Holder’s desperate letter proves Mr. Snowden is in grave danger
By John Robles | The Voice Of Russia | July 28, 2013
The Attorney General of the United States of America Eric Holder has taken the unusual step of writing a letter to the Russian Federation essentially making promises that United States will do nothing unusual or in any way against U.S. law if the Russian Federation will just put aside its own norms, the Russian Constitution, international law and conventions and just, as the U.S. Ambassador put it, “return” Mr. Edward Snowden to the United States.
The Attorney General begins his letter by listing the “crimes” that Mr. Snowden is charged with ignoring the fact that the laws that Mr. Snowden is said to have broken are not crimes in the Russian Federation, or perhaps Mr. General is under the assumption that U.S. law somehow is something that the rest of the world must abide by and follow.
Judging from the real and documented history of the United States, the country possesses a total lack of respect or regard for international law and the laws of other sovereign nations, especially the Russian Federation. This is evident from the illegal invasions of sovereign nations, illegal torture programs, extra-judicial executions by drone and other means and with regard to Russia, the continuous illegal kidnapping and rendition of Russian citizens back to the United States.
I have been documenting these crimes for over a decade and have been the victim of similar U.S. ‘retribution”, so hearing the Attorney General preach to Russia about U.S. law as it is engaging in asking Russia to also set aside its Constitution, as the U.S. does, and engage in double standards and hypocrisy, is something nauseating to say the least.
The sheer hypocrisy that is evident in the U.S. actions surrounding Mr. Snowden and the level of desperation that the U.S. has shown are simply mind boggling in their breadth and scope.
Mr. Holder writes:
“Mr. Snowden believes that he is unable to travel out of Russia and must therefore take steps to legalize his status. That is not accurate; he is able to travel. Despite the revocation of his passport on June 22, 2013, Mr. Snowden remains a U.S. citizen. He is eligible for a limited validity passport good for direct return to the United States. The United States is willing to immediately issue such a passport to Mr. Snowden.”
The whole point, in case Mr. Holder has missed it, which it is obvious he has, is that Mr. Snowden has been granted political asylum in several countries and had wanted to travel to those countries. Not face death or torture at the hands of a government that has secret torture prisons, launches wars of aggression at every political whim, has off-shore indefinite detention facilities and engages in regular extra-judicial executions, just to name a few of the continuing violations of international norms that the U.S. is guilty of.
Such a government can and must never be trusted and that is a fact that can in no way be known better than by someone like Mr. Snowden who worked for the CIA and the NSA. So a one way ticket to America is not an option Mr. Holder. No one in their right mind would trust any of the assurances given by Holder, and Mr. Snowden is right, and moreover, has the right, to seek asylum and be protected.
Holder:
“We also understand from press reports that Mr. Snowden has filed papers seeking temporary asylum in Russia on the grounds that if he were returned to the United States, he would be tortured and would face the death penalty. These claims are entirely without merit.”
Again are we supposed to forget the last several decades of world history? Are we supposed to forget Manning who has been tortured, are we to forget Abu-Ghraib, Guantanamo and even ex Vice President Richard Chaney signing off on such torture techniques as “puncturing an eye” and “slicing a testicle”? Are we to forget case after case after case and report after report of other instances of torture, extra-judicial executions and even innocent men and women being executed when there was evidence that exonerated them?
Mr. Holder insults our intelligence.
“Second, Mr. Snowden will not be tortured. Torture is unlawful in the United States…”
It is interesting to note that he says “unlawful” and not “illegal” and this whole argument is absurd regardless of the wording because we know the U.S. renditions people all the time to countries where torture is legal and we know the U.S. has its own special off-shore torture prison at Guantanamo. Simply unbelievable.
The rest of the letter goes on to say that Mr. Snowden would be granted a fair trial blah blah blah… Yeah good one Mr. Holder, just like the NATO 5, Jeremy Hammond, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, everyone who has ever been droned, the hundreds of men at Guantanamo and let’s not forget how Trayvon Martin’s family got justice, etc. ad-nauseum.
The United States has become a rogue illegal nation and the continued persecution of Mr. Edward Snowden, a young man who exposed that rogue nation’s illegality against the world and its own citizens and more importantly Mr. Holder, against the very Constitution you are sworn to uphold, prove beyond all doubt that Mr. Snowden is in very grave and imminent danger.
