SUSANNE DAHLGREN, susanne.dahlgren at helsinki.fi
Dahlgren writes frequently on Yemen. She is Academy of Finland research fellow with the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and the author of Contesting Realities: The Public Sphere and Morality in Southern Yemen. (Syracuse Univ. Press 2010). She said today: “Today Yemen will have presidential ‘elections” with only one candidate, Vice President Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi from Saleh’s party. It is questionable that these elections represent a step forward, and for sure, they hardly reflect the demands of the popular uprising. In fact what we have in Yemen now is the old card trick called ‘dialogue’ Saleh has used for years to lure his opposition into bad compromises. Many Yemenis refuse to believe in Hadi’s leadership. They remember last summer when Saleh spent months hospitalized in Saudi Arabia after a rocket attack and Hadi acted as the nominal head while Saleh’s sons actually held power. The losers of Yemen’s stalemate situation are those who dared to risk their lives to demand justice and fairness, and in today’s Yemen, it is the majority of people. As one indication of the seriousness of the situation in Yemen, the government prevents foreign observers to enter the country in the manner of the Syrian regime.”
News Release Archive | democracy | Accuracy.Org
Yemen “Elections”
The .0000063% Election
ARI BERMAN, ari at thenation.com
Berman just wrote the piece “The .0000063% Election: How the Politics of the Super Rich Became American Politics,” which states: “At a time when it’s become a cliché to say that Occupy Wall Street has changed the nation’s political conversation — drawing long overdue attention to the struggles of the 99% — electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the 1%. Or, to be more precise, the .0000063%. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80 percent of the money raised by super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each.
“These political action committees, spawned by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision in January 2010, can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations, or unions for the purpose of supporting or opposing a political candidate. In theory, super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating directly with a candidate, though in practice they’re just a murkier extension of political campaigns, performing all the functions of a traditional campaign without any of the corresponding accountability. …
“The Wesleyan Media Project recently reported a 1,600 percent increase in interest-group-sponsored TV ads in this cycle as compared to the 2008 primaries. Florida has proven the battle royal of the super PACs thus far. There, the pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, outspent the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, five to one. In the last week of the campaign alone, Romney and his allies ran 13,000 TV ads in Florida, compared to only 200 for Gingrich. Ninety-two percent of the ads were negative in nature, with two-thirds attacking Gingrich, who, ironically enough, had been a fervent advocate of the Citizens United decision.
“With the exception of Ron Paul’s underdog candidacy and Rick Santorum’s upset victory in Iowa — where he spent almost no money but visited all of the state’s 99 counties — the Republican candidates and their allied super PACs have all but abandoned retail campaigning and grassroots politicking. They have chosen instead to spend their war chests on TV.”
Berman wrote the piece for TomDispatch.com and is a contributing writer for the Nation magazine and author of “Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics.”
Palestinians, Israel and Freedom and Democracy
AHMET DOGAN, via Ann Wright, Greta Berlin
Professor Dogan, whose 18-year-old son Furkan was killed during the Israeli military raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in May 2010, is in Washington, D.C. He hopes to convince U.S. officials to open an independent investigation into his son’s killing by Israeli commandos and to discuss with them what the U.S. has done, or will do, to ensure justice and accountability for his son’s killing. Furkan was an American citizen born in Troy, New York while his father was finishing his master’s degree.
Professor Dogan just wrote a piece titled “A Father Speaks for His Son,” which states: “The Obama administration’s failure to support my son and my family’s humanitarian concern for Palestinians comes from the same misguided policy that has led to decades of support for Middle East autocrats and Israeli governments that have long oppressed Palestinians. … Furkan, though young, also saw the bigger picture. He sought not simply humanitarian relief for Palestinians, but also freedom from Israeli subjugation. With freedom advancing in Tunisia, Egypt, and around the Gulf, Palestinians’ long efforts to free themselves from Israeli domination are also worthy of recognition and support.”
Note: Former Israel Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni writes today in the Washington Post of “the pursuit of aims by peaceful means, commitment to the rule of law and to equality before the law.” See previously “Livni: A lawyer ‘against law’?”
NOUR JOUDAH
Joudah is a graduate student at Georgetown University and a spokesperson for the U.S. Palestinian Community Network. She said today: “The leadership of the Palestinian Authority acted without proper delegation from the Palestinian people. Their actions echo the dictatorial rule that has typified the rest of the Arab world and however unfortunate, it is no surprise that the PA has suppressed popular Palestinian protests in solidarity with the Egyptian people in the Occupied West Bank. As Arabs move to protest such rule over their lives, from Tunisians, to Egyptians to Yemenis to Jordanians, Libyans and Bahrainis, we also move as Palestinians of the U.S., refugees outside our land and an inseparable part, like other Palestinian refugees the world over, of the Palestinian national body, to protest the dictatorial and unrepresentative rule of the PA.” USPCN will hold a news conference on Monday outside the PLO offices in Washington, D.C.
