Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on August 20, 2013
The Nile Runs Red With Blood
Egypt’s US-financed armed forces have gone to war against Egypt’s people. Arab spring has become Arab winter.
So far, army and security police have scored brilliant battlefield victories against unarmed men, women and children, killing and wounding thousands who were demanding a return to democratic government.
The latest Cairo protests by supporters of the elected Morsi government have been scattered by gunfire and huge armored bulldozers resembling the giant vehicles used by Israel to smash Palestinian barricades and protesters. All Egyptians opposing the Sisi dictatorship are now officially, “terrorists.”
Egypt’s generals and hard right Mubarakist supporters have ditched any pretense of civilian government and now rely on the bayonet and tank. The men with the guns make the rules.
This is the third fairly elected Arab government to be overthrown or besieged, like Gaza, by Western-backed military regimes. Unlike Algeria, where the first elected government was crushed, Egypt’s Islamists have no arms and are unlikely to be able to mount serious domestic resistance aside from some pinprick attacks in Upper Egypt and Sinai.
The bloody Mubarakist counter-revolution, financed by Saudi Arabia and some Gulf monarchies, has put the United States, Egypt’s patron, into a serious jam. Washington was forced to denounce the coup and ongoing state repression as “deplorable,” in the words of US State Secretary John Kerry.
However, weeks earlier the clearly confused Kerry had praised the coup that overthrew Egypt’s first democratically elected government as “restoring democracy.” He refused to brand the military putsch a coup, for that would have meant cutting off annual $1.3 billion in US payments to Egypt’s armed forces, a key US ally. President Obama has simply ducked the whole issue.
Since Washington preaches democracy, civilian rule, and human rights, it can’t be seen to be openly backing Egypt’s brutal military and security forces. So the Obama administration has been pussyfooting around events in Egypt, pleased to see Egypt’s generals in charge and the Islamists out of power, but unwilling to say so.
US Mideast policy is run from five different power centers: the White House, State Department, Pentagon, CIA and Congress. America’s powerful pro-Israel lobby gives Congress its marching orders over Egypt, controlling financial aid, food supplies and weapons deliveries. In effect, Israel is a sixth player in this game.
Now, the White House has made a significant demarche: after delaying delivery of a few F-16 fighters, it just cancelled the annual US-Egyptian Brightstar military exercise, an affirmation of the Pentagon’s domination of Egypt’s military. This is a blow to the Pentagon and a boost for Kerry’s State Dept.
Egypt’s 440,000-man armed forces is joined at the hip with the Pentagon which controls its arms, funding, training, high tech equipment, promotion lists, spare parts and munitions supply, the latter two always kept in short supply.
So Egypt’s generals will soon have to sheathe their swords, withdraw tanks, and fabricate a figurehead civilian government that at least looks somewhat real, instead of the army-installed cigar-store Indians now supposedly running the government.
This will mollify Washington. After all, the US happily backed and financed the brutal Mubarak military regimes for three decades, turning a blind eye to its torture, executions and massive human rights violations. Western media obediently lauded the Mubarak dictatorship as a pillar of Mideast stability (US code talk for status quo).
Expect a rapid return to Mubarakism once the bloodshed dies down, and likely his release from jail. The prisons will fill again, the torturers will work overtime and Egypt will return to full-blown military-police state led, most likely, by General al-Sisi, who looks every inch a modern dictator in his dark sunglasses and medals.
For once, leading Republican senator John McCain got it right: Washington should cut off all military aid to Egypt he urged, as US law mandates. America’s image in the entire Muslim world is at risk. Remember when President Obama called for full democracy across the Mideast?
But Obama is reluctant to move because Israel, its friends in Congress, and the Pentagon brass are squarely behind Egypt’s military regime, as they were behind Mubarak. Egypt, and its US guided armed force, are a pillar of the American Mideast Raj.
16 Comments on "The Nile Runs Red With Blood"
dissident on Tue, 20th Aug 2013 2:48 am
“western media obediently”… Indeed the western media is right there with Pravda under the USSR and the press under gleichschaltung in Nazi Germany. The media is always a mouthpiece for the establishment.
bobinget on Tue, 20th Aug 2013 4:59 am
Let the show trials begin.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/08/2013819235957279126.html
BillT on Tue, 20th Aug 2013 5:38 am
Maybe only the beginning of the second act in this play… ?
Arthur on Tue, 20th Aug 2013 10:14 am
Indeed Bill, this drama is not over yet.
“America’s powerful pro-Israel lobby gives Congress its marching orders over Egypt,”
Wouldn’t ‘control’ be a more apt description of the state of affairs?
