PORTRAIT OF A CAIRO LIBERAL AS A MILITARY BACKER

PORTRAIT OF A CAIRO LIBERAL AS A MILITARY BACKER

    Tuesday, August 20, 2013   No comments

In Cairo Friday morning, before the midday call to prayer and an afternoon of protest marches that resolved in violence, chaos, and the overnight siege of a mosque, I jumped into a taxi and slipped across the Nile into the quiet, semi-suburban neighborhood of Dokki. I was there to meet with Mohammed Aboul-Ghar, a seventy-three-year-old academic and politician who has been a leading figure in Egypt’s liberal establishment, and now represents one of the most confounding elements of the country’s current crisis: the wholesale alignment of old-guard liberals with the military.

Aboul-Ghar’s reputation in pro-democracy politics is well earned. In 2004, during the era of Hosni Mubarak, Aboul-Ghar co-founded the March 9th organization, a group of professors who bravely fought against the interference of state-security services into the operations of Egypt’s universities. In the run up to the 2011 revolution, he was an organizer and spokesman for the National Association for Change, an anti-authoritarian organization led by Mohammed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize Winner and Egypt’s most prominent liberal politician. And after Mubarak finally fell, he helped create what many viewed as the most substantial political party for liberals, the Social Democratic Party. That fall, as a temporary military regime ruled Egypt, I had met with Aboul-Ghar, who happily assured me that the military would soon be leaving the management of the country to civilians. “My feeling is that the military wants to have a safe retreat,” he said then. “A safe retreat and all their previous privileges.”

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The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq

The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq

    Monday, August 19, 2013   No comments

The CIA has publicly admitted for the first time that it was behind the notorious 1953 coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, in documents that also show how the British government tried to block the release of information about its own involvement in his overthrow.

On the 60th anniversary of an event often invoked by Iranians as evidence of western meddling, the US national security archive at George Washington University published a series of declassified CIA documents.

"[T]he military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran.

The documents, published on the archive's website under freedom of information laws, describe in detail how the US – with British help – engineered the coup, codenamed TPAJAX by the CIA and Operation Boot by Britain's MI6.

Britain, and in particular Sir Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, regarded Mosaddeq as a serious threat to its strategic and economic interests after the Iranian leader nationalised the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, latterly known as BP. But the UK needed US support. The Eisenhower administration in Washington was easily persuaded.

British documents show how senior officials in the 1970s tried to stop Washington from releasing documents that would be "very embarrassing" to the UK.

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read also: US President Barack Obama made a major gesture of conciliation to Iran on Thursday when he admitted US involvement in the 1953 coup which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh... read more >>

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused Egypt’s interim rulers of committing state terrorism and compared army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has accused Egypt’s interim rulers of committing state terrorism and compared army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad

    Sunday, August 18, 2013   No comments

“The Al-Fath Mosque is under siege. People’s place of worship is innocent. They have burned, destroyed our mosques in Syria and in Egypt. Either Bashar or Sisi, there is no difference between them. There is no salvation with oppression,” Erdoğan said during a defiant speech in the northwestern province of Bursa Aug. 17 where he attended the launching ceremony of an urban renovation project.

Erdoğan also slammed Egyptian officials for describing supporters of toppled President Mohamed Morsi as “terrorists.”

“People are saying ‘we ask for our vote to be honored.’ But there are those calling them terrorists. But I am saying that state terrorism is currently underway in Egypt,” Erdoğan said.
 

“There are currently two paths in Egypt: Those who follow the Pharaoh, and those who follow Moses,” he added.    

Erdoğan condemned the attacks against worship places, including churches, but said that supporters of Muslim Brotherhood where mostly protecting those places from being vandalized.

He also argued that Turkey could be next for "those who were stirring unrest" in Egypt.

The tension between the countries peaked as Turkey recalled its ambassador in Cairo, sparking a reciprocal move by Egypt. Egypt’s Ankara envoy, Abdurrahman Selahaddin, had urged Turkey not to side solely with the Muslim Brotherhood and respect “all Egyptians.”

However, Erdoğan refused to step back from his defiant rhetoric vis-à-vis the July 3 military takeover, accusing those who have financially helped the “coup regime” of being accomplices to its actions. He also assured that Ankara was pursuing diplomatic efforts to increase pressure on the interim government that took power following the military coup.

“We had wanted the United Nations Security Council to speak with a fair and determined voice. The Organization of the Islamic Conference and the European Union have no face left to look at in the mirror,” he said.

Erdoğan said Turkey and Qatar had been the only supporters of the Morsi government, while also thanking the Netherlands and Denmark for their position during the current Egyptian turmoil.

Erdoğan saluted several times the crowd with the 'Rabaa' sign made by raising four fingers, which has become the symbol of the killings in Egypt and at the Rabaa al-Adawiya Square where the supporters of the ousted President Mohamed Morsi have gathered for weeks.

