Archives: Articles

By Maung Zarni

17 July, 2013

@ maungzarni.com

Aung San was murdered on 19 July 1947, 66 years of ago tomorrow. He was killed by 27 bullet wounds from the British Army-issued machine guns in the British-assisted assassination.

When Aung San and his multi-cultural and multifaith comrades were killed by Made-in-England bullets it was not just the men’s lives they were taken away.   Aung San’s secularist, egalitarian and multiculturalist vision too was killed and buried along with their remains.

Aung San was a rare bird from a deeply tradition-bound colonial Burma who attempted to redefine who was a son (or daughter) of the soil – or Tai-yin-tha.  He was secularist, anti-feudal radical thinker and leader, who defined everyone whose umbilical chord was cut on the Burmese soil as Tai-yin-thar.  If Aung San knew that his country is now having a Nazi-turn under the “Buddhist” disguise, he would certainly be turning in his grave.

Besides, the Burmese elites of today are attempting to bring back the British commercial and military complex against which Aung San fought throughout his grown-up life.

Ironically, it is the leaders of the Army he founded under Fascist Japan’s patronage, and his own daughter who are facilitating this re-penetration of Burma by British interests as a frontier market and resource brothel – at the expense of the minorities – and the non-elite Burmese public.

According to the Nation editor and publisher the late Ed Law Yone, who met the last colonial governor Hubert Rance, in the latter home in Surrey, London was thinking of putting Galon Mr/U Saw, their local proxy and the local Mastermind behind Aung San’s murder, to form the government immediately after Aung San’s death on 19 July 1947.

The late Brigadier General Kyaw Zaw, one of the 30 members of the nucleus of the Burma Independence Army was unequivocal when he wrote in his Burmese language biography – that none other than the colonial Crime Investigation Department (CID) knew days ahead of U Saw’s plot to take out Aung San. And Aung San himself knew the plot was being hatched to take him out and told his ADC Captain Tun Hla that it would be U Saw who would take him out.

The truth of the matter is Aung San was a smart (as opposed to doctrinaire) Marxist-influenced radical nationalist whom the British Establishment saw as a serious threat to Britain’s post-independence designs over Burma.

Weeks leading up to his assassination, Aung San was so stridently anti-British economic exploitation – and accused the British authorities of attempting to de-stablizie the country on-the-verge of independence. He called the British all kinds of name, and derided Britain’s colonial mindset and worldview.

My neighbor in Oxford was the film director Rob Lamkin, formerly with the BBC, who made the documentary “Who killed Aung San?” He said the British Government removed or otherwise destroyed official dispatches from Rangoon back to FCO in London, which would have incriminated Brits in the assassination of Aung San and half of his multicultural and multiethnic cabinet.

There have 60-plus years’ attempts to sanitize the narrative of the assassination of Aung San and his closest colleagues. Even Suu Kyi’s late husband Michael Aris was involved. According to Lamkin, the day “Who killed Aung San?” was aired on the BBC Panorama (?) Mr Aris called the director and angrily registered his deep displeasure that Rob went ahead and more than insinuated the shadowy British official involvement in the killing of Aung San. He was worried that the film would put “Suu in a very difficult position with the British government (which she came to rely on as a foreign source of support).”

The official entity that was involved, according to the documentary, was the British Council, more specifically, a key staff of the Council was the main liaison with the local Mastermind U Saw. U Saw kept asking prison officials when he would be able to see his main contact.

A few months prior to the assassination, the news broke that about 200 Made-in-England automatic sub-machine guns disappeared or stolen from the British Army arms depot. Surely, the assassins killed Aung San and his deputies, including 2 Muslim colleagues, with the very machine guns. The officer in charge of the depot slipped out of the country in no time, and with no troubles, assisted by the last colonial government.

U Nu was eventually handpicked by the British to lead the new cabinet, and Nu did everything in his power to quell the popular public opinion by burying the truth behind Aung San’s assassination: the British aiding and abetting the local Mastermind whom they later hang when the events turned out against their original idea of making Saw Aung San’s successor. On his part, Nu, now the head of the almost nearly independent government, went ahead, giving Britain major economic concessions and accepting British military advisers to train the Burmese Army.

