Better than Nixon saying (as Vice President) “you won’t have Dick Nixon around anymore” Of course he lied. Later he said “I am not a crook!” Again, he perjured.
Trump was very succinct. To the point. “I’m fucked” … actually, he’s sodomized with a shovel, sideways so it would hurt more.
The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘President Mursi’ has pretty much made his personal peace with the US government, the US Pentagon funded Egyptian military, and the US backed Apartheid State of Israel and is trying to establish a Far Right, ‘Islamic’ clergy dictatorship over the Egyptian people. The Egyptian population is now in full rebellion against this possible prospect… Egyptian protesters storm the Muslim Brotherhood HQ in Alexandria, Egypt …Let’s hope they succeed against this plot to stop a real democracy from being developed in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country.
The Egyptian Revolution has been jump started once again! Egypt unrest: Anti-Mursi protests intensify …This is what the US government’s rush to create multiple regime changes through war across the region, alongside the continuing Israeli violence against the Palestinian people is actually unleashing.
Hurray, President Morsi! You continue to defy low expectations and continue to push the limits of the constraints that the US government has tried to put on you. Morsi has opened Gaza so that the Palestinians held prisoner there can perhaps now begin to leave! Israel will continue to try to enslave Palestinians or simply push them to elsewhere. Still, it is a great move for now, Morsi! Stand firm. Morsi meeting opens a door on Gaza blockade.
Hillary thinks that she and Barack can continue brokering the US government desired breakup of the Egyptian popular rebellion against the US made- Egyptian military, but she might well be completely wrong??? Egyptians pelt Clinton motorcade with tomatoes Protesters chant 'Monica, Monica', throw shoes and water bottles at US secretary of state's motorcade.
First the Egyptian military brokered a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, where the Left candidate was pushed off and out of the runoff. The Muslim Brotherhood seemed to think that they were then going to be allowed to SHARE power with the US-made military monster that has ruled Egypt for decades, hiding the generals’ rule behind Mubarak, the now dying ex-dictator.
But the Egyptian military wants it all, because Muslim Right Wingers are not good for business and making money is precisely what the generals most specialize in. Certainly they do not do good in keeping the country free of outside imperialist control.
The generals prefer the stability of a military dictatorship hiding behind the international complicity of pretending that democracy somehow exists in Egypt. They want their man in as ‘president’ if at all possible? But the people are no longer willing to tolerate this game, even if governments of other countries still are.
All this puts Israel, the US, and Western Europe in a big bind. How can they once again stabilize the biggest Arab country in terms of population? It’s an increasingly difficult task for them. The people are trying to rise up and toss their game playing away for good, and the international super rich and their governments know that. Power to the Egyptian People! The time for it is NOW! The so-called ‘international community’ will try once again to cancel the popular will of a proud people now in rebellion.
The Obama Administration and the Egyptian military have brokered a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and all is despair with the Egyptian population as their revolution in process has now seemingly been subverted. A supposed ‘Arab Spring’ has been turned into an ‘Arab Fall’, as the US government hopes to push the Arab people internationally back into yet another continuation of a US run ‘Arab Winter’, where the Israeli Jewish Apratheid State and US and Western Imperialism run the region and deplete the area of its oil. See Brotherhood claims victory in Egypt president vote
Replacing Mubarak the Dictator with the same ol’ corrupt crowd PLUS an add on of Islamic extremism lite is hardly what the Egyptian population was looking for or needed.
Going to Jerusalem to stand with Israel. uh huh…
Like, wouldn’t the Israelis prefer to have somebody who’s not a ChickenHawk? I mean, he had the choice and the chance to join the Army and go fight in the Middle East, chose not to. Same with most of the War Caucus in America. Both in and out of Official Government Service.
Glenn, you’re a putrid bitch.
Typical of your party affiliation, I know, and not even the worst piece of scum to float to the top of that cesspool.
There are Israelis who are working for peace, and you want instead to bring them more war, more death, more of your own sick brand of Hatred. You should be ashamed, so should any of your Demented Disciples. Unfortunately, none of you are.
I’ll say it, since there’s so much thundering silence on the issue, you’re going to start a war in which Jewish people get killed right along with everybody else, I guess that makes you Anti-Semitic. Like AIPAC who prop up Israel in the hopes that Israel will be destroyed in fire, thinking somehow that they’ll thus provoke God to action and that, somehow, God will smile upon them for destroying so many people and so much of His world. Delusional Bastards.
Apparently the Imperialists weren’t lying when they said they were bringing American-style “freedoms”
In Bahrain
and in Iraq… where the Iraqi Puppet Government PIGS have used American style Police Tactics to break up demonstrations, including, with the United States “Freedom” Army standing ready to back them up if the Peasants took the upper hand, simply slaughtering protestors. Something the Colorado Springs Gestapo knows full well, beating and arresting peaceful marchers (mostly elderly and disabled) in the St Patricks Day Parade 2007
“Protesters took to the streets of Iraq again today, demanding the same reforms that have become common cause across the Arab world. But while most nations have chosen violence or empty promises (both of which the Maliki government has dabbled in) to answer these demands, Iraq is also taking a very American idea.
On Wednesday the government announced a ban on protests in the capital city of Baghdad, saying that street vendors had complained it was hurting business. The answer was to sequester protesters into specially designated free speech zones.
The US began using “free speech areas” to move political dissent away from public view, nominally for security reasons, and became extremely common starting in 2004, when both major party conventions herded protesters into cages that were officially acceptable areas in which to protest.
The notion of doing so in Baghdad was mocked by protesters, who insisted that herding them all into soccer stadiums was absurd. Protesters continued to march in the streets instead, and no reports indicate any protesters showed up at the stadiums.”
The Puppet al Maliki knows how to dance when the Imperial Storm Troopers pull his strings.