Please don’t insult the intelligence of the world and the Russian Government by engaging in such ridiculous letter writing Mr. Holder. We all know that once Mr. Snowden is in your hands, and I pray for him that never happens, he will be interrogated using your “enhanced interrogation techniques” until he goes insane or kills himself and if he does survive he will be locked in solitary confinement under special observation until the day he dies, that is of course if he is not executed, as nothing will stop you from executing him once he is in your hands.
Will a letter from the Russian Government saying execution is illegal stop you if there comes a day when the switch is about to be pulled on Mr. Snowden? No. So why should your false guarantees force Russia to violate its own Constitution?
By the way Mr. Holder, how are Mr. Bout and Mr. Yaroshenko faring after you illegally renditioned them from third countries? Rule of law? Only when it is convenient for you and those in power. Mr. Snowden exposed your illegality, as did I and we know what happens to those who expose the illegality of the Imperial United States of America. Just ask Julian Assange.
And lastly, just in case Mr. Holder was not aware: The Russian Government knows what you are up to better than you think Mr. Holder, Russian officials and the Russian Government are not fools, after all Mr. Snowden won’t be the first American who has received asylum in Russia due to the illegality of the American state. He won’t be the first, because actually, I was.
The opinions and views expressed here are my own I can be reached at robles@ruvr.ru.
Related article
‘Low-level NSA analysts can spy on Americans’
RT :: July 28, 2013
NSA spying programs give access to US citizens’ private data to low-level analysts with little court approval or supervision, says Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story on Washington’s PRISM surveillance system.
“[PRISM] is an incredibly powerful and invasive tool,” Greenwald told ABC’s ‘This Week.’ The NSA programs are “exactly the type that Mr. Snowden described. NSA officials are going to be testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, and I defy them to deny that these programs work exactly as I’ve said.”
The NSA keeps trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases which they can access anytime with simple screen programs, he said.
“And what these programs are, are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things.”
“It searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future.”
While the program conducts wiretapping with little court approval or supervision, there are “legal constraints” on surveillance that require approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, in which court judges can secretly review the government’s plans to track suspected terrorists in advance.
“You can’t target [Americans] without going to the FISA court,” Greenwald stressed. “But these systems allow analysts to listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents.”
“And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst,” he added.
Greenwald will testify before a Congressional committee on Wednesday, along with NSA officials who have previously downplayed Snowden’s claims about the agency’s easy-access data.
PRISM is a mass electronic surveillance data mining program operated by the NSA since 2007. The program was exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden earlier this summer. Snowden leaked information about the program to the media, warning of a far greater extent of mass data collection than the public knew existed. The disclosures were published by The Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6.
Snowden later leaked further information to Greenwald which pertained to mass security operations carried out across the world. He spoke of British spy agency GCHQ, which uses the Tempora surveillance program. The whistleblower also shared information regarding Germany’s cooperation with US intelligence, which reportedly combs through half a billion German phone calls, emails, and text messages on a daily basis.
A call for transparency on surveillance programs
The call for increased oversight and transparency for surveillance programs has been growing, even among supporters of the NSA.
“I do think that we’re going to have to make some change to make things more transparent,” Senator Saxby Chambliss, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told ABC.
Former federal judge James Robertson, who used to grant surveillance orders, said he was shocked to hear of changes to allow broader authorization of NSA programs – such as the monitoring of US phone records. He urged for a reform which would to allow counter-arguments to be heard.
“What FISA does is not adjudication, but approval,” Robertson said, speaking as a witness during the first public hearings into the Snowden revelations. “This works just fine when it deals with individual applications for warrants, but the 2008 amendment has turned the FISA court into an administrative agency making rules for others to follow.”
However, government officials have defended the surveillance initiatives as authorized under law, claiming they are necessary in order to guard the country against terrorist threats.
Following Snowden’s revelations on NSA surveillance, President Barack Obama assured US citizens in June that “nobody is listening to [their] telephone calls.”
He said the surveillance programs monitor phone numbers and the durations of calls, adding that if there are any suspicions and “if the intelligence community then actually wants to listen to a phone call, they’ve got to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation.”
President Obama added that America is “going to have to make some choices” between privacy and security, warning that the highly publicized programs will make it harder to target terrorists.
