Stop Oil Companies Tax Breaks

Take action: Ask oil executives about their billions in tax breaks

Oil companies are living large.

While you and I pay skyrocketing prices at the gas pump, these corporations are laughing all the way to the bank. The "big five" — ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell and ConocoPhillips — made a staggering $32 billion in profit during the first quarter of the year.

The worst part? These companies get billions of dollars a year in tax breaks. So you get to give them money at the pump – and then each April when you pay your taxes.

Clearly, this isn't sound policy. Instead of helping Big Oil, we should support growing industries like clean energy, where every $1 million of investment creates roughly 16 jobs. $4 billion would create 64,000 jobs a year.

Green For All has begun to speak out on the issue. Yesterday, I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post and appeared on MSNBC to raise awareness about these handouts.

There's a way you can get involved.

Tomorrow, the heads of the "big five" companies are testifying before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, having been called by Chairman Max Baucus of Montana.

Use the tool at our website to suggest to Sen. Baucus the questions you want these executives to answer.

Our country can't afford to hand over billions of dollars to some of the richest companies in America – companies that perpetuate a dirty energy system.

Join me in speaking out.

Sincerely,

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
CEO, Green For All

 
 

Stop Big Oil subsidies

While the price of oil skyrockets, oil companies are pulling in massive profits and collecting tidy subsidies from American taxpayers. Something is dreadfully wrong with this picture. The Senate may soon vote on a measure to end Big Oil subsidies, which amounts to 4 billion dollars a year. Ask your Senators to vote against Big Oil subsidies.

These subsidies go to the same industry that is pushing legislation to allow offshore development without new safety requirements. The oil industry fights safety inspections, complains about environmental safeguards critical to protecting community water supplies and wildlife refuges, pressures Congress to gut environmental laws and blocks attempts to ensure that the taxpaying public gets fair value through royalties when they exploit the lands that belong to all Americans.

Take action now.

According to the federal government's Energy Information Administration, the average cost to produce a barrel of oil in the United States is approximately $30. So when oil companies sell a barrel for triple the cost — $100 or more, as they have been for months - the oil industry is pocketing at least $70, and passing the cost on to you and me.

In a budget environment where severe cuts to environmental protection programs, education and programs like Medicare are being threatened, there's no place for the oil industry giveaways that cost taxpayers $40 billion each decade.

Help us end this debacle. Take action today.

And thanks, again, for all you do to protect America’s wild places.

Sincerely,
Kathy Kilmer

Corporate Boards Getting Whiter While America Is Not

Janell RossJanell.Ross@huffingtonpost.comBecome a fan of this reporter

White men's already dominant control of the boards that oversee the nation's largest corporations widened during the last six years, according to a new report issued by the Alliance for Board Diversity.


In 2004, white men held 71.2 percent of board seats associated with the nation’s Fortune 100 companies. By 2010, that figure had grown slightly to 72.9 percent. During the same period, the share of Fortune 100 board seats held by black men dropped from 7.8 percent to 4.2 percent. White men gained 32 board seats, while black men lost 42. And, the total number of Fortune 100 board seats held by all women, Latinos and Asian Pacific Islanders grew by just 45 seats.


When the alliance broadened its research from the Fortune 100 to include Fortune 500 companies, it found that there was not a single Latino female board chair of a Fortune 500 company in 2010.
"The good old boys network is continuing to work," said George Herrera, a member of Windham International, Inc.’s board and a former director of the Cendant Corp. Hererra is Latino.
Also, just 15 of the nation’s Fortune 500 boards include at least one member of each of the major ethnic groups tracked by the U.S. Census.


The pattern raises questions about corporate America's commitment to diversifying corporate boards and the efficacy of decades-long efforts by advocacy groups to reshape them.
“There are all kinds of excuses,” said Deborah M. Soon, a senior vice president of strategy and marketing who oversees the executive leadership initiative at Catalyst, a New York-based nonprofit that provides information about creating workplaces that enable women and their employers to succeed and is part of the alliance that produced the report.


“It’s too hard finding women. It takes too long,” said Soon, an Asian woman, describing the usual excuses for the lack of corporate board diversity. “But, there are cultures and norms that permeate corporate America today and continue to stand in the way of greater board diversity.”
Some companies and financial analysts have questioned the business value of board diversity. A 2007 Catalyst study examining corporate finances between 2001 and 2004 –- a period of boom and bust –- found that companies with women on their boards outperformed those without women in several key ways. Among the study’s findings: Fortune 500 companies that ranked in the top 25 percent for female board member inclusion produced on average a 53 percent better between return on equity, a 42 percent difference in profits, and a 66 percent difference in return on invested capital when compared to companies with the least gender-diverse boards.


This month, the nation’s two largest public pension plans developed a database where companies invested by the plans can find a diverse and qualified pool of potential board candidates. The two funds spent about $120,000 on the database, said Wayne Davis, a spokesman for one of the two California public employee plans. The funds expect to make their money back in subscriptions to the database.
The benefits of board diversity extend well beyond stock prices, said Arnold Donald, president and CEO of the Executive Leadership Council, a Virginia-based organization with nearly 450 mostly African American corporate senior executive members. The council is also a part of the Alliance for Board Diversity.


Companies need more diverse boards so that they can better understand the interests, concerns and experiences of their increasingly diverse clients and customers. Diverse boards are more likely to come up with ideas that expand sales and distribute corporate philanthropic dollars to address a wider variety of community needs said Donald, who is African American.
“If the lay person will think about any experience they may have had where there was a very diverse group of thinkers at the table,” said Donald. “That diversity probably brought more creative, dramatic and impactful ideas and solutions. A diverse group of people are simply going to have a different understanding of events, demands and needs.”


While working as a senior executive at Monsanto, Donald assigned a diverse team to the effort to get Environmental Protection Agency clearance for a new herbicide. A group had been working on the project for 17 years. The diverse team sought and won approval in less than a year, he said.
In the last decade, 98 percent nation’s population growth was due to increases in the black, Latino and Asian populations. Together, women, racial and ethnic minority men already comprise 66 percent of the nation’s population.


“I think what’s happened is that a lot of these companies are not in lock step with understanding the changing demographics [of the country],” said Herrera. “When there is a resignation the CEO typically looks within the board to try to get a recommendation so only about 48 to 50 percent of fortune 500 companies even use a search firm.”
Right now, there are nearly 900 Fortune 1000 companies that do not have a single Latino member of their board, said Herrera. Among Fortune 100 companies, only half have a Latino board member. Latino population growth outpaced that of any other group over the last decade.


“When you are sitting here and hearing the Census numbers,” said Herrera, “and the explosion of the Hispanic community and the size of its spending power you realize that we are driving the profits and revenues of a lot of these companies. I think we have to ask if I am good enough to buy your products in services then tell me why I am not good enough to sit in your board room.”


In the six-year period that the alliance study examined, many corporate boards became less diverse for a variety of reasons ranging from ordinary inertia, to a handful of retirements by just a few people of color serving on multiple boards, said Donald. Then, Donald said, there are the unintended consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, accounting regulations instituted after the demise of Enron and WorldCom.


