Groups Quit Egypt Rally Saying Hijacked by Islamists

Published on Saturday, July 30, 2011 by Reuters

Liberals fear Islamists will dominate constitution rewrite
by Edmund Blair and Marwa Awad

CAIRO - More than 30 political parties and movements withdrew from a rally on Friday that was organized to send a united message to the ruling army about reform, saying the event was hijacked by Islamist groups.

"Islamic law above the constitution," read banners in Cairo's Tahrir Square that was packed with tens of thousands of people. Protesters who fear Islamists will seek to dominate plans to rewrite the constitution demanded they be taken down.

"Islamic, Islamic, we don't want secular," they chanted in the square filled with many followers of the strict Salafist interpretation of Islam.

"There are so many (Islamic) beards. We certainly feel imposed upon," said student Samy Ali, 23. He said Salafists had tried to separate women and men camping there.

Islamists and more liberal groups have diverged on how hard to press the ruling generals for change. They have also been divided over the fate of the constitution, which is to be re-written after parliament is elected later this year.

Liberal groups fear the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's best organized group, and other Islamists will dominate the vote.

A joint statement by more than 30 groups said Islamists and other groups had agreed on demands to make on Friday "to thwart attempts by the military council to divide the revolutionaries and distort their image." But the groups said "some Islamic currents" violated this agreement.

Abdelrahman al Barr, a senior Brotherhood member, said of the decision by other groups to quit Friday's rally: "Salafist slogans shouldn't be a cause for other political forces to withdraw. Everyone is free to say what they feel like."

But the Brotherhood is home to a broad range of views and some agreed Salafist actions were divisive. "There are certainly some Brotherhood members who are upset over the way Salafist groups have taken over the square," Brotherhood youth member Amr Salah said in Tahrir.

Friday's protests in Cairo and other cities had been called to deliver a unified message to the ruling army council, which took over when Hosni Mubarak was ousted on February 11. Many protesters now say it is not delivering on promises to change.

"We agreed on uniting our call for swift elections, resignation of the public prosecutor and the demands of the families of martyrs," said Mohamed Adel, spokesman of the April 6 movement, one of those which withdrew.

Those killed in the uprising to oust Mubarak are referred to as "martyrs."

Several groups, including the liberal Wafd party, also said they were withdrawing from a rally in Suez, east of Cairo, because Salafists were using it for their own ends.

In the Sinai Peninsula, where many people own weapons, about 150 people rallied in the town of Al-Arish. Some had banners with Islamic slogans. They fired shots in the air. Security sources said one youth and a policeman were wounded.

'RED LINE'

Alongside the Islamic slogans, there were other chants in Tahrir on Friday, such as "People and army, hand in hand."

Some protesters have accused the Brotherhood, which was banned under Mubarak but now enjoys unprecedented freedom, of making a pact with the army. The group denies this although differences over how hard to push the army remain.

Echoing the view held by many Islamists, preacher Mazhar Shaheen said in a sermon in Tahrir: "Our army will remain a red line, because it protected the great revolution ... No one can divide us and the army."

He said the army should provide a timetable for handing power to civilians. The generals say they are moving as fast as possible to do this and deny dragging their feet.

While the army is expected to hand day-to-day government to civilians after elections, some protesters expect it to keep a hand on power, partly because of its vast business interests. The army has also provided Egypt's rulers for six decades.

However, the Brotherhood has sought to heal some divisions with other groups. It made a statement of support for the April 6 movement, which in a rare move by the army, was singled out for trying to divide the people and the military. April 6 has been at the forefront of criticism of the military.

"The Brotherhood rejects discrediting and distorting any revolutionary force that chooses to rally peacefully," Mohamed Beltagy, a member of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, said.

One of the persistent protester demands has been for a swifter trial for Mubarak, now set for August 3. Protesters say the army wants to drag it out to protect its former commander-in-chief and the army from public humiliation.

Mubarak has been in hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh since April. He has not been transferred to a prison, as his two sons and other officials have, due to illness.

An official in the hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh said on Friday Mubarak's condition was "almost stable" but he continued to suffer from severe depression, the official news agency MENA reported. Earlier this week, hospital officials told MENA the former president was weak and refusing to eat solid food.

A source close to Mubarak said on Thursday his lawyer would tell the court in Cairo he was too sick to attend. His two sons, the former interior minister and other officials being tried alongside him are expected to be present.

Additional reporting by Shaimaa Fayed, Patrick Werr and Omar Fahmy; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Sophie Hares

Islamophobia and the Internet

CounterPunch
Weekend Edition
July 29 - 31, 2011

Cut-and-Paste Hatred

By JEFF SPARROW

The massacre in Oslo has focused attention on the toxic influence of the Islamophobic blogosphere from which Anders Breivik cut and pasted much of his manifesto.

But it's important to recognise that the far right blogs do more than simply disseminate hatred – that, with the blogosphere, the demagogues of anti-Muslim bigotry have stumbled upon an organizational form that resolves some of the traditional problems besetting racial populism.

Historically, the racist right builds from those we might call the social etceteras, thatstrata sitting uncomfortably between the main classes of industrial society. Classical fascism, for instance, was based upon individuals simultaneously resentful of big capital and fearful of losing their hard-won shreds of respectability. Shopkeepers, professionals, small business owners, bureaucrats, retirees, the unemployed: people conscious of being screwed by the banks, but also fretting about immigrants flooding their suburbs. The characteristic 'two-facedness' of racial populism (shrill denunciations of Wall Street alongside exposes of culturalMarxism) reflects its supporters' sense that they are squeezed from above and below, with no evident solution at hand.

That means that the supporters of the racial right are often the most atomized elements of society. There's no innate ties of solidarity between two small businessmen – indeed, they're in competition with each other -- and there's even less of a bond between a small businessman and a declassed factory worker.

How, then, do you organize this aggregation of flotsam and jetsam, people without any particular collectivity other than a shared sense of not fitting in?
The traditional answer is via political activity that in and of itself contrasts with the hopeless isolation of everyday existence. Hitler famously wrote of how his mass marches served to 'burn[…] into the small, wretched individual the proud conviction that, paltry worm as hewas, he was nevertheless a part of a great dragon.' For classical fascism, meetings, rallies and street violence served not simply to advertise the movement but to excite supporters, to give them a collective sense of participating in a grand adventure.

Nonetheless, precisely because populism grows, as Marx put it, 'by the simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes', keeping organisations together always proved difficult for the far right. That's why racial populist groupings typically form around a charismatic, authoritarian leader, a single figure who can keep followers in-line via force of will. Even so, they tend to grow very quickly – and then spectacularly implode, as various followers decide that they, too, would like to be fuhrer.

That's why the blogosphere matters.

Blogs are unique in that they allow supporters to feel an ownership of a political project without giving them any actual control. They are, to put it another way, simultaneously participatory but undemocratic.

That's why the major Islamophobic blogs should be understood not simply as providing ideas for their followers but as offering them an experience.

It is, after all, far easier to become politically active online than in a traditional organisation. There's no limit to how much you can post in the comments thread of a 'counter-jihadi' website: if you choose, you can spend all day holding forth about the forgeries on Obama's birth certificate without ever leaving your La-Z-Boy recliner. Very quickly, you find yourself part of a community, recognizing and being recognized by other members. Through that participation, you can forge a new identity, one that's exciting and meaningful.

In real life, you might be a retired dentist, aggrieved at your vermicular existence; on Michelle Malkin's site, you're 'Mightydragon55', Hammer of Islam and agent of counter-jihad.

The major sites periodically launch blog-wars and other online campaigns, and these serve to cadreise their followers. Where the far-right of the past blooded its recruits via street battles with the Left, today, you can prove your mettle and bondwith your comrades by joining a snarky pile-on against some progressive site.

Yet, while blogs enable involvement, they don't require democracy.

As soon as you launch a real life political organisation -- even one on the far right -- the question of decision-making (elections, congresses, etc) comes to the fore. Which, inevitably, raises the vexed issue of who gets to play Hitler and who has to be Germany.

In the blogosphere, it's different. The most popular sites are built around a single magnetic figure, whose accepted role is to lay down on a daily basis the political line that everyone else follows. A right-wing blog community can thus be much more stable than a right-wing organisation, simply because, online, top-down leadership goes without saying.

Furthermore, the anonymity of the blogosphere encourages a rhetorical escalation that's very useful for the far right.

If you attend a political meeting, you might think twice about shouting out your desire to herd immigrants into camps, for fear you'll have to explain yourself to your neighbours. But as 'Nordicwarrior' you need feel no such constraints, and can express yourself, as TS Eliot once put it, with 'the braggadocio of the mild-mannered man safely entrenched behind his typewriter'.

Which means, of course, there's a certain unreality to online politics, with the commenter writing all-cap screeds as 'Wrath of Thor' just as likely to be an aggrieved grand-dad as a skinhead or stormtrooper.

That being said, Oslo showed the folly of taking comfort from the extremity of online Islamophobia. If you visit, say, Atlas Shrugs, proprietor Pamela Geller often seems to be hallucinating on demand. Hers is a world in which Obama's not only a Muslim: he's both the secret son of Malcolm X and a drug-addicted Kenyan jihadi, engaged in extramarital dalliances with crack whores.

Yet Breivik hailed Geller as a savant, an authority whom he quoted extensively throughout his manifesto.

The organisations of the far right, while growing, are still comparatively small. But the Islamophobic blogosphere stretches across the globe, providing a network that allows every angry shopkeeper to marinate in extravagant fantasies of racial war and creeping sharia – not just reading about the stuff but, crucially, participating in a community in which such views are accepted without question. Given the combination of all-encroaching paranoia and rhetorical violence, it's not so very surprising if the online world occasionally leaks bloodily into reality.

