The people of Egypt today mark 14 days of nonviolent uprising against a brutal military regime that has ruled with near total power for 30 years. The peaceful protests are an astonishing coalition of educated and working-class, Muslim and Christian, secularist and religiously driven, old and young, male and female, and yet they are in fact a peaceful citizen-driven revolution against tyranny. The Mubarak regime has waged a brutal assault on peaceful demonstrators, human rights monitors and international press, and now there is concern the international attention may turn away.

Human Rights Watch is reporting that at least 297 people have been killed by the Egyptian regime since 28 January, “232 in Cairo, 52 in Alexandria and 13 in Suez”. The huge death toll comes from just three cities, and according to the human rights watchdog, “The vast majority of these deaths occurred on January 28 and 29 as a result of live gunfire.” It also appears many were killed by rubber bullets apparently fired indiscriminately at ultra-close range or when teargas canisters were fired directly at demonstrators.

The behavior of the Mubarak regime since the outbreak of the protests has been consistent and unwavering: it appears to be the behavior of a military dictatorship with feudal control over the society it rules, which sees no reason to abandon its long-running use of violence, terror and propaganda to impose its will. When news reports began to emerge showing evidence the regime was behind the killings, and that hundreds of thousands had spontaneously joined the protests, a concerted, intense and violent campaign against international journalists began, and paramilitaries began throwing firebombs into crowds of unarmed civilians.

There is concern now that the regime fully intends to push the media out —detentions have continued unabated, despite promises to release high-profile prisoners and implement reforms—, crush non-governmental human rights groups operating in Egypt, and then wage war against the protest movement. CNN’s Anderson Cooper says he feels guilty having left Egypt temporarily for his own safety and to seek medical attention, suggesting protesters may be at risk if international media turn away from Cairo or if the protesters are forced out of Tahrir Square, where media have relatively consistent access to images of events.

The revolution in Egypt is a peaceful protest movement, calling for meaningful democratic reform, and defiantly refusing to accept any promise coming from a discredited president known to rule through corruption, violence and authoritarian abuses. In Egypt, in 2011, the revolution must be televised. International media attention is the closest thing to real security the demonstrators calling for justice can hope to have, and media can help to spread the word about what is really going on under the rule of Hosni Mubarak.

Every day, more information surfaces showing evidence of brutal authoritarian crimes. On Wednesday and Thursday, it is now known, the regime threw firebombs and fired live bullets into Liberation Square, into crowds of unarmed demonstrators which included women and children.

When Mohamed El Baradei —widely seen as a credible Mubarak opponent and spokesperson for the protest movement, a Nobel laureate who used to head the International Atomic Energy Agency— met with 9 leading pro-democracy activists, every one of them was detained by Mubarak’s security forces. The regime is systematically rejecting negotiations with leading pro-democracy activists, while meeting with establishment figures who lead various opposition factions.

Protest leaders, El Baradei, the United States government and human rights watchdogs in Egypt and abroad, all agree the “transition talks” Vice President Omar Suleiman is staging are inadequate and not substantive enough in terms of implementing democratic change in Egypt. Suleiman has said the regime will not lift the state of emergency.

In a shocking moment of contempt, the new prime minister named by Hosni Mubarak, Ahmed Shafiq, repeatedly ignored questions by CNN’s Candy Crowley regarding a campaign of arrests against demonstrators and journalists, Shafiq flippantly remarked ”Frankly speaking, if there is some problems, it’s not intended at all, my dear.”

Shafiq’s rhetoric suggests the government either claims to have no ability whatsoever to control the armed paramilitaries and security forces working for the government, or no control over its own authoritarian reflexes. He seemed almost to be laughing as he said “some problems”. Anderson Cooper reported estimates run as high as 1.5 million security agents employed by the regime’s secret police forces.

There is a fundamental logical disconnect between the rhetoric of the regime and its behavior, between the regime’s claim of total incapacity to prevent violent assaults on unarmed civilians and its claim that it alone has the unique ability to prevent “chaos”. And each of these logically incoherent rhetorical flourishes has been used to cover up for brutal anti-democratic measures, which in at least 297 cases have resulted in death for innocent Egyptians.

The world media has a moral obligation not to leave Tahrir Square, not to shift the focus away from the ongoing nonviolent uprising against Hosni Mubarak and his regime. Human rights organizations describe long-running and systematic detention without process and torture, sometimes for nothing more than association with a suspect.

According to Human Rights Watch:

Torture, although it is strictly forbidden under Egyptian law and the international human rights treaties Egypt has signed, has been a widespread and persistent phenomenon in the country, particularly during interrogation of security suspects. Methods of torture include beatings with fists, feet, leather straps, sticks, and electric cables; suspension in contorted and painful positions accompanied by beatings; the application of electric shocks; and sexual intimidation and violence. The government-appointed National Council for Human Rights, in its first annual report released in April 2005, acknowledged that torture is part of “normal investigative practice” in Egypt.

If the protests in Tahrir Square are dispersed, without a significant change in the makeup of the governing political structure, those who have defiantly confronted the regime will most likely be detained and may be subjected to ill treatment in the “normal” atmosphere of extreme violence and total impunity, in which the security forces of Hosni Mubarak have operated.

The government is systematically and decisively ignoring even its own prohibition against torture, and has blocked every attempt to investigate incidents of torture. “To date, Egypt has refused to permit the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture to visit the country,” according to the Human Rights Watch report Black Hole, on the use of torture in Egypt.

There is a fundamental ethical and human obligation to bear witness, to keep attention focused on the fate of those brave souls who are staring down the brutality and impunity of a military dictatorship that disguises itself in the trappings of civilian government and business development. International media, especially television cameras, have an obligation to ensure that they do not walk away from those innocent people who have determined that now is the time for their people to say no to tyranny and degradation.

A video from Alexandria reportedly shows Mubarak’s police force shoot an unarmed pro-democracy demonstrator in cold blood. The man was walking in a street, and there were reportedly other demonstrators behind him, encouraging him to walk toward the armed police. The video clearly shows the man shot by the police, without any violent provocation whatsoever.

The video is yet more evidence of the extreme and undue violence of the Mubarak regime’s response to nonviolent pro-democracy demonstrations. While the world has just seen the protest movement erupt onto the scene, the government’s refusal to take seriously nationwide denunciation of police violence and political persecution is what led to the movement’s demand that first of all, Mubarak must step down.

Rights groups and anti-government activists are saying the video is now clear evidence for all the world to see that the Mubarak regime has held onto power by the use of lethal violence and totalitarian measures.

Tonight The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof reported to CNN that watchdog groups have talled at least 297 deaths so far resulting from the regime’s violent crackdown on unarmed demonstrators. As of today, Hosni Mubarak remains in power, because his forces have been murdering their fellow Egyptians. Calls for charges on crimes against humanity against key regime figures are mounting.

After intense pressure from Amnesty International, foreign governments, private business and the press, Egypt’s new vice president Omar Suleiman pledged yesterday that Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who is reputed to have launched a Facebook page denouncing police brutality and political persecution, would be freed. He was abducted by regime police near the beginning of the pro-democracy demonstrations, on 28 January, and was not heard from publicly till today.

The Facebook page, “We are all Khaled Said“, was reportedly used to organize the most far-reaching pro-democracy campaign in Egyptian history, bringing together opposition groups, human rights watchdogs, concerned citizens and tech-savvy young people who see no need for military government and want to determine their own future. On Sunday, news began to spread around the world that a security agent had leaked information that Ghonim was being set up on trumped up charges and was likely to face torture.

Ghonim gave an exclusive live interview to a private Egyptian television channel, DreamTV, after his release this afternoon. The release appears to have been a gesture to business leaders the regime seeks to keep close relations with, and possibly to satisfy demands from foreign governments that political detentions end. The interview has stirred and inspired citizens across Egypt, reframing the official story and reminding ordinary Egyptians that the regime, and not the demonstrators, is the source of suffering and strife.

The interview was intensely emotional; Ghonim spoke of the deep patriotism of the pro-democracy activists, of people who are putting their lives and their livelihoods at risk for the sake of giving their nation a better future, free of political persecution and authoritarian violence.

According to the Guardian:

Ghonim’s stature across the country now appears destined to rise dramatically if the post-interview reaction on the internet is anything to go by. Calls are being made for him to stand as president. Others predicted that his performance, which was being acclaimed as a tour de force of calm but explosive political passion, would inevitably boost the numbers of those attending the latest mass demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir square and elsewhere this morning.

“I am not a hero. I only used the keyboard, the real heroes are the ones on the ground. Those I can’t name,” said Ghonim, who sobbed throughout the interview, which ended with him being overcome with emotion as he was shown images of some of those who died in the uprising.

Ghonim said he was not tortured and that his jailors did not mistreat him, but said the methods of the security forces were not acceptable to the protest movement. But he said he was shocked to hear that people inside the prison had heard he was a “traitor”. “Anyone with good intentions,” he said, is viewed as a traitor, “because being evil is the norm.”

He added that “If I was a traitor, I would have stayed in my villa in the Emirates and made good money and said like others, let this country go to hell.” He said the protest movement was spontaneous and grew from the aspirations of the Egyptian people, and that far from being traitors, the organizers’ sincere aim was to save their country from the ongoing disaster of authoritarian rule.

Ghonim said every Egyptian has a right to have full and complete information about what the government is doing with the wealth it draws from the people. “Inside I met people who loved Egypt,” he said “but their methods and mine are not the same. I pay these guys’ salaries from my taxes, I have the right to ask the ministers where my money is going, this is our country.”

There are now calls for Ghonim to be given a leadership role, at least as spokesperson for the coalition of pro-democracy parties. The interview is also being seen as a potential threshold moment, after which the regime will no longer be able to pursue a strategy of persecution and detention or of talking reform while seeking to disperse the protesters gathered at Tahrir Square.

Tuesday has reportedly been labeled a “day for decorating Tahrir Square”, which some in the movement hope will be another opportunity for hundreds of thousands to flood the square in central Cairo, which is now being called adoringly “Free Cairo”, “the Free Republic of Tahrir” and “the embryo of a new nation”.

The new burst of nationwide inspiration to support the pro-democracy movement could give weight to the activists’ argument that a swift transition to a coalition caretaker government of opposition parties would be the most responsible and orderly way to move Egypt forward and leave the chaos of the crackdown behind. US president Barack Obama said yesterday that Egypt “will not go back” to the repression of the last three decades, and the new popularity of Wael Ghonim appears to signal that Egypt’s wider population agrees.

It has recently become fashionable to say the US is not expressing a consistent policy on Egypt, that the policy has been changing every day or is noncommittal. This is patently untrue and distorts the very consistent message of support for the pro-democracy movement coming from the White House. Pres. Obama and his administration have consistently supported the just cause of the demonstrators, while urging the Egyptian government to take substantive reforms without delay.

Stability has become a dirty word, because it has been used by the Mubarak regime for the last 30 years and throughout this crisis to justify brutal repression of dissent. Bu the demonstrators themselves have sought to show they are in fact the conscience of the nation, and it is the regime that sows chaos and violence. Hosni Mubarak has sustained an incredibly narrow regime, enriching himself and those close to him, by dividing all possible futures into stability defined by his rule and chaos induced automatically by anything else.

The press have been missing the nuance and complexity that allow for pro-democracy demonstrators to co-opt Mubarak on stability, just as they are missing the nuance and complexity that allow Pres. Barack Obama to take the most responsible position possible —that of supporting the demonstrators without posing as their leader— while gradually shepherding the US-Egyptian diplomatic relationship through the practical and psychological paces of the coming transition.

A recent Onion satire of cable news journalism ended with an announcement that after a commercial break they would follow a police chase from a helicopter “and free associate about what’s going on”. The satire works because it comments not only on cable news methodology, but also on a basic intellectual vice of the human mind: the desire to define circumstances even when the moment does not allow for it.

The world press have been courageous and responsible in telling the story from Cairo, despite great and perhaps mounting personal risk, but those writing at a distance have to be careful not to attempt to achieve the same heightened sense of danger by misreading the political landscape or sensationalizing isolated words or phrases.

The perception that Barack Obama or his administration have been “dithering” is a distortion that stems from media wanting to read the whole story into one or two enigmatic phrases. Such commentary ignores the crux of the problem, that events like this are not decided in one moment or by the words of one individual; they are fluid. The whole of the distortion is of course often propped up by the cynical assumption that the only US government interest in Egypt is Israel and that the interest of that ally can only be served by the US backing hardliners or manipulating political dynamics.

That analysis is reflexive and mirrors the worst distortions of the Mubarak regime, which has spread such rumors in the past to stoke nationalist unity and to neutralize domestic critics, and the political manipulations of those who have relied on such distortions to drive a wedge between Mubarak and his allies abroad. In the current crisis, it appears pro-Mubarak paramilitaries stole several US embassy vehicles, using one to plow through a crowd of civilians the other day, in an attempt to create a distraction and drive a wedge between the demonstrators and the west.

But all of this ignores a fundamental truth about the diplomatic vision of Barack Obama and his administration, which has worked to cultivate a respect for the value of a vibrant and open civil society. On 20 January 2009, in his inaugural address, before a crowd of more than 2 million people gathered to usher in a period of democratic reform, Pres. Obama told the authoritarian regimes of the world that if they would unclench their fists at home, they would find a hand extended abroad.

Many viewed it as a signal specifically to Iran, but the “3D diplomacy” of Sec. Clinton’s State Dept. has shown the Obama administration is working across the world to foster democratic processes, transparency and the rule of law, whether seeking justice for victims of rape in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, supporting the right of the people of South Sudan to escape their attackers, or moving swiftly to answer the call to assist neighbors in quake-ravaged Haiti.

In the case of Egypt, the Obama administration urged the regime from the outset to refrain from violence and worked to expand the space for hearing protesters’ grievances. They prudently took up the just cause, while careful not to look like they were engineering the events taking place. That last point is a vital component of recognizing the genuine right to self-determination of the people of Egypt. Pres. Obama has never wavered on this point.

He has, however, been criticized for acting like a civics professor trying to educate Egypt’s leaders on the process of elective government —a criticism that originated in the halls of Mubarak’s own government, of course—, then criticized for not doing so forcefully enough. The wavering of latest-trend analysis from ideologically varied press with varying degrees of depth of analysis, has led some to see wavering where it has not been shown, and that is a poor foundation on which to base any serious political analysis.

Behind the scenes, we know the Obama administration has been pressuring Mubarak to resign and to turn over power to an interim government, which Obama has said both publicly and privately must be made up of a broad coalition of opposition parties. Impatience with Mubarak has been transferred, however, by some in the media to Obama, as if it were within the reach of the president of the United States simply to dictate a date and hour of departure for the Egyptian leader.

That has, of course, infamously, been tried in other times in other places, and it often works out poorly, because there is no real control there, no direct connection between the will of one nation’s leader and the fate of that of another. There are complexities, and most of all, there are people involved.

To honor the cause of the pro-democracy movement in Tahrir Square, that “embryo” of a free Cairo, as one witness called it, is to honor the right and the capacity of the people who have bravely organized and perpetuated this movement, to guide the process and to get it right.

There is no more firm champion of their cause among world leaders, but as a political leader with a responsibility to foster peace and security as well as the rights of ordinary people, Pres. Obama has a responsibility to behave responsibly and not to frame his role as one of foreign sponsor of a colonial government. His role is to lead by example, to foster civility by calling for and by exhibiting it, to consistently urge that legitimate grievances be heard, and he has done that and the focus, inside Egypt as well as outside, is now on how to best achieve that fundamental political transition.

It is disingenuous at best and propagandist at worst to suggest that what Pres. Obama has been doing over the last two weeks is “dithering” or wandering aimlessly in an unclear policy environment. What needs to be reported, what is most significant about the Obama response to the uprising of the Egyptian people, is how psychologically prepared he and his diplomatic leadership were to deal with the sudden upheaval and how appropriate and on-target has been the response: calling for change, calling for non-violence, demanding prisoners be freed, demanding reform.

Power, if such a thing really exists for any one individual to wield, is not best used when thrown into a fit of bluster or aggression; it is best used when it defers to those best suited to do the best work and to achieve the best result, to the betterment of humankind and to the reduction of harm generally. That approach is difficult to get right and fraught with many pitfalls —like the false accusation that one is not decisive enough—, but it is the right approach.

Pres. Obama has shown both the depth of his character and the heart of his culture, by honoring in the purest and most consistent terms the rights of the Egyptian people and the obligations of those who seek to provide them with a government. He has artfully channeled the vast complexity of world opinion into a sound strategy for peaceful transition, in which the nonviolent pro-democracy movement is allowed to oversee a process of democratization.

Whether people around the president have expressed specific desires to see Mubarak depart sooner or later is immaterial to the thrust of the US message: this is an Egyptian revolution, and Pres. Obama has consistently expressed support for the cause, support for the civility and organization of it, for the ideals and the right to have just grievances addressed by a transition to a new form of government.

We all have an obligation not to privilege the distortions that emerge from a totalitarian state’s manipulations over the facts in evidence. We have an obligation to report the policies as they stand, not as our worst selves would have them appear to be, for the sake of applying pressure or inflaming emotions.

With that said, the Obama administration has a basic responsibility, to the American people, to the ideals of open democracy, and to the people of the region and the world, to keep moving the discourse of officially recognized political transition toward the position of true justice: no Mubarak insiders, no one involved in torture or abuse, allowed to serve in any interim or future government.

