All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and joining me on the line is Jason Ditz.
He's our news editor at antiwar.com, news.antiwar.com.
Welcome back to the show, Jason.
Hey, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here now.
I kind of redid some things, and you're my first real live road test on the telephone setup the way I have it now.
You sound good so far.
We'll see how it goes.
But it's all on my end anyway if there's a problem, so don't worry.
All right, the news.
The Mubarak dictatorship is over.
He's gone.
But what else has changed in Egypt, Jason?
Well, as of right now, the change other than getting rid of Mubarak isn't necessarily for the better.
The military's taken over ostensibly just for an interim period until there's a free election.
But they've declared martial law.
They've suspended the Constitution.
They've disbanded Parliament, all of which wouldn't necessarily be so bad, except they're also chasing the protesters out of Tahrir Square.
And they've banned basically all the organizing of unions in the country.
So that the unions that were striking near the end of the protest are all ordered back to work, and they're barred from meeting privately.
So Tahrir Square's been emptied then?
Well, not entirely, but it has.
They have moved against the protesters and chased a lot of them out of there.
Well, you know, there was a bit of foreshadowing of this right when, uh, I guess it was Suleiman who had said, um, okay, we've heard you.
You've made a great point, and you have some great complaints.
Now go home.
And that didn't work, right?
But so now basically they're saying, all right, it did work.
We heard you.
Mubarak's gone.
Now go home.
And the military is enforcing that, which before the military was basically just standing around mostly.
Well, is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
When it was Suleiman, that was one of the big knocks against him, besides the fact that he spent decades as the nation's torture master and was one of Mubarak's closest allies, which are also pretty big problems, was that he was constantly demanding that the protesters leave.
And that's why, even though the original idea, at least among Western people, for an interim government was going to be him leading the dictatorship for a few months, it turned into the military, which had a little bit better, uh, a little bit better PR among the people in Egypt, because they hadn't been massacring protesters or anything.
But now they're, uh, they've taken over and it seems like they're doing everything that Suleiman would have done anyway.
They're chasing the protesters out, tearing down all the tents and everything set up in Tahrir Square and, uh, basically moving forward with, uh, well, they, they specifically said that they're going to rule by edict for the next six months.
Yeah, they're saying that outright, that, uh, you'll have your election, but not till September?
Yeah, at least September.
They haven't actually set a date for the election, but they've said it'll be at least six months.
Okay.
I guess, yeah, September was the old one, but you're saying they haven't really said whether they're calling new elections or just going with the ones that were already scheduled?
Right.
Or, or the possibility that they might not have them at all.
But, uh, that might be a little too cynical at this point, but I think it might be warranted too.
Well, now, do you have any sense of the reaction of the protesters and whether they're going to, uh, put up with this?
Well, it sort of split the protesters because some of them, you know, they, they were all pretty much appalled at the idea of Suleiman replacing Mubarak.
Uh, some of them, uh, not so much with the military replacing him.
And it seems like that sent a good number of them home when the celebrations were over.
But there are a lot of them who are, who were concerned, uh, at the military taking over in the first place and are even more concerned now that the military started cracking down under martial law.
And, uh, so there's still a pretty strong, uh, contingent of protesters out there that are resisting this new government.
Well, now, I guess, you know, the problem is during the protest, they didn't have really set up or did they have set up a, um, kind of an interim civilian government to be in charge?
I mean, I heard some talk of that, and of course, there's the obvious Mohamed ElBaradei from, you know, the international point of view.
But is there anyone that the people of Egypt, that those protesters, uh, had tried to set up to say, like, we will go ahead and supervise the government until the elections?
Not really.
They, they had, uh, negotiators that most of the protest groups had agreed on, but they hadn't really gotten around to setting up any sort of, uh, replacement regime.
And there, there have been calls now, particularly now that the military's in charge, to say, well, okay, it's great that the military's in charge, now let's, uh, agree on a temporary constitution and an interim government to lead this charge into the elections that would be presumably made up of the protesters.
But, uh, it seems like the military's just saying that's not going to happen.
That, uh, there's not going to be an interim constitution or any sort of interim, uh, legal government.
It's just going to be the military ruling with an iron fist until the day that those elections happen.
Well, and here's the thing, too.
I mean, have they, it sounds like not until after these elections would the issues of, say, legalizing, um, you know, competition in politics in Egypt even be able to be put into the law, much less enforced, unless the military's saying, now go ahead and form your political parties.
But it doesn't sound like that's what you're saying they're doing to me.
Well, they certainly aren't doing that yet.
And whether they do that when the election date is set and it gets closer, I guess, remains to be seen.
But the early indications aren't good.
And it seems like they're, uh, you know, they're openly talking about running a military candidate for that election, if indeed it does happen.
And it seems like it's a pretty good bet that with the military ruling the country with an even tighter grip than Mubarak had, that the military candidate would be at a pretty distinct advantage in that election.
To say the least, yeah.
