Stuff of Interest

--Abigail Nussbaum reviews work by Joanna Russ, Gwyneth Jones, and Mary Gentle.

--Adrienne Maree Brown and Dani McClain, at Alternet, raise the question, Corporations Ain't People, So Why Do They Have the Power of Citizens? and then call on Octavia Butler's work in their discussion of the issue.

--Mozn Hassan, director of Nazra for Feminist Studies, interviews Ma Ma Cash about the protests in Egypt. (Link thanks to the F-Word Blog)

--Girls on Film takes scenes between men in mainstream movies and replays them with women playing the parts verbatim as written for men. A video at their site shows a scene from the latest Star Trek movie. (Link thanks to the F-Word Blog)

--Pan Morrigan's "Roadmap" gives the details of Andrea Hairston's tour promoting Redwood and Wildfire, her brilliant new novel, which Aqueduct Press will be releasing on February 28. The tour dates include include both textual readings and Chrysalis Theatre productions performing scenes and songs from the novel. I expect this will be exciting, stimulating entertainment.

--Andrea Hairston talks on You Tube about how she came to write Redwood and Wildfire.

Quote of the day

The government has removed police and all security from the streets and neighbourhoods are policing themselves. Young people have formed neighbourhood watches and are guarding their areas. They're having fun, inventing barricades and passwords, checking IDs and ushering you through with a theatrical flourish.

Everyone – particularly women – are talking about how much safer they feel with the police off the streets. ---Ahdaf Soueif. Diary of an Egyptian rebel: we will not turn back

A Dark Day for Journalism

Last night the forces of the uprising managed, valiantly, to hold onto Tahrir Square against the deadly, vicious attacks of Mubarak's thugs. Today, though, numerous news venues are reporting that dozens of journalists, as well as human rights workers and bloggers, have been detained, beaten, carjacked, hunted down, and otherwise intimidated by the Mubarak government. Security personnel in the Hilton hotel have systematically removed photographers' equipment. Mubarak's thugs have dismantled satellite dishes and destroyed equipment at the television studios of non-State Egyptian stations. Perhaps of all, the live feeds from Tahrir Square have ceased. As the New York Times's Nick Kristof tweeted earlier today, "Govt is trying to round up journalists. I worry about what it is they're planning that they don't want us to see."

Here are some links:

Committee to Protect Journalists, Mubarak Intensifies Press Attacks with Assaults, Detentions
The New York Times, Gangs Hunt Journalists and Rights Workers
The Guardian, Egypt Cracks Down on Foreign Journalists
ABC News, List of Journalists Who have Been Threatened, Detained, or Attacked While Reporting in Egypt
Huffington Post, Human Rights Watch Researcher Detained
Huffington Post, Dozens of Journalists Detained, Clash with Pro-Mubarak Forces

The article at the Committee to Protect Journalist site observes:

"This is a dark day for Egypt and a dark day for journalism," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "The systematic and sustained attacks documented by CPJ leave no doubt that a government-orchestrated effort to target the media and suppress the news is well under way. With this turn of events, Egypt is seeking to create an information vacuum that puts it in the company of the world's worst oppressors, countries such as Burma, Iran and Cuba.

"We hold President Mubarak personally responsible for this unprecedented action," said Simon, "and call on the Egyptian government to reverse course immediately."

[...]

Government officials, pro-government journalists, and commentators loyal to Mubarak have for the past two days been engaged in a systematic campaign to present foreigners, and particularly foreign journalists, as spies. CPJ has documented at least seven instances on state-owned television or on private stations owned by businessmen loyal to Mubarak in which individuals described elaborate foreign plots to destabilize Egypt that centered on foreign provocateurs, including journalists. In several instances, they were described as "Israeli spies." In one instance, a woman whose face was obscured "confessed" to having been trained by "Americans and Israelis." She went on to say that the alleged training took place in Qatar, where Al-Jazeera is based.

I'd like to recommend Professor Juan Cole's blog, which has been running a series of posts providing background and analysis as the uprising continues. It is particularly instructive to read his Why Egypt 2011 Is Not Iran 1979, in which he spells out the immense, particular differences between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011.

A Regime of Thugs

Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Souief, a columnist for the Guardian, writes of Mubarak's bloodbath, now in progress:

Out of my window I saw the crowd marching across 15 May flyover. It's odd: the pro-Mubarak lot are so much more regimented – and so much less civil: the noise pollution, the rude gestures at the street, the sticks, the attitude – and at the same time the perfectly scripted banners, the "stewards" marshalling and directing them.

By midday they had started to attack Tahrir Square; the attacks are continuing as I write now. I'm getting regular updates from the square from my son, nieces, sister and other friends in the thick of it. The people who on Tuesday night were listening to music and debating modes of government are now putting their bodies on the line. It's all they have. The pro-Mubarak lot, of course, have sticks and stones, and swords and chains and dogs and trucks and … the military stand by and do nothing.