Sarbanes-Oxley set new standard for public company boards, management and public accounting firms making each of the groups more accountable for inaccuracies in corporate financial statements. It also requires boards to be made up of mostly independent directors and create an audit committee that includes at least one person with financial management experience. Companies that do not have such a person must explain why in proxy statements.
Donald believes that to find these people many Fortune 500 companies turned to the ranks of retired CEOs, CFOs and accounting firm executives. Because of historical hiring, recruiting and promotion patterns, these pools consist almost exclusively of older white men, Donald said. 


The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not respond to a request for comment about corporate board diversity or the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley.
One of the reasons for the mixed results in the alliance’s report may be that, since Sarbanes-Oxley, many boards have been reduced in size and have recruited more independent directors from the pool of retirees that Donald describes, said Lissa L. Broome, a professor at University of North Carolina School of Law who researches the issues of diversity on boards. Another problem may be one that, for years, passed as the solution to all types of discrimination: ignore or at least avoid talking about difference.


When Broome and her research partners interviewed corporate board members around the country about the issue of diversity, many of the people interviewed expressed confidence that board diversity is valuable but were unable to articulate specific ways in which it affected decision making or shaped outcomes.
“I think part of the problem is that people are very uncomfortable talking about race and gender,” said Broome, who is white. “Talking about that is not politically correct or may not feel that way for a lot of these directors.”


In February 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission began requiring companies to include in their proxy statements information about how diversity factored into filling board vacancies. But diversity was not defined and the statements have, thus far, been vague, Broome said. To help companies find more diverse candidates, Broome maintains a database of individuals interested in serving on corporate boards that companies can use free of charge.


Herrera doesn’t believe that Sarbanes-Oxley is the reason for the decline in certain types of board diversity. While Herrera does have business experience, he has never served as the CEO or CFO of a major corporation. But, he is a member of Windham’s audit committee.
“I think companies have to be committed and aggressive in finding people who have the skills they need,” said Herrera. “We do exist, and, let’s be honest here, they do have the capacity to find us and understand us when they want to sell their products. Companies have to bring that same aggression to the table when it’s time to search for directors.”


Another part of the problem may simply be the way that some companies opted to weather the recession. Many companies retrenched and focused on protecting capital, said W.D. “Denny” Minami, an Asian-American who is also a North Star Financial Corporation board member and former director at Ashford Hospitality Trust, Inc. These companies looked for board members with contacts that would help the businesses simply maintain rather than identify or expand into new markets.


While American companies wrestle with the issue of board composition, Norwegian companies have already complied with 2008 rules ensuring women hold 40 percent of each public company’s director seats. Companies that did not comply risked being delisted from Norway’s stock exchange. Most met the deadline. A small number went private or reincorporated in other countries, Broome said.


“My sense is that that is never going to happen in the United States,” said Broome. “But, I’d sure like to see it threatened.”

The Right-Wing Network Behind the War on Unions

The Right-Wing Network Behind the War on Unions
Inspired by Ronald Reagan and funded by the right's richest donors, a web of free-market think tanks has fueled the nationwide attack on workers' rights.

— By Andy Kroll
Mon Apr. 25, 2011

From New Hampshire to Alaska, Republican lawmakers are waging war on organized labor. They're pushing bills to curb, if not eliminate, collective bargaining for public workers; make it harder for unions to collect member dues; and, in some states, allow workers to opt out of joining unions entirely but still enjoy union-won benefits. All told, it's one of the largest assaults on American unions in recent history.

Behind the onslaught is a well-funded network of conservative think tanks that you've probably never heard of. Conceived by the same conservative ideologues who helped found the Heritage Foundation, the State Policy Network (SPN) is a little-known umbrella group with deep ties to the national conservative movement. Its mission is simple: to back a constellation of state-level think tanks loosely modeled after Heritage that promote free-market principles and rail against unions, regulation, and tax increases. By blasting out policy recommendations and shaping lawmakers' positions through briefings and private meetings, these think tanks cultivate cozy relationships with GOP politicians. And there's a long tradition of revolving door relationships between SPN staffers and state governments. While they bill themselves as independent think tanks, SPN's members frequently gather to swap ideas. "We're all comrades in arms," the network's board chairman told the National Review in 2007.

Occasionally, SPN think tanks boast of their clout. Such was the case when the Tennessee Center for Policy Research bragged on its website recently that it "leads the charge against teachers' union" and "laid the groundwork" for the bills now in the Tennessee legislature to restrict, and possibly eradicate, bargaining for public school teachers. More often, though, the fingerprints of SPN's members are less apparent.

Founded in 1992 by businessman and Reagan administration insider Thomas Roe—who also served on the Heritage Foundation's board of trustees for two decades—the group has grown to include 59 "freedom centers," or affiliated think tanks, in all 50 states. SPN's board includes officials from Heritage and right-wing charities such as the Adolph Coors and Jacqueline Hume foundations. Likewise, its deep-pocketed donors include all the usual heavy-hitting conservative benefactors: the Ruth and Lovett Peters Foundation, which funds the Cato Institute and Heritage; the Castle Rock Foundation, a charity started with money from the conservative Coors Foundation; and the Bradley Foundation, a $540 million charity devoted to funding conservative causes. SPN uses their contributions to dole out annual grants to member groups, ranging from a few thousand dollars to $260,000, according to 2009 records.

According to SPN's website, Roe launched the conservative network "at the urging" of President Reagan himself as a way to shape state-level policy just as Heritage has influenced federal policy. Surveying the political landscape today, Roe's and Reagan's idea couldn't have been more prescient. More than a dozen states are currently considering legislation weakening the clout of organized labor. In many of those states, SPN think tanks have been pushing for similar prescriptions for years via "research" papers, policy recommendations, and talking points that are widely distributed to lawmakers.

In Iowa, Republican Gov. Terry Branstad cited research (flawed, it turned out) by SPN's Public Interest Institute in his January 2011 budget address to justify curbing the state's collective bargaining law for public workers. (Last month, the GOP-controlled Iowa House passed a bill limiting bargaining rights, but the measure died in the Democratic-controlled Senate.)

In Michigan, as Mother Jones previously reported, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, an SPN member, published a list of four policy recommendations that would give unelected "emergency managers" more power to go into municipalities and wipe out union contracts and fire local elected officials, all in the name of repairing broken budgets. All four ended up in Governor Rick Snyder's "financial martial law," as one GOP lawmaker described it. The bill was signed into law in March.

The Nevada Policy Research Institute (NPRI) has for more than a decade bashed the Silver State's efforts to pass collective bargaining laws and accused unions of trying to "monopolize the public sector." In March, Nevada Republicans, citing NPRI data, introduced a bill of their own to weaken bargaining rights. There, as in other states considering similar measures, GOP lawmakers called on an SPN staffer to testify on the bill, which he did favorably.

