Author Archives: News Sources

Egypt’s military rulers using xenophobia to cement their power

Sarah Carr writes: Former President Mohamed Morsi was stripped of power illegally in a military coup, even if this decision was backed by a large majority of the general public.

It was mostly the privately owned satellite media and newspapers that became the army’s court jester, or at least did so with the most gusto. Logos appeared on screens insistently informing viewers that 30 June was a popular revolution, not a coup. Then the terrorism rhetoric began, and the pro-Morsi protesters were no longer just a bunch of skin-disease ridden, cult supporting lunatics, but also terrorists. Again, this happened almost seamlessly. Television presenters indulged themselves in the vilest xenophobia against Palestinians and Syrians, who they claimed were camped out in pro-Morsi sit-ins and meddling in Egyptian affairs.

Only the weakest of evidence was produced to support these claims, including a video of some men dancing dabke to this Palestinian pro-Morsi song. The aim, of course, was twofold: Firstly, to support the claim that the Brotherhood has links with Hamas and other foreign groups involved in acts of insurgency in Sinai, and secondly, to isolate the Brotherhood even further, turn it into a “them” separate from the rest of the population. The fastest and most foolproof way to do this in Egypt is to establish that a group has links with foreign powers. It works every time.

The media campaign has been disastrous for Syrian refugees, whether already in Egypt or seeking to cross its borders. Syrians who want to come to Egypt to flee the devastation in their country must now gain security authorization before doing so. Syrians already in Egypt are quietly being rounded up at army checkpoints and detained—even individuals registered with the United Nations.

The general public was sold. It ran stumbling and screaming into Sisi’s protective arms and nestled in his bosom. Almost overnight, people mutated into barrel-thumping nationalists celebrating a victory against a foreign enemy, when no battle has yet been won and their enemy is one of them. Hot air—lots of hot air — has been blown into former President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s corpse. Perhaps they are trying to blow his spirit into Sisi. Three years after the heady independent days of 25 January, and Egyptians are once again seeking out the army strongman to hold their hand, and an enemy—invented or real, it does not matter—to define and shape their cause. Like all nationalist movements, this is sentiment partly informed by fear and hate. There is nothing of real ideological substance here, no long-term goal other than either containing the Brotherhood or crushing the Islamist movement. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt army gives Brotherhood 48 hours to join roadmap

Reuters reports: Egypt’s army gave the Muslim Brotherhood until Saturday afternoon to sign up to political reconciliation, a military official said on Thursday, after the army issued a veiled threat to use tougher tactics against the group.

“We will not initiate any move, but will definitely react harshly against any calls for violence or black terrorism from Brotherhood leaders or their supporters. We pledge to protect peaceful protesters regardless of their affiliation,” the official said, saying they had 48-hours to comply.

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Syria’s exodus: a refugee crisis for the world

The Guardian reports: Western countries including the US and Britain may be asked to accept tens of thousands of Syrian refugees because the exodus from the civil war is overwhelming countries in the region, the UN’s refugee chief has warned.

With no end to the war in sight, the flight of nearly 2 million people from Syria over the past two years is showing every sign of becoming a permanent population shift, like the Palestinian crises of 1948 and 1967, with grave implications for countries such as Lebanon and Jordan, UN and other humanitarian aid officials say.

One in six people in Lebanon are now Syrian refugees. The biggest camp in Jordan has become the country’s fourth-largest city. In addition to those who have crossed borders, at least four million Syrians are believed to have been displaced within their own country, meaning that more than a quarter of the population has been uprooted.

In an interview with the Guardian, António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said the situation was already far more than just a humanitarian crisis. If a resolution to the conflict was not found within months, the UN will look to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in countries better able to afford to host them, including Britain. Germany has already offered to take 5,000, but other offers have been limited, Guterres said.

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Egypt’s military ruler risks igniting civil war

The New York Times reports: The commander of the armed forces asked Egyptians on Wednesday to hold mass demonstrations that would give him a “mandate” to confront violence and terrorism, appealing to one side of Egypt’s sharply divided populace and raising the specter of broader unrest.

