The American Liberal vs The Revolutionary: Exposing the Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

Liberals, despite their protestations, remain wedded to U.S. imperial rule in the world. They wish only that it morph into a kinder, gentler imperialism. A Revolutionary knows that the only way change will ultimately come is by way of a sustained social revolution, one that engages a critical mass to work collectively in dismantling injustice and oppression.”






By Solomon Comissiong

“Liberals will frequently use pronouns such as, ‘we’ or ‘our’ in reference to the United States' deadly militaristic actions.”

One of the many ways to easily tell the difference between an American "Liberal" and a Revolutionary-minded American is on the topic of war. Liberals will openly use money as a primary reason why they oppose the war. They say things like, "The financial costs associated with these wars are taking away much needed resources from our schools, public works and even health care!" This is very much true, however it is not the most important reason to oppose the United States' imperialist wars. The most important reason would be that these wars destroy innocent lives and decimate entire nations. These wars rip the lives of women, children, men and elderly off of the planet. The Liberal loves to speak about the financial costs of war, however what about the human costs of these wars of aggression? Ultimately the loss of life can never be paid back. And when it comes to the United States government, they routinely get the most “bang” for their buck, slaughtering innocent civilians wholesale. In the most duplicitous manner they call it “collateral damage,” however this is mass murder – plain and simple!

Revolutionary-minded Americans oppose the US government's wars because they are imperialist and because they destroy human lives, and destabilize entire nations. Ending these wars would save countless lives and would bring us one giant step closer to peace. Naturally, this would free up trillions of dollars that could also be used to save lives (healthcare) and to empower communities (i.e., universal education, livable wages, affordable housing). We must always be primarily motivated by humanity, not simply capital. Most Liberals fail in doing this because they, like their conservative counterparts, are also devoted capitalists. There is nothing revolutionary about capitalism. Capitalism is counter-revolutionary.

“We must always be primarily motivated by humanity, not simply capital.”

These Liberals will frequently use pronouns such as, "we" or "our" in reference to the United States' deadly militaristic actions. A Revolutionary knows that this government never asked their approval when making decisions to invade and bomb other countries. They know the US government does not represent their vested interests in peace, justice and humanity. The Revolutionary knows damn well that they oppose imperialism! The average Liberal is continually stuck in an emotional quagmire desperately wanting to believe that this is ‘their’ government and not a government of and for Plutocrats. They believe they can change society by reforming the US government. A Revolutionary knows that the only way change will ultimately come is by way of a sustained social revolution, one that engages a critical mass to work collectively in dismantling injustice and oppression. They then must build a new society (and government), upon a foundation that puts humanity first and people before profits. The Revolutionary also knows that they are citizens of the world, first, and not of the United States of Imperialism! The average American Liberal has been trained to see things radically different (and not in a good radical way). They are so polluted with Americanism; they are beholden to a set of fraudulent ideals they have been indoctrinated with since childhood. Humanity is much lower on their list of priorities than their manufactured nationalism.

“Liberals scorned Bush for his war crimes, however they champion Obama’s wars, aggression and mass murder.”

The American Liberal is often a willing cheerleader for imperialism, so long as a Democrat is orchestrating that war. We need to look no further than the most recent historical example with US president Barack Obama. Since becoming president of the United States Empire, Obama has launched numerous drone strikes (far more than George W. Bush), and vastly expanded the theater of war, bombing at least seven different nations. George W. Bush lied about Iraq as a justification to bomb, invade and destabilize that country. President Obama lied about Libya, stating Muammar Gaddafi was mass killing his people, as a justification to initiate a US and NATO led bombing campaign in the North African nation. Tens of thousands of people were killed as a result. Liberals scorned Bush for his war crimes, however they champion Obama’s wars, aggression and mass murder. Ostensibly the American Liberal adores imperialism so long as it is a Democrat overseeing it. It was doubly pathetic to witness countless African-Americans supporting, or remaining silent in regard to Obama’s imperialist actions. White liberals in Democratic Party clothing have politically domesticated African-Americans. African-Americans used to oppose the United States’ imperialist wars, however since the rise of Obama they now support them. Barack Obama was the white liberal’s most perfect Trojan horse.

The American Liberal is a fraud. And as Malcolm X admonished us, liberals are foxes in sheep clothing. It is especially important that people of color recognize this simple fact: Liberals/Democrats are not our friends anymore than Conservatives/Republicans are. It is long past due that more of us develop a more revolutionary-minded way of thinking. Our humanity depends on it.

“The white conservatives aren't friends of the Negro either, but they at least don't try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the ‘smiling’ fox.”—Malcolm X

________________
Solomon Comissiong (www.solomoncomissiong.com) is an educator, community activist, author, and Founder of the Your World News Media Collective (www.yourworldnews.org). Solomon is the author of A Hip Hop Activist Speaks Out on Social Issues. Solomon is also the writer and producer of the documentary, Hip Hop, White Supremacy & Capitalism: Why Corporations Infiltrated RAP Music. He can be reached at: solo@yourworldnews.org

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

Waiting for Emancipation: The Prospects for Liberal Revolution in Africa

In the present decade, 7 out of the 10 fastest-growing economies (as conventionally measured) are African. In 1900 Africa was the world’s least densely populated and urbanized continent with 7.5% of world population. Today it is double that, with an urban share fast approaching the global average. According to UN projections, Africa will be home to 25% of all the people alive in 2050, 40% in 2100 (when Asia will contribute 42% and the rest 18%).—Keith Hart

80,000 South African Platinum Miners Strike For A Living Wage. (Screen capture
from YouTube video)

By Keith Hart
We live in a racist world. Despite the collapse of European empire and the formal adoption of a façade of international bureaucracy, the vast majority of black Africans are still waiting for meaningful emancipation from their perceived social inferiority.

Africans wait for emancipation in an unequal world

Now there is much talk of economic growth in Africa. In the present decade, 7 out of the 10 fastest-growing economies (as conventionally measured) are African. In 1900 Africa was the world’s least densely populated and urbanized continent with 7.5% of world population. Today it is double that, with an urban share fast approaching the global average. According to UN projections, Africa will be home to 25% of all the people alive in 2050, 40% in 2100 (when Asia will contribute 42% and the rest 18%). This is because Africa’s annual population growth rate is 2.5% while the rest of the world is ageing. The Asian manufacturing countries already recognize that Africa is the fastest-growing market in the world. This could provide an opportunity for Africans to play a stronger hand in international negotiations. If they succeed in standing up for themselves, it would be a world revolution, the end of the racist world order, no less.

