Egypt’s Mursi Defends Power Grab

Insists Move 'Temporary' and Aimed to Protect Constitutional Committee

AntiWar
Jason Ditz

Faced with an ever-growing backlash over last week’s power grab, Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi struggled to defend his edict, insisting that the move was “temporary” and not intended to centralize power in his hands.

Rather, in a new statement Mursi insisted that the move was meant to limit the power of the judiciary, and was primarily aimed at avoiding the “politicization” of the court system while keeping them from ousting the committee penning the new constitution.

Yet the edict went well beyond protecting the committee, claiming unilateral power for the president to do anything he deems necessary and insisting the court can’t even theoretically review anything he does. To the extent it renders the court totally powerless it would seem to limit interest in its politicization.

Making the move temporary does seem to be a key part of the edict, and assuming it remains temporary it may placate some critics. The edict only sought to define presidential power until the new constitution is written, with the assumption that the constitution itself will define them afterwards.

“Temporary” measures in the Middle East have a tendency to last for decades, however, as with the “emergency law” in place in Egypt before the revolution, which granted Mursi’s predecessor Hosni Mubarak similar unchecked power. The longer it takes to get a constitution in place, the more Egyptians are likely to bristle at the power Mursi is now claiming for himself.

U.S. is Allied with and actively Supports Al-Qaeda

Iran Review
Interview with: James F. Tracy
By: Kourosh Ziabari

Professor James F. Tracy

American political commentator believes that the United States has been constantly allied with Al-Qaeda and supported it militarily and financially.

"Major media have recently had to acknowledge that US-NATO interests are aligned with Al Qaeda in Syria, of course overlooking the fact that the US and Sunni States also recruited and armed these soldiers of fortune. What the Obama administration has sought to do with the alleged murder of Bin Laden in May 2011 is to close the chapter on the old, villainous Al Qaeda and open a chapter on the new and friendly Al Qaeda. This narrative is slowly unfolding, while Americans are instructed on a different bogey to fear, which now appears to be homegrown terrorism," he said in an exclusive interview with Iran Review.
Prof. James F. Tracy is the Associate Professor of Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where he teaches courses on media history and the role of journalism in the public sphere. Tracy's scholarly work and commentary on media and politics have appeared in numerous academic journals, edited volumes, and alternative media news and opinion outlets. He is editor of Democratic Communiqué, journal of the Union for Democratic Communications, an affiliate of Project Censored, and a regular contributor to GlobalResearch.ca. Tracy's latest work assessing Western press coverage of US-NATO military ventures and the human costs of war appears in Censored 2013: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2011-2013 (Seven Stories Press, 2012).

Prof. Tracy took part in an interview with Iran Review to answer some questions regarding the influence of advocacy organizations on the U.S. government and the mutual relationship between these entities, the further limitation of civil liberties and individual freedoms in the United States, the challenges ahead of progressive, alternative journalism in the United States, Western mainstream media's coverage of Iran and Syria affairs and the prospect of U.S. military expeditions in the Middle East.

Q: What do you think about the role of influential American think tanks and public diplomacy and advocacy organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations or the National Endowment for Democracy in creating unrest and instability in the countries which are opposed to the United States policies? Do you find traces of their footsteps in the ongoing violence in Syria? Do they have plans to destabilize Iran so as to realize their mischievous objective of regime change in Tehran?

A: One can contend that the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Endowment for Democracy are much more than advocacy organizations. The question suggests the popular view that Western states and especially the United States are above such organizations in terms of decision making power and responsiveness to the populations they purportedly serve.

This is the idealization of a transcendent governing apparatus upheld in public opinion and touted in Western mainstream media. This is the myth the CFR specifically perpetuates about itself and the liberal state. In fact, the CFR is a branch of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and it has more or less dictated US foreign policy from within entities such as the US State Department since before World War Two.

This is not to say that every member of the CFR is involved in such maneuvers. Some are in the organization because they're flattered to be asked and they see it as prestigious and fashionable, or they wish to network with other influential figures. Yet it is no mistake that membership is exclusive and participants all occupy strategic positions of power in major global corporations, in academe and the media, and in government, and thus can be mobilized to exert their influence as the CFR inner circle desires. They also openly share in the ideology of weakening the nation state and privileging global-regional and international bodies, such as the European Union and the United Nations.

It is through such organizations that they can get their policies enacted with little if any interference from the common people or their representatives at the national level. The CFR's interests and activities, alongside the interests supported by the major philanthropic foundations such as the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundations, and the Gates Foundation, are demonstrable manifestations of the deep state that truly runs the world, has priorities that differ greatly from the bulk of humanity, and has sought to exert itself since the 1920s.

The "Arab Spring" appears to be largely a maneuver of organizations such as the CFR and NED. This was evident from the onset with the high degree of Western media exposure afforded the fairly modest demonstrations 2011 in Tahrir Square that preceded Mubarak's ouster by the Central Intelligence Agency. The same media outlets unquestioningly covered the Western and Sunni-backed deployment of Al Qaeda mercenary forces and NATO airpower against the most modern and socially progressive state on the African continent under the Obama administration's "Responsibility to Protect" cover. A central bank was reportedly created in the back of a mercenary pickup truck. This was a colossal war crime that Western public opinion is left largely in the dark about. It also underscored liberal-progressive hypocrisy and credulousness in the US, evident in the pronouncements of public figures such as Juan Cole and Amy Goodman, who led the cheering section for Libya's destruction. If the Bush administration successfully vanquished the probable leader of the African Union those on the Left would have been in a huff. When one of their purported own oversees such a campaign it's not only condoned but applauded, much like the "humanitarian" bombing of Yugoslavia by Clinton.

As many of your readers are likely aware, Libya is significant because some of the same mercenary forces recruited by US intelligence and Sunni states that were employed there are now deployed in Syria. Like Libya, Syria is also a fairly modern state that is not hostile to the West but is regarded as being autonomous, particularly in its alliance with Iran and Hezbollah. It is also seen as a strategic threat to Israel in terms of Iran, and so must be dismantled before a more concerted campaign against Iran is to take place. I'm inclined to think that those determining policy for the Obama administration want compliant fundamentalist regimes installed throughout the Middle East. This will be disastrous to overall security in the region but I don't believe that's their goal. War is much more profitable and has much greater potential than peace for those who wish to exert control over resources.

Q: In one of your articles, you argue that the United States has become a police state, with such restrictive legislations and programs which the government has put into effect to limit the citizens' personal freedoms and different types of civil liberties, such as the Sedition Act of 1798 which criminalizes the publication of "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government and governmental officials. Would you please elaborate more on your notion of the United States becoming a police state?

A: I believe this was "The Paranoid Style of American Governance," where I pointed out that the laws, policies, and organizational structure of the US government, how its exaggerated concern over surveillance and security is arrayed against the American people. The situation is comparable to how an increasingly delusional paranoid might approach human relationships s/he is involved in.  As a result of the 1996 Effective Death Penalty and Anti-Terrorism Act following the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing and the 2001 PATRIOT Act enacted after September 11, 2001 many of the civil liberties Americans have been guaranteed under the Constitution have been stolen, never to return.

