New research sheds light on a key dietary change in early human evolution

By Philip Guelpa, wsws.org

14 October 2013

Recently published research provides a strong new line of evidence that the evolutionary split between hominins (the group that includes modern humans and their ancestors) and great apes (gorillas and chimpanzees) involved a major change in diet.

Three articles in the June 25, 2013 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) report on research using carbon isotopes in the tooth enamel of a large sample of early hominin fossils. The result more precisely defines when these human ancestors shifted from a diet focused on woodland plants to one including significant quantities of grasses and other open-land plants.

Each article focuses on data from a different country—Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa—which has yielded numerous early hominin fossils. The research was done by over two dozen scientists from institutions in Africa, Europe and North America. It supports the previous interpretation, based on fossil morphology and environmental setting, that early hominins underwent a significant change in diet as part of their adaptation to a new environment. It also provides additional details regarding the timing of this important aspect of their evolution.

The first article reports on research which examined fossils from the Hadar Formation in Ethiopia, the second on studies of specimens from the Turkana Basin in Kenya, and the third on South African specimens from a number of localities. These are accompanied by an overview article by Richard Klein.

Together, these studies indicate that the earliest hominins, dating to before 4 million years ago (mya) had a diet not distinguishable from that of chimpanzees. By 3.5 mya, however, a notable shift had taken place—the inclusion of a significant proportion of grassland resources in their diet. This may even have included meat from grazing animals that ate such plants (i.e., by hunting or scavenging), though there is at present little corroborating evidence for this possibility.

The dietary change combined with the earlier adoption of bipedalism (upright walking) to mark the definitive break by hominins from the forest-dwelling great apes and set them on an evolutionary path that ultimately produced modern humans.

The last common ancestor of humans and great apes, possibly the species Ardipithicus ramidus or a close relative (see “ New fossils provide insights into early human evolution ”), dated to 4.4 million years ago, was a forest dweller, but may have been at least partially bipedal.

During the Pliocene geological epoch (5.3 to 2.6 mya) extensive tropical woodland areas in Africa began to shrink in response to gradual drying and cooling of the climate, which eventually led to the ice ages of the Pleistocene. Populations of the last common ancestor were faced with the option of either trying to survive in the shrinking forests or to venture out onto the expanding grasslands. Those that did the former eventually became the modern great apes. Those that followed the latter course evolved into hominins. A number of lines of evidence have helped to elucidate this transition.

Evidence of bipedalism can be clearly seen in the major modifications to the skeletons of early hominins, in particular the feet, lower limbs, pelvis, and spine. Changes in the diet have been inferred based on modifications of dentition (from teeth designed for chopping vegetation to ones better suited for grinding seeds), as well as a reduction in prognathism (forward projection of the jaws), also to assist in grinding food. The environmental settings in which early hominin fossils have been found also suggest a change in diet from forest to grassland resources. However, these indicators of dietary change are all indirect—they form the basis for inference about the use of new food sources, but are not remains of the foods themselves.

The evidence presented in the new papers published in PNAS represents actual traces—in this case isotopes of carbon atoms—from the foods our ancestors ate. Carbon atoms have two stable variants (isotopes) that are found throughout nature. Ratios of isotopes, such as those in fossilized tooth enamel, often give insight into biological or physical processes, revealing important information about the diets or environments of animals from the past.

Studies of carbon isotopes over the last 20 years have helped show how grasslands spread throughout Africa, pushing back forests, for more than 10 million years. This has been possible because many grasses use a special photosynthetic pathway—called a C4 pathway—that sequesters more of the heavier carbon isotopes into plant tissues than ordinary “C3” plants. These heavier isotopes from plants make their way into soils, and into the bones and teeth of animals grazing on the landscape. Isotopes from fossils in Africa show that as grasslands expanded, more and more herbivores began eating C4 grasses instead of other plants.

The newly reported research in PNAS used these differences in plants to assemble information about the diets of our early ancestors. It provides an independent line of evidence that tends to support the previous interpretation of a shift in early hominin diet as a characteristic of the initial development of this lineage. Furthermore, it indicates that this shift must have taken place prior to 3.4 million years ago, since all the specimens of Australopithecus afarensis, the species that includes the famous fossil “Lucy,” which date to that time, show the chemical signature of the changed diet, encompassing a wide range of foods.

This dietary shift most likely occurred during the movement of early hominins onto the grasslands, beginning at least a million years earlier, perhaps represented by the earlier australopithecine species— Australopithecus anamensis. Specimens of this species that have been tested, dating to between 4.1 and 3.9 million years ago, do not show elevated C4 plant consumption. This suggests that the dietary shift occurred sometime between 3.9 and 3.4 million years ago, a time span from which no suitable fossils are currently available.

The presumed ancestor of the australopithecine line and perhaps of great apes as well, Ardipithicus ramidus, dating to 4.4 million years ago, shows little evidence of consuming C4 plants. By contrast, later species of East African Australopithecus show ranges for C4 consumption similar to those for Australopithecus afarensis.

