"Obama should listen to us"

So Obama came, talked, and left - and it's business as usual in Cairo again. I'm not going to analyze the speech here, but will restrict myself to this one comment: While Obama may still believe that he was speeking at Cairo University - this "source of Egypt's advancement" (never mind the routine repression of cultural and political life on campus) - in reality he never did. For what is a university, after all, without students? Once emptied of its true owners, an institution like this is reduced to nothing more than a dead monument. It's no longer an institution of learning and progress but merely a stage - which is exactly what Obama was looking for when he came to Egypt of course. I don't know about Egyptian students, but I would for sure have been deeply insulted if I'd been thrown out of my university for a visit like this. In that respect - and despite all the nice words about friendship and peace and equality - it was a truly colonial moment, indicating that Egypt still doesn't fully belong to the Egyptians but to the ruling clique and its foreign patrons. Was this really the proper way to start a "new beginning" between the United States and the muslim world?

At the end of the day, the ordinary Egyptians I spoke to about the visit and the speech was mostly indifferent. While some where clearly impressed by Obama' charisma and his positive remarks about Islam ("He is a hundred times better than Bush"), almost no one expressed any hope that real change in US policy is actually waiting around the corner. One of the best comments was uttered by a taxi driver last night. As the speech was mentioned on the radio, I asked him for his opionion. His response was: "I didn't hear it and I don't want to hear it. I heard it was a nice speech, but who cares? I'll listen to President Obama when he starts listening to us. Learn how to listen first, then you can talk."

In the court of Mubarak

Good news for Egypt's ruling elite this week: China wants further military cooperation, the European Union desperately wants help to cut its dependence on Russian gas, and Obama picks Cairo for his speech to the "muslim word," while promising continued unconditional aid. The line of great powers seeking an audience in the court of Mubarak never seems to end...

Ayman Nour's unexpected release

A few months ago the party headquarters of Hizb Al-Ghad in downtown Cairo was attacked and burnt by thugs led by the "pro-government" faction of Mustafa Moussa, while security forces stood back and watched. Then, just a week ago, the administrative court reversed a decision that had placed Moussa in control of the party. And today, Nour was unexpectedly released.

Not surprinsingly these sudden developments has led to speculations in media and blogs that Nour's release was "a gesture of goodwill to the Obama administration." Zeinobia writes: "The Washington Post was speaking from two days ago that Mubarak wanted to meet with Obama in the first 100 days and the White House put some conditions : The Release of Ayman Nour and the Return of Saad El-Din Ibrahim."

It's possible. Adding my own wild conspiracy theories to the speculations, I can't help but wonder if there is any relation between the release of Nour and the probable detention by state security of a party activist last week. Was the "disappearance" of Hossam Shahata some kind of revenge for the administrative court decision? Or a signal that even as Nour is released in order to appease Obama and easen the pressures for "reform", the security apparatus will persist in it's harassment of party activists in order to prevent al-Ghad from capitalizing on Nours release to broaden it's support base? Or (most likely) was the kidnapping just "business as usual," part of the daily routine repression that Obama is now going to ignore because one of thousands of political prisoners was released?

Update: More on Hossam Shahata.

Renditions and "extraordinary renditions"

Supporters of Obama are coming to his defense on the issue of renditions. Scott Horton at Harper's points out that media reports fail to distinguish between renditions and "extraordinary renditions" which was introduced by George W Bush:

"A central feature of this program was rendition to torture, namely that the prisoner was turned over to cooperating foreign governments with the full understanding that those governments would apply techniques that even the Bush Administration considers to be torture. /---/ The earlier renditions program regularly involved snatching and removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering them to a criminal justice system. It did not involve the operation of long-term detention facilities and it did not involve torture."

However, as pointed out by Arabist, in the case of renditions to Egypt, even the earlier program did lead to trial in exceptional courts and torture.

Update: Sarah Carr sent me a link to an interesting post by Allan Nairn on this subject. An excerpt:

"If you're lying on the slab still breathing, with your torturer hanging over you, you don't much care if he is an American or a mere United States - sponsored trainee. /---/ The catch lies in the fact that since Vietnam, when US forces often tortured directly, the US has mainly seen its torture done for it by proxy -- paying, arming, training and guiding foreigners doing it, but usually being careful to keep Americans at least one discreet step removed. That is, the US tended to do it that way until Bush and Cheney changed protocol, and had many Americans laying on hands, and sometimes taking digital photos. The result was a public relations fiasco that enraged the US establishment since by exposing US techniques to the world it diminished US power. But despite the outrage, the fact of the matter was that the Bush/Cheney tortures being done by Americans were a negligible percentage of all of the tortures being done by US clients.For every torment inflicted directly by Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the secret prisons, there were many times more being meted out by US-sponsored foreign forces."

Read the rest.

In Obama era, human rights watchdogs go soft?

So while Obama wants to close down Guantanamo and ban "harsh interrogation techniques" he issued executive orders authorizing the CIA to continue carry out "renditions" - "secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States" (in other words: kidnapping suspected "terrorists" and sending them to be tortured in countries like Egypt).

This is not a big surprise, at least if you keep in mind that the illegal renditions was introduced already by democrat president Bill Clinton, before the Bush-era and the "war on terror." What really makes me concerned is this part of the LA Times article:

The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism. "Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch."What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

Is this the new strategy of human rights watchdogs in the Obama-era? Are they suddenly going to trust the good intentions of governments, softening their criticism in gratitude for any small positive measures being taken? I hope not, but also fear this is a consequence of the general liberal attitude which says that the problem is not so much with the "war on terror" itself, but the particular way it was being conducted by the Bush administration.