In California, where a Republican lawmaker introduced a bill in February to repeal collective bargaining on retirement benefits for public workers, the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) has churned out a steady stream of reports and op-eds claiming that teachers unions use collective bargaining to "neuter school board authority, protect bad teachers, restrict principals, emphasize seniority over performance, and limit teacher evaluation and accountability." That is, bargaining is to blame for just about everything that's gone wrong. A 2003 PRI paper recommended that policymakers "streamline or repeal" collective bargaining for teachers.

When SPN think tanks are not providing conservative lawmakers with ammo, they're providing them with cover as they take on organized labor. In Wisconsin, as Republican Gov. Scott Walker weathered criticism and sinking approval ratings for his anti-union "repair" bill, the MacIver Institute and Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, both SPN members, rushed to his defense. MacIver lauded Walker's controversial bill as a "step in taming the behemoth" of big government caused by public-sector unions. Meanwhile, a staffer for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (and former Wisconsin legislative aide) defended Walker's bill in an error-riddled New York Times op-ed as "fiscally modest, but politically bold." As tens of thousands poured into the streets of Madison to oppose Walker's bill, MacIver even cut a video that dismissed the pro-labor protesters as radicalized communists and socialists.

More recently, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, another SPN member, urged lawmakers to "follow Wisconsin's lead" and curb collective bargaining rights for public workers, and the GOP-controlled state Senate voted to do so soon after. Republican Gov. Mary Fallin is expected to sign the repeal into law.

SPN think tanks do more than merely pepper politicians with briefings and a barrage of policy recommendations; they also serve as a farm team for the GOP. Reps. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) all ran SPN think tanks before entering Congress. Following his election in 1994, Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, a Republican, "hired almost everybody" (PDF) out of SPN's Pioneer Institute in Massachusetts, according to an SPN official.

In Michigan, the GOP and Mackinac Center have been particularly close. Before serving as Michigan's governor, Republican John Engler helped found the center in the late 1980s, and the two-term governor would go on to implement many of Mackinac's recommendations. (Engler and the think tank did, however, disagree on a few issues.) In 1995, Engler also appointed Joseph Olson, Mackinac's long-time board chairman, to oversee Michigan's insurance commission. "The Mackinac Center has been tied at the hip with the Republican Party establishment for years," a spokesman for the Michigan Education Association says.

The SPN revolving door spins both ways. Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), previously served as Republican Gov. Rick Perry's deputy general counsel and the head of Perry's policy division, overseeing the administration's work on everything from health care and education to criminal justice. Jeff Judson, who led the TPPF before Rollins, did stints in the offices of Sen. John Tower and Rep. Tom DeLay, as well as in the George H.W. Bush administration's Department of Energy. Forest Thigpen, president of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, is a former aide in the DC office of Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.).

Tracie Sharp, SPN's president, told Mother Jones in an email that member think tanks "set their own policy agendas" and "have always been fiercely independent." But those on the other side of the fight see the think tanks as part of a broader effort. "This is not a grassroots movement to eliminate collective bargaining," says Al Mance, executive director of the Tennessee Education Association, the state's largest teachers union. "This is a national movement, and it's funded by all the conservative moneyed interests."

Rev. Jackson to Lead Rally for Michigan

 Rev. Jackson to Lead Rally for Michigan Blacks
Date: Thursday, April 21, 2011,  

By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com

         Rev. Jesse Jackson will lead a rally at the Michigan state Capitol in Lansing at 11 a.m. Thursday. (AP)

The emergency takeover of the government of Benton Harbor, Michigan, like the suspension of collective bargaining rights for employees in Wisconsin, are all part of a greater scheme to reverse years of civil and states rights law, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Wednesday.

Jackson, who will lead a rally at the state Capitol in Lansing at 11 a.m. Thursday with the Michigan Black Legislative Caucus, said it was time to organize residents to take back their government through mass demonstrations and legal action.

Last month, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed a new law expanding the powers of emergency managers appointed by the Treasury Department to take over distressed schools and communities.

The first town affected by the law was Benton Harbor, a predominantly black city in southwest Michigan. On Friday, Joseph Harris, the state-appointed emergency financial manager, suspended the decision-making powers of Benton Harbor officials.

According to The Detroit News, the order limits Benton Harbor officials to calling meetings to order, adjourning them and approving minutes of meetings.

Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney called the move “sad news for democracy in Michigan.”

Jackson told BlackAmericaWeb.com that the law likely would be used for a broader mission, which would target collective bargaining rights for public employees, dilute voter strength – particularly for black Americans and other people of color – and limit states’ rights.

“It’s not just Benton Harbor. (Snyder has) approved 40 other emergency mandatory measures so it’s like a takeover of government that denies their workers’ rights. It’s replacing democracy with a czar in the name of fiscal emergency,” Jackson said.

Benton Harbor has long been an economically depressed community, where the median income hovers around $10,000 a year, compared to its more affluent neighbor St. Joseph, a mostly white community with a median income average of $33,000.

Jackson pointed out that while the U.S. is involved in wars on three fronts, all supposedly seeking to preserve or promote democracy, there is serious movement within the U.S. to diminish the democratic process.

“It’s wrong there, and it’s wrong here. They are attacking teachers unions, attacking collective bargaining, attacking the rights of (voter) access,” Jackson said, adding that the argument that this is an effort to deal with fiscal crises affecting struggling communities is nothing more than a cover-up for a more sinister agenda.

“This is a states’ rights agenda,” Jackson said. “It’s the ‘60s all over again, when the federal government had to intervene to protect us. We won these battles, but now the right wing is engaging in a radical backlash.”

He said urban centers with organized labor, including Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit and Memphis, could well face similar challenges.
There have been reports that Wisconsin is considering its own emergency financial manager law.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow wrote in her Tuesday blog that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says he's no way about to repeat what Michigan has done, with a bill that imposes what critics call financial martial law. Instead, it appears that a business group in Milwaukee is pushing for stress tests for municipalities.

Jackson said it was critical to inform the black community about the insidious nature of such legal maneuvers to appeal to legislators to pay closer attention to bills that could wrest away local autonomy and organize public demonstrations against such action.

Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks to city leaders in Benton Harbor

Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks to city leaders in Benton Harbor

Jackson to Lead Rally for Michigan Blacks

Jackson to Lead Rally for Michigan Blacks

The cultural Kryptonite of the American Right - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

The cultural Kryptonite of the American Right - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Before US Tomahawk cruise missiles began to rain down on Muammar Gaddafi's air defences this past week, the only conversation that president Obama had to have was with his senior advisors.

They, and they alone would decide whether a country founded as a democratic republic would engage in what George Washington would have likely viewed as a "foreign entanglement" – using 21st century ordinance against a sociopath with a history of violence and a worse hat fetish than Sammy Davis Jr.

Obviously, in 200 years the United States has evolved from a rebel-with-a-cause into a world power, and additional involvement in world affairs has become part of the cost of doing business.

There is also a good argument to be made that after the terrible mistake of the Iraq invasion, the US can do some good by putting an end to the murderous Gaddafi in Libya, as part of an international coalition made up of Arab and African countries, blessed by the United Nations.

Yet, that does not change the fact that congressional support for this operation was as important as an appendix or a Newt Gingrich marriage vow.