So who are these people? In support of the president, they throw Molotov bottles and plant pots from the tops of buildings onto the heads of women and children. To establish stability and order, they break heads with rocks and legs with bicycle chains. To have their say in the debate they slash faces with knives. Who are they? Well, every time one of them is captured his ID says he's a member of the security forces. And his young captors simply hand him to the military who are standing by.

So, the regime once again displays its banality; unable to come up with any move that is decent or innovative, it resorts to its usual mix of brutality and lies. On Tuesday night President Mubarak came on TV and patronised the rest of the country by claiming that Egyptians were in the grip of fear, and pretended that his regime which has been de-developing the country and stealing the bread from people's mouths is now suddenly equipped to "respond to the demands of our young people". He reminded the people of his (now ancient) history as an air force pilot and added a tearjerker about being an old man who wanted die in his country.

And the next morning, not 12 hours after the president's emotional appeal, the regime turned loose its thugs on the street. The same tactics that have been used against protesters over the last five years, the same tactics in force at the last elections to scare voters off the streets, appeared and with redoubled viciousness. This is the regime that is going to listen to the people and use the coming months to put in reforms. Sure.

I've been holding my breath for days, waiting to see which way the Egyptian army was going to jump.  I think at least some of the army are still on the fence, even now. Since most journalists are being physically intimidated and successfully chased from Tahrir Square, the odds don't look good.

ETA:

The Committee to Protect Journalists is compiling a list of journalists who have been attacked today in Egypt. The breadth of these attacks is gobsmacking. Read it here.

"He is not squeamish"

The signs strike me as ominous. Military aircraft (F-16s and helicopters) are flying low over Cairo; Al Jazeera, which has been broadcasting heroically, has been shut down by the Mubarak government; and Mubarak has been spotted at a military operations center. Most ominous of all, though, is his appointment of Omar Suleiman as his deputy. Suleiman has quite the pedigree. According to both Stephen Gray and Jane Mayer, he is one of the key men in the CIA's torture/rendition program. ("He is not squeamish," Mayer quotes a former ambassador to Egypt as writing.) He has a grisly record for not only ordering torture but also performing it personally (notwithstanding his age).

Stephen Soldz writes:

Suleiman wasn't just the go-to bureaucrat for when the Americans wanted to arrange a little torture. This "urbane and sophisticated man" apparently enjoyed a little rough stuff himself.

Shortly after 9/11, Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib was captured by Pakistani security forces and, under US pressure, torture by Pakistanis. He was then rendered (with an Australian diplomats watching) by CIA operatives to Egypt, a not uncommon practice. In Egypt, Habib merited Suleiman's personal attention. As related by Richard Neville, based on Habib's memoir:

Habib was interrogated by the country's Intelligence Director, General Omar Suleiman.... Suleiman took a personal interest in anyone suspected of links with Al Qaeda. As Habib had visited Afghanistan shortly before 9/11, he was under suspicion. Habib was repeatedly zapped with high-voltage electricity, immersed in water up to his nostrils, beaten, his fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks.

That treatment wasn't enough for Suleiman, so:

To loosen Habib's tongue, Suleiman ordered a guard to murder a gruesomely shackled Turkistan prisoner in front of Habib - and he did, with a vicious karate kick.

After Suleiman's men extracted Habib's confession, he was transferred back to US custody, where he eventually was imprisoned at Guantanamo. His "confession" was then used as evidence in his Guantanamo trial.

The Washington Post's intelligence correspondent Jeff Stein reported some additional details regarding Suleiman and his important role in the old Egypt the demonstrators are trying to leave behind:

"Suleiman is seen by some analysts as a possible successor to the president," the Voice of American said Friday. "He earned international respect for his role as a mediator in Middle East affairs and for curbing Islamic extremism."

An editorialist at Pakistan's "International News" predicted Thursday that "Suleiman will probably scupper his boss's plans [to install his son], even if the aspiring intelligence guru himself is as young as 75."

Suleiman graduated from Egypt's prestigious Military Academy but also received training in the Soviet Union. Under his guidance, Egyptian intelligence has worked hand-in-glove with the CIA's counterterrorism programs, most notably in the 2003 rendition from Italy of an al-Qaeda suspect known as Abu Omar.

In 2009, Foreign Policy magazine ranked Suleiman as the Middle East's most powerful intelligence chief, ahead of Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

In an observation that may turn out to be ironic, the magazine wrote, "More than from any other single factor, Suleiman's influence stems from his unswerving loyalty to Mubarak."

If Suleiman succeeds Mubarak and retains power, we will likely be treated to plaudits for his distinguished credentials from government officials and US pundits. We should remember that what they really mean is his ability to brutalize and torture.

State-sponsored torture is incompatible with democracy. But you already knew that, right?