Well, I don't know.
I guess this is, uh, it sounds like bad news.
But really what it just means is that the people who just, you know, by the millions accomplished the bringing down of that dictator, they've got to stay out and they've got an uphill battle still on their hands.
They're going to have to, um, you know, just because, uh, maybe the, uh, the army is able to take that square from them doesn't mean that, uh, you know, they have to go away or feel that that new unity and cohesiveness and, and, um, you know, common purpose that they had has to dissolve as well.
I sure hope to see that, uh, you know, they remain, uh, as vigilant as before in whatever ways they can, if they, even if they can't take over liberation square again.
Yeah, it's hard to say what, uh, what the military is going to do at this point.
If they're intent on really just keeping the situation as it is right now.
But, uh, certainly those protesters still have a lot of sway if they choose to exercise it.
And that's the real question here is, are they going to be mollified by the fact that it's not Mubarak and it's not Suleiman?
It's, it's a council of military leaders that are ruling the country, or are they going to keep pushing to ensure that the military does step down?
Well, I guess, you know, it really all depends on how quote unquote professional or how political those generals are, whether they want that power.
There's some generals in some societies who just, Hey, you know, who wants to be a politician?
Just tell me who to kill and I'll go kind of thing.
So maybe it's possible that they don't want to just have an outright military dictatorship, but we'll see.
All right, hold it right there, everybody.
It's Jason Ditz, news.antiwar.com.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott.
I'm sorry if the phone line sounds a little fuzzy.
All my fault.
I got some adjustments I need to make.
I hope it's not too bad for y'all.
All right, so welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
It's Jason Ditz on the line, news.antiwar.com.
This man reads every news story published in the world all day, every day from every source that exists on Earth.
And then he writes up what's all most important for y'all to know at news.antiwar.com.
So tell me, Jason, we have this whole thing that's, you know, I didn't coin the phrase, but they call it, you know, the Muslim world where the Muslims live.
That's pretty much from Morocco to the Philippines.
You know, obviously not going all the way up into Russia, but across that middle band there, Central Asia and the Middle East and then out into the islands and all that.
There's a lot of Islam there.
And it seems like although the whole world's been transfixed with what's going on in Tunisia and especially in Egypt, it seems like these countries are the ones who probably have maybe the most to learn from the example being set.
And of course, everyone knows there's been stories here and there.
But I was wondering if you could sort of give us the roundup of, you know, copycat protests, not to diminish them, but, you know, follow up protest movements in various countries in the Middle East.
And hey, why not start in the West and in North Africa and then kind of work eastward across the map for us as you know it?
Well, sure.
And like you said, the copycat aspect of this doesn't diminish the protests at all.
Egypt itself was very much a copycat protest of the Tunisia revolts, which were the first ones that kicked off late last month.
But yeah, most of the countries in the quote-unquote Muslim world have some of the same problems.
They have the rising unemployment, the rising price of food, the dictatorial government.
And yeah, Morocco's had protests.
Algeria's had a ton of protests.
There's been quite a lot of effort in organizing protests in Libya, although so far they haven't really gotten off the ground.
But it seems like there's still a lot of effort there.
Well, and I want to mention here, too, that people should remember that Libya goes in the category of U.S.
-backed military dictatorships.
And in fact, someone called me out on saying that, so I had to prove it.
And I went and found some good footnotes about military-to-military transfers by the United States to Colonel Qaddafi over the last 10 years.
Oh, absolutely.
Eight years.
It's a long way from the 1980s.
And he's sort of done a reverse Saddam Hussein, where Saddam was the U.S.
-backed dictator in the 80s and sort of fell out of favor with the administration.
Qaddafi was the hated Middle East dictator who's fallen back into favor in the U.S.
And there's a lot of support for his regime now in the administration.
And he's got much the same situation that an Egypt or a Yemen or a Jordan has, which is a crumbling economy, a lot of resistance to his military rule, and the annoyance that he's cozying up to the West, even though he's doing it in a somewhat different manner than a Hosni Mubarak or Ali Abdullah Saleh has done.
Right.
I guess the reason I wanted to really harp on his friendship with America now is because, um, which, you know, I'm all for friendship, but just not America directly backing other countries' military dictatorships.
That's different.
But I want to point that out because I sort of was thinking of Libya in the category with Syria, where maybe they'll have some protests here, but at least that's not exactly my country's responsibility.
And then I remembered, oh, yeah, no, Libya is America's responsibility again.
That's right.
I forgot.
I want to make sure that it went in there with Jordan and Egypt, not with Syria in the way I categorize things in my head.
That's all, you know, Colonel Gaddafi.
He's one of ours.
OK, good.
OK, so now tell me a little bit more about Algeria.
You said there are a lot of protests there in Algeria.
Yeah, Algeria's had a long standing history of unrest, and it's really started swelling again recently.
The government's tried to crack down on shutting off the Internet and turning off a lot of the different types of communication, much as Egypt did.