Background: Recently Al-Jazeera released the “Palestine Papers,” which document acquiescence by the PA to Israel. The head Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, resigned after their release.
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Egypt: Resources and Interviews
“There’s a Reason Public Opinion in the the Arab World Isn’t Pro-American”
Note on Internet: With major protests planned for Friday, the Egyptian government late Thursday disconnected the Internet and Egyptian mobile phones. People are finding some ways of overcoming this. The Institute for Public Accuracy is highlighting online connections that 
are available via accuracy.org/online-resources-on-egypt — regularly updating all day Friday.
SHEILA CARAPICO
Professor of political science and international studies at Richmond University and currently visiting at the American University in Cairo, Carapico told the Institute for Public Accuracy shortly before phone lines were cut: “Earlier this week Hillary Clinton said that Egypt is ‘stable’ — but Egyptians are not interested in stability. They’re interested in change. Then, she urged ‘restraint’ by ‘both sides.’ This is an absurd statement. You have people protesting for democracy who are being assaulted by a massive state apparatus with rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannons.
“The women [in the protests] are unveiled. That’s a strong indication these protests are not from the Muslim Brotherhood. For the past ten or more years we’ve been indicating that the reason we don’t want the Arab electorate to take over is because we don’t want the Brotherhood. Now we’ve backed off from that to say this may not be the Brotherhood, but it’s not pro-American. But I’m sorry, there’s a reason why public opinion in the Arab world isn’t pro-American. And that’s because American foreign policy isn’t pro-public opinion in the Arab world.
[Read more...]
The Mideast * “A New Era” * From Cairo
SEIF DA’NA
Seif Da’Na is an associate professor of sociology and international studies at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside specializing in Mideast and North Africa. He said today: “Repercussions of the Tunisia example will be deep and significant and will be felt throughout the region. The uprising signifies not only the failure of the neo-liberal economic model that Arab regimes pursued, but also the futility of political oppression to enforce this model in the long run. The event signifies the beginning of a new era that must be seen as a process of change and might lead to the creation of a new region. The demands by people on the street we are seeing in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere are broad. They are political, economic, and social demands signifying the dead-end of a system that employed excessive political oppression to enforce destructive neo-liberal economic policies. Privatizing the public sector essentially reversed the post independence economic achievements of these countries, increased inequality, and created intolerable living conditions for a significant part of the population. [Read more...]
Interviews Available with Tunisians: “A Third Way”
Protests continued today in Tunisia, with the ruling party’s headquarters surrounded and its signage dismantled.
RADIA DAOUSSI
Daoussi, a Tunisian native, is the president of the Vineeta Foundation, a non-profit focusing on public health and human rights. She also works for international organizations, including UNDP, UNICEF, and the World Bank. Daoussi said today: “Tunisians have not let down their movement, it’s not like Ben Ali is out and we can all go home. The Ben Ali regime was supported by the U.S. government for years with hundreds of millions of dollars. Ali came to visit the U.S. under Bush. Tunisia has apparently been a major player in the ‘rendition’ program. Tunisia followed the IMF structural adjustment programs, cutting subsides for food and fuel. It was heralded by the IMF, by France and the U.S. as a model for the Third World because of its growth, but it was dependent on tourism. It did provide good education, but not many jobs.
“For all the talk of democracy by U.S. officials, this was a homegrown movement, not planned out by the U.S. military or government. It’s past time for people in the U.S. to ask what price there is for ‘stability.’ There’s a third way — not pro-U.S. authoritarianism or repressive Islamic rule — a true democracy.” Daoussi is speaking at a forum tonight in Washington, D.C.
The following activists are available for a limited number of media interviews form Tunisia (please call between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. Tunisia time, which is 6 hours ahead of U.S. ET):
[Read more...]
Tunisian Academic: “Will Not Recognize This Band of Thugs”
NOUREDDINE JEBNOUN, [beginning Tues. 2:00 pm ET]
Available for a very limited number of interviews with major media outlets, Jebnoun is visiting assistant professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He said today: “Today, in Tunisia, a new government has been announced and mainly led by the same old guard of criminals from the Constitutional Democratic Rally, which is neither ‘constitutional’ nor ‘democratic’ but an aggregation of thugs and criminals that Tunisian people, who sacrificed themselves for freedom and dignity, must place under trial. I will not recognize this government and I do not consider this government representative of the genuine aspirations of the heroic Tunisian people. Our people who were killed by the snipers of the praetorian Presidential Guard as well as by mercenaries hired by [ousted dictator/President] Ben Ali from Belarus and Serbia deserve better compensation than being represented by this mediocre political class; which in reality has neither legitimacy nor credibility. [Read more...]