The communists bitterly opposed Nu’s terms of independence – the Burmese paying full compensation to all the British commercial firms including natural resource extractive industry such as Burmah Oil Corporation (BOC), mining companies, etc.

When the communists rejected the independence of Burma as a sham and went underground within 90-days of independence – in March 1947 – India was the first to help Nu fight the Communist revolt. In due course, the British came to Nu’s aid, training Burmese strategists in ruthless counter-insurgency methods – most specifically the infamous “Four Cuts” strategy and selling all military hardware that Ne Win and his army needed to fight the Communists.

Now history is repeating itself.

Funeral Process of Aung San and his comrades, Fall 1947

The British banks sucked Burma dry leading up to the Japanese-Burma Independence Army ‘invasion’ in Dec 1942 while externalizing their blood-sucking responsibility to the South Indians known as Chettyers who came to be scapegoated for all the ills of the colonial Burma.

Now the vampires are heading back to their old lucrative hole to suck more!

This time our ruling and opposition elites are facilitating this blood-sucking process, themselves morphing into third class mini-vampires!

Orwell calls the ‘white man’s civilizing mission’ in colonial Burma ‘humbug’ and the Raj nothing more than ‘a system of theft’.

Now Orwell’s thieves and looters are heading back to Burma in a second Gold Rush. Indeed the second coming of the Raj, this time Raj Lite.

Oxbridge-trained financiers from the City, Sandhurst and Royal Academies-trained advisers and ex-British service men in Britain’s arms industry, that sold GBP 12 billion worth of arms to repressive regimes around the world last year are all about to rush in to penetrate the frontier market. Back in 1880’s the Kingdom of Burmah was ‘one of the world’s unexplored markets’. A century and half on, today’s Myanmar is one of the very few remaining ‘frontier markets’. So, Britain won’t miss the rush.

Aside the country being about to be re-exploited by the British interests, what the society and a people have long already lost, thanks to the British colonial designs, is this:

When Aung San and his multi-cultural and multifaith comrades were killed by Made-in-England bullets it was not just the men’s lives they were taken away.

It was their original secularist-multiculturalist vision for a post-independence Burma that was murdered and buried along side these martyrs who included a Shan, a Karen, a Myanmar Muslim, a devout Bama Buddhist, a liberal socialist, and a radical secularist Aung San.

For those pro-Aung San Burmese campaigners trying to revive the annual call to pay homage to the fallen co-founders of a post-independence Burma through the state broadcast sirens at 10:37 am tomorrow they should go beyond the siren calls for a few minutes and observing a moment of silence.

They – and the whole nation on the brink of Nazification – urgently ought to embrace, and actively put in practice, the Martyrs’ ‘Big Tent” vision of a secularist multiculturalist Burma – for all, irrespective of race, faith, and ideologies.

Only then will the fallen Martyrs will be able to say,

Sadu/Thadu! Sadu/Thadu! Sadu/Thadu! (A good deed has been done!)

Well-done! Well-done! Well-done!

By Nile Bowie

16 July, 2013

As figures in Egypt’s powerful military collude with the political opposition to form a civilian interim government, what kind of political and economic solutions will the new regime offer, and is Washington’s hidden hand at play?

Political polarization has reached new heights in Egypt following the dramatic overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected leader. After sweeping away two presidents since 2011, the original goals of the revolution, embodied in the popular slogan “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice and Human Dignity,” haven’t come close to materializing. For all intents and purposes, life for the average Egyptian is more difficult now than under Hosni Mubarak, and although Morsi’s shortcomings may not have justified a military coup, his tenure was a spectacular failure. Although many perceive Morsi and Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) as being hijackers of the 2011 revolution, the bottom line is that the revolutionary fervor emanating from Tahrir Square is not directed against one party or political figure, but against economic conditions and neoliberal tendencies that have largely remained unchanged throughout the ebb and flow of Egyptian politics in recent times.