The movement to abolish slavery was officially completed in the late nineteenth century. But emancipation is rarely as simple as that. In West Africa, abolition was a disaster. The internal drive to capture slaves continued apace and, despite a shift to their use in domestic production, supply soon exceeded demand. The price of slaves fell drastically, leading to their widespread abuse. Colonial empires were then justified by disorder in West Africa and by the drive to abolish the Arab slave trade in East Africa. Much later, when these regimes fell, Africans were offered emancipation once more, this time through national independence. Most African economies then regressed for a half-century. Apartheid was defeated in South Africa, but two decades later the country is more unequal and unemployment is rampant, while the government shoots its own people if they complain. Africans are still waiting for equal membership of world society. But they have never encountered more favourable conditions than now.

In the twentieth century, a population explosion was accompanied by a jump in Africa’s urban share from under 2% of the population to almost half. This urban revolution is not just a proliferation of cities, but also involves the installation of the whole package of pre-industrial class society: states, urban elites, intensification of agriculture and a political economy based on extraction of rural surpluses and the city bazaar.

The anti-colonial revolution unleashed hopes for the transformation of an unequal world. These have not yet been realized for most Africans. Africa’s new leaders thought they were building modern economies, but in reality they were erecting fragile states based on the same small-scale agriculture as before. Either machine production would be developed in some sectors of the economy or the state would devolve to a level compatible with its small-scale productive base. This structural weakness inevitably led them to exchange the democratic legitimacy of the independence struggle for dependence on foreign powers. Life support to Africa’s new ruling elites was switched off in the early 1980s. Many governments were made bankrupt and some countries collapsed into civil war.

The growth of cities should normally lead to rural-urban exchange, as farmers supply food to city-dwellers and in turn buy the latter’s manufactures and services. But this progressive division of labour requires a measure of protection from the world market and it was stifled at birth in post-colonial Africa by the dumping of subsidized food from the tax-rich West and later of cheap Asian manufactures. ‘Structural adjustment programmes’ imposed by the World Bank and IMF meant that Africa’s fledgling national economies had no protection. Tax collection in Africa was never as regular as in Eurasia; and governments still rely on whatever they can extract from mineral royalties and the import-export trade. Rents secured by political privilege are the chief source of wealth. This constitutes an Old Regime ripe for liberal revolution.

African development in the twenty-first century

‘Development’ refers first to humanity’s hectic dash from the countryside to the city since 1800. The engine driving this economic growth is assumed to be ‘capitalism’. Development then means trying to understand how capitalist growth is generated and how to make good the damage it causes in repeated cycles of creation and destruction. A third meaning refers to the developmental states of the mid-twentieth century, the idea that governments are best placed to engineer sustained economic growth with redistribution. The most common usage, however, refers to the commitment of rich countries to help poor countries become richer. This was at first real enough, even if the means chosen were often flawed. But after the 1970s, it has faded. If the rapid growth of the world economy encouraged a belief at first that poor countries could become rich, from the 1980s ‘development’ has meant freeing up global monetary flows and applying sticking plaster to the wounds inflicted. Development is the label for political relations between rich and poor countries after colonial empire.

There are two pressing features of our world: the unprecedented expansion of markets since the Second World War and massive economic inequality between (and within) nations. Becoming closer and more unequal at the same time is a recipe for disaster. Africa, with a seventh of the world’s population, had 2% of global purchasing power around the millennium. What could Africa’s new urban populations produce for the world economy? Apart from exporting raw materials, when they could, the world market for food and other agricultural products is skewed by western farm subsidies. Manufacturing as an alternative faces intense competition from Asia. African countries should argue collectively in the councils of world trade for some protection from international dumping, so that their farmers and infant industries might supply their own populations first.

Exchange between cities and their hinterlands has been frustrated for a post-colonial Africa whose international bargaining position is undermined by being fragmented into 54 states. The fastest-growing sector of world trade is the production of culture: entertainment, education, media, sports, software and information services. The terrain is less rigidly mapped out here than in agriculture and manufacture and Africans are well-placed to compete in this field because of the proven global preference for their music, films and plastic arts.

Classes for and against a liberal revolution

The classical liberal revolutions were sustained by three ideas: that freedom and economic progress require increased movement of people, goods and money in the market; that the political framework most compatible with this is democracy; and that social progress depends on science, the drive to know how things really work. The energies generated by Africa’s urban revolution are already manifested in economy, technology, religion and the arts; and they could be harnessed to radical change if freed from the Old Regime.

Miners on strike in Marikana, South Africa where 44 miners were ultimately massacre by police.
(Screen capture from YouTube video)

Rousseau’s condemnation of eighteenth century France rings as true for our world: “It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined… that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry multitude goes in want of necessities”. The institutions of agrarian civilization are alive and well, not just in post-colonial Africa. The greatest riches are no longer acquired through selling products cheaper than one’s competitors; rents secured by political privilege -- such as Big Pharma’s income from patents, monopoly revenues from DVDs and CDs or tax revenues, used to bail out the Wall Street banks – keep the superrich afloat today.

In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon provided a blueprint for a class analysis of decadent societies ripe for revolution. Political parties and unions were weak and conservative in late colonial Africa because they represented only a tiny part of the population: the industrial workers, civil servants, intellectuals and shopkeepers of the town, classes unwilling to jeopardize their own privileges. They were hostile to and suspicious of the mass of country people.

The latter had customary chiefs supervised by the military and administrative officials of the occupying power. A nationalist middle class of professionals and traders confronted the superstition and feudalism of traditional authorities. Landless peasants joined the urban lumpenproletariat. Eventually colonial repression forced the nationalists to flee the towns and take refuge with the peasantry. Only then, with the rural-urban split temporarily healed by crisis, did a mass movement take off. Fanon’s method might help us identify the potential for another African revolution.

Clearly, trade and finance are not organized, in Africa or the world at large, with a view to liberating a popular movement. A liberal revolution would need allies with significant wealth and power. Africans will have to develop their own transnational associations to combat the huge coalitions that would deny them self-expression. One of the strongest political movements today is the formation of large regional trading blocs in response to neoliberal globalization. A national framework for development never made sense in Africa and it makes even less sense today. The coming revolution could leapfrog many of the obstacles in its path, but not if African societies still wear the national straitjacket they inherited from colonial rule.

