Middle East: Bush Out. posted by Richard Seymour

According to Adam Shatz in the Los Angeles Times , Bush's embrace can prove deadly for dissidents in Arab countries - driving the poor and oppressed into the arms of Hezbollah against the US which, having invaded Iraq and given carte blanche support to Israel, gets no props in the Middle East. Gary Younge makes a similar point in the South African Mail & Guardian.

Fortunately, the real resistance in the Middle East is taking off regardless. This report from this year's Cairo Conference sums up the mood:

The gathering mood for change meant there was a fascinating mixture of Islamic, nationalist, socialist, peasant and trade union activists from across Egypt. On the first evening over 1,000 people crammed into the opening rally, which was followed by three days of discussion.

The dominant theme of the conference was the urgent need to oppose the occupation of Iraq and how real reform could be achieved in Egypt.

The democracy hailed by George Bush and the Washington neo-cons is not the democracy people in the Arab world are fighting for. In Egypt a new campaign called Kifaya — “Enough” in Arabic — has been launched, calling for real democracy.

The campaign is demanding the end of Hosni Mubarak’s reign as president and opposes plans to nominate his son as the next president.

Yes, yes, I know that dirty ' I ' word was slipped into that report. Well, They can sometimes have as much interest in overthrowing dictatorship as anyone else. The report continues:

Dina is a member of the anti-globalisation movement in Egypt. “There is rising struggle in Egypt,” she says.

“The vast majority of Egyptians want an end to corruption that allows billions of dollars to be salted away by officials and their hangers on. We want an end to the emergency laws that have been used to keep people down. We want an end to laws that outlaw independent political organisations and trade unions, and ban public gatherings. In the last 24 years over 20,000 people have been killed by the state.

“Every day in Cairo the police sweep through the underground Metro or stop minibuses heading to the slums that ring Egypt’s capital. They seize young men on the pretext that they are cracking down on Islamic militants, or looking for drugs. They seize you if they find a piece of hashish on you, or if you have forgotten your ID papers.

“Every night they pack off hundreds of young men to police stations and state security centres. If you are lucky they might hold you for a couple of hours, or a couple of days. If your luck is rotten they will beat you, or torture you with electric shocks—a facility available in all of Egypt’s police stations.

“The police have to fill a daily quota of arrests, so they seize people at random. Torture under Mubarak’s regime is routine.”

The most severe repression under the present regime is often meted out to those who dare to oppose the government’s links with the US and Israel.

There are also interviews with two attendees of the Cairo conference, one a delegate supporter of Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, the other a Sunni intellectual.

Meanwhile, a memo shows that the US commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, authorised the use of torture . No wonder, then, that Sadr's follower calls for million strong anti-US demo .

Finally, why is the government blocking investigations into the murder of Iain Hook, a UNRWA official, by Israeli forces?