And the soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors who say they’re fighting for OUR freedom there or anywhere else are still lying, as are any of their political allies.
One of the slaughters of demonstrators in Iraq happened very recently, when the War-Pigs were applauding demonstrations in Libya and Syria, but, again, having U.S. military standing by in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and of course, Iraq, to make sure the Peasants didn’t get too “uppity” and actually TAKE the “freedom” the U.S. Politicians lie so smoothly and say they’ve “given” to the region.
Meanwhile, Bradley Manning languishes in the Torture Dungeons at Quantico for telling the Truth which those same politicians dare not speak.
Hillary Rodham-Clinton, Imperialist that she insists she isn’t, said that Iran was “meddling” in the pro-democracy movements.
Oh, my! How DARE the Iranian people feel concern for something happening in their back yard! Especially since the Puppet Hereditary Dictators in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, and Kuwait are ROYALTY to and the Iranian government is composed of “Peasants”.
Yeah, piggoes, some “freedom” you’re exporting.
Gotta admit, though, the beat downs, arrests, torture and murders THEY commit with YOUR backing, are exactly the same as how you treat American Dissidents.
For once you Pig Bastards weren’t actually Lying.
Saddling up, out of the shadows of covert participation in the Libyan rebellion against bogeyman Gaddafi might be the US misstep which the Arab movement has been looking for. It’s not enough that Barack Obama’s active suppression of public uprisings in Bahrain and Yemen unmasked his administration as anti-Democratic, now he’s deploying the brute force already visited on Iraq. Bombs against Gaddafi will soon enough yield innocent civilian deaths and America’s War on Islam not only expands in North Africa, it pits itself against the entire pan-Arab revolution. The Qatar-based Al Jazeera Network may have its own motives for beating the drums of war against the loose cannon madman Gaddafi, while sparing the House of Saud similar vilification, but AJ has succeeded in goading the Western powers to put their weapons where their oil is, effectively throwing fuel on a fire that was stalling against the firewall of the dictator’s repressive might. Forget Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi, the adversary to unite Arabia will be the USA. And while conventional wisdom for Western governance is to announce unpopular policy during the black hole Friday news cycle, our arrogance shows itself tone-deaf to Islam. We might have figured it out watching what happened in Egypt’s Tahrir Square. The secular week-end in the West can erupt as Days of Rage after the reflection of Friday Prayers.
To the point that Oil Corporation workers in Bahrain and throughout the Persian Gulf, North Africa and the Indian Ocean are on high alert. The people there know which side of their toast is buttered and they’re plenty swoll about being ripped off, enslaved, targeted by Oil Company hired goons like the Blackwater Thug assassins, Drone Operators bombing them from secret rooms halfway around the world: Video Gamers who were recruited from living in their moms’ basement with the promise that they can Kill Humans for real and not face any consequences or put their own cowardly lives in danger. Now the oilfields, refineries and shipyards of the world are under security lockdown. The ever-nearby British-American military bases also in danger.
The tactics– IEDs, car bombs, hijacked airplanes? nope.
People. There have been reports throughout the long long long Imperial Wars of the Imperial Stormtroopers being fired on by the Imperial-armed Slave Soldiers of the local provinces. BP and the old Standard Oil allegedly broken up, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, Gulf.. getting back together again just in time… They’ve spent trillions of other people’s dollars (guilders, francs, marks and pounds too) and hundreds of millions of other peoples’ lives and more than a century of time building up their Business Empire or Empire Business whichever term better suits.
The Slave Rebellion that can overthrow the Empire,
People. Pure and simple. Their fellow slaves in the Provincial Armies and police forces, even in the Home Provinces of the Emperors, like America and England, joining in with their fellow slaves, tired of fighting their fellow Working Class at the orders of the Big Boss Man.
Only to be spat upon, despised, and impoverished by their Masters.
Such has happened in Wisconsin. And now, in Denver, and Colorado Springs, workers are coming together to support their brethren, across America and around the world.
The Imperial Powers love ignorance, they love an uneducated populace, and have fought hard to dismantle Public Education, Public Communications Systems like PBS, NPR, and the Internet. Cut and cut and cut but they weren’t fast enough.
Now, just when they were close to their goal of privatized access to anything, especially information… from deciding who would be allowed to attend school to who can say what on the airwaves, and even on the Internet, “Freedom of the Press but only for those who own the presses”.
Wham, Bam, Jan25 comes along, Wikileaks, and the base of the Imperial Wealth, the provinces and satrapies, where the “president” or “prime minister” or even “king” of each, including America and Britain, was just a provincial governor appointed by the Empire and tolerated only as long as he or she did the bidding of the Empire.
All these latifundium slaves from beggar to so-called Kings, under the supposedly unbreakable grip of the Empire, have a window of opportunity. The Empire is collapsing under the weight of its wealth and greed, now is the time for everybody to get out from under their landing zone. Let the Giant fall but don’t be under it when it crashes.
So-called respected activists in the West are weighing in on what’s next for the pro-Palestinian struggle. Based on their informal survey of comments and tweets of unknown provenance, the conclusion being reached is that Egypt needs a breather, that Egypt’s new Junta needs time to show its hand, before international efforts to relieve Gaza should resume. This, in vivid contrast to the activists of Pan-Arabia who know to strike while the iron is hot. Not only do Americans and Europeans have naught a trace of the courage shown by our North African allies, we don’t even have the stomach to see them rise to the occasion again. Prudence we caution, but who are we to pretend expertise on the matter? Where have well respected organizers got the Gazans so far? No one’s questioning best intentions. Tahrir Square #Jan25 means you’ve been served. Stand the fuck up, or shut it.
I’ll rally to support the Wisconsin unions, AND let’s hope they too can rise above what immediately threatens them to see that the oppressed of the world have a common enemy.