Citizens cannot expect to be secure in their persons and papers. We are subjected to humiliating warrantless searches at transportation facilities. As a result of a string of legislation capped off by President Obama's National Defense Authorization Act of December 2011 the government now reserves the right to jail or murder citizens on political grounds. There is little if any recourse because our political representation has to a large degree been bought off by private interests. The US increasingly looks like a totalitarian state and is one major event away from fully resembling the Soviet Union or an Eastern Bloc state circa 1970. The extent of the rollback in civil liberties is very overdone because a majority of Americans are ill-informed, politically unsophisticated, and in many instances even functionally illiterate. Thus they are unaware of the police state's accelerated formation since the mid-1990s and unprepared to contest it. A combined regime of poor public education and the stultifying effects of mass media and culture have dumbed the American public down to the extent that its republic has been taken right out from underneath its nose.

Q: It's widely believed that the United States, as its leaders claim, is a "beacon of freedom" since the mass media are allowed to publish every critical material at will, even if they threaten the national security, in such cases of war with another nation. Is this widely-accepted belief true? Don't the mass media face any restriction or impediment by the government to censor certain stories or withhold from the public sensitive information?

A: The major, agenda-setting US news media—USA Today, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and their broadcast and cablecast amplifiers—that the small strata of semi-politically adept and literate citizens rely on for information are all controlled by interests that are overall supportive of the US police state and US-NATO foreign policy. To return to your initial question, many of the owners or top editors and journalists are also CFR members. Together they perform a central propagandistic function of the state through selective reportage of issues and events, omission of key information, and heavy reliance on "official" government or corporate sources.

Such a set of procedures is worse than outright falsehoods because a falsehood can be disproved and a journalist or news organization called out on the carpet. However, by owning most of the newsgathering and distribution outlets, by using official sources and employing careful editing procedures such media retain credibility in the public mind. In the Soviet Union much of the citizenry knew that by reading Pravda they were being fed outright lies so they learned to "read between the lines" to interpret what was really going on. That requires a degree of political sophistication that is beyond most Americans.

The government and major news media are also being challenged by alternative news media and thus resort to a more blatant form of disinformation that jeopardizes their perceived trustworthiness, which is now at an all-time low. This is the case with their coverage of the US-NATO actions and Libya and Syria—specifically the fact that the US is allied with and actively supporting its alleged arch enemy Al Qaeda.

For over a year corporate media tried to cover this up when it was there in plain view. Alternative outlets reported otherwise and in the face of this mainstream media had to eventually relent and admit that the US is indeed supporting Al Qaeda.

As an example, one case involved a US-based alternative media outlet reporting on the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies collectively purchasing over one billion rounds of lethal, "hollow point" ammunition. Major media sought to assuage growing public concern on this by focusing on a single government agency's (the Social Security Administration) purchase of 180,000 rounds of such ammunition, asserting that it was for target practice. This was absolute propaganda likely pitched to these outlets by covert government sources. It's fairly common knowledge among American gun enthusiasts that "full metal jacket" ammo is used on the range because it's far less expensive than hollow point and performs the same function. Nevertheless, the 180,000 SSA story was widely circulated, performing the intended propaganda function, mainly through conscious omission of the most important information that alternative media honestly chose to highlight.

Another argument that I need to make in light of the world wide expanse of news and information now available on the Internet is that the US citizenry doesn't need to rely primarily on USA Today or New York Times editors for what it is exposed to. This remains the case so long as the Internet remains free from government or corporate encroachment and regulation. In this regard there is a wealth of information for those who have the time, discernment, and initiative to seek it out and become informed. Investigative journalists and commentators have much to draw on in terms of analyzing and explaining the meaning and significance of issues and events. This is essentially what newspapers and journals did before the application of scientific objectivity to journalism and the pretentious separation of news from analysis and opinion.

Q: What challenges do the independent, progressive journalists of the United States face today? In one of your articles, you had criticized some of the progressive media for failing to give coverage to important topics such as the truth about the 9/11 attacks. Would you please elaborate on that? In my view, the progressive media outlets such as CounterPunch or The Nation have to some extent broken apart the monopoly of the mainstream media and allowed the free flow of information while the mainstream media steadfastly try to suffocate the truth. Don't you agree?

The Summer of Muslim Discontent: It’s Not “The Amateur Film” Stupid

Global Research
Prof. James Petras

The so-called “Arab Spring:” is a distant and bitter memory to those who fought and struggled for a better world, not to speak of the thousands who lost, life and limb.  In its place, throughout the Muslim world, a new wave of reactionaries, corrupt and servile politicians have taken the reins of power buttressed by the same military, secret police and judicial power who sustained the previous rulers.[2]

*      *      *

Introduction

Death and destruction is rampant, poverty and misery has multiplied, law and order has broken down, retrograde  thugs have seized political power, where previously they were a marginal force.  Living standards have plunged, cities are devastated and commerce is paralyzed.  And presiding over this “Arab Winter” are the Western powers, the US and EU, – with the aid of the despotic Gulf absolutist monarchies, their Turkish ally and a motley army of mercenary Islamic terrorists and their would-be exile spokespeople.

The legacy of imperial intervention in the Muslim world during the first decade of the 21^st century, in terms of lives lost, in people displaced, in economies destroyed, in perpetual warfare, exceeds any previous decade, including 19^th and 20^th century colonial conquests.  Much of the latest Western mayhem and violence has been compressed in the period dubbed the “Arab Spring” between 2011 – 2012.  Moreover, the worst is to come.  The Western overseers have gained strategic positions of power in some countries( Egypt ), are engaged in prolonged ruinous wars in others ( Syria ) and are preparing for even bigger and more destructive military intervention in still others ( Iran ).

The “Winter of Muslim Discontent” covers an entire arc from Pakistan , Afghanistan in South Asia, through the Gulf region and the Middle East to North Africa .  In the throes of the worst economic crises to hit the West since the 1930’s, the Western imperialist regimes have squeezed their people, mobilized personnel, arms and money to engage in simultaneous wars in five regions and two continents – in pursuit of overthrowing political adversaries and installing clients, even if it results in the destruction of the economy and uprooting of millions.

Let us begin with Egypt , where the Arab Spring has become a case study in the making of the New Imperial Order in the Muslim world.  To attribute the mass violent rebellions across two continents and two dozen Muslim countries to a US made film which desecrates the Prophet Mohammed is the height of superficiality.  At most the film was the trigger that set off deeply rooted hostilities resulting from two decades of US led ravaging and destruction of the Muslim world and more particularly, rage flows from Washington ’s crude intervention against the promise of the Arab Spring.

Egypt:  The Making of a Client State

From day one, in February 2011, Washington sought in every way to prop up the Mubarak dictatorship as thousands of protestors fighting for freedom were killed, wounded or jailed in the major plazas and streets of Egypt .  When Mubarak was forced out of power, Washington sought to retain its influence by turning to his Generals, and backed the military junta which seized power.  As the military dictatorship became the target of huge pro-democracy demonstrations, Washington backed a political power sharing agreement between the dominant pro-Western neo-liberal sector of the Muslim Brotherhood and the military, excluding any but the most superficial democratic and socio-economic reforms demanded by the poor and the working and middle classes.

With the election of President Mohamed Morsi, Washington secured the most fervent advocate of savage “free market” capitalism and the second best (after Mubarak) advocate of retaining Egypt’s status as a US client state in the Middle East.  Morsi, following in the footsteps of Mubarak and in accordance with the Washington and Tel Aviv, closed the trade routes between Gaza and Sinai, traveled to the Non-Aligned Movement in Teheran to deliver the Saudi-Gulf message calling for support of the Western backed armed mercenaries ravaging Syria .  Later he announced plans to privatize publicly-owned enterprises, reduce the deficit via elimination of basic subsidies to the poor, de-regulate the economy to increase the flow of foreign capital and end labor strikes^[3].  As a reward for his servility and to ease the process of remaking Egypt as a pliable Western client state, Washington, Saudi Arabia, the IMF, Qatar and the EU have offered Morsi over $20 billion in loans, debt relief and grants^[4].  Morsi’s rule depends on playing the ‘spiritual card’ to retain the support of the impoverished Muslim masses, while pursuing a staunch neo-liberal economic strategy and neo-colonial foreign policy.