There should be prosecutions of those responsible for crimes against the democratic rights of the people of Egypt, but that must be a process decided by the will of the Egyptian people, as measured through a legitimate democratic process. It was 2004, before Spain officially banned fascist demonstrations, 29 years after the death of the dictator Franco and 26 years after the establishment of the current constitution.

In Chile, the last two presidents before Piñera were individuals who had been detained and tortured by the Pinochet regime, but neither one sought revenge for Pinochet’s crimes; instead they threw their weight, and the conscience of their country, fully behind building a legitimate system of due process and letting that system evaluate the options for prosecution based on standing law, prior law and the evidence available.

Both nations are thriving, and both are strong and committed democracies. It will be for the Egyptian people to decide what course they take and how they go about formalizing the end of the dark period of the Mubarak government. So far, the Obama administration has consistently sought to move the discourse of transition toward the end of Mubarak’s rule and the beginning of a real democracy in Egypt; that trend should continue, and should move toward barring all Mubarak insiders involved in abuses from any future office.

Even as the government has begun to agree to concessions and to begin a process of democratization, there are concerns an employee of Google, reportedly abducted by the regime at the beginning of the pro-democracy protests, faces “serious risk of torture”. There is video showing the moment of his abduction by plainclothes security officers working for the Mubarak regime.

According to the Guardian:

Amnesty International today warned that a Google employee in Cairo, reportedly arrested at the start of the protests, faces a “serious risk of torture”.

Wael Ghuneim (or Ghonim) was arrested by Egyptian security forces on 28 January 2011 during protests in Cairo, eyewitnesses said.

Google said it hadn’t heard from him since then and appealed for information, according to the New York Times.

According to an unnamed internal government source reported to be close to the proceedings against Ghuneim, saying he is seriously at risk of being subject to dangerous false charges, possibly “disappeared” by the regime:

His case had initially been handled by joint task force from General Intelligence and State Security. He was accused of receiving assistance from foreign entities to undermine the stability of, and overturn the government, engaging in saboteurs activity against the dignity of the state, and promulgating stigmatizing disinformation in an online smear campaigns for the benefit of foreign agencies.

He is, now, in the New State Security Complex in the 7th District, Madinet Nassr, North East Of Cairo.

Nobody was able to talk to him, but his file has been seen, and was described as grave.

At the present moment, no one outside a narrow group of security officials has seen Ghuneim since his disappearance. Human rights groups are calling for his immediate and unconditional release, and for an investigation into the individuals involved in his abduction, including the security officials responsible for ordering his arrest.

On Tuesday, more than one million Egyptians turned out for mass demonstrations in cities across the country. On Friday, crowds massing in central Cairo and Alexandria were reported to be even larger than the Tuesday crowds, despite brutal and bloody assaults by pro-Mubarak militia on Wednesday and Thursday. It is now day 13 of the Egyptian transition to demonstrations, and opposition leaders are reportedly negotiating with the government to shape an orderly and peaceful process of transition.

The government of the United States is doing a very necessary tightrope walk, supporting the cause of the pro-democracy demonstrators, while avoiding the political mistake of posing as the driver of the situation in Egypt, but has reportedly urged Pres. Mubarak to resign, in the interests of both his people’s democratic rights and his country’s stability. Mubarak seems to have taken the view that it falls to him, an unelected ruler in office for 30 years, notorious for rigging elections and banning all opposition, to oversee the process of devolving power to the people.

One observer has said leaders across the region must be wary of what seems to be a region-wide stress on populations no longer able to pay the high and rising costs of “bread and food and pharaoh”. While political infighting goes on and disputes between the interim government and the most radical protesters persist, Tunisia appears stable, functional and prosperous just weeks after its own popular uprising against an authoritarian president.

On the ground, according to all accounts, Egyptians appear convinced the time has passed for the presidency of Hosni Mubarak. The revolution is not just the masses of people gathering in Cairo or Alexandria or Suez; it is the socio-political dynamic whereby the people of Egypt have taken control of the right to organize political discourse, the right to plan their future, the right to join together online and in public and to confront the abuses of the powerful.

The Guardian has reported:

Mahmoud, a 35-year-old teacher, talks of a revolution, but what he means is not so much people on the streets toppling a hated figure as how they see their relationship with this government and all future governments. “People have changed. They were scared. They are no longer scared. We are not afraid of his system any longer and when we stopped being afraid we knew we would win,” he said. “We will not again allow ourselves to be scared of a government. We will not be afraid to say when we think the president is wrong or the government is bad. This is the revolution in our country, the revolution in our minds. Mubarak can stay for days or weeks but he cannot change that. We cannot go back.”

There is another vision of how this kind of transition can take place, one which privileges a specific vision of “order” and “stability”, and that is the vision Hosni Mubarak seems intent on fostering. The Mubarak vision now seems clearly to be that only by a process of disciplined devolution of power, gradually and even grudgingly, with the leverage of the military and an aggressive police force with emergency powers, can democracy safely emerge from an oppressive political status quo.

Mubarak seems intent on using the illusion of order to continue to aggrandize his own legacy and to prevent his people’s taking responsibility for their own future. Illusion, because the pathological dysfunction inherent in Mubarak’s style of authoritarian rule is not order; it is the absence of complication based on the imposition of fear and silence. And that is the source of chaos, suffering and disorder in Egypt.

What we have seen over the last 13 days is a government committed to a pathological refusal to deal honestly with the rights, complaints and just humanitarian demands of its people. After three decades in “emergency rule”, Mubarak continues to allege that any leadership other than his would breed chaos.

This fact itself is the unnamed elephant stomping around in the beating heart of the nation, and it is now openly being named: Mubarak’s 3o-year dictatorship has either failed to bring order, and therefore must end, or it has long since exhausted its usefulness and become abusive, and therefore must end.

The clarity of this view is demonstrated by the fact that the only unrest since the start of the protests has been provoked by hired gangs working for the government, while the pro-democracy demonstrators have cooperated with the military in Tahrir Square and labored diligently to ensure that no weapons enter the square and no violence breaks out.

While the regime has kidnapped and interrogated journalists and human rights activists at secret locations, and paramilitaries have waged deadly assaults on unarmed demonstrators and burned media offices, the crowds of ordinary Egyptians gathering in Tahrir Square have instituted a process of detention for thugs and troublemakers, with the movement pressing for civility and transparency.

Today, it emerged that throughout the two days of violent and direct military assault on the demonstrators and journalists at Tahrir Square, there were women and children huddled near the center of the square, under direct assault from government linked paramilitaries. If it were the proper way forward for the Mubarak government to gently devolve power to the people, could a government that sends thugs armed with machetes, firearms and fire-bombs to attack unarmed protesters, women and children, be trusted?

The question all leaders involved, from the Egyptian government to opposition and protest leaders and foreign diplomats and heads of state, must be asking is: is this transition in the spirit of a people-centered revolution, or is it a clumsy process of devolution managed by a discredited regime? The difference is meaningful, both in fact and form, and the Egyptian people deserve the respect inherent in winning recognition for this great cultural transformation they have undertaken with such courage and determination.

If we look back through history, the great successes in transformative change are solidified by governments that respect the primacy of the people over any administrative regime in the democratic process:

• It was a people’s movement and a transformational political philosophy, not a process of authoritarian devolution that allowed thirteen British colonies in North America to become the United States;
• It was Mohandas Gandhi, his philosophy of satyagraha or non-violent resistance, and not the British parliament, that won India its independence;
• It was the dignity and example of Nelson Mandela, and the justice of the popular uprising against apartheid, not the consent of the apartheid regime, that transformed South Africa into the Rainbow Nation;
• It was the sovereign demand of the Chilean people, and their commitment to justice, and not the wisdom or sanction of a military dictator, that ended a 17-year rule;
• It was People Power, the just and transcendent demands of millions of ordinary Filipinos, and not the generosity of Ferdinand Marcos, that ended his brutal regime…

The question of Egypt’s transition is not one of which authority is best suited to see through a controlled transition to an approved government; it must be a political revolution, in which the agents of power of the old regime give up their hold on power, asking and deserving nothing in return. It is their basic human responsibility to cede to the demand for humanity, liberty and justice, in the Egyptian system.

The pro-democracy movement has shown itself to be committed, thoughtful, peaceful and responsible. The regime has shown itself to be unwilling to respect fundamental natural laws of human dignity and mutual respect; it has murdered its own people; it continues to lie to the world about the nature of the violent crackdown, and is led by a man accused of funneling over $70 billion in money and assets to himself and his family.

One woman has reportedly been camping int he square with her three-year-old son for six days. Her husband is with them and has been making sure to go periodically for supplies. She told the press that she is “doing this for my son.” An accountant, Amira Ismael says her son’s future life will be made or broken by whether or not he is forced to live under the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

“Mubarak,” she says, “has to go because with Mubarak my son has no future, no life. We can’t afford to send him to the good school and Mubarak makes the government schools bad because he wants to keep the people stupid. The government is Mubarak’s government, not our government. I will stay here until Mubarak leaves. I will stay here days, months, years.”

The revolution is in the mind of the Egyptian people, in the nature of their discourse and their aspirations, in their willingness to focus their energies on coming together to negotiate the building of a vibrant and diverse civil society in which every citizen has the right and the guaranteed freedom to express his or her views, to gather with fellow citizens to organize or to effect change, to seek office or to cast votes in a legitimate, free and fair election, to be seen, to be heard, to be fully human in the way he or she chooses.

The revolution is the demand that society seek and honestly move toward justice and fairness, at all times, and without persecution or violence. The transition must be led by people with no connection whatsoever to the abuses of the past.

The news from Egypt this Saturday suggests pro-democracy demonstrators have begun negotiations with the authorities on ways to ease Hosni Mubarak out of power. Under pressure from foreign governments and diplomats across the region, as well as the UN, EU and US, Egyptian government officials and the military have reportedly begun planning for a process that would first sideline, then replace Pres. Hosni Mubarak, in power for 30 years, under emergency rule.

There are reports that Mubarak has resigned as leader of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), but the reports have not been independently confirmed. With speculation swirling about whether an agreement has been made that would see Mubarak relinquish power to an interim government in which power would be shared by Vice President Omar Suleiman, the military and opposition parties, Mubarak’s resignation from the NDP, following his son’s resignation, could be a sign the transition is beginning.

A doctor working at the makeshift field hospital at the edge of Tahrir Square told the BBC today that the square is “the embryo of a new nation”. While clashes continue in other parts o the capital and in Alexandria, Tahrir Square, he said “is free Cairo”. After two days of bloodshed, chaos and fear, families joined youth activists, opposition leaders and religious figures to call for a peaceful transition to a new and democratic Egypt.

The demonstrators and the military cooperating to keep the square safe and allow for peaceful mass demonstrations are showing the way to a new civic order, in which people of diverse backgrounds and interests treat each other civilly and welcome each other into a great national debate; they are setting the stage for the first period of genuine popular self-determination in Egypt’s history.

Amnesty International welcomed news that human rights activists have been freed, but called for an independent criminal investigation into the detentions:

Amnesty International has called for an investigation into the detention of some 35 human rights activists and journalists, including two Amnesty International staff members, who were freed after spending almost two days in military custody.

The Egyptian and international human rights activists, lawyers and journalists were arrested Thursday when military police raided the offices of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center.

Human Rights Watch reported today that the military appears to be planning to push the protesters out of Tahrir Square:

The military is becoming more restrictive in allowing access to Tahrir square and seems to be preparing to pressure the protesters to end their occupation. A new army checkpoint has been put up on the Gezira side of the Qasr al-Nil bridge, and a second military checkpoint at the entrance to Tahrir square. Because of these checkpoints it is taking longer for people to get into the square. Long lines are backing up.

We met with the organizing committee of the protesters, to discuss their security concerns, as well as their obligations under human rights principles. One of the organizers said they had some informal discussions with the army that morning, and had been told that the army wanted the protesters to leave the square. He said that for the first time, the army was actively encouraging protesters to leave and had asked the organizers to help them end the protests.

Experts on Middle East political regimes and economics estimate the assets of Hosni Mubarak and his family may exceed $70 billion, accumulated after 30 years of authoritarian rule. If true, the figure would make Mubarak the most extreme kleptocrat in modern history, having stolen more than $2 billion per year by setting up businesses through his political and military positions.

Reports on the massive estimated wealth of Mubarak and his family suggest much of it may be held in secret accounts in Switzerland, or in more conventional accounts in Britain, or in expensive real estate inside Egypt and abroad. Calls for criminal prosecution of Mubarak have been on the rise since his forces killed pro-democracy demonstrators and now at least one journalist, and a conviction on charges of crimes against humanity could lead to the seizure of all assets accumulated during his reign.

There has been speculation that Mubarak, who last week said he’s tired of the battle to stay in office and wants to step down —but can’t, lest chaos ensue—, may be using extreme force and a propaganda campaign against demonstrators, foreign press and foreign governments, to hold onto billions in ill-gotten gains. There are also now calls for investigation into alleged crimes from throughout Mubarak’s 30-year reign.

The Guardian’s Jack Shenker has sent forward a list of human rights activists and pro-democracy leaders taken into custody by the Mubarak regime during the last week. The list, which is not considered to be complete, as it is difficult to get information on who has been arrested, and under what circumstances, includes the affiliation of those detained and reads as follows:

Hisham Mubarak Legal Centre and the Centre for Economic and Social Rights
Ahmad Seif el-Islam abd el-Fattah
Ahmad Taher
El-Sayyed el-Fekki
Fatma Abed
Kamal Samir
Mona el-Masri
Muhamma Hamdi Mahmoud
Muhsin Bashir
Mustafa el-Hasan
Nadia
Nadine Abu-Shadi
Shahdan
Tamer Hagina

Amnesty International
Mona el-Kakhi
Saeed Haddadi

Human Rights Watch
Daniel Willams

Youth Activists
Ahmad Douma
Amre Ezz
Amre Salah
Michael Nabil
Mustafa Shawqi
Naser And el-Hamid
Shadi el-Ghazali Harb
Wael Ghoneim
Yaser Hawwari

Anyone with information regarding the detention or abuse of human rights workers and pro-democracy activists should please send along that information, to this address.

These are the witnesses who have committed themselves to looking out for the wellbeing and human dignity of others, who have sought to ensure that crimes against humanity and petty indecencies are not committed against the people of Egypt. Their detention is an outrage that shows a total lack of seriousness on the part of the government to undertake reforms that would allow the Egyptian people to at last live free of the fear of tyrants and warlords.

UPDATE, 10:56 pm EST: Amnesty International welcomed news that human rights activists have been freed, but called for an independent criminal investigation into the detentions:

Amnesty International has called for an investigation into the detention of some 35 human rights activists and journalists, including two Amnesty International staff members, who were freed after spending almost two days in military custody.

The Egyptian and international human rights activists, lawyers and journalists were arrested Thursday when military police raided the offices of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center.

Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director for Human Rights Watch, issued this statement today:

Great news this morning, all our Egyptian colleagues detained on February 3 have been released. Late last night the military released Dan Williams of Human Rights Watch, two researchers from Amnesty International and two journalists, one French, the other Portuguese. This morning they freed the Egyptian lawyers and activists who were also picked up in the raid on the Hisham Mubarak Law Center.

Ahmed Seif al-Islam, former director of the center, was the last to leave the military camp where they were all held because he was insisting on the return of all the equipment and documents the military took from the center.

We are so relieved to have our colleagues back safely. Now we can get back to our work of monitoring and reporting on the human rights situation here.

The Guardian newspaper is reporting:

Two of al-Jazeera’s journalists in Cairo have been released a day after they were detained by the Egyptian authorities.

The release of Cairo bureau chief, Abdelfattah Fayed, and another journalist, Mohammed Fawi, comes a day after the news channel said its offices in the Egyptian capital had been burned and destroyed by “gangs of thugs”, Reuters reports.

The ransacking, destruction and burning of the news network’s offices, appears to have been part of a concerted effort by forces loyal to or directed by Hosni Mubarak to undermine the public’s access to truthful information about what is going on in Tahrir Square and what kind of crackdown is being pursued to protect the regime.

Friday, for the planned “day of departure”, hundreds of thousands of non-violent pro-democracy demonstrators again massed at Midan Tahrir —Cairo’s Liberation Square—, despite two days of brutal pro-Mubarak militia attacks on demonstrators and journalists. The military today began to play a more active role in securing the square against armed gangs and pro-government cadres.

They blocked all the main entrances to the square, and searched and secured every person entering the square. No weapons and no pro-Mubarak provocateurs were allowed into the square. While some skirmishes were reported in the vicinity, Tahrir Square was again the scene of diverse interests coming together to demand major democratic change and the removal of Hosni Mubarak.

The atmosphere was celebratory, protesters of diverse cultural and political backgrounds prayed together, and the military and opposition movement worked together to ensure the security of the square and the people gathering there. Reports suggested their were long lines of people streaming toward the square, and only a small number of pro-regime gangs roaming the neighboring streets.

In this CNN report, one of the demonstrators describes a return to confidence in the will of the Egyptian people to confront tyranny and establish a legitimate system of free and fair elections. She says any more violence against demonstrators or any further civilian deaths will only accelerate the time after which Mubarak cannot possibly remain in power.

Al Jazeera says the campaign of persecution has escalated dramatically, as a “gang of thugs” broke into their offices, destroyed equipment and set fires, threatening the staff and carrying out what appeared to be a concerted effort by government forces to shut down international media reporting on the protests in Tahrir Square.

