Syrian regime loyalists view events in Egypt as a victory for Assad

Al-Akhbar reports: Syrian officials had turned off their phones. After Bashar al-Assad’s interview on Egypt with the Syrian state-run daily Al-Thawra, they refused to comment on the situation. Assad had declared the end of political Islam, expressing confidence in the Egyptian people’s consciousness that led to the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Two other official statements appeared, one from Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zobi and the other from Qadri Jamil, the deputy prime minister for economic affairs. Zobi said this was the beginning of the end for Islamist regimes, comparing the collapse of the Brotherhood model in Egypt to Syria’s steadfastness.

An “official source” within the Syrian foreign ministry issued a statement congratulating the Egyptian people, expressing “respect for the popular national protest movement.” Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad refused to give a statement to journalists during his meeting with an Algerian delegation at the Syrian foreign ministry.

Syrians agreed that Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi’s ouster is a testament to the Egyptian people’s ability to determine their own political destiny. Although there were no rallies in solidarity with Egyptians, as happened previously, Syrian regime loyalists viewed events in Egypt as a victory for Assad since Mursi, who had interfered in Syrian affairs, was booted even though he came to power through elections. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt’s shadow hangs over Syrian opposition

Reuters reports: Syria’s opposition hit deadlock on Friday in talks to elect a new leader, as the toppling of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood dealt a blow to its most influential faction.

The stalemate is preventing the main players in the Syrian National Coalition from reaching a deal acceptable to their Saudi and Qatari backers, who want to strengthen the opposition to counter an onslaught by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria’s civil war.

Sources in the Arab- and Western-backed coalition said the fate of an agreement hinges on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, the only organized group in the opposition, which holds a balance of votes between a Saudi-backed and a Qatari-backed candidate.

But the group is reeling from this week’s political blow its mother branch in Egypt, where the armed forces intervened to topple Islamist President Mohamed Mursi after mass street protests.

“The atmosphere is subdued. The Brotherhood in Egypt, and by extension in Syria and elsewhere, took a blow, but even their opponents feel that the Middle East lost a historic opportunity to convince Islamists to embrace democracy,” a coalition official said in Istanbul, where the opposition is meeting. [Continue reading…]

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The rise of the Iranian moderates

Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiators, writes: Political infighting and factionalism has become a cynical characteristic of Iranian politics since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, specifically in the last 16 years. This phenomenon escalated with the sweeping victory of the traditional left wing of the revolution relabeled as Islahtalaban, or “Reformists,” in the presidential election of 1997. During the eight years of President Mohammad Khatami’s administration from 1997 to 2005, the right wing of the revolution — relabeled as Usulgarayan, or “Principalists” or “Conservatives” — was progressively sidelined and replaced by Reformists. Khatami, while disapproving of factionalism, could not withstand the tide of change toward a Reformist-dominated administration. This left many Principalists alienated and bitter from the experience they faced at the hands of the Reformists.

The surprise win for the Principalist candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the 2005 presidential election turned the tide against the Reformists. This time around, the purge of Reformists from the administration was swift and almost total, ushering in a period of dominance in the administration by one faction for the next eight years.

During both periods of extreme political polarization and dominance by one faction, there existed moderates within Islahtalaban and Usulgarayan. Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani — early on in Khatami’s presidency — voiced his concern over the growing trend toward factionalism. As one of the key founders of the Islamic Republic, he cautioned that such political infighting would ultimately endanger the whole establishment. Rafsanjani instead called for like-minded politicians in both camps to create a new political movement in Iran, under the banner of moderation or centrist. Subsequently, then-Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmoud Vaezi, MP Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, Deputy Cultural Minister Ali Jannati and I met with Rafsanjani to realize the initiative. In that meeting, Rafsanjani told us, “Ruling the country with one faction would be a disaster for the country, and instead all moderates within both major factions should unite and advance economic-political development to strengthen the pillars of the Islamic Republic.” In the same meeting, we decided to establish a party, the Hezbe Etedal va Tosehe, or “Moderate and Development Party.” The best candidate to lead the party, according to Rafsanjani’s advice, was Hassan Rouhani. In 1999, the party and its central committee was established and led by Rouhani. [Continue reading…]

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Venezuela offers asylum to Snowden

The New York Times reports: President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela said Friday that he would offer asylum to the fugitive intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden, who has been stranded in a Moscow airport searching for a safe haven.