Given the recent revolutionary pro-democracy and nationalist fervor, Morsi looks for ways to deflect rising socio-economic discontent with his neo-liberal economic policies by adopting an apparently pious Muslim posture – condemning “the film” ridiculing the Prophet and tolerating assaults on the US Embassy in Cairo … which angered Clinton and Obama, who expect total subservience, especially
toward the symbols and substance of everything US^[5].

Why the Mideast Exploded, Really

Consortium News
Ray McGovern

Exclusive: The new conventional wisdom, in the wake of angry protests roiling the Middle East, is that Muslims are either way too sensitive or irrational. How else to explain the fury over an offensive anti-Islam video? But the video was just the spark that ignited a long-smoldering fire, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

“Why Is the Arab world so easily offended?” asks the headline atop an article by Fouad Ajami, which theWashington Post published online last Friday to give perspective to the recent anti-American violence in Muslim capitals.

While the Post described Ajami simply as a “senior fellow” at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, Wikipedia gives a more instructive perspective on his checkered career and dubious credibility.

An outspoken supporter of the war on Iraq, Ajami was still calling it a “noble effort” well after it went south. He is a friend and colleague of one of the war’s intellectual authors, neocon Paul Wolfowitz, and also advised Condoleezza Rice. It was apparently Wolfowitz or Rice who fed Ajami’s analyses to then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who cited Ajami’s views repeatedly in speeches.

The most telling example of this came in Cheney’s VFW address on August 26, 2002, in which the Vice President laid down the terms of reference for the planned attack on Iraq. Attempting to assuage concerns about the upcoming invasion, Cheney cited Ajami’s analysis: “As for the reaction of the Arab ‘street,’ the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are ‘sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans.’”

Author and scholar Fouad Ajami.

In his writings, Ajami did warn, in a condescending way, that one could expect some “road rage … of a thwarted Arab world – the congenital condition of a culture yet to take full responsibility for its self-inflicted wounds.” He then added:

“There is no need to pay excessive deference to the political pieties and givens of the region. Indeed, this is one of those settings where a reforming foreign power’s simpler guidelines offer a better way than the region’s age-old prohibitions and defects.”

No One Better?

Ignoring the albatross of tarnished credentials hanging around Ajami’s neck, the Post apparently saw him as just the right academician to put perspective on the violence of last week in Middle East capitals. As for his record of credibility: Well, who takes the trouble to go to Wikipedia for information on pundits?

Nor were the Post’s editors going to take any chances that its newspaper readers might miss the benefit of Ajami’s wisdom. So the Post gave pride of place to the same article in Sunday’s Outlook section, as well. What the Post and other mainstream media want us to believe comes through clearly in the title given to the article’s jump portion, which dominates page 5: “Why a YouTube trailer ignited Muslim rage.”

Setting off the article were large, scary photos: on page one, a photo of men brandishing steel pipes to hack into the windows of the U.S. embassy in Yemen; the page-5 photo showed a masked protester, as he “ran from a burning vehicle near the U.S. embassy in Cairo.”

So – to recapitulate – the Post’s favored editorial narrative of the Mideast turmoil is that hypersensitive, anti-American Muslims are doing irrational stuff like killing U.S. diplomats and torching our installations. This violence was the result of Arabs all too ready to take offense at a video trailer disrespectful of the Prophet.

Nonetheless, it seems to be true that the trailer did have some immediate impact and will have more. According to an eyewitness, the 30 local guards who were supposed to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi simply ran away as the violent crowd approached on Tuesday night.

Wissam Buhmeid, the commander of the Tripoli government-sanctioned Libya’s Shield Brigade, effectively a police force for Benghazi, maintained that it was anger over the video trailer which made the guards abandon their post.
“There were definitely people from the security forces who let the attack happen because they were themselves offended by the film; they would absolutely put their loyalty to the Prophet over the consulate. The deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet.”

Predictably, Islamophobes and Muslim haters with influence over Western media coverage are citing the violence as the kind of “irrational” over-reaction that “exposes” Islam’s intolerance and incompatibility with democratic values and demonstrates that Islam is on a collision course with the West.

It is no surprise that Ajami gives no attention to the many additional factual reasons explaining popular outrage against the U.S. and its representatives – reasons that go far deeper than a video trailer, offensive though it was. Ajami steers clear of the dismal effects of various U.S. policies over the years on people across the Muslim world – in countries like Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya, Afghanistan. (The list stretches as far as distant Indonesia, the most populous Muslim state.)

Last week’s violence not only reflects the deep anger at and distrust of the U.S. across the Islamic world, but also provides insight into the challenges posed by the power now enjoyed by the forces of extremism long held in check by the dictators toppled by last year’s wave of revolutions.

Cui Bono?

Who are the main beneficiaries of misleading narratives like that of Ajami. He himself concedes, “It is never hard to assemble a crowd of young protesters in the teeming cities of the Muslim world. American embassies and consulates are magnets for the disgruntled.”

So, does that mean the notorious video trailer is best regarded as a catalyst for the angry protests rather than the underlying cause? In other words, if the video served as the spark, who or what laid the kindling? Who profits from the narrative that neocons are trying so hard to embed in American minds?

Broad hints can be seen in the Washington Post’s coverage over recent days – including a long piece by its Editorial Board, “Washington’s role amid the Mideast struggle for power,” published the same day Ajami’s article appeared online.

NAM Summit: Ban Ki-Moon in disgraceful show of US puppetry

Global Research
Finian Cunningham

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (C), Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (R)
and Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi at the opening ceremony
of the 16th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran on August 30, 2012.

Seated alongside Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the day that Iran took over presidency of the NAM of 120 nations, the presence of Ban could be seen as a blow to the diplomatic machinations of the United States and its Western allies, including Israel.

But, rather than making a forthright statement of support for Iran, the veteran South Korean diplomat showed his true colours as a servile puppet of American imperialism.

In the weeks leading up to the 16th summit of the NAM, Washington had been calling on the UN top official to decline attending the conference in Tehran. When Ban announced last week that he was going ahead, the US government was evidently peeved, calling his decision “a bit strange”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was predictably more strident, denouncing Ban’s visit to Iran as “a big mistake”. In typical vulgar and provocative language, Netanyahu subsequently attacked the NAM summit as “a stain on humanity”.

What the United States and its Western allies feared most from the NAM summit was a global display of goodwill and solidarity towards Iran. For more than three decades now, Washington has invested huge political capital in a global campaign of vilification against Iran, denouncing the Islamic Republic as a “rogue state”, a sponsor of “international terrorism” and, over the last 10 years, as “a threat to world peace” from alleged nuclear weapons development.

The Western powers of the US, Britain and France in particular continually arrogate the mantle of “international community” to browbeat Iran, claiming that the nation is in “breach of its obligations”.

In attempting to portray Iran as a “pariah state” these powers, along with Israel, have partly succeeded in turning reality on its head and to assume the outrageous right to threaten Iran with pre-emptive military strikes and enforce crippling economic sanctions.

However, the attendance of some 120 nations in Tehran this week - two-thirds of the UN General Assembly - is a clear statement by the international community that resoundingly rejects this Western campaign of vilification.