You’ll think I’m minimizing the rape of CBS reporter Lara Logan by of a mob of Egyptian “celebrants” at the height of the Mubarak-departure delirium, as reported so far, but I want to point out that hers is not even representative of the rapes suffered by the victims of America’s wars, crimes ongoing, tragedies unseen, unheralded and as a result -or not- eliciting scant sympathy from the American public. Yes it is embarrassing that white people care only about their own women, especially blonds. In fairness, the brown victims in other lands are kept from American view. Logan by the way is part of the apparatus which directs the media lens. Has Ms. Logan shown the humility to express concern for victims who cannot be airlifted to proper medical care, who may be victims of sex trafficking war zone gang rapes and have no rescuers? Perhaps as a media propagandist for US military enterprises, Ms Logan and her defense contractor husband will be opening their eyes to the millions of men, women and children whose lives are destroyed as a result of their livelihoods. The crime suffered by Lara Logan was as reprehensible as inexcusable, but it brings into sharp focus a dilemma I have: what fate worse than death do we wish on those who perpetuate America’s wars?
–And to really mix my malaprops, she sings for them that bought her. If there was one variable which got away from the underdogs of Egypt’s Jan25 Revolution, it was who would referee the endgame. While Hosni Mubarak’s stunning defiance Thursday night looked like a Hail Mary pass hoping to provoke the protesters to mayhem, as a defensive strategy he was moving the goalposts. Anticipating a capitulation, the Tahrir Square demonstrators made clear it was the entire regime which needed ousting, no Suleiman, no Emergency Law, an inviolate list of demands. Mubarak’s insulting buffoonery focused the great beast’s wrath like a rodeo clown. When the announcement came he was stepping down, who could not help but raise a cheer, drowning out the earlier precautions. Mubarak played Egypt like a fiddle, as he burned it, while the fat lady of state media called the game over.
It’s not over until the fat lady sings
So opera advises American football, in reality a game governed strictly by elapsed time. The expression describes the mutual sense that every competition has a natural denouement. Actually another false notion, as this feeling is not often shared by the side fallen behind at the final score.
I’ve convoluted ask not for whom the bell tolls– and if you have to ask how much it costs–, Hemingway and Bugatti I believe, to stress the obvious, that Wagnerian sopranos are kept in furs by the wealthiest of patrons. As epic as might be your struggle, unless you transcend the stage to torch the theater, the status quo raises and lowers the curtain. Without seizing the state media, if even that had been possible, and without staging a narrative to compete with Mubarak’s Greekest of tragic high dives, the Tahrir Square revolutionaries became mere players to please the king.
How could we have missed the grand theatricality of Mubarak’s televised last stands, lighting and makeup dialed to Bela Lugosi? Anyone who knows to dramatize a campfire tale by holding a flashlight under his chin also knows they don’t do that for their profile pic.
In all three of his televised responses to the Jan25 reformers, Mubarak could be paraphrased to have said “over my dead body.” It was a road map his adversaries probably should have heeded. Where is Mubarak now? He’s not gone, he hasn’t even left Egypt. We are informed Mubarak has stepped down by the same henchmen who told protesters “all your demands will be met,” then meeting none.
We learn now that Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Military is trying to clear Tahrir Square. It’s outlawing those who would cause chaos and disorder, and forbidding labor unions to assemble or strike. It’s refusing to end Egypt’s emergency law, or to release the unknown thousand detained during the protests. What of Suleiman and the regime’s other cronies? We have only Mubarak’s doppelganger in an army cap. Field Marshall “Happy” Tantawi, takes to the microphone with no other agenda it appears than to restore Egypt its accustomed sonorous normalcy. If Tibetan throat-singing has an antecedent we can wager now it was Pharaoh throat-talking.
Dance with the one who brought you
A mantra worth cursing out, when Americans wonder why their elected representatives answer only to their biggest campaign donors. So why would Egypt’s Jan25 upstarts have banked on winning the cooperation of the army? I almost said “their” army, but it’s bought and paid for by Mubarak, actually by the same interests who buy US politicians. Deciding not to challenge the army spared lives, but it’s left the military regime in place. Regime unchanged.
There’s a problem when you harness the protection of the military without knowing the intentions of its leaders. You can win a nonviolent revolution against the schoolyard bully if you’ve got the deterrence of “My Bodyguard,” but when the army does that on a national scale it’s called a “bloodless coup.” I’d be curious to know if nonviolence cultists rank bloodless coups among behaviors they condone.
Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement, chief instigators of the Jan25 uprising, attribute much of their organizing skill to training with OTPOR, the famously successful Serbian youth rebellion which ousted a Balkan despot. OTPOR is now a “pro-Democracy” consultant group that tours the world to awaken nascent freedom-seeking insurgents aspiring to popular uprisings. OTPOR refutes insinuations rising from the disclosure that it has accepted CIA funding, but curiously OTPOR is more often by happenstance advising malcontents in Venezuela, Bolivia, Equador, Iran, the usual outspoken rivals to US hegemony. What are they doing in Egypt? Had Hosni Mubarak gone rogue and we didn’t know it?
When pan-Arabists think of events in Tunisia and Egypt igniting popular uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East, there’s a line to draw between the common dictators and those more hostile to the West, whose rule is autocratic by necessity of having to defend against CIA and Mossad activities designed to foment instability.
Whether against anti-US foes or pro, it might be safe to say that OTPOR talks a good game, without having yet had a victory. They too deposed a dictator, but not his regime. The problem with OTPOR’s advice has to do with the end game.
I sat in on an OTPOR seminar once. They make a yearly visit to Colorado College to lecture for the nonviolence program. At the conclusion of one lecture I witnessed a tremendously telling aside, which emerged during the Q&A, and definitely wasn’t in the nonviolence syllabus. I wonder if the A6YM got the memo.