Freedom and protection in the early modern revolutions

The American, French and Italian revolutions all combined mass insurgency with an extended period of warfare focused on removing fragmented sovereignty, unfair taxes and restrictions placed on movement and trade; German unification had a similar focus, but followed a different political trajectory. The success of the British in establishing a global free trade regime in the nineteenth century and the revival of that regime as economic orthodoxy today have obscured the complex dialectic of freedom and protection whose imperatives were laid out by Sir James Steuart in Principles of Political Economy (1767).

Impediments to trade caused by divided sovereignty within and between states had to be overcome. Development under these circumstances depended on removing these barriers to trade. At the same time, these incipient free trade areas needed a measure of protection, so that their own agriculture and manufactures could benefit from supplying newly consolidated home populations. The French revolution is a striking case in point.

In 1793, the Terror was unleashed and the Bretons raised a ‘Royal and Catholic Army’ against which the revolutionary Republic sent out an army of its own to fight in the War of Vendée. Nantes, France’s largest port, was heavily involved in slavery and trade with the Caribbean. It stood out for the Republic and was besieged by the Royalist army. The ensuing battle was decisive for the Revolution; the shippers financed the Republican army. Why did the Nantes bourgeoisie risk so much for the Revolution? France, although a central monarchy, was then a patchwork of local fief-holders, each of whom exacted what they could from people and goods moving through their territory. The Republic promised to end all that and establish a regulated home market. The Nantes shippers wanted to reduce the costs of moving their trade goods inland and so they allied themselves with the Republic.

In the United States, American and Dutch smugglers led resistance to the East India Company’s tea monopoly and to British taxes offsetting the crown’s military costs. The Italian Risorgimento too was backed financially by the industrialists of Milan and Turin who wanted a national home market freed of territorial fragments and unrestricted access to world trade. In all three cases, the power of merchant and manufacturing capital played a decisive part in the revolution.

Long before the European Common Market became the European Union, the Prussian Zollverein was launched in 1818 and culminated in the German Empire. In each case political unification was preceded by a customs union lasting half a century. The Zollverein was a piecemeal attempt to harmonise tariffs, measures and economic policy in scattered territories controlled by the Prussian ruling family. The Germans attributed their vulnerability to extreme political fragmentation (some 40 states in 1815). Prussia’s main aim was to expand a protected zone of internal free trade from which the Austrians were excluded. By the 1860s, most of what became Germany had joined the customs union. Their leading economist, Friedrich List, proposed a ‘national system’ of political economy. He emphasized the scope for innovation within an expanded free trade area protected from the world market. Similar proposals were espoused by Americans like Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay.
Towards greater integration of African trade

President Mbeki’s idea of an ‘African renaissance’ expressed the belief that a black majority government in South Africa might be a catalyst for an African economic revival based on greater political coordination between what had before been easy pickings for the world’s great powers. His initiative was aimed exclusively at the very political class that has failed Africa so often since independence. He did not factor civil society movements into his plans.

Africa currently consists of a labyrinthine confusion of regional associations which do little to strengthen their members’ bargaining power in world markets. On the ground, however, African peoples maintain patterns of long-distance movement and exchange developed over centuries despite their rulers’ attempts to force economy and society into national cages.

This is one major reason why so much of the African economy is held to be ‘informal’: state regulations are routinely ignored, with the result that half the population and most economic activity are criminalized and an absurd public effort is wasted on trying to apply unenforceable rules. Classical liberalism offers an answer to this chaos -- the widest area possible of free trade and movement, with minimal regulation by the authorities. Neoliberal globalization has done much to discredit this recipe, since political initiatives, even in pursuit of free trade, are anathema. Yet the policy conclusion is inescapable: the boundaries of free commerce and of state intervention should be pushed beyond the limits of existing sovereignties.

China occupied a similar slot to Africa in western consciousness not so long ago. In the 1930s, people often spoke of the Chinese as they do of Africa today. China was then crippled by the violence of warlords, its peasants mired in the worst poverty imaginable. Today the country is an economic superpower. This profound shift in power from West to East does not guarantee that Africa will escape soon from the stigma of inferiority, but the structures of North Atlantic dominance that once seemed inevitable are perceptibly on the move; and that makes it easier to envisage change. Humanity is entering a new era of social possibility. Africans’ drive for emancipation from an unequal world society affects all of us. In that sense an African revolution would be a world revolution.

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.

Translating Malcolm X into Irish: Malcolm X Film Festival’s First Historic Event in West Belfast

For some of the younger people of Northern Ireland, “it was the first time they heard Malcolm X’s own words speaking about ‘rejecting the white man,’ developing independence Black liberation organizations, rejecting the dehumanization from the white man, and being inspired by the ‘darker nations’ of Africa and Asia uniting against European colonialism.”







By Sukant Chandan, Coordinator at the Malcolm X Movement

“Belfast and Derry hold some of the most politicized anti-imperialist and socialist working class communities in the entire ‘West.’”

We arrived into Ireland on Friday 13th March as the latest political crisis was gripping this small section of the island of Ireland. Left-wing Irish Republican party Sinn Fein had blocked an austerity budget leading to the freezing of the budget for Northern Ireland. Directly related to this was a public workers one day strike the day our Malcolm X Movement delegation arrived at Belfast International airport, so we had to catch a taxi to West Belfast where we are staying with a local grassroots Irish republican socialist activist and friend. Sitting in the front of the taxi and chatting with the driver, I went through the usual careful and subtle probing as to where he stood in the British colonial-induced division in the six counties. Was he an Irish nationalist (who happen to be overwhelmingly Catholics) who united with the “third world” anti-imperialists, including the ANC, and supported the total end to British rule and the reunification of their country, colonized and partitioned by British colonialism? Or was he a Unionist (who happen to be overwhelmingly Protestants) who were historically planted into Ireland as colonial settlers and who more recently allied to Apartheid South Africa and are still largely allied to racist right-wing forces and the white settler state of Israel and want the six counties to remain eternally a part of the United Kingdom?

As we passed the beautiful hills of Cavehill and Black Mountain that immediately surround Belfast city we discussed the budget crisis at which point the taxi driver mentioned something along the lines of “those who have always held power here do not like to see that changing,” which clearly indicated to me that he was probably an Irish nationalist. It turned out he was and I felt more comfortable and we got into a big conversation whereby I mostly asked questions and he, like it seems so many people who lived through the “Troubles,” were more than happy to impart their usually insightful and sophisticated analysis informed by their experiencing of the horrors of the conflict there.