Clearly, the majority of the world’s people do not see Iran as a rogue state or a threat to world peace. Indeed, the endorsement of Iran’s presidency of the NAM for the next three years is vindication of the country’s right to develop on its own terms, including the pursuit of peaceful nuclear technology.

In one fell swoop, the NAM summit liquidated Washington’s political capital for denigrating and isolating Iran as worthless. Seated at the top of the summit’s gathering in Tehran, the mere presence of the UN General Secretary to witness the appointment of Iran as the new leader of the Non-Aligned Movement was partially a symbolic vote of confidence.

But then, in his speech on this historic day, Ban engaged in a disgraceful diplomatic offensive. He pointedly denounced those who “deny the [Nazi] holocaust” and who call for the Zionist state’s destruction. Ban championed “Israel’s right to exist” without a word of condemnation of Israel’s decades-long crimes against humanity on the Palestinian people and its violation of countless UN resolutions. In that way, the UN chief was peddling the spurious Western propaganda that seeks to besmirch Iran’s principled opposition to the Zionist state’s record of criminality.

Ban went on to cast bankrupt Western aspersions on Iran’s nuclear rights. He said that Iran needed to use its presidency of the NAM to demonstrate peaceful intent, allay fears that it was developing nuclear weapons and to engage positively with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Western-dominated P5+1 group - the group that has used every step in bad faith to hobble and hamper a negotiated agreement with Iran.

The question is: what planet has Ban Ki-Moon been living on? The fact is that Iran has done everything to comply with the IAEA and its obligations to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran has consistently demonstrated its peaceful nuclear ambitions and its responsibility to the NPT - unlike the Western powers and their illegal nuclear-powered Zionist rogue state. Just this week, Iran even invited the member states of the NAM to visit its nuclear facility at Natanz - an unprecedented show of openness.

For Ban to reiterate such unfounded, scurrilous suspicions against Iran on the day that it assumes the presidency of the NAM is a reflection more of his abject servility to Western powers - and it underscores the urgent need for a total structural reformation of the UN to make it more democratically accountable.

What was even more telling was what Ban omitted to say in his speech at the NAM summit. Unlike his pointed jibes at Iran, he only used the vaguest language to condemn the violence raging in Syria whenever the evidence is glaring that the US, Britain, France and their Turkish, Israeli and Persian Gulf Arab allies are now openly flouting international law by fuelling a covert war of aggression in that country.

Just this week, a US Congressional report revealed that the United States is responsible for nearly 80 per cent of all global arms sales in 2011 - some $66 billion worth - a figure that has tripled on previous years. Half of this trade in weapons and death has been plied by the US to the Persian Gulf monarchies who are in turn laundering the arms to Syria. No words of condemnation from Ban on that.

Nor did the UN chief speak out to condemn the illegal economic sanctions that Washington and its coterie of imperialist allies have slapped on Iran - sanctions that are, in effect, an act of war and are viciously imposing hardship on Iranian civilians, including thousands of infirmed people in need of vital medicines.

Nor did Ban condemn the Western powers’ covert war of sabotage and assassination of Iranian scientists, some of whose bereaved families were attending the NAM summit as he spoke.

In a further reprehensible omission, the UN General Secretary lauded the Arab Spring pro-democracy movements. He mentioned several countries by name, but significantly did not include Bahrain even though the people of that country are being butchered and incarcerated daily since their uprising in February 2011. The Western powers and their corporate media do not mention the depredations of their despotic ally in Bahrain against women and children. And neither does Ban Ki-Moon.

No, he would rather engage in pejorative, baseless innuendoes against Iran, while disgracefully covering up Western crimes of aggression in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and the ongoing slaughter of innocents with US drones in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

NAM stands for solidarity against imperial aggression. In his address to the NAM, Ban Ki-Moon was acting like an ambassadorial puppet for his Western masters. Maybe in reforming the UN, the Non-Aligned Movement should from now on seek to ensure that any future head of the United Nations be truly representative of the concerns and anguish of the world’s majority, and not a diplomatic salesman for imperialist powers.

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Many of his recent articles appear on the renowned Canadian-based news website Globalresearch. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He specialises in Middle East and East Africa issues and has also given several American radio interviews as well as TV interviews on Press TV and Russia Today. His interests include capitalism, imperialism and war, socialism, justice and peace, agriculture and trade policy, ecological impact, science and technology, and human rights. He is also a musician and songwriter. Previously, he was based in Bahrain and witnessed the political upheavals in the Persian Gulf kingdom during 2011 as well as the subsequent Saudi-led brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests.

Syria: Turning Back the Clock on the Arab Spring

Global Research
Ahmad Barqawi

Whatever genuine grievances and demands for political reform the Syrian people might have had a year and half ago were trodden underfoot by this stampeding sectarian drive that the Syrian opposition itself worked so hard to foster among its own supporters.

Perhaps one of the most inglorious accomplishments of the western-backed/Gulf-funded Syrian opposition is that it has – and over the course of mere months - managed to inflict such a colossal, irreparable damage to the Syrian people’s future prospects of having a real, homegrown and genuine uprising to bring about positive change in their own country.

Thanks to the devious Syrian National Council and the crazed Free Syrian Army; the term ‘revolution’ has sadly lost its worth and lustre for a sizable portion of the Syrian populace and in the Arab world in general, as it has become marred by abhorrent stigmas of sectarianism, religious fanaticism, succumbing to foreign agendas, subjugation of national integrity and social disintegration. We must concede to the SNC, the FSA and their western patrons their unrivalled ability in transforming what was essentially a flicker of hope into an entire landscape of desolation and ruin.

In the blink of an eye, the home country in which all Syrians coexisted peacefully and harmoniously together for decades became a place they do not even recognize; reciprocal kidnappings between rival tribes, sects, ethnicities and neighbourhoods have become the order of the day; makeshift illegal checkpoints manned by pundits and warring militias have popped up all over Syrian cities; where ID cards could easily get unfortunate passersby killed on the spot, the country’s normally amicable population has been driven headfirst into a horrible cycle of killings and reprisal killings, torture and summary executions, and Mount Kassioun, a once picturesque and vibrant touristic site that overlooks Damascus has become a strategic vantagepoint for rocket launchers and artillery barrage.

Most of those dire consequences trace straight back to the Syrian National Council’s doorstep; by handing the fate of the Syrian uprising lock stock and barrel over to the unreliable hands of Hillary Clinton and her deep-pocketed coterie of Gulf despots; they have nearly completely nullified whatever credibility the rebellion might have enjoyed when it was born on the streets of Dera’a. It ceased to be a matter of local dissent against a brute dictatorship any more; it quickly morphed into this disastrous foreign-induced coup d'état – complete with mad covert and overt military operations and intelligence work.

Not only did the Syrian opposition manage to effectively kill the Syrian revolution in the womb by alienating vast sectors of the public from joining the uprising; but they have willingly chosen to systematically sectarianise Syrian society by sowing the seeds of intolerance and confessional discord. Right from the word go; the entire Alawite population was criminalized outright and deemed guilty by “sectarian association” to president Bashar Al-Assad. Mass branding them as “Shabiha” (pro government guns-for-hire) was nothing more than a cheap albeit racist ploy to justify the prosecution of entire Alawite communities and soften the sting of any possible criticism that might arise in response to the FSA’s criminal practices against innocent civilians.