So what follows?

Most importantly, the Left needs to take Islamophobia seriously. It's easy to snigger at the oddballs and nutters who find Muslims lurking behind every bush. But the anti-Islam sentiment is fast becoming a key tenet of the far-right,structurally identical to the anti-Semitism of the early twentieth century.

Nor is it useful simply to urge restraint, to call, Jon Stewart-style, for a rhetorical de-escalation. Right-wing populism grows because it appeals to those who feel that they have their backs to the wall. In the twenty-first century's climate of austerity and economic crisis, many people do not feel calm – and nor should they. The Islamophobes channel genuine insecurities about job losses and social disintegration into imaginary threats from the caliphate.

In that respect, then, the growth of the far right represents, as always, a perpetual reminder of the failure of the Left, not online but in the real world. If we don't come up with answers, there will also be an Anders Breivik who does.

Jeff Sparrow is the editor of Overland magazine and the author of Killing: Misadventures in Violence.

The True Costs of the War on Libya

Weekend Edition
July 29 - 31, 2011
CounterPunch

A Wicked, Heartless Folly
By CHARLES ABUGRE

The invasion was planned and the opportunity to execute it was highly propitious.

They say 'time heals' emotional wounds. If that is so why don't I feel less enraged as the days go by since the outrageous invasion of Libya on ludicrous false pretences four months ago? Yes, Libya is under invasion from air and sea bombardments directed by foreign special forces on Libyan soil. The purpose of the invasion is regime change. The aim of the bombs that are killing people and laying Tripoli to waste is for one purpose only, to help a rebel group they formed and armed to overthrow the Colonel Gaddafi regime. The air bombardments were initiated in the false expectation that once bombs started falling in Tripoli, Libyans in Tripoli would rise up against Gaddafi and in this murky situation the armed group would march in from Benghazi and take power. As time goes by, the strategy gets desperate. It has now become 'anything to kill or oust Gaddafi and his sons will do'. This is reminiscent of the 1960s when the same actors used not so dissimilar tactics to overthrow governments they didn't like. The plan failed, which is why four months into the carnage, Gaddafi still pops out of the hole he is hiding in to scream insults at his invaders.

The invasion was planned. In the case of the US involvement, as far back as George Bush Junior's 'war on the axis of evil'. In the case of the French, active planning may have been since October 2010. The planning most likely included ensuring that weapons and forces were ready in Benghazi when the moment came. This is why the civil protest in Benghazi, which started in a similar manner as the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings of unarmed civilians, turned into an armed rebellion in two days, and in less than a month, the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation)/French invasion had began. This incredible speed of events is far from spontaneous.

That there are British, Dutch, French and Italian special forces, among others, on the ground not just in Benghazi but all over the country is neither debatable nor denied. We know that much, from the reports of the British media and from the clumsy ways in which the Netherlands and Britain sought to introduce their special forces days into the insurgency. Recall the helicopter full of British special forces that landed in the middle of the rebel troops who promptly captured and displayed them before realising that they were 'friendly forces'. Days later, the Dutch were even clumsier. They ended up being captured by the Gaddafi forces, who displayed them before the world's media and then released them. You should have the seen the glee in the face of Gaddafi's son.

But the penetration of special forces into Libya, if we are to believe Franco Bechis, the Italian journalist writing in the 24 March edition of Libero (re-told in www.economicsnewspaper.com), may have been as far back as 16 November 2010 when a train-load of French people landed in Benghazi carrying what were alleged to be businessmen seeking to invest in Libya's agriculture. A large number of these 'businessmen' were in fact soldiers. According to Franco Bechis, quoting the Maghreb Confidential, active planning for regime change by the French began on 21 October 2010 when Nuri Mesmar, Gaddafi's chief of protocol and his closest chum, arrived in Paris for surgery. However, Mesmar was not met by doctors but by the French secret service and Sarkozy's closest aides. Mesmar was also responsible for the Ministry of Agriculture. On 16 November, Mesmar agreed to a strategy to drop troops in Libya under the guise of a business delegation. Two days later, a plane-load of people, including soldiers, landed in Benghazi where they met, among others, Libyan military commanders to encourage them to desert. One of them who agreed to desert was Colonel Gehan Abdallah, whose militia subsequently led the rebellion. Where did this information come from? The Italian intelligence service.

The role of Nuri Mesmar – using a close friend to stick the knife in the back of his friend in power – is as old as the story of Brutus and Caesar in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and reminds one of how Captain Blaise Campaoré of Burkina Faso was used by the French to overthrow and execute his closest friend Thomas Sankara.

But it was not only from France that the armed rebellion was planned. The head of the Libyan National Council, Colonel Khalifa, arrived from the USA on 14 March to lead the armed rebellion a month after it began. Colonel Khalifa has been living in the United States since the 1980s, apparently working as an agent for the CIA. This fact was contained in a book published in 2001, titled the 'African Handling' by Pierre Pean according to www.economicsnewspaper.com. The 31 March edition of the Wall Street Journal carries a story which says that 'The CIA officials acknowledge that they have been active in Libya for several weeks, like other Western Intelligence Service'. Khalifa, Mesmar and others will be joined in the leadership of the Provisional Government by some of the most murderous individuals in the Gaddafi regime, including Jalil Mustafa Abud, who until the uprising was the minister for justice and on the list of Amnesty International's most egregious human rights violators.

LUDICROUS FALSE PRETENCES

I used the phrase 'ludicrous false pretences' to describe the excuses publicly sold to a gullible press, decidedly. Why? The core of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 claims to have the aim of 'protecting civilians'. There are two sets of principles which the need to protect civilians could have been drawn from. One is the principle of holding all combatants responsible in respect of the Geneva Convention. This principle is covered by UN Security Council Resolutions 1265, 1296 and 1820, among others. Armed combatants from both sides who violate the Geneva Convention will be held liable, under these resolutions, and could suffer sanctions and by extension be liable to face the International Criminal Court (ICC) owing to the extent of the violations qualified as crimes against humanity or as genocidal. These resolutions however do not legalise external military intervention.

The second is the principle of the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P). This is based on the concept of 'borderless' security, which was the title of the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) released in December 2001 and subsequently adopted as an operative principle by the UN. This commission, chaired by Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, undertook to study the relationship between (a) the rights of sovereign states, upon which the greater part of international relations has been built, and (b) the so-called 'right of humanitarian intervention' which has been exercised sporadically – in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo but not Rwanda – and with varying degrees of success and international controversy. The report addressed 'the question of when, if ever, it is appropriate for states to take coercive – and in particular military – action, against another state for the purpose of protecting people at risk in that other state'.

The conclusion was that the priority should be the protection of human beings, not state sovereignty. Therefore, if human security – physical safety and dignity – was threatened by the state or its severe inability to address, the international community had the responsibility to act, including by armed intervention. R2P places humanitarian law above that of sovereignty. The R2P was heavily lobbied, for especially Western humanitarian organisations, and its adoption by the UN celebrated. However, others have warned against the danger of this principle for a number of reasons. First, supplanting humanitarian law over sovereignty means supplanting humanitarianism over rights for the latter and is based on citizenship, which in turn rests on sovereignty. Secondly, the R2P principle opens the door for selective interventions and selective justice by those who control the Security Council. It also creates legal and political dependence on the UN Security Council and militarily powerful countries, thereby undermining the very foundations for long-term justice and peace which rests on domestic political processes. Resolution 1973 was crafted on the basis of R2P, 'legalising' the invasion. Invasion is what the NATO countries wanted, not simply in order to minimise harm to civilians by Gaddafi's forces but for regime change.

Was an invasion necessary on humanitarian grounds? This is debatable because the answer lies in the counter-factual, namely, the issue of whether or not Gaddafi's forces would have bombed Benghazi to bits as claimed. What we now know is that the Gaddafi air force did not target civilian settlements in Benghazi when they flew and according to Amnesty International, the claim of mass rape by Gaddafi's forces could not be verified on the ground. We also know that the suppression of the 15 February civilian uprising by Gaddafi was not the first. The last major suppression of this sort was in 2006. Like with other North African and Middle Eastern dictators, Gaddafi put down the 2006 uprising violently, shooting a few and arresting others. There were no mass murders and at the time his actions received the tacit support of the USA in particular as a legitimate response to an Al-Qaida influence. But the plain truth is that the situation was no longer a civilian uprising after two days. It was an armed insurgency and every state has the right to confront armed insurgency with arms. We have seen this time and again in the Unites States, whether they are responding to religious fanatics or drug gangs in black neighbourhoods.

Was there a better way to save lives? Yes, if given the chance. We know that President Lula da Silva (former president of Brazil) offered to lead a mediation mission to mediate a ceasefire. This was supported by Latin American countries, the African Union and even the weak-kneed Arab League. Gaddafi had agreed to the idea of a ceasefire, including international forces, to observe it. This was turned down by NATO and their vassals in Benghazi. The African Union mission was humiliated in Benghazi and the Western media hosted discussions that ridiculed the AU initiatives. Peace was given no chance. Why? Because the agenda is regime change and not the protection of civilians.

If military intervention was the better route to protecting civilians, why hasn't NATO invaded Yemen where a wholly non-violent uprising is being brutally suppressed with live bullets? Robert Gates, who was until recently the US defense secretary is reported to have said, 'I do not think it's my role to intervene in the internal affairs of Yemen.' Could it be because he is 'our bloody dictator'? After all, he is fighting a war against left-wing separatists 'we' don't like, and Yemen plays host to America's fifth fleet? How about Bahrain, the tiny kingdom where the royal family owns most of the islands that make up the kingdom, and where with the support of Saudi troops large numbers of unarmed demonstrators have been gunned down? Is there even a talk of hauling the sultan to the ICC? This is the selective use of the R2P that many have feared.