According to the Guardian:

The Cairo office of al-Jazeera was ransacked by pro-government “thugs” today, as the Arabic language news channel also said its news website had come under attack by hackers.

Al-Jazeera said its office had been stormed by a “gang of thugs” who burned equipment, on a day of reports of escalating violence against journalists covering the Egyptian uprising.

Al-Jazeera’s website was also hacked, with a banner advertisement reportedly replaced by a fake ad saying “Together for the Collapse of Egypt” and linking to a site attacking the network. A spokesman for the Qatar-based network said “Our website has been under relentless attack since the onset of the uprisings in Egypt”.

The network is also reportedly investigating the attacks, alleging there is a concerted and sweeping attack against all forms of free press in Egypt. “While the deliberate attacks this morning were an attempt to discredit us we will continue our impartial and comprehensive coverage of these unprecedented events,” said the network spokesman.

Starting on 2 February, Mubarak’s regime has organized and carried out a comprehensive undercover war against the press, with agents provocateurs —many reported to have been carrying government ID— not only surrounding and intimidating, but attacking with deadly weapons, members of the press from across the world.

Video from the Guardian newspaper shows massive crowds, described by some as the single largest public pro-democracy protest in the history of the Arab world, at Tahrir Square in central Cairo. Demonstrators urge embattled Pres. Hosni Mubarak to “please, leave now”; one says “Everything is destroyed. What more do you want? Just leave,” while another says “Please, Mr. Mubarak, if you love this country, leave this country.

The demonstrations are being called the “Day of Departure”, and there have been reports across the world media throughout the day that top Egyptian government officials may be in talks with military leaders and foreign governments to discuss a swift exit for Hosni Mubarak. The exact shape of the interim government has not been agreed to or made public, but opposition leaders are reportedly being urged to negotiate with the government to speed Mubarak’s departure.

That hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out has surprised many, as there was such a serious escalation of violence over the last two days and what appeared to be preparations by the regime for a violent crackdown to crush the protests. Across the region, some observers have described a mood of “euphoria”, with one Yemeni parliament minister saying “this is the great Arab revolution” and that corrupt regimes will be swept from the scene.

Over the last two days, Hosni Mubarak has made Cairo the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. After Mubarak’s new prime minister issued an “apology” for the lethal violence waged by pro-Mubarak gangs on Wednesday and into Thursday’s pre-dawn hours, the government appeared to be engaged in an even more intense campaign of violent assaults on unarmed pro-democracy demonstrators and journalists.

Throughout the day Thursday, forces loyal to Pres. Hosni Mubarak —acting in lock-step with statements by both Mubarak and his new vice president that reporters and democracy activists are “foreign agents” and enemies of Egypt— escalated attacks against journalists and protesters, beating, stabbing, kidnapping and persecuting them in an apparent attempt to “eliminate witnesses” to whatever is about to follow.

Mubarak and his government have seized public media and are using television and radio to issue fabrications and propaganda alleging “foreign agents” are instigating the protests and trying to destabilize Egypt and subject Egyptians to violence, scarcity and chaos. There are reports the government is using Internet media to spread lies and calling on Egyptians to target foreign journalists and dissidents and to treat Friday’s protests as a dangerous even staged by foreign spies.

Mubarak’s campaign against the media appears designed to “clear the battlefield” of any obstruction to an extreme and bloody totalitarian massacre of his opponents. Seasoned war correspondents, including journalists who have studied or reported on violent extremist groups across the region, say they have never seen such a pervasive and coordinated campaign to assault journalists.

Journalists from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United States, Bahrain, Qatar, Russia, France, and elsewhere have been targeted for attack and/or kidnapped and held unlawfully or interrogated by paid gangs or by agents of the Mubarak regime. Major global news networks have been so consistently and gravely threatened with brute force they even took down live feeds showing Tahrir Square at a distance Thursday.

Cairo has degenerated from a city gripped by peaceful protests to a place where an exhausted and morally bankrupt totalitarian regime is now waging a lascivious assault on humanity itself. Mubarak’s character as leader appears to be the driving force in what is a mounting tragedy, and it is the character of a man who reacts to an historic opportunity for his nation to be transformed for the better by first ceding partially, appointing a reputed torture chief to be his vice president, then sending snipers and thugs to spill the blood of his people.

Since the beginning of the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations, Mubarak’s paramilitary forces may have killed more than 300 of their fellow Egyptians. Death counts for last week’s nationwide rash of violence range from 100 to 300, while the death count for Wednesday and Thursday is currently estimated between 8 and 13. There are fears that many people have yet to be heard from and may be suffering from untreated wounds, or worse.

Now Hosni Mubarak is using state radio and TV to incite violence against “foreigners” and dissidents, using the strategy Slobodan Milosevic used to foment genocide in Yugoslavia and the leaders of the Rwandan genocide employed to seduce their followers into murdering family, friends and neighbors. Mubarak has flagrantly sought to turn all of Egypt into a country overrun by a violent, visceral fear of foreigners, of the press or of human rights activists.

In the last two days, Mubarak’s regime has organized and carried out a comprehensive undercover war against the press, with agents provocateurs —many reported to have been carrying government ID— not only surrounding and intimidating, but attacking with deadly weapons, members of the press from across the world.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has published this summary of assaults:

• The Washington Post told CPJ that the paper’s Cairo bureau chief, Leila Fadel, and Linda Davidson, a photographer, were among a number of journalists detained this morning. Their unidentified driver and translator were also picked up, and the driver was beaten. Fadel and Davidson were freed late today, but the status of the driver and translator was unclear.

• Corban Costa of Brazilian Radio Nacional and cameraman Gilvan Rocha of TV Brasil were detained, blindfolded, and had their passports and equipment seized, according to Brazilian news accounts. The two were reportedly held overnight without water in a windowless room in a Cairo police station. An officer forced the reporters to sign a statement in Arabic saying they would immediately leave Egypt for Brazil, reports said. “We had to trust what he said, and sign the document, “ Corban said. They said they will be sent back to Brazil on Friday.

• Polish state television TVP said that five journalists working in two crews–Krzysztof Ko?osionek and  Piotr Bugalski; and Micha? Jankowski, Piotr Górecki, and Pawe? Rolak–were detained in Cairo and that one of their cameras was smashed. Krzysztof Ko?osionek and Piotr Bugalski were released, according to Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

• The New York Times reported today that two of its reporters were released after they were detained overnight in Cairo.

• Canadian Globe and Mail journalist Sonia Verma tweeted today that she was being taken “into some kind of custody.” She later reported that she was held by the military for three hours.

• CNN-IBN reported that video journalist Rajesh Bharadwajm was “taken away” from Tahrir Square by military forces. Bharadwajm’s status was not immediately clear.

• Maurice Sarfatti, who writes under the name Serge Dumont, was arrested twice within the past day, according to a statement from the daily Le Soir. The Belgian journalist, who was freed late today, works for a number of European publications.

• A German freelance journalist was briefly detained between Alexandria and Cairo, Frank-Dieter Freiling, a senior vice president of ZDF-German Television, told CPJ in an e-mail.

• Three Romanian TV crews were detained Wednesday and Thursday in Cairo, according to Antena 3 producer Vlad Petreanu, who e-mailed CPJ with details. On Wednesday, Adelin Petrisor, a reporter for the state-owned broadcaster TVR, and an unnamed cameraman were detained by Cairo police, searched, and later released. On Thursday, police detained Realitatea TV reporter Cristian Zarescu and his unidentified cameraman. Authorities confiscated their tapes before releasing them. Also on Thursday, Antena 3 reporter Carmen Avram and cameraman Cristian Tamas, were stopped by police. The men sent a text message late today saying they were being held for questioning.

• Mubarak supporters stormed Cairo’s Hilton Hotel searching for journalists, Al-Jazeera reported today. Journalists inside the hotel posted a Tumblr entry that said: “About 20 foreign journalists are currently holed up.” No injuries were immediately reported, but the journalists’ status was unclear.

• Rachel Beth Anderson, a freelance videographer in Cairo, tweeted that “cameras & phones disappearing from journo hotel rooms in the Semiramis hotel! We’re locked inside by staff who says its orders from outside.”

• Fox News reported that correspondent Greg Palkot and producer Olaf Wiig were hospitalized after being beaten by protesters in Cairo.

• The Swedish public broadcaster SVT reported that its correspondent in Egypt, Bert Sundström, is recovering from stab wounds to the stomach in a Cairo hospital. STV said it lost touch with Sundström as he was reporting in Tahrir Square and when they finally reached him on his cell phone, a man answered and told the station that he had been “taken by the military.” STV’s Ingrid Thörnqvist told the online Aftonbladet: “He is seriously injured, but the condition is stable.”

• The Greek daily newspaper Kathimerini said its correspondent in Cairo, Petros Papaconstantino, was “briefly hospitalized with a stab wound to the leg” after an attack by Mubarak supporters in Tahrir Square, according to The Associated Press. The reporter wrote on Kathimerini‘s site: “I was spotted by Mubarak supporters. They … beat me with batons on the head and stabbed me lightly in the leg. Some soldiers intervened, but Mubarak’s supporters took everything I had on me in front of the soldiers.” AP also reported that an unidentified Greek newspaper photographer was punched in the face.

• The Associated Press reported that CBS reporter Mark Strassman and a camera operator were attacked while trying to photograph people throwing rocks. Strassman told AP that demonstrators punched and sprayed with Mace his camera operator, whom he did not identify. “As soon as one started, it was like blood in the water,” he said.

• Dima Salem, a reporter for Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television, was attacked by pro-Mubarak supporters who took her cameraman’s equipment and tried to beat her, the station said. Witnesses helped them escape, Al-Arabiya reported on the air.

• Two Al-Jazeera English journalists were attacked by Mubarak supporters, the Qatar-based satellite station reported on the air. Three other network reporters were detained in Cairo, the station reported. No names were given.

• Alfred Yaghobzadeh, a French photographer working for SIPA Press agency, was beaten while covering street protests, according to AP, which moved a photo of the journalist being aided by witnesses.

• The AP reported that men wielding sticks disrupted operations and seized satellite equipment at one its locations.

• A BBC producer tweeted that Margaret Evans, a CBC reporter, was forced to hand over recording equipment to military forces in Tahrir Square.

• Margaret Warner, a senior correspondent for the U.S.-based “PBS Newshour,” had her camera confiscated. Warner tweeted today: “PBS NewsHour arrives Cairo. Camera gear inspected & confiscated. 2 hours & we’re still haggling.”

• At least four Spanish journalists were attacked in Cairo, according to news reports. Joan Roura, a correspondent for TV3, a Catalan public television station, was attacked by men who tried to steal his mobile phone while he was conducting a live broadcast for the 24 hours news channel. Assaults were also reported against Sal Emergui, a correspondent for Catalan radio RAC1; Gemma Saura, a correspondent for the newspaper La Vanguardia; and Mikel Ayestaran, a correspondent for the newspaper Vocento/ABC.

• Several Turkish journalists were attacked by Mubarak supporters, according to news reports. Cumali Önal of Cihan News Agency and Do?an Ertu?rul of the Turkish Star Dailywere attacked and beaten by pro-Mubarak supporters on Wednesday. Both were in stable condition today.

• Men with knives seized Erol Candabako?lu, a Turkish Fox TV reporter, along with his unidentified cameraman and driver on Wednesday while they were filming in the Boulaq neighborhood of Cairo, according to news reports. The Turkish news agency Anatolia reported that Egyptian police later freed them.

• Metin Turan, a reporter for the Turkish state-run TRT channel, was assaulted today and beaten by Mubarak supporters, who seized his camera, money, and cell phone,according to the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman. The reporter escaped and sought refuge at the Turkish Embassy; embassy officials told the paper they would take Turan to the hospital because he suffered from wounds and bruises. Isa Simsek, a photographer for Today’s Zaman, was also assaulted today by a Mubarak supporter, according to news reports.

• Popular Egyptian blogger Mahmoud (aka “Sandmonkey”) tweeted: ”I was ambushed & beaten by the police, my phone confiscated, my car ripped apar& supplies taken.” He said he was briefly detained.

• Wally Nell, a photographer for the California-based Zuma Press agency, was wounded under the 6th October Bridge at the Corniche on the Nile in downtown Cairo, according to accounts posted by family and friends. Those accounts described Zell as having suffered multiple pellet wounds after being fired upon by police.

• At least four contributors to Demotix, a U.K.-based citizen journalism website and photo agency, were also attacked, Turi Munthe, Demotix CEO, told CPJ in an e-mail. The four included Nour El Refai and Mohamed Elmaymony.

• The British-based communications company Vodafone accused the Egyptian government of hijacking its text messaging services and sending out text messages supportive of Mubarak, according to news reports.

• Multiple journalists for state-owned or government-aligned media have resigned or have refused to work after the government put pressure on them to sanitize the news or to not report on violence against demonstrators, several CPJ sources said. Shahira Amin, an anchor on the state-owned Nile TV channel, said on the air: “I refuse to be a hypocrite. I feel liberated.”

A senior Egyptian judge has called for the indictment of of Hosni Mubarak for crimes against humanity, saying what occurred at Tahrir Square on Wednesday and Thursday was clearly “a massacre” and must be described as such. The International Criminal Court could begin proceedings against the dictator immediately, given the wide array of evidence mounting against him.

The US Department of State has obtained information that the Egyptian Interior Ministry was responsible for ordering the mass detention of journalists. That information may ultimately tip the balance of power in Egypt, as those under Mubarak and in charge of the military see the long-time ruler’s position is untenable.

There are reports that foreigners, including unarmed students seeking to escape the violence and make their way to the airport, may also have been targeted for attack. Foreign governments now have to consider not only whether Egyptians are in jeopardy, but whether their own people are coming under violent assault by agents of the regime.

The governments of the United States and the European Union are reportedly meeting to discuss policies for diplomatic intervention to help speed the process of democratic transition, and there are calls for the Arab League to intervene, to show a united front and in the interests of the Egyptian people and the region, demand the removal of Pres. Hosni Mubarak from power.

There are reports today that Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, has gone to Tahrir Square to join the hundreds of thousands massing there for the “day of departure” rally, in which pro-democracy demonstrators, reportedly including a Catholic cardinal and a top Muslim cleric, who were seen holding hands and calling for national unity.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who was attacked by gangs of pro-Mubarak forces for the second consecutive day, on Thursday, was forced to broadcast from “an undisclosed location”, describing himself as “scared” about what might be about to happen and saying ordinary Egyptians were becoming afraid of what the government might do. He described the day as “the second day of all-out attacks” against pro-democracy and human rights activists and foreign and domestic journalists.

Field reports found doctors were treating many of the demonstrators for gunshot wounds, the shots having been fired by snipers and pro-Mubarak gangs.

Footage was shown in which a police van clearly speeds its way through a crowd of pedestrians, mowing down several and not stopping.

The degeneration of civil society in Egypt is absolutely owing to the failings and moral perversions of an illegitimate regime and of its leader Hosni Mubarak, a man the whole world now sees has been thoroughly corrupted by 30 years of unaccountable rule and arbitrary exercise of power.

A prominent Egyptian scholar, Fouad Ajami, told CNN on Thursday that “last night we entered the dark period” in which “we saw really naked the cruelty of the regime”. He said Mubarak’s cruelty and violence turned the peaceful protests into “a fight for the country”. Where Egyptians were using peaceful means to call for a change in the country’s form of government, the government is using machetes, Molotov cocktails, and gunfire, to kill Egyptians in the streets.

The International Criminal Court should begin collecting evidence from every possible witness as to the nature of Mubarak’s exercise of power, not only during the last ten days, but throughout his period of uninterrupted “emergency” rule. The United Nations should immediately begin drafting a new treaty declaring any prolonged period of “emergency rule” a crime against humanity and resolving to investigate abuses committed under all such regimes.

It is fundamentally unfair to the victims of such brutality that the world wait until millions of souls are steeled with the uncommon courage required to go into the streets and face down a potential onslaught from hired mercenaries and secret police. To overthrow a dictator, and avoid the defeat of a Tianenmen Square, Egypt’s people are trying to get not one, but literally millions of brave citizens to stare down the symbol of state-sponsored violence.

In 1989, in Beijing, it was one man against a column of tanks. In 2011, in Cairo, it is hundreds of thousands of brave souls against gangs of paramilitaries hired to intimidate, to injure and to kill, in order to defend a dictator. Indeed, while the 2nd of February was the day Mubarak sent his forces into Tahrir Square to spill Egyptian blood, the 4th should be the day the people’s interim government is installed, and Hosni Mubarak exiled forever to face criminal charges.

The “Day of Departure” rally has swelled the ranks of pro-democracy demonstrators occupying Tahrir Square. Reuters reports the prime minister has instructed the army to “assist” journalists and protect them from the armed pro-Mubarak gangs roaming the city. The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont gave an interview describing a harrowing experience of being detained multiple times by armed men, some wielding machetes, being forced “to kneel in front of a wall”, being detained for 2 hours by the army, which he described as “polite and disciplined”.

The Guardian is reporting:

The putative opposition figurehead Mohamad ElBaradei and another prominent opposition figure, Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, have both been seen either in or on their way to Tahrir Square, according to a number of accounts.