This presenter, a veteran of the student uprising that deposed Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, contended that after this victory for Democracy, etc, etc, after the attention span of the media had moved on, the same Milosevic cronies who’d been driven to the shadows, assassinated the opposition leaders and crept right back to power. His lesson, a mere thesis, which I paraphrase to reflect his muted emphasis: we should maybe have taken it one step further and made sure to kill the fuckers.
A6YM is still gambling they can separate the lower ranks of the army from the brass. If Robert Fisk’s report that Egyptian tank commanders refused January 30 orders to make a Tiananmen Square out of Tahrir, there may still be hope in such a strategy. But it certainly won’t work if no one will announce that it has worked. If a tyrant falls in the forest and no one hears, his rule doesn’t fall. The funeral cortege of Genghis Khan killed everyone in its path to keep word of his death from spreading across the empire until his successor could consolidate power. If you’re not going to push him off the cliff literally, perhaps Slavoj Zizek is right to say you’ve got to create a Tom and Jerry moment where despots like Mubarak see that there is no longer any foundation beneath him, where visualizing his own demise brings it upon himself. But can that be done without having director’s cut over the narrative?
What kind of farce are we perpetuating to pretend that Hosni Mubarak must be granted a dignified exit? What dignity commanded firing on unarmed protesters? Are we to pretend men who torture to retain their power can be cajoled to release it?
Instead, the Egyptian rebels find themselves with no ground beneath their feet, their “victorious revolution” now a meme being used to rally dissenters against America’s chief adversary Iran.
For a few interminable minutes there, okay– days –and bloody, millions of Egyptians had taken to the streets rejecting the legitimacy of Egypt’s authoritarian regime. The despotic Mubarak refused to budge and experts deemed the outcome a “stalemate.” Really? A preponderance of citizens greater than most voter turnouts, versus an unmovable leader, and commentators want to call it a draw? Worse is overlooking the obvious about the leaderless opposition forces. Jan25 came together to demand freedom, which the West equates with Democracy. But the Egyptian activists accomplished it through Anarchism. The West fears the Muslim Brotherhood, but the real banned party is the anti-globalist youth movement whose name must not be spoken. When President Obama pretends the US will shepherd Egypt through its “transition” he is sidestepping the real epiphany of Tahrir Square, a people united by idealism, minus a government. “Anti-government” protesters, precisely.
According to to news analysts, Obama commending the Egyptian military for not firing into the crowd should be a sign that the Egyptian PEOPLE want the military to run the transfer of power. And worries about “geopolitical consequences” sure. OTHER puppet dictators might get overthrown, mustn’t allow that. And it interferes with “our” plans to bomb Iran.
After Hosni Mubarak did his best last night to bite his thumb at his gaping-mouthed subjects, the heart of humanity aches in anticipation of the potential of angry bloodshed Friday in the streets of Cairo. Egypt’s JAN25 organizers have so far held steady to a winning strategy of nonviolent protest, in spite of the tremendous state repression, and as yet it’s only moved them forward. But Mubarak has proved that the success of demonstrations is not judged by public opinion. Revolutions very traditionally involve an overthrow. Despotic torturers rarely capitulate to appeals to their conscience. Before the revolutionaries can ensure the universal support of the Egyptian people, they will have to commandeer the state’s propaganda machine. Hopefully sympathetic employees will turn it over without forcing the demonstrators to compel its silence. While it might be prudent to guard against provocateurs inciting mayhem, public audacity wanes without momentum. Let’s not discount the gains which the brave youth of Jan25 have won with violence. Tahrir Square would not have been gained without wave after wave of assaults against the ranks of riot police. Returning the thrown stones was the only action which kept Mubarak’s goons from overtaking Tahrir and slitting everyone’s throats. Whether Egypt’s freedom-seekers this Friday take the high road or the low, under fire from Mubarak’s security goons, we must support them.
As the Empire burns… “Rescue Mission” was the excuse for the ultimately FAILED invasion of Grenada, to draw attention away from the Iran/Contra cartel FAILURE getting skunked in Lebanon. And to divert attention from the British Naval bombardment of Argentina under pretext of defending an Imperial Possession and the fact that the U.S. Military, in direct renegation of the Constitutionally ratified treaty with the Organization of American States, was actively assisting the British Empire with their unlawful attacks against the people and nation of Argentina. Just a small part of that Wonderful Reagan/Maggot Thatcher Legacy that the right wing TeaTards are celebrating. Stupid Bastards.
The Cuban medical school on Grenada is still in operation, Cuba is still providing far more medical aid in the Caribbean nations than the United States, Grenada in the first actual election (not the Rigged One the U.S. Military imposed on them after the “liberation”) voted for the same Socialist government the U.S. had deposed.
The British Empire has declined even further since then, and will again be challenged on las Islas Malvinas “falklands” (named after a Scots sellout who sold Scotland to the English)
The next time, the Mighty Rule Britannia won’t be ruling the waves. They got sucked into or perhaps manipulated the U.S. attack on their Former Raj in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq. They no longer have the Imperial Navy to spare on another colonialist defense Belligerent Assault.
On the other hand, they do get to (pay for) another Wedding Extravaganza involving their overprivileged Dangerously Inbred Royal Family. While their American allies, at massive taxpayer expense, lose the rest of the Former Empire.
Including Egypt. Ireland? Gone from their grasp. Iraq? on the way out of the Empire. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Hong “Gone” Kong? Kenya, Zimbabwe? If they weren’t taking us down along with their empire it would be a pleasant jest…
Welcome, New Princess Kate! One of your long-deceased outlaw in-laws, your namesake, Katherine “The Great” died when her horse fell on her… in bed. –just one of a long line of miscreants in your new family. Jack “the Ripper” for instance, Vlad “The Impaler” Ivan “the Terrible” William “The Bastard” what wonderful surnames they bring! There’s not one class of crime in the world that cannot be assigned to that family name. Fratricide, parricide, matricide, infanticide, they’ll probably have to invent yet another way to say “murder” to fit it all in.