Is the military intervention saving lives? Clearly not! How do aerial bombardments of civilian settlements and atrocities by rebels armed by NATO constitute saving civilians lives? Are the people of Benghazi more civilian than the people in Tripoli and other places? The history of Western military invasions ostensibly meant to save lives has often tended to claim lives. Take Iraq, where a million or so died directly from bombs and indirectly from sectarian violence and a million more have been displaced. Not even Saddam's several years of murderous rule managed to achieve that feat. Or take Afghanistan or Somalia or even the Balkan interventions?

Are these invaders capable of false pretences to justify armed interventions? Yes. The evidence abounds. The story of lies and deceitfulness that was sold to the same gullible media to justify the invasion of Iraq is well known. George Bush and Tony Blair were in no doubt that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Once the decision was made to invade Iraq everything was done to provoke a justification for invasion. Before the invasion of Afghanistan on the pretext of going after Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaida, the ruling Taliban had offered to hand Bin Laden over to an international tribunal if the Americans provided evidence of his involvement in the 9/11 bombing of the Twin Towers in New York. There are similar stories relating to the bombardment of Yugoslavia.

WHY REGIME CHANGE?

So, if the North African uprisings that spilled over into Libya provided the enabling conditions for regime change planned long before, and if 'saving lives' was not the real purpose of the military intervention, why are they so desperate to remove Colonel (Brother) Muammar Gaddafi and his family from power?

There are many theories.

RETRIBUTION

Different governments harbour different grievances against 'the Brother'. Some say Sarkozy is seeking to cover up an embarrassment, one that could cause him a legal headache if the lethargic French legal system were to ever to come to life. This is the allegation that his election campaign for president of the French republic was substantially funded by the Gaddafi family. 'Papi Silvio' (Berlusconi) was embarrassed by 'the Brother' when he pitched his tent in Milan at a time that Berlusconi was facing a public outcry over his womanising behaviour. 'The Brother' is said to have addressed a room full of angry Italian women, and surrounded by his 'liberated' women guards, announced himself a protector of Italian women. The British and the Americans may have more serious grievances in the form of the downing of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie. It is probably the same sense of grievance that led many African governments to acquiesce to UN resolution 1973. Many would love to see the back of this weird man who prowled their territories in a manner that made them small in the eyes of their people. But it is simply not wise to embarrass, let alone anger those with bigger military might.

IN SUPPORT OF A LEGITIMATE INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE

In the New Eastern Outlook journal (www.journal-neo.com), Dmitry Isayev quotes Papi Silvio as saying that the war in Libya is a war of independence of Cyrenaica (eastern Libya), presumably from the colonisation of Western Libya, perhaps in much the same way as the separation of South Sudan from the rest of Sudan. Silvio's Italy is therefore clear in what it is doing – it is supporting a separatist movement. While it is unlikely that his NATO counterparts will welcome this perspective of the war, Silvio's view does have resonance. The armed insurrection is launched from Benghazi (the capital of the east), which for several centuries was the seat of the monarchy. While the monarchy lasted Cyrenaica controlled the oil resources, a thriving port and fishing grounds, and therefore the wealth. This monarchy was overthrown by Gaddafi in 1969 with the support of clans from the west. Since then the east has been marginalised politically and economically. But if the purpose of the war is to separate the two Libyas, how does this gel with UN Security Council resolution 1973, which is meant merely to protect civilians?

GEOPOLITICAL INTERESTS

In the 23 June issue of Issue (536) of the leading online publication on African issues, Pambazuka News (www.pambazuka.org), Ismael Hossein-Zadeh suggested that NATO are going after Gaddafi because of his insubordination that threatens strategic interests and the very sense of power itself. One area of unforgiveable insubordination is Gaddafi's (and his Syrian counterpart's) refusal – the only two 'Arab nations' to do so – to be absorbed into NATO/US/French strategic security arrangements for the control of the Mediterranean Sea Basin and the Middle East. 'Libya and Syria have not also participated in NATO's almost ten-year-old Operation Active Endeavor naval patrols and exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and neither is Libya a member of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue military partnership which includes most regional countries: Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania'. Libya's Gaddafi also opposed the US Africa Command (AFRICOM).

These are serious infractions because of the strategic importance of the Mediterranean region. Staying out means Gaddafi cannot be trusted when it comes to the security of Israel – a country you do not mess around with. Staying out means an important source of oil, gas and minerals deposit cannot be relied upon in strategic planning. Staying out also means leaving a crack for other non-NATO countries, especially China, Brazil, India and Russia, to find serious footing in the region. Staying out constitutes a serious geopolitical risk.

The concern to contain India and China is not a throw-away point. Questioned on his view about what really motivates the invasion of Afghanistan, Henry Kissinger, the famed foreign secretary of the Cold War era, says that 'trends supported by Japan and China, to create a free trade area in Asia – an opposing block of the most populous nations in the world with great resources and some of the most industrial nations will be inconsistent with American national interests. For this reason, America must maintain a presence in Asia…' (Simon and Schuster, 'Does America need a foreign policy?', quoted in www.economicsnews.com). This is consistent with the views of Zbigniew Brzzinsky, Jimmy Carter's foreign secretary, the man understood to have discovered and mentored Barack Obama into the presidency. He considers Euro-Asia to be the 'chessboard on which the battle takes place for global primacy'. The Mediterranean is a core part of Euro-Asia. Speaking on 28 March, Barack Obama says of the Libyan invasion: 'when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act … America has an important strategic interest in preventing Gaddafi from defeating those who oppose him'.

STRATEGIC ECONOMIC INTERESTS

In my view there are three areas in which strategic economic interests express themselves: economic policies that influence the accumulation, ownership and movement of capital, goods and services; the control over natural resources indirectly or directly; and the power of long-term debt. In the Pambazuka article, Ismael makes the point that the control of oil matters but that NATO/French countries already exercise control through the presence of their companies. The problem is that Gaddafi has refused to privatise the oil wells and so exercises effective control. That is dangerous, in the same way that Hugo Chavez is. Gaddafi keeps an open-door policy with regards to foreign companies. Such a policy risks letting China into Libya in a big way, thereby complicating the strategic security question. As George Bush once said, 'if you are not with us then are against us.' Obama has merely retained this view.

Besides, control over natural resources is control over policies. Neoliberalism may be dead in academic circles, but not in real politik. If it were, Goldman Sachs wouldn't be literally running the US economic policy. Gaddafi has been extremely naughty in this area as well. If you look at the World Bank's world development indices, you find that Libya has not borrowed from the World Bank and the IMF in years, even after the sanctions were lifted. Libya's economy is heavily state-owned. It has a life expectancy and quality of life comparable to the richest countries. This is against the grain. Worst still, by actively supporting and putting aside resources to realise the dreams of the three major pan-African institutions – the African Monetary Fund, the African Investment Bank and the African Central Bank – Libya could be said to be undermining the Bretton Woods institutions controlled by the NATO countries and France. Breaking the stranglehold that these institutions have over Africa could also mean weakening the geopolitical influence of NATO countries/France over the continent. Moreover, Libya has become and investment competitor in Africa. The Libya African portfolio has a rolling kitty of US$8 billion dollars channelled into investments ranging from telecommunications, the hospitality industry, some manufacturing and retail of oil and gas. Libya is effectively redeploying some of their sovereign wealth funds (SWF) away from purchasing US government bonds into investments in Africa. That cannot be totally encouraged given the US government dependence on petro-dollars for selling their bonds.

WAR AS A MEANS OF TRANSFERRING BADLY NEEDED CAPITAL OUT OF LIBYA

The military bombardments of Libya have already resulted in the shifting of capital from Libya to the invaders. Directly, they have seized the assets of the Libyan people owned by Libyan public institutions and re-channelled them into expenditures. These expenditures will most likely be military hardware and other logistics support for the war. The US impounded US$30 billion or so, which Ismael suggests is earmarked as a contribution to the building of the pan-African institutions mentioned earlier. Britain impounded undisclosed bank accounts and assets, including UK£700 million worth of Libyan dinars printed by a British currency printing firm, De la Rue, which they are likely to give to the rebels. The procurements in support of the war effort will most likely be from these countries and will therefore serve as a fiscal stimulus in these economies. In advance of the war, the Libyan 'opposition' figures would have quietly shifted their ill-gotten wealth abroad, some into the tax havens controlled by the invading countries. We will never know how much.

But perhaps the most significant and long-term means of inducing capital from Libya will be as reparation payments for the war. The cost of every munitions that was fired wildly or on target by the Libyan rebels and by NATO/France; the cost of every missile fired from the air or seas; the cost every spy plane that flew over Libyan airspace; the cost of every soldier mobilised for the war effort; the cost of intelligence, special analysts and contractors will be paid for by the Libyan people, with their oil and gas, decades into the future. And this will not be cheap. Newspapers in Britain speculate that if the war continues to the autumn, Britain may spend upwards of a UK£1 billion. At the end of May, the British armed forces estimated that they had flown 1,500 sorties, attacked 300 targets and fired at least 20 tomahawk missiles, one costing US$1 million. A tornado bomber flying a 3,000-mile round trip from its base to Tripoli and back costs US$300,000 per flight. A C17 transport plane costs over US$60,000 per hour to fly. The British say they have over 1,000 personnel involved in the operation. The cost to the US taxpayer is estimated to top a US$1 billion by autumn. In March, the US had 75 aircrafts involved in the operation and FT reports that on the first day of the operation, the US had spent US$110 million. If the Kosovo war is a guide, by the end of the third month the US had spent US$2.4 billion in the operation. Add the cost of the other NATO and Arab partners and it is conceivable that by end of July the cost of the Libyan invasion will approach if not exceed US$10 billion and counting. David Cameron, the British prime minister, said plainly on TV that whatever the outcome of the war, Libya will pay the cost of its participation. Add the cost of reparations and compensation for mercenaries and plain theft by many of the crooks constituting the provisional government and the Libyan people will find themselves tens of billions of dollars out of pocket.