Towards the end of the conversation we discussed British covert operations in their dirty war in Ireland, with “the Brits” supporting the pro-Unionists “Loyalist” death squads, through what is infamously known as collusion, reminding me of the same covert operations and collusion with neo-colonial death squads in the Muslims world. Our journey came to an end, we bid farewell and he wished us a good stay in West Belfast.

“The murals reflected the Irish republicans’ affinity and solidarity with the people of Palestine and South Africa against white supremacy rule, but featured mostly their own revolutionary martyrs.”

It felt great to return to West Belfast, my second time there, and my fifth time in Ireland since 1999, every one of those visits I come to partake in political and cultural work with the Irish revolutionaries who are in Sinn Fein and independent Irish republican socialists and anti-imperialists. Belfast and Derry hold some of the most politicized anti-imperialist and socialist working class communities in the entire “West,” and as such is a primary example and inspiration of how a brutally colonized people (indeed the first colonized nation of English colonialism 800 years ago) can resist, organize and steadily build their politics in an inter-generational time frame.

We arrived to deliver the first of seven events in the First Annual Malcolm X Film Festival, taking place at the well-known cultural centre, Culturlann on the historic Falls Road in West Belfast. However, we had the full afternoon before the event day to have a walk around Falls Road and see the many revolutionary murals painted on gable ends of terraced homes and the famous rows of murals showing brightly and colorfully the recent and ancient history of the struggle of Irish freedom from colonial rule.

While West Belfast remains palpably politicized, one can still feel the Troubles rescinding into the background in the community with a new generation of young people and teenagers who were borne after the start of the peace process formally initiated by the Good Friday Agreement in 1998/1999. While social justice is a long way off there has been some increase of private investment. A shiny leisure center and a massive new shopping tower above the Milltown Cemetery where many of the martyrs for Irish freedom are buried.

We saw Palestinian revolutionary icon, leading PLO and PFLP member Leila Khaled, featured on a few murals. Khaled herself would be addressing the Malcolm X Film Festival the following day. The murals reflected the Irish republicans’ affinity and solidarity with the people of Palestine and South Africa against white supremacy rule, but featured mostly their own revolutionary martyrs, people like James Connolly and IRA prisoner of war and elected MP Bobby Sands whose mural has pride of place on the Falls.

While walking around the Falls our Irish host would greet and have a wee chat with people of the community who were all politically active in some way or another – either working with local youth, or whatever anti-imperialist and socialist activities they were committed to. This is a community that is pulsating with political discussion and activity, hardly spending any time on social media, but actually being socially embedded in real life and struggles with their community. We sat down for a snack and a tea with three young community activists and anti-imperialist socialists, two of them coming from solid revolutionary families with family members having served back in the conflict in the revolutionary national liberation armed movement of the Irish Republican Army, said by some to be unofficial armed wing of Sinn Fein.

“Bernadette MacAliskey was the first of two Irish speakers at the event to ‘translate’ Malcolm X for the Irish audience.”

Along with the great “craic,” hospitality and political discussions, the quick wit and charisma and intense discussions that seems to be nearly universal characteristics of the people, there were also instances of the trauma of living through a brutal war. Any working class community has its fair share of trauma, but add into the mix lots of shooting, massacres, torture and imprisonment, and it all adds up to a terrible mix that no humans should have to live through.

The Malcolm X Film Festival saw over 50 local activists attend the event the following day, which my revolutionary Basque Country comrade told me was a decent turn out in West Belfast considering the time and what was concurrently taking place. The event opened up with the first film montage of Malcolm X speaking on Civil Rights and Black Power in his last final years of speeches and interviews. There would be no one more fitting to speak on this panel than Bernadette MacAliskey, who became the most inspiring and audacious revolutionary at a very young age against the British Army’s occupation of the working class district of the Bogside in Derry. She took to the peoples barricades, helped to mobilize the youth and community against the British military police and army, got elected on a national liberation and socialist platform to parliament and remains to this day the youngest woman ever to have been elected. She was a leader of the Irish civil rights movement inspired by the Black civil rights movement in the USA and the undivided Indian peoples non-violent national liberation struggle. As with those historic examples, the oppressed Irish people’s struggle for non-violent change was met with brutality and massacres by the colonialists. The notorious Bloody Sunday Massacre was conducted in 1972 by the British state, killing 14 protestors and leadig to a further radicalization of the movement.

Later in the evening, I was told by an Irish comrade that the event would have seen young activists hear for the first time people with English accents talking about anti-imperialism, socialism and the liberation of Ireland. It was the first time that they would hear someone non-white speaking about these things. And it was the first time they heard Malcolm X’s own words speaking about “rejecting the white man,” developing independence Black liberation organizations, rejecting the dehumanization from the white man, being inspired by the ‘darker nations’ of Africa and Asia uniting against European colonialism etc. Therefore Bernadette MacAliskey was the first of two Irish speakers at the event to ‘translate’ Malcolm X for the Irish audience. She recounted her experiences of going to the USA in the late 1960s and 1970s when she was a highly sort after speaker, invited by white feminists and relatively well-off Irish Americans who lived in houses that to MacAliskey “appeared like plush hotels” with “two toilets and three bathrooms” compared to the poor working class areas of Derry from where she came from, in which the struggle for better housing for Catholics and Irish nationalists was one of the primary issues in the civil rights struggle against the Irish apartheid system. She explained that the feminists in the USA had house servants who were Black or Brown, but she would find more common ground with those Black and Brown women than the white feminists and middle class Irish Americans. She said that she felt at home associating with the Black Panthers and the radical Puerto Rican anti-imperialist socialist group the Young Lords. Famously, MacAliskey was handed the keys to New York City that she instead gave to the Black Panthers. MacAliskey explained that she thought that one of the big problems of the Irish is that they think they are white and have white minds.

Following MacAliskey was Dr. Moussa Ibrahim, the last media spokesperson for the Libyan Socialist Jamahirya government before NATO and its proxies destroyed it in 2011. Dr Ibrahim is still wanted by NATO who have put him on the red list on Interpol; he is still underground and a leading figure in the anti-NATO Libyan resistance. Dr Ibrahim eloquently explained that Malcolm X is a central figure for inspiration for the Libyan resistance. He continued to explain that part of the reason why Libya was destroyed was that like Malcolm X and Kwame Nkrumah and other African revolutionaries, Muammar Gaddafi was pioneering the capacity building of the African continent, and the African Union strategically aimed towards assisting in the liberation of Black people across the world. But the two things, Dr Ibrahim explained, that motivated NATO to destroy Libya was Gaddafi’s proposal for a gold-based African Dinar that would have ended the Dollar and Euro domination of Africa, and also the Global South military alliance that was being developed with Bolivia and Venezuela, a South Atlantic Treaty Organization to counter NATO. Dr. Ibrahim hoped that the Libyan and Irish people can reconnect to the unity that they previously developed, and many Irish activists attending were keen to nurture that unity once more. Dr Ibrahim also conveyed that Libya should be one of the most important Black Liberation struggles to give solidarity to on the planet as the general anti-NATO resistance in Libya is also united together with darker skinned or Black Libyans who have been systematically persecuted in acts of genocide by NATO’s proxies in Libya.