“I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young American Edward Snowden,” Mr. Maduro said during a televised appearance at a military parade marking Venezuela’s independence day.

Mr. Maduro said he had decided to act “to protect this young man from the persecution unleashed by the world’s most powerful empire.”

It was not immediately clear, however, how Mr. Snowden could reach Venezuela or if Mr. Maduro was willing to help transport him.

Also on Friday, Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua, said he was open to taking in Mr. Snowden. “It is clear that if the circumstances permit we will take in Mr. Snowden with pleasure and give him asylum in Nicaragua,” Mr. Ortega said in Managua.

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Edward Snowden is a whistleblower, not a spy — but do our leaders care?

Spencer Ackerman writes: According to US legislators and journalists, the surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden actively aided America’s enemies. They are just missing one essential element for the meme to take flight: evidence.

An op-ed by Representative Mike Pompeo (Republican, Kansas) proclaiming Snowden, who provided disclosed widespread surveillance on phone records and internet communications by the National Security Agency, “not a whistleblower” is indicative of the emerging narrative. Writing in the Wichita Eagle on 30 June Pompeo, a member of the House intelligence committee, wrote that Snowden “has provided intelligence to America’s adversaries“.

Pompeo correctly notes in his op-ed that “facts are important”. Yet when asked for the evidence justifying the claim that Snowden gave intelligence to American adversaries, his spokesman, JP Freire, cited Snowden’s leak of NSA documents. Those documents, however, were provided to the Guardian and the Washington Post, not al-Qaeda or North Korea.

It’s true that information published in the press can be read by anyone, including people who mean America harm. But to conflate that with actively handing information to foreign adversaries is to foreclose on the crucial distinction between a whistleblower and a spy, and makes journalists the handmaidens of enemies of the state.

Yet powerful legislators are eager to make that conflation about Snowden. [Continue reading…]

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David Brooks: Islamists ‘lack the mental equipment to govern’

David Brooks is the kind of mild-mannered conservative who was able to move from the Weekly Standard to the New York Times as easily as a hand sliding into a glove.

To describe the largest political class in the Middle East as lacking the equipment to govern, would, from anyone else’s mouth, sound like the crudest form of bigotry. Brooks makes it sound like incontrovertible truth.

Islamists might be determined enough to run effective opposition movements and committed enough to provide street-level social services. But they lack the mental equipment to govern. Once in office, they are always going to centralize power and undermine the democracy that elevated them.

Nathan Brown made that point about the Muslim Brotherhood recently in The New Republic: “The tight-knit organization built for resilience under authoritarianism made for an inward-looking, even paranoid movement when it tried to refashion itself as a governing party.”

Once elected, the Brotherhood subverted judicial review, cracked down on civil society, arrested opposition activists, perverted the constitution-writing process, concentrated power and made democratic deliberations impossible.

It’s no use lamenting Morsi’s bungling because incompetence is built into the intellectual DNA of radical Islam. We’ve seen that in Algeria, Iran, Palestine and Egypt: real-world, practical ineptitude that leads to the implosion of the governing apparatus.

I’m surprised Brooks included a link to Brown’s piece in TNR because anyone who goes there will see that the George Washington University professor doesn’t share Brooks’ contempt for Islamists. Brown writes:

In studying Islamist movements over the last decade, I generally found that the most rewarding time to speak to leaders was about a year or so after an election. During the heat of the political battle, they made decisions like most politicians do (on the fly, often overreacting to yesterday’s headlines) and spoke like most politicians do (providing glib spin than reflective analysis). But at calmer moments, they spoke less like politicians and more openly. And there was a reason why: The movements prided themselves (justifiably) on an ability to learn.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its sister organizations represent the most successful non-governmental organizations in Arab history. No other movements have been able to sustain, reinvent, and replicate themselves over so much time and space. And there are two secrets to that success: a tight-knit organizational structure that rewards loyalty and the ability to adjust and adapt.