Obama and his people simply knew they could ignore the people's representatives and safely rely upon a militarised culture primed to support an attack on an Arab nation. Particularly one the US had already thrown down with only a generation ago. 

It is this fact that makes author, syndicated columnist and talk radio host David Sirota's new book, Back To Our Future, not only a fascinating read about the culture of the 1980s, but a manifestly important work in helping explain why the United States does the things it does today.

From involvement in a civil war in Libya to allowing a madman sans background check to saunter into his local arms bazaar and purchase a high-powered firearm for an attempted assassination of a congresswoman.

The latter being easier than say, finding plutonium for your DeLorean in 1955.

'Outlaw with morals'

As Sirota explains it, the 80s were the age of cross-marketing, when concepts that had a place in American history suddenly became commonplace. The anti-government language of president Ronald Reagan adorned films such asGhostbusters and E.T.

These "political messages in non-political settings indoctrinated the young, when their filter for political propaganda was turned off." As a result, these framed narratives became part of the conventional wisdom, continuing to this day.

In much the way E.T. heightened suspicions about our government, Lybian terrorists in Back To The Future and a bad-guy professional wrestling star named The Iron Sheikh helped prepare the American people for the role we've played in the Arab world over the past decade.

Meanwhile, the "outlaw with morals", or rogue who had to work against the system to get things done, was a key message that reached the masses.

The bromide of "government being the problem, not the solution", was not only contained in Reagan's philosophy, but Wall Street's ethic, the frontier mythology of many regions of the country, and films, music, and television series, but perhaps most importantly promoted using athletes by one of the most powerful marketing machines ever seen – Nike.

As Sirota offers about Nike's effect, "they took this narrative to the level of societal saturation".

This can at least partially explain the rogue individualism that can be found in the love affair certain Americans have with guns, and even more importantly, the corollary that only they can protect themselves, often from the very government they once looked upon for this service.

Of course, this cultural sea change did not just happen by itself. An array of right-wing think tanks and media organisations, born in the 1970s to lead this kind of a cultural revolution, synergistically grabbed this societal zeitgeist and hopped, skipped and jumped with it, declaring the 1960s and 1970s an illegitimate, naïve, or even dangerous social experiment.

As Sirota reminds us, in the 1980s a minister speaking at The Heritage Foundation, one of these newish (1973) and lavishly funded right-wing media and policy operations intricately tied to the Reagan administration, believed he and his ilk, were "here to turn the clock back to 1954 in this country".

'Prepubescents' in charge

Danny Goldberg, former CEO of Air America, has also recognised this cultural evolution, and the role played by well-funded conservative organs in helping spread the non-love.

As he sees it, appealing to the psyche and vision of the American people or pulling on their heartstrings, if you will, is in short supply on the Left, as "Democrats do not use imagination and culture to open minds for their agenda".

As Goldberg put it in a Nation piece, "you can count how many people click onto a web page, how long it was viewed and how many people it was forwarded to but determining how much impact it has on the minds of the readers requires educated guesses and fallible intuitive human analysis."

The Left had better begin to under this outsized role of culture, imagination and emotion in our politics soon.

Because if we are indeed operating in parameters set up by not only the politics, but the arts and letters of 1980s, reinforced by millions of dollars invested in long-term conservative projects to convince the American people this is the way it has always been, we are in for a rough decade or three.

For as Sirota says, "our world is increasingly run by the prepubescents, college kids, and young ladder-climbers who were originally indoctrinated and inculcated in the 1980s."

Therefore, if we are looking for an alternative to all-too-present strains of foreign adventurism, Wall Street me-ism and domestic militia-ism – among other challenges – we will need our own cultural rebirth to return to the values that once animated this nation.

Because, whether he comes from Krypton, Kansas City or Kazakhstan, I am not ready to start kneeling before Zod anytime soon.

Cliff Schecter is the President of Libertas, LLC, a progressive public relations firm, the author of the 2008 bestseller The Real McCain, and a regular contributor to The Huffington Post.

Follow Cliff Schecter On Twitter: @Cliffschecter

Moral bankruptcy in Libya war

Foreign intervention in Libya is fuelled by ulterior motives, not goodwill.

