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Life in jail for using, digging illegal border tunnels: Egypt

Press TV – April 12, 2015

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has issued a decree rendering the digging or using of illegal border tunnels punishable by life term.

“Anyone who digs or prepares or uses a road, a passage, or an underground tunnel in the country’s border areas with the purpose of connecting with a foreign entity or state, its citizens or residents… will face life in prison,” said the presidential decree published in the official gazette on Sunday.

According to the decree, those who are aware of such tunnels and refrain from informing authorities also face life in prison, which in Egypt amounts to 25 years behind bars.

The Egyptian government claims that it has destroyed vast numbers of such routes and has recently intensified efforts to demolish such underground passages which connect the restive Sinai Peninsula to the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Palestinians use the underground tunnels to transfer essential supplies, including food and fuel into Gaza, which has been blockaded by Israel since 2007, a situation which has caused a decline in the standard of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.

Israel not only defies international calls to lift the brutal siege, but also refuses to allow medication or construction materials into coastal enclave.

April 12, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Were US Arms to Egypt Ever Really Frozen?

By PAUL GOTTINGER | CounterPunch | April 12, 2015

On February 31, Obama announced the lifting of what the New York Times called “an arms freeze on Egypt”.

The US arms export restrictions the Times is referring to had been put in place following a 2013 coup, which removed Egypt’s democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi.

This Times piece titled, “Obama Removes Weapons Freeze Against Egypt” states:

“President Obama on Tuesday lifted an arms freeze against Egypt that he had first imposed after the military overthrow of the country’s democratically elected government nearly two years ago.”

The piece states that the “freeze” was imposed after the coup. Given this, readers will naturally assume the Obama administration enacted a significant policy shift towards the Egyptian government as a result of this affront to democracy.

But the Times quickly qualifies the extent of this arms freeze by listing the very small number of “big ticket” items which had been restricted.

The piece states:

“Mr. Obama cleared the way for the delivery of F-16 aircraft, Harpoon missiles and M1A1 Abrams tanks, weapons prized by Egyptian leaders, who have smoldered at the suspension.”

NPR handled this same issue in a more confused way. An NPR story called “US Ends Freeze on Military Aid to Egypt” stated:

“Certain types of training and military equipment never stopped flowing. But in 2013, the flow of weapons deliveries was halted after Egypt’s military takeover.”

These seemingly contradictory sentences seem to both admit US arms deliveries never really ended, but then also imply that they in fact had stopped.

Both the Times and NPR do correctly point out that F-16s, Harpoons, and M1A1 Tanks were held up by the Obama administration, and that now these items—along with the full allotment of the $1.3 billion in this year’s military assistance—will again flow to Egypt.

However, what the Times and NPR didn’t mention is that in essence US military aid to Egypt was never really frozen. The ‘freeze”, it turns out, was little more than a light frost.

Export data from the US Census Department shows that in 2014 alone the US shipped Egypt almost $44 million in parts for military aircraft, over $36 million in parts for armored fighting vehicles, and over $68 million in guided missiles.

In addition, both the NPR and Times piece fail to mention the 10 Apache helicopters, which the US delievered to Egypt in October of 2014 (worth $171 million), and which were previously included in the so called “arms freeze”.

What both the Times and NPR do mention is that these weapons are going to an Egyptian government which may be a titch less than perfect. However, they both completely fail to explain the depth of the abuses.

The Times piece mentions that Egyptian authorities have arrested over 40,000 people since the coup, and the NPR story states there are at least 20,000 political prisoners.

Both reports brush over how Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the now president of Egypt, seized control of Egypt following the coup and immediately instituted a serious crackdown on human rights, which continues to this day.

Neither NPR nor the Times mention the 1,300 protesters killed, the mass death sentences, that a major political party has been deemed a terrorist organization, that media outlets have been closed, that activists and journalists remain detained, that protest is essentially outlawed, and that there have been no serious steps towards democracy taken.

Despite these very serious human rights abuses, the US continued shipping, not only parts for advanced weapons systems like jets, helicopters, and tanks, but also smaller arms, which could be used against the Egyptian population.

In 2014, the US shipped a small number of military machine guns, military rifles, as well as over $600,000 worth of parts for military rifles.

These exports are especially troubling given that in August of 2013 the Egyptian security forces opened fire on a protest camp killing at least 1,000 people and injuring almost 4,000. This is a massacre similar in scale to the one in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that the Times and NPR faithfully played their servile role by peddling the myth that the US froze arms to Egypt. But surely human rights groups got the story right? Well, no.

