CIA declares Mission Accomplished, Mubarak says not so fast

[lupercal]

Gee you're a ray of sunshine. Aren't ya?

Is that you Anita?

I'm getting sick of everything is bad, everything is evil.... Most of the world is made of good and decent people who just want to live a simple life. The age of hate and fear is coming to an end.

So why is it all these "good and decent" official fairy tales involve toppling an evil dictator who coincidentally happens to have told the UK or one of its racketeer clients to take a hike?

[compared2what?]

You might look more closely at what the Rafah crossing ever really consisted of before you become compelled. At it's peak, Rafah was open for two days a week, and allowed a few hundred to come through while thousands stood wishing.

Not so. To borrow your preferred technique, Google "Egypt opens Rafah crossing for three days" and you will get 21,700 results spread over the last few years. Here's a typical one:

Rafah crossing to open 3 days
Published Saturday 08/05/2010 (updated) 09/05/2010 09:53

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Gaza's sole border crossing with Egypt will open in both directions Saturday until Monday, authorities said.

Officials say they hope the crossing will remain open an additional two days to alleviate pressure at the terminal.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=282739

Why didn't Egypt open the border for more than three days at a stretch? The answer is "a U.S.-brokered agreement" requiring Israeli monitors to be present, which Israel refused to send or by other accounts Hamas refused to allow:

A U.S.-brokered agreement, signed in 2005 when Israel withdrew its forces and settlers from Gaza, stresses that the crossing can operate regularly only when pro-Abbas forces and European Union ( EU) monitors be present. However, Egypt opens the crossing from time to time before humanitarian cases and people who had got security clearance from Egyptian authorities.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/w ... 296376.htm

So while the crossing was not open 24/7, Mubarak did open it frequently, apparently in violation of his "international" treaty obligations.

Oh, I don't know. I mean, I saw those stories. I just chose not to cherry-pick them while ignoring the far more numerous ones like this:

Opening Rafah crossing as lifeline for Gaza poses dilemma for Egypt
President Hosni Mubarak caught between Arab solidarity and pragmatic approach to Israel, his country's neighbours

Jack Shenker in Rafah, Wednesday 2 June 2010 19.19 BST

From the donkey carts trundling down near empty roads in the afternoon heat, you would never have guessed this patch of land lay at the centre of a diplomatic storm. Nor did the row of bored looking customs officers sipping tea in the shade give any indication that their work commands global attention. But the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza has long been a place where rhetoric and reality rarely meet eye to eye.

Less than 24 hours after Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, effectively promised to break Israel's siege of Gaza by opening the Rafah crossing indefinitely, today's developments were no exception.

The trickle of Gazans who crossed into Egypt spoke volumes about the predicament Mubarak finds himself in after Israel's deadly assault on the Free Gaza flotilla.

Caught between the need to appease growing public anger at Israel's actions and the necessity of maintaining his close relationship with the Jewish state on the other – a friendship which opens the door to more than $2bn of American aid annually, money on which many analysts believe Mubarak's unpopular regime depends upon for survival – the Egyptian government has found itself incapable of living up to its own hype.

"No one is optimistic that this will lead to any kind of permanent solution," said a UN official making his way from Egypt to Gaza. "The border has been opened for political purposes alone. Such an opening is critical for humanitarian reasons, but it won't last."

At times the activity at the crossing was so slow it was difficult to discern whether the border had really opened. Several aid trucks made it into Gaza during the morning including some carrying power generators from the Egyptian Red Crescent, and hundreds of Gazans who had been staying in Egypt returned home. But there was hardly any traffic, human or cargo, in the other direction.

Officials said no more than three busloads of passengers had crossed into Egypt by early evening, leaving an estimated 3,000 Gazans waiting on the other side. Some blamed bureaucratic delays on the Gazan side, where Hamas officials were reportedly trying to implement a system of prioritising who should be allowed to cross first. Others said Egyptian intransigence was at fault.

Most of those who reached Egypt were in need of medical attention, but a few had more cheerful reasons for the trip. One couple were en route to their daughter's wedding in Dubai and were overjoyed at having navigated their way through the maze of officials and security checks. "There are many buses backed up on the other side filled with people who want to come through," said the father of the bride. "We were lucky to make it."

But the lucky ones were few and far between. Mostly the arrivals hall remained desolate, in contrast to the departures lounge which was periodically flooded with Gazans returning from Egypt.