Morsi’s year in office saw the doubling of food prices and the weakening of the Egyptian pound while his administration negotiated a $4.8 billion loan with the IMF that would have imposed crippling conditionalities on the people, including the slashing of subsides that the poorest rely on. While some 40 percent of Egyptians live in poverty, Morsi’s narrow pursuit of more liberalization, deregulation and privatization appeared to many as a continuation of Mubarak-style economics. To be sure, the Islamist flavor of Morsi’s tenure upset many secular Egyptians, as well as those in the Coptic Christian community, but the crux of the issue remains Morsi’s mishandling of the economy, in addition to his failure to reach out beyond the Muslim Brotherhood’s political base. Morsi’s approach to foreign policy was the greatest indication the he was in fact bound by a Western leash, and the coup in Cairo has left a mark on the grand chessboard.

Saudi Arabia & Qatar play geopolitical ping-pong

It’s generally accepted that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were bought and paid for by Doha, which channeled some $17 billion into Brotherhood-led regimes throughout the post-Arab Spring landscape – as such, Morsi’s foreign policy moved in step with Qatar. Shortly before being deposed, Morsi closed down the Syrian embassy in Cairo and pledged allegiance to the jihadist insurgency working to topple Bashar al-Assad. Furthermore, security coordination with Israel became more intimate under Morsi than under Mubarak, while he allowed the destruction of the majority of underground tunnels between Gaza and Sinai that Palestinians had used to smuggle in food and goods. Those pudgy sheiks in Doha were so upset over losing their man in Cairo (and their investments) that the Emir likely gave orders from the top to the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera news network requesting that the pro-Brotherhood line be toed, resulting in the resignation of 22 staff members over what they allege was “biased coverage” of the events that unfolded.

When the Qataris dropped the ball, the House of Saud was there to pick it up. King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarch, was one of the first regional leaders to recognize Egypt’s interim government right after the coup – primarily because SCAF Chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is his man. Al-Sisi held his post for less than a year before bringing down Morsi and previously served as Egypt’s military attache in Saudi Arabia – he also studied in Washington and previously cooperated with Washington over war games and intelligence operations. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have since stepped up to provide emergency financing for the bankrupt Egyptian state, to the tune of $8 billion. Relations between Doha and Riyadh sway back and fourth between being cordial at times, to outright bitterness. Another subplot recently saw the Saudi-US-backed Ahmad Jarba take over the Syrian National Council, marking the notable ascendancy of Saudi influence within the Syrian opposition, a major setback for Qatar.

Are Washington’s fingerprints on the Egyptian coup?

Some may ponder, why would Washington involve itself in the removal of Morsi when he was such a perfect stooge? The fact is that the Americans knew that critical mass was building against the Muslim Brotherhood (some 22 million people signed a petition calling for Morsi’s resignation), which prompted them to give SCAF a reluctant green light to stage a coup, seeing it as the surest bet that Washington would continue to exert control over Egypt and the geopolitically crucial Suez Canal. The US knew which way the wind was blowing, and stepped up financing of anti-Morsi organizations and figures through the National Endowment for Democracy and other quasi-governmental organizations financed through the State Department and USAID. The fact that Washington fell short of referring to the military coup as what it rightfully was lends credence to US complicity; moreover, Washington has not changed its plans to deliver four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt in the coming weeks, which speaks volumes of the Obama administration’s position on the matter. SCAF receives some $1.3 billion in annual US assistance, and no matter how one reads the political tea leafs, Washington’s interests in Egypt are too great, and it has no choice but to diplomatically, financially and militarily back the product of the July 3 coup.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Obama isn’t exactly losing sleep over the changes in Egypt, probably because the new interim government is lined with Western-educated “liberals”that will continue the same political and economic policies as Morsi, and Mubarak before him. Interim President Adly Mansour, former chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, had a hand in dismantling the “political isolation” law that prohibited members of the old [Mubarak] regime from contesting elections, and is widely seen as the civilian face acting on SCAF’s behalf. Mansour appointed Hazem el-Beblawi as Prime Minister, a former finance minister and Paris-trained economist who has worked with international financial institutions and taught at the American University in Cairo; a recent editorial in the New York Times has called on him to slash Egypt’s energy subsides, a move he whole-heartedly supports. Ahmed Galal, a Boston University-trained economist and Word Bank veteran has been named Finance Minister; Nabil Fahmy, former Egyptian ambassador to the United States, is the Foreign Minister who also served as the head of opposition National Salvation Front, whose members have received funding from the State Department-linked National Endowment for Democracy.

