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By Bill Van Auken

11 July, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Secret National Security Agency documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have exposed a massive spying operation covering all of Latin America.

The NSA’s interception of billions of telephone conversations, emails, Internet searches and other forms of communication made by Latin American individuals, companies and government agencies has provoked a wave of protests and demands for explanations by the Obama administration.

Snowden, the source of the secret documents, remained confined to the transit zone of Moscow’s international airport Wednesday, with conflicting reports about the prospect of his finding asylum in Venezuela or elsewhere.

According to the documents reported in the Rio de Janeiro-based daily O Globo, the most intensive surveillance has been conducted against both US allies—including Brazil, Colombia and Mexico—and against Venezuela, whose bourgeois nationalist regime has in the past come into conflict with US aims in the region.

Also subjected to the NSA surveillance net have been Argentina, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Paraguay, Chile, Peru and El Salvador, according to the O Globo report.

The spying has involved two programs: PRISM, which collates email, Internet chats, searches and other material directly from the servers of IT companies such as Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Skype; and “Boundless Informant,” which collects telephone calls, faxes and other communications.

Also in use has been a program code-named Silverzephyr, which an NSA power-point slide explains is aimed at “accessing lines for information transmission through a partner,” referring to an unnamed private corporation with access to satellites, telephone networks and data transmission systems.

The revelation that telephone and Internet communications in numerous Latin American countries have been exposed to constant surveillance by the NSA has given the lie to US officials who have defended the agency’s wholesale spying on the populations of both the US itself and other countries as a necessary weapon in the so-called war on terror.

There is no evidence that the countries subjected to this spying were the source of terrorist threats against the US. Moreover, as the documents made public by Snowden make clear, much of the US surveillance has been directed at uncovering “commercial secrets,” arms purchases and other matters designed to further the interests of US-based banks and corporations in their struggle to dominate the region’s economies.

“One aspect that stands out in the documents is that…the United States doesn’t appear interested in military affairs alone, but also in trade secrets—‘oil’ in Venezuela, and ‘energy’ in Mexico, according to a list produced by the NSA in the first quarter of this year,” O Globo reported.

In its surveillance of Venezuelan communications, for example, the NSA has focused both on military procurements and the oil sector, while conducting intense spying operations following the death of President Hugo Chavez, who headed the country’s government for 14 years.

In Mexico, in addition to a focus on drug trafficking, the surveillance has been directed at securing information on energy policy and deals.

Significantly, among those protesting the spying operation was the Federation of Industries of the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s most powerful business lobby. Paulo Skaf, the president of the federation, said that “any espionage is condemnable and an abuse, whether it is against individuals or against companies, no matter what government commits it.” He added that the US government should be compelled to “make some kind of reparation.”

The NSA documents make clear that Colombia, which is Washington’s closest ally in the region, receiving more military aid than any other countries save Israel and Egypt, has trailed only Brazil and Mexico as a target for US espionage. Even the right-wing government of President Juan Manuel Santos found itself compelled to issue a formal protest.

Mexico’s government demanded that Washington provide “ample information” on its spying operation and affirmed that “relations between countries must be conducted with respect and observance of legal frameworks,” while “energetically condemning any deviation from this practice.”

Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, declared that she “felt a shiver going down my spine when we learned that they are spying on us all through their services in Brazil.”

Certainly all of these bourgeois governments have carried out their own spying programs, several of them in collaboration with US intelligence.

Colombia’s secret police agency, the Department of Administrative Services, was revealed to be involved in a wide-ranging wire-tapping operation two years ago, targeting members of parliament and Supreme Court justices.

Fernandez de Kirchner was compelled to dismiss a close political ally as minister of security following revelations that the agency was overseeing “Project X,” in which the national police were spying on social activists and dissident trade unionists.

Until a recent decision by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, CIA personnel worked directly alongside their Mexican counterparts in “intelligence fusion centers” set up inside Mexico.

And among the reports based on the leaked NSA documents published in O Globo was the revelation that so-called “Special Collection Service” centers were set up by the CIA and the NSA in Brasilia, Bogota, Caracas, Panama City and Mexico City to monitor information from foreign satellites.

Nonetheless, the exposure of the wholesale espionage by US intelligence has escalated tensions between the various Latin American governments and Washington, fueled in no small part by conflicting economic interests under conditions where the historic hegemony of US imperialism in the region has been eroded by increased trade and investment from China and Europe, as well as the growing role of Brazilian capital.

It is expected that the NSA spying operation as well as the recent incident in which the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced down in Europe over alleged suspicions that it was carrying Edward Snowden from Moscow to asylum in Bolivia will figure prominently in the deliberations of a summit meeting of the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur, which convenes in Montevideo Friday.

The Organization of American States, a body traditionally dominated by Washington, passed a resolution Tuesday condemning the act of state air piracy conducted by European governments at the behest of the CIA against Morales. Only the US and Canada failed to join in backing the statement, which demanded apologies from the governments of France, Spain, Italy and Portugal and explanations for their actions.

Spain, which initially refused such an apology, changed course Tuesday, with Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo declaring, “If any misunderstanding has taken place, I don’t have any objection to saying sorry to President Morales.”

Under questioning by reporters. Garcia-Margallo confirmed that the false information that Snowden had been aboard Morales’s plane had come from the US.

The Bolivian government has charged that Washington knew its allegations to be false, but spread them as a means of retaliating against Morales for saying he was prepared to offer Snowden asylum and using the incident to intimidate him and anyone else contemplating aid to the ex-NSA contractor.

Despite relentless government and media vilification of Snowden, the latest opinion poll conducted by Quinnipiac University found a clear majority, 55 percent, identifying him as a “whistle-blower,” i.e., someone who exposed government crimes, while barely one third agreed with the Obama administration in classifying him as a “traitor.”

While it is far from clear whether the offers of asylum made by the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua will amount to more than left-nationalist rhetoric, it is clear that Snowden enjoys massive popular support both in the US and among working people all across the globe. It is only in the political mobilization of this support that his real defense lies.

By Ramzy Baroud

11 July, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

“The revolution is dead. Long live the revolution,” wrote Eric Walberg, a Middle East political expert and author, shortly after the Egyptian military overthrew the country’s democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi on July 3.

But more accurately, the revolution was killed in an agonizingly slow death, and the murders were too many to count.

Mohamed ElBaradei, a liberal elitist with a dismal track record in service of western powers during his glamorous career as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is a stark example of the moral and political crisis that has befallen Egypt since the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak.

ElBaradei played a most detrimental role in this sad saga, from his uneventful return to Egypt during the Jan. 2011 revolution – being casted as the sensible, western-educated liberator – to the ousting of the only democratically-elected president this popular Arab country has ever seen. His double-speak was a testament not only to his opportunistic nature as a politician and the head of the Dostour Party, but to the entire political philosophy of the National Salvation Front, the opposition umbrella group for which he served as a coordinator.

The soft-spoken man, who rarely objected to the unfair pressure imposed on Iraq during his services as the head of the UN nuclear watch dog, was miraculously transformed into a fierce politician with persisting demands and expectations. His party, like the rest of Egypt’s opposition, had performed poorly in every democratic election and referendum held since the ouster of Mubarak. Democracy proved him irrelevant. But after every failure he and the opposition managed to emerge even louder thanks to a huge media apparatus that operated around the clock in a collective, undying commitment in rearranging the country’s political scene in their favor, regardless of what the majority of Egyptians thought.

Soon after General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi announced a military coup on July 04, in what was a clearly well-organized conspiracy involving the army, much of the media, the opposition and disaffected Mubarak-era judges, silencing the Muslim Brotherhood and their own media were paramount. The level of organization in which the coup conspirators operated left no doubt that the military was most insincere when two days earlier they had given the quarreling political parties 48 hours to resolve their disputes or else.

But of course there was no room for compromise as far as ElBaradei’s opposition was concerned, and the army knew that well. On June 30, one year since Morsi had taken office following transparent, albeit protracted elections, the opposition organized with the sinister goal of removing the president at any cost. Some called on the army, which has proven to be extremely devious and untrustworthy, to lead the ‘democratic’ transition. ElBaradei even invited supporters of the former regime to join his crusade to oust the Brotherhood. The idea was simple: to gather as many people in the streets as possible, claiming a second revolution and calling on the military to intervene to save Egypt from Morsi and his supposed disregard of the will of the people. The military, with a repulsive show of orchestrated benevolence, came to the rescue, in the name of the people and democracy. They arrested the president, shut down Islamic TV stations, killed many and rounded up hundreds of people affiliated with the ruling party. Fireworks ensued, ElBaradei and his men gloated, for Egypt had supposedly been saved.