“In effect, Israel is a sixth player in this game.”
Make that the 1st, 2nd…6th.
“America’s image in the entire Muslim world is at risk.”
Lol!! Even the Constitutional jihadists from the libertarian internet underground need to brushup their understanding of the world outside the US.
Now that in the eyes of US State Secretary John Kohn the Egyptian army has ‘restored democracy’, maybe they can cart back the Great Democrate Mubarak into office, provided he is able to mumble an AEI prefabricated text from a piece of paper and not look like a 3500 year old mummie in the process, although such a spectacle could be good for tourism.
“The media is always a mouthpiece for the establishment.”
Fortunately there is now a new kid on the media block, monitored and hated and feared, but not controlled by the establishment: the internet, a geopolitical nouveautee, as many Arab ruler is no longer able to confirm.
TIKIMAN on Tue, 20th Aug 2013 11:24 am
So what.
Let the scum of the desert kill each other. Just means less Muslims to kill freedom lovers.
BillT on Tue, 20th Aug 2013 11:42 am
The internet is the next target of the Empire. Be patient. It is a little more difficult to control, but not impossible.
Arthur on Tue, 20th Aug 2013 12:19 pm
“It is a little more difficult to control, but not impossible.”
Don’t think so. The economic importance of the internet is far too great to simply cancel it. People on average spend more time on the internet these days than on the MSM, which are dying on their feet. Maybe they can take down blogs and websites, but not email and thus subscription lists.
GregT on Tue, 20th Aug 2013 5:10 pm
Never say never Arthur,
I am sure that they are working very diligently, to find a way.
bobinget on Tue, 20th Aug 2013 5:12 pm
The US has canceled all military aid to Egypt which
has almost overnight, it seems, gone from a right frypan into a Fascist Inferno.
dissident on Wed, 21st Aug 2013 12:13 am
There will be a flurry of disavowals like in the case of Pakistan, but at the end of the day the junta will be Uncle Sam and his allies’ bestest pals.
BillT on Wed, 21st Aug 2013 2:17 am
I am not too sure that internet is not controllable. It was developed for warfare, not the public. It went public when they saw the profits that could be made, but, like everything else, it can fade and disappear. Or be restricted to just corporations, governments, and the military. Soon the world will not be able to afford it as they will be trying to buy food and shelter.
As for commerce, that worked before the internet and will work after.
Ricardo on Wed, 21st Aug 2013 2:29 am
We have over 50 million muslims in europe, the blood shed will be coming here if we don’t drive out these rats.
GregT on Wed, 21st Aug 2013 4:37 am
Sounds like quite the infestation, almost twice the population of Canada! I know how much you believe in not relying on others to take care of your problems for you. If it were me, I wouldn’t be wasting my time posting on peak oil websites, when I had so much more important work to do.
Arthur on Wed, 21st Aug 2013 7:27 am
In the Dutch parlament every parlamentarian has an iPad.lol On the Dutch nine o’clock news (at 20:00) the newsreader often carries a stupid iPad. The entire government is planning for the implementation of e-government. In schools all kids have a tablet. Even in war torn Syria, the government can afford to switch off the internet every now and then during critical operations. It is not going away, no politician has the power to do that. All they can do is monitor it, but only because internet users are too lazy to implement a few measures, like encryption and browsing via anonymizers or carrying out google searches via startpage.
Arthur on Wed, 21st Aug 2013 7:59 am
Greg, why do you think Sarajewo, Bagdad, Damascus or Beirut are different from London, Amsterdam, LA or even Toronto? They are not. Same conditions, same results. When the old post-WW2 globalist powerstructure dies, for whatever reason (financial crash, resource depletion, lost war), the cards are going to be dealt anew. Why do you think these first four cities became hell holes? Because they were ethnically mixed. Were. That’s why Japan, Korea and indeed the Philipines will be relatively quiet, where Anglosphere and western continental Europe are going to be the new Valley of Tears once the economic conditions really go south. Not there yet and could last another 5-20 years.
GregT on Thu, 22nd Aug 2013 2:39 am
Arthur,
I don’t doubt that this may very well be the case, but my question is: What can be done about it? I don’t see any point in complaining about it, or putting others down. There are just as many on both sides that will be responsible if ethnic violence breaks out. Pointing fingers at one side or the other will not solve anything. Labelling an entire group of people with a derogatory name promotes violence, it does nothing but cause the hatred that foments civil unrest in the first place.
The way I see it is, a person needs to take action him or herself, instead of expecting others to solve their problems. If they don’t like something, they should do something about it, or move on.