THE LONG-TERM BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF WAR TO THE VICTORS

Note that the power of debt is not simply the volume of money one owes and transfers but the effect on power relations. Libya will forever be subordinated to its creditors even if the debt is odious. It will have to open up its policy making to the creditors, open up its banks, import more and privatise assets, including natural resources. As the vanquished, it will be forced to join those organisations it previously stayed away from and conform. The destruction is equally beneficial. The more the better – after the war of destruction is the reconstruction. This is great for the construction firms of the victors, suppliers of building material, architects and engineers. The suffering banks of Europe and America will be energised by massive lending for the reconstruction effort, exacerbating the debt burden of the Libyan people but widening the profit margins of investment banks and the army of rent-seekers that follow them – accountants, lawyers and gamblers. War, especially in an oil-rich country, cannot be bad for economies in the doldrums.

IMPACT ON THE REST OF AFRICA

I characterised the invasion as wicked and heartless, quite deliberately. It is wicked because of the selfishness of the agenda underpinning the invasion, its lack of concern for the impact on the Libyan people. The invasion will undoubtedly turn Libyans from a proud people who know little abject poverty (in spite of Gaddafi's dictatorship and several years of economic sanctions) into a typical sub-Saharan African type – a few wealthy people swimming in increasing pools of desperately poor people with severely wounded pride. It is not inconceivable that various armed factions will emerge however this madness ends. Centuries old tribal and clan divisions would have been widened not narrowed. Racial bigotry will spread having been unleashed by the media propaganda about black African support to Gaddafi. Libya will never be the same again and seeing what is happening in Iraq, Libya's change will not be for the good for a long time to come.

But the wicked effects are not limited within the boundaries of Libya. Anything between 500,000 to 1 million workers from across Africa south of the Sahara have been displaced, and adding to the already over-flowing pool of the unemployed. The president of Niger estimated the displaced Nigerien workforce to be in the region of 200,000. Is anybody intending to compensate for these losses? The effect of this displacement is not simply that it aggravates the already scary poverty situation but also that it has the potential to exacerbate the insecurity in these fragile zones, especially the area stretching from Mauritania, across Niger, Mali, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti. These areas are fragile and volatile in several respects – ecologically, economically, socially and in terms of potential for armed conflicts. The potential for violent conflict will be made worse by increased availability of arms of all sorts – the type that are now being dropped all over the place by NATO/France.

The invasion is heartless also because it has deprived Africa of investment resources and undermined the creation of institutions that are critical for the poorest continent to transform its countries' economies and overcome suffering and the indignity of poverty. It has transformed the African Union from one representing all of Africa to one effectively representing Africa south of the Sahara in the manner that Libya has been characterised by the invaders (as an Arab country), a characterisation that the rebel group seems to carry proudly on its chest.

WAY FORWARD

Too much water has passed under the bridge. The Gaddafi family must leave power. Indeed no one, wherever they may be, should have the legitimacy to rule and have active power over resources of the land without being democratically elected. This applies to Gaddafi and his family just as much as it applies to the rag-tag bunch that calls itself the interim government, especially as we know that they are made of some of the most unsavoury elements in the Gaddafi government.

This means that there is no alternative to negotiation as the way forward. Even the NATO/French invaders have been forced acknowledge this, especially since their hope of speedily toppling Gaddafi has not materialised. The African Union plan for a negotiated settlement remains the most credible – an immediate ceasefire; humanitarian intervention and protection in all parts of Libya; an external observer force; an interim government made up of both sides; a timetable for political parties to form, electioneering to happen and elections to take place; and a legal process to investigate, try and punish the guilty. And if I may add, a no-reparations and no-debt-claims commitment by the invading forces. This should have been the way forward from day one, were the Lula mission and the AU strategy allowed.

The bottom line is war was solely unwarranted. But my greatest sadness and shame was to see the United Nations secretariat beating the war drums and cheering on the battle rather than singing the songs of peace. This is a sad time indeed. How else can one describe what is going on in Libya but a wicked, heartless folly?

Charles Abugre is the regional director for Africa, United Nations Millennium Campaign.

The New Anti-Semitism

Weekend Edition
July 29 - 31, 2011

Is That Dr. Goebbels Laughing?
CounterPunch
By URI AVNERY

The Nazi Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, calls his boss, Adolf Hitler, by hell-phone.

“Mein Führer,” he exclaims excitedly. “News from the world. It seems we were on the right track, after all. Anti-Semitism is conquering Europe!”

“Good!” the Führer says, “That will be the end of the Jews!”

“Hmmm…well…not exactly, mein Führer. It looks as though we chose the wrong Semites. Our heirs, the new Nazis, are going to annihilate the Arabs and all the other Muslims in Europe.” Then, with a chuckle, “After all, there are many more Muslims than Jews to exterminate.”

“But what about the Jews?” Hitler insists.

“You won’t believe this: the new Nazis love Israel, the Jewish State - and Israel loves them!”

* * *

THE atrocity committed this week by the Norwegian neo-Nazi – is it an isolated incident? Right-wing extremists all over Europe and the US are already declaiming in unison: “He does not belong to us! He is just a lone individual with a deranged mind! There are crazy people everywhere! You cannot condemn a whole political camp for the deeds of one single person!”

Sounds familiar. Where did we hear this before?

Of course, after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

There is no connection between the Oslo mass-murder and the assassination in Tel Aviv. Or is there?

During the months leading up to Rabin’s murder, a growing hate campaign was orchestrated against him. Almost all the Israeli right-wing groups were competing among themselves to see who could demonize him most effectively.

In one demonstration, a photo-montage of Rabin in the uniform of an [] SS officer was paraded around. On the balcony overlooking this demonstration, Binyamin Netanyahu could be seen applauding wildly, while a coffin marked “Rabin” was paraded below. Religious groups staged a medieval, kabbalistic ceremony, in which Rabin was condemned to death. Senior rabbis took part in the campaign. No right-wing or religious voices were raised in warning.

The actual murder was indeed carried out by a single individual, Yigal Amir, a former settler, the student of a religious university. It is generally assumed that before the deed he consulted with at least one senior rabbi. Like Anders Behring Breivik, the Oslo murderer, he planned his deed carefully, over a long time, and executed it cold-bloodedly. He had no accomplices.

* * *

OR HAD he? Were not all the inciters his accomplices? Does not the responsibility rest with all the shameless demagogues, like Netanyahu, who hoped to ride to power on the wave of hatred, fears and prejudice?

As it turned out, their calculations were confirmed. Less than a year after the assassination, Netanyahu indeed came to power. Now the right-wing is ruling Israel, becoming more radical from year to year, and, lately, it seems, from week to week. Outright Fascists now play leading roles in the Knesset.

All this – the result of three shots by a single fanatic, for whom the words of the cynical demagogues were deadly serious.

The latest proposal of our fascists, straight from the mouth of Avigdor Lieberman, is to abrogate Rabin’s crowning achievement: the Oslo agreements. So we come back to Oslo.

* * *

WHEN I first heard the news about the Oslo outrage, I was afraid that the perpetrators might be some crazy Muslims. The repercussions would have been terrible. Indeed, within minutes, one stupid Muslim group already boasted that they had carried out this glorious feat. Fortunately, the actual mass-murderer surrendered at the scene of the crime.

He is the prototype of a Nazi anti-Semite of the new wave. His creed consists of white supremacy, Christian fundamentalism, hatred of democracy and European chauvinism, mixed with a virulent hatred of Muslims.

This creed is now sprouting offshoots all over Europe. Small radical groups of the ultra-Right are turning into dynamic political parties, take their seats in Parliaments and even become kingmakers here and there. Countries which always seemed to be models of political sanity suddenly produce fascist rabble-rousers of the most disgusting kind, even worse than the US Tea Party, another offspring of this new Zeitgeist. Avigdor Lieberman is our contribution to this illustrious world-wide league.

One thing almost all these European and American ultra-Rightist groups have in common is their admiration for Israel. In his 1500 page political manifesto, on which he had been working for a long time, the Oslo murderer devoted an entire section to this. He proposed an alliance of the European extreme Right and Israel. For him, Israel is an outpost of Western Civilization in the mortal struggle with barbaric Islam. (Somewhat reminiscent of Theodor Herzl’s promise that the future Jewish State would be an “outpost of Western culture against Asiatic barbarism”?)

Part of the professed philo-Zionism of these Islamophobic groups is, of course, pure make-believe, designed to disguise their neo-Nazi character. If you love Jews, or the Jewish State, you can’t be a Fascist, right? You bet you can! However, I believe that the major part of this adoration of Israel is entirely sincere.

Right-wing Israelis, who are courted by these groups, argue that it is not their fault that all these hate-mongers are attracted to them. On the face of it, that is of course true. Yet one cannot but ask oneself: why are they so attracted? Wherein lies this attraction? Does this not warrant some serious soul-searching?

* * *

I FIRST BECAME aware of the gravity of the situation when a friend drew my attention to some German anti-Islamic blogs.

