we reign in our valley and restore the glory of our past, and build glory with our hands. A country we sacrifice for and which sacrifices for us. A country with justice we support, and with God's support we build."

– Ahmed Shawky

As Egypt's revolution enters its fifth week, developments continue apace, with the process of amending key areas of the constitution already under way. Yet this rapidity, with a mere 10 days allocated by the Supreme Military Council for the Constitutional Amendment Committee to complete its work, is a cause of concern. In the ongoing jubilation following Hosni Mubarak's resignation, crucial questions about the final goal of the Revolution are yet to be asked, not least what specific form of government Egypt requires to secure the gains of the past month, and prevent the return of autocracy.

Rather, attention has been directed towards ensuring a swift transition from temporary military rule to an elected civilian administration. While there is understandable eagerness for the burden of governance to be passed to civilians without delay, the process by which this is achieved is of paramount importance for Egypt's democratic foundation. Without a solid and comprehensive programme for reform that enjoys broad support, this transition will be impeded, incomplete, and potentially self-injurious. In such circumstances, it is difficult to envisage a situation where the military will feel comfortable detaching itself completely from the affairs of the state. The best guarantee for an expedited and permanent handover of power is the manifestation of the people's continued unity of purpose, and their capacity to move forward methodically.

Under the current timeline for transition, presidential and parliamentary elections to select a new government are expected to be held within six months. Many have hailed this as sufficient to ensure democratic rule. However, democracy is infinitely more than free and fair elections which, without appropriate safeguards, may result in an 'elective dictatorship' (a tyranny of the majority constrained only by the requirement to hold elections every four to six years). Pinning the country's hopes on a new government that will operate under a slightly modified version of the existing system ignores the proven reality that the current framework is dysfunctional, and hazardous to the long-term welfare of the state. Piecemeal repairs will not rectify this failing.

Moreover, due to the previous government's deliberate policy of suffocating independent political activity, Egypt's political parties are inherently weak, disorganised, and unfamiliar to the vast majority of voters (with the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the National Democratic Party of former President Mubarak). Decades of suppression cannot be countermanded in a matter of months, and expecting people to vote for persons and parties about which they know little is a disservice to democracy. Parties and political activists require time to develop, publicise, and defend policies, and compete freely in the marketplace of ideas.

Additionally, there is the risk that the current enfeeblement of Egyptian party politics might result in a parliament crippled by being composed of numerous small parties all lacking a mandate to govern by themselves. In the absence of anything approaching an overall majority, vote trading between different political parties would be unavoidable. While positive consensus building would be the desired consequence, the danger is that the parliamentary system would be reduced to a crude dance of bartering, and jockeying for power that promotes narrow party political objectives rather than national interest. Such a woeful affliction is evident in Nepal, and post-invasion Iraq (where it is aggravated by a constitutional system tailored specifically to guarantee a fractious and impaired central government).

The time required to redress these serious problems is in excess of the six months that Egypt has been given under the current timeline for transition. Indeed, it is reasonable to expect that at least 12 to 24 months would be required before Egypt would be able to establish a political system that is genuinely fit for purpose. Evidently, the current arrangements under which the country is being governed cannot be sustained for such a prolonged interval. Egyptians are conscious of the absence of any electoral mandate held by those administering the country currently, and the prospect that the military may feel compelled to extend their period of government to prevent a damaging political vacuum. A formula is required that will both permit the creation of an elected civilian government to which the military can handover power with confidence (thereby avoiding the spectre of a return to military rule subsequently), and provide the required time for constitutional and electoral reform, and political development.

A possible solution would be to change the basis upon which the upcoming elections are to be held. Rather than electing a new president and parliament for full six and five year terms respectively (as under the current constitution), voters would elect a temporary transitional government (preferably one free of partisan alignment) whose term would be explicitly limited to a relatively short period of time (perhaps to two years), thereby mitigating in large measure the possible negative consequences mentioned above. This intermediate administration would be mandated to, among other things, redress definitively the catalogue of flaws in the existing constitution and electoral laws through a constitutional convention, public commissions, and parliamentary committees, and to allow the growth of a functioning party political system. This would enable Egyptians to explore what 'democracy' means for Egypt, such as creating a free space for political discussion and dissent, empowering the press to challenge politicians and public figures, and upholding the right to form and join civil organisations free from state interference or intimidation.

With the conclusion of this critical transitional period, the approval of a new constitution in a nationwide referendum would then pave the way for a new government to be elected for a full term (ideally not to exceed four to five years, as opposed to the current six year presidential term), giving the country a thoroughly reformed political system that ensures the integrity of political competition and participation. This would require dedicating the next six months to determining the parameters of the proposed transitional government - how it would be elected, the length of its term, and the primary objectives of its reform agenda.

Undeniably, this is an ambitious proposition, particularly given the prevailing preference to vest responsibility for political, economic, and social reform in the hands of whatever government emerges after the elections in six months. This assumes that the current euphoric spirit of co-operation will survive to permit cross party collaboration. Egyptians should not discount the possibility that the newly elected President and his/her party may well advance their own agenda in defiance of other political groups, a prospect made all the more likely by the sheer breadth of powers granted to the President by the existing constitution, and the aforementioned weakness of most political parties. Additionally, such a hasty schedule would prevent the sober, reasoned constitutional debate that Egypt needs so acutely.