Meanwhile, deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce said that the “program is not intentionally used to target any US citizens” and is “key in our counter-terrorism efforts.”
Testifying on Capitol Hill before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in June, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander claimed that the NSA’s storage of millions of phone records has thwarted more than 50 terror attacks in more than 20 countries since September 11, 2001. However, evidence of the prevented attacks has not been revealed.
US Prison Population Shrinking; States Ready to Sell Extra Prisons
By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky | AllGov | July 28, 2013
In what some experts say may be the beginning of the end for mass incarceration, the U.S. prison population declined for the third year in a row last year.
In 2012, the prison population shrunk by 1.7% (or 27,770 inmates), according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).
The third consecutive yearly drop in prisoner numbers has been the result of fewer crimes and changes in state correctional policies. Many states are now relying more on probation and parole instead of locking people up.
Although the percentage decline might seem small, the fact that it followed decreases in 2011 and 2010 indicated the country is undergoing a “sea change” in criminal justice policy.
“This is the beginning of the end of mass incarceration,” Natasha Frost, associate dean of Northeastern University’s school of criminology and criminal justice, told The New York Times.
Before 2010, the U.S. prison population increased every year for 30 years, from 307,276 in 1978 to a high of 1,615,487 in 2009.
The decline has not affected federal prisons, which are seeing record numbers of prisoners.
At least 17 states are selling or are considering selling some of their underutilized prisons. For example, in Pennsylvania, the state is looking to sell off two prisons that were recently emptied and shut down. A 40-building prison in Cambria County and a 32-building correctional facility in Westmoreland County are among 37 surplus state properties listed for sale.
According to BJS, 47% of prisoners have been incarcerated for non-violent crimes, such as property offenses, drug offenses and public order offenses.
Louisiana had the highest percentage of its population in prison last year, 893 per 100,000 state residents. In second place was Mississippi (717 per 100,000 state residents), followed by Alabama (650 per 100,000 state residents), Oklahoma (648 per 100,000 state residents), and Texas (601 per 100,000 state residents).
Maine had the lowest imprisonment rate (145 per 100,000 state residents), followed by Minnesota (184 per 100,000 state residents), and Rhode Island (190 per 100,000 state residents).
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Inmate in California hunger strike dies
Press TV – July 28, 2013
One of the California inmates who have for weeks been on a hunger strike has died in solitary confinement, according to the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition.
Billy Sell died on Monday, July 22, at the Corcoran State Prison in central California.
Sell‘s fellow inmates say he had been requesting medical attention for days before his death.
Saturday marks the 20th day of the hunger strike which started in protest against solitary confinement practices in the state’s prisons.
“Advocates are outraged at Sell’s death, noting that it could have been prevented if (prison officials) had negotiated with strikers,” the coalition said in its statement.
Prison officials have launched an investigation into the death which they claim is a suicide.
“It’s irresponsible and inflammatory for hunger strike supporters to say this inmate, whose death is being investigated as a suicide, died as a result of the hunger strike,” said Deborah Hoffman, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in a statement.
Reports say more than 30,000 inmates have joined the hunger strike in California where there are some 132,000 prisoners.
Inmate advocates put the number of state prisoners confined in extreme isolation at nearly 12,000.
EU’s response to NSA? Drones, spy satellites could fly over Europe
RT | July 27, 2013
The European Union is pondering an EU Commission proposal to acquire a fleet of surveillance drones, satellites, and planes as part of an “ambitious action” to boost the European defense industry. It follows revelations of the NSA’s spying programs.
The European Commission has issued a 17-page report, proposing some concrete steps that would encourage pan-European defense cooperation.
“Maintaining and developing defense capabilities to meet current and future challenges in spite of severe budget constraints will only be possible if far-reaching political and structural reforms are made. The time has come to take ambitious action,” the Commission’s report said.
One of the actions suggested in the report is funding a pre-commercial procurement scheme to acquire prototypes of some technologies – including drones.
The full list of technology candidates includes equipment to detect chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives threats (CBRNE), “communication equipment based on software defined radio technology,” and remotely-piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), otherwise known as drones.
According to Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the report, the European Commission has for long been eyeing the possibility of using drones over Europe.
“The European Commission has long identified the potential of this emerging technology and supported the market by investing in research and innovation relevant for RPAS through the Framework Programme for Research. A broad stakeholders’ consultation has demonstrated the necessity for action at EU level, setting as priorities the further development of RPAS civil applications and the integration of the systems into the European air space as soon as possible,” the document said.