Based on their data, the researchers propose that Australopithecus afarensis was a “generalist omnivore,” consuming a wide variety of plants, insects, and even small game, perhaps by scavenging.

Data derived from specimens of Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus, South African hominins that date to around 2.5 mya, indicate a continuing omnivorous diet, including both C3 and C4 plants for the former and a focused C4 plant diet for the latter, suggesting a concentration on grasses. Paranthropus, the specialized grazer, eventually became extinct. Australopithecus africanus, on the other hand, may be closely related to the earliest members of the genus Homo, the lineage that ultimately gave rise to modern humans. This suggests that dietary flexibility may have been an important component of human adaptation.

The next big shift in hominin diet occurred with the appearance of the earliest members of the genus Homo, about 2.5 million years ago (overlapping in time with the later australopithecines), when the first evidence of stone tool use as well as of meat consumption is found.

What is not fully understood is the apparent lag between the adoption of bipedalism and the dietary shift. Perhaps the movement out of the forest was very gradual, involving a long period during which the earliest hominins remained largely on the forest fringes rather than going permanently out onto the savannah, continuing to rely on food sources found in the former while beginning to experiment with those of the latter. New forms of social organization necessary to adapt to the alien environment (collective defense against predators, for example) and the initial development of technology are likely to have taken time to evolve.

Re-assessing Political Islam: Part II

Pinochet: America’s thug in Santiago. “Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood.” Are the Egyptian generals following his template?

Written by Eric Walberg Эрик Вальберг/ Уолберг إيريك ولبر Tuesday, 15 October 2013 19:10

Cairo graffiti (2011): 'Life, revolution'

The Pinochet-style coup in Egypt in July 2013, 40 years after the Chilean coup, gives pause to reconsider Islamic political strategy. It took Chile 25 year before Pinochet was arrested (ironically, in Britain on a Spanish warrant), and he died eight years later without being convicted at the age of 91. Chilean socialists retook power 27 years after the coup, but their party was no threat to capitalism, a pale ghost of Allende’s revolution. Is this the fate of the Arab Spring?Muhammad’s political legacyReflecting on the state of political Islam in the post-1979 world, in Stages of Islamic Revolution (1996), Kalim Siddiqui looks for guidance to Muhammad’s political legacy:*Islam (the world means ‘peace’) does not shrink from conflict; however, war is a last resort, and must have a higher moral purpose, not territorial or economic gain, but for defense of the umma. When the Muslims emigrated to Medina, the Quraish invaded Medina to prevent it from becoming established as an Islam state, but this actually helped consolidate the political and military power of Islam there and subsequently over the Arab peninsula. (Think: Blowback, e.g., the Iraqi invasion of Iran and ongoing threats by US-Israel to invade Iran strengthened the Iranian revolution.)

*Establishing Islamic rule requires an open movement approach which gathers all on board, as Muhammad established in setting up Medina as the first Islamic state. The political party approach is divisive, and gets bogged down by early compromises and deals with existing political forces. (Recall Iran after the revolution when liberal Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and President Abolhassan Banisadr objected to the anti-imperialist course of the revolution, the former resigning in November 1979, the latter plotting a new uprising and forced to flee abroad in 1981. Also, the unraveling of the recent revolutions in Tunisian and Egyptian, where liberals similarly split and then worked to sabotage the revolution.)

*In an Islamic state the leadership must be muttaqi (pious) and the citizens must pledge allegiance based on taqwa (piety) for the system to dispense justice. The system of state structures of the previous exploitative state must be replaced. (Think: Khomeini’s velayat e-faqih, the Revolutionary Guards, Jihad for the Reconstruction of Life, the Baseej (mobilization) vs the paralysis in post-revolutionary Tunisia and Egypt.)

As in Iran, in post-revolutionary Egypt, the initial mass movement for change quickly unraveled—secularists such as Nasserist Hamdeen Sobahi, and liberal Mohamed ElBaradei, initially cooperated with the Islamists before turning against them in the name of nationalism, not grounding their actions in taqwa. The Islamists proved helpless, faced with an army in the financial clutches of Washington, which in league with the judiciary and (now 40+) western-style political parties, stripped the Islamist government of meaningful power, sabotaged the economy, and carried out the coup approved in Washington, obviating the need for a messy invasion.

The support of the newly uncorrupt government by the vast majority provided a brief window of justice (a doubling of the minimum wage, new freedoms for Islamists to organize grassroots initiatives to help the poor and encourage a revival of the faith, honest elections), despite the active sabotage of the old state structures, which the coup abruptly ended. Secular leaders, watching as the ‘soft state’ now under the direction of the Islamists became less and less relevant, mounted a hysterical campaign to overthrow the popular government, abandoning the revolution and calling on the old guard to take back control through brute force to end all pretense to justice.

Qutb’s legacy

Siddiqui approves of Sayyid Qutb’s rejection of nationalism in Milestones (1964) and his call for broad-based revolution, leading to the overthrow of the imperialist order. But the revolution in Iran was not Qutbian.