The world community – the real world community, not the diplomatic charade code-named the UNSC – is thrown into a psychosomatic stupor and forced into a moral dilemma to choose between letting a psychotic tyrant maim and murder a nation (usually called "his own", as if he owned Libyans) or else stand still and witness the hypocritical abuse of that fact by US and its European allies in order to consolidate a military foothold into the dramatic unfolding of democratic uprisings in North Africa and beyond.
This evident dilemma, however, is a trick question, a false choice, and the answer to it, as to all others, is "none of the above". Visionary artists like Márquez have redrawn the moral map of our universe so that we do not have to make these banal choices.
Finding a military foothold
By luring the US into leading yet another war against a sovereign nation-state, Gaddafi has given the US and its allies a military foothold in the unfolding and open-ended democratic uprisings in the region and thus turned Libya into the crucible of a new meltdown of state power and national sovereignty.
In this act, and thanks to the revolutions that now sweep through two continents, we are back not to la vita nuda of Georgio Agamben but in fact to a renewed asabiyyah of Ibn Khaldun.
We are not helpless facing these tribal and postmodern acts of violence exacerbating each other; we are retrieving a collective consciousness of commitment and identity that can and will judge these atrocities – Gaddafi's and those who sold and now destroy his arms – and we will do so with historical agency, political prowess, and above all moral rectitude.
Seeing through the thicket of these events is no easy task – but we must. Leading Arab intellectuals are scrambling to strike a balance between support for the Libyan uprisings without appearing to endorse or condone the US-led invasion of Libya.
It is a difficult spot to occupy if you insist on implicating yourself onto that corner. Just shy of two years ago, if Obama as much as mentioned the name of Neda Aqa Soltan, the young woman who was cold-bloodedly murdered by the security forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran during the heydays of the Green Movement, many on the Left were quick to use the reference as an indication that the movement was in fact the handiwork of the CIA and financed by the Saudis.
Now the same folks find themselves in the rather embarrassing situation that Obama and his military might coupled with the military might of the entire EU, and now in fact extended to include NATO, are bombing Gaddafi's army in support of the democratic uprising in Libya.
The same folks were in a similarly embarrassing situation even earlier when the Egyptian army became instrumental in the success of the Egyptian revolution.
The money that the CIA had evidently allocated for regime change in the Islamic Republic was peanuts compared to the US investment in the Egyptian army to implicate and train it for its imperial projects in the region.
But do either of these two cases, the instrumental role of the Egyptian army in the Egyptian revolution or the military support of the US and its European allies for the rebellious uprising against Gaddafi's tyranny detract an iota of legitimacy from the veracity and grassroots authenticity of the Egyptian revolution or Libyan uprising? Of course not, not a scratch.
The glorious Egyptian revolution remains exemplary for the whole world to behold, and the world has unconditional support for the Libyan uprising against domestic tyranny and foreign domination alike, no matter how the US and EU imperial adventurism may want to abuse it.
The only embarrassment that remains is for what passes for "the Left" to figure out the limits of its own moral and political imagination.
To be fair, the Left is not the only block of thinkers and activists caught in the sectarian stupor – for or against the US-led invasion of Libya.
A group of mostly American scholars and think tank employees have just written an open letter to Obama urging him to "recognise, arm, and support the National Coalition Government in Libya".
No such letter was written by any one of these folks asking the US president to "recognise, arm, and support" Hamas for example, or Hezbollah, resisting the brutalities of Israel in the region.
Meanwhile, al-Qardawi's dismissal of the Bahrain democratic uprising as merely sectarian is yet another clear indication that moral and political bankruptcy is not limited to leftist or right wing sectarianism and has an equally prominent role in ageing, stale Islamism as well.
For a man of God – like al-Qardawi – to be so ungodly limited in his moral imagination must be a sign of the divine vengeance on a trapped faith that has lost trust in reality and confidence in the world.
Awakening a moral imagination
Beyond these banalities, stubborn remnants of old clichés, we need clear-headed moral rectitude to figure out what is happening in our midst and right in front of our own eyes.
Assimilating these extraordinary events backward to sectarianism of one sort or another will be a sure way to delusional confusions, of undoing in words what is happening in deeds.
If the dandy French guru, Bernard-Henri Lévy, is so in a rush to make sure the post-Gaddafi shape of Libya is Zionist-friendly that he rushes in public half naked and has somehow convinced his ego-maniacal banality that his juvenile dress code is really "cool", it is really his issue with his therapist and has no bearing on Libya and beyond.
The groovy "philosopher" (poor philosophy) knows only too well that the ultimate loser in these democratic uprisings is the settler colony of Israel, and it is just matter of time that the young generation of Israelis will want to join this block party and tear down those apartheid walls.
Meanwhile, the only way Zionists know how to handle such a (for them) "crisis" is to make a deal with corrupt politicians, for the democratic will of people frightens "the only democracy in the Middle East" out of its wits.
For all we know, Bernard-Henri Lévy has struck a deal with Moustapha Abdeljalil, a former justice minister turned rebel leader, to assume an Israeli-friendly Libya when Gaddafi finally exists.
But that possibility can not mar our reading of the Libyan uprising. They do their things (imperial designs and colonial settlements) and we do ours (we, the people).
Propaganda officers like Bernard-Henri Lévy or Muslim clerics like sheikh Yusuf al-Qardawi (who at least has the decency of buttoning up his shirt when he shows up in public) are known and predictable factors.
Our categorical denunciation of violence – whether perpetrated by Gaddafi, Sarkozy or Obama – is a moral position and not a political proposition.
The unwavering solidarity with the democratic will of a people who have put their lives on the line – from Tehran to Libya and beyond – never oscillates because of any political consideration or because American Neo-cons or French Zionists are trying their best to kidnap it.
In a famous articulation of a "categorical imperative" in his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Immanuel Kant proposes that we must act in such a way as if the maxim of our action were to become by our will a universal law.
This is a moral maxim, not a political dictum – a mandate by which a moral imagination can form a society of citizens and citizenship, and not the political proposition by which a polity might be formed or in its absence deformed.
States are not moral proposition, they are political machineries and as such they still function very much the same way that Max Weber defined them early in the twentieth century, as a political machinery that claims a monopoly of "legitimate" violence.
Weber always considered that "legitimacy" parenthetically – that a polity might grant or withdraw it from a state apparatus.
Investing a state – a tyranny like Libya or a democracy like the United States – with legitimacy is a political contract predicated on a moral choice; shooting your own citizens or invading another sovereign nation-sate is a political atrocity that ipso facto suspends that moral pact.
We as citizens, as "the people", must never presume to have the political prowess to order a military strike or to drop a bomb, for that would be at the heavy price of forfeiting our moral agency to invest or withdraw legitimacy from the state apparatus.
We, the people, were never consulted when millions of dollars of arms were sold to Gaddafi by the US or the UK; as we, the people, were never consulted when the UNSC resolution 1973 was ratified. So why must we be put in a position to condone or denounce the US-led invasion of Libya?
We are not, have never been, in a position to decide. But we are, and we remain, in a position to bear witness, to judge, and to act accordingly – and what we are witnessing from one continent to another is first and foremost a moral rebellion, and thus the persistence to call it for what it is, for "dignity".

Vox Populi
Holding our grounds as moral agents, for us, the people – Libyans, French, British, or Americans, etc. – the US and its European allies and Gaddafi are the losers in this game, sooner or later. Triumphant will remain the democratic will of the Libyan people that will overcome this debacle.
The question is how. Gaddafi has bloodied this democratic uprising, and that cannot be allowed to mar and maim the post-Gaddafi choices.
The Libyan people, which cannot be reduced or limited to those who have taken up arms and must be extended to the civic foregrounding of a democratic future must think of enduring institutions beyond the obscenity of a doctorate in democracy bought and paid for at the London School of Economics for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the man who would be king.
Cliché and outdated forms of solidarity or opposition no longer make sense. Neither blind solidarity without an eye towards the formation of enduring institutions of democracy, nor the degeneration of opposition to adventurous imperialism into suspicion of democratic uprisings will find a way into the texture and contour of this long awaited revolutionary moment.
We need to keep our eyes on the ball – which is the democratic will of people, vox populi – rising to demand and exact enduring institutions of civil liberties and social justice.
The UN is the diplomatic arm of the US and its European allies. The US lacks any moral authority to pretend to be on the side of these democratic uprisings. NATO is abusing Gaddafi's slaughter of his own people to reclaim the Mediterranean Sea and environ as its theatre of operation.
China and Russia scarcely think of anything but their lucrative business dealings. Against the collusion of all these forces have arisen the moral authority and the democratic will of people from western Africa to eastern Asia.
What ever the will to dominate and exploit might be, it will lose to the infinitely superior will to defy and reclaim peoples' destiny. Tyrannies might be as conniving as the octogenarians ruling the Islamic Republic or as reckless as Gaddafi's Libya. But they will both fold facing these rises of democratic wills.
These revolutionary uprisings are realities sui generis, legitimate by what and where they are, and they must not be reduced to losing agential autonomy, and thus finding and losing legitimacy by the hypocritical and opportunistic attempts of military powers to embrace or repress them.
What Egyptians have achieved in Tahrir Square in particular re-conceives the very notion of "democracy".

Tahrir Square is today the symbolic site of rethinking the entire gamut of a political philosophy that can, happily, overcome the meaningless catastrophe codenamed "the West" as it redefines "government" in terms much closer to popular sovereignty, even before it is re-narrated into enduring institutions of civil liberties. 

The revolutionary uprising across two continents need the cultivation of a new language, the drawing of a new moral map. 

"Language is not just one of man's possession in the world," says German hermeneutician Hans Georg Gadamer inTruth and Method, "but on it depends the fact that man has a world at all. For man the world exists as a world in a way that no other being in the world experiences. But this world is linguistic in nature."

It makes no difference if Gaddafi and his children rule over Libya for one more day or one more century. 

The moral map and the grammatological syntax and morphology of our imagination have already changed. 