How high does the Republican Party score on its ability to adjust and adapt? On the basis of its current trajectory as America’s old white party, I’d say: not very well.

Let’s suppose that Egypt’s military swiftly organize new presidential elections and Mohamed ElBaradei becomes the face of secularist rule in Egypt. Will Brooks then give the secularist just one year to see if they possess the mental equipment to govern?

It looks like it won’t be long before the New York Times columnist reverts to the neoconservatives’ default position: Muslims aren’t ready for democracy.

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Demoting democracy in Egypt

Shadi Hamid writes: When Mohamed Morsi became Egypt’s first democratically elected president last year, it was an especially sweet victory for the Muslim Brotherhood, the region’s oldest and most influential Islamist movement. After a long history of repression, the Brotherhood had finally tasted triumph. But their short-lived rule ended Wednesday when Egypt’s army deposed Mr. Morsi.

The Brotherhood’s fall will have profound implications for the future of political Islam, reverberating across the region in potentially dangerous ways. One of the most important political developments of recent years was the decision of Islamist parties to make peace with democracy and commit to playing by the rules of the political game. Leaders counseled patience to their followers. Their time would come, they were told.

Now supporters of the Brotherhood will ask, with good reason, whether democracy still has anything to offer them. Mr. Morsi’s removal will breathe new life into the ideological claims of radicals. Al Qaeda and its followers have long argued that change can’t come through the democracy of “unbelievers”; violence is the only path. As the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri once said, “What is truly regrettable is the rallying of thousands of duped Muslim youth in voter queues before ballot boxes instead of lining them up to fight in the cause of Allah.”

Al Qaeda’s intellectual forebears emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, and were shaped by events that bear an eerie similarity to those of this week. In 1954, a popularly backed Egyptian Army moved against the Muslim Brotherhood, arresting thousands and dismantling the organization. Prison had a radicalizing effect on Sayyid Qutb, a leading Brotherhood ideologue, who experienced torture at the hands of his captors before being executed in 1966. Many of Mr. Qutb’s followers later left the Brotherhood’s embrace and went their own way, setting up militant organizations that would begin perpetrating acts of terrorism.

In 1954, no one could have guessed that the brutal crackdown against the Brotherhood would set in motion a chain of events that would have terrible consequences for the region and America. [Continue reading…]

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NSA looking for recruits — finding would-be whistleblowers

The NSA came to recruit at a language program at the University of Wisconsin:

Madiha R. Tahir: This is not just a word game [defining who counts as an “adversary” of the United States] and you understand that as well as I do. So, it’s very strange that you’re selling yourself here in one particular fashion when it’s absolutely not true.

NSA female recruiter: I don’t think we’re selling ourselves in an untrue fashion.

Tahir: Well, this is a recruiting session and you are telling us things that aren’t true. We also know that the NSA took down brochures and fact sheets after the Snowden revelations because those brochures also had severe inaccuracies and untruths in them. So, how are we supposed to believe what you’re saying?

[pause]

Student A (female): I have a lifestyle question that you seem to be selling. It sounds more like a brochure smallercolonial expedition. You know the “globe is our playground” is the words you used, the phrasing that you used and you seem to be saying that you can do your work. You can analyze said documents for your so-called customers but then you can go and get drunk and dress up and have fun without thinking of the repercussions of the info you’re analyzing has on the rest of the world. I also want to know what are the qualifications that one needs to become a whistleblower because that sounds like a much more interesting job. And I think the Edward Snowdens and the Bradley Mannings and Julian Assanges of the world will prevail ultimately.