“Dr. Ibrahim hoped that the Libyan and Irish people can reconnect to the unity that they previously developed.”

The second Irish speaker who translated Malcolm X for the Irish audience was former IRA prisoner of war and Sinn Fein member from Derry, Gerry MacLochlainn. MacLochlainn recounted how the Irish democrats of the 18th and 19th centuries mobilized to ensure that the Belfast port was not used in the genocidal industry of European slavery against African peoples. The most powerful thing MacLochlainn said and on which he finished was that the Irish people have to thank the British in a kind of way, thank them for ensuring that Ireland did not become a European colonizing power and instead because of the British colonial oppression of Ireland pushed the Irish into the camp of the global anti-imperialist movement against racism and colonialism.

I had to nearly pinch myself as I wondered if Ireland had ever seen such a discussion of white supremacy, colonialism and imperialism, resistance, liberation and Malcolm X with such an array of revolutionary speakers. Leila Khaled spoke about the importance of Malcolm X’s message of dignity and liberation of oppressed peoples, and emphasized that the death squads such as “Isis” are working for, and creations of, imperialism and Zionism to destroy the countries and communities in the region. Leila Khaled stressed that it was of primary urgent necessity that people must unite against these neo-colonial death squads. Leila Khaled and the whole room laughed when for the third time she could not understand the English of our Irish comrades and I had to “translate” the questions for her. I later commented and joked with Irish comrades that MacAliskey and MacLochlainn politically translated Malcolm X for the attendees, and I translated the contributions so Leila Khaled could understand. I suppose all of us who are resistant victims of colonialism have to make efforts to listen, learn and understand the differences in our accents and languages to better unite for our common liberation.

We completed our event and visit with discussions about how the Malcolm X Movement and the Irish activists and struggles will work closer together and build for the Second Annual Malcolm X Film Festival in 2016 which will be dedicated to, and working alongside, the Black Panthers to commemorate the 50th anniversary since the founding of another primary radical anti-imperialist and socialist movement from within the West. As the airplane pulled away from the land of Ireland and drifted back to the heart of colonialism and whiteness in London, the Malcolm X Movement delegation left Ireland satisfied that we had fulfilled part of our revolutionary duty to unite Malcolm X with the Irish in a common cause of anti-colonial liberation. There remains much uniting to be done.

____________
Sukant Chandan is Coordinator at the Malcolm X Movement in the UK. She can be contacted at sukant.chandan(at)gmail.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

U.S. Operations in Yemen Fail Miserably: Shiite Rebels Announce Takeover of Country

Houthis issue "constitutional declaration" amid continuing unrest

Houthi rebels announced they were assuming country of Yemen on Friday.  (Image:  Google maps)

By Andrea Germanos
Unrest continues in Yemen on Friday as Shiite Houthi rebels announced a "constitutional declaration" and that they were assuming control of the country.

The group issued the statement in a televised address from the Sunni majority country's capital of Sana'a.

A 551-member Transitional National Council would be formed to replace the parliament, and that body would appoint a 5-member council to assume the presidential role during a "transitional period," according to their statement.

President Abed Mansour Hadi, Prime Minister Khaled Bahah, and members of the Yemeni cabinet resigned last month after the rebels had reportedly seized the presidential palace.

The Houthis' announcement follows a Wednesday deadline set by the rebels for political parties to "to reach a solution and fill the vacuum."

That power vacuum, however, did not appear to prevent U.S. drone strikes on the impoverished country.

From the New York Times:

“The revolutionary movement has always been quick, it won’t take that long,” said Ali al-Imad, a member of the Houthi political bureau. “It’s not important when, so much as it is that we now have a political road map.”

Independent journalist Iona Craig, who was based in Yemen or four years until December, tweeted Friday that the Houthi's action was essentially formalizing a coup:

The Houthis have basically just formalised the coup. Their own 'revolutionary committee' will 'approve and guide' everything. #Yemen

— Iona Craigأيونا كريج (@ionacraig) February 6, 2015


Another two years of transition? It's already been 12 years since Yemenis last got to vote for their parliamentary.

— Iona Craigأيونا كريج (@ionacraig) February 6, 2015

The Houthis have been described in media reports as being backed by Iran, but Vijay Prashad, George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, dismisses this claim. As Inter Press Service reported last month:

On the one side, [Prashad] said, the government of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and then Hadi, suggested to the U.S. [the Houthis] were anti al-Qaeda.

But, on the other hand, they used the fact of al-Qaeda to go after their adversaries, including the Zaydis (Houthis).

“This double game was well known to the Americans. They went along with it. It is what allowed AQAP to take Jar and other regions of Yemen and hold them with some ease,” Prashad said.

He dismissed as “ridiculous” the allegation the Zaydis are “proxies of Iran”. He said they are a tribal confederacy that has faced the edge of the Saleh-Hadi sword.

Journalist and co-founder of the The Intercept Jeremy Scahill has stated that U.S.-backed former President Ali Abdullah Saleh "is sort of the not-so-hidden hand behind some of the power grab efforts of the Houthis."

Meanwhile, a humanitarian crisis continues to grip the lives of many Yemenis.

Anti-poverty organization Oxfam warned last month that over half the population was in need of aid, and that millions of Yemenis did not have enough to eat or have clean drinking water or basic healthcare services.

"It is simply unacceptable that the real story of 16 million Yemenis in need of help keeps going unnoticed," Grace Ommer, Oxfam’s Country Director in Yemen said. "Despite the challenges, we continue to deliver desperately needed aid to Yemenis in some of the poorest areas outside the capital. But if the international community continues to stand by and watch while Yemen risks going from a fragile to a failed state we will find it even harder to maintain this lifesaving support."