I was shocked to the core. These outpourings are almost verbatim copies of the diatribes of Joseph Goebbels. The same rabble-rousing slogans. The same base allegations. The same demonization. With one little difference: instead of Jews, this time it is Arabs who are undermining Western Civilization, seducing Christian maids, plotting to dominate the world. The Protocols of the Elders of Mecca.

A day after the Oslo events I happened to be watching Aljazeera’s English TV network, one of the best in the world, and saw an interesting program. For a whole hour, the reporter interviewed Italian people in the street about Muslims. The answers were shocking.

Mosques should be forbidden. They are places where Muslims plot to commit crimes. Actually, they don’t need mosques at all – they need only a rug to pray. Muslims come to Italy to destroy Italian culture. They are parasites, spreading drugs, crime and disease. They must be kicked out, to the last man, woman and child.

I always considered Italians easygoing, loveable people. Even during the Holocaust, they behaved better than most other European peoples. Benito Mussolini became a rabid anti-Semite only during the last stages, when he had become totally dependent on Hitler.

Yet here we are, barely 66 years after Italian partisans hanged Mussolini’s body by his feet in a public place in Milan - and a much worse form of anti-Semitism is rampant in the streets of Italy, as in most [or “many”?] other European countries.

* * *

OF COURSE, there is a real problem. Muslims are not free of blame for the situation. Their own behavior makes them easy targets. Like the Jews in their time.

Europe is in a quandary. They need the “foreigners” – Muslims and all – to work for them, keep their economy going, pay for the pensions of the old people. If all Muslims were to leave Europe tomorrow morning, the fabric of society in Germany, France, Italy and many other countries would break down.

Yet many Europeans are dismayed when they see these “foreigners”, with their strange languages, mannerisms and clothes crowding their streets, changing the character of many neighborhoods, opening shops, marrying their daughters, competing with them in many ways. It hurts. As a German minister once said: “We brought here workers, and found out that we had brought human beings!”

One can understand these Europeans, up to a point. Immigration causes real problems. The migration from the poor South to the rich North is a phenomenon of the 21st century, a result of the crying inequality among nations. It needs an all-European immigration policy, a dialogue with the minorities about integration or multiculturalism. It won’t be easy.

But this tidal wave of Islamophobia goes far beyond that. Like a Tsunami, it can result in devastation.

* * *

MANY OF the Islamophobic parties and groups remind one of the atmosphere of Germany in the early 1920s, when “völkisch” groups and militias were spreading their hateful poison, and an army spy called Adolf Hitler was earning his first laurels as an anti-Semitic orator. They looked unimportant, marginal, even crazy. Many laughed at this man Hitler, the Chaplinesque mustachioed clown.

But the abortive Nazi putsch of 1923 was followed by 1933, when the Nazis took power, and 1939, when Hitler started World War II, and 1942, when the gas chambers were brought into operation.

It is the beginnings which are critical, when political opportunists realize that arousing fear and hatred is the easiest way to fortune and power, when social misfits become nationalist and religious fanatics, when attacking helpless minorities becomes acceptable as legitimate politics, when funny little men turn into monsters.

Is that Dr. Goebbels I hear laughing in hell?

Uri Avnery is a contributor to The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Military stokes xenophobia in Egypt

By Leila Fadel and Ernesto Londono, Published: July 30 2011

CAIRO — Facing mounting challenges and spreading unrest, Egypt’s interim military rulers have resorted to an old tactic: Blame the foreigners.

In recent weeks, military leaders have charged that protesters demanding reforms and a speedy transition to democracy are working at the behest of foreign agents attempting to stoke divisions within Egyptian society.

Security forces have detained a number of foreigners — including at least five Americans — and accused them of spying for Israel or the West. The ruling Egyptian generals have also criticized recent offers of foreign aid and decried what they call attempts by the United States and other countries to meddle in Egypt’s nascent democracy.

“It’s the kind of rhetoric that resonates very strongly with Egyptians,” said Heba Morayef, a Cairo-based researcher with Human Rights Watch. “Egyptians are very proud of being Egyptians.”

Ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s intelligence officers often used xenophobic rhetoric to deflect domestic criticism, Morayef said. The recent tactics are more pervasive and blunt, she said.

Egyptian activists say the efforts to stoke xenophobia could be a pretext to crack down on groups that have become increasingly critical of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

“The military council is deliberately creating an atmosphere of deep suspicion and hostility toward anyone that dares criticize its performance,” said Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Military leaders have in particular sought to disparage the April 6 movement, one of the most active in the mosaic of groups that brought down Mubarak in February. Army officers have asserted that the group’s members received military training in Serbia and are receiving U.S. funding — allegations that the group denies and the military has not publicly substantiated.

For any group seeking U.S. assistance, there’s a risk of being treated as suspect.

“There are 600 organizations that applied for aid at the American Embassy here in Egypt,” Maj. Gen. Hassan Roweini, a member of the military council, said in a recent televised interview. “It’s all been documented by the security apparatus of the state, with names and dates and what they’ve been training for and the amounts they’ve received from abroad.”

Last weekend, when thousands of critics of the military council attempted to march from Tahrir Square to the Defense Ministry, intense clashes broke out between the demonstrators and supporters of the military.

Activist Amr Gharbeia, a member of Bahgat’s group, was seized by a team of pro-military men who beat him, paraded him through the streets calling him a spy, and tried to turn him in to military intelligence personnel, Bahgat said. The military did nothing to release him from his captors.

Another demonstrator, Egyptian tour guide Yasmin Abdul Razik, said she was taken into custody by military police officers.

Soldiers and a plainclothes man beat her, dragged her around by her hair, used electric prods to sting her arms and back, and searched furiously through her bag. Inside, they found $12. Soldiers jumped on the top of their vehicle, showing they had found American dollars in her possession, she said. They questioned her for five hours about the cash, and photographed her holding the bills, accusing her of using foreign money to pay people to protest.

“The military leadership is rotten,” said Razik, 26, whose bruises are still visible. “They are using the same tactics, calling us foreign agents because they don’t understand that we are protesting because we love our country.”

Egyptian security officials have also detained a number of foreigners, accusing them of espionage.

Four of the five Americans taken into custody in recent weeks were released July 11, after days of questioning, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement.

Ilan Grapel, 27, a law student who holds Israeli and American citizenship, remains in custody. Egyptian officials have said Israel dispatched him to Cairo to stoke religious tension and to incite Egyptians against the military council — charges that his family and the Israeli government have called ridiculous.

Western diplomats said they are alarmed by the rising xenophobia, which they say has the potential to put Egypt’s streams of foreign funding in jeopardy. The military council recently nixed a negotiated $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund that would have alleviated some of the country’s most urgent needs, saying Egypt could do without foreign aid.

The generals have also complained that Washington is trying to meddle in Egyptian politics by funding and training candidates and parties. U.S. officials say their activities are nonpartisan.

Ironically, one Western diplomat said, no Egyptian institution has been more dependent on international aid than the armed forces, which have long received the bulk of the roughly $2 billion in annual U.S. assistance.

“I think they never anticipated that they would be held responsible for every little thing,” the diplomat in Cairo said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic protocol. “It’s much easier to have someone else to blame.”

Americans Work Too Much and Have Too Little Time for Play: Here's How to Slow Down 'The Great Speed-Up'

By Jason Mark, AlterNet
Posted on July 29, 2011, Printed on July 31, 2011

Feeling overwhelmed? If you're like many Americans, the answer is probably a beleaguered yes. People across the country report that they are working harder than ever, checking their email on weekends and vacations, putting in more hours at the office, and juggling multitasks just to keep up. While the frenzied pace seems to have hit information workers particularly hard, employees throughout the economy (warehouse workers, hotel housekeepers, teachers) say they are being asked to do more, in less time, with fewer co-workers to help them.

Welcome to "The Great Speedup." That's what Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, who edit Mother Jones, dub the phenomenon in the current issue of their magazine. Just like when factory owners used to speed up the pace of the assembly line to fill an order, today's companies are trying to wring more productivity from workers year after year, even as wages for most remain flat. Bauerlein and Jeffery write: "Just counting work that's on the books (never mind those 11 p.m. emails), Americans now work an average of 122 hours per year more than Brits and 378 hours (nearly 10 weeks!) more than Germans."

Judging from the buzz in the blogosphere, the article has struck a chord with many (especially the hyper-wired cognoscenti who are so plugged in they notice a new MoJo story as soon as it's posted). The article makes me think of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique: Here, suddenly, is a clear description of a malaise that millions have felt but had no name for. The idea of the Great Speedup is so compelling because it dissects a problem hiding in plain sight. It's a relief to realize that all of us, worked to the bone, are not alone.

I was thinking about all this the other day as I took my time to make a sandwich before heading off to the three-acre organic fruit and vegetable garden where I volunteer. In the middle of the week. On a Wednesday.

Although I have certainly felt the time-crunch anxiety so many people complain of, at that moment -- standing in my kitchen at midday -- it seemed that I had all the time in the world. The antidote to the Great Speedup appeared obvious. Don't want to work so hard? OK, then: Work less.

I know that doesn't sound all that helpful (and more than a little tautological), but bear with me. Because here's the thing: From scrappy little nonprofits to Fortune 100 companies, there are examples out there of how to have a fulfilling career while working fewer hours. If you really want to slow down, the first thing you have to do is ask for it.