The brevity of such well known terms as 'separation of powers' and 'checks and balances' conceals the varied factors to be considered in selecting which governmental system to adopt. By electing a government in six months under the existing constitution, Egyptians would have unconsciously assented to the perpetuation of a particular system of government without performing the necessary diligence to consider alternative options. Rather than simply accepting the current malformed and inadequate model, the question should be asked: 'What system will work for Egypt – presidential, semi-presidential, or parliamentary?'. Resolution of a matter of such overarching importance demands time.

The immediate and long term challenge for Egypt's revolutionaries, and military guardians, is to craft a new political system that will deliver competent and effective government, safeguard the citizens' rights and liberties, and protect the country from foreign domination and exploitation. This is a sacred duty owed not only to the Egyptians of today, but to future generations who have no immediate representation. Proceeding with haste risks placing this future in jeopardy. With so much at stake, a calm and undisturbed environment is required for the creation of a new constitutional and electoral framework, and the germination of genuine political life. As the old Egyptian proverb advises, "Go slower to reach your destination faster". Treading the path of transition with care is the best means of ensuring that the torch of the revolution remains in the hands of the people.

Tamer O. Bahgat is a transnational lawyer with a predominant International Law Firm in London, with experience in corporate and international law, and a focus in economic and constitutional reform in emerging markets.

Khalid El-Sherif is a legal and policy professional with experience in regulatory reform, public and private international law, with a focus on development in the Arab World.

Islamophobic Nut-Job Pam Geller Officially Designated a Hate Group

NY Daily News:

Manhattan blogger Pamela Geller and her posse of anti-Islamic protesters have been branded a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Stop the Islamization of America was included in the civil rights organization's annual roundup of extremist groups - a rogue's gallery that includes everything from the Ku Klux Klan to white supremacists and Nazis.

Geller's group was one of the most vocal opponents of the proposed Islamic Center near Ground Zero.

The group was also behind ads that were placed on city buses urging Muslims to leave "the falsity of Islam."

Geller, who runs a blog called Atlas Shrugs, dismissed the Law Center as an "uber left" group that has "failed to address the greatest threat to our national security."

"My group is a human rights group," she said. "And these people are taken seriously? This is the morally inverted state of the world."

My group is a human rights group! Man, irony is dead, cremated, the ashes were ground up and fed to monkeys and their shit was blasted into outer space.

If you missed it last summer: "How a Lunatic, Racist Blogger Is Fanning Hate Against Muslims -- With the Help of Our Dumb Media"

By Joshua Holland | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at February 25, 2011, 1:38 pm

Plague Kills Scientist in First Laboratory Case in 50 Years

By Tom Randall - Feb 24, 2011
BLOOMBERG

A Chicago scientist died of the plague after becoming the first U.S. researcher to contract the disease in more than 50 years, a government report said.

The man, a 60-year-old university researcher who wasn’t identified in the report, was working with a weakened form of the plague bacterium that was previously thought to be harmless to humans. The case occurred in September 2009 and was described today in a report by the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The University of Chicago previously identified the man as Malcolm Casadaban, a professor of molecular genetics and cell biology who worked at the school for three decades.

Centuries after the bubonic plague killed millions of people in medieval Europe, the disease continues to infect more than 2,000 people worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization in Geneva. Scientists who study the plague use the weakened bacterium, which has never been linked to a human illness and is excluded from the strict safety codes that regulate the study of other deadly germs, the CDC said.

“The severe outcome experienced by the patient was unexpected,” CDC scientists wrote in the report. “Researchers always should adhere to recommended use of personal protective equipment.”

An autopsy of the man revealed a previously unknown medical condition that may have made him more vulnerable to the illness, according to the report. He had a hereditary condition called hemochromatosis, which causes an excessive buildup of iron in parts of the body. Previous studies have shown that injecting mice with doses of iron while they are exposed to the plague increases their chance of getting sick.
Yersinia Pestis

The bacterium that causes pneumonic, bubonic and septicemic plague is called Yersinia pestis. The CDC tested the version of the weakened bacterium the man was working with to make sure it hadn’t evolved to become more deadly. They injected mice with high doses of the strain and compared it with similar weakened strains. Less than 3 percent of the animals died, suggesting the germ hadn’t become more virulent, the CDC said.

The plague is spread by rodents and the fleas that feed on them. Improved hygiene and knowledge about the disease has limited its global spread, according to the WHO. Early diagnosis and treatment can improve outcomes, and about 10 percent of reported cases of plague result in death, the WHO said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Randall in New York at trandall6@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net.