Listen to the whole exchange — an exchange between a thoughtful and intelligent group of students and two robotic servants of the U.S. government:

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Der Shitstorm

The Economist says that following revelations about the NSA spying on America’s so-called allies, the “noun ‘Der Shitstorm’ made a timely entrance to the official German lexicon this week.”

As the Shitstorm mounts, Germany is sending a delegation to Washington (some think it should be the other way round). Politicians are struggling to explain what they knew and when they knew it. Federal prosecutors are opening inquiries. Sigmar Gabriel, an opposition leader, says they should interview Mr Snowden and if necessary offer him “witness protection” in Germany. The head of the domestic security agency says he knew nothing of the NSA’s schemes, but his service may have benefited from the results.

The fear in Europe is that, once so many data are in American hands, who is to say that they will not be misunderstood, leaked or misused? The information may help catch terrorists and gangsters today, but become part of American power politics (or commercial advantage) tomorrow. European policymakers took a lot of persuading before they agreed to share data on financial transactions and airline passenger lists with America. Now European Parliament members are threatening to suspend the deals. Another potential casualty is a proposed transatlantic free-trade deal, on which talks are due to start on July 8th (see article). France (never enthusiastic) and left-wing politicians in other countries want them halted, pending full clarification of the espionage programmes.

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Ignore the NSA — France, too, is sweeping up data

The New York Times reports: Days after President François Hollande sternly told the United States to stop spying on its allies, the newspaper Le Monde disclosed on Thursday that France has its own large program of data collection, which sweeps up nearly all the data transmissions, including telephone calls, e-mails and social media activity, that come in and out of France.

Le Monde reported that the General Directorate for External Security does the same kind of data collection as the American National Security Agency and the British GCHQ, but does so without clear legal authority.

The system is run with “complete discretion, at the margins of legality and outside all serious control,” the newspaper said, describing it as “a-legal.”

Nonetheless, the French data is available to the various police and security agencies of France, the newspaper reported, and the data is stored for an indeterminate period. The main interest of the agency, the paper said, is to trace who is talking to whom, when and from where and for how long, rather than in listening in to random conversations. But the French also record data from large American networks like Google and Facebook, the newspaper said.

Le Monde’s report, which French officials would not comment on publicly, appeared to make some of the French outrage about the revelations of Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor, about the American data-collection program appear somewhat hollow. [Continue reading…]

That France’s political leaders — like those of every other Western democracy — are hypocrites will probably not come as news to the French or anyone else. But in reporting this, the New York Times appears to be assuming its default position: always defend governmental power — the power that this newspaper and its reporters mainline like heroin.

Mass surveillance? Everyone’s doing it. Let’s move on to the next story (and get a pat on the head from the White House).

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Bolivia threatens U.S. embassy closing after Snowden search

Bloomberg reports: Bolivia threatened to close the U.S. embassy as presidents from across the region met to show solidarity with President Evo Morales after the global manhunt for fugitive leaker Edward Snowden diverted his flight.

“We don’t need them, we’ve got other allies,” Morales, 53, said yesterday at an emergency summit of Latin American leaders in the highland Bolivian town of Cochabamba. “We don’t need the pretext of cooperation and diplomatic relations so that they can come and spy on us.”

Presidents from Argentina, Ecuador, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela met with Morales to demand Spain, France, Portugal and Italy apologize and explain why they denied the Bolivian leader’s presidential jet permission to fly through their airspace July 2. The incident led the plane to make an emergency landing in Vienna after a fuel gauge stopped working correctly, Morales said.

The group called for a new meeting of South American presidents on July 12 in Montevideo, Uruguay to discuss further retaliation against the European countries for the “flagrant violation” of international law, according to a statement read by Bolivia’s Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca at the end of the meeting yesterday. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Chile’s Sebastian Pinera, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Peru’s Ollanta Humala skipped the summit.