My personal experience is illustrative (to a point). I work as an editor at a quarterly environmental magazine. It's a great job, and I'm psyched to have it, but I also have other passions -- foremost among them, organic farming. So when I was offered the job, I said I could only accept the position if I could take off two afternoons a week to go work in the garden. At first, my future boss was leery of the idea. He wanted a full-time editor, not someone who was going to disappear a couple of days to play in the dirt. But I assured him I could do the job at 75 percent time and he relented -- on the condition that the time split would be re-evaluated after a six-month probationary period. More than four years later, the arrangement is still in place: I go to the magazine Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and spent Wednesday and Friday afternoons building compost and digging vegetable beds.

That's a nice story, you may be saying, but not everyone works at lefty nonprofits with accommodating managers. Fair enough. So let's talk about my friend Kom, a buddy from the farm.

Kom recently landed a job at a major Silicon Valley brand. (Since he only started the job last week, I'm going to keep the firm anonymous; let's just say you likely use the company's products daily.) During the interview process, Kom said he would take the position so long as he could take off Wednesdays to help with our farm's harvest. The interviewers were, naturally, surprised by the request.

"I didn't think I would get the job because of that," Kom told me. "The interview went on for two and a half hours." But within a few days they offered Kom the position -- with Wednesdays off, as he had asked.

The anecdote is important because of the size and importance of the employer. Here's a company that people are dying to work for. Typically the firm is the one with the clout to write the terms of employment. But, as Kom's case shows, if you have the courage to ask to work less, you might be surprised by the answer.

I asked Kom if he thought other people could, or should, ask their employers for shorter, more flexible schedules. "I think they should, I really do," he said. "I don't know. I think it's a matter of values. You have to decide how you value experiences."

The Money Problem

I don't want to sound cavalier about the idea of working less -- especially since that means earning less money. The decision to put in fewer hours at the office involves a real financial sacrifice, and that's a difficult thing for many families to imagine these days. Over the last four years I've surrendered about $60,000 in salary. I still live pretty comfortably, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't notice the missing money. I don't put as much as I should into my retirement account. I don't spend as freely on some things that I really want to have, like, say, furniture and clothing. I have to force myself to keep my material desires modest.

And that can be difficult. Keeping your material wants in check is especially hard in a society in which we are told -- constantly, relentlessly -- that stuff equals success and possessions mean happiness. They don't of course. As Bill McKibben pointed out in his book Deep Economy, GDP has been rising more or less steadily in the United States since the end of World War II. But Americans' satisfaction with their lives -- their happiness -- leveled off in the 1950s. Since then, we've been working harder and longer so we can purchase bigger things: bigger houses, bigger cars, bigger Big Gulps. The result, as the Great Speedup reveals, is bigger stress.

Over at Grist, Dave Roberts, in his own personal response to Bauerlein and Jeffery, suggests that one way to counteract the speedup is to embrace what he calls the "medium chill." Roberts writes: "The medium chill involves what economists call satisficing: abandoning the quest for the ideal in favor of the good-enough. It means stepping off the aspirational treadmill, foregoing some material opportunities and accepting some material constraints in exchange for more time to spend on relationships and experiences."

The key point comes at the end there: How many possessions are you willing to sacrifice for more experiences? If you want to get all Marxist about it, capitalism requires that you sell your time for money. You go to the office 9 to 5 (or 9 to 7, as the case may be), and in exchange your employer pays your salary or wage. Time really is money. In choosing to work less than 40 hours a week in an office, Kom and I have made the decision that we would prefer to be time rich even if that means being somewhat cash poor. It means that we're loaded when it comes to controlling our own schedules.

Now, in all fairness, asking your employer if you can work less is going to be a harder sell for people who earn an hourly wage than it is for salaried employees. Flexible, less-than-full time schedules are probably an easier ask for people in the information sector (where the work can be done remotely, and at any time of the day) than for workers in, say, the construction trades, the service industry or manufacturing. But it's not impossible, or unheard of. Just take a look at the history of the W.K. Kellogg Company.

In 1930, during the depths of the Great Depression, the cereal giant based in Battle Creek, Michigan decided to move most of its 1,500 employees from a 40-hour work week to a 30-hour schedule. In doing so, the company was able to hire an additional 300 people and stem the tide of unemployment in Central Michigan. At the end of World War II, Kellogg's managers floated the idea of returning to a 40-hour week. The employees pushed back. A 1946 survey of Kellogg's workers found that 77 percent of men and 87 percent of women preferred the 30-hour week even if it meant lower wages. The six-hour day was so popular that it remained in effect in some Kellogg's departments until 1985.

One of the most interesting things about the Kellogg's experience is that -- contrary to what the management gurus would have you think -- the shorter week increased worker productivity. As W.K. Kellogg himself said at the time: "The efficiency and morale of our employees is [sic] so increased, the accident and insurance rates are so improved, and the unit cost of production is so lowered that we can afford to pay as much for six hours as we formerly paid for eight."

How was this possible? Perhaps because the Kellogg's workers had more time to re-charge, to express their creativity, to feel like they were part of a community -- and that gave them more energy to bring to their jobs. A reporter for a national business magazine who went to investigate the scene in Battle Creek found "a lot of gardening and community beautification, athletics and hobbies ... libraries well patronized and the mental background of these fortunate workers ... becoming richer." Rather than feeling overstretched and tired, the Kellogg's employees felt more fulfilled -- which made them better workers.

I would guess that some similar calculation went through the heads of people who hired my friend Kom. The company where he now works prides itself on being home to creative people. It wants to attract visionaries. As Kom remembered the interview, "They were talking about my time at Alemany Farm and they were really interested. It seemed they were more interested in me personally than my abilities in regard to the position. I guess I must have passed all the software tests they gave me, and after that they wanted to know about me."

Yes, finding a way to work less will take some courage on the part of individual employees to ask -- nay, demand -- shorter work weeks. It will also take some courage on the part of corporations. They will have to see, as the Kellogg's experience proved, that giving employees a little space to breathe will likely result in a workforce that is more creative, more innovative and more energetic.

Another key lesson of the Kellogg's story is how a shorter workweek can contribute to more overall employment. The logic is pretty simple: If all of us who have jobs worked less, then more of us without jobs could have some work. Free time would increase, unemployment would go decrease, everyone would be better off. A labor movement fantasy, you say? It doesn't have to be.

Creative managers and courageous companies can do a lot to help slow down the speedup. Fundamentally, though, we also need a change in government policy. We're being driven so hard in part because there are few federal laws that guarantee downtime. The US is one of just five countries that doesn't mandate paid maternity leave (not to mention paternity leave); one of just eight countries that doesn't guarantee a paid vacation; and one of only 15 countries that doesn't require some time off during each work week. If we're going to take back our time, that has to change.

As we experiment with ways to slow down, reclaim some of our time and work less, I'm sure people will find the rewards worth far more than the lost wages. We'll have more chances to do the things we really love -- whether that means knitting, or dirt bike riding, or playing softball, or spending time with the kids. I think you know what I'm talking about: It's called living.


Jason Mark splits his time between Earth Island Journal and San Francisco's Alemany Farm. Follow his lazy twitter updates: @writerfarmer.

Debunking the Big Lie Right-Wingers Use to Justify Black Poverty and Unemployment

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on July 29, 2011, Printed on July 31, 2011

In April, the Oklahoma legislature passed a constitutional amendment that would do away with affirmative action policies in the Sooner State. Sally Kern, a state rep vying for the coveted title of Most Extreme Lawmaker in America, explained her rationale for supporting the amendment, saying (among a slew of nutty things) that “it's character that ought to count, not whether you're white or black... it should be your willingness to say, 'I'm going to become everything I can become.'"

Kern suggested that blacks simply don't work as hard as whites. “I’ve taught school,” she said, “and I saw a lot of people of color who didn’t study hard because they said the government would take care of them.”

Kern was simply advancing one of the most enduring and pernicious untruths in America's political economy. It holds that poverty – in general, but especially within communities of color – doesn't result from purely economic factors. Rather, the poor are where they find themselves as a consequence of some deep-seated cultural flaws that keep them from achieving success. They're held back, the story goes, by what is known alternatively as a “culture of poverty,” or a “culture of dependence.” It's a popular fable for the right, as it absolves the political establishment for public policies that harm the working class and the poor.

It's also thoroughly and demonstrably untrue, flying in the face of decades of serious research findings.

It's a myth that should be put to rest by the economic experience of the African American community over the past 20 years. Because what Kern and other adherents of the “culture of poverty” thesis can't explain is why blacks' economic fortunes advanced so dramatically during the 1990s, retreated again during the Bush years and then were completely devastated in the financial crash of 2008.

In order to buy the cultural story, one would have to believe that African Americans adopted a “culture of success” during the Clinton years, mysteriously abandoned it for a “culture of failure” under Bush and finally settled on a “culture of poverty” shortly after Lehman Brothers crashed.

That's obviously nonsense. It was exogenous economic factors and changes in public policies, not manifestations of “black culture,” that resulted in those widely varied outcomes.

The Clinton Boom, the Bush Bust and the Great Black Depression

During the Clinton years, African Americans saw the greatest economic advances in memory. Over the course of the 1990s, millions of black families joined the middle class. With a booming economy and Clintonian policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit, which pulled millions of low-income families out of desperation, the poverty rate among African Americans hit its lowest point in U.S. history in 2000. Black poverty fell by more than 10 percentage points between 1993 and 2000, and poverty among African American children dropped by an unprecedented 10.7 percentage points in five years (from 41.9 percent in 1995 to 31.2 percent in 2000).

But a little-known fact is that even before the recession hit in 2008, blacks had already taken a huge step back economically during the 2000s. By 2007, African Americans had already lost all of those gains from the 1990s. That year, sociologist Algernon Austin wrote, “On all major economic indicators—income, wages, employment, and poverty—African Americans were worse off in 2007 than they were in 2000.”