It also claimed it would “take into account the data protection and privacy concerns associated with the civil use of RPAS.”
The drones are also proposed to be used in conjunction with other surveillance technologies, including aircraft and satellites.
Lamenting the absence of a structural link between civil and military space activities in the EU and saying that Europe “can no longer afford” the economic and political cost of such a divide, the Commission focused on several technologies that are said to be able to serve both civilian and defense objectives.
These include space surveillance and tracking (SST), which are said to be aimed at protecting satellites from space debris, boosting satellite communications (SATCOM), and building a pan-EU cutting-edge satellite surveillance capability.
The report said it is “crucial” for a number of technologies to be explored and developed in the EU, including “hyper-spectral, high resolution satellites in geostationary orbit or advanced ultra-high resolution satellites in combination with new sensor platforms such as RPAS.”
The Commission has yet to estimate to what extent the proposed moves are useful for EU security. Based on the assessment, it will “come up with a proposal for which capability needs, if any, could best be fulfilled by assets directly purchased, owned and operated by the [European] Union.”
A response to Snowden’s NSA leaks?
The Commission’s report is part of the ongoing debate on the common EU defense policy which is set to culminate in a summit of European leaders in December.
Media reports have said that the European Commission and Lady Ashton’s European External Action Service actually want to create military commands and communications systems to be used by the EU for internal security and defense purposes.
The UK, which stoutly opposes such motion, is said to be leading an intense behind-the-scenes battle against establishing an EU military operations headquarters in Brussels.
Curiously, senior European officials regard the plan as an urgent response to the recent scandal over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations on American and British communications surveillance.
“The Edward Snowden scandal shows us that Europe needs its own autonomous security capabilities, this proposal is one step further towards European defense integration,” a senior EU official said, as quoted by the Daily Telegraph.
However, plans to create the EU’s own security and spying agency and employ spy drones and satellites for “internal and external security policies” – which would reportedly include police intelligence, internet surveillance, protection of external borders, and maritime overwatch – will likely raise concerns that the EU is creating its own version of the NSA.
The Open Europe think tank has already warned that the EU “has absolutely no democratic mandate for actively controlling and operating military and security capabilities.”
“The fact is, European countries have different views on defense and this is best served by intergovernmental cooperation, not by European Commission attempts at nation-building,” Open Europe research analyst Pawel Swidlicki said.
A Shameful Day to Be a US Citizen
AG Holder promises Russia not to torture Snowden
By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening | July 27th, 2013
I have been deeply ashamed of my country a number of times. The Nixon Christmas bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong was one such time, when hospitals, schools and dikes were targeted. The invasion of Iraq was another. Washington’s silence over the fatal Israeli Commando raid on the Gaza Peace Flotilla–in which a 19-year-old unarmed American boy was murdered–was a third. But I think I have never been as ashamed and disgusted as I was today reading that US Attorney General Eric Holder had sent a letter to the Russian minister of justice saying that the US would “not seek the death penalty” in its espionage case against National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, promising that even if the US later brought added charges against Snowden after obtaining him, they would not include any death penalty, and vowing that if Snowden were handed over by Russia to the US, he would “not be tortured.”
So it has come to this: That the United States has to promise (to Russia!) that it will not torture a prisoner in its control — a US citizen at that — and so therefore that person, Edward Snowden, has no basis for claiming that he should be “treated as a refugee or granted asylum.”
Why does Holder have to make these pathetic representations to his counterpart in Russia?
Because Snowden has applied for asylum saying that he is at risk of torture or execution if returned to the US to face charges for leaking documents showing that the US government is massively violating the civil liberties and privacy of every American by monitoring every American’s electronic communications.
Snowden has made that claim in seeking asylum because he knows that another whistleblower, Pvt. Bradley Manning, was in fact tortured by the US for months, and held without trial in solitary confinement for over a year before being finally put on trial in a kangaroo court, where the judge is as much prosecutor as jurist, and where his guilt was declared in advance by the President of the United States — the same president who has also already publicly declared Snowden guilty too.