Inside Tahrir Square, a “relaxed atmosphere” prevails among the hundreds of thousands gathered, and there appears to be an atmosphere of safety and security, though armed “vigilantes” appear to be blocking access to the square. Foreign media continue to describe difficulty accessing the site of the demonstrations, and live feeds from the square have been harder to set up than on Tuesday, when over a million people filled the square demanding Mubarak’s departure.

The protests scheduled for today were aimed at gathering millions of Egyptians in the streets for a march from Tahrir Square to one or more of the presidential palaces, where they would demand the immediate resignation of Pres. Hosni Mubarak and all of his ministers. It is not clear at this writing (7:52 am EST / 2:52 pm Cairo time) whether that final, key phase of the march will take place, but there does appear to be a much greater show of united national opposition to the Mubarak regime, from all levels of society.

A commenter on the Guardian website, who has been speaking with her husband who is presently at Tahrir Square, reports:

Eyewitness reports in Tahrir Square confirm the presence of Amr Moussa in the square with the pro-democracy demonstrators. He is the current secretary general of the Arab League and former minister of foreign affairs, is a liberal politician.

The Catholic Cardinal in Egypt was witnessed hand in hand with a Muslim cleric, both in their religious dress with the pro-democracy demonstrators. He was speaking about national unity, stating that the myth of sectarian strife is only made by the failing government security apparatus and urge people to unite as Egyptians. The Muslim cleric also stated the same.

Yesterday, Pres. Hosni Mubarak said in an interview that “If I resign today, there will be chaos”, but that claim appears to be belied by the massive opposition to his rule and by the peaceful nature of the protest. The only chaos that has occurred over the last 11 days appears to have been deliberately instigated by forces loyal to Hosni Mubarak, whether they were secret police or hired “thugs”.

The brutal crackdown that occurred in central Cairo over the last two days has reportedly led top United States government officials to speak directly to the top officials under Mubarak and in the Egyptian military, to chart a course for his departure from power, with an interim government to include opposition parties and possibly the military.

UPDATE, 10:44 am EST (5:44 pm Cairo): Video from the Guardian newspaper shows massive crowds, described by some as the single largest public pro-democracy protest in the history of the Arab world, at Tahrir Square in central Cairo. Demonstrators urge embattled Pres. Hosni Mubarak to “please, leave now”; one says “Everything is destroyed. What more do you want? Just leave,” while another says “Please, Mr. Mubarak, if you love this country, leave this country.

The demonstrations are being called the “Day of Departure”, and there have been reports across the world media throughout the day that top Egyptian government officials may be in talks with military leaders and foreign governments to discuss a swift exit for Hosni Mubarak. The exact shape of the interim government has not been agreed to or made public, but opposition leaders are reportedly being urged to negotiate with the government to speed Mubarak’s departure.

That hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out has surprised many, as there was such a serious escalation of violence over the last two days and what appeared to be preparations by the regime for a violent crackdown to crush the protests. Across the region, some observers have described a mood of “euphoria”, with one Yemeni parliament minister saying “this is the great Arab revolution” and that corrupt regimes will be swept from the scene.

UPDATE, 12:34 pm EST (7:34 pm Cairo): The Guardian is reporting:

The Egyptian army is manning checkpoints at all entrances to the square, searching people for weapons before allowing them in. No pro-Mubarak protesters are being allowed into the square, following days of clashes between the two groups. The atmosphere — in the square at least — has been relaxed and peaceful, although skirmishes and gunfire were reported later in central Cairo (5.18pm).

The Nobel peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei has reportedly said he will not run for the Egyptian presidency in future elections (5.10pm). However, Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, who was in Tahrir Square today has reportedly suggested he is considering running for president (3.37pm).

Youth activists in Egypt have drawn a list of four very specific demands that they want to be met, including the dismantling of the ruling NDP government, a new constitution and the creation of a committee to have responsiblity for appointing a transitional government (5.05pm).

That the military is protecting every entrance to Tahrir Square, and allowing pro-democracy demonstrators into the square, while barring all weapons and all pro-Mubarak supporters, is a positive development, allowing for a far more peaceful and safer atmosphere than in recent days. There are sporadic reports of “skirmishes” and gunfire in the streets surrounding the area, but a swelling crowd and atmosphere of jubilation and defiance inside the square.

The New York Times reported earlier today that the Egyptian military may be in agreement with a plan to remove Mubarak from power and transition to an interim government representing a broad coalition of opposition parties. Calls for the dismantling of the governing NDP government are in part an effort to prevent the rigged parliament (83% went to Mubarak’s party, despite vehement opposition from the population) from undermining the peaceful transition to truly electoral government.

Ahmed Shafiq, the new prime minister installed over the weekend by embattled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, has made public apology for the violence that occurred yesterday in Cairo’s Midan Tahrir, or Liberation Square. Shafiq addressed the nation, saying “As officials and a state which must protect its sons, I thought it was necessary for me to apologize and to say that this matter will not be repeated”. He called the bloodshed “a disaster”.

The apology comes after images were broadcast around the world of heavily armed thugs assaulting reporters and peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators, many of them found to be carrying official identification as state security forces or police. Anti-Mubarak protesters had said these so-called baltagayyah were paid gangs sent by Mubarak and Suleiman —the new vice president and Mubarak’s director of intelligence (and political detention and torture) for 15 years— to crush the popular uprising against the regime.

Shafiq acknowledged that the attacks appeared to be part of a coordinated campaign of violence, but that “no one had prior knowledge”. He described his being “surprised” to see camels in Tahrir Square, which many have interpreted as a subtle acknowledgement that he had thought the crackdown would look different than it did. Others have suggested Mubarak ordered Shafiq to make the apology, because he may have some “deniability”, may not have been involved in the planning.

There was swift, furious and angry reaction to Shafiq’s words on Twitter, where anti-Mubarak voices seemed convinced this was another way for the government to conceal its ongoing campaign to detain and intimidate the opposition and its supporters. Several feeds accused the government of continuing arrests and tactics of “humiliation” and suggested the investigations Shafiq spoke of would be what so many feared when Mubarak spoke of investigations: a widespread cover-up targeting dissenters and concealing Mubarak’s role in the chaos.

Many have also expressed concern that Wednesday demonstrated that the new Mubarak-Suleiman regime was formed specifically in order to take a more hardline, authoritarian posture to the protests. Shafiq expressed a willingness to go to Tahrir Square personally to meet with the pro-democracy demonstrators. Shafiq also said that he and Vice President Suleiman met today with leaders of several opposition parties and that talks to implement a transition to democratic rule would include demonstrators from Tahrir Square who have been calling for Mubarak to step down.

But key opposition figures rejected the claim, saying they would now negotiate with Mubarak, Suleiman or Shafiq. They say the three are part of a brutal authoritarian response to peaceful demonstrations, which has —as Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported Tuesday— left at least 300 killed and over 3,000 injured, with masses of opposition supporters detained. Yesterday, at least four were killed and over 1,500 injured when pro-Mubarak forces —apparently organized by the regime— assaulted the demonstrators.

UPDATE, 10:33 am EST: Reports from Cairo say at least 8 human rights workers and pro-democracy workers from the Hisham Mobarak Law Center and the Egyptian Center for Social and Economic Rights. Nicholas Kristof has put out a message on Twitter saying that journalists have been arrested by Mubarak police forces. The crackdown appears to continue, even as PM Shafiq says he wants to visit with and negotiate with demonstrators. One of those detained may be the father of one of a demonstrator who gave an emotional interview to Al Jazeera last night.

There are reports the police are accusing the protesters of being foreign agents, and it appears the Mubarak regime continues to be using the strategy that the nature of the crackdown and the meaning of the pro-democracy movement can be covered up.

There are more reports today of live ammunition being fired in Tahrir Square. Demonstrators have been injured and it appears the violent crackdown continues, even as the prime minister calls for negotiation and hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians mass in support of the pro-democracy movement.

UPDATE, 2:48 pm EST: Billionaire Richard Branson is has said Mubarak must resign, and he may lead a campaign to divest from Egypt if Mubarak or his regime remain in power. He called on business and political leaders from around the world to join together and issue a “clear statement of intent” calling on Mubarak to leave office immediately and allow a peaceful transition to electoral democracy.

UPDATE, 2:54 pm EST: The Guardian is reporting, via live updates on the crisis in Egypt:

While Christine Amanpour was allowed to interview Mubarak, her ABC colleagues have been running from pro-Mubarak mobs: “A group of angry Egyptian men carjacked an ABC News crew and threatened to behead them today in the latest and most menacing attack on foreign reporters trying to cover the anti-government uprising.”

Earlier today, NPR reported that doctors volunteering at the makeshift outdoor field hospital that had been set up in one corner of Tahrir Square said they treated huge numbers of wounds from knives, blunt objects, fire bombs and bullets, adding that snipers had been “backing up” the pro-Mubarak mobs from rooftops around Tahrir Square. It is another sign that professional security forces had been sent in to wage a paramilitary assault on peaceful demonstrators and journalists.

UPDATE, 3:00 pm EST: It is 10:00 pm in Cairo. The clashes that rocked the city throughout Wednesday and into the pre-dawn hours of Thursday were more sporadic and less intense Thursday, and Tahrir Square again filled with pro-democracy protesters, defying the regime’s use of force. But reports from Cairo, filtering through Twitter and international media, suggest the crackdown is in fact widening, as human rights workers and journalists are now being detained and brutalized.

Voices among the demonstrators say the security forces detaining human rights lawyers suggested they were to be slandered as foreign agents, as part of a Mubarak-led cover-up of the regime’s violent crackdown. Mubarak himself told ABC News’ Christiane Amanpour that he is “disturbed” by the violence that occured on Wednesday and into Thursday, but that his government was not responsible. Protesters, and some journalists, have warned these remarks presage a strict authoritarian crackdown intended to reclaim Mubarak’s hold on power.

Vice President Omar Suleiman announced today that Mubarak’s son, Gamal, would not seek election to replace his father in the presidential elections scheduled for the fall of this year. It also appears Gamal Mubarak has resigned from the ruling National Democratic Party, though the specific motivation for doing so was not made public.

The government also reportedly froze the assets and prohibited the travel of key figures that were dismissed from the government last week by Mubarak. That move is being interpreted as one of two things: either an attempt to conceal evidence of the regime’s wrongdoing by barring witnesses access to foreign media, or to paint Mubarak as a man of law and order willing to cooperate in investigations of corruption within his administration.

UPDATE, 6:40 pm EST: Today a small candlelight vigil was held by human rights supporters in Old Damascus, to mourn the pro-democracy demonstrators who have died in Egypt. Syrian authorities failed to intervene when a group of 20 men “dressed in civilian clothes” but apparently coordinated, assaulted and, from eyewitness accounts, brutally beat the 15 unarmed civilians gathered in front of a police station.

While Mubarak’s new prime minister has apologized for the violence in Tahrir Square and said he will investigate the causes, and Mubarak’s vice president and chief intelligence officer said fall elections have been moved up to August, Pres. Mubarak himself defiantly said his government is not responsible for the violence and blamed one of the opposition parties.

Meanwhile the crackdown has reportedly been ongoing and in some ways intensifying. Journalists are now so flagrantly and directly under assault from security forces in central Cairo that multiple networks have shut down their live feeds. There are reports of at least 13 people killed, as pro-Mubarak forces appear to continue attacking demonstrators. Cairo has become the world’s most dangerous city for journalists, almost overnight, and Mubarak’s regime is being condemned for the violence.

UPDATE, 8:12 pm EST: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer explained on air that the mounting rash of violence and political detentions targeting journalists “has made it impossible for us to show live pictures”. Al Jazeera’s Cairo bureau put out a tweet saying the same, that maintaining the live feed from Tahrir Square was putting their lives in danger. They pledged to bring back the live feed as soon as security conditions improved.

The atmosphere of violence and the persecution of journalists should be something the Egyptian military could control. It appears to independent observers that the military has taken the view that the “pro-Mubarak” forces are probably a mix of citizens and paramilitaries and that restraint is preferable.

Today the military mobilized to keep the pro-Mubarak gangs out of Tahrir Square, at least for part of the day, and pr0-democracy demonstrators in the square began fortifying and securing barricades to make sure armed cadres could not entre the square. Makeshift field hospitals were set up at one corner of the square to back up the main field hospital set up inside a nearby mosque, and activists were reportedly detaining armed attackers they were able to subdue in a holding area.

Yesterday, in defiance of a total ban on public gatherings, tens of thousands of Egyptians marched in Cairo, decrying the authoritarian methods of the regime of long-time president Hosni Mubarak. Organizers said they planned to repeat and expand the protests today, but thousands of military and riot police are reported to be lining the streets of Cairo, and the government has shut down all access to Twitter inside Egypt, in an effort to prevent social media organizing.

International media are showing images of protesters bloodied after being physically assaulted by heavily armed police. Mubarak’s regime has been in power for three decades, and has consistently faced vehement opposition from sometimes extremist parties, but yesterday’s protests appeared to be more mainstream, with young people demanding more individual liberty and denouncing the perennial emergency rule Mubarak has used to crush dissent and eliminate democratic opposition.

Mubarak has long been seen as a US ally, in part because he has supported long-term peace with Israel, cooperating on security and trade issues. But critics in the US, Europe, and Israel have also warned Mubarak’s authoritarianism might be a serious political and security liability, warning that Egypt needs to democratize in order to achieve real security across the region.

The so-called “Day of Rage” protest was by far the largest mass demonstration against Mubarak in decades. Foreign Policy’s Ashraf Khalil reports:

The Egyptian government’s standard operating procedure is to overwhelm any public protest with a massively disproportionate wave of black-clad police. As a result, most protests tend to boil down to the same 500 noisy hard-core activists hopelessly penned in by thousands of riot cops.

But today those numbers were reversed, and the police, at times, seemed completely confused and struggling to keep up. In one confrontation outside the Supreme Court building in downtown Cairo, the riot police attempted to lock arms in a human chain to block the protesters’ path. Their effort, however, proved hopelessly ineffective — waves of marchers simply overwhelmed them and continued on their path.

Today the numbers are restored to normal, and the use of teargas, batons and outright assault, according to numerous reports, appear to be clamping down on the demonstrations. The real question for Mubarak and his regime will have to be whether such events will be repeated not today or tomorrow, but at a time determined by a growing protest movement demanding more democratic freedoms.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been a relentless defender of the most aggressive tacts used during the Bush era to combat terrorism. The word aggressive applies to the attitude, of course, not the thoroughgoing nature or effectiveness of those policies. He is now attacking Pres. Obama for his response to the alleged terror plot that involved a Christmas Day bombing over Detroit, which was foiled. Yet Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate foreign relations committee, has called Cheney’s criticism unfair, and says Obama’s response has been “strong” and “decisive”.

In fact, if we examine the nature of the policies promoted by former Vice President Cheney, we find a common thread: whether it’s torture, the wish to selectively —which many believe means entirely— abolish habeas corpus, arbitrary detention, snap bombing raids, invasions of whole countries based on deliberately manipulated intelligence, the common thread is a sadistic bloodlust. It is as if Mr. Cheney cannot find it in himself to put democracy ahead of the lust for a violent, unhinged response. He equates the use of brute force to “strength” and considers military action the most intelligent response in every case.

The pro-violence approach espoused by Cheney is not only cited, by both captured terrorists and the intelligence community, as a primary motivator for terrorist recruiting, it also belies a near total inability to think clearly on matters of national security. Whereas Cheney would have us believe he is serious because he is obsessed with carrying out violent acts and dehumanizing those suspected of involvement in terrorist plots, that obsession shows he is not serious about crafting the smartest solution to the problem. He is serious only about developing elaborate vehicles for sadistic behavior, using national security as an excuse.

In more than one way, Mr. Cheney’s dark obsessions endanger our nation. His perverse approach to defending the nation projects an image not of strength, but of cruelty, thus lending credence to the most cruel and deranged of our enemies. The extreme nature of his apparently global plot to dehumanize anyone he deems a potential enemy of the United States suggests this is something the United States routinely does and for which its global influence is used.

And his advocating torture and other sadistic practices actually inflames hatred of the US, produces false intelligence, and undermines intelligence gathering at all levels. It also puts Americans —both in the military and civilians traveling abroad— at greater risk of such treatment, according to every military and intelligence report that has examined the subject. There is also the most often overlooked piece of the Cheney security puzzle: his policies are a direct assault on the very principles of Constitutional democracy in the United States, a capitulation of the highest order to the terrorist mindset.

So why does Dick Cheney persist in promoting sadistic, ill-advised policies that are more likely to harm us than help us, that have already failed in spectacular fashion, which our enemies use to recruit a new generation of militant thugs to wage war on our civilians, all while deliberately and actively seeking to forfeit our freedoms and our Constitutional democracy? Does Mr. Cheney benefit personally in some way from this campaign of horrors? Is he in the torture-for-profit business?

Maybe he has some money invested in firms that profit from war. But it would be easier to continue lying about the evil of our enemies to provoke wars for profit than it would be to add to that already very tall order an always-on campaign in favor of torture, ignoring habeas corpus and undoing the fundamental principles of a democratic society. So the profit-motive is not an adequate explanation for Cheney’s rants.

There’s always the issue of defending his past actions, to avoid prosecution. And this is a good argument. It’s been all but evidentially established that Dick Cheney was integral in crafting a number of key Bush-era policies that violated US law, including the Constitution, and that he was at the top of a conspiracy to conceal those activities from the Congress, the public and the world. Allegedly. If proven in a court of law, such allegations could lead to his prosecution as the most serious criminal saboteur of the Constitutional order in US history (barring the Civil War period).