Al Jazeera (especially the more vulgar Arabic branch of the Qatari-funded news network) was - and still is - a major instrument in furthering this deadly stereotype; the channel that once championed (or so it seemed anyway) pan-Arab national causes such as the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation and the Iraqi resistance to the Coalition invasion, is now openly and notoriously championing what amounts to prima facie ethnic cleansing of Alawites in Syria. This was glaringly evident in the channel’s knee-jerk attempts at justifying the latest mass murder of several members of the Berri family in Aleppo; insisting that the victims were plain-clothed paramilitary thugs “armed to the teeth” fighting alongside government forces prior to their capture and swift execution by the “good guys”. This multi million-dollar media mammoth has been reduced to nothing more than a mere sleazy PR office for the crooked Free Syrian Army.

Of course this blatant bigotry was not limited to the Alawites but extended to the Shiites as well. In a bizarre reshuffle of political cards; Syria has become a safe haven for a slew of CIA, MI6 and even Mossad operatives to roam in and out of rebel-held areas to their hearts’ content, but not for Lebanese Shiite families and Iranian civilians - who have become the target of a vicious witch-hunting spree as various gangs and factions of the Free Syrian Army compete for the honour of “hosting” (a callous euphemism for “kidnapping”, used by the kidnappers and repeated shamelessly by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya news channels) and humiliating these people on live television.

Case in point; on May 22, 2012, a busload of Shiite pilgrims (including women) was intercepted at gunpoint by gangs of the FSA near Aleppo while they were returning home to Lebanon from a religious trip to Iran. Later, the women were released but till this very day the fate of the remaining 11 male hostages remains uncertain (despite a handful of badly choreographed, self-promotional televised theatrical appearances of the kidnapper on Lebanese channels).

‘Israeli-Egyptian security cooperation not at risk’ following forced resignation of top brass

Editor's Note:  Still, it seems some reassurance is in order...

Times of Israel
Stuart Winer
Greg Teppor

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, left, meets with
the leader of Egypt's ruling military council Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi in Cairo last year.

President Mohammed Morsi’s sudden deposition of Cairo’s military elite on Sunday will not harm security collaboration between the Israeli and Egyptian armed forces, a senior official in Jerusalem told Maariv on Monday.

Assuaging fears that unfamiliar military leaders in Cairo might not cooperate with Israel, the official said that Defense Minister Mohammed Hussein Tantawi’s replacement, Abdul Fatah Khalil Al-Sisi, “is well acquainted with Israel’s security elites — from Defense Ministry Policy Director Amos Gilad, to the prime minister’s special envoy Yitzhak Molcho, and of course Defense Minister Ehud Barak.”

Gilad and Molcho met with Al-Sisi during recent visits to Cairo, and Al-Sisi also met IDF Planning Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Nimrod Shefer during his two visits to Egypt this summer, Maariv reported.

Israel was surprised Sunday by Morsi’s ouster of military strongman Tantawi, Chief of Staff Sami Anan and other security chiefs, and is wary of the consequences of the power play, other Israeli security sources said following Sunday’s “civilian coup.”

The move cemented Morsi’s authority over the armed forces in what was seen as a move similar to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ouster of dozens of his generals. However, Erdogan achieved control over the army in a gradual process; Morsi has done so in a matter of days.

An unnamed Israeli official was quoted on the Walla news site as saying that the immediate consequence of the shake-up was that no one in senior Egyptian military positions would now dare take any steps that they feared would not find favor with the Muslim Brotherhood president. Such a shift would inevitably adversely affect Israel, given that Tantawi and Anan were in close ongoing contact with their Israeli counterparts. The two also had long-term relations with senior American officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Morsi, by contrast, has acknowledged no direct contact with Israel since his election two months. He sent a brief letter of thanks to President Shimon Peres last month, in response to two missives from Peres. But when the President’s Office publicized the letter, Morsi’s spokesman denied ever sending it.

Israel’s leading Arab affairs analyst Ehud Yaari described Morsi’s move Sunday as a “civilian coup” against the army. The move underlined that the president and the army are no longer running Egypt together, but rather that the army is subject to the orders of the presidency, Yaari said.
Morsi was said Sunday to be about to launch an intensified crackdown on terrorist cells in the Sinai, a week after Islamist terrorists killed 16 Egyptian security forces at their base near the Israel border, commandeered an armored vehicle and smashed across the border into Israel, where they were blown up by the Israel Air Force.

Israel last week gave Egypt permission to deploy forces in excess of limitations set out in the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in order to carry out the crack down. “The question is, after the military operation, will Morsi take the troops back out again,” said Yaari.

Political sources in Jerusalem said that if Morsi’s new appointees do not cooperate with Israel, then Israel will start to take independent action to thwart terrorist attacks from Sinai, Channel 10 reported.

Dismembering the Arab World

Salem News

The Qataris and Saudis give financial support to the ‘rebels’ for weapons, payments to fighters and mercenaries, and logistical oversight of attacks on Syria.

Special thanks to Gilad Atzmon

Dr Makram Khoury-
Machool is a Palestinian
scholar in Cambridge, UK

(CAMBRIDGE, UK) - The behaviour of the NATO-aligned, anti-Syrian bloc is now blatant enough for us to better understand what is happening in Syria. On the one hand, we find political operators such the ad-hoc group ‘Friends of Syria’, and on the other, two Arab personalities, both ministers of two Gulf sheikhdoms.

The first group includes NATO-led heads of states, with a barely disguised Israeli master-plan conceived by the likes of Bernard-Henri Lévy. Rather than being the friends of Syria, these personalities are arguably working to secure their own financial interests in, around, and via Syria. The two Arab politicians are the two foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They have declared that those forces acting violently against the Syrian state should be armed and financially supported. In short, these conventions of the so-called ‘Friends of Syria’ are probably no more than a ‘modern’ version of those meetings conducted by Viceroy Lord Curzon, who, in 1903, addressed the ‘Chiefs of the Arab Coast’ on HMS Argonaut in Sharjah (UAE).

The Qataris and Saudis give financial support to the ‘rebels’ for weapons, payments to fighters and mercenaries, and logistical oversight of attacks on Syria. All of this is in addition to their support with telecommunication services, combat tactics, and strategic military advice. Unsurprisingly, the Western military advisors, who operate for the armed groups behind the scenes, do not feature in any media outlets. Neighbouring states also provide geographical assistance to the armed groups, with Jordan providing a passage for mercenaries from Libya, and Turkey acting as the northern military base for operations.

Turkey is involved because of its wish to align itself with the Saudi-Sunni, NATO-backed line and also its fear that a dismembered Syria would lead to the promotion of Kurdish autonomy. In their eyes, this could bring about the eventual union of the Kurds with Iraqi and Syrian Kurds and then lead to civil war with Turkey and the eventual separation of Kurdistan from Turkey and the creation of a Kurdish state.

For its part, Israel has for decades planned, as part of its strategy to dominate the Middle East and the Mediterranean, to weaken Syria in order to continue its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and to dominate water sources. Essentially, Israel wants to be the main economic and military power in the region and indeed, Israel may well emerge from the weakening ofSyria as the main winner, if only in the short-term.

Through its orchestrated media campaigns transmitted over the decades to its own public,Israel has constructed a concept of Syria as the major threat to its existence in the Arab world. Arguably, the governmental vacuum that might be created in Syria could be filled by al-Qaeda-like groups giving sufficient justification for Israel’s actions (against Syria and/or Iran) and would also promote the idea of a conflict between ‘civilized-democratic’ Israel and ‘savage’ Islamists.