It is incredibly shameful that we US citizens have to admit that we live in a country that tortures its prisoners, that casually executes people who are mentally retarded, who are innocent, who had defense attorneys who slept through their clients’ trials, whose prosecutors slept with the judge, who were denied access to DNA evidence that could have proven their innocence, or who were convicted based upon the lies of prosecutors and prosecution witnesses.
This country’s “justice” system has become so perverted and politically tainted that the rest of the world, including Russia, knows that Snowden is telling the truth when he says he cannot hope to receive a fair trial here. Indeed, Congress has passed laws, and the President has signed laws, giving this government the power to lock someone like Snowden up indefinitely without trial, to torture him, and even to kill him, not through a jury decision on capital punishment, but simply on the basis of a secret “finding” by the President that he has aided or abetted terrorism.
No wonder Russia and several other countries, including Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, have offered or are considering offering Snowden asylum.
And no wonder that, in its obsession with getting its tyrannical hands on him, this government is willing to promise (for what a promise from the US government is worth) not to kill him or torture him.
Shame and anger are the only appropriate responses to that letter from Holder.
If this were a country that honored the rule of law, Attorney General Holder would not need to promise not to torture. He would need only to point to the US Constitution, with its ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” He would not need to promise a fair trial to Snowden, with no capital punishment on any charges. He could point instead to the Constitution’s promise of a presumption of innocence and of a public trial by a jury of the accused’s peers, to make the case against the granting of asylum.
In such a country, someone like Snowden, with the help of a crack legal team, would have a fair shot at proving to a jury his innocence of the government’s frivolous espionage charges. He’d have a fair chance of convincing at least one juror of his absolute innocence of any crime, making his conviction impossible.
But that is not what this country is, especially today.
In today’s US courts, we know the “Justice” Department would seek to bar testimony about Snowden’s motives in leaking the documents he downloaded from the NSA’s computers. They would ask the judge to limit defense arguments and testimony in the case to the narrow issue of whether or not he downloaded and leaked files, not to whether those files exposed Constitutional violations and needed to be brought to the public’s attention. Our judges, nominated by presidents and confirmed by senators, Democrat and Republican, who want jurists who favor government secrecy and who generally side with the government against the people, can be counted on to grant the government’s motions.
In such circumstances, a defendant like Snowden, facing charges of espionage or theft of government secrets, has no ability to defend himself. The trial would be like in a Lewis Carroll event: “Verdict first, trial later!”
Hopefully President Vladimir Putin will not be pressured by the US into pretending that Snowden has nothing to fear in going back to face “justice” in the US.
It is bad enough that we Americans have to hang our heads in shame as our Attorney General pretends, against all evidence to the contrary, that there is still a fair legal system operating in the US, and that the US respects human rights and the rule of law.
We should not have to also endure yet another kangaroo court trial, this time of Edward Snowden.
Snowden should be granted asylum in Russia, or should be allowed to travel to one of the other countries of his choice that have had the courage to offer him asylum.
If we’re going to have trials on the issue of spying in the US, let them be of Holder himself, and of President Obama.
Egypt’s military junta playing with fire
By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | Jul 26, 2013
Egypt’s military strongman General Al Sisi is playing with fire that may engulf the North African country with even more internecine bloodshed. This week on state TV, Al Sisi called for massive street protests to face down “terrorists” who, he said, were destabilizing Egypt’s national security.
He also claimed that such popular show of strength would give the Egyptian army “a mandate” to use violence to restore order.
Such inflammatory talk by the supposed head of national security is tantamount to pushing Egypt – the Arab region’s most populous country – into a civil war.
The reprehensible thing about this is that General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi is indulging in reckless demagoguery to incite violence in order to cover up the fact that it is he who violated the law and constitution of his country.
As head of the Egyptian military, Al Sisi is supposed to be duty-bound to protect the nation from harm. But what he appears to be doing is plunging the nation into chaos and conflict by way of concealing his own selfish ambitions.
On 3 July, it was Defense Minister Al Sisi who dismissed then President Mohamed Morsi. Nearly three weeks on, no one has seen or heard from the deposed Muslim Brotherhood president. Even his family is still unaware of Morsi’s whereabouts and has accused the military of “kidnap”.
Meanwhile, Al Sisi, who also heads the Supreme Council of Military Forces (SCAF), appointed a senior judge as the interim-president, and oversaw the formation of an unelected government. This civilian administration is only a front for Egypt’s military deep state, which stems from the US-backed Hosni Mubarak dictatorship (1981-2011).