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Propaganda Trap: Egyptian Elite Succumb to the Hate Virus

Propaganda Trap: Egyptian Elite Succumb to the Hate Virus

    Saturday, August 17, 2013   No comments

Just weeks ago, they decried police violence and the heavy-handed state apparatus. Now, after over 600 members of the Muslim Brotherhood were killed on Wednesday, the Egyptian elite is silent. Those who dare to voice empathy are given a hostile reception.

Egyptian Amir Salim has the classic profile of a revolutionary. As a politically engaged young lawyer, he specialized in human rights cases, a focus which earned him nine trips to jail under Hosni Mubarak. When the revolt against the aging despot gained traction in 2011, Salim quickly became one of its spokesmen. After Mubarak's fall, he founded an organization which promulgated the creation of a civilian state free from military meddling. In a book published in 2012, he dissected the structures of Mubarak's police state.

Now, the same police that Salim attacked so vehemently in his book, has responded to demonstrations in Cairo with shocking brutality. At least 623 people, the vast majority of them civilians, were killed in street battles earlier this week.
And what is Salim doing? Sitting in a popular café in the Cairo city center, he says things like this: "The Muslim Brothers are a sickness and the police have to eradicate them." And: "The police and the army were only defending themselves." He adds that "the problem will only have been solved when the last Muslim Brother who causes problems is locked away in prison." When asked about the obvious human rights violations perpetrated on the dead and wounded, he said: "And what about the rights of those who live near the protest camps? What about their right to be able to enjoy their apartment?"

Welcome to Egypt under General Abd al-Fattah al-Sissi. The country is so polarized that people are no longer able to feel any empathy whatsoever for others. It is a country in which the smartest and most critically thinking intellectuals are now spewing little more than propaganda, with people on both sides of the deep political divide displaying a penchant for simplification, vilification and agitation. Those who ask critical questions run the risk of being physically attacked, an experience that many foreign journalists have encountered in recent days

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On the streets of Cairo it's not just a fledgling democracy that lies in ruin. US policy too is in tatters - in the eyes of many - or at least America's reputation and credibility

On the streets of Cairo it's not just a fledgling democracy that lies in ruin. US policy too is in tatters - in the eyes of many - or at least America's reputation and credibility

    Saturday, August 17, 2013   No comments

Since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, the US has struggled to strike a balance between support for the tenuous progress towards democracy and protection of its national security interests.

The White House has tried hard to work with whoever is in power in Egypt but has ended up with no friends and little influence in Cairo.

Washington's recent diplomatic efforts in Egypt have failed one after the other. Up until his removal from power, the US tried to counsel Mr Morsi to accept a compromise with the army and the protesters.

The US also appealed to the military not to remove Mr Morsi. After the coup, Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns travelled to Cairo twice to help mediate between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. But even getting an audience in Cairo these days is a hard task for US officials.

The US refrained from calling Mr Morsi's removal a coup for fear of upsetting the country's generals and the millions who demanded Mr Morsi's departure.

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Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has said that radical Sunni Islamists were likely behind a car bomb attack that killed dozens of people in the Lebanese group's stronghold in southern Beirut

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has said that radical Sunni Islamists were likely behind a car bomb attack that killed dozens of people in the Lebanese group's stronghold in southern Beirut

    Saturday, August 17, 2013   No comments

The leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah on Friday blamed Sunni extremists for a string of attacks targeting the group’s strongholds over the past few months, including a car bombing that killed 22 people and wounded more than 300 a day earlier.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said all preliminary investigations showed Takfiri groups - a term for Sunni radicals - were likely behind the bombing in a predominantly Shiite southern suburb of Beirut, as well as other recent attacks.

He also pledged to double the number of Hezbollah fighters in neighboring Syria, who have travelled there to support the regime of President Bashar Assad.

“If you think that by killing our women and children ... and destroying our neighborhoods, villages and cities we will retreat or back away from our position, you are wrong,” he said in a speech to supporters marking the end of the 2006 monthlong war with Israel.

“If the battle with these terrorist Takfiris requires for me personally and all of Hezbollah to go to Syria, we will go to Syria,” he said, drawing thunderous applause from thousands of supporters gathered in a village in south Lebanon bordering Israel. The crowd watched him speak on a large screen via satellite link.

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Murdering the Wretched of the Earth

Murdering the Wretched of the Earth

    Saturday, August 17, 2013   No comments

Radical Islam is the last refuge of the Muslim poor. The mandated five prayers a day give the only real structure to the lives of impoverished believers. The careful rituals of washing before prayers in the mosque, the strict moral code, along with the understanding that life has an ultimate purpose and meaning, keep hundreds of millions of destitute Muslims from despair. The fundamentalist ideology that rises from oppression is rigid and unforgiving. It radically splits the world into black and white, good and evil, apostates and believers. It is bigoted and cruel to women, Jews, Christians and secularists, along with gays and lesbians. But at the same time it offers to those on the very bottom of society a final refuge and hope. The massacres of hundreds of believers in the streets of Cairo signal not only an assault against a religious ideology, not only a return to the brutal police state of Hosni Mubarak, but the start of a holy war that will turn Egypt and other poor regions of the globe into a caldron of blood and suffering.