Human Rights Watch have documented rights abuses perpetrated by the Egyptian government, however they haven’t documented much on the US responsibility for these abuses. This is especially true when it comes to US military support and US arms exports.

Egypt receives the second largest amount of US military aid, and the US and Egypt have a decades long history of military cooperation. Given this, the US could exert a significant amount of influence in Egypt. However, this context is absent in both the Times and NPR articles.

The Times, NPR, and HRW also all fail to mention that the end of US arms restrictions to Egypt means that the last remaining aid and weapons to Egypt, which had been held-up, have now been released.

This means that after a military coup, a massacre, systematic human rights abuses, and even continued detention of Americans, Egypt didn’t lose a single dollar of US taxpayer funded aid, or a single weapons shipment.

Shamefully, NPR, the Times, and HRW all lead readers to falsely believe that the US significantly changed its policy towards Egypt to respond to concerns for democracy and human rights. Unfortunately, the data says otherwise.

Paul Gottinger is a journalist based in Madison, WI whose work focuses on the Middle East. He can be reached via Twitter @paulgottinger or email: paul.gottinger@gmail.com

April 12, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia rejects Iran’s calls for ceasefire in Yemen conflict

RT | April 12, 2015

Riyadh has called on Iran not to interfere in the conflict in Yemen after Tehran repeatedly called for end to the Saudi-led airstrike campaign against embattled Yemen.

“How can Iran call for us to stop the fighting in Yemen? … We came to Yemen to help the legitimate authority, and Iran is not in charge of Yemen,” Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said Sunday at a joint press conference in Riyadh with his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius.

Faisal called on Iran to stop providing political and military support to the Houthi rebels, a Shiite rebel group, that has taken control of swathes of the country, including the capital, Sanaa, in recent months.

On Thursday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei decried Saudi airstrikes as a “crime and genocide.” In a speech Thursday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies to halt aggression in Yemen and commence peace negotiations.

“To the countries in the region, I say, let’s adopt the spirit of brotherhood. Let’s respect each other and other nations,” Rouhani said. “Do not kill innocent children. Let’s think about an end to the war, about a ceasefire and humanitarian assistance to the suffering people of Yemen.”

Moscow is calling for a diplomatic solution to the conflict, emphasizing that foreign military intervention would only lead to more civilian deaths. Last Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov met with the newly appointed Saudi ambassador, conveying the “necessity for a ceasefire” to create favorable conditions for a peaceful national dialogue.

The US has meanwhile accused Iran of aiding the Houthis.

“There are obviously supplies that have been coming from Iran.” US Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday. “There are a number of flights every single week that have been flying in. We trace those flights, and we know this. We are well aware of the support that Iran has been giving to Yemen.”

For its part, Iran has denied backing the rebels. On Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Saudi charge d’affaires to lodge a complaint against allegations of Iran’s involvement in Yemen.

Saturday Yemeni militiamen in Aden said they captured two Iranian military officers advising Houthi fighters. The two officers are allegedly members of an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Tehran has denied these reports, according to Iranian state news agency IRNA. “Iran has no kind of military force in Yemen,” Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Saudi Arabia and nine other Sunni majority states began an airstrike campaign against Houthi positions throughout the country at the end of last month. Ousted Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia as rebels advanced on Aden, where he had been staying since being forced out of Sanaa in February.

According to the International Federation of the Red Cross, up to 1,042 people have died in the conflict so far. Even getting aid to conflict-torn areas and retrieving the dead has proven dangerous and outright impossible at times.

“Our paramedics face being targeted while doing their job. There are dead and wounded left in the street whom we cannot reach,” Abdullah Radman, a doctor with the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Reuters.

April 12, 2015 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Africom’s War on Libya

In this excerpt from Bob Coen and Eric Nadler’s film “Shadow War of the Sahara”, broadcast on the Franco-German channel ARTE charts the rise of the U.S.military’s AFRICA COMAND (AFRICOM). This excerpt reveals why AFRICOM’s chief critic, Libya’s Mohammar Gaddafi, had to be removed from power for the project to succeed.

April 12, 2015 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

Argentine president says West seeking to destabilize Latin America

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Press TV – April 12, 2015

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has slammed the West’s “soft” campaign to destabilize Latin American countries.