The 35-member interim government is packed with holdovers from the Mubarak era. Many of them are closely associated with the Egyptian military and police. The central figure in the so-called civilian administration is General Al Sisi, who also appointed himself as deputy prime minister – in addition to his portfolio of defense minister and head of the SCAF.
Fawning visits to Cairo last week by US senior diplomat William Burns and the European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief, Catherine Ashton, demonstrate that Washington and its Western allies are endorsing the military coup against Egypt’s nascent democracy.
Burns said somewhat cryptically that this was “a second chance” for Egyptians. One wonders if what he really meant was a second chance for Egyptians to conform to the US-backed military deep state that Washington has bankrolled with $1.5 billion every year for the past three decades.
In recent days, the US has said that it is delaying the delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Egypt. This was prompted by the incendiary call for street protests by General Al Sisi. But Washington is only reacting for public relations purposes to fend off criticism that it is pandering to the military junta.
Notably, an unnamed senior Pentagon official told the Washington Post: “This is not a way of punishing them (Egypt’s military). It gives us more time to consult with Congress, walk them through our strategy and explain our views to them.” Besides, too, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel reportedly consulted with Al Sisi hours before the announcement that the F-16s would be delayed.
Understandably, millions of Egyptians who voted for Morsi’s presidential bid in June 2012 feel that their long-fought-for democratic rights have been trampled on by the same military machine that they rose up against in January 2011 as part of the Arab Spring.
The ouster of Mubarak on 11 February 2011 was supposed to herald a new democratic beginning for Egypt. But evidently, the Mubarak-era military deep state is back in the driving seat – albeit with the trappings of a civilian administration.
When Al Sisi and his other US-trained Egyptian Generals deposed Morsi, they did so under the cynical guise of “obeying the popular will” and “saving the nation” from possible violence between anti and pro-Morsi crowds. There is evidence that Mubarak-era businessmen and media magnates gave the anti-Morsi demonstrations lionized coverage, thereby amplifying an atmosphere of national tensions and insecurity.
While Morsi certainly alienated wide sections of the population during his one-year presidency, it is nevertheless legally questionable that he should have been dismissed from office, put under secret arrest without charge, and that the constitution should be suspended and the Parliament dissolved. If that sounds like a military coup that’s because it is, even though Western politicians and media have banished the word from public discourse.
The way to make that unlawful intervention appear legitimate was to claim the mantle of acting on behalf of the people to maintain national security. However, what has transpired is that the Egyptian military and remnants from the Mubarak-era judiciary have taken the reins of political power out of the hands of the electorate. The formation of the interim government without any popular mandate earlier this month makes that clear.
The targeting of hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members and other Morsi supporters with arrest, detention and prosecution for alleged Mubarak-era crimes also makes it apparent that the military-led Egyptian deep state is running a vendetta to wipe out political opponents, not acting as a caretaker for a transition to civilian politics.
Repression has also involved lethal violence by the state forces and apparently civilian-clothed agents. Since Morsi’s overthrow, as many as 200 people have been killed in street clashes and thousands more injured. Most of the victims have been Morsi supporters, with the military responsible for most of the bloodshed. The single-biggest deadly incident was on 8 July when the military opened fire on Muslim Brotherhood protesters outside the Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo, killing as many as 80 and wounding over 400.
Last week on national state TV, the interim President Adli Mansour used provocative language when he said: “We will fight the battle for security until the end.” He also warned darkly against those who “hide behind false slogans and who are driving the country to the abyss”.
What “false slogans” might the military-appointed interim president be referring to? Perhaps they include “We don’t support military coup” or “Reinstate Morsi”.
This sinister formula of polarizing society and demonizing political opponents was taken to new heights this week. Again, speaking on national state TV and wearing sunglasses, General Al Sisi said: “Egyptians must take to the streets on Friday to give me the mandate to face down violence and terrorism… Friday is the day we, the army, the people and the police, will unite.”
Asking people for a mandate to face down violence and terrorism sounds like preparing a green light for even more massacres committed by the Egyptian army. And then, in the aftermath of bloodshed, the military strongman will be able to claim that he was only acting “on behalf of the people” to “defend the nation”.
This is the politics of fascism, conducted with the imprimatur of Western so-called democratic governments.