While nationalism was not a major force in overthrowing the Shah (who had tried to whip up a Persian Empire chauvinism to counter Islam), the unity of the post-revolutionary state in the face of invasion certainly relied on a gut patriotism. And the original uprising was largely peaceful (more like a general strike), and succeeded only when troops defected in large numbers, refusing to shoot the demonstrators.

The Egyptian coup worked precisely because of the strident appeal to nationalism, and accusations that the MB was not concerned enough about Egyptians, more interested in liberating al-Quds (Jerusalem). Ironically, the coup united people outside Egypt in condemning it, while it split Egyptians largely based on the appeal of nationalism.

Yes, Muhammad fought against narrow tribal identity and racism, but a benign nationalism can appeal to ethnicity and culture, and is not necessarily based on imperialism, exploitation, chauvinism, racism.

Siddiqui’s militant analysis was appropriated by the al-Qaeda types, who he dismissed in 1996 as “pockets of obscurantist conservatism”, who also denounce nationalism (though they are noted for their Saudi/ Arab chauvinism), belittle western-style elections, and spurn a broad alliance with leftists/ liberals. The attacks by the Egyptian Islamic Society and Islamic Jihad in Egypt in the 1990s resulted in the deaths of 800 Egyptian policemen and soldiers, rebels, and civilians including dozens of tourists.

While there is a grudging respect for al-Qaeda-type martyrs among the Sunni masses, this mostly random killing of civilians (mostly Muslims) is antithetical to Islam, and has acted time and again to justify brutal crackdowns under Mubarak and today. Other conflicts of the 1990s involving Islamists (Bosnia, Kashmir, Afghanistan, even Egypt) have not led to any clear victories a la Iran.

On the contrary, the Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo ended up welcoming the imperialists as their ‘saviors’; Kashmir is draped in the Pakistani flag; and the “pockets of obscurantist conservatism” took control in Afghanistan and continue to insinuate themselves into legitimate struggles in such places as Algeria and Mali. They are inspired not by the intent of the Quran, but by their mortal enemies, the imperialists, who made terrorism against civilian populations the bedrock of 20^th century totalitarian rule. In a sense, the Bin Ladens are the dying gasp of the imperialist order, sharing the stage with their American and Saudi nemeses. The al-Qaeda types took Qutb’s 19^th century anarchist-like revolutionary strategy to a fatal extreme, and have compromised more thoughtful efforts at Islamic renewal. (Think:Baader–Meinhof multiplied ‘n’ times around the world.)

Towards a global Islamic movement

Siddiqui asserted a “global Islamic movement” was already in place following the victory of the Iranian revolution and the mujahideen in Afghanistan: “the globalization process is now complete … new ideas based on hard political facts and the setting of goals attainable by defined and tried methods are now setting [its] agenda.” He hailed the “emergence of political consensus amongst Muslims all over the world.”

This boast was wildly optimistic. Islamists are far from united:

*Most western Muslims are assimilationist, faced with Islamophobia;

*“Obscurantist conservatives” working at times with the imperialists (Libya, Syria) have provided an excellent excuse to block any genuine Islamic alternative;

*Stark sectarianism continues to plague the umma, confirmed by the ongoing mass killings of Shia civilians by Sunni in Iraq, the persecution of Shia in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and the civil war in Syria. Iran’s example engenders more envy than respect among Sunni leaders, which sadly translated into popular suspicion of Iran and Shia.

Siddiqui, like many other critics both Muslim and secular, dismisses the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a misguided tool of the Saudis and/or Americans, given that they sought political asylum in Saudi Arabia and the West under Nasser and Mubarak. But what option did they have? Whatever interaction there is between Islamists and imperialists is a two-way street, and the sharpened enmity between Islamists and secularists following the Egyptian coup is a stark corrective. The ongoing mass killings of MB supporters in Egypt is hailed by the Saudi and Gulf monarchies, whose real agenda as supporters of imperialism has never been clearer.

Siddiqui uncritically praised the jihadists and Taliban in Afghanistan as true revolutionaries, defeating single-handedly the Soviet ‘empire’, ignoring the massive US-Saudi backing and the unholy alliance of not only the West and the new genuine Islamist government in Iran, but communist China, and the dubious Islamic qualifications of many so-called jihadists, who needed no credentials to be equipped with deadly weapons, who included mercenaries and drug smugglers, and whose understanding of Islam was a fundamentalist, dogmatic one, derived from the Saudi Islam-by-rote taught in madrassas in the mountains of Pakistan.

It was these jihadists who were the tools of the Saudis and/or Americans. The same goes for Egypt’s liberals, not the MBers languishing in Egyptian jails or teaching in Saudi universities and now demanding the restoration of the elected government. The Taliban did more to undermine genuine Islamic renewal than to promote it. And how to explain that Iranian Islamists are implacable foes of Afghan’s Taliban, and staunch supporters of Syria’s secularist dictator against the motley array of ‘Islamists’ there? One thing that is ‘clear’ is that there is little b/w in politics, including Islamic politics.