Except it was not.

“Mubarak-era media owners and key members of Egypt’s liberal and secular opposition have teamed up to create arguably one of the most effective propaganda campaigns in recent political history, to demonize Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood,” wrote Mohamad Elmasry of the American University in Cairo.

Much of the media in Egypt never truly shifted allegiances. It remained as dirty and corrupt as it was during the Mubarak regime. It was there to serve the interest of the powerful business and political elites. But, due to the changing political reality – three democratic elections and two referendums, all won by Islamic party supporters – it was impossible for them to operate using the same language. They too jumped on the revolution bandwagon using the same frame of references as if they were at the forefront of the fight for freedom, equality and democracy.

Egypt’s reactionary forces, not only in the media, but also the pro-Mubarak judges, the self-serving military, etc, managed to survive the political upheaval not for being particularly clever. They simply had too much room to regroup and maneuver since the desperate opposition, ElBaradie and company, put all of their focus on discounting Morsi, undermining the Muslim Brotherhood, and undercutting the democratic process that brought them to power. In their desperation and search for power, they lost sight of the revolution and its original goals, disowned democracy, but more importantly endangered the future of Egypt itself.

What took place in Egypt, starting with the orchestrated ‘revolution’ on June 30, from the army’s ultimatum, to the military coup, to the shameless reinvention of the old order – accompanied with repopulating the prisons and sending tanks to face unarmed civilians – was not only disheartening to the majority of Egyptians, but was a huge shock to many people around the world as well. Egypt, which once inspired the world, is now back to square one.

Since the onset of the so called Arab Spring, an intense debate of numerous dimensions has ensued. One of its aspects was concerned with the role of religion in a healthy democracy. Egypt, of course, was in the heart of that debate, and every time Egyptians went to the ballot box they seemed to concur with the fact that they wished to see some sort of marriage between Islam and democracy. It was hardly an easy question, and until now there have been no convincing answers. But, as in any healthy democracy, it was the people who were to have the final say. The fact that the choice of a poor peasant from a distant Egyptian village didn’t match ElBaradei’s elitist sensibility is of no consequence whatsoever.

It is unfortunate, but hardly surprising, that many of the idealists who took to Tahrir Square in Jan. 2011 and spoke of equal rights for all, couldn’t bear the outcome of that equality. Some complained that decades of marginalization under Mubarak didn’t qualify Egypt’s poor, uneducated and illiterate to make decisions pertaining to political representation and democratic constitution. And in a sad turn of events, these very forces were openly involved in toppling the democratically-elected president and his party, as they happily celebrated the return to oppression as a glorious day of freedom. ElBaradie may now return to center stage, lecturing Egypt’s poor on what true democracy is all about – and why, in some way, the majority doesn’t matter at all.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

11 July, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

During the 2011 Egyptian uprisings, the military was jeered for cracking down on protestors and for the infamous virginity tests they conducted on detained female protestors.  In June 2012, when Mohamed Morsi won the presidential race with 51% of the votes, crowds gathered in Tahrir Square to celebrate his victory, chanting : ” God is great” and “down with military rule. ”    Barely a year passed before the crowds were cheering the U.S.-backed military for ousting their first democratically elected president in a coup dubbed by various media outlets as a democratic coup .   What transpired?

Mr. Morsi alienated both Egyptians and foreign states in his short term in office.  No doubt many Egyptians were alarmed and opposed to what they perceived as his ‘power-grab’, as well as the new constitution which passed in a referendum with 64% of a measly 33% turnout; but inarguably,  the economy was a huge factor in sending protestors to the streets.  The lack of progress in dealing with the economy, the fuel shortages,  and the IMF loan delay also contributed to the continuous unrest in Egypt .

It is worthwhile mentioning here that a significant percentage of Egypt ‘s economy is run by the military.    Robert Springborg, an expert on Egypt ‘s military told The New York Times : “Protecting its businesses from scrutiny and accountability is a red line the [Egyptian] military will draw”.     Also of note is the fact that long lines formed at gasoline stations in Cairo amid an apparent fuel shortage, disappeared quickly after the coup.  This led to speculation that the fuel crisis had “been deliberately engineered to feed unrest and dissatisfaction with the Morsi government in the days before its overthrow.”

Gripped in social and economic crisis, it came as no surprise that on May 1 st , a group opposed to Mr. Morsi which called itself “Rebel” organized a 1 million people march to be held on June 30 th .    The group also planned on delivering a signed petition to the Prosecutor General at the same time with the aim of collecting 15 million signatures by that date.  “In one month, movement promoters travelled the length and breadth of the country, collecting signatures door to door, on buses, in restaurants and offices as well as on the internet.” They claimed that they had secured j ust over 7 million signatures , and four weeks later, on June 28 th , the Washington Post reported that the group had secured 22 millions signatures .   (Given the timeframe and the challenges, surely this number has a place in the Guinness Book of World Records – if only it could be verifiable).

This number cited by “Rebel” became an accepted reality and was promoted by media outlets without verification.  As anti-protestors marched on Tahrir as planned, military  tanks and personnel blocked the pro-Morsi crowd from the onset;  enabling the media lens to capture the sea of anti-Morsi demonstrators and marginalizing his supporters.  These actions together with the unverified 22 million signatures claim played an essential role in calling a military coup a “democratic” coup.   Washington was off the hook and funds could to secure the Egyptian army’s cooperation and loyalty to Washington .

But one should ask why was it that Washington which has a long standing relationship with the Moslem Brotherhood [1] rejected Morsi?

There are many answers to this question – with the most basic being that he was not part of the plan.  As early as 2007 speculation about Hosni Mubarak’s  replacement appeared in the American mainstream media.  Discussing his ailing health, in October 2007, Michael Stackman’s opinion piece in The New York Times addressed the importance of a Mubark’s replacement to be someone who would continue the same policies towards Israel and Washington .

With this in mind, in 2008, young, ‘civil society’ Egyptians met with former Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice who called the young Egyptian activists the “hope for the future of Egypt “.  The “hope of Egypt ” also met the US National Security Advisor and prominent Congressional member. These meetings were organized by The Freedom House ( see link here ).  The Freedom House, an outfit which calls itself “independent” but receives 80% of its funding from the US government, including the National Endowment for Democracy — a CIA front — claimed to provide ” advanced training on civic mobilization, strategic thinking, new media, advocacy and outreach “.

In 2010, Freedom House boasted of teaching new media tools to Egypt ‘s “hope”.

Freedom House had reason to boast.  2010 was a crucial year to decide and settle on Mubarak’s successor as time was of the essence given Mubarak’s health and terminal illness.  In April 2010, the pro-Israeli Jerusalem Post ventured that former IAEA Chief, Egyptian-born Mohammad El baradei would ” add excitement to Egyptian politics.”   He did.   Mr. El-Baradei served on the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group funded by Carnegie, Soros, and Ford (Ford Foundation was a conduit for CIA funds during the Cold War – Saunders 2000 [i] ) where he rubbed shoulders with colleagues Shimon Peres, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki al-Faisal,  Richard Armitage,  Zbigniew Brzezinski, etc.

Morsi’s election not only interrupted Washington ‘s efforts to replace Mubarak in spite of his close cooperation with Washington (specifically in cutting ties with Syria ).   Morsi presented Washington with many challenges.  Not only was he reported to have called “ Jews descendants of pigs and apes ”,  but his election into office was warmly welcomed not only by HAMAS, but also by the U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who called Morsi “the choice of the great people of Egypt” while one of his senior aides, Saeb Erekat, said the democratic vote for Morsi “meant the Palestinian cause was the Number One priority for all Egyptians “.    Washington was not in the business of making Palestinians jubilant, or contradicting Israel ‘s demands. .