Netanyahu proposes new “Marshall Plan” for Egyptian economy to support coup
MEMO | July 26, 2013
Netanyahu hopes that his “Marshall Plan” would see the emergence of a new Arab middle class.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing for the West to adopt a new “Marshall Plan” for the Egyptian economy in order for the coup to succeed. He is being backed by US Republican Senator Rand Paul in his efforts. If successful, Netanyahu will regard the burying of the democratic process in the neighbouring country as the achievement of one of his most important strategic objectives.
The original Marshall Plan was America’s way of helping to rebuild Europe after the Second World War to stem the tide of revolutionary liberation. According to Maariv newspaper, Netanyahu’s plan proposes significant economic growth in the Arab world in order to prevent “radical” Islamic groups from rising to power.
The deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, Eran Lerman, has been pushing the plan in recent meetings in Washington with Congress members. Netanyahu himself suggested such a plan during his own recent visit to the US; finance for the scheme would come from private sources, he claimed. The prime minister believes that Arab countries should be encouraged to have stable democracies free of Iranian influence and that the international community should work towards that objective. Maariv’s report claims that the Israeli officials are looking at possible funding for the project to come from Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Netanyahu hopes that his plan would see the emergence of a new Arab middle class, presumably more ready to do business with Israel. His thinking follows the logic behind US Secretary of State John Kerry’s proposal for massive financial investment in the occupied West Bank to boost the Palestinian Authority’s standing. “The capitalist West thinks that throwing ever more money at a problem will solve it,” said MEMO’s Senior Editor Ibrahim Hewitt. “The natural aspiration of a people to be free of economic, political and military occupation doesn’t register with Western governments for whom economic growth is the Holy Grail.”
The newspaper pointed out that the Israeli government is also preparing to ask the US Department of Defence for an increase in military aid on the pretext of potential threats from the popular uprisings in the Arab region.
Related article
- Israel reacts positively to Egypt coup (rinf.com)
Prosecutor orders ousted Egypt President Morsi’s arrest over Hamas links
RT | July 26, 2013
An arrest order has been issued for ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi over suspected links to Hamas. State media reports the Muslim Brotherhood leader has already been questioned and confronted with the evidence.
Morsi has been detained for 15 days and will be subjected to questioning over suspicions Hamas helped orchestrate his escape from prison in 2011, reported Reuters, citing Mena state media. Morsi has allegedly already been “confronted with the evidence.” During the uprisings that overthrew former President Hosni Mubarak two years ago there were a number of attacks on police stations that led to the escape of Islamists and political inmates.
The accusations set against Morsi also include killing officers and prisoners and kidnapping soldiers.
The ousted president has been held in an unknown location since he was removed from office on July 3 by the military.
The Muslim Brotherhood has condemned Morsi’s detention as “ridiculous” and a “return to the Mubarak regime.”
The UN has urged the Egyptian military to free Morsi along with other Brotherhood leaders “without delay.” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls “on the interim authorities to ensure law and order along with guaranteeing the safety and security of all Egyptians.”
Egypt is preparing for another day of violent protests as Morsi’s followers and the military opposition have both planned mass rallies.
The two groups are at loggerheads over the future of the Arab world’s most populous country. A military official told Reuters that the army has given the Muslim Brotherhood until Saturday to join the so-called “road map” to new elections.
The Brotherhood fears a military led crackdown on the political party that won the Egyptian elections last summer.
“We are continuing our protests on the streets. In fact we believe that more people will realize what this regime really represents – a return of the old state of Mubarak, with brute force,” Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said.
In some of the worst violence since the unrest began in Egypt, 50 Morsi supporters were gunned down at a Cairo barracks on July 8 by security forces.
Does the Right to Privacy Now Apply Only to the US Government?
By JAMES ROTHENBERG | July 25, 2013
Whatever our opinion of Edward Snowden, if we’re fair we see it being formed from a neutral perspective. This is because he was, until recently, a complete unknown. Snowden’s antagonist, the United States Government (USG), occupies the established part of this relationship in our minds.
How do we come to form our opinions? Largely from assessing new information against the background of existing information, in this case, what we know, or, what we believe we know. It’s clear that whatever our opinion of Snowden is is every bit as much a statement about our opinion of the USG.