Despite huge differences between Syria and Libya, Syria’s fate could be similar to that of Libya in terms of direct foreign intervention, were not Russia and China firmly opposed such actions at the UN, where there has been consistent cooperation between the two. Although the origins of Sino-Soviet relations go back to the early days of the 1917 Communist Revolution, it seems that, even two decades after the dismantlement of the Eastern Bloc, the Russian Federation and the Republic of China are, more than ever, following what Mao Tse-tung advised in his ‘Be a True Revolutionary’ address on 23 June 1950. Here, Tse-tung said that ‘in the international sphere we must firmly unite with the Soviet Union’ (see Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. V. p. 39). Shared ideology, world vision, economic interests, and objectives in the field of energy have brought Russia and China ever closer together over the Syrian conflict.

World oil production is headed by Saudi Arabia, with Russia second, the USA third, Iran fourth and China fifth. In terms of oil reserves, we find that the top ten states are:1) Venezuela, 2) Saudi Arabia, 3) Canada, 4) Iran, 5) Iraq, 6) Kuwait, 7) UAE, 8) Russia, 9) Kazakhstan and 10) Libya. Russia is the largest gas producer in the world, with Europe dependent on its gas sourcing. In world gas production, if, because of their geographical distance, we exclude the USA and Canada, Iran comes second and Qatar third. In terms of gas reserves, Russia is number one, with Iran and Qatar in fourth place and Saudi Arabia in sixth. With neighbouring Saudi Arabia as one of the ten leading producers of gas in the world, it is clear why the export interests of Qatar and Saudi Arabia are particularly important and this ranking should give us a clear idea of the alliances that have formed in light of the Syrian conflict.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar (which in different circumstances could have been one state and might yet experience a geographical reshuffle) are both Arab-Muslim-Sunni and both have economic interests. Qatar’s greedy pursuit of marketing contracts for Libyan gas and oil supplies explains its agreement with NATO to attack Libya, its symbolic participation in the air strikes and its support for the rebels to establish a media capability.

Qatar’s aim is to export its gas toEurope, compete with the Russians and gain important political bargaining chips. In order for the export of Qatari gas to Europe to be feasible and competitive, a gas pipe must be laid through Syria. As Russia’s long-standing ally and with the precedents of numerous joint deals dating back to the USSR era, Syria is unlikely to allow anything to threaten the destabilization of Russia’s interests in their last strategic stronghold in the Arab world. This is the main reason why Qatar and Saudi Arabia are supporting the opposition’s struggle to topple the Syrian government.

Syria is fast becoming a Pandora’s box from which all the historical crises of the last 120 years are re-emerging. These begin with the Russo-Turkish war in 1877-8, the Russo-Japanese war in 1904, WWI and WWII and the Cold War. Normally, it takes a superpower 2-3 decades to emerge. It took the USA nearly 25 years to emerge as a superpower from 1890 to the end of WWI. After the death of Lenin in 1924, the USSR was the sick man of Europe. In 1945, after WWII and under Stalin, it emerged as a superpower. After Gorbachev, Russia ceased to be a superpower and seemingly, the Cold War ended. In just over two decades, Putin has ended the unipolar system and a new bipolar world is emerging – as if the Cold War had never ended.

Close examination of the Syrian political system reveals that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is, indeed, a reformist. However, in Syria, as in any other state, factions are intertwined in power-struggles and these and the necessary processes of socialization will take some time to work through. Whilst, as Assad said, it takes just a couple of minutes to sign a new law, it takes much longer to educate people to absorb and participate in the implementation of the new values those laws enshrine. Western ruling elites’ portrayal of these new norms as seemingly growing on trees is an act of disutility and definitely immoral.

Syria was the last secular, socially-cohesive Arab state based on a top-down secular ideology. Despite its volatile, geopolitical surroundings (Lebanon, Turkey, Israel, Jordan and Iraq), Syrian citizens lived securely under this Arab secularism. Syria encompasses a particular type of pluralism and multiculturalism, embedded with religious tolerance and a pluralist existence. This is demonstrated by the toleration of a church, a mosque, a bar and the equal coexistence of both secular and veiled women. In fact, the reform process begun in Syria is more advanced than any similar process in any other Arab state. It includes the removal of emergency laws, the implementation of party laws, election laws, a key media law, and the approval of a new constitution including the removal of the article on the sole leadership of the al-Ba’ath party. Such reforms are part of a genuine political process that will take time. 

However, this reform process has been totally and intentionally undermined by forces, including Western governments acting against the Syrian state. In the last decades, and particularly since 9/11, the West has continually propagated the notion that Islamist terrorists have been threatening the secular way of life. However, Sunnis, technically the religious majority in Syria, contain large segments, and are no less secular than any other Western society.

So, despite Syrians’ clear right to defend the secularity of their way of life, the aim of the West is to dismantle the Syrian state, alter the power structure, and create new demo-geographic entities such as a confederation of the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, which at present, is Turkey’s nightmare. Specific areas might also be depopulated, which might then be used, as has been done with the Druze, to repopulate with Syrian Christians and perhaps with Christians from Lebanon. Other Christians would leave the Levant altogether. The Alawites would then have another state, linked perhaps, with Iran.

The plan is to destroy the modern Arab state of Syria that emerged after WWI and in the 1940s, and, where possible, to establish new religious states (similar to the Jewish state of Israel). In this way, Arab power and along with it, the Pan-Arab ideology of Michel Aflaq and Antun Sa’ade (both Arab Christians) and Nasser of Egypt, would disappear. This process began when, in 1978-9 under Sadat, Egypt signed its peace treaty with Israel, and was followed by the destruction of Lebanon in 1982, the second Intifada in 1987, and the economic takeover of Iraq in 2003. It was then followed in Libya with the seizing of oil and gas in 2011. Therefore, in order to keep the US-Rael (US-Israel) hegemony, the West needs to align states along sectarian lines (Sunni-Shiite) rather than on Pan-Arabism. Indeed, this process was boosted after the occupation of Iraq and the toppling of the Ba’ath party.

In practice, what is now happening in the Arab world is a ‘correction’ of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, when the main colonial powers, Britain and France, carved out the boundaries of the current Arab states and installed their own Arab agents. These ongoing, neo-colonial plans include provision for any two or more Arab parties to fight the Syrian regime and to keep them fighting until such time as each state is dismembered and fractured into 2-3 states, based on sectarian lines. Then colonial elites can continue to scoop up the wealth because, after all, the imperial mentality has hardly changed.

Since Western powers cannot achieve this on their own, they need agents such as Qatar in Libya and Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others in Syria. These agents, preferably self-serving, undemocratic Arab-Muslim-Sunni monarchies, will use Sunni-Islam to promote fanaticism against other Arabs, Muslims and non-Muslims (e.g., Arab Christians, Shiites and Druze). Those Arabs with access to the (economic) global elite (for example, the Royal Saudi family and the Qataris with the Americans and other European elites) are, by and large, the ruling elites in the Arab Gulf or their protégés. It is they who are driving a wedge between the various sects and magnifying and exploiting the playing of the Sunni card with non-Arab Muslim Sunni Turkey against Syria. It would hardly be a surprise either if they were in cahoots with Israel-serving Western powers. Otherwise, it would remain fairly difficult to explain why the most authoritarian regime on earth, Saudi Arabia, is acting against Syria and trying to teach it lessons in democracy, something that Saudi Arabia is not very keen to know much about.