Iranian experience is indeed germane to the Sunni world, which will only move towards genuine independence through mass support for homegrown Islamists, in the first place, the Sunni MBs, culminating in the collapse of the existing neocolonial regimes. The Sunni Middle East was more thoroughly integrated into the imperial order, so this scenario requires that the empire withdraw its support for its local secular regimes, a prospect that is possible only with the unraveling of the neocolonial order itself.

Power in Islam

Power is central to Islam; you can’t relieve oppression/ injustice if you are weak. Muhammad was a brilliant political strategist, and his progress from simple trader to head of a powerful new socio-political and religious formation indeed deserves careful consideration by his followers today. For while earlier prophets also became rulers (Yusuf, Dawud, Sulayman), they inherited rule from previous sovereigns. Muhammad was the first to build a political formation from scratch, providing a template for any future Islamic society.

What is the Prophet’s understanding of ‘power’? How did he acquire and use power? What role did military campaigns play in generating more power? How did the Prophet share power with others?

These are the questions that Siddiqui raised and that Zafar Bangash addresses in Power Manifestations of the Sirah (2011), where he analyzes in detail Muhammad’s political writings—the hijra (exile), the Constitution of Medina, treaties with various tribes, letters inviting world leaders to Islam, and the Prophet’s final khutba(sermon)—and reflects on their relevance in today’s world.

There are 250+ letters, treaties of the Prophet. The prophetic mission lasted 23 yrs, and the next 10 years saw the rapid triumph of Islam throughout the Arabian Peninsula, the result of careful planning, strategic alliances, and judicious use of force to neutralize the power of enemies without wholesale destruction or massacres.

Lessons from Muhammad’s political writings

*A wise leader pursues not war, but ‘soft power’—treaties honoring the legitimate needs of participating constituencies. Muslims moved to Medina and later returned to Mecca by invitation not invasion. (Europeans were not invited to the New World, nor were Jews invited to colonize the Holy Land.)

*The hijras (to Abyssinia, Medina) were necessary both for personal safety, to propagate the message of Islam and, in the latter case, to provide a base for establishing Islamic governance. In sending some of his followers to Abyssinia, Muhammad boldly wrote directly to King Negus, asking him to provide the Muslims asylum. The germ of an Islamic state whose leader held temporal power on the level of a king was there even in exile.

*The Constitution of Medina, arguably the world’s first constitution, set new rules of conduct in a divinely conforming society: any believer in need is the responsibility of all other believers; Jews have equal status with Muslims; mercy is better than punishment, but punishment is also a form of mercy to ‘balance accounts’ and protect the umma; no individual/ group can enter into separate arrangements with enemies of the state.

*The latter allowed Muhammad to make formal treaties with nearby tribes preventing them allying with the Quraish of Mecca, consolidating Muslim power. This culminated in the Treaty of Hudaybiya with the Quraish, where Muhammad made significant compromises to achieve his political goals, foregoing the hajj that year but established peace for 10 years. This implicitly recognized the Muslim state in Medina, allowing the rapid expansion of Islam and preventing further Quraishi conspiring.

*Muhammad’s political testament came in his final sermon during his last hajj to Mecca, where he emphasizes the cultivation of an Islamic personality, the necessity of both economic and social justice, stressed the danger of riba (usury, based on greed) as opposed to sadaqa (charity, based on compassion).

*To lead a revolution requires a strong, confident leadership, motivated by belief and compassion. Muhammad always remained optimistic, exuding confidence. He told Quraishi leaders who were persecuting him early on that they would conquer the Byzantine and Persian empires if they accepted Islam, already aware of his power and authority through his divine inspiration. They laughed at him and drove him out of Mecca, but he returned 10 years later peacefully—though he smashed their idols—and they willingly converted en masse to Islam. And together, the Byzantine and Persian empires were conquered.

*Power must be consolidated in the hands of a just executive authority (state) to represent all factions in the body politic. Institutional injustice cannot be corrected by individuals alone. Whereas corrupt politicians seek to amass rights and wealth for themselves and minimize their responsibilities to society, Muslims even where they are a minority have an extra responsibility to society, based on belief that the worldly journey is a mere reflection of the spiritual one, and must reflect spiritual values. Without the fearless self-assurance that comes with acceptance of divine guidance, the individual as well as societies soon succumb to the corrosive influence of power and wealth. ‘Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely’, unless the leadership holds to moral laws above man. Islam regulates use of power to avoid the rich (powerful) using their advantage to exploit the weak (poor).

Lessons from Egypt’s first Islamic government

Looking back on the fateful period in Egypt that marked the brief rule of the first Islamist government, there are many lessons to be learned. Not cynical Machiavellian ones, but ones grounded in the Quran, which must be read and reread (tajdid), the life experience of the Prophet (sira, sunna), and applied in our ever-evolving historical context (ijtihad).

*The result of the Treaty of Hudaybiya suggests that when history is on your side (as Islamists believe) the old order can collapse quickly and a new order can be ushered in relatively peacefully. The Iranian revolution confirmed this, even in the age of empire, as did five elections in post-revolutionary Egypt.