Regardless,  Morsi dug in deeper.    Soon after taking office, Morsi forced NGO’s out of Egypt , raising the ire of Freedom House (NGOs were referred to as force-multipliers by Colin Powell, and have been instrumental in executing US policies around the globe).   Additionally, Morsi forced out powerful military figures in order to reclaim the military power the army had seized.  As Juan Cole put it, ‘ a coup against the generals ‘.  Israel called the move “Instability in Egypt to threaten Israel ,” and “Muslim Brotherhood on our doorstep.”  However,  Morsi made the mistake of appointing Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi as military chief – a man with close ties to the U.S. and Saudi Arabia .

Perhaps his most serious offense was his opposition to a dam which bo th Israel and Saudi Arabia favored as they had plans to divert water from the Nile .  In 2012, it was reported that Saudi Arabia had claimed a stake in the Nile .    Israel ‘s ambitions went much further back.

First initiated by Theodore Herzl in 1903, the diversion plan was dropped due to British and Egyptian opposition to it only to be picked up again in the 1970s.  At that time, Israeli’s idea was to convince Egypt to divert Nile water to Israel .  In 1978, President Anwar Sadat “declared in Haifa to the Israeli public that he would transfer Nile water to the Negev . Shortly afterward, in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Sadat promised that Nile water would go to Jerusalem .  During Mubarak’s presidency, published reports indicated that Israeli experts were helping Ethiopia to plan 40 dams along the Blue Nile .” [ii]

On May 30, 2013, The Times of Israel reported that the construction on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (on the Blue Nile) had sparked a major diplomatic crisis with Egypt .  The article also reported (citing Al-Arabiya) that Major General Mohammed Ali Bilal, the deputy chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces, had said Egypt was not in a position to confront the project (countries).  “The only solution lies in the US intervening to convince Ethiopia to alleviate the impact of the dam on Egypt .”  No such solutions from the U.S.

On June 3 rd ,  Morsi met with his cabinet to discuss the dam and its implications.  Cabinet members were surprised to learn that the meeting was aired live.   During the meeting , a cabinet member said: “Imagine what 80 million of us would do to Israel and America if our water was turned off”.  Morsi contended that “We have very serious measures to protect every drop of Nile water.” The day prior to Morsi’s ouster, on July 2 nd , Fox News reported that work on the dam was “proceeding apace”, with plans to finish the project in 2017.

It seems the only “serious measure” undertaken was the ouster of Morsi.  With him gone, the military engaged, and the poring in of Saudi money, the dam project will proceed unhindered;  blood-diluted Nile water will flow to the enemies of the Egyptian in sink with a current of jubilation by the crowds who ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the influence of lobby groups.

[1] During the early years of the Cold War, American spies in Cairo   “engaged in an operation to show Soviet ungodliness”  by circulating anti-Islamic literature and attributing it to the Soviets.   When the nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser refused to become America ‘s man in Egypt , CIA looked for a “religious spellbinder” who could tip the scales of Arab opinion and “divert the growing stream of anti-American hostility.”  The intent was to “groom a messiah who would start out in Egypt, and then spread his word to Africans and perhaps other Third World peoples” in order to “immunize them against false prophets,” namely Nasser [1] . Although no ‘messiah’ was groomed, the CIA did co-opt leaders of the Islamic revival movement known as the Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood and “the seeds of a  furtive relationship between the CIA and the Ikhwan were planted.”  In the years ahead, the agency would become a de facto accomplice of the Muslim Brotherhood and its “terrorist” activities [1] .

[i] Frances Stonor Saunders. The Cultural Cold War: the CIA and the World of Arts

and Letters . New York : New Press 2000

[ii] “ Will Nile water go to Israel ? North Sinai pipelines and the politics of scarcity”, Middle East Policy   (Sep 1997): 113-124.

By Franklin Lamb

09 July, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Dahiyeh, Beirut: This observer’s neighbors seemed to believe, especially over the past year, as most of us did, that the war in Syria would, in one form or another, spill into our neighborhood, Dahiyeh, the Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut near the Shatila and Burj el Barajeh Palestinian refugee camps.

And now it has with a vengeance.

As this observer left his flat this morning and walked toward his motorbike on Abbas Mousawi Street en route to Shatila Palestinian Camp for a 10:30 a.m. appointment, at precisely 10:15 a.m. there was a tremendously loud blast. It seemed to shake our massive 12 story apartment building which had been rebuilt by the WAAD (“promise”) Hezbollah construction enterprise, from the mountain of rubble it was turned into in July of 2006. Leveled as most in the neighborhood were, by American weapons in the service of the Zionist regime still occupying Palestine.

Contrary to media reports, the blast was not on my street, Abass Mousawi, behind Bahman Hospital, but rather down a side street one block over and two east toward the Hezbollah media office near the Hezbollah sponsored Islamic Cooperation Center in the area of Bir al-Abed. The explosion occurred close to the Coop supermarket and Salah Ghandour Square.

Jumping on my motorbike I was one of the first to arrive on the scene face to face with an inferno that initially seemed to engulf ten or so cars in a parking lot surrounded by eight or nine Waad built high-rise apartment buildings, being a few of the more than 250 residential buildings in our neighborhood leveled during the 33 day July 2006 war.

Finally, it seemed like an eternity, two fire trucks arrived and made their way thru the rapidly expanding chaos as nearby residential buildings with windows blown out started to empty of their inhabitants amidst fears that another blast may be triggered. A few men joined this observer in pulling the very long hoses close to the inferno as medics arrived and searched for injured. At press time, 38 neighbors were treated, including several children, at nearby Bahman Hospital and others rushed to Rasoul al-Alham hospital and Cardiac Care Center, ten minutes away on airport road.

I observed a six feet by six feet by around eight foot deep crater at the blast site. As I watched the Red Crescent and Hezbollah emergency services staff care for the injured and the many who were traumatized, the crowd quickly grew to a few thousand, with fear, shock and anger spreading. Many elderly slumped against walls and curbs dazed while neighbor helped neighbor, especially the young to cope with the effects of the blast which shattered windows and caused serious damage to several nearby residential buildings, including cracks in their walls. There was much panic and shouting, with crying turning to anger and with people caring for the elderly and children with apartment building entrances set up as emergency treatment areas and neighbors helping neighboring reassure one another.

The Hezbollah neighborhood of Dahiyeh has been for years considered the safest residential area of Beirut due to strong Hezbollah security measures which over the past year have been intensified including the use of packs of explosive sniffing dogs moving up and across the streets and alleys, usually around three in the morning I have noticed since I often work during the night when its cooler and more quiet, and hearing a barking dog is very rare around here. More scrutiny-security cameras have been placed on utility poles and on rooftopss, with security personnel frequently stopping and questioning new arrivals or visitors to the area and at time residents told not to go to their roofs.

Yet, as Syria’s President Bashar Assad noted several months ago, despite intensive security measures taken in Damascus, it is still very difficult to prevent car bombings.

The speculation has already started concerning who committed this act of terrorism, one day before the start of the Holy Month of Ramadan. Whoever is was, cause the carnage by booby trapping a 1998 Renault Rapid. No one has yet claimed credit and likely will not. Hezbollah’s International Relations official Hizbullah MP Ali Ammar told al-Manar that the blast was carried out by the supporters of the so-called American-Israeli project. “There are clear Israeli fingerprints,” Ammar said as he inspected the damage.

The Bir al-Abed bombing , not far the William Casey ordered 1985 CIA bombing that targeted Sayed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, in which 80 citizens were murdered and more than 200 wounded, is interpreted but some of the residents in my building, two families so far telling me they will move, as simply a message for Hezbollah to leave Syria. Because if it was a typical al Qaeda operation aiming at maximum civilian deaths, detonating the blast a few hundred yards in any direction would have left many more victims, according to a Hezbollah bomb specialist.

This observer counted 15 destroyed vehicles and more than 20 damaged. A fierce fire erupted among some of the vehicles sending thick black smoke billowing high into the sky. I also saw gentlemen who I assumed was the parking lot attendant badly wounded. Another wounded man near him seemed also to be in serious condition.

Reuters has reported five were killed but Hezbollah is denying this report and I met the Hezbollah Media director on the scene and his job was to get the facts straight before the Party of God made any announcements.

For many in my neighborhood, a major concern is that Syria’s troubles will reopen the wounds of Lebanon’s long civil war but this time with the Sunnis community, which by and large supports the Syrian opposition, being pitted against Hezbollah, the powerful Shite led Resistance organization which supports Syria President Bashar Assad.