You should run like Hell away from that diseased family, they put the Funk in Dysfunctional. Your new Father in law is accused of killing your new husbands Mum, but of course you know that…
But you get to provide the same spectacle she did and for about the same reason. Just another Royal Distraction, bread and circuses as the Empire burns.
Remember the Maine? In 1898 a popular uprising was threatening Spanish rule in Cuba. 
The US Navy cruised to the rescue. The rescue of whom, we never got the chance to find out. An explosion aboard the USS Maine gave America the pretext to blame a Spanish torpedo. An America inflamed by a jingoist press declared war on Spain and promptly seized her colonies “to protect US interests,” by coincidence just as the indigenous populations were overcoming their colonizer and were about to win their freedom. Today a US attack fleet speeds toward Egypt. Washington asserts its mission is to evacuate US nationals if need be.
I’d like to imagine the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge will position itself off Egypt’s coast to facilitate the Egyptian government’s stable transition to Democracy.
Perhaps the fleet intends to augment the security which Hosni Mubarak is deliberately destabilizing in Egypt. Perhaps they will offer medical care for Egyptian protesters denied access to Cairo hospitals if their wounds incriminate the government. Perhaps sophisticated Navy electronics will provide an alternate internet backbone if Mubarak tries cut his people off the web. Perhaps the US Navy can help jam the state television station still broadcasting lies to the broader population. I’m hoping our navy can erect a gallows prominently on the bow, to threaten Mubarak, speaking in the only language the despicable dictator might understand, an urgency he doesn’t feel from the peaceful protesters of Tahrir Square.
Possible?
Is it more likely to be a false flag like the Maine? Remember the USS Liberty? That was a US intelligence ship attacked in 1967 by unmarked Israeli planes, hoping that Egypt would catch the blame? There was more to that story and anyway it didn’t work out.
Remember whatever boat it was attacked/not-attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident? That worked.
“Showing the Flag” doesn’t have to be false flag. Remember the USS Cole? Worked in Yemen. Traditional foreign policy teaches that gunboat diplomacy asserts military dominance. Actually it runs a calculated risk. It draws out indignation and a show of defiance. Because a military wants to flush out resistance sooner than being taken by surprise.
Remember the enterprising Marines in Iraq who drove around with a megaphone insulting the Prophet Mohammad? They repeated Jesus Killed Mohammad until every last proud Muslim to renounce their blasphemy was baptized in an obliteration of firepower.
Remember the Maine? Americans remember the Maine like it remembers the Alamo or 9-11. We have no idea. We have no sense of deja vu about the US spreading its forces in defense of empire. I’m really hoping this is not the equivalent of the Soviets sending their tanks into Hungary in 1956.
But Americans have nothing on the educated Egyptians. Whatever America’s gunships have in mind, the Arab world has seen it. Jan25 organizers continue to defy media expectations about the movement losing steam. Attendance keep rising, yesterday pro-Mubarak citizens were proclaiming their changed allegiance. Today the labor unions are recognizing the imperative of launching a general strike, and protesters are venturing outside of the central demonstrations, threatening government buildings and facilities.
With every successive day of victories for the Democracy-seeking demonstrators of Tahrir Square, I have every confidence that the Egyptians will outwit this latest US envoy convoy.
Why then weren’t they contracted by the U.S. Dept of (in)Justice to find the sender of the email on the White House LAN, who gave Pooter Libby the information to help the BushTards punish Valerie Plame Wilson for not backing up their LIES about WMDs? Wouldn’t the Capital Murders of 7000+ U.S. soldiers committed by the CheneyBush Kartel stir patriotic interest on the part of ANY of them? One of the Bush Lies was that they HAD initiated a thorough investigation into the Plame leak, but couldn’t find anything. Yet Disney and other entertainment outlets can find not only the ORIGIN of a file transfer, but also the computer receiving the data, or so they claim on all of the billions of IP addresses on the Internet, but they can’t find one person sending an email from a specific computer, at a specific time, from the White House which has a camera trained on every door, especially in a time of “heightened security”? On an extremely limited Local Area Network.
Since WHEN? Isn’t HBGary one of the firms contracted by not only the Dept of (in)Justice but also Homeland (in)Security and the Department of Remote Controlled Assassinations “Defense”?
Why do I suspect that the alleged hack attack on their website by “anonymous” is a Marinus van der Lubbe type of setup to convict without trial the persons HBGary and their whoremasters at DoJ and DoD had already targeted?
This is sick. On a day when the British are considering taking the first steps toward an Extraordinary Rendition to Guantanamo Torture Center of Wikileaks founder Assange, and BBC is reporting the “hack” against HBGary as though it’s an established fact, Beating the ol’ War Drum against Freedom, once more…
The top twenty Trending Searches on Google:
1. superbowl score by quarter
2. best superbowl commercials 2011
3. super bowl commercials 2011 youtube
4. darth vader commercial
5. christina aguilera national anthem
6. super bowl scores by quarter
7. danaher
8. pittsburgh post gazette
9. amazon eve
10. green bay press gazette
11. superbowl national anthem 2011
12. joan rivers go daddy
13. pittsburgh newspaper
14. black eyed peas halftime
15. beckman coulter
16. christina aguilera super bowl
17. arianna huffington
18. eminem chrysler commercial
19. star spangled banner christina aguilera
20. half time show super bowl 2011 video
The Empire is going DOWN in Egypt, in Yemen, in Tunisia, in Jordan, it’s spilling over into Iraq where the BushCheneyObama appointed President for Life of Iraq, Nouri al Maliki, has been frightened into stating he’ll give up his Imperial Backed Satrap-in-Perpetuity role in three years. (gives him and the Empire time to change their tune if things turn around for them, perhaps?)
