From: William Gladys <william.gladys@tiscali.co.uk>
Date: Fri, May 27, 2011 at 6:46 PM
Subject: Fw: hizb.org.uk | Full Site
To: Al-Hilal <Al-Hilal@sky.com>
Cc: world_Politics@googlegroups.com
- Mubarak to face trial for killings of protesters on Tahrir Square
- Obama and Cameron must break this addiction to war
- VIDEO & PICTURES: Hizb ut-Tahrir's demonstration against Obama – Hands OFF Muslim lands
- UK and US's 'essential' relationship's a 'colonial' relationship to maintain hegemony in Muslim world
| Mubarak to face trial for killings of protesters on Tahrir Square Posted: 25 May 2011 02:49 PM PDT The former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is to be tried for conspiring to kill demonstrators whose protests brought an end to his 30-year rule. The move by the military government is seen as an attempt to satisfy growing popular anger in Egypt at its failure, since taking over from 83-year-old Mr Mubarak on 11 February, to prosecute and purge members of the old regime. The former dictator is being charged with the "premeditated murder of some participants in the peaceful protests of the 25 January revolution". He is also accused along, with his two sons Alaa and Gamal and a close business associate, with abuse of power in order to make money. Mr Mubarak is currently detained at a hospital in the resort town of Sharm el Sheikh, while his sons are in Tora prison. His 70-year-old wife Suzanne was released on bail after handing $4m and a villa to the state. Charges against Mr Mubarak include accepting as gifts a palace and four villas at Sharm el Sheikh and being part of a conspiracy to sell gas at a cheap price to Israel. Prosecution of Mr Mubarak, his family and associates has been a central demand of the protesters who are suspicious the military government is planning to let them off the hook. Cairo was swept with rumours that Mr Mubarak was to benefit from an immunity deal under which he would give up part of his fortune and apologise to the Egyptian people for the failings of his regime. A massive rally, called "Egypt's second revolution", is planned for Friday to protest at the lack of change since Mr Mubarak stepped down after at least 846 protesters had been killed. Instead, many of those taking part in subsequent protests have been jailed, beaten and given long sentences after a summary trial by a military tribunal. "I have not seen such activity in organising a big protest in Cairo since the revolution," said one reform activist. Protesters are particularly outraged that emergency laws have not been suspended, and are demanding that, at the very least, the police and army should stop torturing people. Official brutality and misuse of arbitrary powers goes on as before, if in a somewhat more muted form. For instance, during a Coptic protest last week, one of those arrested was an electrician taking no part in the demonstration. He was detained when returning home with an electric drill which prosecutors claimed was an "offensive weapon". Egypt is currently ruled by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), a shadowy body of senior military leaders which has been very slow to dismantle the ruthless police state over which Mr Mubarak presided. Though SCAF expressed loyalty to the uprising it has failed notably to provide medical aid to thousands injured in the protests and given no compensation to those who lost breadwinners or businesses. The economy is in bad shape after the revolution at a time when many Egyptians have higher expectations. Foreign exchange reserves have been draining away from $36bn to $28bn since the start of the year, tourism earnings are down by $1bn a month, and industry is working at half capacity. Most of the construction sites in Cairo are idle. The military government is trying to do enough to satisfy popular anger against the Mubaraks and their business cronies without paralysing economic activity or frightening off foreign investment. But such concessions are often seen by critics of the army as yet one more covert attempt to preserve the status quo. |
| Obama and Cameron must break this addiction to war Posted: 25 May 2011 02:47 PM PDT Both Britain and America are fuelling Muslim anger by failing to rein in an aggressive military interventionist strategy. It's the war, stupid. At the time of his election in 2009, everything about Barack Obama endeared him to British opinion. Events since have honoured that enthusiasm, with the president retaining an approval rating in the region of 70%. Obama is admired for his vigorous steps to fend off recession. He is admired for confronting the health industry lobbyists. He speaks the language of conciliation abroad. He has seemed a voice of reason and sobriety, after eight years under George Bush when America seemed alien and painfully at odds with the world. This has been spoiled by continuing western military aggression in and on Muslim states. All Obama promised, in cleansing the west's reputation, in restoring disengagement and reversing Washington's image as an overbearing bully, has been vitiated by surges, drone missiles and the kneejerk attack on Libya. That the top item at a summit between Britain and America should be how to bomb a north African state that threatens neither of them is absurd. To many in Britain, American foreign policy under Obama has come to seem Bush-lite, while Britain's seems Blair-lite. This is more than sad. In Obama and David Cameron the west has two of its most capable and convincing leaders in a quarter century. Both are thoughtful men, albeit inexperienced in foreign affairs, with relatively secure home bases. These leaders should be ideally cast as beacons of sane judgment in parts of the world that chronically need it. So why are both trapped in the morass of the Muslim arc, sitting targets for the jibes of Islamist fundamentalists? For the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, nations forming a significant regional grouping have seemed on the brink of freeing themselves from oppressive regimes. They are doing so not through outside intervention or military coup but through the delicate process of insurrection. They have mobilised their capitals and provincial cities, their professions, their military, their urban middle class and those eternal agents of change, students. They have demanded great sacrifice and loyalty from their peoples to the cause of freedom. But their cause has derived its peculiar potency through being "bottom-up". Such regime change may be aided by outside support, from the media, overseas contacts and an expatriate diaspora. It is not aided by grandstanding in Washington and London, by megaphone diplomacy and by blundering military intervention. There is no evidence that it is helped by aerial bombardment, which strengthens rather than