A reliable Hezbollah source has just advised this observer that 53 have been wounded but so far no confirmed fatalities stood at 53. This is the second time this year that the Hezbollah stronghold has come under attack following threats of retaliation by Syrian rebels.

The concierge of my building just reported that as of 4 p.m. Beirut time on 7/9/2013, two suspects have been arrested following the blast.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and Syria and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

By Dr Gideon Polya

05 July, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The 4th of July is Independence Day for the United States of America and commemorates the 4 July 1776 Declaration of Independence for America, the key passage of which is “ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ” Unfortunately American racism has grossly violated the proposition that “all men are created equal” and the worst form of racism involves invasion of other countries. The US has invaded about 70 countries since its inception and has invaded a total of about 50 countries since 1945 [1]. The World needs to declare a transition from the 4th of July as Independence for America Day to the 4th of July as Independence from America Day.

The following is a list of countries invaded by the US forces  (naval, military and ultimately air forces) since its inception in order of major incidents. This catalogue derives heavily form the work of US academic Dr Zoltan Grossman’s article “From Wounded Knee to Libya : a century of U.S. military interventions”   [1], Gideon Polya’s book ‘Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (that includes a brief history of all countries since Neolithic times) [2] and William Blum’s book “ Rogue State ” [3]. This list includes instances of violent deployment of US forces within America (e.g. against demonstrators, miners etc), and includes small-scale bombing and military intervention operations, military evacuations of Americans and specific instances of explicit threats of use of nuclear weapons. The list does not include the 1801-1805 US Marine Barbary War operations against Barbary pirates based in Morocco , Algeria , Tunisia and Libya , and also ignores massive US subversion of virtually all countries in the world.

(1) American Indian nations (1776 onwards, American Indian Genocide; 1803, Louisiana Purchase; 1844, Indians banned from east of the Mississippi; 1861 onwards, California genocide; 1890, Lakota Indians massacre), (2) Mexico (1836-1846; 1913; 1914-1918; 1923), (3) Nicaragua (1856-1857; 1894; 1896; 1898; 1899; 1907; 1910; 1912-1933; 1981-1990), (4) American forces deployed against Americans (1861-1865, Civil War; 1892; 1894; 1898; 1899-1901; 1901; 1914; 1915; 1920-1921; 1932; 1943; 1967; 1968; 1970; 1973; 1992; 2001), (5), Argentina (1890), (6), Chile (1891; 1973), (7) Haiti (1891; 1914-1934; 1994; 2004-2005), (8) Hawaii (1893-), (9) China (1895-1895; 1898-1900; 1911-1941; 1922-1927; 1927-1934; 1948-1949; 1951-1953; 1958), (10) Korea (1894-1896; 1904-1905; 1951-1953), (11) Panama (1895; 1901-1914; 1908; 1912; 1918-1920; 1925; 1958; 1964; 1989-), (12) Philippines (1898-1910; 1948-1954; 1989; 2002-), (13) Cuba (1898-1902; 1906-1909; 1912; 1917-1933; 1961; 1962), (14) Puerto Rico (1898-; 1950; ); (15) Guam (1898-), (16) Samoa (1899-), (17) Honduras (1903; 1907; 1911; 1912; 1919; 1924-1925; 1983-1989), (18) Dominican Republic (1903-1904; 1914; 1916-1924; 1965-1966),  (19) Germany (1917-1918; 1941-1945; 1948; 1961), (20) Russia (1918-1922), (21) Yugoslavia (1919; 1946; 1992-1994; 1999), (22) Guatemala (1920; 1954; 1966-1967), (23) Turkey (1922), (24) El Salvador (1932; 1981-1992),  (25) Italy (1941-1945); (26) Morocco (1941-1945), (27) France (1941-1945), (28) Algeria (1941-1945), (29) Tunisia (1941-1945), (30) Libya (1941-1945; 1981; 1986;  1989; 2011), (31) Egypt (1941-1945; 1956; 1967; 1973; 2013), (32) India (1941-1945),  (33) Burma (1941-1945), (34) Micronesia (1941-1945), (35) Papua New Guinea (1941-1945), (36) Vanuatu (1941-1945), (37) Austria (1941-1945), (38) Hungary (1941-1945), (39) Japan (1941-1945), (40) Iran (1946; 1953; 1980; 1984; 1987-1988; ), (41) Uruguay (1947), (42) Greece (1947-1949), (43) Vietnam (1954; 1960-1975), (44) Lebanon (1958; 1982-1984), (45) Iraq (1958; 1963; 1990-1991; 1990-2003; 1998; 2003-2011),  (46) Laos (1962-), (47) Indonesia (1965), (48) Cambodia (1969-1975; 1975), (49) Oman (1970), (50) Laos (1971-1973),  (51) Angola (1976-1992), (52) Grenada (1983-1984), (53) Bolivia (1986; ), (54) Virgin Islands (1989), (55) Liberia (1990; 1997; 2003), (56) Saudi Arabia (1990-1991), (57) Kuwait (1991), (58) Somalia (1992-1994; 2006), (59) Bosnia (1993-), (60) Zaire (Congo) (1996-1997), (61) Albania (1997), (62) Sudan (1998), (63) Afghanistan (1998;  2001-), (64) Yemen (2000; 2002-), (65) Macedonia (2001),  (66) Colombia (2002-), (67)  Pakistan (2005-), (68) Syria (2008; 2011-), (69) Uganda (2011), (70) Mali (2013), (71) Niger (2013).

The human cost of these US interventions has been horrendous. A major component of war- or hegemony-related deaths is represented by avoidable deaths from violently-imposed deprivation. Since 1950 the UN has provided detailed demographic data that have permitted calculation of such avoidable deaths, year by year, for every country in the world. 1950-2005 avoidable deaths total 1.3 billion for the whole world, 1.2 billion for the non-European world and 0.6 billion for the Muslim world [2], the latter carnage being 100 times greater than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) [4, 5} or the “forgotten” WW2 Bengali Holocaust in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons [6].  Currently 18 million people die avoidably each year in the Developing World on Spaceship Earth with the US in charge of the flight deck.

Here is a summary of post-1950 avoidable mortality/ 2005 population (both in millions, m) and expressed as a percentage (%) for each country occupied by the US in the post-1945 era. The asterisk (*) indicates a major occupation by more than one country in the post-WW2 era (thus, for example,  the UK and the US have been major occupiers of Afghanistan , Iraq and Korea , leaving aside the many other minor participants in these conflicts). Data is also given for the US: US [8.455m/300.038m = 2.8%],  Afghanistan* [16.609m/25.971m = 64.0%], Cambodia* [5.852m/14.825m = 39.5%], Dominican Republic [0.806m/8.998m = 9.0%], Federated States of Micronesia [0.016m/0.111m = 14.4%], Greece* [0.027m/10.978m = 0.2%], Grenada* [0.018m/0.121m = 14.9%], Guam [0.005m/0.168m = 3.0%], Haiti* [4.089m/8.549m = 47.9%], Iraq* [5.283m/26.555m = 19.9%], Korea* [7.958m/71.058m = 11.2%], Laos* [2.653m/5.918m = 44.8%], Panama [0.172m/3.235m = 5.3%], Philippines [9.080m/82.809m = 11.0%], Puerto Rico [0.039m/3.915m = 1.0%], Somalia* [5.568m/10.742m = 51.8%], US Virgin Islands [0.003m/0.113m = 2.4%], Vietnam* [24.015m/83.585m = 28.7%], total = 82.193m/357.651m = 23.0%.

Thus in the period 1950-2005 there have been 82 million avoidable deaths from deprivation (avoidable mortality, excess deaths, excess mortality , deaths that did not have to happen) associated with countries  occupied by the US in the post-1945 era. However the US has subcontracted a huge amount of violence to nuclear terrorist, democracy-by-genocide, racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel for which the related data is as follows: Apartheid Israel [0.095m/6.685m =1.4%] – Egypt* [19.818m/74.878m = 26.5%], Jordan* [0.630m/5.750m = 11.0%], Lebanon [0.535m/3.761m = 14.2%], Occupied Palestinian Territories* [0.677m/3.815m = 17.7%], Syria* [2.198m/18.650m = 11.8%], total = 23.858m/106.854 = 22.3% i.e. Apartheid Israeli aggression has been associated in 1950-2005 with 24 million avoidable deaths in the countries  it has violently  occupied, a carnage similar to that caused by the German Nazis in Russia duringWW2.

