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Arab Spring:
Thursday, July 11 @ 22:52:42 UTC |  By Ramzy Baroud
July 11, 2013
“The revolution is dead. Long live the revolution,” wrote Eric Walberg, a Middle East political expert and author, shortly after the Egyptian military overthrew the country’s democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi on July 3.
But more accurately, the revolution was killed in an agonizingly slow death, and the murders were too many to count.
Mohamed ElBaradei, a liberal elitist with a dismal track record in service of western powers during his glamorous career as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is a stark example of the moral and political crisis that has befallen Egypt since the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak.
ElBaradei played a most detrimental role in this sad saga, from his uneventful return to Egypt during the Jan. 2011 revolution – being casted as the sensible, western-educated liberator – to the ousting of the only democratically-elected president this popular Arab country has ever seen. His double-speak was a testament not only to his opportunistic nature as a politician and the head of the Dostour Party, but to the entire political philosophy of the National Salvation Front, the opposition umbrella group for which he served as a coordinator.
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Arab Spring:
Tuesday, July 17 @ 13:37:16 UTC | By Esam Al-Amin
July 17, 2012 - counterpunch.org
Over the past weekend Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Egypt for the first time since the election in late June of Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Dr. Muhammad Morsi. During her visit, Clinton not only met with the new president but also sat with Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the same military council that has been effectively ruling the country since Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February 2011.
According to the New York Times, Clinton declared during her meeting with the Egyptian Islamist president that the U.S. “supports the full transition to civilian rule with all that entails” and emphasized the need for “building consensus across the Egyptian political spectrum.” The following day Clinton met with Tantawi after which she declared that the U.S. would like to see the Egyptian military return to “purely national security role.”
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Arab Spring:
Monday, June 18 @ 10:05:19 UTC | By Esam Al-Amin
June 18, 2012 - counterpunch.org
The masks dropped. The cards are shown.
For over a year, Egyptians have wondered who was leading the efforts to frustrate and obliterate their nascent revolution, or what was dubbed in the local media as the “third party” or the “hidden bandit.”
But the mystery is no more.
It was none other than the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the same body that took power from deposed president Hosni Mubarak under the guise of leading the transitional period towards democracy. It was a masterful work of political art.
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World Focus: Egypt, the American Way
Wednesday, March 23 @ 04:34:09 UTC | Model of the Status Quo?
By Gregory Elich
March 23, 2011 - counterpunch.org
In Egypt, a people's uprising has succeeded in removing Hosni Mubarak from power. The main battle, however, lies ahead. Will there be a substantive transformation of Egyptian society, or will the economic and political system remain essentially unchanged, with only a new face occupying the presidential office? There are powerful forces that are determined to steer events in the latter direction.
While many in the Egyptian middle class, fed up with the corrupt rule of Mubarak, may be content to see the establishment of formal electoral democracy, the poor of Egypt hope for genuine economic and political change. Their grievances are many.
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World Focus: Behind the Arab Revolt is a Word We Dare Not Speak
Saturday, February 26 @ 18:58:12 UTC | By John Pilger
February 24, 2011 - johnpilger.com
Shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I interviewed Ray McGovern, one of an elite group of CIA officers who prepared the President’s daily intelligence brief. McGovern was at the apex of the "national security" monolith that is American power and had retired with presidential plaudits. On the eve of the invasion, he and 45 other senior officers of the CIA and other intelligence agencies wrote to President George W. Bush that the "drumbeat for war" was based not on intelligence, but lies.
"It was 95 per cent charade," McGovern told me.
"How did they get away with it?"
"The press allowed the crazies to get away with it."
"Who are the crazies?"
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World Focus: The Revolutionary Rebellion in Egypt
Wednesday, February 16 @ 10:00:23 UTC | By Fidel Castro
February 15, 2011 - counterpunch.org
Several days ago I said that Mubarak’s fate was sealed and that not even Obama was able to save him.
The world knows about what is happening in the Middle East. News spreads at mind-boggling speed. Politicians barely have enough time to read the dispatches arriving hour after hour. Everyone is aware of the importance of what is happening over there.
After 18 days of tough struggle, the Egyptian people achieved an important objective: overthrowing the main United States ally in the heart of the Arab nations. Mubarak was oppressing and pillaging his own people, he was an enemy to the Palestinians and an accomplice of Israel, the sixth nuclear power on the planet, associated with the war-mongering NATO group.