During her address at the 35-nation Summit of the Americas in Panama City on Saturday, she said the attempts always originate in some NGOs that “we never know who finance them.”

She warned that the destructive attempts “aim at the destabilization of governments in the region, of the governments that have done the most for equality, for education and social inclusion.”

Pointing to the “major accomplishments” of the Latin American governments in the areas of human rights, social inclusion, health, and education, Kirchner said the West lends support to “governments with neoliberal policies that shattered people.”

She also denounced the Western attempts to combat “governments that can show their credentials of having been the ones that have included their countrymen the most.”

Elsewhere in her remarks, the Argentine president criticized the UK for considering her nation a “threat” and thus justifying an increase in its military presence in the Malvinas Islands, known as the Falklands to the British.

“The United Kingdom declared my country a threat to its won territory, the Malvinas Islands: 2.3 percent of UK’s budget is allocated to defense. It is also absurd,” she added.

Britain declared Malvinas as part of its overseas territories in 1833. Argentina calls it an occupation and has time and again challenged the British military presence in the archipelago, which is about 500 kilometers (310 miles) east of Argentina’s coast.

Row over the islands turned into a bloody war in 1982. The conflict then claimed the lives of 649 Argentine soldiers, 255 Britons and three islanders.

Tensions between Argentina and the UK mounted again in 2013, after a London-backed referendum asking the islanders to decide whether to remain under the British rule. Some 99.8 percent people voted to remain a British territory. The Argentine government challenged the vote calling it “a British maneuver lacking legal value”.

April 12, 2015 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

Mother of convicted ‘Boston Bomber’ says FBI framed sons, Americans the ‘real terrorists’

By Brandon Martinez | Non-Aligned Media | April 11, 2015

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been convicted on all 30 counts relating to his alleged involvement in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Dzhokhar and his deceased brother Tamerlan were accused of organizing and executing the attack which claimed the lives of three people and wounded hundreds of others.

But like most ‘official stories,’ the Boston Bombing is replete with holes and oddities which do not conform with the US government’s narrative.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the alleged bombers, has accused the FBI of framing her sons for the attack. From the beginning, she has held that her sons are innocent and that the FBI itself is responsible for the bombing in Boston, using “fake blood” and crisis actors. “I am 100 percent sure this is a set up,” she told Russia Today, adding that the FBI had been watching and “controlling” her sons for several years preceding the attack in 2013.

“The [real] terrorists are the Americans and everyone knows it,” she recently told the Vocativ website.

One major anomaly is that the Boston Globe announced hours beforehand that local authorities were intending to do a controlled explosion as part of ‘bomb squad activities’ in the precise location and on the same day of the marathon bombings. Another glaring indication of government complicity was the fact that Boston police were running a ‘terror drill/exercise’ on the same day, at the same time, and in the same place of the explosions at the Boston Marathon; a textbook procedure during staged attacks.

If the ‘Boston Bombing’ wasn’t a state-sponsored false flag, then the incident would be an exception to the rule.

Since 9/11, which was itself a staged-managed black op engineered by Israel’s Mossad and the CIA, American authorities have attempted to manufacture ‘terror incidents’ by using informants and plants to cultivate terrorists or otherwise induce them to act.

In his informative book The Terror Factory, investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson describes how the FBI has built up a network of 15,000 informants who have been tasked with infiltrating American-Muslim communities, but not for the purposes of weeding out real potential terrorists. Rather, the aim of the FBI’s vast army of informers has been to create terrorists when there would otherwise be few, if any at all.

The FBI, acting as one of many enforcement arms of the Bolshevistic US Security State, seeks to use the false fear of terrorism to justify draconian legislation which gives government virtually unlimited powers. All Western governments do this, following Washington’s lead after the synthetic terror of 9/11. Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, among other servants of the Zio-Anglo-American financial nexus, deftly fell in line with the ‘terror scare program’ of Stasi-like mass surveillance and authoritarian control mechanisms.

All Western governments know 9/11 was a lie, that al-Qaeda had nothing to do with it, and that the US and Israeli regimes are to blame. But all Western governments are unable to voice the truth about the ‘grand deception’ of 9/11 because they are effectively economic and political vassals of the Zio-American empire. They cannot ‘speak up,’ fearing their economies would literally be ‘shut down.’