Who is fighting in Syria? Journalists Lie Than Admit That They’ve Been Manipulated

The 4th Media
Thierry Meyssan

Though the Western press portrays the Free Syrian Army as an armed revolutionary group, for more than a year Thierry Meyssan has affirmed that it is on the contrary a counter-revolutionary body. According to him, it would have progressively passed from the hands of reactionary monarchies in the Gulf to those of Turkey, acting for NATO. Such a non-mainstream affirmation needs demonstrative proof…

_____________________________________________

For the last 18 months, Syria has been prey to troubles that have steadily increased to become a widespread armed conflict having already killed about 20,000 people. If there is consensus on this observation, narratives and interpretations vary beyond.

For Western states and their press, the Syrians aspire to live in the Western market democracies. Following the Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan “Arab Spring” models, they rose up to overthrow their dictator Bashar al-Assad. The latter suppressed the demonstrations with bloodshed. While Westerners would have liked to intervene to stop the massacre, the Russians and Chinese, out of self-interest or contempt for human life, opposed intervention.

On the contrary for all other states that are not vassals of the U.S. and for their media, the U.S. launched an operation planned a long time ago against Syria. First, through its regional allies, and then directly, they have introduced armed bands, modeled on the Contras in Nicaragua, that have destabilized the country.

But they found only very weak domestic support and were routed while Russia and China prevented NATO’s destroying the Syrian army and reversing the regional equation.

Who is telling the truth? Who is wrong?

Armed groups in Syria do not defend democracy, they fight against it

First, the interpretation of Syrian events as an episode of the “Arab Spring” is an illusion because this “spring” has no basis in reality. This is an advertising slogan to positively present unrelated facts. Although there has been a popular revolt in Tunisia, Yemen and Bahrain, there was none in neither Egypt nor Libya.

In Egypt, the street demonstrations have been limited to the capital and parts of the middle class; never, absolutely never, have the Egyptian people identified with the telegenic spectacle of Tahrir Square [1]. In Libya, there was no political revolt, but a separatist movement in Cyrenaica against the power of Tripoli, and the military intervention of NATO, which cost the lives of about 160,000 people.

The Lebanese station NourTV has been very successful airing a series of broadcasts by Hassan Hamade entitled “The Arab Spring, from Lawrence of Arabia to Bernard-Henri Levy.”

The authors develop therein the idea that the “Arab Spring” is a remake of the “Arab Revolt” of 1916-1918 orchestrated by the British against the Ottomans. This time, Westerners have manipulated situations to upset a generation of leaders and impose the Muslim Brotherhood.

In fact, the “Arab Spring” is false advertising. Now, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Gaza are governed by a brotherhood; on the one hand imposing a moral order and on the other supporting Zionism and pseudo-liberal capitalism, that is to say the interests of Israel and the Anglo-Americans. The illusion was dispelled. Some authors, like Syria’s Said Hilal Alcharifi, now deride the “NATO spring“.

Secondly, the leaders of the Syrian National Council (SNC) as well as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) commanders are not democratic at all, in the sense that they would be favourable to “a government of the people, by the people, for the people“, according to Abraham Lincoln’s formula taken from the French Constitution.

Thus, the first president of the SNC was the Paris academic, Burhan Ghalioun. He was in no way “a Syrian opponent persecuted by the regime” since he circulated freely in and out of his country.

Nor was he a “secular intellectual” as he claims, since he was the political advisor to the Algerian Abbassi Madani, President of the Islamic Salvation Front (ISF), now a refugee in Qatar.

His successor, Abdel Basset Syda [2] entered politics only in the last months, and immediately established himself as a mere executor of US wishes. Upon his election as head of the SNC, he pledged not to defend the will of his people, but to implement the “road map” that Washington drew up for Syria: The Day After.

                                                        Logo of the “Free Syrian Army”

Nor are the Free Syrian Army fighters champions of democracy. They recognize the spiritual authority of sheikh Adnan Alrour, a takfirist preacher, who calls for the overthrow and killing of Assad, not for political reasons but simply because Assad is of the Alawite faith, that is to say a heretic in the preacher’s eyes.

All of the identified officers in the FSA are Sunnis and all of the FSA brigades are named after historical Sunni figures. The “revolutionary tribunals” of the FSA sentence their political opponents to death (and not only supporters of Bashar al-Assad) and they slaughter the unbelievers in public. The FSA program is to end the secular regime installed by the Baath, the SSNP and the Communist Party in favor of a pure religious Sunni regime.

The Syrian conflict was premeditated by the West

The western will to end Syria is known and it is quite sufficient to explain current events. Let us recall some facts that leave no doubt as to the premeditation of these events [3].

"Progressive" Journalism's Legacy of Deceit

Global Research
Prof. James F. Tracy

Progressive-left media persist in acting as propaganda outlets for the US-NATO destabilization of Syria, thus placating a politically conscious audience that might otherwise be mobilized against acts of imperialism and violence. The historical record suggests how this is not the first time "Progressive publicists" were used to sell a war.

A recent report in the UK Guardian by Charlie Skelton explains that Western news outlets remain willing victims (or accomplices) in a propaganda campaign for US -NATO led Syrian intervention being carried out by skilled and well-financed public relations practitioners. According to Skelton, “the spokespeople, the ‘experts on Syria’, the ‘democracy activists’ … The people who ‘urge’ and ‘warn’ and ‘call for action’" against the Assad regime are themselves part of a sophisticated and well-heeled public relations effort to allow NATO forces to give Syria the same medicine administered to Libya in 2011. “They're selling the idea of military intervention and regime change,” Skelton reports,

“and the mainstream news is hungry to buy. Many of the "activists" and spokespeople representing the Syrian opposition are closely (and in many cases financially) interlinked with the US and London – the very people who would be doing the intervening. Which means information and statistics from these sources isn't necessarily pure news – it's a sales pitch, a PR campaign.”[1]

If one thinks that a revelation of this magnitude would be cause for other major Western news media to reassess their reportage of the Syrian situation they would be greatly mistaken. Amy Goodman's Democracy Now is a case in point. Since the beginning of the “Arab Spring” color revolutions the foremost broadcast venue of “independent” progressive-Left journalism in the United States has used its reportage to obfuscate and thereby advance the campaign for regime change in Egypt, Libya, and now Syria. The tactics of disinformation and death squads employed in Libya and Syria should be easily recognizable since they were refined against popular Central American moves toward popular enfranchisement by the Reagan administration during the 1980s.

As Finian Cunningham recently observed [2] Democracy Now’s adherents look to Goodman on a regular basis because of her perceived credibility; she is the self-avowed “ exception to the rulers”—a tireless crusader against the restrictive corporate media where there remains a “deafening silence … around the issues—and people—that matter most.”[3] Today Goodman’s vaunted program is contributing to the very violence being committed by Western-backed mercenaries against the Syrian people.

Goodman and similar Left media are engaging and convincing precisely because of their posturing against corporate media control, economic exploitation and war mongering. Occupying the outer contours of National Public Radio's milquetoast programming, Democracy Now’s self-described “independent” reportage takes on a certain aura of authenticity among its supporters—mainly progressives with concerns for social justice and human rights.

Such characteristics make Goodman and Democracy Now among the most effective sowers of disinformation. Further, their role in assuaging an educated and otherwise outspoken audience serves only to aid and abet the wanton military aggression Goodman and her cohorts claim to decry. In light of the program’s broader coverage of the “Arab Spring,” such reporting must be recognized and condemned as sheer public relations for NATO and the Obama administration’s campaign of perpetual terrorism and war on humanitarian grounds.[4]

On July 19, shortly after interviewing a mysterious “Syrian activist” who allegedly participated only with the assurance of anonymity, Democracy Now brought on McClatchy’s Beirut correspondent David Enders, who presented the US-NATO-backed mercenary army’s actions that resulted in the deaths of high-level Syrian government officials as part of a spontaneous popular revolution that was gaining momentum.