During a speech to recent military graduates, the commander, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, warned of forces taking the country into a “dark tunnel,” a clear reference to Islamist supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, and he asked Egyptians to protest on Friday.

“I’m asking you to show the world,” he said. “If violence is sought, or terrorism is sought, the military and the police are authorized to confront this.”

The call for mass mobilization thrust the general into the center of Egypt’s contentious politics, raising questions about his ambitions while contradicting the military’s pledges to defer to civilian leaders after removing Mr. Morsi. His appeal also hinted at a broader crackdown against Islamists, whose leaders have already been detained.

As the Muslim Brotherhood planned competing protests on Friday, Egyptians faced another threat of bloody street clashes in what has become a long and wearying cycle.

In a statement, the Brotherhood said the general’s speech amounted to a call for “civil war.” [Continue reading…]

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McKeon: Egypt’s military ‘doing the right thing’

Al-Monitor reports: The Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, in an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor at his Capitol Hill office, said that he opposes cutting off US military assistance to Egypt and that Egypt’s armed forces are “doing the right thing” to support democracy in Egypt.

In contrast to Sen. John McCain and others who have called for stopping military aid to Egypt because of its armed forces’ role in deposing former President Mohammed Morsi, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, who has been chairman of the committee since January 2011, said that Egypt’s military has been a “stabilizing influence” and its actions were necessary to put Egypt’s democratic transition back on track.

Those who support cutting off military aid to Egypt argue that US foreign assistance provisions require ending assistance in the event of a military coup. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt imposes toughest Gaza restrictions in years

The Associated Press reports: Egypt’s new government has imposed the toughest border restrictions on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in years, sealing smuggling tunnels, blocking most passenger traffic and causing millions of dollars in economic losses.

Some in Hamas fear the movement is being swept up in the same Egyptian military campaign that earlier this month toppled the country’s democratically elected Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi — like the Gaza rulers part of the region’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt’s military has said the Gaza restrictions are part of its security crackdown in the Sinai and has not suggested it is trying to weaken the Hamas government or bring it down in the process.

Past predications that Gazans fed up with the daily hardships of life under blockade will rise up against Hamas have not materialized.

However, the new Gaza border restrictions are tougher than any enforced by Morsi’s pro-Western predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, a foe of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, according to Gaza residents and Hamas officials. [Continue reading…]

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U.S., in sign of displeasure, halts F-16 delivery to Egypt

The New York Times reports: President Obama, in his first punitive response to the ouster of Mohamed Morsi as president of Egypt, has halted the delivery of four F-16 fighter planes to the Egyptian Air Force.

Mr. Obama, administration officials said, wanted to send Egypt’s military-led government a signal of American displeasure with the chaotic situation there, which has been marked by continued violence, the detention of Mr. Morsi and other leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a transition that has not included the Brotherhood.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel relayed the decision to Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the head of Egypt’s military, a senior official said, and did not say when the Pentagon might reschedule the delivery.

“Given the current situation in Egypt, we do not believe it is appropriate to move forward at this time with the delivery of F-16s,” the Pentagon press secretary, George Little, said Wednesday. He did not cite any specific actions by the Egyptian military. [Continue reading…]

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White House begs Congress to bow to the NSA and ignore public opinion

The Washington Post reports: Concerns about personal privacy are on the rise, with a big majority of Americans saying the National Security Agency’s collection of telephone and Internet data intrudes on citizens’ rights without clear improvements in U.S. security, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say the NSA programs are infringing on some Americans’ privacy rights, and about half see those programs as encroaching on their own privacy. Most of those who see the programs as compromising privacy say the intrusions are unjustified.

The Guardian reports: The Obama administration has forcefully urged the defeat of a legislative measure to curb its wide-ranging collection of Americans’ phone records, setting up a showdown with the House of Representatives over domestic surveillance.