*Alliances with non-Muslims are always necessary, but beware traitors.

*Yes, nationalism is dangerous, but it is wrong to ignore the real forces at work, which must be harnessed.

*Sharia and an Islamic state are essential, but they are concepts which evolve and require careful input from both scholars and the umma.

Just how the MB’s relations with other ‘progressive’ forces could have been better is a moot point now. The MB leaders were unable to find common ground with the opposition, even those socialists whose aims are largely those of Islam—social and economic justice. Islamists have been traditionally intransigent towards socialism, dismissing it as just a variant of secular materialism, lacking a moral center. But trust-building is a two-way street, and there is little evidence of the opposition making any concessions in order to meet the MB halfway.

Essential to the success of the Islamist project today is recognition of the important difference between capitalism and communism—the latter based on social justice, banning of interest, speculation and exploitation, though flawed by its militant secularism. The Muslim Central Asian states, after several decades of state repression of religion, became far more prosperous than their neocolonial Muslim neighbors, and voted overwhelmingly to keep the Soviet Union intact. A reformed communism could arguably have accommodated a genuine revival of Islam there. This includes Afghanistan, where the 1978 socialist ‘revolution’ was instigated solely by Afghans and was only reluctantly supported by Moscow, and where any thought of building an Islamic society was lost in the US-led insurgency and subsequent invasion.

Perhaps we are now closer to a ‘global Islamic movement’ after the Egyptian coup. The need for Sunni-Shia convergence in confronting imperialism has never been clearer. The Iranian revolution as bellwether is as compelling as ever, even though attempts to emulate it have not yet succeeded. As well, there are some anti-imperialist forces in the West—both left and right—who see through the smoke and mirrors of Iranophobia and Islamophobia generally, and are readier now to work with Islamists in their common struggle. This is not central to Siddiqui’s pre-911 analysis, but his call for new revolutionary thinking by Muslims, based on the Quran and life of the Prophet, taking into account the historical context, leads logically to this.

Are we in the home stretch for a re-emerging Islamic civilization? The Egyptian coup looks like a desperate last-ditch move to brand Egypt’s body politic indelibly with secularism. But the sands of time shift. The turncoat Salafi and the Mubarakite Al-Azhar sheikhs blessing the coup are already balking at the roughshod rewriting of a constitution that they earlier approved and partially wrote themselves. By banning the MB, torturing and murdering its members, confiscating their property, the secularists only dig themselves deeper into a hole. Astute US political strategists—even Senator John McCain and PNAC notable Robert Kagan—have denounced the coup, along with conservatives such as Ron Paul, though the coup was approved by President Obama, and western leftists have—shamefully—been less categorical.

Humanity’s real enemies have never been clearer. At the same time, terrorism and a prolonged armed insurgency is not the way to achieve victory, as the cumulative post-911 tragedies and now the tragic civil war in Syria demonstrate. Ballot boxes can provide a vehicle for shura (consensus), the bedrock of Islamic democracy.

Islam is not going away, and the next genuine elections in Egypt will return the Islamists to power—as long as they remain united. The triumph of Islam will come only with patient and vigorous analysis and organizing, and patient pursuit of the socio-economic justice. Truth will prevail. Muslims believe this, and there is no reason after 14 centuries, during which Islam has continued to gain adherents, to believe otherwise.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Walberg is author of >From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization http://www.claritypress.com/WalbergII.html

Egypt: End of Hope

Battleground Cairo

by ANDRE VLTCHEK

Cairo

Instead of passion and hope, all there is left on the streets of Cairo is depressing defeatism, frustration and hate.

Once there were heads and hands raised high, and the Egyptian flags flew proudly in the wind; there were fiery speeches, dreams of social justice, of a brand new country with an enormous heart and a distinct place for every citizen. Once it all was not unlike what has been taking place all over Latin America for more than a decade.

But it now appears to be over, burned down and in ruins. These days it is hate that has replaced hope, and there is so much of it, so much hate, all over the capital and all over the country!

And it is not a healthy, constructive hate pointed at savage capitalism or imperialism. It is a depressing hate, a defeatist hate; a hate that Egyptians are now showing towards each other. There is hardly any ideology left, except in the ranks of the Socialist Revolutionary Organization, and very few other groups and movements that are still fighting for the essential values of the 2011 Arab Spring.

There is still a core, a skeleton of the “Movement of the 6^th Of April” – the organization that stood at the vanguard of the Revolution. But even that suddenly appears to be too weak – not strong enough to halt this depressing reverse trend.

As I look down from the bridge at Bulak neighborhood, the citizens are engaged at finder-pointing and loud shouting. Men and women are insulting each other, and soon there are skirmishes and fistfights. This is some sort of local-level settling of scores between the supporters of The Muslim Brotherhood and the followers of the military – that very same military which overthrew the moderate but inept Islamic government in July 2013.

Soon I am spotted and several fists are raised towards me, fingers pointed. One minute later, stones are flying my way.