“We’ve seen the rebellion grow in numbers and as far as its organizational capability. And they’ve attempted to strike at Assad and his inner circle multiple times … I think what we’re seeing is just the government crumbling under the weight of a massive rebellion. It simply can’t put it down.”[5]

Goodman and Democracy Now are in fact upholding progressive journalism's greatest perversion: consciously using the public's faith in its performance and moral rectitude to promote the latest war—a tradition that dates back almost one hundred years. At that time journalists with public personae remarkably similar to Goodman’s were employed to persuade the American public on US entry into World War One. This was done with the government's careful consideration of how ostensibly liberal crusaders were held in high regard by the broader public.

Include Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi among Growing Masses that Doubt al Qaeda's role in 9/11

Washington Times
Ben Birnbaum

Egypt’s likely next president has long called for the U.S. to hold a “scientific conference” to determine the real culprits of the Sept. 11 attacks, having cast doubt on al Qaeda’s role in 9/11 for years.

“The U.S. administration has never presented any evidences on the identity of those who committed that incident,” longtime Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi is quoted as saying in a 2007 posting on Ikhwanweb, the Islamist group’s official English website.

“The Muslim Brotherhood and others demanded a transparent trial with clear evidence and to have court rulings,” he said after the sixth anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. “We confirm that this isn’t a defense to those who committed these actions, but we only seek the truth.”

Mr. Morsi last week won the most votes in the first round of Egypt’s presidential election, and he is heavily favored to win a runoff this month against secular former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik.
He is not the only candidate to have floated conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks: Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh - a former Brotherhood figure who finished fourth in last week’s race - said last year that he believed 9/11 was “part of a conspiracy.”

Mr. Morsi’s remarks underscore the challenges the U.S. likely will face in a Brotherhood-dominated Egypt. The group’s Freedom and Justice Party won 47 percent of the seats in Egypt’s parliamentary elections and is expected to play a dominant role in crafting a new constitution.

A call for proof

While condemning the 9/11 attack “regardless of its doer,” Mr. Morsi lambasted the U.S. response to them, calling the Bush administration “the world’s terrorism leader” and accusing it of getting “in line with Israeli occupation forces in aggression, injustice, encroaching lands and raping women.”

IMF Banksters worst fear: Egyptians launch campaign to repudiate Mubarak's debt's

Islamist
Samer Attallah

Mubarak contracted the debt so Mubarak should pay. Let the international banksters like IMF and WB who lent the money to Mubarak go collect it from him. Third world debt repudiation is the criminal banksters worst nightmare. Argentina did it successfully in the 90 and now there are Egypt, Pakistan Philippians even India is a possible candidate for debt repudiation

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts
8 November 2011 by Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debt

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts has the honour to announce the formation of a joint Egyptian-Tunisian committee for the Dropping of Debts in coordination with the campaign in Tunisia. The Campaign to Drop Tunisia’s Debt aims at auditing and dropping the debts of the dictator Bin Ali and was launched in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution. This coordination between two popular Arab movements is a practical translation of the achievements of the Arab Spring.

The joint committee shall work on the exchange of experience in the reviewing and auditing of debts; coordinating the two campaigns’ activities and organising relations globally. Such cooperation aims to cause the dropping of all odious, illegitimate external debts; which were amassed with foreign governments and international financial institutions by the corrupt regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Zine Al-Abidine Bin Ali.


Founding Statement

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts was conceived as part of the January 25th Revolution, and affirms the right of the Egyptian people to assert collective control over all matters related to their life and the future of coming generations. This is a popular movement that aims to facilitate Egypt’s economic independence from the many forms of exploitation, subordination and resource misappropriation that were imposed upon the people of Egypt during the past decades by the regime of the ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak and his collaborators abroad.

Egyptian police accused of killing protesters get light sentences

PressTV

A Cairo court has given suspended one-year sentences to 11 policemen accused of killing protesters during last year’s uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

The policemen were accused of killing 22 protesters and injuring 44 others outside a police station in Cairo's Hadaeq al-Qobba neighborhood in one of the deadliest days of the protests on January 28, 2011.

The policemen were guilty of using live ammunition in violation of orders, the court ruling said, adding that “the right of self-defense here is legitimate, but the defendants exceeded that right.”

The ruling, carried by the official news agency MENA, said the people outside the police station were genuine protesters, but they were later infiltrated by a “misled minority” that attacked the police.

The sentence means the policemen will not face prison time.

Families of the dead protesters gathered outside the court and chanted "Death to the murderers!"

Since the ouster of Mubarak last February and coming to power of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, dozens more people have been killed.

Protesters have regularly taken to the streets to denounce the ruling military, accusing it of stifling dissent, stalling on reforms and of human rights violations.

Planned Regime Change in Syria

Global Research
Stephen Lendman

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria had peace and calm until Washington intervened belligerently.

Strategies and tactics vary. Objectives are consistent. They involve replacing independent regimes with pro-Western ones by any means, including war.

Three unwinnable ones rage. Nonetheless, Obama plans more. Syria's target one. For the past year, US-instigated violence ravaged parts of the country. Thousands have been killed, many others injured.

Syria's gripped by fear. Heavily armed killer gangs rage out of control, and direct foreign intervention looms. More on that below.

Assad's wrongly blamed. The blame game targets victims, not villains. As a result, ongoing conflict continues.

February 26 was potentially historic. Syrians overwhelmingly approved constitutional reform. Only the fullness of time will tell if promised change, in fact, happens. Western intervention may prevent it.

After 90% of Syrians supported draft constitutional changes, Assad issued decree No. 94 officially approving it, effective February 27.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said referendum results show Syrians support him. Moscow called on all sides to concur, stop violence, and engage in dialogue with no preconditions.

On February 27, in an article titled "Russia and the Changing World," Vladimir Putin noted similarities between Syria and Libya. He warned against foreign intervention.

He called Arab Spring changes replacement of one force for another. In other words, everything changed by stayed the same, and in countries like Egypt, got worse. He said "Moscow won't allow anyone to repeat the Libyan scenario in Syria."

Court Case to Determine Whether City Park Ordinances Trump the 1st Amendment

Dick Kaiser

Judge David Dingledine

In the wake of the 2011 uprising in Tunisia, the Arab Spring, and the ongoing world-wide Occupation Movement, the American court system has begun to consider the thousands of criminal citations dealing with violations of local ordinances that challenge the right of persons to peacefully assemble in public spaces for the purpose of exercising their right to petition their government.

As has been reported widely, the Occupation Movement has been protesting the corrosive effect that concentrated wealth, termed the 1%, has on society, particularly on the political system. Using the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution, which affords citizens the inalienable right to assemble and protest government policies, occupations throughout the country have permanently occupied public parks and plazas to convey their demand that the democratic process be reformed to benefit the common good, the 99%.

Over 700 citations have been issued by the Tucson (AZ) police to overnight occupiers in two local parks since October 2011. The municipal court is currently considering the merits of these citations.

On Friday, February 17th, Judge David Dingledine heard the motion to dismiss the citations against Occupier Mary Decamp. The following 35 minute video documents this proceeding which features well know defense attorney Bill Risner and assistant city Allen Merritt presenting their arguments.

The judge's ruling is expected soon.