NONE of these made the top twenty. Instead people are fixing their gaze on the Bread and Circuses Imperial Games.
The closest thing to any interest in what the Evil Empire is doing is some commercial involving Darth Vader. And Ms Aguilera not singing the National Anthem right. Of course the Racist Pricks who make up the American Right Wing will blame that on her Spanish surname and I’ll bet that none of them can actually sing the entire song.
That’s THEIR level of so-called “patriotism”. Drown out the FACT that their murder spree at home and abroad, like the Baby-killing Drone Strikes which, according to the USAF only kill “Militants” are actually killing more civilians and especially Children than they are “militants”.
Drown it out with racist inspired chants of “she can’t sing the National Anthem!” Ahem.
/rant
anyway… back to REAL NEWS, m’kay? Wikileaks is under real attack for publishing data such as the USAF admitting in what they THOUGHT were “internal” communications that they don’t know Who the Fuck They’re Killing in more than half of their Literally God-damned air strikes. But they claim to know that the only people they’ve killed were Militants.
Wikileaks founder Assange is being held on drummed up charges in anticipation of the WarPigs being able to kill him.
The WarPigs are actively seeking people who don’t bow down, lick their boots and refrain from mentioning the Truth that counters their LIES. A REAL Criminal is coming to Colorado Springs to receive a Hero’s Medal for his acts of treachery, lies, murder, theft, conquest… all in the name of God. The Imperial Vassal States are in open rebellion against the Empire, the Empire has bugger all they can actually do about it, and people worry about a football game instead.
The “barbarians” aren’t at the gates, they’re firmly ensconced in the seat of Imperial Power. And they obviously fully intend to destroy everything they possibly can on their way down to Hell. And they’ll do it in the name of God and of Freedom.
It’s an open air prison, a police state where all opposition voices are arrested. Our press is reporting the arrest of foreign journalist, what about the murder or disappearance of the #Jan25 organizers. On Thursday after a leadership consultation with Mohamed ElBaradei, the internet coordinators of the Tahrir Square uprising were arrested as they left ElBaradei’s house, with four further members of the April 6 Youth, a list of missing which now includes: Amr Salah, Shady El Ghazaly Harb, Naser Abdel Hamid, Ahmed Doma, Amr Ezz, Mostafa Shawky, Mohamed Arafat, Amal Sharaf.
Al Jazeera has reasserted live footage in Cairo today, for the Friday demonstration billed as “Day of Departure” meant to depose dictator Mubarak. Already gone are the US major network talking heads, fleeing in advance the predicted mayhem as if to dot the exclamation point of their Chaos in Egypt meme. Alas, they won’t be here to offer color commentary on the hundreds of dozens of demonstrators of indeterminate religious-political orientation massing for Egyptian on Egyptian rioting. For the rest of us, this is a veritable revolution before our eyes. Perhaps the monumental event of our lifetime. Regardless the outcome, most of us are probably so estranged from reality to recognize it. This is what Democracy looks like.
We only know representative democracy, warped beyond recognition by an electoral college system only a statistician’s mother could love. Switzerland is the only direct democracy we’re taught in school. But democratic participation in Switzerland is not much more complicated than a homeowners association in an affluent neighborhood. People power taking to the street, denouncing the illegitimacy of its authoritarian masters, leaderless, allied, that’s real democracy.
What a shame the American celebrities are missing the party. Williams and Couric fled with the expat community, Amanpour is already giving her veneer of respectability to the next interviewee, Zuckerberg not Assange, because the corporate media wants to call this a Facebook revolution sooner than Wikileaks’. Anderson Cooper is cowering on the hotel floor of an undisclosed location, unafraid to confess that he’s fearing for his life, working that [brown] people-are-revolting angle.
On the heroic independent media side, Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous spent the night in Tahrir Square, sleeping among the activists, half of them with bandaged heads, waking at intervals by the alarm sounding for anticipated stone-throwers.
None of the network journos showed any hesitation to criticize the harassment they encountered on the streets, though blaming Mubarak’s thugs was never explicit, and none of them veered from celebrating the riots as “Egypts killing each other.” Even Al Jazeera pretended to confuse the Pro and Anti sides, failing to discriminate between the side which was armed from the side taking cover, the knife wielders from desperate stone throwers trying to keep their attackers at bay.
Finally this morning an AJ text crawl mentioned 300 fatalities since the protests began January 25th, otherwise there has been scant mention of innocent civilians killed, some of them shot in the head by nighttime snipers.
All of the networks, even Al Jazeera express their incredulity that the demonstrators project no central leadership, failing to speculate why that may be.
Al Jazeera takes care to mention, every time they consult one of their three correspondents on the ground, that they omit speaker identities “for their own safety.” Even when they interview activists, the AJ anchors thank them for being brave enough to reveal their real names. Not discussed is the certain probability that calling out a demonstration leader will direct the security apparatus to deploy their snipers, summary arrest, or detention of family members. As the media wax horrific the barbarity of Cairo’s street culture chaos, they maintain a rudely unrealistic civil pretense to mask Egypt’s cruel police state.
My nightmare scenario, now that I’m looking over millions of peaceful undaunted Egyptians chanting for deliverance from their uncaring dictator? I worry about the US advisors reported to have flown into Cairo this morning, reassuring their cabby, it was reported, that everything was going to be fine.
I worry that Washington has spot on advice to offer Mubarak about how to respond to a “million man march.” After all, that’s old hat for DC. Let ’em eat waffle cake.