A statement from the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, late on Tuesday evening capped an extraordinary day of near-revolt on Capitol Hill concerning the secret National Security Agency surveillance programes revealed by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by the Guardian and Washington Post.

The White House urged House members to vote against a measure from Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, that would stop the NSA siphoning up the telephone records of millions of Americans without suspicion of a crime.

“This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process,” said the statement emailed from the White House late on Tuesday in anticipation of a House debate on the Amash measure scheduled for Wednesday. [Continue reading…]

So what does the White House do to promote an open deliberative process? Send in Gen Alexander to provide a classified briefing!

The New York Times reports: General Alexander’s hurried visit to Capitol Hill came as a leading Senate critic of the N.S.A.’s large-scale collection of data about Americans’ phone calls spoke out about expansive government surveillance. He declared that recent leaks about domestic spying by Mr. Snowden have created a “unique moment in our constitutional history” to reform what he said has become “an always expanding, omnipresent surveillance state.”

Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, the leading Senate critic and a member of the Intelligence Committee, also hinted that the revelation that the government has been keeping records of every domestic phone call is not the only such extensive program. And he blasted national security officials in the Obama administration, saying they have “actively” misled the American public about domestic surveillance.

“As we have seen in recent days, the intelligence leadership is determined to hold on to this authority,” Mr. Wyden said. “Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person’s life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government.”

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Edward Snowden’s fear of flying is justified

Geoffrey Robertson writes: As Edward Snowden sits in an airside hotel, awaiting confirmation of Russia’s offer of asylum, it is clear that he has already revealed enough to prove that European privacy protections are a delusion: under Prism and other programmes, the US National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ can, without much legal hindrance, scoop up any electronic communication whenever one of 70,000 “keywords” or “search terms” are mentioned. These revelations are of obvious public interest: even President Obama has conceded that they invite a necessary debate. But the US treats Snowden as a spy and has charged him under the Espionage Act, which has no public interest defence.

That is despite the fact that Snowden has exposed secret rulings from a secret US court, where pliant judges have turned down only 10 surveillance warrant requests between 2001 and 2012 (while granting 20,909) and have issued clandestine rulings which erode first amendment protection of freedom of speech and fourth amendment protection of privacy. Revelations about interception of European communications (many leaked through servers in the US) and the bugging of EU offices in Washington have infuriated officials in Brussels. In Germany, with its memories of the Gestapo and the Stasi, the protests are loudest, and opposition parties, gearing up for an election in September, want him to tell more.

So far Snowden has had three offers of asylum from Latin America, but to travel there means dangerous hours in the air. International law (and the Chicago Convention regulating air traffic) emphatically asserts freedom to traverse international airspace, but America tends to treat international law as binding on everyone except America (and Israel). Thus when Egypt did a deal with the Achille Lauro hijackers and sent them on a commercial flight to Tunis, US F-14 jets intercepted the plane in international airspace and forced it to land in Italy, where the hijackers were tried and jailed. President Mubarak condemned the action as “air piracy contrary to international law” and demanded an apology, to which Reagan replied: “Never.” The UK supported the action as designed to bring terrorists to trial.

In 1986 Israel forced down a Libyan commercial plane in the mistaken belief that PLO leaders were among its passengers, and the US vetoed UN security council condemnation. So there must be a real concern, particularly after Nato allies collaborated in forcing down the Bolivian president’s jet, that the US will intercept any plane believed to be carrying Snowden to asylum, either because he is tantamount to a terrorist (Vice-President Biden has described Julian Assange as a “hi-tech terrorist”) or simply because they want to put him on trial as a spy. [Continue reading…]

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If Trayvon were Pakistani…

Micah Zenko writes: President Barack Obama surprised the White House press corps on Friday when he preempted the normal daily briefing to offer his unscripted ideas on the Trayvon Martin case.