Except for the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust of over 1.3 billion avoidable deaths since 1950 and 18 million avoidable deaths per year, the above analysis does not take into account US subversion of virtually every country on earth. One visible expression of this subversion is the presence of US forces in hundreds of bases around the world. Thus the Saudi Arabia-occupied Bahrain dictatorship is not listed above but is a major base for the US Navy.

According to Canadian geographer Professor Jules Dufour : “The US has established its control over 191 governments which are members of the United Nations. The conquest, occupation and/or otherwise supervision of these various regions of the World is supported by an integrated network of military bases and installations which covers the entire Planet (Continents, Oceans and Outer Space). All this pertains to the workings of  an extensive Empire, the exact dimensions of which are not always easy to ascertain. The main sources of information on these military installations (e.g. C. Johnson, the NATO Watch Committee, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases) reveal that the US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases Worldwide…In this regard, Hugh d’Andrade and Bob Wing’s 2002 Map 1 entitled “ U.S. Military Troops and Bases around the World, The Cost of ‘Permanent War’ ”, confirms the presence of US military personnel in 156 countries. The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries. In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide. These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide (Gelman, J., 2007).” [7].

How does your country feature  in the history of the genocidally racist American Empire?

My country Australia, one of the richest and most peaceful countries in the world, is popularly known as the Lucky Country because of this good fortune. However since the US forced Japan into WW2 [6] , Australia has shifted its allegiance from the UK to the US and has become the American  Lackey Country. Appalled by the Vietnam War, the reformist Whitlam Labor Government (1972-1975) promised to get out of Vietnam and abolish racism and also sought clarity on Australia ‘s role in US nuclear terrorism. Whitlam was sacked in a CIA-backed Coup in 1975 [3]. A cowardly Australian Labor Party (aka the Australian Lackey Party)  quickly realized that the only way top get back into office was to adopt a craven “All the way with the USA” position and leading Labor figures became intimate with the Americans. When in the 2004 election campaign Labor Opposition Leader Mark Latham promised to bring Australian troops back from Iraq “by Christmas” he was publicly rebuked and vetoed by the US Ambassador, lost the election and has been reviled and ridiculed by the pro-war, pro-Zionist, US lackey Australian Mainstream media and MPs ever since.

In 2010 extremely popular Labor PM Kevin Rudd raised the ire of the Americans by suggesting destruction of US- protected  Afghan opium crops that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2000-2001 but restored by the US to 93% of world market share by 2007 and which have killed over 1 million people world-wide since 2001  (including 200,000 Americans, 50,000 Iranians, 18,000 British, 10,000 Canadians, 8,000 Germans and 4,000 Australians) [8]. Kevin Rudd also raised the ire of the traitorous racist Zionists by mildly protesting the large-scale Apartheid Israeli forging of Australian passports for Israel state terrorism purposes and the kidnapping, shooting,  tasering, robbing and imprisonment of Australians in international waters by Israeli state terrorists. On 24 June 2010 PM Kevin Rudd was removed by a US -approved, foreign mining company-backed, pro-Zionist-led Coup. Rudd’s pro-war, pro-Zionist and slavishly pro-American successor PM Julia Gillard rapidly moved to allow the US to station 2,500 child-killing Marines in Darwin with suggestions of bases for US nuclear–armed warships, US drones and US warplanes. Nevertheless WikiLeaks revealed that 2 of the Coup plotters were US “assets” who would regularly update the American Embassy about internal Labor Government  matters. The disastrous and extremely unpopular Gillard Government [9] has finally recently been replaced by a new Rudd Labor Government and it appears  that PM Rudd has learned his lesson  and is evidently  shifting Right to keep Big Business and the Neocon American and Zionist  Imperialist Lobby happy (he hasn’t much choice – 70% of Australian newspaper readers read the media of extreme right-wing, Australian-turned-US-citizen, media mogul Rupert Murdoch in Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy Australia).

Conclusions.

America has invaded 70 countries since its 4th of July Independence Day in 1776. American imperialism has made a major contribution to the 1.3 billion global avoidable deaths in the period 1950-2005. The Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist One Percenters can be seen as the New Nazis. The World, including ordinary Americans  (1 million of whom die preventably each year) [10],   must shake off the shackles of endless American One Percenter warmongering, imperialism and mendacity. The World must make the Fourth of July Independence from America Day. Tell everyone you can.

References.

[1]. Dr Zoltan Grossman, “From Wounded Knee to Libya : a century of U.S. military interventions”,  ” http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html .

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality_05.html .

[3]. William Blum, “ Rogue State ”.

[4]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas”.

[5]. Martin Gilbert, “Atlas of the Holocaust”.

[6]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com.au/  .

[7]. Jules Dufour, “The world-wide network of US military bases”, Global Research: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-worldwide-network-of-us-military-bases/5564 .

[8]. “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .

[9]. Gideon Polya, “100 reasons why Australians must reject Gillard Labor”, Countercurrents, 24 June, 2013 : http://www.countercurrents.org/polya240613.htm .

[10]. Gideon Polya, “One million Americans die preventably annually in USA ”,  Countercurrents, 18 February 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya180212.htm .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .

By John Pilger

05 July 13

@ Guardian UK

Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America on “suspicion” that it was carrying a political refugee to safety – and not just any refugee but someone who has provided the people of the world with proof of criminal activity on an epic scale.

Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the “international community”, as the governments of the west call themselves. To a chorus of baying indignation from Whitehall to Washington, Brussels to Madrid, heroic special forces would be dispatched to rescue their leader and, as sport, smash up the source of such flagrant international gangsterism. Editorials would cheer them on, perhaps reminding readers that this kind of piracy was exhibited by the German Reich in the 1930s.

The forcing down of Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane – denied airspace by France, Spain and Portugal, followed by his 14-hour confinement while Austrian officials demanded to “inspect” his aircraft for the “fugitive” Edward Snowden – was an act of air piracy and state terrorism. It was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world and the cowardice and hypocrisy of bystanders who dare not speak its name.

In Moscow, Morales had been asked about Snowden – who remains trapped in the city’s airport. “If there were a request [for political asylum],” he said, “of course, we would be willing to debate and consider the idea.” That was clearly enough provocation for the Godfather. “We have been in touch with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country,” said a US state department official.

The French – having squealed about Washington spying on their every move, as revealed by Snowden – were first off the mark, followed by the Portuguese. The Spanish then did their bit by enforcing a flight ban of their airspace, giving the Godfather’s Viennese hirelings enough time to find out if Snowden was indeed invoking article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”

Those paid to keep the record straight have played their part with a cat-and-mouse media game that reinforces the Godfather’s lie that this heroic young man is running from a system of justice, rather than preordained, vindictive incarceration that amounts to torture – ask Bradley Manning and the living ghosts in Guantánamo.

Historians seem to agree that the rise of fascism in Europe might have been averted had the liberal or left political class understood the true nature of its enemy. The parallels today are very different, but the Damocles sword over Snowden, like the casual abduction of Bolivia’s president, ought to stir us into recognising the true nature of the enemy.

Snowden’s revelations are not merely about privacy, or civil liberty, or even mass spying. They are about the unmentionable: that the democratic facades of the US now barely conceal a systematic gangsterism historically identified with, if not necessarily the same as, fascism. On Tuesday, a US drone killed 16 people in North Waziristan, “where many of the world’s most dangerous militants live”, said the few paragraphs I read. That by far the world’s most dangerous militants had hurled the drones was not a consideration. President Obama personally sends them every Tuesday.

In his acceptance of the 2005 Nobel prize in literature, Harold Pinter referred to “a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed”. He asked why “the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities” of the Soviet Union were well known in the west while America’s crimes were “superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged”. The most enduring silence of the modern era covered the extinction and dispossession of countless human beings by a rampant US and its agents. “But you wouldn’t know it,” said Pinter. “It never happened. Even while it was happening it never happened.”

This hidden history – not really hidden, of course, but excluded from the consciousness of societies drilled in American myths and priorities – has never been more vulnerable to exposure. Snowden’s whistleblowing, like that of Manning and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, threatens to break the silence Pinter described. In revealing a vast Orwellian police state apparatus servicing history’s greatest war-making machine, they illuminate the true extremism of the 21st century. Unprecedented, Germany’s Der Spiegel has described the Obama administration as “soft totalitarianism”. If the penny is falling, we might all look closer to home.