The icing on the cake is the appointment of opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei as interim Vice President, who is a trustee of the US International Crisis Group and a former senior UN diplomat, who has been a staunch advocate of IMF medicine for Egypt. Some of the loudest voices calling for Egypt’s democratization during Mubarak are now key figures in the interim government. Members of the opposition with no public mandate to speak of are now in power after jailing the democratically elected president, a move that reflects their commitment to democracy as a principle, or lack thereof. If mass protests against Morsi amounted to a majority at the ballot box, the opposition could have constitutionally and legally removed him from power through a scheduled parliamentary vote – what the Egyptian people got was an opportunistic collusion between SCAF and members of the opposition to usurp power. Morsi supporters will not soon concede to a sullen acceptance of the coup, but any armed insurrection on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood won’t go down well, seeing as SCAF has them severely out-gunned.

Recent polls taken before the June 30 protests showed that SCAF’s approval rating had reached 94 percent while the Muslim Brotherhood’s rating was at 28 percent and the opposition’s at 38 percent. It’s strange that Egypt’s anti-Morsi activists would place their trust in SCAF given its extensive crackdown on civilian protestors since the revolution began, and certainly no one can deny that the Muslim Brotherhood was isolated during its final days. It is highly unlikely that Morsi would ever be reinstated at this point, and the interim government can be expected to pursue austerity measures, economic restructuring, and a foreign policy in step with Western-Gulf states. The military’s strong grip over the economy (estimates suggest that military-connected enterprises account for 10 percent to 40 percent of the Egyptian economy) and its monopoly on force make it a political construct that won’t be blown down by revolutionary winds so easily, and as long as it enjoys backing from the United States, expect SCAF to remain firmly entrenched. It should be of no surprise if the many who made their voices heard in Tahrir Square take to the streets yet again in the coming months with one thing on their mind – third time’s the charm.

By Edward Snowden

13 July, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

NSA Whistleblower asks for support from international community and human rights campaigners

Edward Snowden along with Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks (left) at a meeting with human rights campaigners in Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow today where he released the following statement. (Photograph: Tanya Lokshina/Human Rights Watch)

Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any time. That is the power to change people’s fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement – the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president’s plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela’s President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.

This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.

If you have any questions, I will answer what I can.

Thank you.

Whistleblower Edward Joseph Snowden is a US former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who leaked details of top-secret US and British government mass surveillance programs to the press.

By Bryan Dyne

13 July, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Newly released documents reveal the depth of collaboration between Microsoft and the National Security Agency in collecting data from the company’s users, including communications and documents sent or accessed over Outlook.com, SkyDrive and Skype. They also show that Microsoft worked with the NSA to break the company’s own encryption, ensuring the fullest possible access for the agency.

The latest files, provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in the Guardian, come from the the Special Source Operations (SSO) division. The SSO overseas all programs that target US telecommunications via corporate partnerships, of which Prism, exposed by Snowden last month, is just one.

What has been released so far reveals how Microsoft in particular worked with the US intelligence apparatus to provide full access to all documents and messages of the company’s users. The NSA referred to the program as a “team sport.”

Microsoft—which boasts the slogan is “your privacy is our priority”—was reportedly involved in the Prism program to provide NSA data since 2007, the year the program began. While Microsoft claims that it only submits to “legal processes” initiated by the government, it does not specify what those are. Such a vague statement could mean anything, especially since it is now known that the NSA operates under a set of laws secretly overseen and interpreted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

According to the documents, a major project between Microsoft and the NSA involved handing over the data passing through Outlook.com, Microsoft’s primary email client, which includes Hotmail. Last July, the NSA became concerned that it would be unable to intercept the encrypted messages being passed through Outlook’s chat service. In response, Microsoft worked with the agency to break its own encryption.

A document from 26 December 2012 states: “MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal” with the need to bypass Outlook’s encryption. “These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012.” This was a full two months before Outlook.com went live to the public.

At the time, the NSA already had full, unencrypted access to all emails sent via Outlook.com. “For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption,” the documents state. The only difficulty was collecting email aliases, which can make tracking specific people slightly more difficult. However, as one entry states, “The FBI Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) team is working with Microsoft to understand” this feature and overcome it.