Obama departed from his usual reluctance to talk publicly about his personal experience with racial bias, reminding viewers that African-American men — including him, before he became a senator — experience prejudice based only on their appearance, not their personality or behavior. He added that the African-American community was interpreting the outcome of the case through a “set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.” And he noted that, while the African-American community is not naïve about violence involving its young men — they are “disproportionately both victims and perpetrators” — that fact is no excuse for different treatment under the law.

It is striking to compare Obama’s deliberate and thoughtful commentary about the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin with the military tactic that will forever characterize his presidency: killing people with drones. The president posits that it is wrong to profile individuals based upon their appearance, associations, or statistical propensity to violence. By extension, he believes that, just because those characteristics may seem threatening to some, the use of lethal force cannot be justified as self-defense unless there are reasonable grounds to fear imminent bodily harm. But that very kind of profiling and a broad interpretation of what constitutes a threat are the foundational principles of U.S. “signature strikes” — the targeted killings of unidentified military-age males. [Continue reading…]

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Video: James Hansen on nuclear power

Hansen’s analysis is (at least to me) quite persuasive. One point where I think it’s questionable is in his assessment of the impact of anti-nuclear lobbying. He fails to mention that opposition to continued research in nuclear technology also serves the interests of the fossil fuel industry and that governments which have moved away from nuclear power are probably acting more in the interests of the oil industry than they are responding to pressure from environmentalists. Environmentalist have leverage neither in terms of money nor votes, so who are the politicians going to listen to?

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Is the U.S. ramping up a secret war in Somalia?

Colum Lynch reports: The Obama administration earlier this year expanded its secret war in Somalia, stepping up assistance for federal and regional Somali intelligence agencies that are allied against the country’s Islamist insurgency. It’s a move that’s not only violating the terms of an international arms embargo, according to U.N. investigators. The escalation also could be a signal that Washington’s signature victory against al-Qaeda’s most powerful African ally may be in danger of unraveling.

Just last year, Obama’s team was touting Somalia as unqualified success. “Somalia is a good news story for the region, for the international community, but most especially for the people of Somalia itself,” Johnnie Carson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told reporters last October at the New York Foreign Press Center. Carson praised African forces, principally Uganda and Kenya, for driving the terror group al-Shabab out of the Somalia’s main cities, Mogadishu and Kismayo. “The U.S.,” he boasted, “has been a significant and major contributor to this effort.” Indeed, the United States has emerged as a major force in the region, running training camps for Ugandan peacekeepers destined for battle with Somalia’s militants, and hosting eight Predator drones, eight more F-15E fighter jets, and nearly 2,000 U.S. troops and military civilians at a base in neighboring Djibouti.

But despite the array of forces aligned against it, Al-Shabab is demonstrating renewed vigor. “The military strength of al-Shabaab, with an approximately 5,000-strong force, remains arguably intact in terms of operational readiness, chain of command, discipline and communications ability,” according to a report by the U.N. Monitoring Group for Somalia and Eritrea. “By avoiding direct military confrontation, it has preserved the core of its fighting force and resources.”

“At present, al-Shabaab remains the principal threat to peace and security in Somalia,” the report adds. “The organization has claimed responsibility for hundreds of assassinations and attacks involving improvised explosive devices, ambushes, mortar shelling grenades and hit and run tactics.”

Not coincidentally, perhaps, American involvement in the region is again on the rise, as well. Last year, according to the U.N. group, the United States violated the international arms embargo on Somalia by dispatching American special operations forces in Russian M-17 helicopters to northern Somalia in support of operations by the intelligence service of Puntland, a breakaway Somali province. [Continue reading…]

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Tales of witnesses to Cairo massacre back pro-Morsi version

McClatchy reports: Overlooking the scene where 55 supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi died during a standoff with the Egyptian military two weeks ago are two 16-story apartment buildings whose residents are perhaps the only unbiased witnesses to what happened.

With no videos or photos having surfaced of the initial violence, Morsi supporters and the military have offered two very different versions of what set off the confrontation, the deadliest incident since the military toppled Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, early this month. At least 100 people have since died in clashes between the military and Morsi partisans, most recently Tuesday, when nine people were killed.