By Robert J. Burrowes

04 July, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Some people have accused Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden of being traitors. But this obscures a deeper and more important question.

If the government of the United States is engaged in endless acts of lawless violence, as the documentary evidence clearly demonstrates, (See Fred Branfman, ‘World’s Most Evil and Lawless Institution? The Executive Branch of the U.S. Government’: http://www.alternet.org/investigations/executive-branch-evil-and-lawless) then it is not Manning and Snowden who are the traitors for providing evidence of this violence and the surveillance necessary to carry it out. The real traitors are all of those other employees of intelligence agencies who say nothing while they collaborate with the endless and often secret perpetration of violence by the U.S. government and its allied governments in our name.

Why does this matter? It matters because it tells us that thousands of individuals are willing to collaborate, without the intervention of analytical thought, compassionate feeling or conscience, with the use of violence. And that bodes ill for our society.

Collaborators and traitors take many forms: they are prevalent in warfare but common in ‘ordinary’ society as well, and labels such as ‘scab labourer’ are used to describe them. Most frequently, they are those relatives and friends who ‘stab you in the back’. Why do so many people collaborate with perpetrators of violence? See ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence An understanding of their psychological profile will tell us this.

First, collaborators are terrified and they are particularly terrified of those individuals (usually one or both parents or other significant adults) who perpetrated violence against them when they were a child although this terror and, remarkably, the identity of their perpetrator(s) remain unconscious to them. Second, because they are terrified, they are unable to defend themselves against the original perpetrator(s) but also, as a result, they are unable to defend themselves against other perpetrators who attack them later in life.

This lack of capacity to defend themself leads to a third feeling – a deep sense of powerlessness. Thus, terrified, defenceless and powerless, some victims will try to placate the perpetrator. Victims who resort to placation, the fourth attribute of collaborators, will invariably fear those individuals who resist the perpetrator’s violence, will usually perceive resistance to violence as ‘morally wrong’ and perhaps even perceive any resistance to violence (including explicitly nonviolent resistance) as ‘violent’, because their own fear of resisting perpetrators is now so deeply embedded in their unconscious that any form of resistance is considered futile and likely to provoke further perpetrator violence. And this ‘violates’ their powerless ‘strategy’ of placation.

The strategy of placation is also attractive to collaborators because they have a warped sense of empathy and sympathy, the fifth attribute. They will have empathy and sympathy for the perpetrators of violence, rather than the perpetrator’s victims, as an outcome of how they were emotionally damaged as a child.

Having unconsciously ‘chosen’ collaboration and betrayal as a means of ‘defending’ themselves against personal victimisation, the collaborator will now acquire a deep sense of self-hatred (precisely because they cannot defend themselves and now betray others) which, in turn, will negate any remaining sense of personal self-worth.

However, it is too terrifying and painful for the collaborator/traitor to be conscious of any of these feelings, so they will usually exhibit an eighth attribute if challenged: self-righteous justification for their collaboration/betrayal often expressed in either ideological/religious terms or as sympathy for the perpetrator.

One version of this occurs when collaborators justify their collaboration with perpetrators of violence in terms of a supposed ‘obligation to obey’, although they might not use this precise language: many collaborators will characterise their obedience as ‘loyalty’, ‘support’ or ‘helpfulness’ in order to mask from themselves the fear that drives their submissive behaviour. For collaborators, the importance of obedience also far outweighs any sense of personal moral choice, if the idea of personal moral choice makes any sense to them at all. If you are scared to resist violence, then you must make a virtue out of submission and obedience.

Penultimately, collaborators/traitors invariably exhibit a ninth attribute: they unconsciously project their fear and self-hatred, as outcomes of their own victimhood, as fear of and hatred for the perpetrator’s victims.

Finally, as a result of all of the above, the collaborator will exhibit a tenth attribute: the delusion that they are ‘in control’; that is, they are no longer (and never were) the victim of violence themselves. Tragically, of course, this delusion is a trap: an individual is never safe in the role of collaborator. The perpetrator might turn on them at any time.

Collaborators and traitors learn their ‘craft’ during childhood. Most usually it will originate when a parent terrorises the child (by threatening and/or inflicting violence) into collaborating with this parent against the other parent and/or the child’s siblings. Sometimes it originates when a teacher terrorises the child into collaborating with the teacher against the child’s fellow students, perhaps to find out who was responsible for some minor ‘wrongdoing’.

Once the child has betrayed its siblings or classmates, it will usually need the ‘protection’ of the violent parent or teacher as a ‘defence’ against any retaliation by its siblings or classmates. Hence, it will become ‘locked’ into the role of collaborator/traitor out of fear of the perpetrator’s violence against it as well as fear of the violent retaliation of siblings or classmates. This, of course, suits the perpetrator.

The collaborator will perform this role throughout their life as they now unconsciously recognise and identify with those who are most violent, including state authorities that inflict ‘legitimised’ violence on those individuals perceived as ‘enemies’ or ‘criminals’.

If you wish to publicly identify yourself as someone who will not collaborate with violence, you are welcome to sign online ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

Robert has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

By Johannes Stern & Alex Lantier

04 July, 2013

@ WSWS.org

The ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi, following four days of nationwide mass protests, has placed power in the hands of a military junta which is committed to the defense of the economic interests of the country’s ruling class and to the geo-political aims of American imperialism.

The removal of the hated Mursi regime has evoked jubilation. However sincere and deeply felt this sentiment may be, the fact is that Mursi’s overthrow has placed the army, not the masses, in power. None of the essential demands that motivated the mass protests—for decent jobs, livable wages, adequate social services, and democratic rights—will be met by the military regime.

The military has intervened for one overriding purpose: to pre-empt and suppress the growing political movement of the Egyptian working class. The coalition government that it unveiled last night is in no way a genuine expression of the democratic strivings of the working class. Rather, the new ruling structure is a sinister coalition of reactionary forces, which includes long-time henchmen of Hosni Mubarak, various Islamic politicians, and several liberal politicians with close connections to the US-based International Monetary Fund. None of the individuals and organizations has either a mass social base or advances a popular social program.

After seizing control of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) television stations and reportedly arresting Mursi, the head of the military junta, General Abdul Fatah Khalil Al-Sisi, unveiled a political “road map” that includes the immediate suspension of the constitution and the formation of a so-called “national technocratic” government.

The term “technocratic” is being bandied about to evoke the image of politically neutral experts who stand above partisan class interests. In reality, the so-called “technocrats” are steeped in the reactionary nostrums of the international banks.

The anti-working class character of the government emerges clearly from examining the list of reactionaries who flanked al-Sisi as he announced his “road map” yesterday evening. These included several generals, Coptic pope Tawadros II, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayyeb, and opposition politicians including National Salvation Front (NSF) leader and former UN official Mohamed ElBaradei, Younis Makhioun of the far-right Salafist Al Nour Party, and Mahmoud Badr of the opposition Tamarod (“Rebel”) coalition.

Each one of these figures was selected to create the impression of broad support for the new regime across key political and religious divides in Egypt.

The army chose the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, as president. Mohamed ElBaradei has been named prime minister. There are vague promises of early elections.

Mansour had long ties to the old Mubarak regime. ElBaradei, who worked for years as an official of the United Nations, has close ties to the economic and foreign policy establishment of the United States. ElBaradei supports austerity measures worked out in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which favors cuts to subsidies for basic goods such as grain and fuel.

In the political maneuvers that set the stage for the military coup, a key role has been played by the Tamarod coalition. This is a thoroughly pro-capitalist political movement. Founded at the end of April as a campaign to collect signatures against Mursi, it quickly became a rallying point for a range of opposition parties—liberal, Islamist and pseudo-left alike—and remnants of the former Mubarak regime who oppose the MB. Its supporters include El Baradei’s NSF, the Islamist Strong Egypt Party of former MB member Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, the April 6 Youth Movement, and the pseudo-left Revolutionary Socialists (RS). The movement also accepted an endorsement from General Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister under Mubarak.

Although the United States had been backing Mursi, the Obama administration entered into talks with the Egyptian military once it became clear that the regime could not be saved. The Egyptian army launched the coup after intensive discussions with General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In a statement yesterday evening, US President Barack Obama backed the removal of Mursi, while taking care to avoid the word “coup.” Using vague language that imposed no restraints on the military, Obama sanctimoniously requested that the army “move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible, through an inclusive and transparent process.”