American protesters get the same response from Obama as they did from Bush 43. Praise for the glorious display of citizens exercising their constitutional rights. Talk away, shout it to the rooftops. Feel better? I hear you America. Thank you for your faith in the system. You are the change you’ve been waiting for. Please collect your refuse on the way out. Be sure to leave something in the hat to cover the expense of the Port-a-Johns. Thank you America, I’m honored, really. Yes we can, see you at the polls in 2012. Thank you for flying Air of Democracy. Bu’bye.
Point of no return in Egypt. Mubarak is overseeing crimes from which he will not be able to walk away. Pro-Democracy demonstrators cannot leave Al Tahrir Square. Not because it is barricaded and besieged by plain-clothed “Pro-Mubarak protesters” but because activists who go home face immediate arrest by the secret police. Even as thugs harass the protesters, unhindered by the Egyptian army, Human Rights Watch expresses most concern for the protest organizers who are vulnerable to infiltrators facilitating their abduction or assassination by sniper. Here’s an illuminating first hand account from an activist who writes as Sandmonkey:
UPDATE 3/3 AM: Colleagues report Sandmonkey apprehended ferrying medical supplies to Al Tahrir Square. First an inspiration, now his statement is prophetic. UPDATE 3/3 tweets: “I am ok. I got out. I was ambushed & beaten by the police, my phone confiscated, my car ripped apart & supplies taken” and “Please don’t respond to my phone or BBM. This isn’t me. My phone was confiscated by a thug of an officer who insults those who call.”
EGYPT, RIGHT NOW!
Thursday, 3 Feb 2011I don’t know how to start writing this. I have been battling fatigue for not sleeping properly for the past 10 days, moving from one’s friend house to another friend’s house, almost never spending a night in my home, facing a very well funded and well organized ruthless regime that views me as nothing but an annoying bug that its time to squash will come. The situation here is bleak to say the least.
It didn’t start out that way. On Tuesday Jan 25 it all started peacefully, and against all odds, we succeeded to gather hundreds of thousands and get them into Tahrir Square, despite being attacked by Anti-Riot Police who are using sticks, tear gas and rubber bullets against us. We managed to break all of their barricades and situated ourselves in Tahrir. The government responded by shutting down all cell communication in Tahrir square, a move which purpose was understood later when after midnight they went in with all of their might and attacked the protesters and evacuated the Square. The next day we were back at it again, and the day after. Then came Friday and we braved their communication blackout, their thugs, their tear gas and their bullets and we retook the square. We have been fighting to keep it ever since.
That night the government announced a military curfew, which kept getting shorter by the day, until it became from 8 am to 3 pm. People couldn’t go to work, gas was running out quickly and so were essential goods and money, since the banks were not allowed to operate and people were not able to collect their salary. The internet continued to be blocked, which affected all businesses in Egypt and will cause an economic meltdown the moment they allow the banks to operate again. We were being collectively punished for daring to say that we deserve democracy and rights, and to keep it up, they withdrew the police, and then sent them out dressed as civilians to terrorize our neighborhoods. I was shot at twice that day, one of which with a semi-automatic by a dude in a car that we the people took joy in pummeling. The government announced that all prisons were breached, and that the prisoners somehow managed to get weapons and do nothing but randomly attack people. One day we had organized thugs in uniforms firing at us and the next day they disappeared and were replaced by organized thugs without uniforms firing at us. Somehow the people never made the connection.
Despite it all, we braved it. We believed we are doing what’s right and were encouraged by all those around us who couldn’t believe what was happening to their country. What he did galvanized the people, and on Tuesday, despite shutting down all major roads leading into Cairo, we managed to get over 2 million protesters in Cairo alone and 3 million all over Egypt to come out and demand Mubarak’s departure. Those are people who stood up to the regime’s ruthlessness and anger and declared that they were free, and were refusing to live in the Mubarak dictatorship for one more day. That night, he showed up on TV, and gave a very emotional speech about how he intends to step down at the end of his term and how he wants to die in Egypt, the country he loved and served. To me, and to everyone else at the protests this wasn’t nearly enough, for we wanted him gone now. Others started asking that we give him a chance, and that change takes time and other such poppycock. Hell, some people and family members cried when they saw his speech. People felt sorry for him for failing to be our dictator for the rest of his life and inheriting us to his Son. It was an amalgam of Stockholm syndrome coupled with slave mentality in a malevolent combination that we never saw before. And the Regime capitalized on it today.
Today, they brought back the internet, and started having people calling on TV and writing on facebook on how they support Mubarak and his call for stability and peacefull change in 8 months. They hung on to the words of the newly appointed government would never harm the protesters, whom they believe to be good patriotic youth who have a few bad apples amongst them. We started getting calls asking people to stop protesting because “we got what we wanted” and “we need the country to start working again”. People were complaining that they miss their lives. That they miss going out at night, and ordering Home Delivery. That they need us to stop so they can resume whatever existence they had before all of this. All was forgiven, the past week never happened and it’s time for Unity under Mubarak’s rule right now.
To all of those people I say: NEVER! I am sorry that your lives and businesses are disrupted, but this wasn’t caused by the Protesters. The Protesters aren’t the ones who shut down the internet that has paralyzed your businesses and banks: The government did. The Protesters weren’t the ones who initiated the military curfew that limited your movement and allowed goods to disappear off market shelves and gas to disappear: The government did. The Protesters weren’t the ones who ordered the police to withdraw and claimed the prisons were breached and unleashed thugs that terrorized your neighborhoods: The government did. The same government that you wish to give a second chance to, as if 30 years of dictatorship and utter failure in every sector of government wasn’t enough for you. The Slaves were ready to forgive their master, and blame his cruelty on those who dared to defy him in order to ensure a better Egypt for all of its citizens and their children. After all, he gave us his word, and it’s not like he ever broke his promises for reform before or anything.