Obama's Secret Plot To Bring 100 Million Muslims to the US

Behold the mother of all anti-Obama conspiracy theories.
motherjones.com
By David Corn | Fri Feb. 25, 2011 12:01 AM PST

In the past few years, paranoid conservatives have cooked up all sorts of conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama. Some have claimed he has a secret plan to confiscate guns [1]. Others have said he has a secret plan to confiscate IRA accounts [2]. Still others have contended he's setting up clandestine FEMA concentration camps [3]. And, of course, there's the big one: Obama's is an undercover socialist purposefully trying to wreck the US economy so he can implement a dictatorial takeover [4]. But here's the mother of all right-wing conspiracy theories: Obama is scheming to bring tens of millions of Muslims—perhaps up to 100 million—from the Middle East into the United States in order to turn this country into an Islamic nation by the end of his second term.

Fortunately, this diabolical plan has been exposed by an American-born Israeli named Avi Lipkin, who says he once was a translator for the Israeli government, and an outfit called Special Guests, which books conservative commentators and advocates on popular television and radio talk shows. Lipkin's website claims that since 1990 he has lectured on various topics—including the threat of Islam and Israel—in over 1000 churches and synagogues in the United Sates, Canada, England, Greece, Israel, and other countries. His bio [5] notes that he heads the Judeo-Christian Bible Bloc party in Israel. (The party's Facebook page [6] listed 103 members yesterday.)

This week, Lipkin and Special Guests sent an email to television and radio bookers pitching [7]the biggest story of all time:

According to Arabic language broadcasts intercepted and interpreted by Lipkin and his team, "The Moslem world is saying that President Obama wants amnesty for the current Hispanic 12 million illegal immigrants in the US in order to pave the way for the next wave of tens of millions of illegals from the Middle East to the United States, leading to 50 to 100 million Muslims living in the US before the end of Obama’s second term, which will be brought forth by these new US citizens voting for their savior, Obama."

Lipkin, who also goes by the name Victor Mordechai, claims to have "a source with a senior United Nations official" (whatever that means) who says that the United States "will be a Muslim country by the end of Obama's second term." This grand plan is so organized that it even has three parts. Phase One: Obama foments unrest in "each Middle East country" so that these regimes are toppled and replaced by "fanatic" Sunni Mulsims, who go on to "overthrow the competing Shiite regime in Iran without involving American troops." Phase Two: A massive exodus of Muslims heads toward Europe, Canada, and the Unites States, turning all of these Western nations into Muslim countries. Phase Three: The nations now controlled by Islamic extremists "march on Israel in an effort to destroy it" and Obama "keeps his promise…to destroy Israel."

Of course, there's a YouTube video (embedded below) that explains Lipkin's scoop. It's called, "Is Barack Obama Really A Saudi/Muslim 'Plant' in the White House?" The answer is obvious. The video claims that "for years before" the 2008 election, Lipkin's wife, who worked for the Israeli government monitoring Arabic radio broadcasts, picked up broadcasts of Saudis saying, "We will have a a Muslim in the White House in 2008." (Remember Obama's bow before the Saudi king in 2009? Wink, wink.) The video notes that Obama has refused "to reveal" his long-form birth certificate "or anything else about his past." (Convergence with the birthers!) The video suggests that Obama and his crew have pulled off the "greatest…scam in history" and "put an anti-American and Saudi-sponsored Muslim in the White House, thanks to a brain-dead American public and news media, both obsessed with skin color and an American Idol mentality." The video goes on to say that in 2009 Lipkin's wife listened to an Egyptian television broadcast featuring the then-foreign minister saying that Obama had sworn to him that he was a Muslim. Obama—according to Lipkin's account of his wife's account of the foreign minister's account—also told this Egyptian official that after he finished with the health care debate, "You Muslims will see what I will do for Islam regarding Israel."

The video does not specifically cover Obama's secret scheme to bring up to 100 million Muslims into the United States. But isn't that what a Saudi plant would do?

Avi Lipkin puts Glenn Beck to shame as a conspiracy theorist. But though he's on the fringe, he's not on his own. His video has been viewed 2.9 million times. And Special Guests is an outfit that works within the conservative establishment. According to its website [8], the organization has collaborated with the National Right To Life Committee, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, the Second Amendment Foundation, and other conservative groups. The site boasts [9], "We regularly place guests on radio shows including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity Radio, [and] Michael Savage." The group says it only promotes causes that "are pleasing to The Maker, our Creator." It asks potential clients, "What is your special message? Is it helpful to humanity? Is it God-honoring?" Apparently, it pleases God to accuse the president of covertly plotting—and implementing!—a Muslim takeover of the United States.

Source URL: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/obamas-secret-muslim-plot

Links:
[1] http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/The_big_lie_on_guns_--_it_works.html
[2] http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/01/new-obama-conspiracy-confiscating-your-ira
[3] http:// http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/36526/fema-camps-jesse-venturas-conspiracy-theory-debunked/
[4] http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/bob-inglis-tea-party-casualty
[5] http://www.vicmord.com/biography.html
[6] http:// http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8892612319#!/group.php?gid=8892612319&v=info
[7] http://specialguests.com/guests/viewnews.cgi?id=EkAlFuukyyRVWBNoAc&tmpl=default
[8] http://
[9] http://www.specialguests.com/special.php