Once again, the Revolutionary Socialists—the most prominent of the pseudo-left groups in Egypt—has adapted its rhetoric to the political maneuvers of the bourgeoisie. In February 2011, the RS backed the military junta that came to power after Mubarak’s ouster. In 2012, as the military faced mounting popular opposition, they hailed Mursi’s election as a victory for the revolution. Now that the working class has moved into struggle against Mursi and the MB, they have aligned themselves with a coup to bring back the army and elements of the old Mubarak regime into power.

The only consistent element of the RS’s reactionary politics has been their opposition to the emergence of an independent political movement of the working class. They speak for sections of the upper middle class, closely connected to the Egyptian bourgeois establishment and its imperialist backers.

By Danny Schechter

03 July 13

@ Consortium News

When Nelson Mandela was a dedicated freedom-fighter against white-ruled South Africa, he was almost as much a “non-person” in the U.S. media as he was in South Africa’s press. Only after Mandela pulled back from demands about redistributing wealth was he embraced as a mass media icon, Danny Schechter reports.

There’s anger amidst the apprehension in South Africa as the numbers of “journalists” on the Mandela deathwatch grows. Members of his family have about had it, comparing what even the New York Times called a “media swarm” to African vultures that wait to pounce on the carcasses of dead animals.

President Barack Obama was soon in South Africa, carrying a message that he hyped as one of “profound gratitude” to Nelson Mandela. The Times reported, “Mr. Obama said the main message he intended to deliver to Mr. Mandela, ‘if not directly to him but to his family, is simply our profound gratitude for his leadership all these years and that the thoughts and prayers of the American people are with him, and his family, and his country.'”

It doesn’t seem as if the South Africa’s grieving for their former president’s imminent demise are too impressed with Obama seeking the spotlight. Some groups including top unions protested his receiving an honorary degree from a university in Johannesburg.

Interestingly, NBC with its team buttressed by former South African correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault did not bother to cover the protest but relied on Reuters reporting “nearly 1,000 trade unionists, Muslim activists, South African Communist Party members and others marched to the U.S. Embassy where they burned a U.S. flag, calling Obama’s foreign policy ‘arrogant and oppressive.'”

“We had expectations of America’s first black president. Knowing Africa’s history, we expected more,” Khomotso Makola, a 19-year-old law student, told Reuters. He said Obama was a “disappointment, I think Mandela too would be disappointed and feel let down.”

Reuters reported, “South African critics of Obama have focused in particular on his support for U.S. drone strikes overseas, which they say have killed hundreds of innocent civilians, and his failure to deliver on a pledge to close the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba housing terrorism suspects.”

(Oddly, The South African police detained a local cameraman who used his own drone to photograph the hospital from above. He was stopped for “security” reasons.)

For symbolic reasons, as well as because of his global popularity, Nelson Mandela seems to be of special interest to the American media with the networks, nominally in an austerity mode, busting their budgets to have a dominant presence.

South African skeptic Rian Malan writes in the Spectator, “Every time Mandela goes into hospital, large numbers of Americans (up to 50) are flown here to take up their positions, and the South African network is similarly activated. Colin, (a cameraman who works for a U.S. network) for instance, travels to Johannesburg, hires a car and checks into a hotel, all on the network’s ticket. Since last December, he’s probably spent close to 30 days (at $2000 a day, expenses included) cooling his heels at various poolsides. And he has yet to shoot a single frame.

“As Colin says, this could be the worst disaster in American media history, inter alia because all these delays are destroying the story. When the old man finally dies, a lot of punters are going to yawn and say, Mandela died? Didn’t that already happen a year ago?”

Hostility to the media is satirized in an open letter by Richard Poplak from the foreign media to South Africa that appears in The Daily Maverick:

“As you may have noted, we’re back! It’s been four long months since the Oscar Pistorius bail hearing thing, and just as we were forgetting just how crappy the Internet connections are in Johannestoria, the Mandela story breaks.

“We feel that it is vital locals understand just how big a deal this is for us. In the real world – far away from your sleepy backwater – news works on a 24-hour cycle. That single shot of a hospital with people occasionally going into and out of the front door, while a reporter describes exactly what is happening-at length and in detail? That’s our bread and butter. It’s what we do. And you need to get out of the way while we do it.”

Why all the fanatical interest? The U.S. media loves larger-than-life personalities, often creating them when they don’t exist. Mandela has assumed the heroic mantle for them of Martin Luther King Jr. whose memory enjoys iconic status even as his achievements like Voting Rights Act was just picked apart by right-wing judicial buzzards in black robes. (King’s image was also sanitized with his international outlook often muzzled).

The current homage to Mandela wasn’t always like this. For many years, the U.S. media treated Mandela as a communist and terrorist, respecting South African censorship laws that kept his image secret. Reports about the CIA’s role in capturing him were few and far between. Ditto for evidence of U.S. spying documented in cables released by Wikileaks.

In the Reagan years, Mandela’s law partner Oliver Tambo, then the leader of the ANC while Mandela was in prison, was barred from coming to the U.S. and then, when he did, meeting with top officials. Later, Rep. Dick Cheney, R-Wyoming, refused to support a congressional call for Mandela’s release from jail.

In 1988, I, among other TV producers, launched the TV series “South Africa Now” to cover the unrest the networks were largely ignoring as stories shot by U.S. crews ended up on “the shelf,” not on the air.

A 1988 concert to free Mandela was shown by the Fox Network as a “freedom fest” with artists told not to mention Mandela’s name less they “politicize” all the fun. When he was released in 2000, a jammed all-star celebration at London’s Wembley Stadium was shown everywhere in the world, except by the American networks.

Once Mandela adopted reconciliation as his principal political tenet and dropped demands for nationalization anchored in the ANC’s “Freedom Charter,” his image in the U.S. was quickly rehabilitated. He was elevated into a symbolic hero for all praised by the people and the global elite alike. Little mention was made of his role as the creator of an Armed Struggle, and its Commander in Chief,

U.S. networks also did not cover the role played by the U.S.-dominated IMF and World Bank in steering the economy in a market-oriented neo-liberal direction, assuring the new government could not erase deep inequality and massive poverty and that the whites would retain privileges.

The American press shaped how Mandela was portrayed in the U.S. The lawyer and anti-nuclear campaigner, Alice Slater, tells a story of her efforts to win Mandela’s support for nuclear disarmament.

When “Nelson Mandela announced that he would be retiring from the presidency of South Africa, we organized a world-wide letter writing campaign, urging him to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons at his farewell address to the United Nations. The gambit worked.

“At the UN, Nelson Mandela called for the elimination of nuclear weapons, saying, ‘these terrible and terrifying weapons of mass destruction – why do they need them anyway?’ The London Guardian had a picture of Mandela on its front page, with the headline, ‘Nelson Mandela Calls for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.’

“The New York Times had a story buried on page 46, announcing Mandela’s retirement from the Presidency of South Africa and speculating on who might succeed him, reporting that he gave his last speech as President to the UN, while omitting to mention the content of his speech.”

And so it goes, with his death seeming to be imminent, he has been reduced to a symbolic mythic figure, a moral voice, not the politician he always was. He became an adorable grandfather praised for his charities with his political ideas and values often lost in the ether of his celebrity. He has insisted that he not be treated as a saint or a savior. Tell that to the media.

As ANC veteran Pallo Jordan told me, “To call him a celebrity is to treat him like Madonna. And that’s not what he is. At the same time, he deserves to be celebrated as the freedom fighter he was.”

Watch the coverage and see if that message is coming through, with all of its implications for the struggle in South Africa that still lies ahead.

By Yasmine Fathi

03 July, 2013

@ Ahram Online

Despite decades of planning for Egypt ‘s eventual transition into an Islamic state, only two years of post-revolution politics appear to have put paid to the Muslim Brotherhood’s longed-for Islamist renaissance

As Egypt ‘s first freely chosen president took the stage last summer, the thousands arrayed in Cairo ‘s Tahrir Square roared their approval. After a knife’s-edge vote, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi had clinched the country’s most powerful civilian position – the secretive Islamist organization’s goal for over eight decades. Now, surely, an Islamic state was within its grasp.