weakens the resistance of the bombed. Nor is insurrection aided by tipping money into dissident factions, which become corrupted and dependent on such support, as appears to have happened in Iran. Such intervention played no part in the decay of communism. It toppled regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq by main force, but at vast cost and with so much damage to the physical and political fabric that stable reconstruction has been impossible. Military intervention played no part in regime change in Tunisia and Egypt, while its deployment in Libya seems to have been counter-productive. There was desperation in Monday night's display of air power over Tripoli, as the RAF celebrated Obama's arrival in Britain with a reprise of Bush's 2003 "shock and awe" in Baghdad. This is not responsible foreign policy, but rather an archaic brutalism. That the Anglo-American special relationship, coyly renamed "essential", should take the form of military aggression is a missed opportunity. Yesterday's article by Obama and Cameron in the Times was a museum piece of platitude and cliche, interspersed with such whoppers as the claim that, in responding to the Arab spring, "it is not our place to dictate the pace and scope of this change". Why then are they trying to dictate it in Libya? Obama's private distaste for the legacy of Bush is clear. He is trying to move the American war machine out of Iraq and hopes that the "surge" in Afghanistan can in time cover a retreat there as well. This makes it the more disappointing that he cannot rein in the military machine now entrenching America's presence across the Muslim world. Recent revelations in the New York Times by the widow of the late American envoy, Richard Holbrooke, indicate deep scepticism among diplomats in Afghanistan and Pakistan towards Obama's continued belligerence, and towards his reliance on assassination and drone attacks. Holbrooke depicts an unsure Obama in awe of his generals and reluctant to hear warnings that he faces another Vietnam. There seems little hope that the president might redirect his attention at negotiation, let alone accept that "a stable Afghanistan is not essential: a stable Pakistan is". Most western democracies are struggling to retrieve their economies from the credit crunch. Only America and, to a lesser extent, Britain still regard it as their manifest, and costly, destiny to dictate the manner in which a selection of world states rule their people. This "neoconservative" ambition might not be so ignoble were it implemented effectively, were it deputed to soft-power agencies in education, health, international exchange and the promotion of trade. Such methods were being tried, until recently, in both Libya and Syria. That they did not work out in the short term did not make them wrong. What is surely exhausted is the policy that Britain and America currently share, of bringing about regime change by military aggression. Generals can promise politicians glory, even if they seldom deliver it. But they are bulls in the interventionist china shop. Obama and Cameron have let themselves become trapped in a lethal military embrace, one that has failed to deliver peace in Iraq or security in Afghanistan. It has destabilised Pakistan and spread al-Qaida's influence. It has killed hundreds of thousands of people to no one's obvious benefit, and cost billions of dollars that would have been better deployed on peace and reconstruction. Today, London and Washington are fortress cities through which their statesmen must travel like frightened rabbits, like Obama during his London visit. This was the legacy of Bush and Blair and it is the most barren in recent history. Yet it holds those successors in thrall. Neither has shown a capacity to disengage from the drums and trumpets of warin favour of a more subtle and more productive diplomacy. Until they do, any hope that the west's leadership might gain traction in the Muslim world is futile. |
| VIDEO & PICTURES: Hizb ut-Tahrir's demonstration against Obama – Hands OFF Muslim lands Posted: 25 May 2011 12:34 PM PDT Demonstration outside Parliament on the day Obama and Cameron discussed how to maintain their hegemony over the Muslim lands. Click here to view the embedded video.
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| Posted: 25 May 2011 09:29 AM PDT London, UK, May 25th 2011 – The Queen's David Cameron and Barack Obama's talk of an "essential relationship" between the US and UK is in fact an ongoing colonial relationship that seeks to maintain their economic, political and military control in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and the wider Muslim world – especially through military interventions. Commenting on Obama's UK visit and the rebranding of the Anglo-American relationship, Taji Mustafa, media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain said: "A main focus of their meetings today – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Arab uprisings – shows their level of cooperation in maintaining their military and political interventions in the Muslim world. In their joint letter in the Times, Obama and Cameron said 'whether fighting wars or rebuilding the economy, our needs and beliefs are the same'. Indeed, outside of economic affairs their focus has been on maintaining the war in Afghanistan which continues to kill men, women and children and has destabilised Pakistan; a surge in drone attacks in Pakistan killing countless people; intervention in Libya against their former ally Gadaffi; and the ongoing occupation of Iraq. Their hypocrisy and duplicity is even more obvious when they talk about being on the side of people rising up against Western backed tyrants in the Arab world while still warmly engaging with the ruling butchers of Bahrain – who were welcomed to Downing street only last week." "As capitalist states, the common interest the Queen's British and American government's have in the Muslim world is in subjugating the people of the region in the name of economic and political gain so they continue to colonise the Muslim lands – including through direct military interventions like in the days of the British empire." "Western governments are trying hard to maintain their hegemony in those lands – either through propping up old despots, intervening to manipulate the peoples' call for change or direct military intervention." "Real change will only come about when there is a new system that replaces the western backed and corrupt tyrannical regimes in the Muslim world with a new system – the Caliphate, which will stand up to western imperialism in all its forms, look out for the interests of the people and change the colonial relationship between the Muslim world and the West." [Ends] |
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