Microsoft’s collusion with the NSA also extends to the SkyDrive cloud storage service introduced last year, which now houses documents of 250 million users and is fully integrated into Windows 8 and the latest Office suite. The company worked “for many months” with the FBI to allow Prism full access to the service without any separate or special authorization.

This means, according to a document dated April 8, 2013, “that analysts will no longer have to make a special request to SSO for this—a process step that many analysts may not have known about”.

In other words, every analyst at the NSA has full and easy access to everything that is on SkyDrive. This includes essentially every file that is generated in Microsoft Word, Excel, and other office programs on a Windows 8 machine, which automatically “backs up” everything to the SkyDrive.

In the words of the NSA, “this new capability will result in a much more complete and timely collection response” of the data of Microsoft users. The agency then applauded Microsoft: “This success is the result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established.”

The NSA has also worked intensively with Skype, both before and after it was bought by Microsoft, to gain access to the text, audio and video communications of Skype’s estimated 800 million users. Despite its denials, Skype does appear to have the ability to collect all the information and data from all calls and hand them over to the US government. This throws into question denials of other companies, such as Facebook, Google and others, on the same question.

According to the files, the NSA began working on integrating Skype into Prism in November 2010 but didn’t succeed until February 4, 2011. Two days later, it began full audio communications interception. “Feedback indicated that a collected Skype call was very clear and the metadata looked complete,” reads the initial reports on collected Skype calls.

Now, even video communications are collected. “The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete ‘picture’”, bragged one NSA file from July 14, 2012, when the NSA tripled its ability to collect Skype video communications.

These revelations underscore the extent to which the government has relied on, and received the active assistance of, giant companies that control much of the Internet and telecommunications systems. Through relations with these corporations—including Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, AOL, Verizon, AT&T, and others—the government has been able to tap into the Internet backbone, collect online communications, and gather the phone records of hundreds of millions of people.

These companies are all part of a state, intelligence and corporate nexus that has been engaged in the systematic and illegal violation of the democratic rights of the population of the United States and the world.

By Bill Van Auken

12 July, 2013

@ WSWS.org

The Obama administration has announced it will go ahead with the shipment of four F-16 fighter planes to the Egyptian military, signaling its intention to ignore US laws requiring a cutoff of aid to countries that have suffered military coups.

This gesture of support to the so-called interim government, which is dominated by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and its top commander, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, comes as the ruling junta is intensifying its police-state crackdown against supporters of ousted Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi.

The ruling junta has cynically justified its orders to arrest leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood by claiming that they bear responsibility for the army’s July 8 massacre of at least 55 demonstrators who had marched on Cairo’s Republican Guard compound, where Mursi was believed to be held prisoner. The military and the Egyptian media have cast the incident, in which several hundred other unarmed demonstrators were wounded, as a “terrorist” attack on the army.

The bloodletting has raised the specter of a civil war erupting in Egypt, with mounting concerns that demonstrations called by Muslim Brotherhood supporters for Friday after the mosques let out, and a rival rally called by their opponents among the bourgeois liberal and pseudo-left forces of the Tamarod (“rebel”) coalition in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, could produce clashes in the Egyptian capital.

Egypt’s public prosecutor has ordered the arrest of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie and at least nine other senior members of the Islamist party, while hundreds of others are being hunted down for participating in Monday’s bloody protest.

The Muslim Brotherhood charged that the arrest orders could serve as a pretext for the violent breakup of a protest vigil that the group and thousands of its supporters have been staging at the Rabaa Adawiya mosque in Cairo.

Even while the security forces are hunting down Muslim Brotherhood leaders, Hazem el-Beblawi, the free-market economist who has been named prime minister as one of the civilian front men for the army’s rule, told Reuters that he was offering posts to Muslim Brotherhood leaders in a cabinet that he expects to be filled by next week. The news agency said that the MB has rejected the offer, vowing not to participate in a regime brought to power by a “fascist coup.”

The Obama administration has shown no such reticence in dealing with the coup regime. While the Pentagon issued a brief statement Wednesday saying that the US president had ordered it to “review our assistance to the government of Egypt” in light of “the events of last week,” as in similar statements issued by the White House and the State Department, it carefully avoided using the word “coup.”

