Yesterday’s post was missing a last ‘who would have guessed it’ item:  RT reports a recent trend among the children of Indian immigrants to the U.S. It seems that increasing numbers, armed with graduate degrees, are returning to India, where they find more opportunities – and a more relaxed life-style, as has been the case for American ex-pats who move to Europe.

This morning, Britain’s Supreme Court rejected Julian Assange’s request that it reopen Sweden’s request that he be extradited to face sex-related allegations, widely believed to serve America’s determination to arrest Assange on charges of terrorism. Since the U.S. is armed with the latest, controversial legislation allowing it to arrest anyone suspected of links to enemy groups, Assange will be an internationally watched test case.

Finally, just days before the Presidential run-off in Egypt, that Supreme Court has ruled that Parliament should be dissolved, claiming that one-third of its new members were fraudulently elected.  Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss scholar of Islam and Oxford professor, interviewed by RT, believes the Muslim Brotherhood has been used by the Egyptian Army to ultimately retain power, bringing Egypt back to the days of deposed leader Mubarak.

More precisely, as Syria hurtles toward all-out civil war on Israel’s northern and Eastern border, pitting Russia (and, diplomatically, also China) against the United States, the latter appears to be going all-out to ensure that Egypt becomes once again a predictable neighbor to Israel’s south.

At the risk of repeating myself, I want to put yesterday’s post in a wider context:

As spring makes demonstrating less uncomfortable, Europeans are taking to the streets by the tens of thousands to protest the austerity measures their leaders have come up with to combat the crisis induced by the 2008 financial debacle.

In a tribute to the movement that began more than a year ago in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and and is still on-going, yesterday, tens of thousands, fed up with 25% unemployment, gathered in Madrid’s main square, Puerta del Sol and and in 80 other cities across Spain.

In London, hundreds of protesters gathered outside St Paul’s Cathedral, where an Occupy protest camp was removed in February, and marched peacefully through the financial district.

Smaller protests have taken place in the Portuguese capital Lisbon and in Germany’s financial centre, Frankfurt.  German demonstrations come as the 13.2 million people eligible to vote for the state legislature in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous and industrialized state, elect a new regional government.  Not all Germans agree with Chancellor Merkel’s austerity measures, which have included greater freedom to fire workers, putting about one fourth in temp positions.

1,000 marchers converged on Tel Aviv to protest the cost of living, with marches also reported in other Israeli cities. Prime Minister Netanyahu has just consolidated his power by bringing the main opposition party Kadima on board, none too soon to undertake domestic reforms. Fareed Zakaria noted today that he can no longer invoke the fragility of his support to delay making peace with the Palestinians, while Iran’s Ahmedinejad noted that this failure represents a greater danger to Israel than any military attack.

The common thread in all these situations is epitomized by the oft heard criticism of the international Occupy Movement of failing to offer concrete proposals for change. But at this point popular pressure, combined with brutal government crackdowns, may make the emphasis on reform too little, too late.

If you think this is an exaggeration, Iraq Veterans Against the War are circulating an on-line petition asking the commander of the Illinois National Guard to refrain from sending in the National guard when they gather for the NATO Summit, where they will as I wrote yesterday:

“…..ceremoniously return our NATO service medals to denounce the disastrous 11-year war in Afghanistan.

The Illinois National Guard Deputy Director of Domestic Operations recently stated publicly that he stands ready to deploy National Guard troops on peaceful NATO protesters.

Send an email to Major General L. Enyart, head of the Illinois National Guard, and urge him not to activate troops against fellow veterans.”

A few minutes after I signed the petition and hit ‘send’ I received the following email:

‘Symantec Mail Security detected prohibited content in a message sent from your address. (SYM:13657982411663453303).’  

It was from the IL-ExchangeService@ng.army.mil, Recipient, MG Enyart.

When I went to look for the Vets’ email in my inbox, it had been remotely moved to the trash.

While European protesters have inherited a long tradition of solidarity, the heritage of American activists emphasizes individualism. As a result, the latter campaigned for changes to SOPA in the name of the free sharing of artistic works. It was, it seems, less motivated to prevent the Patriot Act from assimilating citizen organizing through “wire, oral and electronic communications’ to terrorism, which brings us back to the beginning of this post.