Although the Great Recession obviously hit everyone hard, it didn’t cause everyone equal pain. In 2007, the difference between white and black unemployment rates fell to the lowest point in years: just 3 percentage points. Yet as the economy fell into recession, that gap quickly grew again, and by April 2009 it had doubled, reaching a 13-year high. As the economy began to turn around in 2009, African Americans didn’t see much recovery; median household income rose 7 percent for white families and only 1 percent for blacks.

Today, with the national unemployment rate at around 9 percent, black joblessness stands at over 16 percent. This week, the New York Times reported that in 2009, the “median wealth of whites [was] 20 times that of black households,” a difference that represents “the largest [racial] wealth disparities in the 25 years that the [Census] bureau has been collecting the data.”

Again, while economic swings this significant can be explained by economic changes and different public policies, it's simply impossible to fit them into a cultural narrative.

The Culture of Poverty: Nonsense Since the Beginning

In my book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy, I look at the origins of the “culture of poverty,” as well as the large body of data refuting its existence. The term was first coined in sociologist Oscar Lewis’s 1961 book, The Children of Sanchez. Lewis, who had studied poverty in small Mexican communities, asserted that they shared a set of common cultural attributes. Although he had only studied small samples, he concluded that the same attributes were universal among poor people.

Education scholar Paul Gorski noted that after the publication of Oscar Lewis’ book, “Researchers around the world tested the culture of poverty concept empirically.” Fifty years of studies have revealed a number of observations about the causes of poverty, but, as Gorski noted, “On this they all agree: There is no such thing as a culture of poverty. Differences in values and behaviors among poor people are just as great as those between” the rich and poor. “The culture of poverty concept,” he added, “is constructed from a collection of smaller stereotypes which, however false, seem to have crept into mainstream thinking as unquestioned fact.”

Gorski did an exhaustive literature review on the culture of poverty meme. Are poor people lazier than their wealthier counterparts? Do they have a poor work ethic that keeps them from pulling themselves up by their bootstraps? Quite the opposite is true. A 2002 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that among working adults, poorer people actually put in more hours than wealthier ones did. As Gorski noted, “The severe shortage of living-wage jobs means that many poor adults must work two, three, or four jobs.”

There are quite a bit of data suggesting that kids whose parents are heavily involved in their schooling do better than those whose parents aren’t. But are poor people less interested in participating in their kids’ schooling, as the culture of poverty myth suggests? No. Several studies have found that rich and poor parents have the same attitudes about education. Poor parents do in fact spend less time going to school events and volunteering in their children’s classrooms, but that’s not a matter of culture. As Gorski wrote, it’s because “they are more likely to work multiple jobs, to work evenings, to have jobs without paid leave, and to be unable to afford child care and public transportation.”

Are poor people more likely to use drugs and alcohol? Gorski noted that the research shows that drug use in the United States “is equally distributed across poor, middle class, and wealthy communities,” but that “alcohol abuse is far more prevalent among wealthy people than among poor people.”

Perhaps the most pervasive narrative is that poor people, and black people especially, don’t cherish traditional institutions like marriage. It’s self-evident that having one breadwinner instead of two (or one breadwinner and one parent to raise the kids) is an economic disadvantage, and any number of studies have found that single-parent households (especially single-mother families) are more likely to be poor. But the culture of poverty narrative confuses correlation with causation.

Just as people with little money hold the same attitudes about education as those with big bucks do, Jean Hardisty, the author of Marriage as a Cure for Poverty: A Bogus Formula for Women, cites a number of studies showing that “a large percentage of single low-income mothers would like to be married at some time. They seek marriages that are financially stable, with a loving, supportive husband.” Poor women have the same dreams as everyone else: they “often aspire to a romantic notion of marriage and family that features a white picket fence in the suburbs.” Low economic status leads to fewer marriages, not the other way around.

In 1998, the Fragile Families Study looked at 3,700 low-income unmarried couples in 20 U.S. cities. The authors found that nine in 10 of the couples living together wanted to tie the knot, but only 15 percent had actually done so by the end of the one-year study period.

And here’s a key finding: for every dollar that a man’s hourly wages increased, the odds that he’d get hitched by the end of the year rose by 5 percent. Men earning more than $25,000 during the year had twice the marriage rates of those making less than $25,000.

Writing up the findings for the Nation, Sharon Lerner noted that poverty “also seems to make people feel less entitled to marry.” As one father in the survey put it, marriage means “not living from check to check.” Thus, since he was still scraping bottom, he wasn’t ready for it. “There’s an identity associated with marriage that they don’t feel they can achieve,” [Princeton sociology professor Sara] McLanahan, one of the study's authors, says of her interviewees. (Ironically, romantic ideas about weddings—the limos, cakes and gowns of bridal magazines—seem to stand in the way of marriage in this context – many couples in the study said they were holding off until they could afford a lavish wedding bash.)

The Great Black Depression

Earlier this week, I wrote about the crushing economic depression now afflicting the African American community. Those who buy into the culture of poverty mythology would no doubt explain that reality away as a manifestation of blacks' supposedly flawed work ethic. When jobs are hard to come by, only the most persistent people – those willing to acquire new skills or knock on door after door and face rejection after rejection – are going to wind up being employed.

So let's look again at the evidence. AARP did a study of working people over 45 years of age (PDF), and found that “African Americans surveyed were more likely than the general population to be proactive about jobs and career training.”

They took steps such as training to keep skills up-to-date (30% versus 25%), attending a job fair (18% versus 7%), and looked for a new job (24% versus 17%) in the past year at rates higher than the general sample. A sizeable share also indicated that they plan to engage in these behaviors. More African Americans relative to the general population plan to take training (38% versus 33%), look for a new job (27% versus 24%), attend a job fair (26% versus 11%), use the internet for job-related activities (30% versus 23%), and start their own business (13% versus 7%).

The unemployment rate for African Americans between 45-64 years of age stands at 10.8 percent; the rate for whites of the same age is just 6.4 percent. Older black workers have the drive, and report putting in more effort to land jobs or start businesses than their white counterparts – they embrace a “culture of success” -- yet their unemployment rate remains 40 percent higher.

That's because the “culture” provides a very poor explanation for economic outcomes – especially compared with real-world, social and economic factors like the fact that predominantly black schools get 18 percent less funding per student than white schools, black families have just one-twentieth of the accumulated wealth to pay for college or start a new business than whites making the same income and the impact of a large chunk of the black population getting caught up in a racist drug war and carrying a prison record as a result. And, yes, it's still also in part a result of good, old-fashioned racial discrimination.


Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy: And Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America. Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.

$230,000 For a Guard Dog: Why the Wealthy Are Afraid Of Violence From Below

By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet
Posted on July 29, 2011


“Violence in the streets, aimed at the wealthy. That’s what I worry about.”

That was what an unidentified billionaire told Robert Frank of the Wall Street Journal a while back. Rich people are scared of global unrest, Frank reported, citing a survey by Insite Security and IBOPE Zogby International of people with liquid assets of $1 million or more (translation: folks who have or can get their hands on $1 million in cash fairly easily) that says 94 percent of the wealthy are concerned about “global unrest” around the world.

He noted:

Of course, Insite has an interest in getting the paranoid rich to beef up their security. Still, the numbers are backed up by other trends seen throughout the world of wealth today: the rich keeping a lower profile, hiring $230,000 guard dogs, and arming their yachts, planes and cars with military-style security features.

John Johnson, the owner of the $230,000 dog featured in the New York Times, is a former debt collector. (You can't make this stuff up.) He sold his debt collection company three years ago, but still has not just one, but six highly—and expensively—trained “executive protection dogs.” Harrison K-9 services, the trainers behind Johnson's pricey protection dogs, used to train dogs for elite military units like the Navy Seal team that raided Osama bin Laden's compound. The article doesn't say exactly how many dogs Harrison K-9 has provided for the world's rich and famous, but it does feature a quote from their head trainer saying she's trained “a thousand” dogs.

In addition to security systems, dogs and armed yachts, the security-conscious oligarch can hire a private spy company—Jellyfish, a spinoff of the notorious private security company Blackwater. Or what about their own personal drone? “Smaller, private versions of the infamous Predator” may be coming to well-heeled private citizens near you, according to the UK's Daily Mail. So far the private drones appear to only be for spying, but former Navy fighter pilot Missy Cummings told the Daily Mail, “It doesn't take a rocket scientist from MIT to tell you if we can do it for a soldier in the field, we can do it for anybody.”

So why are the rich getting paranoid? After all, here in the U.S. it looks like they don't even have to worry about their taxes returning to Clinton-era levels, let alone cope with a truly significant change to their lifestyles. Still, as the rich get richer, it seems, they get more and more worried about the rest of us coming for their wealth—and they're out to protect it by any means necessary.

David Sirota has noted that “we're fast becoming a 'let them eat cake' economy,” where ostentatious displays of wealth and arrogance seem to be an everyday occurrence as the rest of the country suffers. A private jet traffic jam was big news in the New York Times last week, because the children of the uber-rich have to get to a Maine summer camp, and driving just won't do. Maine's Tea Party governor, Paul LePage, took some time off from limiting access to the vote and picking fights with organized labor to gloat over the jet traffic:

“Love it, love it, love it,” Mr. LePage said of the private-plane traffic generated by summer camps. “I wish they’d stay a week while they’re here. This is a big business.”

While the private jet crowd is “big business,” the rest of Maine—and the country—is still suffering. And maybe that's where the fear comes in.