So getting the public and the government to agree that his acts were not crimes and his policies were “strong” and heroic could be a way of preventing eventual prosecution. But Cheney’s “defense” —which his very public ranting against Pres. Obama’s counterterrorism policies is widely accepted to be— has been bizarre, to say the least: in order to argue that he did not violate the law by advocating torture, kidnapping, arbitrary detention and random killings, Cheney now advocates for them. He even goes as far as to attack Obama for changing counterterrorism policy by not doing those things. One of the strangest defenses one could ever mount, surely.

To some extent, Cheney is a man who is intimately involved in the industry of war-making and who has already made millions from the Iraq war, through his former company, the “oil services” firm Halliburton, which conveniently morphed into a war services firm when Iraq was invaded, and which continued to pay him throughout his time as vice president. Cheney lied about having “severed” his ties with the company, but an investigation by the Congressional Research Service found he had a special arrangement that gave him stock options and substantial deferred compensation.

During the year 2004-2005, Cheney’s stock option holdings in his former firm shot up by an astonishing 3,281%, rising in value from $241,498 to more than $8 million. By 2005, Halliburton had been paid more than $20 billion in no-bid contract fees for work in the Iraq war zone. Cheney said he would give the proceeds from his stock options to charity, but has never relinquished ownership. His profit-making seems more than secure, and there may yet be investigations into the specifics. (The firm was even paid tens of millions of dollars in bonuses for work that killed US troops, and numerous investigations have been launched.)

But again, it would be easier to gain from such business ties or to defend his claim that he never violated the law if he did not so actively promote and pursue the use of torture and other flagrantly unhinged uses of executive power that violate US law and endanger the nation. The conclusion one is left to draw is that Cheney’s motivation is not strictly financial or related to mounting a legal defense in the court of public opinion, but that he desires to see such policies spoken about, advocated, and embraced, by wide swaths of the US public, regardless of the harm it would do to our way of life and to our national security and standing in the world.

That desire would be evidence of a deep sadistic streak, pervasive enough in his way of seeing the world that he is blinded to both the moral and practical arguments against what he proposes. Uncaring about his torture policy flagrantly violating US law, uncaring about whether the selective suspension of habeas corpus by a chief executive erodes our Constitutional system, uncaring about whether terrorists use his policies to propagate their influence and rally an army to their twisted cause, uncaring about whether torture and rigged intel directly endanger national security, Cheney persists.

Those of us who know the virtues of American democracy, who prize the right to say we live in a “free country”, know that we cannot permit extreme abuses of power like torture and the suspension of habeas corpus. We know that the Constitution and the rule of law must be more sacred than any one man’s lust for power. And we know, in our hearts, that cruelty and deviant behavior do not make us safer. Mr. Cheney’s arguments are sadistic and deeply dangerous for America.

He argues for a primitive defense policy that ignores information and uses no intelligent planning to achieve noteworthy aims. He argues that our values, as a democratic society, are weak and must be cast aside in the grand project of torturing and killing accused terrorists. He argues for wars that create horrific proliferations of risk for US security, with little to no long-term strategy, just guesses and self-praise, put into the planning. His sadistic agenda is an abject failure, and his political voice must be treated accordingly.

There is a fundamental difference between the logic of military tribunals for battlefield captures and the Constitutional order of criminal prosecution and due process: the Constitutional criminal justice system is designed to deal with people who violate laws; military tribunals are meant to be an ad-hoc legal variation of that standard, reserved for representatives of enemy states that violate the laws of war in a battlefield setting. By inveighing against the US criminal justice system’s ability to handle terror prosecutions, the Republican party is not only actively promoting lies, but working to elevate Al Qaeda to the status of a legitimate, sovereign government.

Not only is the Republican party attack on the federal criminal justice system an attack on the US Constitution itself and a frightening departure from the committed service to democratic ideals expected of all elected officials, it suggests both the legitimation of Al Qaeda’s claim that they are entitled to practice warfighting against US interests and that the United States territory is now, legally speaking a “battlefield”. This creates a very real, very distinct threat to long-standing civil liberties that in case of invasion could be curtailed for the general welfare or the security of the state.

The Republican position on terror prosecutions has been nakedly irresponsible for years: refuting the Supreme Court’s determination that there is literally no circumstance conceivable where the United States government could deny any prisoner, detainee or suspect the fundamental legal rights promised by the Constitution —which not only grants rights to individuals, but limits government power to powers specifically enumerated in written law— and promoting the use of abusive tactics and prosecutions that deny access to evidence and adequate defense has led to a disastrous legal situation in which some very dangerous detainees may have a legitimate legal case on appeal.

That the Republican party has sought to create a new judicial precedent in which certain criminal prosecutions are not eligible for any kind of appeal is not a sign of being tough on terror; it is a sign of the party’s willingness to throw away essential Constitutional protections in exchange for the elevation of a gang of thugs and murderers to special status, solely for the purpose of covering up the failings of its own policies. The collective result of the Republican party’s hard-line approach, which has ignored federal law, defamed the Supreme Court and eroded the Constitutional system, has been to endanger the nation by making it easier for suspected terrorists to win in court.

The United States has long been credited with having the most evolved, most open, most dynamic and legitimate, system of trial-based justice. That legitimacy depends on the consistent upholding of fundamental democratic principles for organizing fair trials, examining actual evidence, and demanding that the state not have the power to arbitrarily detain people who have not violated the law. Allegations are not convictions, in such a system, and if they become so, then we will have lost our democracy to a band of terrorist thugs.

The will of elected officials to uphold the Constitution they are sworn to serve should be stronger and more resilient than the frail logic of would-be authoritarians who believe —or simply believe it is convenient to promote the idea— that democracy is weak and dangerous, tantamount to “appeasement” and that only belligerence and disregard for the rule of law can show strength. The entire history of the United States has been about a concerted, society-wide effort to overthrow, comprehensively and for good, the logic of authoritarianism, the police state and the exercise of power for the benefit of power.

We now need to guard against the most perilous failure of imagination, the failure that allows frail minds to perceive the exercise of cynical brute force and arbitrary detention as superior to the vast history of accomplishments of a free people demanding something better of the world, and of themselves. It is also necessary to recognize that there can be no legitimate explanation for using the issue of terrorism to promote one’s own party over another during an election year. Republican attacks on the Constitutional justice system in an attempt to sow fear of Democratic leadership are, if nothing else, in direct service of the interests of terrorism.

Promoting the degradation of the Constitutional justice system in the interest of pre-arranging rigged trials to permanently imprison anyone accused of terrorist acts, without a Constitutional process, is to degrade the Constitutional system of government in service of the radical ideology of terror and hate, promoted by Al Qaeda. It is capitulation, because the very aim of terrorists is to alter the society they attack, by using fear as a lever to alter their reactions to attacks on their way of life.

The aim of terrorists is to cause us to violate our own ideals, erode the rule of law, apply the logic of fear and hate, and in the process lose the dynamism and security that stems directly from our Constitutional system and its hard-won freedoms. Republican politicians have a responsibility to defend not only “the homeland”, but to defend our cherished system of democratic values and processes, to uphold the rule of law and a permanent ban on arbitrary detention, torture and the other instruments of authoritarianism. They have, like the rest of us, an always-active responsibility to defend the virtues of democracy against the logic of fear and extremism, not capitulate to the logic of fear.

China may be fast moving toward global superpower status, with rates of industrialization and wealth-creation nearly unprecedented in human history. But the ancient imperial state still faces pervasive problems of regional and ethnic disharmony and multiple separatist movements intent on breaking up the map of the modern political state. To hold together, Beijing will have to democratize public and private institutions at a rapid pace and in a credible way.

Hong Kong, once a British protectorate, has been granted special political freedoms —as part of the conditions for its return to Chinese rule, and not without significant amounts of public protest from locals demanding them—, including electoral representation and the right to demonstrate. It is a divergent political model within the still largely totalitarian system planned and managed from Beijing, and it may serve as a credible model for how to democratize Chinese institutions of government and enterprise.

In order to meet the social and political demands of coming decades, China will have to grapple with the very real problem of what impact the information revolution will have on Chinese society, which has allowed for a privileged class of central control to impose a strict authoritarian order for thousands of years. Chinese society is already democratizing in terms of information, in that the government has had to admit mistakes in attempts to reorganize and filter information of vital public interest.

The scandal surrounding attempts to cover up the outbreak of SARS in China angered governments and international bodies, and spurred a wave of dissent in China that gave more power to journalists in the state media who sought to put informational value ahead of Beijing politics. Pres. Hu’s “smokeless war” against the press and dissidents has been a questionable enterprise throughout, with limited practical success in promoting Beijing’s projection of power and apparently sparking a surge in dissent.

Authoritarian urges inherent in Beijing’s use of power, both within China and beyond, have generated a notable backlash. In March 2008, an effort to ‘Sino-ize’ the Tibetan economy and consolidate Beijing’s hold on the region led to an outbreak of violence, with ethnic clashes, street demonstrations and security forces attacking civilians in the streets. The demonstrations spread to other regions of China and to neighboring Nepal. As we reported on 31 March 2008:

Demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet turned violent in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, yesterday, as police wielded bamboo clubs and beat demonstrators, including Buddhist monks and nuns. The UN has said Nepal’s harsh clampdown on Tibetan demonstrators violates international human rights law, including the right to peaceful assembly, as embodied in treaties signed by Nepal.

Demonstrations that began in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, more nearly 3 weeks ago have now spread to neighboring provinces in China, and into Nepal and India. The Kathmandu clashes came as large crowds accusing China of human rights abuses in Tibet tried to approach the Chinese embassy grounds.

A similar outbreak of ethnic violence broke out in the western province of Xinjiang, when efforts to centralize political control of the region and marginalize the local ethnic majority led to violent street battles. The government accused Uighur separatists of stoking the violence, while Uighur muslims from the region accused ethnic Han immigrants of undermining the economic opportunity available to the locals.

For the occasion of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, dissidents organized a high-profile petition for political reform, calling the document itself Charter ’08. The document, far from being an outright repudiation of China’s political establishment, calls for an incremental liberalization of the political process, and diversification of the one-party system. It opens with an explanation of the historical moment and the socio-political imperatives the regime will have to face, one way or another:

This year is the 100th year of China’s Constitution, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Democracy Wall, and the 10th year since China signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. After experiencing a prolonged period of human rights disasters and a tortuous struggle and resistance, the awakening Chinese citizens are increasingly and more clearly recognizing that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal common values shared by all humankind, and that democracy, a republic, and constitutionalism constitute the basic structural framework of modern governance. A “modernization” bereft of these universal values and this basic political framework is a disastrous process that deprives humans of their rights, corrodes human nature, and destroys human dignity. Where will China head in the 21st century? Continue a “modernization” under this kind of authoritarian rule? Or recognize universal values, assimilate into the mainstream civilization, and build a democratic political system? This is a major decision that cannot be avoided.

The government’s response has been to suppress the very idea of a need for liberalization and to prosecute those responsible for the petition. Liu Xiaobo, a moderate dissident and respected literary figure, was detained this summer on charges linked to the Charter ’08 movement and has now been sentenced to 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power”, a charge the very name of which is a virtual admission of China’s need to democratize. The trial was just two hours long and has been decried across the world as an unfair prosecution without adequate defense or due process for the accused.

Instead of recognizing the constructive role that responsible political reformists can play in crafting a viable future for China —in line with the international system to which China has signed up but whose values it consistently rejects—, those in power in Beijing are treating the very idea of broader political freedoms for the Chinese people as a threat to national security. As the LA Times has reported:

In the last two years, the Chinese government has cracked down on Internet sites, lawyers, consumer advocates and human rights activists, particularly after the collapse of poorly constructed schools in the Sichuan earthquake and the tainted milk scandal in 2008. Liu is a brave democracy advocate and no stranger to jail; he was sent to prison for 21 months after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, and to a labor camp in 1996 after demanding clemency for others still imprisoned.

This attack on universal values and persecution of the very dissident voices that could most ably and responsibly shepherd China through a period of needed democratic progress is dangerous in the extreme. Beijing’s hard-line tactics have radicalized and even popularized separatist movements across a number of regions, and efforts to disallow protests and even individual complaints about corruption has sown the seeds of deeper dissent across the country, at a time when tens of millions have lost work due to the global economic crisis.

China has also sought, along with its persecution of dissidents and its use of military force to impose political control over satellite regions, to create a hermetically controlled Chinese-language internet, where information can only be posted if approved by state censors. Instead of seizing the Olympics as an opportunity to plan, test and exhibit meaningful democratic liberalization, the government in Beijing has sought to block websites critical of its policies and control the flow of information across all communications networks in China.

But efforts to impose a blanket censorship-enabling spyware technology on all computers in the country were complicated this summer, when complaints about the substantial security risks and negative impact on business and foreign investment forced the government to back down. In July, we reported:

Amid a storm of protest from Chinese citizens, businesses, rights activists and foreign governments, China has suddenly halted its planned installation of a new enhancement to the ‘Great Firewall’ called ‘Green Dam’. In a statement the UK’s Guardian calls “terse”, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported “China will delay the mandatory installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers.”

The technology may still take effect, under the guise of an effort to block pornography in order to protect young people, but there is intense resistance from the international community, and from media and business interests in China. There are concerns that aside from a gross violation of fundamental rights to open information, the software could actually destroy intellectual property, impede the functioning of computer hardware altogether, and even subject users to added security risks.

According to the OpenNet Initiative:

The version of the Green Dam software that we tested, when operating under its default settings, is far more intrusive than any other content control software we have reviewed. Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech. The program installs components deep into the kernel of the computer operating system in order to enable this application layer monitoring. The operation of the software is highly unpredictable and disrupts computer activity far beyond the blocking of websites.

Features that allow for intimate monitoring of keystrokes and usage logs could permit attacks either from within government monitoring or from non-government criminal enterprises, to access personal information, create extensive archives of data regarding individual lives and networks of people, and subject individuals to identity theft, harassment, and other kinds of computer-enabled endangerment. Such intrusive harvesting of personal data could even put children at far greater risk of exploitation via the Internet.

One of the most fundamental dangers inherent in this type of digital data-based persecution of dissent at all levels is that it first of all assists in the coverup of abusive or corrupt activity and secondly does nothing to reform areas of the political system itself that are causing anger and the spread of hostility to government policies. While the Green Dam spyware project may allow Beijing to conceal or disrupt the communication of dissent, it will do nothing to prevent the dissent-inducing abuses or systemic inadequacies from occurring.

The only practical way to ensure that government services meet the needs of real people, and thus fashion a more harmonious system, is for a freer flow of information among people and between the people and their government. Failing that, even the best-intentioned government programs will run into trouble and be a source of unrest or opposition. Persecution of dissent is an ancient tool of underdeveloped power structures; China has the wealth and technology to democratize peacefully, and can do so by liberalizing the process for selecting and evaluating party leaders, policy-makers and administrative bureaucrats.

The Hong Kong model is complicated, and has many critics, but for a nation as vast and diverse as China, facing all of the crises, political, economic and environmental, it now faces, the Hong Kong model provides a worthy example for how to usher in more permissive political processes, without giving up the integrity of the existing system or the territorial integrity of the nation.

There will need to be practical solutions that help keep long-simmering tensions in check, if China is to avoid further flare-ups of ethnic violence or the aggressive ramping up of separatist activity. Change is emerging organically, across China, and the current government will eventually have to choose between working with or against the driving forces of change. Addressing economic concerns —like quality of life, education, transport and energy— will be key to being able to shepherd the nation through the coming period of political transformation. The following are a few areas that may help ensure stability throughout:

1. Re-evaluate prosecutions like that of Liu Xiaobo, which cripple the political dynamism of the Chinese system and help ensure a sclerotic policy apparatus, unaware of the best competing ideas going forward;
2. Free political prisoners like Liu Xiaobo and other responsible dissenters, who use no methods of sabotage or violence, only words and ideas, to convey their message of liberalization;
3. Reward local officials who find creative ways to integrate citizens into the process of making and administering policy;
4. Encourage freer expression of critical views, in part to show tolerance of dissent, in part to allow for the discovery of sound ideas for making a better way for the nation;
5. Encourage local political organizing, even where dissenting views are more popular than Beijing policy: a system of competing views need not override established policy, but can allow for competing views to filter in and serve the public good;
6. Liberalize selection process for Communist party officials, as a first step toward general elections;
7. Recognize cultural and political autonomy of regional states, like Tibet and Xinjiang: a Spanish approach may work better than the militaristic all-or-nothing conquest-based approach favored until now;
8. Reform the justice system, so that low-level corruption cases and judgments benefitting ordinary citizens can gain prominence and foster a new respect for judicial process: this helps guarantee order, but also prevents corruption and abuse;
9. Take a leading role in championing fundamental political and civil rights in other nations: doing so does not violate anyone’s sovereignty, but failing to do so shows a reduced hold on domestic support for the exercise of it;
10. Prepare for an issue-based divergence of factions within the Communist party, and a credible legal process by which those factions can establish competing parties loyal to a central constitution.

Long-term stability is often cited by China’s authorities as the reason behind extremely hard-line actions. But as we are now seeing in Iran, and as we have seen in eastern Europe and the Philippines, hard-line oppression often sows unrest and brings about far more radical kinds of political change. China is too closely linked to the information technology revolution to not be affected by it, and its censoring-technology approach to manufacturing consensus is not viable; it will collapse under the weight of the challenge.