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Commander Haji Ahmad told Firat News that his fighters killed two members of the Turkish Intelligence Service (MIT) in the last two days of clashes in the region of Sad Shahab where the Kurdish villages are located

Commander Haji Ahmad told Firat News that his fighters killed two members of the Turkish Intelligence Service (MIT) in the last two days of clashes in the region of Sad Shahab where the Kurdish villages are located

    Friday, August 16, 2013   No comments

The general commander of Jabhat al-Akrad said 117 Kurdish villages in the Aleppo / Bab / Azzaz triangle are under attack by al-Qaeda-linked groups and several brigades of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The attacks came as a result of  a meeting attended by more 70 commanders of the FSA in Turkey last July.

Commander Haji Ahmad told Firat News that his fighters killed two members of the Turkish Intelligence Service (MIT) in the last two days of clashes in the region of Sad Shahab where the Kurdish villages are located.

The names of two members of the MIT will be announced in the coming days, said the al-Akrad commander, noting that the presence of these people is proof of Turkey's role in the attacks on Kurds.

Many villages in the region of Sad Shahab, including the villages of "Kafar Zikhir", "Narabiya", "Kubbessini", "Kul Suruch", "Jabal Assi" and "Tall Maden" were surrounded 14 August by armed groups affiliated to al-Qaeda. Groups hiding behind the cover of Islam to commit horrendous crimes.

About 500 people were kidnapped in the villages of Kafar Zikhir and Narabiya, Kurdish sources said. Nearly 1,500 families were forced to flee their homes.

Jabhat al-Akrad (the Kurdish Front), consists of members of all ethnic groups in Syria and are allied of the People's Defense Forces (YPG).  This organisation has forty battalions, especially in the areas of Bab Azzaz and Aleppo. It is part of the military council of the "real" Free Syrian Army (FLA).
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A leading member of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has accused Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu of being engaged in efforts to aid armed groups in Syria that have been clashing with Syria's Democratic Union Party (PYD)

A leading member of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has accused Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu of being engaged in efforts to aid armed groups in Syria that have been clashing with Syria's Democratic Union Party (PYD)

    Friday, August 16, 2013   No comments

A leading member of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has accused Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu of being engaged in efforts to aid armed groups in Syria that have been clashing with Syria's Democratic Union Party (PYD), an offshoot of the PKK, the Taraf daily claimed on Friday.
“I'm well informed that Mr. Davutoğlu has been giving special attention to these forces for more than a year,” said Murat Karayılan, a member of the executive council of the Kurdistan Communities' Union (KCK), an umbrella group for the PKK, according to Taraf.

Syria's ethnic Kurdish minority, led by the PYD, gave signals about a month ago that in the absence of a central government in war-torn Syria it was planning to establish an autonomous administration to cater to the needs of locals in the northern part of the country. Now, some of the Islamist groups fighting the Syrian regime, such as the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, have turned their weapons against the Kurds. Fighting between the PYD and the Islamist groups has continued since then.

Karayılan, who is also the head of the PKK's armed wing, the People's Defense Forces (HPG), said that the policy he attributed to Davutoğlu only makes sense if Kurds are seen as the enemy. He added that the attacks on Kurds in northern Syria are part of a plan to stop Kurds from getting stronger and obtaining power. The HPG, Karayılan said, has been reorganized to respond to the new situation. Reports say the HPG is now in a position to cooperate militarily with Peshmerga forces under Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, and to Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Iraq's Kurdish president. Karayılan said the PKK is preparing to establish a professional army.

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A protester attacked Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ and was immediately stopped by security forces at a ceremony he attended today to commemorate Alevi - Bektaşi figure Hacı Bektaş Veli in Nevşehir

A protester attacked Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ and was immediately stopped by security forces at a ceremony he attended today to commemorate Alevi - Bektaşi figure Hacı Bektaş Veli in Nevşehir

    Friday, August 16, 2013   No comments

The protester, who hit Bozdağ in the chest, was identified as Hüseyin Satı, a local journalist. Satı was detained by police after his attempted move failed.

“How dare you to come here,” Satı shouted before trying to punch Bozdağ.

...

Before the incident, Bozdağ delivered a speech about Alevi culture and Hacı Bektaş Veli, but was continually protested by many of the attendees, some of whom carried Turkish flags and posters of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

The crowd also chanted “everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance,” one of the main slogans from the Gezi Park protests, which began May 31.

A three-day festival to honor Hacı Bektaş Veli is hosted in the town that bears his name, Hacıbektaş, every year in mid-August.

“The Hacı Bektaş Veli commemoration activities help us understand him better and aid our walk on his enlightened way, which started centuries ago,” Bozdağ said amid boos.

Bozdağ also said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was working to meet the demands of Alevis, which were set to be announced soon.
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