We've seen revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, attempts in Libya, Syria, Yemen, unrest in Greece and Spain, student protests in England, and here at home the occupation of the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. While nothing yet in the U.S. has approached the level of organized attacks on the wealthy by the have-nots, since the financial crash even the hint that perhaps private jet owners could pay a few more dollars in taxes has been decried as class war. A few protests that actually dare approach the doorsteps of the bankers appear to be all it takes to stoke paranoia among the super-rich.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Warren Buffett, the world's third-richest man, said in 2006, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Buffett had done the math and realized that he paid far less, as a fraction of his income, than the secretaries in his office.

While the Democrats have compromised again and again on economic issues that might have brought real relief to the unemployed, the Tea Party continued to direct all of its anger, its threats, its waving of guns in the direction of the man in the White House and his allies. The billionaires who poured cash into the Tea Party got their money's worth by deflecting outrage onto the president.

And we have seen violence, though not violence aimed at the rich. We saw a man fly a plane into a Texas office building in anger at the IRS and a foiled attempt to shoot up the liberal Tides Foundation and the California ACLU.

The Tea Party also helped sweep in politicians who've made the situation steadily worse. With no one left to protect the working class, inequality continues to grow. The New York Times noted that many of the “new economy”'s low-wage jobs are not sufficient to provide for a person, let alone a family, and yet those jobs are 73 percent of those added in recent months.

Matthew Stoller pointed out that the austerity measures being championed by the new right-wing governors like Florida's Rick Scott (but embraced by Democrats as well) are going to make it worse here at home before it gets better:

...these economic theories aren’t about efficiency, they are about a value system. Scott is arguing for a low trust low cost world, with no education, no regulatory standards, and low quality output. This is the dominant strain of thinking among American elites. It’s not just Rhode Island, where the teachers are literally all under threat of being fired (and where in 2010 Obama apparently sought to win the future by applauding this firing of teachers). In New York, Democratic Governor and prospective 2016 presidential candidate Andrew Cuomo is gleefullyslashing huge chunks of education and health care rather than retain a mild tax on the wealthy. This is a great way to increase crime, disease rates, and social disorder resulting from inequality.

The simple fact is that inequality is a recipe for insecurity, especially when coupled with desperation. Somewhere, the rich know this. It's no accident that the rise in incomes at the top and the drop in income at the bottom has been accompanied by a boom in private security. Not everyone, like Warren Buffett, asks “How can this be right?” but a $230,000 guard dog suggests a deep awareness of the unfair system from which the rich have profited.

And yet as our society transforms from a welfare state into a laissez-faire paradise (and especially as budget cuts come down on fire and police), we are likely to only see more of this kind of thing. Mike Konczal pointed out:

From a series of legal codes favoring creditors, a two-tier justice system that ignore abuses in foreclosures and property law, a system of surveillance dedicated to maximum observation on spending, behavior and ultimate collection of those with debt and beyond, there’s been a wide refocusing of the mechanisms of our society towards the crucial obsession of oligarchs: wealth and income defense.

It's not enough for the super-rich, apparently, to have a legal system biased in their favor, a justice system that locks up the poor and people of color while letting the wealthy off the hook, and government bailouts for the banks that created the economic crisis. That doesn't lessen the cries of “Class warfare!” or decrease the demand for private security.

Research shows (PDF) that it's not just poverty that contributes to violent crime. It's inequality. Brazil, particularly in urban areas, suffers from a sky-high homicide rate (it's reached 57 per 100,000 people a year in Rio de Janeiro) and its cities are marked by extremes of wealth—absolute poverty in the favelas, and wealth locked away behind walls and gates. Private security has become the norm for those who can afford it as few trust the police.

And yet Brazil's left-leaning government has embraced policies to lessen inequality not only for the sake of the people who suffer in poverty, but also to make their country safer for all. Inequality is dropping, and while poverty is still a problem, the government recognizes it as such. Meanwhile, we in the US seems to have learned all the wrong lessons from Brazil. Are we headed for cities where the wealthy segregate themselves behind walls and security guards, on private planes, and the poor are concentrated in miserable conditions?

We are 93rd in the world as far as equality is concerned, and if the debt ceiling deal (or as is looking increasingly more likely, the lack of one) includes a cut to Social Security benefits or an end to the unemployment extension, inequality will only get worse as the poor get, rapidly, poorer. Meanwhile the rich, as has been noted many times, are just concentrating their wealth.

Here in the U.S. in the 1930s, to stave off widespread revolt, we got the New Deal. Elites in this country realized it was worth giving in to prevent the communist revolution that was spreading in other places. In the 1960s, riots as well as mass nonviolent protests pushed LBJ and others to enact social reforms.

Conservatives, backed by an ascendant business class, have been systematically dismantling those bargains, cutting taxes, eliminating regulations, and privatizing public programs and properties ever since. There is no force like communism to give a name to the fears of the capitalists, but the rich nevertheless may look at global revolts with a shudder. As the unemployed, the working poor, and a middle class increasingly pushed downward into near-poverty struggle and new protest movements and strategies spring up, it's not just individual theft, burglary and kidnapping the rich fear—it's an organized movement targeting their wealth.

The question is now whether spreading fear among the elites of the US will be connected to the economic policies that are leaving more and more of us with no solutions—and a whole lot of rage.


Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @seasonothebitch.

In Tahrir Square demonstration, Islamists display clout

By Leila Fadel and Ernesto Londono, Published: July 29 2011

CAIRO — Tens of thousands of Islamist demonstrators thronged Tahrir Square on Friday to call for a more pious state, a stunning show of force that left the liberal pioneers of Egypt’s revolution reeling.

The rally — the largest here in months — comes as Egyptians make fundamental choices about what sort of nation will emerge following the abrupt end in February of former president Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade reign. Friday’s demonstration had been intended to highlight Egyptian unity, but instead laid bare deep divisions.

Most of those who participated in the demonstration appeared to be followers of the strict Salafist school of Islam. They were joined by members of the relatively more moderate Muslim Brotherhood, as well as others who advocate a greater role for religion in the nation’s governance. It was the boldest and most resolute display to date from a community that Mubarak kept largely invisible and in disarray.

The demonstrators were bused in from across Egypt, reflecting a level of organization that could give Islamists a significant advantage in parliamentary elections scheduled for November.

Islamist parties, which advocate for a society rooted in Islamic law and scripture, had largely boycotted recent demonstrations. But leaders said the time had come to speak out against what they see as attempts by Egypt’s interim military rulers, and by liberal politicians, to quietly enact constitutional changes that would enshrine Egypt as a secular state.

The call to reject those moves was answered by a a sea of bearded men and women draped in black garments. Vendors sold flattering portraits of slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, as speakers railed against the United States and Israel.

“Secularists are all over the media, trying to marginalize us because they think we’re ignorant,” said Islam Farris, a 23-year-old pharmacist who demonstrated in Tahrir. “For the first time in history, all Islamic movements are united here because the secularists are provoking us.”

For advocates of a secular Egypt, the rally was seen as another worrisome development following months of decisions by the ruling military council that have dimmed hopes for a smooth transition to democracy.

Islamist and secular leaders had previously agreed to stand united on Friday, calling for shared goals such as the speedy prosecution of Mubarak and his aides, an end to military trials for civilians, and more accountability from the country’s interim military rulers.

But as the Islamists poured into Tahrir, liberal and secular Egyptians were shocked by the tone and intensity of the slogans.

“The people want Islamic law,” the crowds of sweat-drenched Salafists chanted under the punishing sun.

Islamists also turned out in huge numbers in Alexandria and Suez. In Suez, more than 10,000 Salafists gathered in Arbaeen Square and raised posters with the words “secular” and “liberal” crossed out.

Although the vast majority of Egyptians are Muslim, the number who support implementation of strict Islamic law has long been a mystery because hard-line religious communities were persecuted and harassed by Mubarak’s intelligence service.

Secular and youth groups have continued to rally in Tahrir in recent weeks, but their numbers have been sagging since demonstrators began an around-the-clock sit-in on July 8.

Ahmed Korashy, a member of the liberal Free Egyptian Movement, said he was shocked by the Salafist turnout.

“Nobody was expecting this huge number,” Korashy said. His group and a coalition of 27 other liberal and socialist parties left the square to signal their rejection of the Islamists’ message.

“The chants of ‘We want God’s law’ are irresponsible toward this revolution and this country,” said a statement released by the groups. “We do not regret our attempt to achieve unity in the interest of completing this revolution. It just proves who is disrupting this unity.”

Korashy urged his allies to rethink plans to push for implementation of a secular Bill of Rights-style document before parliamentary elections.

“This was a big mistake and we triggered a big problem that cannot easily be contained,” he said.

Friday’s rally comes as Egypt prepares to put Mubarak on trial next week. The former leader, who enjoyed close ties to the United States, was a relatively secular leader, and the military chiefs he appointed — now Egypt’s interim rulers — share that outlook.

By Friday night, the Salafists had largely left Tahrir, but earlier in the day, there had been no doubt of who was in charge.

Ahmed Medhat, a 19-year-old Islamic studies student at al-Azhar, the country’s revered religious institute, spoke to a group of Salafists before prayers in the square on Friday. He told one Salafist protester that their numbers were impressive but that now was not the time for calls for an Islamic state. They had to stick to demands for justice and the minimum wage, he said.

“You’re a secularist,” the Salafist yelled.

A crowd gathered around Medhat, as two men dragged him out of the square.

Elsewhere in Tahrir, Hagar Ragab walked among the crowd wearing a black veil. She said she did not want to force anything on anyone. But she did not want anything forced on her, either.

“I want the will of the people,” she said. “If that’s God’s law, then that’s what it should be. If it’s secularism, then we will accept that.”

Special correspondent Sulafeh al-Shami contributed to this report.