Planning for the period of liberalization that will follow is the only responsible way for the government in Beijing to move forward with long-term Chinese development and political planning. It is the only policy response that will build confidence among foreign investors and major enterprises, including banks, that wish to locate offices or factories in the country, and it will prove to be the only practical way to prevent sectarian conflict and the disintegration of political ties with the satellite states where unrest is already brewing.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the jailed Burmese pro-democracy opposition leader, was recently granted visitation rights to meet with three aging leaders of her National League for Democracy. The meeting marked the highest-level contact she has had with her party in years, even as the Burmese junta prepares to clamp down on pro-democracy elements ahead of the first nationwide election since her victory —never realized by taking office— in 1990. Suu Kyi has instead spent most of the last two decades under house arrest.

The pro-democracy opposition leader has been permitted at least three meetings with members of the military government in recent weeks, and appears to be negotiating both for her freedom and for a more democratic environment for the 2010 election campaign. In November, after meeting with US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, Suu Kyi was permitted to speak to the media, a rare relaxation of the extreme conditions of her house arrest, and a sign that creative diplomacy from Washington may be playing a role.

According to the BBC:

In her letter Ms Suu Kyi also suggested a face-to-face meeting with Than Shwe and offered her co-operation on matters of national interest.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that Ms Suu Kyi “is also expecting the rest of her requests to be fulfilled. She’s optimistic about her letter. She believes the government will allow her requests”.

Suu Kyi wanted to meet with the party elders in part to move her party toward a new generation of leadership. She reportedly requested that the party elders allow her to “reorganize” the central committee, as the leadership are now very old. There is some hope that new leadership may be viewed with less suspicion by the regime, and the National League for Democracy might be reintegrated into the political fabric of a nation that has struggled under dictatorship for 20 years.

An appeal of Suu Kyi’s house arrest order is underway, though observers are skeptical she will win a supreme court case where her freedom is opposed by the ruling military junta. The appeal has been blocked numerous times by lower courts and by the supreme court itself, though the new appeal relates to the 18-month extension of her detention that resulted from her being charged with “harboring” an American man who mysteriously arrived exhausted at her lakeside home after swimming to get there.

Pres. Obama has reportedly secured Chinese president Hu Jintao’s pledge of cooperation on global economic recovery, efforts to curb emissions and combat climate destabilization, and nuclear non-proliferation, both in Iran and North Korea. The pledge of cooperation came despite Obama’s demand that China honor the “universal” human rights of its people, alongside differences over how strongly to pressure Iran to guarantee its nuclear pursuits are legal and peaceful in nature.

Sustained, serious cooperation on efforts to reform and improve international banking standards and limit abuses may be key to guarding against Chinese prosperity eroding American prosperity, and helping to prevent a return to risky, predatory behavior at major US banks. China’s banking system has long been assailed in the west for lacking transparency and condoning behavior banned by international economic treaties. Hu’s pledge of recovery cooperation implies progress on removing such inefficiencies an abuses from the Chinese banking system.

Pres. Obama gave a town-hall format talk to a closed-door gathering in which he spoke against censorship and said the freer the flow of information in a society the stronger that society will be. His remarks were censored by Chinese authorities and the comments on censorship were barred from any media distribution within China. One website that posted the remarks was forced to take them down after just 27 minutes.

The episode highlights the serious divide between Chinese and American policies toward the meaning of people’s government. This means specific details of how to tackle Iran’s nuclear programme, or North Korea’s, will be harder to agree on. Beijing has long tended to be sympathetic to the authoritarian urges of the Iranian regime, though it is suspicious of theocratic politics in general, and North Korea is China’s historic ally. China sees attempts to dictate to Tehran what it is permitted to do militarily or economically as a potential threat to its own sovereignty vis a vis international law.

On climate destabilization and emissions reduction, China is a complicated partner: the Chinese government has demanded special freedom to aggressively ramp up carbon emissions, possibly until per-capita levels rival those in the industrialized democracies. But climate scientists say such a scenario would push the world over the brink into irreversible climate change, possibly with catastrophic consequences for billions of people around the world.

China’s pledge of cooperation is being treated with skepticism by those in western industry who believe it is more a ruse to permit China to negotiated strict limitations on industrial rivals, while ignoring emissions capping requirements altogether. For that reason, Pres. Obama’s visit to China is considered to be a vital step toward securing Beijing’s collaboration on a system of transparent international verification of to achieve emissions targets, reductions and related innovations.

On economic recovery, banking reform is key, but the vast trade imbalance between the US and China, which owns trillions of dollars worth of US dollar currency and government bonds, is another crucial negotiating hotzone. China cannot afford to see the US fail to pay in full on time the debt obligations it has with Beijing, but neither can China afford to see the US dollar decline in value or the influx of US consumer cash for goods and services decline.

Both nations are engaged in a complex catch-22, where no part of the puzzle can be let slip, but no part of the puzzle is entirely secure. Cooperation on economic recovery means both nations will seek to serve and protect that synergistic relationship, while cooperating to find ways to protect against its potential pitfalls. For now, Hu is making pledges that China has traditionally been unwilling to honor; the hope is that Pres. Obama has been able to convey the novel problems of these times, and that Pres. Hu has been able to see China’s future in a new, more interdependent, international light.

Sen. James Webb (D-VA) has won the release of American John Yettaw, who was sentenced to 7 years, including hard labor, for swimming to Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s lakefront home, effectively breaching the terms of her house arrest. Suu Kyi’s house arrest was extended by 18 months after she was convicted for allowing Yettaw to rest and recuperate at her home; the sentence will exclude her from the planned 2010 elections process.

Webb’s mission to Yangon, the capital of Burma (renamed Myanmar by the military junta), is the first by a senior US official in more than a decade. Some pro-democracy activists criticized the visit as legitimizing the regime, but the Obama administration says it supports Webb’s efforts to free Yettaw and to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi and possibly negotiate a shortened sentence for her as well.

The regime’s history relating to Aung San Suu Kyi leaves little room for doubt they will not allow her to participate in next year’s election process or re-enter the political sphere. They crushed democratic rallies in brutal military operations in 1988 and barred Suu Kyi from taking office when her party won an overwhelming victory in 1990 elections.

As the Huffington Post reports:

Washington is Myanmar’s strongest critic, applying political and economic sanctions against the junta for its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government. And this week’s sentencing of democracy leader Suu Kyi and an American citizen at the same trial threatened to drag ties even lower.

Webb will also meet with Gen. Than Shwe, the leader of the military junta and effective head of state. He is the first senior US official to meet with the general. After winning Yettaw’s release, Webb will return home, bringing the freed American citizen with him.

He also had the opportunity to meet with jailed pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi herself, and the results of that meeting will be closely watched, both to gauge her personal wellbeing and the prospects for her eventual release from persistent confinement. There has been mounting pressure in recent years to find new ways to apply diplomatic pressure or to incentivize Gen. Than Shwe to relax the regime’s constraints on Suu Kyi’s personal freedoms and political activities.

The military junta that rules Burma —which it has renamed Myanmar— with authoritarian zeal has handed down a guilty verdict against the nation’s leading pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi. Human Rights Watch says the verdict is a “reprehensible abuse of power”. US president Barack Obama has called the process a “show trial” and has called for Suu Kyi’s immediate, unconditional release.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy advocate who won the 1990 elections that were ignored by the military junta and was subsequently imprisoned for 14 of the last 19 years, has been sentenced to another 18 months of house arrest. Her alleged offense was allowing an unknown American man who had swum to her home for unknown reasons and was suffering from exhaustion to stay the night. The junta says it is illegal for any Burmese citizen to allow foreigners to stay in their homes overnight.

The Asia director for watchdog Human Rights Watch said:

This trial was a farce, a brutal distortion of the legal process. By silencing prominent opponents through bogus trials, the generals are clearly showing why the elections they have been touting for next year won’t bring change.

HRW is not the only organization accusing the junta of trying to rig next year’s elections to maintain their grip on power, which many say is nothing more than a corrupt authoritarian system used to further the personal interests of the junta and their families and cronies. Human rights advocates have compared Burma under the junta to a “prison state”, where people are dehumanized and treated like commodities and property of the state and dissent is banned.

John William Yettaw, the American who showed up one night on the lakeshore behind Suu Kyi’s home, was also sentenced, though more harshly. HRW reports:

Yettaw has been sentenced to 7 years in prison with hard labor, convicted of the same charges of breaching Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention order, and with breaching immigration laws. All four defendants were charged under the draconian State Emergency Act (also known as the Law to Safeguard the State Against the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts).

HRW and other groups also decry the entire judicial system as relating to political prisoners as unfair and rigged. Judges are not independent of the whims of the regime leaders. The trial was closed to the public and to the press and foreign diplomats were only permitted to observe proceedings on a few occasions. The defense was deprived of the right to present an adequate defense, and Suu Kyi was personally blamed for the armed guards who imprison her failing to protect the perimeter of her home.

Brad Adams, the HRW Asia director, said it is “ridiculous” to pretend that any evidence presented affected the outcome of an obviously rigged trial. UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon, who was denied access to Suu Kyi during his visit in early July, said the verdict was “a setback for the national reconciliation process”.

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), said “expresse[d] grave concern” about the verdict and warned the ruling junta that “as a responsible member of ASEAN, [Burma] has the responsibility to protect and promote human rights”. Multiple groups are calling on China, Russia, India and the ASEAN states to impose financial sanctions on the ruling junta as punishment for the verdict.

The Associated Press perceives the routine standard for online journalism, blogging and social networking, which involves quoting, citing and linking to sources, as injurious to its revenue stream. It is now seeking to institute a blanket global policy, whereby quoting even 5 words by the AP would cost the quoting publication $12.50. Quoting 251 words or more would cost $100. Critics say the AP, like other online news producers, benefits immensely from the incoming links posted across the web by readers and journalists referring back to its news material.

Fair use doctrine is a fuzzy area of copyright law. Competing interests often seek to define fair use more liberally or more conservatively, depending on their particular interest in any given piece of content. The AP has aggressively defended its right to control all media produced through or in relation to the agency, but even some of its members say the AP has gone too far afield in claiming copyright control authority. One famous case involves a photo of Barack Obama which was used as a template for the now globally famous artistic rendering, produced by artist Shepard Fairey.

The AP considers the image to be part of its library of copyrighted materials, due to a similarity between the Obama portrait and a photographic image produced by an AP-employed photographer. The photographer says the particular image is not part of the AP’s catalogue and he has not requested its action on his behalf. He even said that as a journalist, there is a multiple interest in producing work for professional compensation, producing information for news consumption, and producing an iconic image that is, by the nature of its effect, part of the commons.

The AP’s new licensing policy means that publications across the web will have to abandon the AP altogether. It is, whether intended to be or not, a death blow to potentially millions of small publishers (individuals, in many cases) whose work could serve as a viral distribution platform for the news agency. Critics hope an online backlash could elevate other news agencies with more liberal quoting policies, to rival the AP and serve as opposition to this licensing policy, which threatens to undermine the free flow of information around the globe.

The AP’s aim is to profit from a 100% command and control licensing strategy, requiring registered use rights for all publications everywhere that seek to quote the AP or refer to their reporting. That command and control strategy will have an immediate chilling effect on the flow of information around the world. It will assist authoritarian regimes in controlling the information available to the public, both within and beyond their borders, as web reporters see themselves shackled and unable to relay AP content virally.

The AP has no plans to compensate online publishers to provide free links to their content and has announced no plans to provide royalty compensation to Twitter posters who direct web traffic to AP content. It is possible, even, to see the AP’s new licensing strategy to be an attempt to “double-dip”, charging multiple times for the same content. Publishers already pay the AP to republish their stories in full, meaning that anyone linking back to those stories may also find themselves charged for re-use or for announcing the content put out by those paying AP partners.

The principle of net neutrality is also under threat from policies like what the AP is now proposing. While fair compensation for work produced is a laudable goal in content creation, the AP seeks to guarantee that no mention of its work be made without some compensation being provided. This is a radical expansion of copyright with extraordinarily high proposed fees ($2.50 per word) that would serve to impede global information flows and reduce the informational value of an open internet.

In fact, the AP appears to be establishing an effective end to the doctrine of fair use, even charging $7.50 to educational institutions that want to use 5 words of AP content for any reason. The policy page falsely claims that this fee is necessary to obtain “permission to legally post”, when in fact, educational use is considered to be the most expansive area where fair use applies.

If the legal viability of such a policy is upheld, the AP would have undue control of global information flows. Giving one institution such veto power over the creation of new content (barring even uses which are designed to be contextual, informational, and which cite the AP as source and link back to the full content, thus adding to the commercial value of the material produced) would amount to an internet culture effectively censored by one commercially-interested institution.

Incredibly, the AP provides RSS feeds that can be used to embed AP content on websites, including not only headlines, but excerpts from articles that range in length from 10 words to 50 words. Not only is this a direct subscription to the standard of viral posting across the internet, where third parties publish or quote excerpts and link back to the original content, it is an attempt to piggyback on the uncompensated work of other publishers.

The use of RSS essentially belies the very idea that the AP has an implicit need or right to control, license and gain from every parcel of 5 words its writers produce. The AP is a cooperative designed to guarantee the free flow of reliable information from around the world and to ensure that journalists are compensated for their work. Its best interests would be served by barring the full republication of its articles, or the unauthorized use of its images, while allowing for clearly innocuous or even beneficial postings of citations with links and other short mentions of its content.

In fact, the US Copyright Office specifically states that “summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report” is considered standard fair use by the 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law. News organizations have to grapple with a very special sort of copyright problem: their work is intended to expand the depth and range of the commons of information and ideas: information and ideas cannot be patented or copyrighted, and so while they produce copyrighted materials, they are not necessarily entitled to 100% total control of that material, where the public interest might be served by reference to or quoting of that content.

The proposed system of licensing fees by the word, or by the 5 word set, poses a very dangerous, very extreme threat to the foundations of a free press and the functioning of an open internet. Aggressive legal action by the AP, as seen elsewhere, could hamper innovation and slow people’s access to needed information, while reducing the AP’s own reach and undermining the total value of its products.

This publication will no longer quote the AP and will make a consistent effort to use other sources wherever possible, to avoid linking to AP-produced content or risk in any way (from the news of this policy arriving on 3 August 2009 onward) falling prey to the totalizing license structure proposed by the AP for its content’s spread across the web.

It is our contention that the AP (RSS is evidence) has knowingly sought to benefit from a symbiotic relationship with small publishers and that its change of position, to now seek to extract prohibitive rates of payment for the continuation of that practice, is unethical and highly irresponsible in light of its likely adverse impact on press freedom and the free flow of information. It is furthermore our contention that enforcing this policy will have the effect of enhancing authoritarian rulers’ grip on power and their ability to manipulate information and control what information reaches the public within their borders.

Corazon Aquino, who served as the 10th president of the Philippines, has died due to complications from colon cancer, at the age of 76. She is known affectionately by millions of Filipinos by the nickname Cory, and is remembered as the woman who helped orchestrate the ‘People Power’ non-violent revolution that deposed the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. She served as president from 1986 through 1992.

As Reuters reports:

The tumultuous events of those weeks reached a crescendo when up to 1 million people waving rosaries and flowers stopped tanks advancing toward Aquino-backed army rebels.

When a bewildered Marcos and his wife Imelda fled the country, it set a precedent for dissidents from South Africa to South America and Pakistan. Aquino was hailed by many as a modern-day Joan of Arc.

Corazon Aquino entered politics when her husband, Benigno Aquino, leader of the opposition to Marcos, was assassinated upon returning to Manila from exile, in 1983. She accused Marcos of ordering the assassination and quickly became a national leader. Her movement culminated with a gathering of 1 million ordinary people massing along Manila’s EDSA highway, blocking military tanks from reaching Aquino and factions of the military that supported her call for change.

Marcos and his wife Imelda fled the Philippines, and went into exile in Hawai’i. Though her time in office was a difficult period, she worked to weed out corruption and refocus Philippine politics on the public interest. She presided over the drafting of a new constitution limiting the presidential term in office to one six-year term, a provision aimed at preventing corrupt maneuvering for repeat electoral victories or efforts to prolong the presidential term.

The Indian reports that the Philippines’ “consul-general in Atlanta, Roy Donato said that the Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has made the national announcement to observe a 10 day mourning period for the former president’s demise.” The consul told members of the press that Arroyo “was the agent of change in Philippine democracy, and almost all the Filipinos I know revered her during her presidency.”

Corazon Aquino was more than just a monumental leader in the history of Philippine democracy: her People Power movement served as precedent to non-violent political protest movements across the world, and may have helped bring liberation to nations choked by authoritarian regimes in Europe and Asia, as well as showing a peaceful way to the end of apartheid in South Africa.

The Associated Press reports:

The uprising she led in 1986 brought down the repressive 20-year regime of Ferdinand Marcos and served as an inspiration to nonviolent resistance across the globe, including those that ended communist rule in eastern Europe.

Aquino’s legacy is one of enacting the universal right to moral indignation in the face of tyranny and oppression. The simple demonstration of outrage at brutal authoritarianism allowed her to focus pro-democracy efforts and forge a cohesive coalition of interests that transformed Philippine democracy.

Her work to end corruption in politics has never been a total success, and she has persisted in her criticisms wherever high-level corruption appeared to be a threat to democracy. She helped orchestrate the removal from office, on corruption charges, of Pres. Joseph Estrada and later joined in calls for the resignation of current president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, when allegations of electoral manipulation were raised.