“Get into the car!” My Egyptian friend shouts at me. “Get inside! If even one person attacks you, the crowd will get here in no time and they will take you apart… They will kill you.”

“But why?” I wonder naively.

“These days they don’t need any reason”, he explains. “They hate foreigners. They hate each other. Don’t you see what is happening in my country?”

I see. And what I observe, I don’t like at all. The hope is over. What is left is a terrible hangover and a bad, dark mood.

But many rich urban dwellers are trying to convince each other that things will get better soon. The upper and upper-middle classes are openly supporting the military, not unlike in Chile, after the 9-11-1973 military coup’ d’état in which the pro-Western faction of the army led by General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the progressive government of Salvador Allende.

Of course the Egyptian Islamist President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood had nothing in common with la Unidad Popular, but the willingness of the elites in the two countries to back the Western-supported military, is truly striking and revealing.

***

As I am photographing the ruined headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, a black limousine stops, the back window is open, and the upper class-looking woman begins shouting at me: “Morsi was a criminal! And I am forbidding you to photograph this building!”

“Who are you?” I wonder. “Do you have any authority to forgive anything, in this public place?”

“I am an Egyptian woman!” She spits at me with scorn.

“That is great”, I say. “But I still don’t understand what gives you the authority to prevent me from working?”

She begins calling someone frantically on her mobile phone. She is obviously reporting me, asking for reinforcements in her sacred fight against a dangerous foreign element.

“There is so much fear”, my friend, a psychiatrist Mohammad Shafik, told me. “I love photography, but these days I don’t even dare to take pictures of scenic spots in and around my own city – Cairo.”

There is clearly something wrong with Cairo’s residents. As supporters of General Sissi exchange punches with supporters of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, women are running around and shouting frantically. Nile Street is blocked, as there is yet another bomb threat. Four people have already been killed recently, not far from here.

Vigilantes are controlling traffic. It looks like a state of siege in front of Sadat’s old palace; there are tanks and sandbags everywhere, the military and police are pointing guns in all directions.

It is 6^th October, Victory Day in Egypt, the day when, 40 years ago, the Egyptian military recaptured the Sinai Peninsula from Israel. Here it is known as the October War, or as the Yom Kippur War in Israel.

In 2013, this anniversary is the moment to show support for the Egyptian army apparatus. Never mind that the Egyptian armed forces have been getting 1.3 billion dollars annually from the United States. Never mind that for years and decades, it had been backing the brutal pro-Western regime of Mubarak. No matter that now it was clearly getting back into power.

“Prophet Mohammed said that the Egyptian army is the best in the region”, reads one of the posters.

Even as the people are cheering the army, the canons on top of the armored vehicles point suspiciously at the crowd. Tanks are blocking all the streets leading to Tahrir Square. F-16 fighter jets are flying over the capital, and so are combat Apache helicopters.

There are slums are all over the capital, and more than 70% of the people of Cairo live in misery, as a sociologist Maher Abdelmalek tells me. But the misery is, suddenly, not on the agenda of either side. It is not discussed and it is not what people are fighting against.

I go to the slums and photograph there, but another set of vigilantes tries to prevent me from working. The same in Giza, where I attempt to film the clogged waterways.

There are insults and more insults, and there are threats. To be a foreign correspondent or a filmmaker working in Cairo, feels much more dangerous than working in DR Congo or in any other war zone.

***

Bombs go off at regular intervals. People are dying. The military has already murdered perhaps 2,000 people since the coup, but the numbers are not confirmed or trustworthy, and are most likely much higher.

Fear is now so potent that even members of the revolutionary movements and organizations do not dare to meet each other during the day, or at night. Several of my encounters are cancelled, despite the fact that I am not working for any Western media outlets – I am making a film for the Venezuelan television network “TeleSur”, and reporting for RT and CounterPunch.

Nobody trusts anybody. Two of my main contacts are in hiding somewhere in the countryside. Members of several allied parties are now refusing to communicate with each other. It is impossible to plan anything, as all trust is broken and fear reigns over the capital.

But ask the elites and they will tell you that everything is great. I ask the General Manager of one of the major luxury hotel chains, whether things have really improved after the coup.

“What coup?” he looks at me in bewilderment. Then he gives me a big smile: “Oh, you mean after Egypt got liberated? Now things are fantastic! And they will soon get even better… Much better.”

My driver laughs when I tell him that Egypt is doing well. He tells me about inflation and about him leaving his teaching position at a public school and becoming a driver: “I couldn’t pay tuition for my two sons.”

We drive to Giza, to the Pyramids, just to see what I had already suspected. The entire area is empty and there are only touts in front of the Sphinx. I see only one tourist bus, with somehow lost looking and confused Spanish visitors. And there are rumors of serious looting. The tourist industry has basically collapsed, but this is also not discussed openly, it is totally hidden. An insurgency is flaring in Cairo, in the Suez area, Alexandria, even in the Sinai Peninsula, which is the main center of the Egyptian tourist industry.