Theoretically, the Rafah terminal open two days a week to allow Gaza residents on the Egyptian side of the border to cross back over, but the buzz around today's events fuelled an increase in the numbers of those travelling. Many had taken the opportunity to stock up on supplies in preparation for their return to a space where items such as coriander and A4 paper are blockaded by the Israelis.

Ramzi, a grocer from Jabalia, was clutching two new bicycles as he made his way through the crowds. "I was over in Egypt visiting my father who's in hospital there, and I thought I'd pick up some presents," he grinned sheepishly. Trolleys laden with mattresses, flat-screen TVs, air conditioners and refrigerators all made their way towards buses waiting to ferry passengers across no man's land to Palestinian territory. "Any product you can dream of, you'll find it here," said one Egyptian customs officer, gesturing towards a queue of Gazans.

Not everyone could join the import bandwagon. Seham Muhammad Hamdani, a mother of two from Gaza who lives in the Egypt, had rushed to the border in the hope of seeing her son and daughter for the first time in 13 years; they live on the other side of the crossing. Due to apparent irregularities in her paperwork, she has been unable to travel to her homeland for more than a decade, while her children are not allowed to leave it. But the Egyptian guards once again turned her away today . "It's the end of hope," she said. "It's up to Mubarak now to resolve our plight."

And why did I make that choice, you might be asking?

Well.

Mostly because not diminishing the state of nearly absolute deprivation and powerlessness in which the Gazans live is a pretty high priority to me. I mean, there's little hope of anyone successfully addressing any problem some aspect of the actual scope or nature of which they find it rhetorically convenient to deny.

And politically awkward as I guess it may be to some, a significant contributing factor to their present tragic circumstances is that the last leader of an Arab state to whom their cause was something more than an issue to exploit for political purposes by making some nominal gesture from time to time -- such as, for example, changing the hours at which a few of the desperately ill Palestinians seeking medical treatment had some remote hope of being admitted to Egypt at Rafah -- died in 1970.

Hosni Mubarak frequently used the Rafah Crossing to make himself look good at the expense of the thousands of Palestinians whom he regularly and arbitrarily humiliated or consigned to medically avoidable deaths by refusing them either passage or aid after the very small quota that satisfied his photo-op and propaganda needs has been met. Not more. And not less.

But please feel free to continue making erroneous claims to the contrary if it advances a goal you feel is valuable enough to justify doing so. I feel satisfied that I've put enough on the record to counterbalance them and it's not like I enjoy repeating myself. So it's entirely your thread to use as you think best henceforth, afaic.

[compared2what?]

I don't know that Bibi even has a plan for another campaign in Gaza, though he might.

Now you know.

No I don't. I know, as I already knew, that the Likud government of Israel was engaging in the kind of saber-rattling that's not a whole lot more of a rarity for them than drawing breath is. Which rhetorical tactic Mubarak countered rhetorically and in accordance with the current policies of his paymasters, to his own political benefit and not that of the Palestinians.

If you have reason to believe that the meeting reported in the article didn't take place or that Mubarak didn't make the remarks attributed to him, fine, but otherwise the facts are not in dispute, as I said above, n'est-ce pas?

Non. Actually, as I said above, ce n'est pas as you said above.

Besides which, I don't dispute the facts reported in the article. I just have no reason to believe the mischaracterizations of them that you're adding via paraphrase have any basis in reality. And considerable reason to believe that they don't, since the meanings you assign to them are pretty well irreconcilable with an informed understanding of the broader contemporary and historical context to which they belong.

But since I have no expectations at all of resolving that dispute, I'm good with having had the opportunity to represent my take on it. Thanks for your generosity in providing them to me, in fact.

Cheers.

[DoYouEverWonder]

So why is it all these "good and decent" official fairy tales involve toppling an evil dictator who coincidentally happens to have told the UK or one of its racketeer clients to take a hike?

Please don't let your love of Israel blind you to reality.

There's a big difference between this -



And this -

[Joe Hillshoist]

"The Egyptian middle class and their Facebook buddies need to shut up and let the revolution continue."

http://twitter.com/ahmedhabib/status/36899532931342336

Just so we are clear lupercal, we are not oblivious to what you are going on about and neither is the rest of the world. If anything now is the time for you to raise all the points you already raised wrt to Egypt earlier, cos now is the time (imo) for me to finish painting my astrological..


er, I mean now is the time that all that stuff you were talking about WILL go into overdrive. And it'll criticise the strikers and anyone else who doesn't allow the hijacking of the revolution.

[Searcher08]

Egypt is not like that - you are conflating things which deserve, for the integrity of each, to be kept separate.