Last year, just before Christmas, she apologized for the role she played in ousting Estrada, who reportedly responded by saying “It was the best Christmas gift I have ever received”. He added that Aquino was “the most trusted person in the country”.

Fernan Marasigan, writing for the Business Mirror, reports:

Speaker Prospero Nograles, who is in the US with President Arroyo, said in a statement, Mrs. Aquino’s “courage, honesty and humility gave hope and life, and inspired the Filipino to fight and win back freedom and democracy—a legacy that will forever be engraved in the hearts of a grateful people. …

Independent Rep. Roilo Golez of Parañaque said he did not have the honor of serving in her government “but I had the privilege of joining her cause after her presidency as she continued to fight for her democratic principles and ideals.”

He said: “A giant has passed. … It will take many generations before another leader of her towering stature will pass our way again.”

The former dean of the College of Law at the University of the Philippines, Raul C. Pangalangan, has said “She was headstrong and single-minded in one goal, and that was to remove all vestiges of an entrenched dictatorship,” adding that “We all owe her in a big way.” The nation is now in mourning, as Catholic priests have organized requiem masses, and members of the public have massed across the capital Metro-Manila to commemorate her moral and political legacy.

Al Roy, a godson to the late Aquino, told the press “The nation lost its moral guiding light, but she will forever remain as the inspiration of this impoverished nation”. President Macapagal Arroyo, on an official visit to the US, called Aquino a “national treasure”, saying she brought “a revolution to restore democracy and the rule of law to our nation at a time of great peril”.

According to the AP:

The Philippines will observe 10 days of national mourning, she said. The Armed Forces of the Philippines said it would accord full military honors during the mourning period, including gun salutes and lowering flags to half-staff. The Aquino family, however, opted for a private instead of a state funeral.

Aquino’s example has spread the ethical call for principled democratic leadership across the globe. Though her personal period of rule was fraught with political difficulties and the infighting that emerged from the hard work of undoing the levers of military rule, she has won the affection of the military and the political establishment and remains in spirit the most powerful political voice in the national consciousness.

The government of Sudan has abducted a United Nations media worker and is preparing to issue a verdict that might have her flogged 40 times for the “crime” of wearing pants. According to Sudan’s extreme interpretation of Islamic law, the aid worker’s two-legged pants are considered to cause “harassment to the public sentiments”. She will be brutally whipped 40 times as punishment for risking the emotional discomfort of Sudanese citizens, by wearing pants that for most people conceal a woman’s body from view.

Lubna al Hussein, a journalist and UN aid worker, has chosen to resign from her UN post, shedding her immunity from prosecution, in order to highlight the manner in which this brutal treatment is meted out to women in Sudan. The totalitarian regime of Omar al-Bashir, reinforced by a campaign of terror and mass killing in various parts of the country, uses fundamentalist Islamic dictates to subject women to a position of permanent degradation and limited rights. Hussein’s case is just one of many.

She was detained at a cafe in Khartoum, along with 12 other women, 10 of whom were flogged for indecency, inside a police station, just two days later. Hussein’s position at the UN meant subjecting her to such punishment was more complicated. She might actually require a trial, if she gave up immunity. She clearly recognized the opportunity to educate the outside world about the depths of cruelty authorities would resort to in furtherance of their arbitrary use of power.

In a show of support for her cause, female friends appeared in court wearing pants, putting themselves at risk as well. The judge adjourned her hearing until 4 August, to allow Hussein time to leave her UN post and face prosecution legally. After the hearing, Ms. Hussein said “This is a case about annulling the article that addresses women’s dress code, under the title of indecent acts. This is my battle. This article is against the constitution and even against Islamic law itself”.

According to the AP:

Women in the mostly Arabized and Muslim northern Sudan, particularly in the capital Khartoum, dress in traditional outfits that include a shawl over their head and shoulder. Western dress is uncommon.

Still, the raid on a Khartoum cafe popular with journalists and foreigners was unusual.

There are suspicions the raid itself may be part of an ongoing campaign to intimidate and scare off foreign aid workers, human rights workers and reporters, who might be trying to bring to light crimes committed against the people of Darfur, or against women broadly. Sudan is one of the most brutal nations in terms of its treatment of women, imposing a violent brand of shari’a law, even against the non-Muslim population.

SIGI, the OECD’s Social Institutions and Gender Index, reports:

Women in Sudan have a very low level of legal protection in relation to family matters. At time of publication, no information was available regarding laws that define a legal minimum age of marriage. According to available statistics, early marriage appears to be widespread. A 2004 United Nations report estimated that 21 per cent of girls between 15 and 19 years of age were married, divorced or widowed. …

Women in Sudan have a very low level of protection for their physical integrity. To date, there are no specific laws prohibiting violence against women, including domestic violence, which is common. Women who file claims are subject to accusations of lying, and the police normally do not intervene.

Women also have virtually no property rights of any kind, and divorce proceedings always assign custody of children to the father. Some observers blame ancient superstitions that treat women as “unclean” or as vehicles for temptation and possession. Others believe Sudan’s authoritarian social structures are mirrored in its political structures, and that (as in many countries where crushing poverty and violent human rights abuses are commonplace) women are seen as a potential voice for the popular conscience, and must be kept from giving testimony in the public sphere or taking roles of responsibility.

Ms. Hussein’s lawyer, Nabil Adib, says the law “is quite unnecessary and degrading. It is harassment.” Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the UN, has said the sentence of flogging would be “against the international human rights standards”. Indeed, the level of suffering inflicted, in comparison with the alleged offense, rises to the level of crime against humanity. According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, crimes against humanity:

are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder; extermination; torture; rape and political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of falling into the category of crimes under discussion.”

The flogging of Lubna al-Hussein is not genocide, but it is torture, and it is not an isolated incident. It is part of a routine and brutal campaign of oppression against a subgroup of the population, all women, through the imposition of laws that justify and promote torture and other cruel treatment. Ms. Hussein is using this trial to demonstrate that the flogging of the women detained with her, and of herself, “are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government”.

In 2004, Amnesty International reported on plans by the Sudan government to flog Intisar Bakri Abulgader, a 16-year old girl, 100 times for the “crime” of adultery:

Cruel punishments are an everyday part of Sudan’s legal system, despite being in clear violation of Sudan’s obligations under international human rights law. Now is the time for the international community to support human rights campaigners in Sudan and turn up the pressure on the government of Sudan to stop these cruel punishments.

This illegal torture is not in fact isolated or sporadic, but is “an everyday part of Sudan’s legal system”, meaning that under international law, the regime of Omar al-Bashir is using torture and other atrocities to maintain its grip on power. Such facts of life in Sudanese society are part of the cause for the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Bashir for crimes against humanity, its first ever such indictment of a sitting head of state.

Ms. Abulgader’s crime was becoming pregnant. She became pregnant out of wedlock, a crime for which a woman can be subjected to 100 lashes. The alleged father of the child was not accused and was not prosecuted. If her lover had been married, she could have been sentenced to death by stoning. Both the punishments themselves and the way they are adjudicated are fundamental violations of international law.

In its 2004 report on the case, Amnesty noted “Scores of people were sentenced to amputation or flogging in Sudan last year. Flogging is frequently carried out immediately after sentencing leaving no chance for appeal, even when there are concerns about whether a fair trial has been held.” Sudan’s judicial proceedings fly in the face of international standards for due process and basic human rights, and rights groups persistently allege women are often “convicted” on nothing more than hearsay, while violent rapists are often not prosecuted, because the state demands physical “proof” from a woman before even opening an investigation.

Former president and leading reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami has urged that Iran hold a nationwide referendum to allow voters to judge whether the 12 June election was legitimate or whether the government has sought to stay in power through mass fraud and other illegal means. Several reformist websites have reportedly carried the news, with Khatami saying “Durability of order and continuation of the country’s progress hinge on restoring public trust”.

The announcement comes on the heels of an embarrassing display of brutality by the government, which attacked opposition supporters with tear gas, while Friday prayers were ongoing, and then assaulted one of the opposition candidates, Mehdi Karoubi, when he emerged from Tehran University, where the powerful cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivered a sermon denouncing the government’s use of violence to intimidate dissenters.

Rafsanjani’s address, Karoubi’s being bloodied by pro-government militia and now Khatami’s call for a referendum, appear to be crystallizing public sentiment against the government and breathing new life into the opposition protest movement. Rafsanjani, himself a leading cleric and former president, said the nation is now in “crisis” and urged all parties to find a way to work together to emerge from the crisis with a legitimate democratic process and without the use of force to resolve political disputes.

He urged the government to release all political detainees. Khatami says the current leadership, which would include the president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, betrayed the principles of the Islamic republic and threatened democracy by backing an election process so marred by fraud and manipulation.

“From the start,” said Khatami, “we said there is a legal way to regain that trust. I openly say now that the solution to get out of the current crisis is holding a referendum”. Iran’s constitution requires that any national referendum be called by the supreme leader himself and monitored by the Guardian Council, a committee of jurists and clerics that normally supports the supreme leader. Since Khamene’i has so visibly chosen sides, Khatami proposes a more independent body, like the Expediency Council.

Last week, opposition candidate Mehdi Karoubi sent a letter to Iran’s chief judiciary officer, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, accusing the government of effecting a military coup d’etat in order to stay in power. Karoubi enumerated crimes like raiding homes, destroying property, kidnapping people and murdering young people in the streets. He warned that failure to take some legal action against the leaders of the government could result in further abuses:

Assuming that government officials and perpetrators can silence this wave temporarily thought violence, imprisonment, and coercion, what will they do with the smouldering ashes? What will they do in the face of their lack of domestic and international legitimacy?

Karoubi also accused the regime of mistreating prisoners. He said:

A great number of the detainees are ill and even include pregnant women. A number of them have held posts within the system at various points in recent decades. None have been given the right to legal representation or consultation. The locations where a majority are being held have not been made clear to their families, and even the state of the health of many of them is still shrouded in mystery for their families.

Karoubi also attended a rally last week, in which he is reported to have said the alleged manipulations of the electoral process mean the government is “illegitimate”. He repeated the opposition’s call for the vote to be annulled and a new election held. Whether Khamene’i could be forced by popular support or pressure from influential clerics to call a referendum on the legitimacy of the party he favors is unclear, but Friday’s crackdown is being treated as a sign by many who believe his days as supreme leader may be numbered.

• Iran Government Attacks Civilians During Friday Prayers
• Rafsanjani Decries Iran Crackdown, Urges Release of All Political Prisoners (updated)
• Mousavi, Karoubi to Attend Friday Prayers Led by Rafsanjani
• Iran Security Forces Rush Demonstrators, Who Chant “We are Not Afraid”
• Iran Association of Researchers & Teachers of Qom Declares Vote-count Illegitimate
• Iran’s President Ahmedinejad Orders Probe into Shooting Death of Neda Soltan
• Mir Hossein Mousavi’s official message to Iranians abroad (transcript)
• Kalemeh, Mousavi’s Web Site, Shut Down by Iranian Authorities
• Detained Reformists Reportedly Tortured to Induce Testimony About ‘Foreign Plot’
• What Happened at Baharestan Square?
• Iran Protesters Reportedly Attacked ‘Like Animals’ by Security Forces
• Iran’s Guardian Council Finds Ballots Cast Exceeded Number of Voters in 50 Cities
• Update on State Violence Against Demonstrators in Iran (video)
• Reports of Shots Fired at Iranian Demonstrators (video, links & updates)
• Khamene’i Demands End to Protests, Says Disputed Results Will Stand
• Open Letter from Iranian Academics to UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon
• Massive Opposition Rally in Tehran Mourns Slain Demonstrators (video)
• Pro-Mousavi Demonstrations & Iranians’ Constitutional Rights (video)
• Iran Opposition Movement Forces Khamenei to Investigate
• Iran Crackdown: Is it Tacit Admission Vote was Rigged?
• Iran Declares Ahmedinejad Winner, Results Widely Questioned as Fraudulent
• Rivals Ahmedinejad & Mousavi Both Declare Victory in Iran Election

Natalya Estemirova, from the Russian human rights organization, the Memorial Human Rights Center, was kidnapped today while leaving her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and later found dead. She reportedly shouted to bystanders “This is a kidnapping!” No one was able to intervene, as four armed men grabbed her and put her into a white automobile.

Estemirova, who had worked with assassinated investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya and was a winner of the , was a vocal critic of the Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov, who is accused of widespread human rights abuses, political killings and war crimes. Russian authorities, from the Putin era and into the Medvedev era, have refused to fully investigate allegations against Kadyrov, preferring to cast him as a patriotic hardliner unwilling to let Chechnya secede from the Russian Federation.

Kidnapped while leaving her home in Grozny, Chechnya, in the morning, her body was found at 17:20 local time (13:20 GMT) in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, near the city of Nazran, according to Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency. Madina Khadziyeva, a spokeswoman for the regional interior ministry told the press the victim had two wounds to the head and that “it was clear she had been murdered in the morning”.

Natalya Estemirova, a close friend and investigative colleague of Anna Politkovskaya, was one of the most prominent human rights campaigners still active in Chechnya. Politkovskaya was murdered on then President Vladimir Putin’s birthday, leading to widespread speculation it was meant to send a sign of allegiance to Putin, who backs Kadyrov’s hardline regime in Chechnya and had been openly critical of reporting by the crusading journalist.

Numerous critics both inside and outside of Russia have alleged that a shadowy network of political figures aligned with Pres. Putin —whose administration employed more active and former spies than any Russian government on record— was conspiring to eliminate critics and consolidate the Putin-centered power bloc that installed Kadyrov in Chechnya. Putin was initially dismissive of the significance of Politkovskaya’s murder, a reaction that shocked many, including political allies.

Now, various groups are calling for a full accounting of Russian political assassinations throughout the post-Soviet era, many of which have never been fully prosecuted or resolved. Human Rights Watch today “urged the Russian government to launch a full, independent, and transparent investigation into Estemirova’s murder”. The HRW statement reads:

“The Russian authorities should take every possible step to bring Natalia Estemirova’s killers to justice,” said Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch. “It seems to be open season on anyone trying to highlight the appalling human rights abuses in Chechnya. It’s high time the Russian government acted to stop these killings and prosecute those responsible.”

Is Russia getting away with murder in Chechnya? There has been triumphalist recasting of the entire Chechen conflict by Russian authorities in Moscow, who now say the resistance is dead and Chechnya is firmly aligned with the Russian Federation. But throughout the process of “resolution”, the assassination of activists, lawyers, and dissidents, has been a persistent stain on Russia’s Chechnya policy.

The pattern is so persistent and visible that Vladimir Putin has alleged it is part of a conspiracy by his political enemies to destabilize the Russian Federation. Some allege the underlying security strategy for Chechnya was to use overwhelming, indiscriminate and brutal force against anyone who would impede outright military reconquest by the Russian military. Putin often justified military and paramilitary actions critics called war crimes as an aggressive counter-terrorism effort to secure Chechnya.

According to the Huffington Post:

A report was released on the same day as Estemirova’s killing, which calls for Russian officials, including Prime Minister Putin, to be held accountable for crimes while they have been in office.

Today, President Dmitry Medvedev expressed outrage at the killing and pledged a thorough prosecution. A spokeswoman told the press the president views as evident the possible connection between her murder and her professional work. Medvedev will now be under pressure to demonstrate that his administration really is serious about prosecuting such political killings, though specific pronouncements on the process of the investigation or the security officials who will lead it have not been given.

But in powerfully ill-fated timing, Pres. Medvedev was in Sochi today, visiting with political and military leaders from Ingushetia, and praising the “success” of security operations to crush a separatist movement he termed “terrorist”. According to Radio Free Europe:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said after meeting near Sochi with acting Ingushetian President Rashid Gaysanov that security forces have had “success” in their counterterrorism operation against Islamic militants in Ingushetia, RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service reports.

Medvedev did not specify what he meant by success or where it was achieved.

The wave of violence includes a recent assassination attempt on the life of Ingushetian president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. He survived the attack, but had to turn over power temporarily to Gaysanov. Medevedev has long been seen as part of the Putin bloc of power and an heir to Putin’s security policies. Russian military interventions in the Caucasus region have raised fears —and allegations— of the kind of abuses seen in the Chechen conflict.

There is concern Russian authorities have sought to further harden their security stance after making nice with US president Barack Obama, who while visiting Russia met with human rights campaigners and said the US was committed to seeing the spread of “universal values”, commentary many in Russia saw as open criticism of the Putin-Medvedev power bloc and its much maligned security policies.

The Guardian newspaper, for instance, is reporting:

The timing of her murder follows Barack Obama’s first visit to Moscow last week as US president. Obama met with Russian human rights activists and set out the US’s commitment to “universal values”.

The Kremlin responded with hardline pronouncements, with the president, Dmitry Medvedev, visiting the breakaway Georgian republic of South Ossetia on Monday. The trip appeared to be a direct rebuff to Obama who had said that both Georgia and Ukraine should be free to choose their own leaders.

Critics and dissidents have intensified their complaints of government interference with media and with rights campaigners and non-governmental investigations over the last decade. Questioning whether Estemirova’s murder is more evidence of “impunity” for political murders in Russia, the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) today praised Estemirova for her work with the group:

Reporters Without Borders is appalled and saddened by today’s murder of former journalist Natalia Estemirova, the Russian human rights NGO Memorial’s representative in Chechnya. …

Estemirova helped Reporters Without Borders conduct a fact-finding visit to Russia’s three Caucasian republics – Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan – in March. The information and analyses she shared with Reporters Without Borders reinforced our conviction that the Caucasus is on the brink of chaos and that human rights activists like her are bravely filling the gap left by a dwindling independent press.