But the July 8 incident outside the Republican Guard headquarters in eastern Cairo remains a touchstone for those who say Morsi was toppled in a military coup and that the military has since taken an approach to Islamists that guarantees years of low-level warfare. Many here fear that Morsi’s incompetent Islamist government has been replaced by an excessively brutal security force reminiscent of the three decades of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. Indeed, it was a call against police brutality that launched the January 2011 uprising that led to Mubarak’s fall.

The military’s version of events says pro-Morsi protesters tried to storm the Republican Guard headquarters, where Morsi partisans think the deposed president is being held, and that security forces turned to live bullets only after they’d fired warning shots, blank rounds and tear gas to no effect.

Protesters say they were simply praying when an unwarranted attack began.

The stories of nine occupants of the apartment buildings whom McClatchy interviewed seem to back the protesters’ version of events, even though many of those residents said they had little sympathy for Morsi and had grown frustrated with the protesters’ constant chants, which had gone on for days. [Continue reading…]

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NSA says it lacks capability to search its own emails

By Justin Elliott, ProPublica, July 23, 2013

The NSA is a “supercomputing powerhouse” with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture. 

But ask the NSA, as part of a freedom of information request, to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees’ email? The agency says it doesn’t have the technology.

“There’s no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately,” NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week.

The system is “a little antiquated and archaic,” she added.

I filed a request last week for emails between NSA employees and employees of the National Geographic Channel over a specific time period. The TV station had aired a friendly documentary on the NSA and I want to better understand the agency’s public-relations efforts.

A few days after filing the request, Blacker called, asking me to narrow my request since the FOIA office can search emails only “person by person,” rather than in bulk. The NSA has more than 30,000 employees.

I reached out to the NSA press office seeking more information but got no response.

It’s actually common for large corporations to do bulk searches of their employees email as part of internal investigations or legal discovery.

“It’s just baffling,” says Mark Caramanica of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “This is an agency that’s charged with monitoring millions of communications globally and they can’t even track their own internal communications in response to a FOIA request.”

Federal agencies’ public records offices are often underfunded, according to Lucy Dalglish, dean of the journalism school at University of Maryland and a longtime observer of FOIA issues.

But, Daglish says, “If anybody is going to have the money to engage in evaluation of digital information, it’s the NSA for heaven’s sake.”

For more on the NSA, read our story on the agency’s tapping of Internet cables, our fact-check on claims about the NSA and Sept. 11, and our timeline of surveillance law.


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Short cuts in Cairo

Adam Shatz writes: On 4 July, the day after the army overthrew Mohamed Morsi and suspended the constitution, I got an email from a friend in Cairo. A photograph of the 30 June demonstrations in Tahrir Square was emblazoned with the words: ‘This is not a coup’. He didn’t say what else it might be, but soon enough others did. A second revolution, a ‘people’s coup’, a ‘re-colution’: terms coined to describe how the events felt to them, or perhaps to bridge the discomfiting gap between experience and reality. It’s not the first time a coup in Egypt has been called something else: Nasser and the Free Officers who overthrew King Farouk in 1952 also called their coup a revolution. What’s different today is that the most ferocious critics of coup-talk are people like my friend, veterans of the 2011 uprising against Mubarak.