And you know this how?
I am making an assertion based on visual information
From watching your TV?

Err, obviously. However, I am watching real time streamed video images from AJ and you are not. I am able to see and hear the change in the crowds mood in real time. Have you even read about that?

You are ignoring the direct sensory information of what is happening in Egypt

Uh, were you there? TV is not real Searcher, not even close.

It's a manufactured reality

Please, try patronizing free?

and as for overcompensating, no I don't think so, because my analysis is based on well-established patterns of spook behavior which you could easily make yourself aware of if you can ever unglue yourself from the telly. Start by googling Operation Ajax.

TarpleyBoy sez what?? What is the point of writing then when the almighty CIA no doubt have you under surveillance; surely they would have eliminated you???

I am very well aware of Operation Ajax, but thanks for the hint about Google. You might like to look up Wikipedia and a thing called confirmation bias.

I am asserting that you do not have an analysis to begin with - what are you using as your input of what is actually happening in Egypt? Do you know anyone in the country? Twitter CIA!!! Facebook CIA!!! Youtube videos? But they are owned by Google which is owned by the CIA? The Internet? But IT was created by the American Military!

Are you getting your Egyptian information beamed directly into the visual cortex? Yes? But THAT would be HAARP - run by the.....CIA!!!


1 Where do you get your information about what is happening in Egypt?
2 What events on the ground in Egypt would indicate a falsification of your hypothesis in your mind?

S08

[ninakat]

No One Curious What CIA is Working On at the Moment in Egypt?
By Jay Janson
February 13, 2011

What does the CIA have in store for Egypt? What chores will it assign its agents, both American and Egyptian?

Has it managed to infiltrate military factions, political organizations and revolutionary groups to make some arrangements for some "spontaneous' events take place?

These are obvious questions Americans of decent mind toward Egyptians should, at the very least, be asking themselves.

Seems that progressives and even socialists in the U.S. are overly cooperative with mainstream media and Congress in hardly ever asking after our secret CIA shadow government.

But then why would one expect focus on the CIA from American progressive journalists. Have they promoted public interest in the ghastly revelations of the many files the CIA was forced to make public by the efforts of dedicated groups taking advantage of the Freedom of Information Law?

These released documents are devastating to read for anyone harboring affection for JFK or Ike. The horrible tales of the CIA protection and employment of Nazi war criminals; of CIA building a world market poppy growing industry again in Afghanistan after the Taliban had eliminated the CIA's first decade long lucrative secret operation; of CIA involvement in murderous drug running in Colombia and previously in Panama with agent Noriega; these all added to the fully expected corroboration of assumptions that CIA homicides were ordered by "tricky Dick' and Kissinger, along with the infinitely greater ones ordered by Eisenhower and Kennedy. Yet, these revelations have been allowed to slip into insignificance in non-corporate funded publications.

Years ago, New Yorker published investigative reporter Seymour Hersh tried to awaken interest in what the CIA was doing all these years in Iraq during the massive amount of sectarian violence that U.S. government spokespersons and subservient media constantly pointed to as the reason "we have to stay in Iraq.' Almost no one took up this topic in alternative media. Why? For decades CIA has sponsored, provoked, initiated, and or prepared overt invasion and involvement in civil wars in Greece, Korea, Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, but become of higher notoriety for its incredibly amazing success in arranging murderous factional fighting to look unprovoked by outside forces. The motive always being to prevent unified independent nations capable of negotiating for their own trade and prosperity.

Associated Press is carrying almost daily reports of furious CIA activity, usually deadly, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but in progressive journalism there is much more debate regarding the words and proposals of the current U.S. president, who surely must be taking orders from, and not giving orders to Robert Gates and the Central Intelligence Agency. A CIA that is by law connected up solely and secretly to the chief executive is in itself a glaring contradiction to claims of democracy in the U.S., but this also goes largely unaddressed even on the progressive sites of the Internet.

Naturally the Network talk shows are, in the wake of Egyptian uprising, all featuring discussions from the farcical point of view that the business interests oriented American government is capable of being occasionally in favor of democracy in nations with U.S. backed dictatorship governments. These discussions swirl around the problem of keeping these nations aligned with a U.S foreign policy of protecting and expanding American investment throughout the world. For anchor and commentators it is what the U.S. president will say, or do, that is supposed to be of paramount interest, not what the awkward-to-speak-of CIA might accomplish.

