The Events in Egypt: A Cautionary Tale on the History of US Foreign Policy Tactics

[Solve et Coagula]

The Events in Egypt: A Cautionary Tale on the History of US Foreign Policy Tactics

by William Blum
Global Research, February 4, 2011
killinghope.org

In July of 1975 I went to Portugal because in April of the previous year a bloodless military coup had brought down the US-supported 48-year fascist regime of Portugal, the world's only remaining colonial power. This was followed by a program centered on nationalization of major industries, workers control, a minimum wage, land reform, and other progressive measures. Military officers in a Western nation who spoke like socialists was science fiction to my American mind, but it had become a reality in Portugal. The center of Lisbon was crowded from morning till evening with people discussing the changes and putting up flyers on bulletin boards. The visual symbol of the Portuguese "revolution" had become the picture of a child sticking a rose into the muzzle of a rifle held by a friendly soldier, and I got caught up in demonstrations and parades featuring people, including myself, standing on tanks and throwing roses, with the crowds cheering the soldiers. It was pretty heady stuff, and I dearly wanted to believe, but I and most people I spoke to there had little doubt that the United States could not let such a breath of fresh air last very long. The overthrow of the Chilean government less than two years earlier had raised the world's collective political consciousness, as well as the level of skepticism and paranoia on the left.

Washington and multinational corporate officials who were on the board of directors of the planet were indeed concerned. Besides anything else, Portugal was a member of NATO. Destabilization became the order of the day: covert actions; attacks in the US press; subverting trade unions; subsidizing opposition media; economic sabotage through international credit and commerce; heavy financing of selected candidates in elections; a US cut-off of Portugal from certain military and nuclear information commonly available to NATO members; NATO naval and air exercises off the Portuguese coast, with 19 NATO warships moored in Lisbon's harbor, regarded by most Portuguese as an attempt to intimidate the provisional government. In 1976 the "Socialist" Party (scarcely further left and no less anti-communist than the US Democratic Party) came to power, heavily financed by the CIA, the Agency also arranging for Western European social-democratic parties to help foot the bill. The Portuguese revolution was dead, stillborn. 1

The events in Egypt cannot help but remind me of Portugal. Here, there, and everywhere, now and before, the United States of America, as always, is petrified of anything genuinely progressive or socialist, or even too democratic, for that carries the danger of allowing god-knows what kind of non-America-believer taking office. Honduras 2009, Haiti 2004, Venezuela 2002, Ecuador 2000, Bulgaria 1990, Nicaragua 1990 ... dozens more ... anything, anyone, if there's a choice, even a dictator, a torturer, is better.

We are so good even our enemies believe our lies
I've devoted a lot of time and effort to the question of how to reach the American mind concerning US foreign policy. To a large extent what this comes down to is trying to counterbalance the lifetime of indoctrination someone raised in the United States receives. It comes in news stories every day.

Continue to read:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=23078

[Solve et Coagula]

'Egyptian people will not let US pick leaders for them'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrumsEmw1VY

[Solve et Coagula]

Egypt: A Sleeping Giant Awakens

by Rannie Amiri
Global Research, February 5, 2011

Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what’s theirs

And finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin' bout a revolution

– Tracy Chapman’s Talkin’ Bout A Revolution, 1988

The sleeping Egyptian giant has finally awoken.

The Arab world’s most populous nation—85 million strong—has been in political hibernation for 30 long years.

The deep slumber is now over. The reign of Hosni Mubarak will end, sooner or later, as a rejuvenated population sheds apathy’s blanket.

After Israel , Egypt is the second-largest recipient of United States foreign aid. Other than what was embezzled, the $1.5 billion in annual assistance has been spent entirely on the military and bolstering Mubarak’s internal security apparatus. It ultimately ensured the Camp David state remained complaint with the diktats coming out of Tel Aviv and Washington.

Indeed, as a result of peace treaties with its eastern and southern neighbors, Israel has had a free hand in continuing the repression and subjugation of Palestinians.

Take, for example, the crippling, inhumane siege imposed on Gaza . Even the most basic good and supplies were prevented from entering the tiny enclave. (This was the price Palestinians paid for holding democratic elections, which Hamas handily won.) Egypt , to no one’s surprise, enforced all embargo restrictions asked of it.

Continue to read:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=23091

[Solve et Coagula]

The Most AMAZING video on the internet #Egypt #jan25

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThvBJMzmSZI

[Solve et Coagula]

Gerald Celente: Tunisia - Egypt - Civil War - Regional War - To The Great War of 21st Century

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXy3znxeUt0

[Solve et Coagula]

EGYPT, THE US AND THE ISRAEL LOBBY

February 5, 2011 posted by Debbie Menon

Israel is generally a significant factor in events in the Middle East, and to understand ongoing happenings it is important to understand the historic and current Israeli connections.