The Boston Bombing is just another corny episode in an endless wave of fabricated, government-scripted and produced terror spectacles designed to confound the already gullible masses, bolster the police state, and re-energize the putrid ‘war on terror’ which is one of the greatest political hoaxes ever executed on the world.

To maintain its military supremacy and dominance over world markets, the US and its Israeli partner in crime must continuously manufacture and spread fear and panic amidst the general public so as to micro-manage the ‘cattle classes’ of plebs and commoners who are not supposed to think for themselves or act independently of government dictates in any area of their lives.

Copyright 2015 Non-Aligned Media

April 12, 2015 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Islamophobia | , | 6 Comments

Fear Inc.: Behind the $57 Million Network Fueling Islamophobia in the U.S.

Center for American Progress

In 2011, the Center for American Progress published “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” in order to identify and expose the organizations, scholars, pundits, and activists comprising a tightly linked network that spread misinformation and hateful propaganda about American Muslims and Islam. The report found that seven charitable foundations spent $42.6 million between 2001 and 2009 to support the spread of anti-Muslim rhetoric.

… Islamophobia in the United States takes many shapes and forms. It takes the form of a general climate of fear and anger toward American Muslims, as seen in the “civilization jihad” narrative, the religious right’s rhetoric, and the biased media coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. It comes out in cynical political efforts to capitalize on this climate of fear, as seen in state-level anti-Sharia bills introduced across the country and in far-right politicians’ grandstanding. And perhaps most dangerously, it manifests itself in institutional policies that view American Muslims as a threat, as seen in the FBI training manuals that profile Islam as a religion of violence. …

February 11, 2015

The Demographics Unit of the New York Police Department, later known as the Zone Assessment Unit, was created with the help of the CIA following the 9/11 attacks to conduct surveillance and monitor Muslims in New York City and the Tri-State Area. However, the Demographics Unit never led to a single terrorism investigation.

In 2011, Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman won the Pulitzer Prize for revealing that since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the New York City Police Department had consistently spied on the Muslim community in New York City and the Tri-State Area.

In April 2014 under the leadership of its new commissioner, William J. Bratton, the New York City Police Department announced that it would end its controversial Muslim spying program by ending the Demographics Unit.

In its own public statement on the closing of its Muslim spying program, the NYPD conceded that “it has been determined that much of the same information previously gathered by the [Muslim spying program over the years] may be obtained through direct outreach by the NYPD to the communities concerned” instead of spying on them.

However, less than one month after announcing the end of the NYPD spying program, The New York Times reported that the NYPD has not backed away from other counterterrorism initiatives that it created in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, including recruiting Arab and Muslim men charged with various crimes and trying to convince them to serve as informants on their mosques and local communities.

April 12, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

German court shuts down anti-Israel exhibition

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This file photo shows a previous “Cologne Wailing Wall” exhibit displaying photographs of Palestinian children killed by Israel’s aggression
Press TV – April 12, 2015

A German court has shut down a long-standing anti-Israel exhibition in the western city of Cologne, accusing its organizer of anti-Semitism and glorification of violence.

The German municipal court said the permanent exhibit, which displayed numerous pictures of the Palestinian children who were killed and injured during the Israeli regime’s bloody offensive against Gaza last summer, violates a law designed to protect minors.

Walter Hermann, the organizer of the exhibit, has protested for years against Israel with his exhibit dubbed the “Cologne Wailing Wall.”

Hermann, 76, whose anti-Israel campaign is named “Peace Demonstration,” told the German Express newspaper that the wanted to draw public attention to Israeli policies against Palestinian people.

The court ruled that Hermann will face a fine of USD 635 and a possible second trial should he continue to display the pictures. The anti-Israel activist intends to appeal the ruling.

Earlier in 2010, the city partnerships of Cologne-Tel Aviv and Cologne-Bethlehem issued a joint statement condemning the anti-Israel exhibit.

According to the statement, “The anti-Semitic and anti-Israel presentation” of the Cologne Wailing Wall “feeds anti-Israel resentments.”

In its latest major act of military aggression against Gaza, the Israeli regime started airstrikes on the Palestinian territory in early July 2014 and later expanded its campaign with a ground invasion. The war ended in late August that year.

Nearly 2,200 Palestinians lost their lives and some 11,000 were injured in the assaults. Gaza Health officials say the victims included 578 children and nearly 260 women, adding that more than 3,100 children were injured in the offensive.

Moreover, the UN has said that up to 1,500 children were orphaned in the Israeli war.

April 12, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 2 Comments