When Egypt or any other overseas issue is discussed in commercial media, there seems little reason to ask about CIA. The CIA, is considered part of American democracy, understood as merely one of many agencies of a freely elected government. Since it's operations and activities are secret, what is the use of discussing them?

For the business world, nicely ordered formal democracy is working well in the British and American homes of empire. Imperialism is unchallenged in the U.S.A. It's out there among the natives in the neo-colonized nations of the former colonially military occupied third world that democracy is more than worrisome. Democracy is inimical to subjugation and undermining for imperialism.

Here is the way some of us see the ruling hierarchy in U.S. imperialism in functioning order of power.

1
At the top, is the business interest consensus led by a cabal of the most important investment bankers.

2
Next would be the CIA pursuing an agenda as seen necessary by the above mentioned and including, under it's operational umbrella, the Pentagon.

3 and 4
Third in influence and importance depending on current conditions, situations, developments and any sudden uncontrolled and unexpected events, would alternately be either the power of conglomerate owned media penetrating down into schools and up into all the institutions of society, or, the three branches of government owned, as FDR once wrote in confidence, "by a financial element since the days of Andrew Jackson." *

Both these alternating third and fourth ranking power bases will be prosecuting an ideological agenda in tandem with activities of the CIA-Pentagon, but in much more general, flexible, fluctuating and less defined progression.

Today, CIA operatives stationed in every country in the world are the commandos penetrating and preparing political, financial and where necessary military domination. Its four billion dollar base legal budget is known, and its mammoth financial empire fueled by corporate donations and funding and far flung net of banks, enterprises, publications, media outlets and infiltrated agencies within U.S. and foreign governments has been researched, documented and much of it can be found on line. CIA exploits of assassinations,
overthrowing elected government and hiring goons to support U.S. business friendly dictatorships is legendary.

If #2 (CIA-Pentagon) comes to dominate #1 (the requirements for the accumulation of private capital), things could get even more dangerous, more unstable, cause more suffering internationally and domestically.

But in such a development there is also a not so remote possibility of more rationality and less of ongoing insanity of material over human progress. For if human beings, even in the military, were in charge, instead of automatons managing accumulation of capital for its owners and using the military amorally, some speck of human compassion might halt the drive toward the use of our WMD in another world conflict just to make a whole lot of money.

Ralph Waldo Emerson warned well over a hundred years ago that "Things are in the saddle and ride herd over men." Seems that right now the revolution in Egypt is counting on Egypt's military to take over from their erstwhile amoral international capital serving wealthy minority.

This hierarchy of power in place for centuries in almost the entire planet since the time of previous empires will inevitably be seen by aroused individuals, such as those who are leading revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, as a house of cards built on the assumption that the great mass of wonderfully ordinary people at its base will continue to believe themselves to be powerless.

In the meantime, #3 (media) will continue to keep the focus away from #2 (CIA) and #1 (capital accumulation) and on #4 (U.S. President, Congress and Supreme Court), with a perhaps unintended but still disappointing concurrence in critical progressive Internet media.

[* "The real truth of the matter is, as you, and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a letter to Colonel Edward House, October 34, 1933]

[lupercal]

Thanks ninakat, great article, and yeah the silence is deafening:

For decades CIA has sponsored, provoked, initiated, and or prepared overt invasion and involvement in civil wars in Greece, Korea, Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, but become of higher notoriety for its incredibly amazing success in arranging murderous factional fighting to look unprovoked by outside forces. The motive always being to prevent unified independent nations capable of negotiating for their own trade and prosperity.

Its success at wrecking countries and then deflecting blame is indeed amazing, and so far it looks like they pulled off another one, and that's bad news for Egypt.

[wintler2]

Thanks ninakat, great article, and yeah the silence is deafening:

For decades CIA has sponsored, provoked, initiated, and or prepared overt invasion and involvement in civil wars in Greece, Korea, Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, but become of higher notoriety for its incredibly amazing success in arranging murderous factional fighting [bzzzz! Fail.] to look unprovoked by outside forces. The motive always being to prevent unified independent nations[bzzzz! Fail.] capable of negotiating for their own trade and prosperity [bzzzz! Fail.].

Its success at wrecking countries and then deflecting blame is indeed amazing, and so far it looks like they pulled off another one, and that's bad news for Egypt.

Lupercal sees a mass anti-dictator revolution as "wrecking" a country .. just like the rest of the apologists for neoliberal fascism.

[wintler2]

No One Curious What CIA is Working On at the Moment in Egypt?
By Jay Janson
February 13, 2011

What does the CIA have in store for Egypt? What chores will it assign its agents, both American and Egyptian?
..

