MRN

The aspiration of the Media Review Network is to dispel the myths and stereotypes about Islam and Muslims and to foster bridges of understanding among the diverse people of our country. The Media Review Network believes that Muslim perspectives on issues impacting on South Africans are a prerequisite to a better appreciation of Islam.

An arab 1848 despots totter and fall

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Tariq Ali

(source: Counterpuch.org)

He can’t stay any longer because the military has declared that they will not shoot their own people. This excludes a Tiananmen Square option. Were the Generals (who have so far sustained this regime) to go back on their word it would divide the army, opening up a vista of civil war. Nobody wants that at the moment, not even the Israelis who would like their American friends to keep their point man in Cairo for as long as possible. But this, too, is impossible.

So, will Mubarak go this weekend or the next? Washington wants an ‘orderly transition’, but the hands of Suleiman the Spook (or Sheikh Al-Torture as some of his victims refer to him), the Vice-President they have forced Mubarak to accept, are also stained with blood. To replace one corrupt torturer with another is no longer acceptable. The Egyptian masses want a total regime change, not a Pakistan-style operation where a civilian crook replaces a uniformed dictator and nothing changes.

The Tunis infection has spread much more rapidly than anyone imagined. After a long sleep induced by defeats—military, political moral—the Arab nation is reawakening. Tunis impacted immediately on neighboring Algeria and the mood then crossed over to Jordan and reached Cairo a week later. What we are witnessing are a wave of national-democratic uprisings, reminiscent more of the 1848 upheavals — against Tsar and Emperor and those who collaborated with them — fthat swept Europe and were the harbingers of subsequent turbulence. This is the Arab 1848. The Tsar-Emperor today is the President in the White House. That is what differentiates these proto-revolutions from the 1989 business: That and the fact that with few exceptions, the masses did not mobilize themselves to the same degree. The Eastern Europeans lay down before the West, seeing in it a happy future and singing ‘Take Us, Take Us. We’re Yours Now.’

When Isaraels protective net of tyranny tears

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

We have not yet reached the stage in which the machinery of Israeli repression breaks up into its component parts – the people – who instead of obeying, begin to think.

By Amira Hass

(source: Haaretz)

There is a miraculous moment in popular uprisings, when fear of the machinery of repression no longer deters people in their masses and that machinery begins to unravel into its component parts – who are also people. They stop obeying and begin thinking.

Where is that moment for us? A group of Palestinian businesspeople had discussed the possibility of joining the popular struggle in the villages near Ramallah against the separation fence. That was before the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The conclusion, a participant told me, was that they cannot allow themselves to take part in those activities because the very next day “Beit El” (the nickname for the Civil Administration, whose base is located near the eponymous settlement ) will revoke all the special passes that allow their businesses to exist. The experiences of others in similar circumstances (for example, senior Fatah officials who deigned to take part in a demonstration or two and had their VIP passes revoked ) are enough to create the fear.

A machinery of repression depends not only on guns and torture in cellars. As the Soviet-bloc regimes proved, bureaucracy is central to the system. The same is true with us: Far from the barriers of transparency of a proper democratic society, Israel has created a complex and invisible bureaucracy that completely controls Palestinian freedom of movement, and hence freedom of employment, livelihood and studies, the freedom to fall in love and establish a family, to organize and other basic liberties.

Situation in Egypt

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Tarek Sayed-Ahmed – Cairo

Media coverage of the recent36in Egypt has been extensive, but I am writing to you as a participant in the peaceful demonstrations and a witness to the barbaric attacks launched last night by thugs of the ruling party (NDP) who used live amunition against unarmed and peaceful demonstrators.This is at least the fourth time demonstrators were attacked by NDP thugs, since the revolution started on Tuesday 25 January.

One was last Friday, the 4th day of the uprising, when police opened fire on demonstrators. 300 poeple were killed, over 2000 were injured and 500 missing.I was among those marching that day towards Tahrir (Liberation) square, and I was exposed to both tear gas (almost suffocating) and live bullets, one of which killed the person right beside me. After their criminal attack the police disappeared deliberately from the streets of Cairo and other cities, left poeple unprotected from violent gangs made up of escaped prisoners.

It is now known that is was the security forces who opened the prison doors and allowed inmates, some of them dangerous criminals to escape with weapons.On Tuesday, there were over two million people gathered in Tahrir square all calling for Mubarak to step down. (There were other millions in other cities in Egypt too, with the same demand: Mubarak has to step down).

Yesterday, paid NDP thugs attacked the peaceful demonstrators again with Molotov cocktials and live bullets. Six people were killed and over six hundered injured. I was also there, and I witnessed those thugs (some of whom turned to be secret police) attack the square on horses and camels to scare the peaceful demonstrators.What is happening in Egypt is a crime. We call on NGO’s and human right organisations to preasure the existing corrupt regime who is obviously struggling for survival at all expenses including killing thousands of peaceful demonstartors.

Last Friday was called the Day of Anger, tomorrow is the Day of Departure (Mubarak’s). Millions are expected to join tomorrow in making history, forcing Mubarak to step down. This is a revolution, not only against the corrupt regime, but also against imperialism represented by USA politics and Isreali occupation. It is a (non islamist) revolution of the collapsing middle class in Egypt, initiated by young people, aspiring for a better future, and for a new Middle East.Express protest against the regime and solidarity with the Egyptian revolution by marching to Egyptian Embassies all over the world, and bombarding Egyptian diplomats with letters of protest and outrage!

Egypts uprising its implications for Palestine

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Ali Abunimah

(source: Electronic Intifada)

We are in the middle of a political earthquake in the Arab world and the ground has still not stopped shaking. To make predictions when36are so fluid is risky, but there is no doubt that the uprising in Egypt — however it ends — will have a dramatic impact across the region and within Palestine. If the Mubarak regime falls, and is replaced by one less tied to Israel and the United States, Israel will be a big loser.

As Aluf Benn commented in the Israeli daily Haaretz, “The fading power of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government leaves Israel in a state of strategic distress. Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East; last year, Israel saw its alliance with Turkey collapse” (Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast). Indeed, Benn observes, “Israel is left with two strategic allies in the region: Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.” But what Benn does not say is that these two “allies” will not be immune either.

Over the past few weeks I was in Doha examining the Palestine Papers leaked to Al Jazeera. These documents underscore the extent to which the split between the US-backed Palestinian Authority in Ramallah headed by Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction, on the one hand, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, on the other — was a policy decision of regional powers: the United States, Egypt and Israel This policy included Egypt’s strict enforcement of the siege of Gaza. If the Mubarak regime goes, the United States will lose enormous leverage over the situation in Palestine, and Abbas’ PA will lose one of its main allies against Hamas.

Already discredited by the extent of its collaboration and capitulation exposed in the Palestine Papers, the PA will be weakened even further. With no credible “peace process” to justify its continued “security co-ordination” with Israel, or even its very existence, the countdown may well begin for the PA’s implosion. Even the US and EU support for the repressive PA police-state-in-the-making may no longer be politically tenable. Hamas may be the immediate beneficiary, but not necessarily in the long term. For the first time in years we are seeing broad mass movements that, while they include Islamists, are not necessarily dominated or controlled by them.