EGYPT - MUBARAK LOOSING CONTROL?
CIA/FBI POWERFUL IN CAIRO
BOOK BANNING NOW FORCED ON AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
MER - Washington - 4 June:
It was only a few months ago that the massacre at Luxor took place;
the crucial Egyptian tourist industry taking a terrible hit from which it has yet to
recover. In the wake of the ongoing attempts to cripple the corrupt government of Hosni
Mubarak -- essentially a disguised military regime ruling under emergency decrees since
the assassination of Anwar Sadat -- Egypt has increasingly become a repressive police
state. Terribly sadistic forms of torture are practiced, freedom of the press has become a
joke, and only the minuscule capitalist class associated with the regime and the Americans
benefits, while the great majority of Egyptians simply live in squalor and repression.
Meanwhile the political and cultural contradictions within Egypt
continue to escalate. How long a regime as confused and prostrate as the one now in Cairo
can continue to rule in a country as important and historically rich as Egypt is surely
now in doubt. But as long as the Americans continue to prop up Mubarak, and as long as the
CIA and more recently the FBI continue to provide the Egyptian regime the means and
techniques of surveillance and repression, the polarization that has characterized Egypt
for some years since the Camp David period is certainly likely to expand toward the
explosion point.
Meanwhile, two important Egyptian events in recent days:
AMERICANS ARREST PALESTINIAN IN EGYPT
Literally at the same time the Israeli government was publicly
indicating it will not arrest Abu Abbas, leader of the PLO faction that pulled off
the "Achilles Lauro" hijacking during which Leon Klinghofer was murdered; the
Egyptian government quietly let the FBI and CIA whisk out of Egyptian another former PLO
official charged with having been involved in airplane hijackings in the same 1980s.
Abu Abbas is in Gaza, and the Israeli courts were asked to direct
the Israeli government which "controls all entry and exit points into territory under
the administration of the Palestinian Authority" to arrest him should he ever attempt
to leave Gaza. The Israeli Attorney General indicated this would not be done and Israel
would in effect look the other way regarding Abu Abbas. Some former "terrorists"
are on the Israeli good-guy list these days.
Not so the American-controlled Egyptians, however. Amazingly the
Egyptian government allowed the FBI and CIA to capture and secretly kidnap another former
PLO official, Mohammed Rashid, from Egypt. He was brought to Washington a few days ago on
board a secret U.S. military transport, the Egyptian public never even aware of what was
happening right there in their own country.
There were no legal or court proceedings in Egypt; no deportation
procedure followed. And to make matters worse Rashid had already been tried in Greece
during the 1980s for the same offenses and imprisoned there! The Greeks had refused
American demands to extradite Rashid to the USA. Not so the Egyptians, however, who didn't
even bother with an extradition hearing, nor contact their favorite Palestinians, Yasser
Arafat and Nabil Shaath.
Meanwhile there are credible rumors in Washington that American
payoffs of more than a million dollars were paid to officials in Egypt connected with the
Mubarak government regarding Rashid.
MAXIME RODINSON BOOK BANNED ON ORDERS AT AUC
Maxime Rodinson is a brilliant French writer who during his career
has written passionately and eloquently about the Palestinian cause -- long before it
became popular to do so. In the 1970s he also wrote an extremely interesting and
insightful book about Mohamed.
After some second-rate Egyptian columnist finally managed to read
this long published book, writing about it in the government-controlled paper, Al-Ahram,
the Mubarak government has now banned the book! Just like that: government decree! And the
once proud American University of Cairo quickly took over from there, ordering its
Professors to remove the book from their reading lists and from the university bookstore
and library!
The question needs to be asked here, for if a journalist were to try
to do so in Egypt he would be arrested and imprisoned -- hasn't the time come for Mubarak
and cronies to go the way of Marcos and Suharto? Or is maybe the analogy of Benazir and
her gallant "Mr. Ten Percent" husband more fitting -- they are under arrest now
in Pakistan in case anyone is wondering?