RSF also demanded of Russia that: “The authorities must publicly condemn this murder and demonstrate a real determination to combat impunity.” RSF recently sent an open letter to Pres. Obama, urging him to call on Russian officials, during his meetings with Pres. Medvedev, PM Putin and others, to call to account all those responsible for violence against the press. The letter noted “According to our research, at least 20 journalists have been killed in connection with their work since Vladimir Putin became president in March 2000.”

This month alone, Estemirova was actively denouncing alleged involvement of Chechen security forces in a number of murders, including the home-invasion murder of Madina Iunusova, a young widow whose husband had been killed in a “police action” in Chechnya. In another case, Rizvan Albekov and his son Aziz were abducted by police, and subsequently gunned down with automatic weapons in what was intended to be an “exemplary punishment”.

According to the Spanish newspaper El País, the kidnappers put their prisoners on display in front of  a group of young men, ordered Albekov to confess his guilt in aiding Chechen rebels, then opened fire when he indicated he had not. They allegedly then threatened to do the same to anyone who had aided the rebels.

Estemirova had accused Kadyrov and his cronies of running sinister brothels filled with sex slaves, kept prisoner by threat of violence, and forced to service the soldiers who serve Kadyrov’s interests. She allegedly told a fellow journalist that Kadyrov had sought to strike fear into her in a private interview in 2008, adding that the authoritarian Chechen president seemed to her to be a “genuine idiot” and that his regime existed simply to serve the whims of his power.

• Frontline UK Hosts Debate on Gov’ts Impeding Press Freedom in War Zones (video)
• Court Clears Three Accused in Politkovskaya Murder
• Top Russian Human Rights Advocate Murdered in Cold Blood
• Trial of Accused in Politkovskaya Murder to Be Held in Open Court
• Politkovskaya Investigation in Disarray, Supporters Say Russian Gov’t Sabotaged Case
• Russian State-Owned Media Launch Smear Campaign Against Litvinenko
• Litvinenko Poisoning Death Now Carries Stain of Blame-the-Victim Allegations
• ‘Objectively Verifiable Truth Now Suspect’

Post election demonstrations in Iran are getting more confrontational, as smaller numbers of angrier demonstrators continue to suffer physical assaults at the hands of militia and security forces. With conservative clerics stepping up their questioning of the legitimacy of both Pres. Ahmedinejad’s re-election and the continued rule of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, demonstrators have reportedly been heard chanting “Death to Khamene’i” for the first time.

It remains unclear from translations in foreign media whether the demonstrators have been chanting “Down with Khamene’i” or “Death to Khamene’i”. Another new chant that has been widely reported is “We are not afraid”, sometimes coupled with “We are all together”. The demonstrators confronting security forces in recent days are being described as a “hard core”, but it is also unclear what degree of organization there is in the most recent rallies. Opposition leaders remain defiant, but have urged demonstrators not to risk personal harm.

Increasingly, observers note the atmosphere of real fear among Iran’s rulers that their power is in jeopardy. The Star Ledger reports:

The consensus they fashioned around a religion-republican form of government is cracking under the pressure of what has become theocratic tyranny.

The re-election of Ahmadinejad was fatally tainted; results were broadcast even while ballots were still being cast. And the claimed two-to-one victory margin for Ahmadinejad seems especially incredible considering the massive pre-vote street support for Mousavi.

The election was used as a legitimizing device, not as a measure of the people’s will, and it was done in so panicked a way as to be obviously manipulated to any who observed the actions of top officials, like the supreme leader himself. What followed was a sublime awakening in which Iranians, in the millions, demanded respect for the republican underpinnings of their revolutionary constitution.

For decades, the tension between republicanism and theocracy has been a constant source of division among top officials. In the late 1980s, those around the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini warned him not to diverge from republicanism, lest his government come to be seen as illegitimate, due to tyrannical practices. Some believe Khamene’i —the current supreme leader— was among those who viewed those moderating voices as a threat to the revolutionary system, and that with his rise in 1989, a long struggle for the soul of the Islamic Republic began, with opposing forces pitted against each other in the current turmoil.

Salon.com has reported that the first page of school history books quotes Khomeini: “Omid e man ba shoma javanha hast”, meaning “My hope is with you, the youth”. In fact, the youth are now seen as being at the root of the opposition movement, forming a kind of wall of conscience against the abuses of the powerful. The Salon author, who conceals his last name for security reasons, writes:

That the vote was against Ahmadinejad there can be no doubt. Consider this: Over the 30-year history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, some 30 percent of the population has never voted. These are the true disbelievers, citizens who take pride in having a blank shenasname, or identity booklet. They are the friends and family members who take every opportunity to remind the rest of us, at the dinner table, caught in traffic, sitting in the park, that voting is a mistake, that you ought not participate in a system that is at its core rotten.

The question of whether a vote against the ruling clerical establishment could be of any use has morphed into a demand that all votes be counted. Millions of new voters turned up to reject the questionable policies of the hardline president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and demand moderating, modernizing reforms. Iran’s system is in practice authoritarian, but rooted in the idea of national historical greatness in which the Persian dream is not to be denied.

There is, in this ancient idea of Persian greatness, a strikingly similar root of righteous individualism to what motivates American civic and political defiance. The people are more concerned now with their right to speak truth to power and to govern through the government, not to be commanded by tyrants.

That popular ideal has bled away from Ahmedinejad’s authoritarian populism to the growing opposition movement, which has brought major clerical figures like former president and Khamene’i rival Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to its cause. There are persistent rumors of a behind-the-scenes effort to build consensus among the Assembly of Experts to possibly sanction or recall Khamene’i.

The New York Times blog, The Lede, has posted multiple videos and the accounts of an eye-witness, who writes:

I was immersed in a crowd of around 300-400 people who had obviously intended to head to Enghelab and were turned around – I am unsure if they came from Vali Asr square (one of the original meet points according to the vague and scatted “calls to action”). They were shouting, mostly “Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein” and “We are all in this together.” This was after 5 pm. From the South (Enghelab St.) the police came north, buttressed with a phalanx of black clad riot police with rubber batons. I saw them swing at many individuals to move them along.

The witness goes on to write “I then realized the bad medicine was coming our way. I stepped out for a preemptive move and it looked like whack-a-mole. Every 5 yards some riot cop was swinging like it was T-ball tryouts.” Though signs of non-violence and peaceful protest were offered, the eye-witness account suggests security forces simply assaulted the demonstrators indiscriminately.

The Basij militia are reported to be directly involved in the physical attacks on opposition demonstrators, and the Guardian’s Julian Borger has reported that Ayatollah Khamene’i's son Mojtaba is now in direct control of the Basij. That news signals for many Khamene’i's abandoning of the republican principles of the Iranian constitution, wherein even the supreme leader is equal before the law, a possible attempt to establish a family-run circle of power at the top of the Iranian security forces.

• Iran Regime Accuses Soros, Cheney, Bilderberg of Conspiracy to Subvert System
• Iran Association of Researchers & Teachers of Qom Declares Vote-count Illegitimate
• Iran’s President Ahmedinejad Orders Probe into Shooting Death of Neda Soltan
• Mir Hossein Mousavi’s official message to Iranians abroad (transcript)
• Kalemeh, Mousavi’s Web Site, Shut Down by Iranian Authorities
• Iran Arrests 8 Employees of UK Embassy, Alleging Subversion
• Detained Reformists Reportedly Tortured to Induce Testimony About ‘Foreign Plot’
• What Happened at Baharestan Square?
• Iran Protesters Reportedly Attacked ‘Like Animals’ by Security Forces
• Iran’s Guardian Council Finds Ballots Cast Exceeded Number of Voters in 50 Cities
• Update on State Violence Against Demonstrators in Iran (video)
• Reports of Shots Fired at Iranian Demonstrators (video, links & updates)
• Khamene’i Demands End to Protests, Says Disputed Results Will Stand
• Open Letter from Iranian Academics to UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon
• Massive Opposition Rally in Tehran Mourns Slain Demonstrators (video)
• Pro-Mousavi Demonstrations & Iranians’ Constitutional Rights (video)
• Iran Opposition Movement Forces Khamenei to Investigate
• Iran Crackdown: Is it Tacit Admission Vote was Rigged?
• Iran Declares Ahmedinejad Winner, Results Widely Questioned as Fraudulent
• Rivals Ahmedinejad & Mousavi Both Declare Victory in Iran Election

The government-linked Basij militia has called for the prosecution of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, alleging that he is responsible for inciting violence in the streets that resulted from clashes between demonstrators and security forces. Mousavi has repeatedly urged his supporters to behave within the law and to practice non-violence; the violence seen since the 12 June election appears to have been consistently the result of security forces attacking unarmed civilians, some demonstrators, some not. 

In a letter to Iran’s top prosecutor, the Basij militia organization alleges Mousavi is guilty of no less than 9 offenses against the state, including ”disturbing the nation’s security”. If prosecuted and convicted, Mousavi would face prison time, a sign to some that the Basij letter may be part of an orchestrated effort by the pro-Ahmedinejad camp, possibly including supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i, to justify the long-term imprisonment of the nation’s most popular opposition politician. 

The Basij militia themselves are implicated in the exercise of random acts of brutality against civilians, including the shooting death of Neda Agha Soltan, whose last moments of life as she bled to death from a gunshot wound to the chest were filmed and circulated widely online. The young woman’s death galvanized international condemnation of the government’s use of violence and aggressive tactics to disperse demonstrators and intimidate the opposition. 

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Eyewitnesses from the scene of Neda Soltan’s shooting are reported to have identified the shooter, tackled him and taken his Basij militia ID. The Basij have been used throughout the election dispute by the government to interfere with demonstrations and to raid locations where the government suspects the demonstrations were being organized, including university dormitories, private homes and even —according to some accounts— places of worship.

The Basij letter stretched the bounds of legal authority in accusing Mousavi of crimes even the Basij admit he probably never committed: “‘Whether he wanted to or not, Mr. Mousavi in many areas supervised or assisted in punishable acts,’ said the Basij letter, which also accused Mousavi of bringing “pessimism” into the public sphere.”

Pessimism is not a crime in Iran, and some observers believe the letter is a thinly veiled threat of violence against the opposition leader, should he persist in his criticisms of the election process. Mousavi, for his part, today declared that he views the new Ahmedinejad government as “illegitimate”, due to the allegedly coordinated and nationwide fraud that occurred in the presidential election. 

Demonstrators have persisted in their attempts to show mass support for Mousavi’s allegations and to demand a new, more transparent democratic electoral process. But staging the huge rallies seen in the early days of the election dispute has been hard, amid an increasingly intense security crackdown. According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran: 

Uniformed and plainclothes agents of the regime’s police were out in force across the capital Tehran and other cities on Tuesday to prevent any anti-government protests from forming. We received numerous reports that agents brutally attacked small gatherings, beating and arresting people.

In various districts of Tehran people in groups of several dozen tried to gather in major squares such as Vanak, Sadeghieh, Tajrish, Enqelab and Vali-Asr but encountered large numbers of repressive forces.

Mousavi has also demanded the immediate release of all political prisoners detained in the government’s crackdown on opposition protests. Mousavi said in an online statement that the security crackdown was “tantamount to a coup”, as the government is using military force to deny opposition supporters their constitutional rights to free assembly and to call for justice. 

Former president and prominent reformist politician Mohammad Khatami today denounced the government’s brutal response to protests and suggested the 12 June election was rigged. With 20 people believed killed by security forces so far, Khatami questioned the government’s response to dissent: “If you want to calm the atmosphere, why are you carrying out mass arrests? Oppressing people will not help end the protests”. 

The former president also says the government is denying those detained their constitutional due process rights, including the right to see an attorney and to challenge their detention in court, writing “why are their legal rights as citizens not preserved, why don’t they have access to a lawyer, why are they not tried in a court, why haven’t they been charged?”

Khatami also suggested the government is attempting to use arrests to coerce false confessions that help it make the argument it must use force to stop the opposition allegations from being thoroughly investigated. Specifically, he took issue with the government’s apparent plan to air taped ‘confessions’. “Obtaining confessions in front of cameras is a useless old method … confessions under pressure are not valid”, wrote Khatami. 

More reporting on Iran’s election crisis, from Café Sentido:

• Iran’s President Ahmedinejad Orders Probe into Shooting Death of Neda Soltan
• Mir Hossein Mousavi’s official message to Iranians abroad (transcript)
• Kalemeh, Mousavi’s Web Site, Shut Down by Iranian Authorities
• Iran Arrests 8 Employees of UK Embassy, Alleging Subversion
• Detained Reformists Reportedly Tortured to Induce Testimony About ‘Foreign Plot’
• Doctor Who Tended to Neda Soltan Tells BBC What He Observed
• Language of Resistance Intensifies Amid New Reports of Demonstrators Attacked
• Full Obama Press Conference on Iran, Economic Recovery, Healthcare (video + transcript)
• What Happened at Baharestan Square?
• Iran Protesters Reportedly Attacked ‘Like Animals’ by Security Forces
• Pres. Obama’s Remarks on Iran (video + transcript, English + Farsi)
• Guardian Council Opposed to Throwing Out Election Results
• Iran Using Western Technology to Spy on its Citizens, Suppress Dissent
• Iran’s Guardian Council Finds Ballots Cast Exceeded Number of Voters in 50 Cities
• Pres. Obama’s Statement on Iran (transcript)
• Larijani Says Majority Suspect Election Fraud; Rafsanjani Relative Detained
• Iran Says ‘Terrorists’ Caused Saturday Clashes; New Evidence of State Violence (UPDATED)
• Update on State Violence Against Demonstrators in Iran (video)
• Reports of Shots Fired at Iranian Demonstrators (video, links & updates)
• Khamene’i Demands End to Protests, Says Disputed Results Will Stand
• Open Letter from Iranian Academics to UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-moon
• UN Rights Chief Warns Iran not to Use Violence
• Iranian Dissident Leader Detained in Hospital ICU, Jailed without Charge
• Massive Opposition Rally in Tehran Mourns Slain Demonstrators (video)
• Iran Government Targets Press as More Demonstrations Planned (video)
• Rafsanjani Calls for Emergency Meeting of Assembly of Experts
• Pro-Mousavi Demonstrations & Iranians’ Constitutional Rights (video)
• Iran Opposition Movement Forces Khamenei to Investigate
• Iran Crackdown: Is it Tacit Admission Vote was Rigged?
• Iran Declares Ahmedinejad Winner, Results Widely Questioned as Fraudulent
• Rivals Ahmedinejad & Mousavi Both Declare Victory in Iran Election
• Iranian Polls Kept Open Several Hours Longer than Planned
• Iran Votes, with Popular Reformist Challenging Hardline Ahmedinejad

Amid a storm of protest from Chinese citizens, businesses, rights activists and foreign governments, China has suddenly halted its planned installation of a new enhancement to the ‘Great Firewall’ called ‘Green Dam’. In a statement the UK’s Guardian calls “terse”, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported “China will delay the mandatory installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers.”

The Green Dam censorship software was planned for installation on every new computer sold in China, allowing the government to monitor and control all internet traffic at the individual level. There appears to have been debate in the government as a result of passionate and even hostile criticism across China’s tightly controlled online community. 

An estimated 300 million people in China are able to access the internet, driving an increasingly sophisticated “arms race” between Chinese government censors and the increasingly tech savvy and independently minded online population. Several incidents in recent years have brought the government’s aggressive censorship operation to the forefront of Chinese public awareness. 

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An attempt to conceal information about the SARS outbreak led to accusations the government had endangered public health around the world, exacerbated the risk of the disease spreading and embarrassed the nation out of an overzealous reflex to avoid the embarrassment of SARS itself. The earthquake that killed tens of thousands in Sichuan led to a spontaneous nationwide online volunteer networking drive, that enabled citizens to contribute aid remotely or by traveling to the hardest hit areas to volunteer. 

Increasingly, Chinese citizens are seeing the internet as a source of information, and censorship as a barrier to being well informed. Chinese businesses and universities have pressured officials to loosen aggressive controls on the flow of information, and there is increasing pressure from the international community to open China journalistically and informationally, for the benefit of its own people and to legitimize 

• Liu Xiaobo Arrested for Suggesting Reform to China’s One-party System
• AP Reports Repression Marks 20th Anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre
• China Still Seeks to Hide What Happened at Tiananmen Square 20 Years Ago (video)
• ‘A Tragedy to Shock the World’: Secret Zhao Memoirs Acknowledge Tiananmen Massacre
• Lin Zhao, Poet Executed for Dissent, Remembered as Tiananmen Anniv. Nears
• ‘Ghost Net’: Cyber-spying Probe Reveals Vast Network of Cyber-espionage Based in China
• China Blocking Websites in Effort to Crack Down on Press Freedom
• 3rd Day of Clashes in Tibet Without Independent Media Being Permitted to Verify Death Tolls
• China frees NY Times reporter it jailed for 3 years; 35 journalists, 51 ‘cyber-dissidents’ still in prison in China… 
• China Detaining, Intimidating Journalists in Effort to Control Public Image Abroad
• China Plans ‘Smokeless War’ Against Press, Dissidents