Oh, How We Love Our Oriental Rulers!

"If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria.  If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt", Robert Baer once said.

Now, the West loves brutal dictators - as long as they keep their cruelties secret and as long they play by the rules - OUR rules, or - to be more precise - the rules of big business. We loved when crazy Gaddafi  resided in a tent on Donald Trump's property in New York and was eager to supply oil, we loved when the Trabelsi Clan provided us with cheap labor slaves and hotels to serve us Western tourists on Tunesia's golden beaches; we loved the outsourcing, the money laundering and the weapon deals with the Mubarak Clan in Egypt, we loved Yemen's Saleh and offered him refuge just as we liked the Shah of Persia and Saddam, and we still love the Gulf states - especially Saudi Arabia - because we can make such a good business with them and they really manage to keep their fellow citizens down and torture in the dark. And we all know: Syria is next. Assad was good, but he couldn't keep his people effectively under control. So don't wonder why "Obama authorized covert support for Syrian rebels"! This is just the "Syrian war of lies and hypocrisy" as one of the last remaining journalists said. Don't you worry, we'll find another dictator for Syria and then we apply democracy there!

If the Iranians Really Want Something from Israel, What Is It exactly?

(50:00)

"Let's talk about the neo-cons. Who has done more damage to Israel than the neo-cons?"

(52:45)

"The American way is always "We don't talk to them!". You take the French on the other hand who have a back-channel to Teheran  right now as we speak. They always talk to their enemies, figure out what they want, see if they can give it and then - once they have decided on a policy in secret - they make it public. And that's what we need to do to Teheran. We really need to find out what they want, how far they're going on this nuclear bomb and what they need from Israel: is it the settlements in the West Bank, is it Israel's nuclear program, is it Lebanon? All these things can be worked out, I think, with the Iranians."

(54:00)

"They [Iran] are not a radical expanding power. They are a traditional state power which wants to be predominant in the Gulf. And they want to be predominant in the Gulf because they believe they have the biggest army, the rim of the Gulf is 90% Shia and they got certain demands."

(48:00)

"I think that we can look at the Iranians and look at the way they have acted in Iraq [...] - they are not suicidal. They're not Al'Qaeda, they don't wanna kill themselves, they could have done an enormous damage to us [...] but they didn't. We have to look at their recent record. We have to look at their record in Lebanon: in spite of the 2006 war they have stepped back from confrontation. They have stepped back from confrontation in Gaza [...]. So I see them as much more accommodating to a grand bargain than I would for instance the Taliban or Al'Qaeda or even huge parts of Saudi-Arabia - they just don't like us - there is a clash of civilizations there - there isn't with Iran. The Iranians are the only country in the Middle-East that really like us ... the Iranian people, not the regime."

These quotations of ex-CIA case officer in the Middle-East Robert Baer stem from a conversation in 2009, at a time when demonstrations against the clerical government took place in Teheran. Much of what Baer says represents a refreshing antidote to the world-wide mass media infotainment and war propaganda currently poisoning international politics. One of the striking questions asked in the video below is simply "What exactly do the Iranians want from Israel?" Note that this question is rarely asked in public debates and practically never by folks blinded by the notorious "wipe off the map" phrase and its endless repetitions.

Note also that in this video, Baer conjectures (at 46:25) that Iran's clerical regime might deliberately goad Israel into an attack on Iran in order to produce an "external threat/enemy", strengthening and confirming the Mullah's dominion inside Iran's not so stable power structure. This possibility has been only recently considered by others: see Former CIA Officials Say Iran’s Clerics Want to Goad Israel Into an Attack. (Sounds too adventurous though and too self-destructive)

see also: The Illusion of the Bomb Threatening the Existence of Israel

Egypt's Cyber Dissidents

German GEO 08/2010 reports about Egyptian bloggers. The Report entitled "Cyber Dissidenten. Demokratie 2.0" tells stories of various internet publishers bullied and/or tortured  by Mubarak's henchmen - the Egyptian police. (German mp3 coverage here)
Various Egyption bloggers - men and women - are introduced and their sufferings, fights and achievements briefly touched:

Wael Abbas - blogger - http://misrdigital.blogspirit.com

Karim el-Beheiry -  blogger - http://egyworkers.blogspot.com/

Ahmad Gharbeia - programmer and blogger from Cairo coaching other bloggers, often in internet security - http://ahmad.gharbeia.org/

Gamal Eid - Egyptian lawyer frequently defending bloggers, director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) - www.anhri.net; Gamal Eid is mentioned in this Amnesty International report: EGYPT MUST DROP CHARGES AGAINST THREE ACTIVISTS

Noha Atef - concentrates on (in her own words) " the daily experiences of citizens [..] with the Egyptian ministry of interior [...] which continues to protect the perpetrators and to deny victims access to justice" - http://www.tortureinegypt.net

Nora Younis - blogger, the hero of the "Black Wednesday, 25-05-2005" - http://norayounis.com/

Hossam el-Hamalawys - Marxist, reports of the miserable working conditions in Egypt - http://www.arabawy.org/

and others. If only 5 of these mentioned would meet offline in some Cairo café, bazar or some other public place, they could be arrested by the police due to the fact that Mubarak rules the country under emergency law since 1981. "If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt" Robert Baer once said. The US financially and militarily support the Mubarak regime as the US Departement of State eagerly and proudly admits on its website (see section "U.S.-EGYPTIAN RELATIONS").