Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Back to the military, Google hero

Notes 51

You’ve been hearing it from Obama and his spokespeople. The Egyptian military is the only institution trusted by Egyptians to broker a new government.

FAREED ZAKARIA GPS
Aired February 6, 2011
Now, the danger of some imagined future has blinded us to the present, and the problem in the present is military dictatorship. Egypt is not run by the Mubarak family, it is a military dictatorship. Since the officers' coup of 1952, all of Egypt's presidents have come from the armed forces. The country is ruled under martial law. Military courts trump civilian ones. Military leaders enjoy huge privileges and a fat budget in the current setup, and they will work very hard to preserve that position. [Sounds like U.S. military]

In fact, right now, what appears to be happening is a consolidation of military power. The civilians and business leaders who are in the cabinet have been fired. The new cabinet is 50 percent military. The governors of Egypt's provinces are now 80 percent military.

The military leadership has fought economic reforms because these reforms threaten the many industries which the army owns. It has also opposed political reform because it fears losing its tight grip on power. And yet, as events unfold, it seems that while having decided to sacrifice Mubarak, the military intends to stay formally in power.

But what Egyptians out on the street are protesting is not just Mubarak personally, but the whole system, the military dictatorship. If the United States is seen as having helped orchestrate a continuation of military rule under a democratic facade, we will deeply disappoint and frustrate the opposition in Egypt, which will inevitably turn more extreme and more religious. And then, some years hence, the Iranian scenario might well come to pass.

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Obama’s preferred candidate. Blessed by Israel according to Wikileaks. How much more Old Guard can you get than Suleiman?

Cables: Israel favored Egypt's VP Suleiman
Mon Feb 7
LONDON – Egypt's Vice President Omar Suleiman was long seen by Israel as the preferred candidate to succeed President Hosni Mubarak, secret U.S. diplomatic cables published Monday suggested.
According to an August 2008 cable released by WikiLeaks and published by the Daily Telegraph newspaper on its website, a senior adviser from the Israeli Ministry of Defense told U.S. diplomats in Tel Aviv that the Israelis believe Suleiman would likely serve as "at least an interim president if Mubarak dies or is incapacitated."
A U.S. diplomat who classified the cable, Luis Moreno, wrote that although he deferred to the Embassy in Cairo for Egyptian succession scenario analysis, "there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of" Suleiman.

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Wonder if he’ll get a cell next to Manning in these confusing times about good guys vs. the rest

Freed Google executive helped spark Egypt revolt
By Hadeel Al-shalchi And Karin Laub –
CAIRO – The young Google Inc. executive detained by Egyptian authorities for 12 days said Monday he was behind the Facebook page that helped spark what he called "the revolution of the youth of the Internet." A U.S.-based human rights group said nearly 300 people have died in two weeks of clashes.

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Mubarak should qualify as a terrorist under current U.S. rules. Appears he’s supported Irag, North Korea in developing WMD. Our support for him coming back to bite us in a more ways than loss of support of Egyptian people.

Concerns grow over Egypt's WMD research
U.S. has been quiet about Cairo's weapons programs, but revolt changes the calculus
By Robert Windrem Senior investigative producer
NBC News NBC News updated 2/7/2011
With Egypt in revolt and the country’s future uncertain, concern is growing over whether a new government in the Arab world’s most militarily and industrially advanced country could accelerate an arms race in one of the world’s most volatile regions.
At the heart of the concern is intelligence indicating that Egypt has quietly carried out research and development on weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, biological and missile technology.
The research and development has continued virtually without pause over the past three decades, according to interviews with U.S. officials and a review of intelligence and other government documents by NBC News.
Specifically, the intelligence indicates that Egypt has carried out experiments in plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment, helped jump-start Saddam Hussein’s missile and chemical weapons programs in Iraq, and worked with Kim il-Jung on North Korea’s missile program.
“If we found another country doing what they’ve done, we would have been all over them,” said a former U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
NBC News has obtained more than a dozen documents that shed some light on several Egyptian weapons of mass destruction programs, including its nuclear potential and details of a joint North Korean-Egyptian missile development agreement.
The reason the U.S. didn’t move, officials say, was Egypt’s role as a staunch U.S. ally and stabilizing force in the Middle East and later as a key player in U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

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Rumsfeld’s new self-serving memoir. Deciphering the code.

Bush, Rumsfeld and Iraq: Is the Real Reason for the Invasion Finally Emerging?
Russ Baker, WhoWhatWhy.com: "In Donald Rumsfeld's new book, Known and Unknown, out February 8, Rumsfeld offers an account of George W. Bush's early interest in Iraq. This was just days after the 9/11 attacks. There were no apparent reasons for Bush to focus on Iraq, instead of on the actual perpetrators of the attacks."

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The delicate game of playing the public like a fiddle. None better than Obama

Chris Hedges | Recognizing the Language of Tyranny
Chris Hedges, Truthout: "Empires communicate in two languages. One language is expressed in imperatives. It is the language of command and force. This militarized language disdains human life and celebrates hypermasculinity. It demands. It makes no attempt to justify the flagrant theft of natural resources and wealth or the use of indiscriminate violence. When families are gunned down at a checkpoint in Iraq they are referred to as having been 'lit up.' So it goes. The other language of empire is softer. It employs the vocabulary of ideals and lofty goals and insists that the power of empire is noble and benevolent."
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Karzai’s hands tied because we wanted to make war, not peace?

Report: 2002 Taliban Peace Offer Damages Myth of Al-Qaeda Ties
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service: "The central justification of the U.S.-NATO war against the Afghan Taliban - that the Taliban would allow al Qaeda to return to Afghanistan - has been challenged by new historical evidence of offers by the Taliban leadership to reconcile with the Hamid Karzai government after the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001."

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Corporate media misrepresenting news again

Tom Engelhardt | Driving Through the Gates of Hell and Other American Pastimes in the Greater Middle East
Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: "As we've watched the dramatic events in the Middle East, you would hardly know that we had a thing to do with them. Oh yes, in the name of its War on Terror, Washington had for years backed most of the thuggish governments now under siege or anxious that they may be next in line to hear from their people. When it came to Egypt in particular, there was initially much polite (and hypocritical) discussion in the media about how our 'interests' and our 'values' were in conflict, about how far the U.S. should back off its support for the Mubarak regime, and about what a 'tightrope' the Obama administration was walking."

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Can’t the media read the tea leaves?

Corporate Media Push Wrong Story on Obama's Relationship With Business
Rose Aguilar, Your Call: "President Barack Obama is hoping to 'mend ties' with big business by speaking to the US Chamber of Commerce (COC), Washington DC's top lobbyist. That's the frame we're hearing in the corporate media even though the President has extended the Bush tax cuts, recently named JP Morgan Chase executive and former COC board member William Daley as his chief of staff, and chose General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head the new 'White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.'"

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Heartbreak on a more human scale. Plans go up in smoke.

Carnival in flames: fire destroys samba warehouses
AP – Firefighters try to extinguish a fire from a warehouse in Samba City, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Monday, …
By JULIANA BARBASSA Juliana Barbassa –
RIO DE JANEIRO – Rio de Janeiro's world-famed Carnival went up in flames Monday for thousands of people who spent nearly a year preparing for the spectacular event.
Seamstresses, set designers and musicians watched in tears as firefighters struggled to control a blaze that raged through warehouses holding many of the elaborate costumes and floats they had assembled for this year's samba parade.

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