A legal finding that a coup had taken place would require that the US administration cut off some $1.5 billion in annual aid to Egypt, $1.3 billion of which goes directly to the country’s military. Since 1948, Washington has poured some $40 billion in military aid into the country, ensuring the Egyptian military’s dominance of the country’s political life.

More significantly, the White House has ordered a scheduled delivery of four F-16 fighter jets to proceed as planned. It is part of an arms package consisting of 20 of the warplanes, eight of which have already been delivered.

White House spokesman Jay Carney declared Wednesday that it would not be “in the best interests of the United States to make immediate changes to our assistance programs.”

Multiple press reports have pointed to a direct US role in the coup that toppled Mursi. In a July 6 report, the New York Times detailed discussions involving US national security adviser Susan Rice and other US officials in the period proceeding Mursi’s overthrow.

According to the report, an Arab foreign minister “acting as an emissary of Washington” delivered a final ultimatum to Mursi ordering either that he accept being turned into a figurehead president with a government appointed by the military, or that the military would overthrow him.

Mursi’s foreign policy adviser, Essam el-Haddad, then held discussions with the US ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, and with national security adviser Rice and was told, after Mursi rejected the offer, that the coup would begin.

“Mother just told us that we will stop playing in one hour,” a Mursi aide texted an associate, the Times reported. Because of its unceasing meddling in the country’s affairs, Washington is referred to by Egyptians as “Mother America.”

In a separate report Thursday, Al Jazeera cited documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Investigative Reporting Program at University of California Berkeley establishing that the Obama administration had “quietly funded senior Egyptian opposition figures who called for toppling of the country’s now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi.”

The funding, provided under the guise of “democracy assistance,” came through various US agencies, such as the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) and the US Agency for International Development (AID).

Al Jazeera reported that these entities, which carry out functions previously filled covertly by the Central Intelligence Agency, “sent funds to certain organisations in Egypt, mostly run by senior members of anti-Morsi political parties who double as NGO activists.”

This description applies to a number of pseudo-left organizations, including the Revolutionary Socialists, which backed the coup, after having previously claimed that the electoral victory of the Muslim Brotherhood represented a victory for the Egyptian revolution. The role of these groups has been to assist the Egyptian bourgeoisie by working to divert the mass struggles that erupted against Mursi’s right-wing policies into political support for the military coup.

In addition to the US funding, the Tamarod was backed by major political and financial interests linked to the old US-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled by the mass revoluionary struggles of 2011.

“Working behind the scenes, members of the old establishment, some of them close to Mr. Mubarak and the country’s top generals, also helped finance, advise and organize those determined to topple the Islamist leadership, including Naguib Sawiris, a billionaire and an outspoken foe of the Brotherhood,” the New York Times reported.

Sawiris told the Times that he “donated use of the nationwide offices and infrastructure of the political party he built, the Free Egyptians. He provided publicity through his popular television network and his major interest in Egypt’s largest private newspaper. He even commissioned the production of a popular music video that played heavily on his network.

“Tamarod did not even know it was me!” he said. “I am not ashamed of it.”

In a further indication of the character of the anti-Mursi coup, the right-wing oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf have rushed to provide economic assistance to the military junta. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have between them pledged $12 billion in aid, clearly viewing military rule as more compatible with their own dictatorial regimes than the Muslim Brotherhood government.

By Dr. Kevin Barrett

12 July, 2013

@ PressTV.com

Recent studies by psychologists and social scientists in the US and UK suggest that contrary to mainstream media stereotypes, those labeled “conspiracy theorists” appear to be saner than those who accept the official versions of contested events.

The most recent study was published on July 8th by psychologists Michael J. Wood and Karen M. Douglas of the University of Kent (UK). Entitled “What about Building 7? A social psychological study of online discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories,” the study compared “conspiracist” (pro-conspiracy theory) and “conventionalist” (anti-conspiracy) comments at news websites.

The authors were surprised to discover that it is now more conventional to leave so-called conspiracist comments than conventionalist ones: “Of the 2174 comments collected, 1459 were coded as conspiracist and 715 as conventionalist.” In other words, among people who comment on news articles, those who disbelieve government accounts of such events as 9/11 and the JFK assassination outnumber believers by more than two to one. That means it is the pro-conspiracy commenters who are expressing what is now the conventional wisdom, while the anti-conspiracy commenters are becoming a small, beleaguered minority.