They've actually banned soccer matches for the past month and indefinitely going forward because they're worried that people in the stands at soccer matches will be talking about how much they dislike the government.
Oh, see, I think that's a bad strategy.
Let them play soccer, man.
You're going to get them all riled up that way.
Yeah, it seems like now they have even less to do.
So it's all the more reason to be talking about how angry they are.
All right.
Now, so what about Jordan?
I know that I think we talked about before on the show how the king of Jordan immediately just sacked his government when at the sign of the first sign of dissent there.
Did that help him?
It helped a little.
It did mollify some of the protesters, because the guy who came in is at least formally a reformist, but he's a reformist who held the position of prime minister as a reformist before and got absolutely nothing done and ended up losing in a crooked election.
And so people aren't holding out a lot of hope that he's going to get anything done.
And it really sort of misses the entire point of why these people are so angry that the king appoints the prime minister, the king appoints the entire cabinet and the king appoints the entire Senate.
I mean, it's a ridiculous amount of power for a monarch to still have in the 21st century.
Yeah, well, do you know how much America gives to Jordan every year?
I don't offhand, but it's a lot.
Yeah, it's not quite up there with Israel and Egypt, but it's for the same reason.
Yeah.
To bribe them into not fighting.
And it's more civilian aid than military aid, I believe, which is sort of the opposite of Egypt, where they cut the civilian aid virtually to nothing while the military aid just kept growing.
All right.
Now, everybody knows that Barack Obama likes to use robots to murder women and children on the ground in Yemen.
Do you think that has anything to do with what's going on there?
And, you know, I saw some headlines, actually, I read an article earlier that said that they had some pretty violent clashes in Yemen over the last couple of days.
Oh, they've had some, well, very violent clashes as the police try to chase the protesters off the street.
Yemen's capital has its own Tahrir Square, and it's actually called Tahrir Square, just like the one in Cairo.
And there's been quite a few protesters there.
And I'm sure the U.S. drone strikes didn't help, but they aren't in the capital city, and the capital in Yemen is very much distanced from the rest of the country.
So I'm not sure how much it's affected the protests.
It seems like the bigger issues are President Saleh has been in power since, you know, 1977.
And even though there's supposed to be a two-term limit for presidents, he still insists he's on his second term because those first 22 years he wasn't an elected president, he was just ruling as the head of, you know, the military or whatever.
So he says those first 22 years didn't count and insists he's still in his second term.
That's funny.
Well, give him credit for, you know, putting a humorous spin on the thing.
Well, now, and, you know, I don't know all that much about Yemen, but what I do know about it is anybody trying to have a central government there has got a lot of problems with different factions that don't want to be under a central government there.
They're always fighting something.
It's what's unique here is that people are protesting with signs and chants and stuff instead of guns.
Right, and the protests are pretty disparate.
You have the protests in the capital, you have the protests in some of the small cities in the mountainous regions in the center of the country, but then you also have some pretty major protests in the south, and they're different.
They're not just calling for Saleh to step down and for democracy, they're calling for complete secession from Yemen.
And, of course, South Yemen did used to be a country during the Cold War.
It was the Soviet-backed part of Yemen, and a lot of them have designs on seceding again.
All right, now, tell me real quick, what's the word from Saudi Arabia?
Anything?
So far, nothing, but there's been a lot of concern that Bahrain might be one of the next Bahrain might be one of the next countries to have a major series of protests because of their fairly large group of Shiites.
But if they do, there's concern that the part bordering Saudi Arabia, which is also sort of the Shiite part of Saudi Arabia, will go the same way.
Bahrain, that's the home of the Fifth Fleet, right?
Yeah, I believe so.
Yeah, wow, it is.
Pepe Escobar was on the KPFK show the other night, and he was talking about it's a brand new era in the world now.
Everything's changed since, you know, February 18th or whatever.
Oh, yeah, even like Albania has had some good-sized protests, and they're a NATO member nation right now.
Yeah, I actually saw one article that mentioned some protesters went out in Belarus, and I think as the author of the article said, that's about as far from the Muslim world as you could get.
But still, hey, we have an autocrat we don't like.
I wonder if we could all just go outside and make him go away.
Chris Floyd wrote an article, I guess we ran it on antiwar.com, I'm sure you saw, saying, hey, could we have stopped the Iraq war if instead of going out on February 15th and March 15th, we just stayed out there and done like the Egyptians did and just said absolutely not to, you know, this premeditated mass murder.
Maybe we could have stopped the war.
Maybe.
Maybe we could bring down the U.S. state.
That'd be fun.
All right, well, I wouldn't want our Pentagon to replace the civilians, though.
That's my problem.
That's always the risk we run with these things.
But okay, we're all out of time, but thank you very much for your time, Jason.
Sure, thanks for having me.
Everybody, that's Jason Vitz.
He is our news editor at antiwar.com, news.antiwar.com.