By 2:30PM on the 6^th October, there is fighting all over the capital. But fighting is also not called fighting here. These are ‘incidents’, and there are some instances of ‘terrorism’. ‘Public order is being disrupted’. Again, the terminology is similar to that used in Chile in and after 1973, or in Indonesia after 1965. Except that in Chile, the great majority of the people had been aware of the situation and of cynical lies.

***

Clouds of teargas hang over the city. Once in a while, explosions resonate, from various directions.

The situation is becoming extremely confusing. There is so much shouting and so little information. I ask my driver to turn on the radio, but all we can hear are some militaristic and patriotic songs.

But everyone is aware of what will be happening after 15:30, when the Muslim Brotherhood cadres begin leaving their mosques.

It all looks grotesque: little children and women holding photographs of high army officials, even kissing their portraits for the cameras; the military pointing their cannons at civilians, as they have been doing for decades… They are aiming even at those who adore them.

Then some people begin to charge and the teargas canisters start exploding. There are several rounds of live ammunition fired into the air.

At 15:30, exactly as expected, the Muslim Brotherhood joins those Sinai celebrations, in its own – in its predictably heavy-handed way.

The battle begins. I see people climbing the walls, holding children to their chests. I see hard-core Islamists with green ribbons encircling their heads, slings in their hands. I see the armed forces charging, and shooting. I see people falling. Not for the Revolution, not for social justice, not for a better Egypt. I see people dying, on both sides, out of spite, from hate. I see human lives wasted. And I see the end of the Arab Spring nearing.

Battles on the 4th.

Brotherhood in Action at the side streets.

Celebrating Sinai.

Egyptian upper class family.

Hate in the streets.

How the how majority lives.

In front of the National Museum.

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His discussion with Noam Chomsky On Western Terrorism is now going to print. His critically acclaimed political novel Point of No Return is now re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. He just completed feature documentary “Rwanda Gambit” about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

The China Fixation

Old Game, New Obsession, New Enemy
by JOHN PILGER

Countries are “pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world,” wrote Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi was a bloody façade behind which a full-scale invasion of Africa and a war in Asia are the great game.

The al-Shabaab shopping mall killers came from Somalia. If any country is an imperial metaphor, it is Somalia. Sharing a common language and religion, Somalis have been divided between the British, French, Italians and Ethiopians. Tens of thousands of people have been handed from one power to another. “When they are made to hate each other,” wrote a British colonial official, “good governance is assured.”

Today, Somalia is a theme park of brutal, artificial divisions, long impoverished by World Bank and IMF “structural adjustment” programmes, and saturated with modern weapons, notably President Obama’s personal favourite, the drone. The one stable Somali government, the Islamic Courts, was “well received by the people in the areas it controlled,” reported the US Congressional Research Service, “[but] received negative press coverage, especially in the West.” Obama crushed it; and in January, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, presented her man to the world. “Somalia will remain grateful to the unwavering support from the United States government,” effused President Hassan Mohamud, “thank you, America.”

The shopping mall atrocity was a response to this — just as the attack on the Twin Towers and the London bombings were explicit reactions to invasion and injustice. Once of little consequence, jihadism now marches in lockstep with the return of unfettered imperialism.

Since Nato reduced modern Libya to a Hobbesian state in 2011, the last obstacles to Africa have fallen. “Scrambles for energy, minerals and fertile land are likely to occur with increasingly intensity,” report Ministry of Defence planners. They predict “high numbers of civilian casualties”; therefore “perceptions of moral legitimacy will be important for success”. Sensitive to the PR problem of invading a continent, the arms mammoth, BAE Systems, together with Barclay Capital and BP, warn that “the government should define its international mission as managing risks on behalf of British citizens”. The cynicism is lethal. British governments are repeatedly warned, not least by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, that foreign adventures beckon retaliation at home.

With minimal media interest, the US African Command (Africom) has deployed troops to 35 African countries, establishing a familiar network of authoritarian supplicants eager for bribes and armaments. In war games, a “soldier to soldier” doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. The British did the same in India. It is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master’s black colonial elite whose “historic mission”, warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the subjugation of their own people in the cause of “a capitalism rampant though camouflaged”. The reference also fits the Son of Africa in the White House.

For Obama, there is a more pressing cause — China. Africa is China’s success story. Where the Americans bring drones, the Chinese build roads, bridges and dams. What the Chinese want is resources, especially fossel fuels. Nato’s bombing of Libya drove out 30,000 Chinese oil industry workers. More than jihadism or Iran, China is now Washington’s obsession in Africa and beyond. This is a “policy” known as the “pivot to Asia”, whose threat of world war may be as great as any in the modern era.

This week’s meeting in Tokyo of US secretary of state John Kerry and defence secretary Chuck Hagel with their Japanese counterparts accelerated the prospect of war with the new imperial rival. Sixty per cent of US and naval forces are to be based in Asia by 2020, aimed at China. Japan is re-arming rapidly under the right-wing government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who came to power in December with a pledge to build a “new, strong military” and circumvent the “peace constitution”. A US-Japanese anti-ballistic missile system near Kyoto is directed at China. Using long-range Global Hawk drones, the US has sharply increased its provocations in the East China and South China seas, where Japan and China dispute the ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Advanced vertical take-off aircraft are now deployed in Japan; their purpose is blitzkrieg.