By Alison Weir / Counterpunch

Minimally explored in all the coverage of the momentous Egyptian uprising taking place over the last 10 days are the Israeli connections.

A central and critical reality is that it is US tax money that has propped up Hosni Mubarak’s despotic regime over the past 30 years, and that this money has flowed, from the beginning, largely on behalf of Israel.

Israel is generally a significant factor in events in the Middle East, and to understand ongoing happenings it is important to understand the historic and current Israeli connections.

The violent creation, perpetuation, and expansion of a state based on ethnic expulsion of the majority inhabitants has been central to Middle East dynamics ever since Israel was created by European and American Zionists in 1948 as a self-identified “Jewish State.”

Israeli leaders and outside observers realized from the very beginning that the only way to maintain such a violently imposed, ethnically based nation-state was through military dominance of the region. For Israel to achieve this military dominance required two things:

(1) The creation of a military more powerful than all the others in the region combined. Israel has achieved this through a uniquely massive influx of US tax dollars and technology, occasionally purloined but largely procured through the machinations of its lobby. (Among other things, Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons, a fact almost never mentioned by American media or the American government.)

(2) The prevention of any other nation in the region from becoming a threat. Israel has attained this goal through several strategies: divide and conquer techniques, direct invasions and attacks (or pushing the U.S. to carry out attacks), and the propping up of despots who would openly or tacitly agree (sometimes in return for similarly large influxes of American tax money) not to support the rights of those oppressed and ethnically cleansed by Israel.
For the past 30-plus years, Egypt has been among those despotic regimes supported by the U.S. and Israel in return for turning its back on Palestinians.

The Egypt-Israeli peace treaty of 1979 has occasionally been mentioned in news reports on the current uprising. That treaty was an arrangement in which the Egyptian leader of the time, Anwar Sadat, stopped opposing Israel’s previous ethnic cleansing of close to a million indigenous Palestinian Muslims and Christians (at least 750,000 in 1947-49 and an additional 200,000 in 1967). This removed the most populous and politically significant country from the Arab front opposing Israel’s illegal actions and led the way for other nations to “normalize” relations with the abnormal situation in Palestine.

In return, Israel gave back to Egypt the Sinai, Egyptian land it had illegally annexed in its 1967 war of aggression. (Egypt had almost managed to re-conquer this land and more in 1973, but the most massive airlift in American history, engineered by Henry Kissinger under pressure from the Israeli lobby, was sent to Israel, preventing this outcome.)

Also in return, the United States agreed to give Egypt more US tax money than any other nation, with the exception of Israel. Since 1979, Egypt has received an annual average of close to $2 billion in economic and political aid /a/ from American taxpayers (most of whom have known nothing about this use of our money). /3/ The arrangement has allowed Mubarak to stay in power for decades despite periodic attempts by Egyptians to free themselves from his ruthless rule.

At the same time, it’s important to note that the U.S., as broker of the peace treaty, gave Israel even greater rewards: guaranteeing Israel’s oil supplies for the next fifteen years; assuring Israel of American support in the event of violations; committing to be ‘responsive’ to Israel’s military and economic requirements; and promising a variety of major transfers of technology and aid, including $3 billion to relocate two Israeli air bases out of the Sinai, where, as journalist Donald Neff noted, they had no right to be in the first place.

In fact, the American financial arrangement with Israel, which had begun years before Egypt’s, has been far cozier than Egypt’s: Israel gets considerably more money from the US, even though its population is one-tenth of Egypt’s; there is little U.S. oversight of how it uses that money; and, unlike Egypt, which receives its allotment monthly, Israel receives its handout in a lump sum at the very beginning of the fiscal year (which means that Americans then pay interest for the rest of the year on money that the government has already given away, while Israel makes interest on it).

In the cases of both Israel and Egypt, the Israel lobby’s role in procuring this U.S. tax money has been central. While this fact is largely missing from US media reports and many liberal/left analyses, it is frequently referred to in Israeli and Jewish media. For example, a current Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) report states: “The question of whether to stake a claim in the protests against 30 years of President Hosni Mubarak’s autocracy is a key one for the pro-Israel lobby and pro-Israel lawmakers because of the role they have played in making Egypt one of the greatest beneficiaries of U.S. aid.”

Continue to read:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/02/05/...ael-lobby/

[Solve et Coagula]

VIDEO: Egypt: Speeding police vehicle plows into protestors

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lrUhs7GR6A

[Dunamis]

I'm sorry, but starting 6 threads (edit, 7 threads!) all on the same current affairs topic (the current situ. in Egypt) and posting them all to the same sub-forum could be classed as spamming, so I have joined them all together.