But one year on, Morsi’s unofficial inauguration in downtown Cairo seems more like the pinnacle of the Islamists’ power then the emergence of a Sharia-compliant Egypt .

In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood’s dream of establishing an Islamic state in Egypt is nowhere close to becoming a reality. Some experts believe that, not only has Morsi’s first year in power tarnished the image of the 85-year-old group, but that of all Islamists.

Following Mubarak’s downfall in February 2011, the Islamists – and specifically the Brotherhood – were expected to effortlessly climb to power. They were the largest opposition present at the time and had the sympathy of many average Egyptians. Their selling point was Islamic Law and the establishment of an Islamic state that would take Egypt back to the glory days of Islam.

The Brotherhood quickly established its political leg, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).

Meanwhile, members of Egypt ‘s Salafist Call – the country’s largest Salafist movement – established the Nour Party. During the Mubarak era, Salafists had refused to participate in opposition politics on grounds that it was sinful to oppose a Muslim ruler.

Parliamentary, constitutional travails

The two competed in the first post-Mubarak parliamentary and Shura Council elections, winning majorities in both. Despite their lackluster performance in parliament – in which they were accused of ignoring pressing matters, such as Egypt’s failing economy, while focusing on trivial issues – they remained popular with many Egyptians.

“Their performance in parliament had a negative impact,” explained political analyst and former MP Emad Gad. “But when Morsi came to power, most people still had a positive view of the Islamic project. But during his first year in office he managed to destroy this image in the eyes of most Egyptians.”

He points out that Morsi has made many promises that he never kept and that his regime has tried to ‘Brotherhoodise’ the nation by taking over many of the country’s top institutions, including the Ministry of Interior and the judiciary.

However, Gad adds that the turning point came when he passed a constitution that was rejected by most political forces in Egypt .

The constituent assembly tasked with drafting Egypt ‘s new constitution saw numerous squabbles, along with accusations that Islamist assembly members were forcing their opinions on the non-Islamist minority. This led most non-Islamist members to withdraw from the constitution-drafting body, leaving only the Islamists to conduct a final vote in a 14-hour marathon session.

“After this, he confirmed to the public that the Islamic current is undemocratic and does not like dialogue,” said Gad.

Morsi’s refusal to fulfill his promises, including the creation of a coalition government that would include Egypt ‘s diverse political forces, also hurt his popularity, say critics.

“His lack of commitment to democracy made people not trust him,” explained Khalil El-Anani, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington . “Secondly, it showed that the Islamists are fascists, and don’t have a democratic ideology.”

Additionally, many Egyptians began to realize that what is said and what is done are two different things.

“He talked about the Islamic project, but did not apply Islamic Law, which is one of the main sellers of the Islamic project,” said El-Anani.

El-Anani pointed out that Morsi agreed to take a loan from the IMF at interest, which is forbidden by Islamic Law.

However, Ahmed Sobie, a leading member of the FJP shoots down these accusations.

“The Islamic current has actually proven to be much more democratic and more serious about pushing Egypt into a democratic path then the other currents,” he said.

He pointed out that it is the Islamist current that has fought to keep the parliament and Shura Council in place. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) that was ruling Egypt after the ousting of Mubarak had dissolved the parliament in June after a ruling by the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) found fault with laws governing the assembly’s elections.

One of Morsi’s first actions after becoming president is to reinstate the parliament. When the SCC suspended his decision a few days later, the Islamists began a yearlong fight to keep the Shura Council, which was threatened with a similar fate.

“We did this to protect Egypt . We had to make sure that all its important institutions were working,” Sobie added.

He also said that it was the Islamists who fought to draft a new constitution for Egypt . He also denied that the Islamists controlled the constituent assembly.

“Let’s not forget that it was the Islamist ultra conservative Building and Development Party that decided to give up their seats in the constituent assembly for the liberals and leftists,” Sobie said. “They did this in order to give them a voice,” stressed Sobie.

He also pointed out that it was Morsi who turned Egypt from a military state to a civil state.

“I doubt either the liberal or Nasserists would have been able to do this amidst all the criticism we received,” explained Sobie.

Alienating the Islamists

However, it is not just the liberal and leftists forces that are at loggerheads with Morsi. The Islamists themselves have also felt let down by him.

“I believe that Morsi’s first year in power, had a negative impact on the Islamic project,” said Nader Bakar, spokesperson of the Salafist Nour Party.

He accused Morsi and the Brotherhood of marginalizing and alienating anyone who is not a member of the group. Then he points out that shed a bad light on the Islamic project.

“The Islamic project does not say that you discriminate between the citizens of one country; it does not say promote authoritarian rule, it does not tell us to ignore those who have opposing views,” explained Bakar. “The stubbornness of the Brotherhood and the unprofessional manner in which they dealt with all the problems of the country has had a negative impact on the way average Egyptians view the Islamists.”

The Islamists also had other gripes with Morsi including his decision to license liquor stores and his lack of support to officers wanting to sport Islamist-style beards. He also opted to smooth relations with Iran thus paving the way for Shia tourists – often seen as a threat by Sunni Muslims – to enter Egypt .

“He also allowed security forces to pursue jihadists, which turned even more Islamists against him,” said El-Anani.

He adds that several other factors have led to the Brotherhood’s failure to lead the country, one of which is the lack of experience in running a populous, diverse and complex state like Egypt .

Mubarak’s iron-fisted rule and repression of the Islamists also resulted in their being excluded from working in government bodies and gaining needed experience.

“Another is the secretive character of the Brotherhood,” said El-Anani. “They know how to work under pressure, but not openly.”

Nor did Egypt ‘s January 25 Revolution provide the group sufficient time to go from repressed opposition to ruling power.

El-Anani cited the example of Turkey , where the Islamists were gradually drawn into politics allowing them to develop their ideas and moderate their political discourse and approach.

In Egypt , by contrast, the Brotherhood was faced with what El-Anani calls “sudden inclusion.”

“They couldn’t strike the balance between being an opposition movement and a responsible political force or ruling party. So they now hover between both,” he explained. “They still think of themselves as an opposition movement, staging protests, strikes and sit-ins; the mindset has not changed.”

On a more practical level, Morsi’s government has failed to provide Egyptians with much needed services. During the past year, there have been frequent power cuts, along with shortages of diesel fuel, gasoline and bread, among other vital commodities.

“These shortfalls are what bother people the most,” says political analyst Amr Hashem Rabie. “In terms of other issues – concerning politics, judicial independence, human rights and civil rights – Mubarak repressed the Egyptians in all this, too. But he, at least, offered these services to the people, so they were patient with his rule to a certain extent.”

Islamist disunity

What’s more, the Islamists’ united front after Mubarak’s downfall did not last long. Within months, cracks appeared, as electoral rivalries heated up.

Hostilities climaxed when the Salafist Nour Party split in early 2013, after party president Emad Abdel-Ghafour defected and announced the formation of a new party, the Watan Party. There were reports that the Brotherhood had played a role in the falling out.

“The Brotherhood encouraged the differences between the Salafists to split and weaken them,” explained El-Anani. “This is what used to happen under Mubarak; it’s the same old game played by Mubarak-era leaders to divide the opposition in order to manipulate them.”

Another issue is that inter-Islamist divisions have always been present. Their unity in the days following the revolution, says El-Anani, was only temporary.

“There has always been historical tension between them,” he explained. “They never trusted each other. This dates back to the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, when they clashed in Alexandria University .”

Tarek Osman, author of ‘ Egypt on the Brink,’ added that the revolution had brought together different Islamic forces to fight a common enemy.

“The revolution brought together these forces behind a very clear objective: defining themselves as ‘Islamists’ against the old regime and against the liberal current in Egypt ,” he said. “The more they delve into the details of the country’s legislative, political and economic transition, the more the fractures appear.”

Many Egyptians are now discontented with the Brotherhood’s performance. The group’s seeming confusion has prompted a popular joke: “The Brotherhood fought to control Egypt for 80 years but had no plan what to do when it actually achieved it.”

It remains unclear how much damage this last year has done to the Islamists’ popularity.

“In this struggle about the country’s social identity, the shape of the future, the loudest voice – the key determinant – will be the 45-million Egyptians under 35 years old,” said Osman. “Their preferences, ideas and views will be the deciding factor,” he asserted. “At the end of the day, it is a fight over the hearts and minds of this generation.”

© 2010 Ahram Online