The political collapse of his regime, and the hypocrisy of the US-led invasion of Libya, is exposed the minute Libyans rose against his tyranny and said enough is enough – or just echoed the voice of Egyptians: al-sha'b yurid isqat al-nizam (tr: the people want the fall of the regime).   

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.  He is the author, most recently, of Iran, the Green Movement, and the US: The Fox and the Paradox (Zed, 2010). 

Obama's critics say Arab revolutions vindicate Bush's freedom agenda, but they overestimate US influence.

While many American conservatives were quicker to warm to the recent Arab revolutions than the Obama administration, they were wrong to have always assumed that American power was the essential ingredient for change in the region.

In his aptly (and mischievously) titled article, Project for a New Arab Century, Muhammad Khan alleged that the recent eruption of popular revolutions in the Middle East left conservative enthusiasts for democracy promotion "largely silent". In fact, conservatives have been very vocal as of late. In the midst of the Obama administration's waffling response to the protests, George W. Bush supporters have seized the opportunity to seek vindication for the former president's 'freedom agenda'.

Elliot Abrams, who served as Bush's deputy national security adviser for global democracy strategy, was the first out of the gates. On January 29, Abrams highlighted Bush's comments on the universality of democracy and the instability of autocracy as prescient strategic insights confirmed by unfolding events. Why, Abrams asked, could Obama not follow Bush's example and express his support for the popular protests more unequivocally?

Others have gone much further than Abrams. For Charles Krauthammer, a popular conservative columnist and one of the chief theorists of democracy promotion, the current upheavals have been all about Bush. "Everyone," Krauthammer insisted on March 4, "is a convert to George W. Bush's freedom agenda" now.

If this is true, then it behooves us to ask what Krauthammer defines as the 'freedom agenda'. It turns out that, according to Krauthammer (all that talk about 'regime change' from 2002 to 2003 notwithstanding), the chief principle of the 'freedom agenda' can be reduced á la Abrams to the rather pedestrian insight that "Arabs are no exception to the universal thirst for dignity and freedom".

But Krauthammer does not stop there and advances quickly from the banal to the absurd. Apparently, in Krauthammer's words, "the Bush Doctrine set the premise" for the current revolutions, upsetting age old structures of power in the Arab world. Really? Did the Arab public truly require Bush's imprimatur on democracy before they rose up to demand greater justice and freedom with the tools provided by democratic discourses?

More serious and substantial commentary has come from William Inboden, a former senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council under Bush. On January 30, Inboden asked why the Obama administration did not see the Egyptian revolt coming and on February 11, he insisted that "not everyone was wrong on Egypt" - pointing to the intriguing (but marginalised) work of the bi-partisan Working Group on Egypt since 2010.

The Working Group on Egypt was perhaps the most persistent and vocal group in Washington circles warning of the decrepitude of the Mubarak regime. On April 17, 2010, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, received a letter from the group, led by Michele Dunne and Robert Kagan, warning that Egypt was "at a critical turning point". The group cautioned that unless the US took a serious interest, Egypt risked "sliding backwards into increased authoritarianism" rather than "progressing gradually on a path of desirable reform".

Receiving little response, the group sent a second letter to Clinton on May 11 2010. Several weeks later Dunne and Kagan penned an op-ed in the Washington Post highlighting the gulf that had "opened between the government and the citizenry" in Egypt. Dunne and Kagan worried that if the US did not take action, then Egypt might be lost to radicalism.


A US-centric view

Before going any further, however, it is worth considering what exactly these critics of the Obama administration actually saw coming in the Arab world. After all, there was nothing particularly profound or prophetic about pointing out that the Egyptian people had little affection for Mubarak and his policies in 2010.  If we really want to know whether American conservatives 'saw it coming', it is better to look beyond their particular assessments of the Mubarak, Ben Ali or Gaddafi regimes to their general view of the relationship between power and change in the region.

Well before Bush II came into office, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a 'neo-conservative' think-tank based in Washington DC, began to mount a full-on assault against the 'realist' assumptions they perceived to be governing American foreign policy. Chief amongst their targets was the allegedly narrow 'realist' construal of national interest. Far better, the PNAC contended, to expand the concept of national interest to encompass things like the promotion of democracy abroad.

After 2001, the PNAC's arguments about democracy promotion and national interest gained momentum. Along with this argument came an unchallenged assumption about the nature of political change in the Arab world.

While conservatives such as Bush spoke enthusiastically about the universality of democracy they remained convinced that beneficial change would come about in only one of two ways: Regime change or gradual internal reform. In either case, American power and support were considered the essential element. American inaction meant either the maintenance of the status quo or the spread of Islamic radicalism.

In many ways, this myopic, American-centric view of power and change continues to govern both conservative and liberal American views of the Arab world. What conservatives never saw coming, along with the majority of American foreign policy analysts, was the manner in which the Arab world has changed in recent months. It turns out America was not the essential catalyst for change that everyone assumed.

Twice in a decade now, hitherto neglected non-state actors have seemingly come from nowhere to fundamentally alter both America's perception of the Middle East and the history of the region itself. Unfortunately, Americans were too mesmerised by the spectre of their own power to see such things coming.

At this juncture, as Americans ponder their future relationship with the Arab world, they might do well to consider the ideas of an important, but neglected theorist of political power, John Howard Yoder. He offered the sound insight that state power (whether 'soft', 'smart' or 'hard') is not equivalent to real power and that he who wields the sword is not the source of agency or creativity in history.


Todd M. Thompson is an assistant professor of International Affairs at Qatar University. 

The battle for Tahrir Square

Media in the line of fire in Egypt
Domestic and foreign journalists have come under siege amid the turmoil in Egypt.
Al Jazeera's online producer Last Modified: 03 Feb 2011 19:35 GMT

       Journalists in Egypt – domestic and foreign – are increasingly under siege, with Egyptian authorities detaining reporters and gangs of young men roaming the streets looking for anyone with camera equipment.
Some of the pressure has come from the government: Six Al Jazeera journalists were detained for several hours earlier this week, and while they were eventually released, their equipment remains with the police.

Earlier on Thursday concerns were raised as another three reporters went missing. They have now returned, safe and well, to their hotel.
Two New York Times reporters were reportedly arrested – or "taken into protective custody", as the government termed it.

'Israeli spy' rumours

Spotters stand outside many hotels, watching balconies with high-powered binoculars. When they see balconies with camera equipment or photographers, they use radios to call in the details.
Egyptian police sources say that information from those spotters has been used to conduct several raids on journalists' hotel rooms in recent days.

And the government has reportedly pressured several hotels not to extend the reservations of foreign journalists.
But most of the intimidation and violence has come from unofficial sources: Young men loiter outside the hotels where many reporters are staying, shouting at (and sometimes attacking) anyone with equipment.

Hotel lobbies are filled with journalists and camera crews wearing bandages, and many have been restricted to watching the events in Tahrir Square from their hotel balconies.
Egyptian state television has actively tried to foment the unrest by reporting that "Israeli spies" have infiltrated the city – which explains why many of the gangs who attack reporters shout "yehudi!" ("Jew!").