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Climate change led to 370,000 deaths over last decade

Imagine if the headline said “terrorism” instead of climate change. Most Western democracies would have imposed martial law. The culture of fear would have been ramped up to an unimaginable scale and ordinary people would be fortifying their homes and limiting their forays into public places. But since instead these were deaths caused by our energy-gluttonous lifestyle, then this is news that won’t even make the front pages.

Nature World News reports: The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released its decadal climate report Tuesday, which corroborated what many already believe to be true: the world is getting warmer, marked by a decade of unprecedented climate extremes.

The 10-year period between 2001 and 2010 was the warmest decade on record since modern meteorological records began around 1850, the report stated.

Those 10 years accounted for more record-breaking temperatures than any previous decade, and sea levels were said to have risen about twice as fast as the trend in the last 100 years.

Average air temperature on Earth during the study decade was nearly half a degree Celsius warmer than the average temperature from 1961-1990. Nine of the decade’s years were among the 10 warmest on record, with 2010 being the warmest year ever recorded.

The report “gives a snapshot of much longer term behavior of the climate system,” said Omar Baddour, coordinator for WMO climate system monitoring.

Baddour said that over the past four decades global temperatures have shown a “pronounced increase.”

Michel Jarraud, the WMO Secretary General, said that the rate of temperature increase “between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented.” [Continue reading…]

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Snowden threatens American vanity more than national security

Following the diversion of the Bolivian president’s jet, which was forced to land in Austria on Tuesday, the Washington Post reports:

The highly unusual detour of a head of state’s flight came just days after Obama seemed to signal that the United States would avoid extraordinary measures beyond seeking Snowden’s extradition. “I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” Obama said during a visit to Senegal last week.

It also pointed to a possible intelligence blunder. Still, former U.S. officials said that if the United States were involved, it may reflect a calculation by the Obama administration that the risk of embarrassment from an unsuccessful search was more than offset by a desire to avoid seeing Snowden arrive to a hero’s welcome in La Paz.

Before departing Moscow, Morales had suggested his country would be willing to consider granting Snowden asylum, a remark that triggered speculation that the Bolivian president might head home with the former NSA contractor in tow.

For that reason, former director of national intelligence Dennis Blair said, U.S. intelligence officials would probably have been asked not whether they could be certain Snowden was on the aircraft, but whether they could assure the White House that he was not.

The efforts being made by the U.S. to prevent Snowden finding political asylum have little to do with national security. After all, he has made it clear that he has already taken measures to ensure that even if he is arrested, he has already protected access to the classified material in his possession — meaning, it will remain available for future publication even if he is behind bars.

So, the hunt in which the U.S. government is now engaged has nothing to do with preventing new leaks. It’s intended purpose is to show that anyone who has the audacity to challenge American power will lose.

The prospect of Edward Snowden receiving a hero’s welcome in Bolivia or anywhere else, evokes an iconic image of American defeat. In spite of its ability to conduct mass surveillance, twist the arms of smaller governments, wage wars anywhere on the globe, assassinate its enemies at the press of a button, and in so many other ways reinforce its claim to be the most powerful nation on earth, it now risks being outsmarted by an individual.

The American Goliath cannot tolerate the idea of losing.

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Small U.S. paper, jealous of the attention The Guardian is receiving

A headline in the Washington Post says it all: “The Guardian: Small British paper makes big impact with NSA stories“.

Minus the put down — “small British paper” — the report is somewhat complimentary of The Guardian‘s numerous recent successes. But it’s not until paragraph six that the Post acknowledges its competitor as “one of the world’s most heavily trafficked news sites with a high of 41 million unique monthly visitors.”

A news outlet that is still clinging to paper might do well to show a bit of deference to what it perceives as an upstart — even if it happens to be “frankly liberal” and foreign.

How awful! A liberal newspaper making waves in Washington. That really is deeply offensive to America’s media establishment.

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Police state: U.S. Postal Service logging all mail for law enforcement

The New York Times reports: Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.

“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who with his wife owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.

As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.

Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.

Together, the two programs show that postal mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail. [Continue reading…]

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