Their insistence is understandable: having brought down another hated president, they’re proud of what they’ve achieved and resent the suggestion that they’ve been manipulated – especially when it comes from Westerners. The youth movement Tamarrod collected 22 million signatures for a petition urging Morsi to resign, and organised the biggest demonstrations in Egypt’s history. You can argue that Morsi’s removal set an alarming precedent, but not that it was unpopular. You can’t even cast it as an elite secular conspiracy against the pious Islamic masses: General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, commander of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, is a devout Muslim (his wife wears a niqab) and has the support of the Salafi al-Nour party. The Salafis are to the right of the Muslim Brotherhood, but they didn’t appreciate the Brothers’ authoritarian style, and they knew an opportunity when they saw one. Within days of Morsi’s removal they flexed their muscles by blocking Mohamed ElBaradei’s appointment as interim prime minister; ElBaradei, who used to say he would never collaborate with the Scaf, accepted the vice presidency as a consolation prize. For now, an obscure jurist called Adli Mansour is acting president, and the economist Hazem el-Beblawi is prime minister. But why bother to remember the names? The ‘re-colution’ will eat its children, just as the revolution did. [Continue reading…]

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Venture capitalists view electronic surveillance as attractive growth sector

The Wall Street Journal reports: The string of revelations about America’s surveillance apparatus by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has cast a spotlight on the growing number of American companies involved in electronic spycraft.

It hasn’t visibly damped enthusiasm among Silicon Valley investors and military contractors looking for ways to get into a business many see as one of the few growth areas left as U.S. military spending contracts.

Some of the country’s most influential venture capitalists and former spy chiefs are investing in companies now providing the government with the sweeping electronic spy system and evolving cyberwarfare programs exposed by Mr. Snowden.

More than 80 companies work with the NSA on cybersecurity and surveillance, according to a recent report in the German magazine Der Spiegel that was based on top secret documents provided by Mr. Snowden. They include firms like the one that employed Mr. Snowden as an infrastructure analyst in Hawaii, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., as well as scores of new players.

Last year, venture capitalists pumped about $700 million into security startups, almost a 10th of the estimated market, according to Lawrence Pingree, research director at Gartner Inc., the U.S. information technology research company. [Continue reading…]

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Congress may use power of purse to rein in NSA

USA Today reports: Republicans in the House of Representatives are seizing the chance to stop the National Security Agency from spying on Americans by using the power of the purse – the $598 billion defense spending bill.

The House of Representatives is expected to begin debate on the bill Tuesday and hold a series of votes on 100 amendments, including two that could put key Obama Administration programs at the mercy of House lawmakers.

One amendment sponsored by Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., would defund the NSA’s bulk phone metadata collection program.

“In order for funds to be used by the NSA, the court order would have to have a statement limiting the collection of records to [the] records that pertain to a person under investigation,” Amash explained during a House Rules Committee meeting Monday.

The Huffington Post reports: The National Security Agency kicked its lobbying into high gear after an amendment from Rep. Justin Amash, a libertarian Republican from Michigan, was ruled in order and will get a vote sometime this week.

NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander scheduled a last-minute, members-only briefing in response to the amendment, according to an invitation distributed to members of Congress this morning and forwarded to HuffPost. “In advance of anticipated action on amendments to the DoD Appropriations bill, Ranking Member C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of the House Intelligence Committee invites your Member to attend a question and answer session with General Keith B. Alexander of the National Security Agency,” reads the invitation.

The invitation warned members that they could not share what they learned with their constituents or others. “The briefing will be held at the Top Secret/SCI level and will be strictly Members-Only,” reads the invite.

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Snowden hopes to leave Moscow airport by Wednesday

NBC News: Former CIA contractor and self-declared leaker Edward Snowden hopes to end his month-long stay in a Moscow airport and move to the city’s downtown by Wednesday, his Russian lawyer told Reuters on Monday.

Attorney Anatoly Kucherena told the news agency that Snowden felt it was too dangerous to leave Russia for Latin America because of U.S. efforts to bring him home to face charges for allegedly leaking classified details about American intelligence gathering efforts.

“He should get this certificate (allowing him to leave the airport) shortly,” Kucherena, who helped Snowden apply for temporary asylum in Russia, told Reuters.

Kucherena said Snowden’s bid to obtain temporary asylum in the country may take as long as three months to process. But, based on the initial response to the request, he can pass through customs and exit the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport where he has been staying for nearly one month.

Snowden has also not ruled out Russian citizenship, according to his lawyer.

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