The USG is not a blank background against which to measure the pros and cons of Snowden’s actions. My contention is simply this: In order to have achieved a position on Snowden close to neutral supposes a worldview in which the US is a neutral reactor to world events and is bent on opposing evil in the interest of creating a more secure world. This is not the history of states, particularly ours.
Even with only an appreciation of very recent American history, we are brought face to face with incessant bombing, crippling sanctions that harm a country’s “little people”, white phosphorus, napalm, depleted uranium, civilian humiliation, indefinite “Devil’s Island style” detention, targeted assassination, robotized and sanitized drone warfare, killing as revealed in Collateral Murder video, and officially sanctioned torture.
No, not a blank background. And now we know, as we should have known, that the vaunted “right to privacy” extends only to, and stops at, the USG. We are to put ourselves in the position of the child whose “parent” knows what is best for us and insists on our trust.
The word “insists” is very important. It has to be backed by something. In the case of the USG it is backed by force, all the force at its disposal. Imagine the reciprocal. The people insist that their government trust them! The absence of force at this level explains the current citizen/state relationship.
There’s a recent, seemingly benign, revelation regarding the United States Postal Service (USPS). Seems like they’ve been photographing the outside of every envelope, package, and postcard passing through its hands. Chalk up 160 billion eavesdropping bits for the USPS last year.
What’s troubling is the legal rationale provided for the intrusion. Loosely stated it’s that the postman has from time immemorial had visual access to the outside of envelopes, so that this was never a privacy concern! And we’re supposed to swallow this whole. The dog-fearing mailman, nosybody that he is, feels free to cop a peek. And, naturally, since he is an agent of the government this “freedom to peek” obtains to the USG as well, because it is unthinkable that an agent should possess powers that do not extend to that for which he is performing his lawful function.
Now that we’ve placed the mailman on a par with the state, and made no distinction between his mild transgression (actually closer to overhearing than snooping), why not extend this to the “Big Brother” image? Could the legal rationale for that be that since we are eminently observable by people in our everyday lives then there is no privacy concern when a certain, larger group of people decide to observe us?
Since the USPS goes lacking for funds, and since it performs a “national security” function, a working idea might be to place the USPS under the Department of Defense, to which money flows freely. That way we could keep the post offices open and possibly slow the escalation of its prices in the bargain.
Snowden has come under criticism because he fled the country. Some believe he should face US justice, what I would characterize as the “martyr solution”, because that is what it would amount to. He fled because this country is no longer safe for whistleblowers. Daniel Ellsberg said as much.
Some believe he should have come in through the front door and taken his case directly to Congress instead of Hong Kong. Go to Congress? To push an approach like this would be to completely ignore the working agenda of a capitalist, militarist, imperialist state and the role its politicians play in it.
To expect the politicians that are complicit with the state in the furtherance of its agenda to play an adversarial role against the very institutions, the financial and corporate elite that sustains them, and upon which they are dependent for their current and future livelihoods is to expect the sun to obey the earth. Whatever bias the public might show toward the USG is magnified times over by those in Congress, with few admirable exceptions.
The term “full spectrum dominance” signifies the ambitious national military project to control all of land, sea, air, space, biological, and cyber fighting capabilities. The term does not originate with avid leftists but is used by them, in quotes, because it is the Pentagon’s preferred description, an open confession of sorts. So, no, Snowden is really only waking the people who have been sleeping.
According to Der Spiegel (whose bias is distinctly anti-left) Jimmy Carter remarked, in defense of Edward Snowden, that “America does not have a functioning democracy at the present time”. He’s been known to have walked away from previous statements, and this remark seems to have been made to a private audience (making it no less true), but the remark itself is totally unsurprising. One can doubt the need for the ending qualifier, “at the present time”. Whether viewed domestically or from abroad, American behavior reveals itself for what it is.
When you see something that looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and in constantly seen in the company of other ducks, you can assume that it’s a duck. That’s funny, but even better it’s funny and speaks to something more. It’s a valuable heuristic.
Take the case of the USG. When you see a country that seeks out right wing dictatorships in foreign countries, aids the right-wingers, deals with the right-wingers, fights with the right-wingers, and is never but never seen in the company of left-wingers, you can assume you have a right-winger.
The slide into fascism is smooth and the momentum is particularly strong at the bottom. In many respects we are already there.
James Rothenberg can be reached at: jrothenberg@taconic.net
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