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Revolution in Saudi Arabia?: Repression by Monarchy Is Helping To Lay the Groundwork

Abdullah ibn Abdilazīz: "King" of Saudi Arabia.
(Illustration by DonkeyHotey)

By Catherine Shakdam
An absolute theocracy, Saudi Arabia has lived since its inception in September 1932 under the thumb of two very powerful forces: the House of Saud and the Wahhabi religious paradigm. Hejaz, which stretches along the western part of the Saudi kingdom, was fused with two formerly independent tribal-led sultanates — Nejd in the west and Asir in the south — to become a Wahhabi kingdom.

“Saudi Arabia is really the manifestation of the alliance of Mohammed Abdul-Wahhab, a late 18th century controversial religious figure, and Mohammed bin Saud, the forefather of Al Saud,” Mohsen Kia, an Iranian political analyst with a Ph.D. in Islamic History, told MintPress News.

“Saudi Arabia was very much engineered to subdue the Arabian Peninsula under the weight of both religious dogma and political despotism,” he said, noting: “Its structure sits on quicksand as related to the state’s ability to maintain its people into servitude.”

A relatively young monarchy, at least from an historical standpoint, Saudi Arabia is essentially a tribal patchwork united by one powerful tribe — Al Saud — under foreign patronage to act as a buffer against the Ottomans and the Persians. The rise of Al Saud of Nejd began in the 19th century, when a deal was struck with imperial Britain to create a counter-power to the expansionist and ambitious Ottoman and Persian empires in the Arabian Peninsula, a region that Britain has always understood to be too geostrategically important to let go of or lose sight over.

As tribes became bound, territories were fused and tribal borders disappeared, the world came to understand Saudi Arabia as a single functional entity, one united nation under the banner of Al Saud.

Yet that unity stands today as little more than a facade.

“The kingdom is not as stable as Western powers would like to think,” Kia said. “This projected stability is but a manifestation of Al Saud’s systematic repressive methods, it is artificial.”

[...]

Many experts have theorized that Saudi Arabia’s wealth is what has shielded its regime from falling victim to the Arab Spring. Lorraine Swartz, an independent researcher and political analyst based in London, is one of these experts.

“While Saudi Arabia is as repressive – if not more – than its former counterparts in the region,” Swartz said, naming Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Col. Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, “it has enjoyed greater economic stability. The economic factor is what has prevented people this far from rebelling against the regime.”

“They have not yet been pushed beyond the tolerable.”

She continued, explaining: “There is a key psychological and social factor to any revolution. Once people have nothing left to lose rebellion comes easy. But the Saudi regime is fast approaching this invisible barrier of ‘tolerance.’ Aggravated repression has exacerbated popular hatred toward the regime, poverty and unemployment are on the rise, and a state-run sectarian campaign against the minority Shia community in Qatif has led to the fragmentation of the kingdom alongside religious lines.”

She noted that in terms of stability, “It’s not looking good.”

Read More

Only If 'Millions and Millions' Rise Up, Can Progressive Agenda Win — Senator Bernie Sanders

Grassroots movement must embrace bold progressive agenda and understand that 'politics is a 365 days a year.'

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) talks with Bill Moyers about the need for the grassroots revolution that is needed to
topple the corrupting influence of money in politics. (Image: Screengrab / Moyers & Company)

By Jon Queally
In an interview with journalist Bill Moyers that will air Friday, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who has announced he is seriously considering a run for president in 2016—said that though voter turnout is key in order to keep Republicans and their regressive polices from making gains in Congress and local elections nationwide, the real challenge for progressives in the coming days, months, and years is to build a powerful grassroots movement that is able to break the stranglehold that big money and corporate interests have placed on the nation's democratic institutions.

"What we have got to do is mobilize the American people in a way that we have not seen in recent history around a progressive agenda," said Sanders.

When asked by Moyers how such a mobilization might be realized, Sanders admitted that he does "not have any magical solutions," but said that when people begin to stand up and say "Enough is enough"—and talk about doing well by their kids, protecting the environment, fighting corporate interests, winning healthcare for all, and taking on the billionaire class—the movement from below will inevitably shift the current debate. "When people begin to move, the people on top will follow them," he said.

"What I do know," Sanders continued, is that the landscape of U.S. politics will not change for the better "if we do not create an economy that works for ordinary people, if we do not end the fact that 95 percent of all new income now goes to the top one percent. We've got to end it, and the only way I know to do that is to rally ordinary people around the progressive agenda. So our job is to create a 50 state, grassroots movement around a progressive agenda."

Asked by Moyers about similar-sounding populist rhetoric used by President Obama when he first ran for president in 2008, Sanders responded: "I have lot of respect for Barack Obama. But, his biggest mistake is that, after running a brilliant campaign in 2008, where millions of people in fact were galvanized, young people, people of color came out and said, 'Hey, we're going to make some real change.' The day after the election he said, okay, thank you very much. Now I'm going to work inside the Beltway and we're going to start negotiating with Republicans and all that stuff. The simple truth is, in my view, nothing gets done unless millions and millions of people will demand it. Politics is 365 days a year."

"Not just voting?" asked Moyers.

"Exactly," said Sanders. "And anyone, you can have the best person in the world as president of the United States, that person will accomplish nothing unless millions of people are standing behind him or her."

Watch the full interview:

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Inside The Islamic State: Reporter Spends Three Weeks With ISIS (Documentary)

Arab Spring — Jihad Summer: This is not an Army, Rather a Well-Trained Militia of Professional Mujahid

'Leader' of the Islamic State reportedly gave a sermon in Mosul, Iraq. (Screen capture
from YouTube video)

"ISIL's track record in Syria includes banning every flag apart from its own; the destruction of any "polytheist" temple or sanctuary (except if it is Sunni); and strict imposition of Islamically correct women wear. Most of all, it is a track record of terror. This is not an army, rather a well-trained militia of professional mujahid."—Pepe Escobar


By Pepe Escobar
Welcome to IS. No typo; the final goal may be (indiscriminate) regime change, but for the moment name change will do. With PR flair, at the start of Ramadan, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS, or ISIL - the Islamic State of the Levant - to some) solemnly declared, from now on, it will be known as Islamic State (IS).