On the Pacific island of Guam, from which B-52s attacked Vietnam, the biggest military buildup since the Indochina wars includes 9,000 US Marines. In Australia this week, an arms fair and military jamboree that diverted much of Sydney, is in keeping with a government propaganda campaign to justify an unprecedented US military build-up from Perth to Darwin, aimed at China. The vast US base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs is, as Edward Snowden disclosed, a hub of US spying in the region and beyond; it also critical to Obama’s worldwide assassinations by drone.

“We have to inform the British to keep them on side,” an assistant US secretary of state McGeorge Bundy once said, “You in Australia are with us, come what may.” Australian forces have long played a mercenary role for Washington. However, there is a hitch. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner and largely responsible its evasion of the 2008 recession. Without China, there would be no minerals boom: no weekly mining return of up to a billion dollars.

The dangers this presents are rarely debated publicly in Australia, where prime minister Tony Abbott’s patron, Rupert Murdoch, controls 70 per cent of the press. Occasionally, anxiety is expressed over the “choice” that the US wants Australia to make. A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warns that any US plan to strike at China would involve “blinding” Chinese surveillance, intelligence and command systems. This would “consequently increase the chances of Chinese nuclear pre-emption … and a series of miscalculations on both sides if Beijing perceives conventional attacks on its homeland as an attempt to disarm its nuclear capability”.

In his address to the nation last month, Obama said, “What makes America different, what makes us exceptional is that we are dedicated to act.”

John Pilger’s new film, Utopia, is released in cinemas in the UK on 15 November and is launched in Australia in January. He can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com.

The Kenya Mall Attack Did Not Come Out of the Blue—Al-Shabab is Joined to Washington at the Hip

Tom Dispatch [1] / By Tom Engelhardt [2]

“exclusive” video [4] of destruction and death, the teary faces, the dramatic tales, the cruelty and the killing, the collapse of part of the building and scenes [5] of utter desolation, the shifting casualty counts, and suddenly, scores of FBI agents [6] — from what once upon a time was a U.S. domestic law enforcement agency — on the ground in distant Nairobi checking out biometric data in the rubble, and you’re being told about a “direct threat” [7] to “the homeland” from a scary Somali terror group called al-Shabab whose killers in Kenya may (or may not) have included recruited Somali-Americans [8]and even a British woman known as “the white widow [9].”

The idea that there was some history to all of this, that it involved Washington and the U.S. military, secret CIA prisons [10] and covert drone strikes [11], the funding, supplying, and organizing of proxy African troops, and the thorough destabilizing [12] of Somalia because Washington feared an Islamic group that was actually unifying the country — out of which al-Shabab (“the youth”) emerged — seems unbelievable, though it is simple fact. And here’s a reality that you won’t see on your TV screen 24/7: if al-Shabab is a nightmare, history has joined it to Washington at the hip. The particular kind of destabilization that gripped Somalia in the post-9/11 years, including a U.S.-inspired Ethiopian invasion [13] and years later aKenyan version [14] of the same, has now spread to Kenya itself. As Nick Turse has argued [15] at this site, this sort of destabilization is now happening across the African continent. The U.S. military, along with the CIA and U.S. intelligence, is moving more deeply [16]into Africa, and in the process, from Libya to the Central African Republic [17], it is helping to turn the continent into Terror Central.

[pullquote]The attack on the Kenyan mall did not come out of the blue. Its causes lie in the criminal policies pursued by the US in that region with Kenyan complicity. [/pullquote]

Those scores of FBI agents combing the ruins in Nairobi (as well as the beefed up [18] CIA contingent now dealing with the situation) aren’t the answer to a sudden crisis. They are signs of a long-term problem; they are the chicken to the terrorist egg — and which came first almost doesn’t matter anymore. If you decide that anyone, anywhere, on Earth can be an imminent “danger” to the homeland and you’ve already transformed the very idea of “national” defense into international defense, and nowhere is too far to go to “defend” yourself, then you are always going to be stirring things up in distant places in ways you don’t understand and with a hatful of unintended consequences.

And don’t think that all of this is just so much seat-of-the-pants happenstance either. The planning for America’s militarized African presence has been going on for years, even if beyond the sight of most Americans, as this site has repeatedly reported [19]. Today, TomDispatch regular [20] David Vine explores another previously unnoted aspect of Washington’s preparations for future wars in a destabilizing Africa: a startling traffic jam of U.S. military bases in Italy. Someday, in some unexpected way, the Italian base story will suddenly break big-time in the mainstream and, once again, it will seem to arrive out of the blue, out of nowhere, without any context, and everyone will be shocked, shocked (unless, of course, you read it first at TomDispatch).

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/kenya-mall-attack-did-not-come-out-blue-al-shabab-joined-washington-hip