The area around Tahrir Square has become a virtual no-go zone for camera crews, which were assaulted on Wednesday almost as soon as they entered the area controlled by supporters of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Several of them were mistaken for Al Jazeera crews, and were chased off by young men wielding sticks and chanting, "Jazeera! Jazeera!".
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said his crew was also assaulted on Tuesday night after being mistaken for an Al Jazeera crew.

A reporter for the Al Arabiya network was kidnapped for several hours during Wednesday’s protest.
The violence has come exclusively from the Mubarak supporters: There have been no reports of pro-democracy demonstrators attacking or intimidating the media.

Egyptian journalists, too, have been the victims of angry mobs, all of them affiliated with the pro-Mubarak crowd. Sarah El Sirgany, an editor with the Daily News Egypt, tweeted that her brother was assaulted while trying to protect a group of reporters attacked by an angry mob.
An Al Jazeera reporter was held at knifepoint by a group of young men on Thursday morning. One man’s face was still bloodied from the previous night’s fighting.
Bloggers, too, have become targets: The popular Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey has reportedly been arrested (it's unclear by who).

International condemnation

The United States and Britain have condemned what they call the intimidation of foreign journalists reporting on events in Egypt.
Robert Gibbs, White House spokesman, called for the release of any journalist who had been detained in the country and said acts to intimidate the media were "completely and totally unacceptable".
PJ Crowley, state department spokesman, added: "There is a concerted campaign to intimidate international journalists in Cairo and interfere with their reporting. We condemn such actions."

Britain's foreign minister also said the intimidation and harassment of journalists was "unacceptable and disturbing".
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists called the attacks on journalists an attempt at "blanket censorship" by the government, and listed a number of reported assaults against Egyptian, Arabic and international media.

         The battle for Tahrir Square

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/aljazeeraenglish/sets/72157625966223134/show/


      It was late on Wednesday as I slipped off to the Corniche road along the Nile to try to make my way inside Tahrir Square.

I had never seen a revolt up close and in real time, so it was with some trepidation that I had left the confines of our building after a full 10 hours of witnessing rock and Molotov barrages out of the window.
The street was empty but for a small army presence – a couple of armoured personnel carriers and some soldiers, most stationed near the Egyptian Museum.
To my left, 300m away, a pro-Mubarak crowd rained Molotov cocktails down on the anti-government protesters from an flyover leading from the 6th of October bridge.

In a few minutes, I had made it south down the Corniche to Kasr al-Nil bridge, which empties into central Cairo from the west and becomes a road that leads directly into Tahrir.
The anti-government protesters in Tahrir had arranged a field of debris 40m in front of their barricade, forcing anyone approaching to stop their stride and hop over.

Twenty metres beyond, they had strung a heavy electric cable about waist high from heavy metal fences on either side of the road, and 10m beyond that lay the final barricade, a stacked mix of metal barriers and spiked fences.
Two wooden boards were jammed length-wise across a side path to bar easy entrance.

I hopped down and walked through a small grassy park, approaching a small squad of men guarding a nearby path that led around the main barricade.
I held my hands up, palms out. They asked me for ID, so I showed them my US driver's license. I also told them that I came from Al Jazeera.
Unlike the pro-Mubarak people, the Tahrir protesters have a passion for our network. You tell the truth, they told me. One of the group patted me down and apologised for the inconvenience.

"It's for security," he said.
'Remember my name'
I approached the Kasr al-Nil barricade from behind, cautiously, and asked permission to take pictures.
Rocks were stacked in piles around the street, and Molotov cocktail bottles sat next to one another near a tree; a revolutionary armoury.

I was referred to the 'boss' of the checkpoint, a man with a lengthy black beard, a white, bloodstained headwrap, and a heavy grey peacoat spattered with blood.
He introduced himself as Hossam Eid al-Sharqawy and took hold of my shoulder. Time was short, I should take pictures quickly and go, he said.
He had blunt words for Egypt's 30-year president, whose two rounds of concessions and promise not to run again have failed to placate protesters. "Hosni Mubarak kills his own people," Sharqawy said.

"Remember my name," he said. "If I die here tonight, you will tell our story."
I told him I would, then photographed the barricade and continued into the square.
The chaos taking place to the north at the Egyptian museum was inaudible.

The square was peaceful but eerily empty; just 24 hours earlier, hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters had staged what might have been the largest political demonstration in Cairo's history, a show which likely prompted Wednesday's violent response.

Men prayed on a large banner that had been laid out on the pavement.
It carried the two words that have become the slogan of anti-government protests from Tunisia to Egypt: "Game Over."
Farther into the square, small groups huddled around fires and inside tents.
The jubilance that had turned the square into a giant camp ground just a day before was gone; people now feared being overrun and killed by the surrounding pro-government mob, many of them reportedly hired thugs.

Apocalyptic scene

As I progressed toward the fighting near the museum, the square became decidedly more apocalyptic.
The roads were carpeted in broken rocks, making it hard to walk.
Men with crowbars and long metal rods – probably stolen from the construction site at the remodeling of the Ritz in the square – chipped away at curbs and at the road to make more projectiles for their comrades.
In the distance ahead, the orange glow of the street lights and the continual Molotov cocktail fire lent an air of medieval combat to the front lines of the fight.

The closer I got, the more frenetic the activity among the anti-government protesters.
Men and women hustled up huge bags of rocks. Another group dragged a metal barricade into a new backup position.
The source of the cacophony that had been echoing off Cairo's streets and through our window was revealed: protesters behind the lines were rhythmically banging on the metal pavement fences in a primal drumbeat to keep the crowd's spirits up.

One storey above us, two men crouched on a balcony and chucked rocks at the pro-Mubarak crowd.

I knelt down behind a pavement about 20m from the barricade.
Fiery Molotovs streamed down toward the pro-Mubarak crowd from above my head, as the government supporters on the 6th of October flyover above and in front of me responded with their own.
The anti-government barricades lay just out of the throwing reach of most of the Mubarak supporters, but occasionally an energetic rock barrage would slam against the metal sheets separating us from them.

Anti-government rock throwers launched their own rocks from behind the barricade, where it was impossible to see where they would land.
Other men crouched in between the sheets, in the shadows, making sure the barrier stayed up and occasionally sneaking a glance out.
What they saw was no-man's land.

War zone

An open space that had once served as a cramped artery of traffic toward Tahrir in one direction and Ramses Square – the main train station – in the other, had become a war zone, covered in rocks and dotted with the fire of petrol bombs.
An army personnel carrier sat parked 75m away, facing us, doing nothing as pro-Mubarak protesters milled about, throwing rocks and taking cover behind bridge supports.

Above, it was hard to discern spectators from rock throwers.

But onlookers eventually withdrew, leaving only dozens of men dancing about, gesturing angrily toward us and throwing rocks.
Everytime an anti-government protester managed to land a petrol bomb on the bridge above, a cheer went up from the barricades, accompanied by joyous cries of "God is great!"

Eventually, the anti-government lines began to advance; skirmishers in front of the line became braver, throwing rocks and petrol bombs with little or no cover.
Loud gunshots rang out, likely from the personnel carrier in front of us, which had been surrounded by pro-Mubarak men.