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That’s what I heard this morning on RT, the Russian English language news channel available in many parts of the U.S. on public stations.  Though not mentioned on either RTs website or those of CNN or the BBC, this is very big news.

According to the Brotherhood’s website /www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=29843, delegates held talks starting Monday of this week with U.S. news media and think tanks.  Today they are holding a conference on Islamist movements in power at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

The delegation will also participate in other public events at Georgetown University, the US Chamber of Commerce as well as meeting with the Egyptian community and US officials.

Meanwhile, Brotherhood leader and founder of the “Egyptian Business Development Association” (EBDA), Hassan Malik has been reassuring investors that their money will be safe in Egypt.  (On March 24 he organized an international conference ‘to support Egypt’s economy through business’).

The Brotherhood’s new Freedom and Justice Party won a plurality in the recent post-Mubarak parliamentary elections, and yesterday it announced that it would run a candidate for president, reversing a previous decision. In other news from the website:

(The Chairman of the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood), ‘Dr. Morsi asserted that the FJP puts the Palestinian issue at the forefront of its interests, because it is an issue linked to the national security of Egypt and the Arab and Muslim world. He highlighted the importance of overcoming the differences between Palestinian factions, working to complete national reconciliation efforts, and ending the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. These, he added, are key stepping stones on the way of defending Al-Aqsa Mosque and liberating the Holy City of Jerusalem.

‘Further, the FJP Chairman said that the Palestinian issue and the siege of Gaza were two key factors in sparking Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, which confirms the great importance of the Palestinian cause to the Egyptian Government and all the Egyptian people. Dr. Morsi added that this prompted FJP members in the People’s Assembly and Shura Council to push for lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip, and the visit by the Egyptian parliament’s Arab Affairs Committee to Gaza….noting the party’s support for providing the people of Gaza with electricity and diesel fuel and other necessities. Dr. Morsi also pointed that members of Egyptian People’s Assembly have engaged many parliamentary mechanisms to warn of the danger of Judaization operations carried out in the Holy City of Jerusalem.’

In other words what is probably the Muslim world’s largest and oldest organization (founded in 1928), wants to reassure the Egyptian street of its support for the Palestinian cause, while attracting economic support from the American business community.  An undertaking that will be worth watching.

In the fifties, President Eisenhower first referred to an idea that eventually became ‘the domino theory’: if one country falls to Com-munism, others nearby would too, like a standing row of dominoes. The United States failed to counter the Chinese Revolution, (wondering when it was too late ‘Who lost China’, but redoubled its efforts to maintain Korea and Vietnam in the Western camp, only half successfully.

I haven’t heard anyone mention dominoes yet in the Egyptian crisis, but the idea is as relevant in the Middle East now as it was in the Far East fifty years ago. Starting in Tunisia, which had been ruled for decades by a strongman, and within weeks spreading to Egypt, Yemen and Lebanon, the Middle East’s middle classes are finally determined to catch up with the rest of the world and secure a voice in their governance.

Analysts fear Jordan and Syria may be next, but most seem to have got it right, except when they warn against the possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood taking power.  Only one or two commentators seem to know that this foundational organization of Islamist revolt is today more like the governing party of Turkey than it is like the Taliban.

And here is where the old domino theory and the new one coincide:  in the fifties, in the Far East, coolies were revolting against feudal land-lords; today, the working and lower middle class of the Middle East orga-nize on Twitter against a klepto-corporatocracy with an international reach that keeps them in a position of democratic or material deprivation that is as intolerable in today’s world as feudalism was in the nineteen fifties.

The voices of reason with respect to the Muslim Brotherhood need to be heard: poverty – or the perception of relative deprivation – has always been at the root of every human revolt.  And whether it be the Brotherhood or organizations it has inspired such as Hamas and Hez-bollah, all emulate the Marxist guerilla program of concrete assistance to the needy, through schools, clinics, or cash payments.

A few American analysts are beginning to realize that it’s depri-vation that drives young people into the arms of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and Secretary Clinton and the President are unequivocal in calling for ‘free and fair’ elections in Egypt.

They are also suggesting that this an opportunity for Israel to settle the Palestinian question once and for all. Will Israel be content to allow the Stuxnet virus to hobble Iran’s nuclear program, and concentrate on picking its way through the field of dominos to become a helpful member of a modernizing Middle East community?