Then Mubarak made his move and showed them what useful idiots they all were.
You watched on TV as “Pro-Mubarak Protesters” – thugs who were paid money by NDP members by admission of High NDP officials- started attacking the peaceful unarmed protesters in Tahrir square. They attacked them with sticks, threw stones at them, brought in men riding horses and camels- in what must be the most surreal scene ever shown on TV- and carrying whips to beat up the protesters. And then the Bullets started getting fired and Molotov cocktails started getting thrown at the Anti-Mubarak Protesters as the Army standing idly by, allowing it all to happen and not doing anything about it. Dozens were killed, hundreds injured, and there was no help sent by ambulances. The Police never showed up to stop those attacking because the ones who were captured by the Anti-mubarak people had police ID’s on them. They were the police and they were there to shoot and kill people and even tried to set the Egyptian Museum on Fire. The Aim was clear: Use the clashes as pretext to ban such demonstrations under pretexts of concern for public safety and order, and to prevent disunity amongst the people of Egypt. But their plans ultimately failed, by those resilient brave souls who wouldn’t give up the ground they freed of Egypt, no matter how many live bullets or firebombs were hurled at them. They know, like we all do, that this regime no longer cares to put on a moderate mask. That they have shown their true nature. That Mubarak will never step down, and that he would rather burn Egypt to the ground than even contemplate that possibility.
In the meantime, State-owned and affiliated TV channels were showing coverage of Peaceful Mubarak Protests all over Egypt and showing recorded footage of Tahrir Square protest from the night before and claiming it’s the situation there at the moment. Hundreds of calls by public figures and actors started calling the channels saying that they are with Mubarak, and that he is our Father and we should support him on the road to democracy. A veiled girl with a blurred face went on Mehwer TV claiming to have received funding by Americans to go to the US and took courses on how to bring down the Egyptian government through protests which were taught by Jews. She claimed that AlJazeera is lying, and that the only people in Tahrir square now were Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. State TV started issuing statements on how the people arrested Israelis all over Cairo engaged in creating mayhem and causing chaos. For those of you who are counting this is an American-Israeli-Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood-Iranian-Hamas conspiracy. Imagine that. And MANY PEOPLE BOUGHT IT. I recall telling a friend of mine that the only good thing about what happened today was that it made clear to us who were the idiots amongst our friends. Now we know.
Now, just in case this isn’t clear: This protest is not one made or sustained by the Muslim Brotherhood, it’s one that had people from all social classes and religious background in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood only showed up on Tuesday, and even then they were not the majority of people there by a long shot. We tolerated them there since we won’t say no to fellow Egyptians who wanted to stand with us, but neither the Muslims Brotherhood not any of the Opposition leaders have the ability to turn out one tenth of the numbers of Protesters that were in Tahrir on Tuesday. This is a revolution without leaders. Three Million individuals choosing hope instead of fear and braving death on hourly basis to keep their dream of freedom alive. Imagine that.
The End is near. I have no illusions about this regime or its leader, and how he will pluck us and hunt us down one by one till we are over and done with and 8 months from now will pay people to stage fake protests urging him not to leave power, and he will stay “because he has to acquiesce to the voice of the people”. This is a losing battle and they have all the weapons, but we will continue fighting until we can’t. I am heading to Tahrir right now with supplies for the hundreds injured, knowing that today the attacks will intensify, because they can’t allow us to stay there come Friday, which is supposed to be the game changer. We are bringing everybody out, and we will refuse to be anything else than peaceful. If you are in Egypt, I am calling on all of you to head down to Tahrir today and Friday. It is imperative to show them that the battle for the soul of Egypt isn’t over and done with. I am calling you to bring your friends, to bring medical supplies, to go and see what Mubarak’s gurantees look like in real life. Egypt needs you. Be Heroes.
Anderson Cooper was attacked in Egypt while reporting by Mubarak supporters.
Anderson Cooper talked to The Huffington Post from Cairo on Wednesday night, and described what happened to him this morning, when he and his crew were attacked by a group of supporters of President Hosni Mubarak.
Amazing, isn’t it? Reporters attacked not by the “out of control Anti-American mob” but by the right wing…
“A man jumped out of the crowd and tried to push us around,” he said. “It sort of allowed other people in the crowd to focus on us. Other people came out of the crowd. Somebody punched me in the head, and from there things escalated quickly.”
The crew decided they had to turn around, he said. They tried to walk away “as calmly as possible,” but this did not calm the crowd around them.
“They were following us, screaming at us, ripping at our clothes,” he said. This lasted for five minutes. The mob threw bottles and water at the crew, and kept kicking and punching people. A few people tried to assist them, but they were overwhelmed by the pro-Mubarak group. Meanwhile, Egyptian soldiers watched the whole thing.
Of course they did. Much like many in Krowd in Kentucky attacking Lauren Valle were Kops. The U.S. Army stood by while we were attacked at St Paddy’s.
Cooper said he received four distinct blows to the head. “I’ve never been punched in the head before,” he said. “So they left an impression.”
He said it was the first time that he’d been directly attacked in a crowd while reporting a story. For now, he is staying away from Tahrir Square. It is not safe, he said, for any journalist to report from there.
At least Hosni Mubarak knew better than to deploy US military hardware against the pro-democracy demonstrators of Al Tahrir Square. The thug astride this camel was pulled off his mount, but nonviolent organizers intervened before the victims of his whip could exact retribution. The protesters released their captives to the Egyptian Army, to what fate it is unknown. The army showed its hand I believe when it did not act against the Mubarak thugs who hurled stones and heavy objects from the otherwise-guarded rooftops surrounding the square, hurling Molotov cocktails into the midst of the peaceful mass, even some aimed at the national museum.