It was hard to tell exactly when, but at some point the anti-government protesters outflanked the Mubarak crowd on the overpass.
'Take the bridge'
Shouts of "take the bridge" rang out along the line. The anti-government crowd began to advance past the metal sheets, and the Mubarak supporters fled.

Men dropped their rocks and bowed their heads to the ground in prayer.

Others began to immediately scrub the pro-Mubarak graffiti off of the monuments in the area that had, for around 12 hours, been occupied by the government crowd.
On the overpass, a tank roared toward the direction of the retreating Mubarak supporters, flooding the air with fumes.

As I stepped back through the barricades to Tahrir, a group of men dragged someone inside.
I tried to take pictures but was told to walk away. It was unclear if they were detaining a pro-Mubarak supporter or bringing back one of their wounded.

Inside, men gathered in groups to assess the victory. Others walked back motorcycles that they had captured. One held a bloody Egyptian flag as he returned.
A crowd across from the Egyptian Museum pressed in around a wounded man. Doctors carried him away, leaving a puddle of blood on the concrete.
One who remained, dressed in a white coat and a cotton mask, told me that the man had been shot in the head by Mubarak supporters, but that he still had a pulse.

Behind me, a similar crowd gathered around another bloody, wounded man who looked completely unresponsive. They carried him away.

I ran into a 22-year-old man named Mohammed Hassan, a blogger, activist and self-described "revolutionary" carrying a stick.

He showed me a catapult the anti-government protesters had erected at a side entrance to the square, which he said they had used to launch flaming debris at the approaching crowd.
I watched as three men tested its tension.
Bandaged face
Further into the square, Hassan led me through a human chain and down the steps that lead into the Sadat metro station.

On the rubbish-strewn stairs, several bloody men sat nervously. The protesters told me they were captured Mubarak supporters.

One man, allegedly a former employee of the defence ministry, had his face nearly completely bandaged, but made a great effort to explain to me that he was not a lover of the government.
It was hard to watch; every few seconds, he seemed overcome by the pain and stopped to gently touch the wounds on his head.
He denied being paid or ordered to come. "It's my creed," he said in English.

As I stood in the makeshift prison, more people were dragged down the steps.
Some fought back and were shoved against the wall by several anti-government protesters.

A skinny man, almost a boy, with a bleeding head wound, pleaded with the captors and tried to convince them that he hated Mubarak.
Another young man, more calm and less wounded, was accused of using a police handgun to fire on the protesters.
The anti-government protesters could not find evidence that their captives were government employees, either police or interior ministry security, but they promised me that others were.

An official from the defence ministry checked on the condition of the alleged former ministry employee, they pulled him up the stairs to turn over to the army, though the protesters assured me the army was simply releasing those prisoners who were turned over.
Metallic drum beat

I left the prison and headed back to the Kasr al-Nil barricade, navigating a chokepoint made of turned over cars set at sharp angles.
I exchanged a few words with the men I had met on the way in; one told me what name to use if I wanted to re-enter.
Then I climbed through the wooden barricade blocking the path to the side of the wall and left.

As I approached our building, a soldier climbed down a tank and halted me. He found my camera in my pocket and demanded the film.
I had removed the SIM card and hid it, and though the soldier at first indicated that I should go with him to his commander, I finally convinced him to let me go, losing only my battery in the process.

Back inside, dawn was beginning to break over Cairo.
The protesters had reformed their barricades, in preparation for the pro-government attack which would come just hours later.

The metallic drum beat never halted. Deep in the square, the crowd remained.

Mubarak's third force terror tactic
President Mubarak unleashed his 'personal' thugs in a failed attempt to silence protestors seeking an end to his regime.

The apparently sudden and unexpected violence against Egyptian protesters that started on February 2 has an interesting historical ring to it. The date marks the unbanning of liberation movements in South Africa in 1990, and the start of political negotiations between the apartheid regime and the African National Congress. It also marks the start of the most violent period in South Africa’s turbulent political history.

The parallels with Egypt start with Mubarak’s speech to the nation on February 1, ostensibly making a significant concession to the protesters and a commitment to Egypt’s democratic future. The next day thugs, many now clearly identified as members of the security forces, rallied in central Cairo and launched attacks on hitherto peaceful demonstrators.

The tactics of deploying so-called third forces is a tried and tested method of autocratic regimes, usually utilised when the regime realises that it is on the strategic defencive politically. The focus of the regime then shifts from merely ruling as usual to extending its reign as long as possible, while at the same time sapping the material and political energy of its opponents.

In South Africa this tactic was intended to legitimise the regime as the only thing standing between an orderly transition to democracy on the one hand, and chaos on the other. At the same time it sought to drain the energy of the liberation movement by killing some of its leaders, forcing it into a defencive mode of thinking and compelling it to accept a compromise favourable to the regime. Mubarak’s statements prior to the unleashing of his ‘police-in-civilian clothing’, the inaction of the army and the apparently reasonable response of his Prime Minister after the fact that they will vigorously investigate the violence and bring the perpetrators to book, are well rehearsed elements of a ‘third force’ strategy.

Like in South Africa, the Egyptian ‘third force’ will be constituted of a variety of elements, including members of the security services operating as civilians, party loyalists and some civilians who are attracted by financial incentives. Even criminal gangs will be increasingly utilised, providing further ‘evidence’ that the violence is not perpetrated by the regime but plainly criminal. In the end the entire effort is neither spontaneous nor independent.

Any decent investigation will find that this force is organised, resourced and directed by elements within the Mubarak regime. The Tahrir Square protesters have already collected ample evidence to this effect. In South Africa it took the brave Justice Richard Goldstone  (of the UN Gaza Report fame) to expose a similar and wide-ranging network of regime instruments masquerading as various independent third forces.

Unless the army intervenes on the side of the Egyptian democracy movement, this ‘third force’ will continue to strike, not only in Cairo and other cities but increasingly also in the rural parts of the country. In South Africa the third force violence lasted from 1990 to 1994. In Egypt Mubarak’s regime has until September to produce a disorganised, leaderless and desperate opposition unable to execute a proper election campaign. The lessons of South Africa are instructive in how to defeat this effort by a desperate regime.

The continued unity of South Africans, in protest, was the central element that defeated the efforts of the apartheid regime to continue governing. If the Egyptian people continue protesting, as they have for the last two weeks, any claims of legitimacy by the regime are transparently ridiculous. In South Africa the central demand of the liberation movement at the height of third force violence became one for a transitional government.

No autocratic regime can oversee its own demise, and a real election could only take place if the entire state apparatus, including its security forces, were placed under the control of an interim government. The South African Transitional Executive Council established in 1993 and acting as an interim government, ensured the holding of free and fair elections in April 1994.

Anything less than the departure of Mubarak and his key allies will mean a transition always under threat of violence by a so-called third force, and an election that might disappear amidst the violence visited upon the Egyptian resistance.

David Africa is an independent security analyst based in South Africa. He has previously worked in counter-terrorism intelligence and research, and served in the underground of the then-banned African National Congress in South Africa.