"To be or not to be" is so … metaphysically outdated. IS is - and here it is - in full audio glory. And we're talking about the full package - Caliph included: "the slave of Allah, Ibrahim Ibn 'Awwad Ibn Ibrahim Ibn 'Ali Ibn Muhammad al-Badrial-Hashimi al-Husayni al-Qurashi by lineage, as-Samurra'i by birth and upbringing, al-Baghdadi by residence and scholarship". Or, to put it more simply, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

IS has virtually ordered "historic" al-Qaeda - yes, that 9/11-related (or not) plaything of one Osama bin Laden - as well as every other jihadi outfit on the planet, to pledge allegiance to the new imam, in theological theory the new lord over every Muslim. There's no evidence Osama's former sidekick, Ayman "the doctor" al-Zawahiri will obey, not to mention 1.5 billion Muslims across the world. Most probably al-Qaeda will say "we are the real deal" and a major theological catfight will be on.


Read More

The Superpower and the Caliphate: ISIS’s Declaration of an Islamic State Signals Collapse of U.S. Strategy in the Region

“The game plan that was hatched in 2011 for Libya, Syria, Iraq – for the whole region – is kaput.”

ISIS member prepares to execute a prisoner. (Screen capture from
ISIS video)

By Glen Ford, BAR

Don’t believe the hype that the CIA is behind ISIS’s declaration of an Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. “The Caliphate threatens, not only its immediate adversaries, but the potentates of the Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and the Mother of All Monarchist Corruption in the Arab Sunni heartland, the Saudi royal family.” It also signals the collapse of U.S. strategy in the region.

ISIS has proclaimed its caliphate, and the world will never be the same again. Although the territorial scope of the jihadist political entity will shift with the fortunes of battle, or maybe even vanish, the emergence of the “Islamic State” signals the final collapse of U.S. imperial strategy in the Muslim world – certainly, in the Arab regions of Islam.

“The legality of all emirates, groups, states and organizations becomes null by the expansion of the caliph’s authority and the arrival of its troops to their areas,” said Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, spokesman for the fighters formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. “Listen to your caliph and obey him. Support your state, which grows every day.”

Think of it as a Salafist declaration of independence – not just from al Qaida, whose marginality in the region was confirmed when its designated affiliate in Syria, Al-Nusra, swore allegiance to ISIS – but from the Arab monarchies and western intelligence agencies that have nurtured the international jihadist network for almost two generations. The Caliphate threatens, not only its immediate adversaries in the Shiite-dominated governments of Syria and Iraq, but the potentates of the Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and the Mother of All Monarchist Corruption in the Arab Sunni heartland, the Saudi royal family. The threat is not inferential, but literal, against “all emirates, groups, states and organizations” that do not recognize that ISIS in its new incarnation is the embodiment of Islam at war.

The jihadist die is cast, a point of no return for the U.S. strategy of projecting imperial power in the region through armed Islamic fundamentalist surrogates. The international jihadist network, which did not exist before the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan created it to undermine the leftist secular government of Afghanistan in mid-1979, has become a movement that can no longer be controlled. The physical contours of the ISIS caliphate, the movement’s dynamic new focal point, may prove indefensible, especially if the Americans decide they cannot avoid an all-out assault on their former asset. But, whatever the U.S. military response, the game plan that was hatched in 2011 for Libya, Syria, Iraq – for the whole region – is kaput, based as it is on the reliable deployment of jihadists as surrogates for NATO and Arab royals. Worse, the Arab oil potentates understand full well that their own regimes are now in grave danger from the indigenous monstrosity they have created. The Saudis, in particular, justify their family’s monopolizing of the Arabian peninsula’s great wealth as reward for safeguarding the holy sites of Islam. No doubt the “Islamic State,” with its movable borders and swiftly expanding pan-Arab and even pan-Muslim constituency, would be glad to assume these responsibilities – over the dead bodies of those Saudi princes who did not escape to London, Paris and New York. The same goes for all the royal lineages aligned with the West and, de facto, Israel.

“U.S. policymakers have no idea how to reposition themselves in the region.”

It is true that the United States retains nearly limitless power to create chaos in the region. Chaos is useful in preventing conventional governments and civil societies from achieving national goals that are inimical to imperialism. But chaos is not empty; it is a cauldron in which contradictions can become explosively acute. The jihadists are, at root, anti-imperialists – inalterably opposed to domination by the “Crusaders” of the West and Zionists. As we have previously asserted, the fundamentalist jihad, although profoundly reactionary, inevitably behaves much like a kind of nationalism – for some, it fills a political void left by the demise of yesteryear’s secular pan-Arab nationalism. ISIS now claims to be the expression of that nationalist-like yearning, as the “Islamic State.”

If you think all this is the work of the CIA, then thank them profusely for accelerating the epic unraveling of U.S. imperial strategy in the Muslim world. As during the days when America’s Egyptian stooge Mubarak was pushed from power, threatening an “Arab Spring” that might depose the oil monarchies, U.S. policymakers have no idea how to reposition themselves in the region. The Americans cannot replace the jihadists as foot soldiers of imperialism. Thus, a period of ad-libbing begins, which will surely involve ostentatious displays of U.S. military prowess, as the Americans remind themselves and everyone else that a superpower outranks a caliphate.

__________

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.

Egypt’s Deep State Rediscovers Itself

Protesters confront Egyptian police. (Screen capture from YouTube video)

By Amr Osman
It is now evident that the coup has not taken Egypt any step closer to a 'real state' where the supreme authority lies within its elected legislature, issuing laws and holding the government to account. On the contrary, the coup has deepened the roots of the deep state, resulting in an entity that is far from modern.

If there is anything positive in the events in Egypt since the military’s junta against its elected president on 3 July 2013, it would be the exposure of what has conventionally come to be called the 'deep state', which is a result of this deep state rediscovering itself.

Among the various groups that participated in the January 25 revolution – Egypt’s real and only revolution – many seem to have sincerely wished to transform Egypt into a state that respected the dignity of its citizens. In fact, they wanted to restore the state – that is, their state – from a corrupt coalition that had hijacked it for decades and divided it into what looked like a confederation of middle-age principalities. The army has its own principality, a giant economic entity with its own factories, supermarkets, and even recreational facilities. As do the police, who are part of the colossal Ministry of the Interior that, in addition to its internal security functions, provides all vital civilian services such as issuing national IDs, passports, etc.

The judiciary is another principality that the parliament cannot even touch without the permission of its lords. The same applies to Al Azhar University and mosque; as well as to the various, and ironically tremendously rich, Sufi ‘orders’; to the equally rich Coptic Church that pretends it is only accountable to God to evade any supervision over its financial and other affairs; to private media that is run by tycoon businessmen who themselves have their own principality, exploiting Egypt’s workers and monopolizing trade in all the vital industries. Last but not least, the Egyptian presidency is a principality of its own, with a budget no one dares to inquire about, that is of course, if it has a fixed budget at all.