I'm interested in the question, shame the author of article isn't, why else did they make no attempt to answer it. Too busy with the condemnation and bemoaning it seems, how unhelpful and divisive.

[hava1]

are there only two options ? hierarchical exploitative unity or chaos ? its a huge philosophical question, I dont know the answer, but maintaining unjust tyrranical regimes for the sake of unity, in our global world, is...depressing. But I agree that the USA destroyed many of its client states in the same manner, of encouraging domestic revolts on the grounds of equality demands. i think the masters in DC look at history in broad paint brush, without looking too much into the "price" of change the deem desirable FOR THOSE people. Its not unique to them, its actually attributed to COmmunist revolution (destory the old world to the ground and build a new one).

Thanks ninakat, great article, and yeah the silence is deafening:

For decades CIA has sponsored, provoked, initiated, and or prepared overt invasion and involvement in civil wars in Greece, Korea, Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, but become of higher notoriety for its incredibly amazing success in arranging murderous factional fighting to look unprovoked by outside forces. The motive always being to prevent unified independent nations capable of negotiating for their own trade and prosperity.

Its success at wrecking countries and then deflecting blame is indeed amazing, and so far it looks like they pulled off another one, and that's bad news for Egypt.

[Joe Hillshoist]

This hierarchy of power in place for centuries in almost the entire planet since the time of previous empires will inevitably be seen by aroused individuals, such as those who are leading revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, as a house of cards built on the assumption that the great mass of wonderfully ordinary people at its base will continue to believe themselves to be powerless.

Cept that seems to be the opposite of what happened in Egypt where an essentially leaderless movement ended up with a quarter of the population (20 million people) on the street.

[Hammer of Los]

(A)re there only two options? Hierarchical exploitative unity or chaos? Its a huge philosophical question, I dont know the answer(.)

Well said.

I choose to believe that coercion or chaos are not the only options. The third option is cooperation, the sense of which is innate to all of us.

Just maybe we can learn to cooperate freely, not in the sense of what is in it for me, which puts me in conflict with you, but in the sense of what is in it for all who cooperate freely together to achieve a single objective.

And maybe, most importantly, when the coerced learn how and when not to cooperate, they will understand when cooperating is not in their best interests, nor in the best interests of all. I am hopeful that this is what is happening in Egypt.

And maybe those who coerce to achieve their own objectives will learn that it avails them nothing, only builds resistance, and leads to conflict.

So perhaps there is hope for the world.

It's an open question.

[DevilYouKnow]

While many progressives criticized Obama for being too soft in his support for the democracy movements in Tunisia and Egypt, the neo-cons were furious that he was on the phone telling their closest ally Husni to pack up and head out. Husni was supposed to pretend to democratize despite the regional threats posed by Iran and the internal dangers of Islamists… That was supposed to be the democratization narrative for Egypt. The neo-cons were to pick and chose which countries in the region should be subjects of their “freedom agenda.”

While Anderson Cooper, Richard Engler, and even Thomas Friedman were hanging out in Tahrir Square and conveying the urgency of the Egyptian people’s desire for freedom to the American public, Niall Ferguson was where it was really happening. “Last week,” he wrote in Newsweek, “while other commentators ran around Cairo’s Tahrir Square, hyperventilating about what they saw as an Arab 1989, I flew to Tel Aviv for the annual Herzliya security conference. The consensus among the assembled experts on the Middle East? A colossal failure of American foreign policy.” U.S. policy—and by extension the Arab people’s right to be free, to desire democracy—was to be decided in rooms like this, not in public squares in Arab cities.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/647/why-tahrir-infuriates-the-neo-cons

[hava1]

I agree. the major struggle has always been against Abuse of power, control etc.

(A)re there only two options? Hierarchical exploitative unity or chaos? Its a huge philosophical question, I dont know the answer(.)

Well said.

I choose to believe that coercion or chaos are not the only options. The third option is cooperation, the sense of which is innate to all of us.

Just maybe we can learn to cooperate freely, not in the sense of what is in it for me, which puts me in conflict with you, but in the sense of what is in it for all who cooperate freely together to achieve a single objective.

And maybe, most importantly, when the coerced learn how and when not to cooperate, they will understand when cooperating is not in their best interests, nor in the best interests of all. I am hopeful that this is what is happening in Egypt.

And maybe those who coerce to achieve their own objectives will learn that it avails them nothing, only builds resistance, and leads to conflict.

So perhaps there is hope for the world.

It's an open question.