The Armed Forces of Egypt, under the command of Gamal Abdel Nasser, had thrown overboard a submissive King and created a Republic which, with the support of the USSR, defended its Homeland from the Franco-British and Israeli invasion of 1956 and preserved its ownership of the Suez Canal and the independence of its ancient nation.
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World Focus: From Counter-Attack to Departure Day: Mubarak's Last Gasps
Friday, February 04 @ 11:41:07 UTC | By Esam Al-Amin
February 04, 2011 - counterpunch.org
There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.”
--V. I. Lenin (1870-1924)
“Victory is accomplished through the perseverance of the last hour.”
--Prophet Muhammad (570-632 AD)
According to the CIA's declassified documents and records, senior CIA operative, Kermit Roosevelt, paid $100,000 to mobsters in Tehran, in early August 1953, to hire the most feared thugs to stage pro-Shah riots.
Other CIA-paid men were brought weeks later, on August 19, into Tehran in buses and trucks to take over the streets, topple the democratically elected Iranian government, and restore Shah Reza Pahlavi to his thrown. It took the people of Iran 26 years, enormous sacrifices, and a popular revolution to overthrow the imposed, corrupt and repressive rule of the Shah.
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World Focus: The Making of Egypt's Revolution
Tuesday, February 01 @ 12:23:07 UTC | By Esam Al-Amin
February 01, 2011 - counterpunch.com
Freedom lies behind a door, closed shut
It can only be knocked down with a bleeding fist
-- Egyptian Poet-Laureate Ahmad Shawqi (1869-1932)
On April 21, 2008, an assistant high school principal placed an advertisement in Al-Ahram, the largest daily newspaper in Egypt, pleading disparately with President Hosni Mubarak and his wife to intervene and release her daughter from prison.
It turned out that her 27 year-old daughter, Israa’ Abd el-Fattah, was arrested 10 days earlier because of her role in placing a page on Facebook encouraging Egyptians to support a strike in the industrial city of al-Mahalla that had taken place on April 6.
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World Focus: Is the Game Really Over for Mubarak?
Monday, January 31 @ 20:22:22 UTC | By Ron Jacobs
January 31, 2011 - counterpunch.org
As I write this on January 31, 2011, Al-Jazeera English is ireporting that six of its reporters have been arrested by the Egyptian military. Meanwhile there has been ongoing speculation as to whether or not the Egyptian military will support the ongoing protests against the Mubarak regime. The live video feed via internet is broadcasting protests across the nation. The protests are growing in front of the camera's eye.
The old Mubarak cabinet has been dismissed and a new one is being assembled. A tighter curfew has gone into effect across the nation. Yet everyone is ignoring it. Furthermore, calls for a general strike are growing; the opposition has issued a call for a "mega-protest" on Tuesday and the major Islamist opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood has called for a peaceful transfer of power.
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World Focus: New York Times: Democracy is Bad for US Foreign Policy
Sunday, January 30 @ 18:41:36 UTC |
By Stephen Gowans
January 30, 2011 - gowans.wordpress.com
Here's New York Times reporter Mark Landler on Washington's reaction to the popular uprising in Egypt against the anti-liberal democratic, human rights-abusing Hosni Mubarak, a "staunch ally.”
Washington is "proceeding gingerly, balancing the democratic aspirations of young Arabs with cold-eyed strategic and commercial interests.”
In other words, democracy and human rights are fine, but not when strategic and commercial interests are at stake.
Landler goes on to say that Washington's cold-eyed commitment to realpolitik and profits "sometimes involves supporting autocratic and unpopular governments – which has turned many of those young people against the United States.”
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War and Terror: What Democracy Looks Like: The Streets of Cairo
Tuesday, March 25 @ 14:22:22 UTC | By GARY LEUPP
"Show me what democracy looks like!" begins a chant often heard at recent U.S. antiwar demonstrations. "This is what democracy looks like!" comes the reply. People in the streets, marching, fired up with righteous rage, determination to stop the imperialist juggernaut and faith in the possibility of a better world. This is what we are now seeing, too, in the Arab world.
The neocons steering the Bush administration have emphasized their intention to promote "freedom and democracy" in the Arab world. Maybe they're succeeding, but not as they intend. Their criminal assault on Iraq is serendipitously driving the Arab masses into political life, the genuine politics of the street, heated debate, and the empowerment that grows out of confrontation with power. Peaceful rallies meet with cordons of baton-wielding police, tear gas, water cannons, bullets and mass arrests. The people respond by directing their fury, not only at U.S. imperialism, but the pro-U.S. governments that seek to deny them the democracy of street protest. The democracy that might start to look like revolution.
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