Within each of these principalities, different cantons have different privileges and powers. Military police and intelligence officers, for example, have powers and access to benefits other military counterparts envy. A senior police officer in the traffic department within the Ministry of the Interior is no match for a young officer in State Security. Within the judiciary, judges in the State Council may feel resentful towards their arrogant and privileged counterparts in the Supreme Constitutional Court.

This applies to all other principalities, where you always find the powerful and the less powerful; the privileged and the less privileged. But what is common among all these principalities is that they all reject the interference of any outside institution in what they regard as their own domains. This, as it turned out after the revolution, applies to even an elected parliament, as well as the various state bodies put in charge of monitoring the activities of public and private institutions and supposedly fighting corruption.

These various principalities have taken their present shape only gradually as autonomous principalities since the 1950s (many of them did of course already exist, but they were significantly reconstituted after the army’s 1952 coup). Their relationship was determined in a largely ad-hoc manner. At a certain point after their takeover in 1952, the army, as the head of state, was able to exercise a great deal of authority over various state and non-state institutions. In the 1960s they were able to undermine the authority and independence of Al Azhar, the judiciary, private businesses and mass media. In the early 1980s, their second representative (Sadat) felt he had the power even to remove the Pope of the Coptic Church himself – supposedly divinely chosen and appointed – and arrest almost everyone who dared challenge his authority. His policies also gave rise to a new class of businessmen, and the National Democratic Party (NDP) began to assume the role of a moderator to moderate the interests of the various institutions and forces that made up the ruling regime.

Under the army’s third representative in the presidency (Mubarak), each of these institutions began to reassert itself over a long period of time, engaging in a long and mostly silent (but at times turbulent) negotiation with other institutions. However, they never had the opportunity to 'sit down' together to demarcate their respective domains and agree on how to deal with any possible outside threats.

This was well-known before the January revolution. People talked about the “deep state,” even if that exact term was not used. Such awareness was tacitly evident in simple but strongly indicative sayings that Egyptians commonly deployed before the revolution, and particularly when they felt like outsiders in their own country; helpless when the ‘father’ (Mubarak), for example, was grooming his son (Gamal) to ‘inherit the property’ (Egypt). Why not, Egypt is their principality. “It’s their country,” Egyptians used to say.

With the fall of Mubarak in 2011, therefore, Egyptians – ordinary Egyptians who are not part of any principality – felt for the first time that Egypt was theirs, that they were not helpless anymore, and that they could determine their own future by electing their own leaders and their own representatives. This was the real cause of the euphoria that followed the revolution. It was a strong feeling of empowerment following a long period of fear, helplessness, and indifference.

In the interim period between the revolution in 2011 and the coup two and half years later, the principalities of the old state maintained a low profile. The army, now officially in charge, was in the forefront of events, of course. But the events of those years made it clear that their popularity and influence among the Egyptians (which rests on various myths of different kinds) could deplete in a matter of months. Very soon the military realised that things could get out of control and, in their perspective, they did. For the first time since 1952, a civilian became the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, one whose legitimacy came from elsewhere, who expected military obedience from senior military leaders and was brave enough to attempt to sack senior officials to make political gains, and more seriously, could ask questions about an empire that has insightfully been described as a “black box in a black room.”

This ‘non-sense’ had to be stopped, all in the name of national security, and allegedly of saving Egypt from a global conspiracy to sabotage the country in which even world leaders were involved, along with their “internal traitors” and “terrorists”. But the events prior to the election of a civilian president must have made it equally clear to the military that if they wanted to regain control, they would have to rebuild the old coalition of principalities, but now on more conscious grounds, where every principality knows its rights and duties. This is exactly what was going on in Egypt after its revolution; the coup itself was just its culmination.

Admittedly, we do not know exactly when the Egyptian military began to orchestrate the coup or with whom. It is unlikely that the President of the Supreme Court (the judiciary), the Sheikh of Al Azhar and the Orthodox Patriarch (the institutions of the “religious establishment”), the Salafi leader, the journalists (mass media), and the “liberal” politicians (liberal and secular forces) were summoned on the day of the coup to show their full support. These representatives of many of the old principalities had very likely been communicating and negotiating for months. And most likely, they were not just negotiating over whether a coup might succeed or not, but also over how the deep state would be restructured and reconstituted in the post-coup era.

All this would be mere speculation had it not been for the events of the last twelve months. A mere glance over the new Egyptian constitution (and the composition of the committee that produced it) and the presidential decrees – issued by the un-elected, army-appointed interim president (Mansour), who is the President of the Supreme Constitutional Court, and who also held both executive and legislative powers, just as his present successor does – suffices to demonstrate the point. The constitution now recognises the virtual autonomy of the judiciary and the army, with the elected president of the republic stripped from his previous military leadership rights (this, of course, becomes irrelevant when a military leader is the president). Many presidential decrees gave the army ownership or management of various lucrative and vital projects, including real estate, high-ways, as well as entire sea ports.

Other decrees have weakened the ability of the Egyptian judiciary and legislature to protect the Egyptian economy from the abuses of domestic and foreign businesses. And we must not forget the decrees that have nearly outlawed protests or criminalised entire groups of political forces in an attempt to eliminate any potential future threats. These are only examples, but almost every single presidential decree from July 2013 to June 2014 has empowered old institutions and weakened “outsider” institutions, groups, or individuals.

This is all we can see for the time being. What appears to be certain, is that the institutions of the old, deep state have become ‘conscious’, both of themselves as separate entities within the state (to the extent we can talk about a state in this context), and of their inter-dependence. Yet as much as this consciousness seems to have strengthened these institutions (to the extent that they successfully orchestrated a counter-revolution with popular support), it may also trigger their undoing.

Each one of these institutions now has both expectations and what they regard as their entitlements for their role in the coup. It is not unlikely that these institutions – whose relationships are based on purely pragmatic calculation but who are otherwise worlds apart – could fail to continue in balancing their respective interests and the interests of the entire coalition that brought Egypt back to square one. This does not necessarily mean that all of them will collapse, but it means that at least some of them will collapse or simply concede to the power of others in a hierarchy of authority, power, and privileges.

Whatever the circumstance, it is now evident that the coup has not taken Egypt any step closer to being a 'real state' where the supreme authority lies within its elected legislature, issuing laws and holding the government to account. On the contrary, the coup has deepened the roots of the deep state, resulting in an entity that is far from modern.

Reprinted with permission from openDemocracy.