Perhaps because their supposedly mainstream views no longer represent the majority, the anti-conspiracy commenters often displayed anger and hostility: “The research… showed that people who favoured the official account of 9/11 were generally more hostile when trying to persuade their rivals.”

Additionally, it turned out that the anti-conspiracy people were not only hostile, but fanatically attached to their own conspiracy theories as well. According to them, their own theory of 9/11 – a conspiracy theory holding that 19 Arabs, none of whom could fly planes with any proficiency, pulled off the crime of the century under the direction of a guy on dialysis in a cave in Afghanistan – was indisputably true. The so-called conspiracists, on the other hand, did not pretend to have a theory that completely explained the events of 9/11: “For people who think 9/11 was a government conspiracy, the focus is not on promoting a specific rival theory, but in trying to debunk the official account.”

In short, the new study by Wood and Douglas suggests that the negative stereotype of the conspiracy theorist – a hostile fanatic wedded to the truth of his own fringe theory – accurately describes the people who defend the official account of 9/11, not those who dispute it.

Additionally, the study found that so-called conspiracists discuss historical context (such as viewing the JFK assassination as a precedent for 9/11) more than anti-conspiracists. It also found that the so-called conspiracists to not like to be called “conspiracists” or “conspiracy theorists.”

Both of these findings are amplified in the new book Conspiracy Theory in America by political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith, published earlier this year by the University of Texas Press. Professor deHaven-Smith explains why people don’t like being called “conspiracy theorists”: The term was invented and put into wide circulation by the CIA to smear and defame people questioning the JFK assassination! “The CIA’s campaign to popularize the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and make conspiracy belief a target of ridicule and hostility must be credited, unfortunately, with being one of the most successful propaganda initiatives of all time.”

In other words, people who use the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” as an insult are doing so as the result of a well-documented, undisputed, historically-real conspiracy by the CIA to cover up the JFK assassination. That campaign, by the way, was completely illegal, and the CIA officers involved were criminals; the CIA is barred from all domestic activities, yet routinely breaks the law to conduct domestic operations ranging from propaganda to assassinations.

DeHaven-Smith also explains why those who doubt official explanations of high crimes are eager to discuss historical context. He points out that a very large number of conspiracy claims have turned out to be true, and that there appear to be strong relationships between many as-yet-unsolved “state crimes against democracy.” An obvious example is the link between the JFK and RFK assassinations, which both paved the way for presidencies that continued the Vietnam War. According to DeHaven-Smith, we should always discuss the “Kennedy assassinations” in the plural, because the two killings appear to have been aspects of the same larger crime.

Psychologist Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph agrees that the CIA-designed “conspiracy theory” label impedes cognitive function. She points out, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (2010), that anti-conspiracy people are unable to think clearly about such apparent state crimes against democracy as 9/11 due to their inability to process information that conflicts with pre-existing belief.

In the same issue of ABS, University of Buffalo professor Steven Hoffman adds that anti-conspiracy people are typically prey to strong “confirmation bias” – that is, they seek out information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs, while using irrational mechanisms (such as the “conspiracy theory” label) to avoid conflicting information.

The extreme irrationality of those who attack “conspiracy theories” has been ably exposed by Communications professors Ginna Husting and Martin Orr of Boise State University. In a 2007 peer-reviewed article entitled “Dangerous Machinery: ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ as a Transpersonal Strategy of Exclusion,” they wrote:

“If I call you a conspiracy theorist, it matters little whether you have actually claimed that a conspiracy exists or whether you have simply raised an issue that I would rather avoid… By labeling you, I strategically exclude you from the sphere where public speech, debate, and conflict occur.”

But now, thanks to the internet, people who doubt official stories are no longer excluded from public conversation; the CIA’s 44-year-old campaign to stifle debate using the “conspiracy theory” smear is nearly worn-out. In academic studies, as in comments on news articles, pro-conspiracy voices are now more numerous – and more rational – than anti-conspiracy ones.

No wonder the anti-conspiracy people are sounding more and more like a bunch of hostile, paranoid cranks.

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