Amr Moussa's Hypocrisy نفاق عمرو موسى

في الماضي

"حماس بالنسبة لنا [مصر] ليست منظمة إرهابية. بالنسبة لنا هي جزء منتخب وعضوا في حكومة وحدة وطنية

المشكلة ليست حماس. المشكلة ليست إيران. المشكلة تكمن في الاحتلال العسكري للأراضي المحتلة "

عمرو موسي بعد أن كان يهاجم أمريكا لاتهامها حماس بالإرهاب أيام مبارك، أصبح اليوم، تحت حكم السيسي، يتهم الإخوان بالإرهاب لاتصالهم بحماس

التفسير الإسرائيلي لحماس يغلب علي إعلامنا ورجال النقلاب في بلادنا.

سبحان من يغير ولا يتغير

The US Values We Share With Israel?

By Mitchell Plitnick

It is clear that US citizens need to start asking what exactly we are supporting in Israel. The general belief and political rhetoric tell us that the US is, through military aid and diplomatic support, protecting Israel’s very existence, that is, the lives of millions of Jews whose history is so full of episodes where we were the victims of violence, ethnic cleansing and even genocide. But in recent years, the story of Israel as a Jewish state has been dictated by demographics and questions of apartheid. So when we support Israel, are we protecting a long-besieged minority and a US ally or are we supporting the kinds of discrimination that are anathema to most of the world?

A disturbing answer to this question was provided by former US President Bill Clinton in his remarks at the celebration of Israeli President Shimon Peres’ 90th birthday: “Is it really okay with you if Israel has a majority of its people living within your territory who are not now, and never will be, allowed to vote?” Clinton asked. “If it is, can you say with a straight face that you’ll be a democracy? If you let them vote, can you live with not being a Jewish state? And if you can’t live with one of those things, then you are left with trying to cobble together some theory of a two-state solution.”

Clinton’s words are a rather clear summation of both the US and Israeli approach to the Israeli occupation, at least among those who are desperately clinging to the long-dead Oslo Process. Those words carry some shocking modes of thought; they also demonstrate very clearly why Israel has gotten more intransigent and the United States ever more feckless over the years.

Yousef Munayyer, writing in the Daily Beast, takes on the broadest and most important point that Clinton’s disturbing words raise. “Palestinian freedom should not be framed as Israel’s choice,” Munayyer wrote. “Rather, as the occupier of Palestinian territory and millions of stateless Palestinians, this is Israel’s obligation, an American obligation and an international obligation. It’s about time we start talking about it this way.”

Some may argue that Clinton was addressing an Israeli audience and it is important to convince Israel that freeing the Palestinians is in their own interest. Indeed, any pragmatic or even just thoughtful approach to the politics of this conflict needs to incorporate that point. But it cannot stand alone or even be the thrust of the reasoning. As Munayyer points out, this is about rights. Palestinians deserve the same rights, to the fullest, that Israelis enjoy.

But the obsession with the Jewish majority reaches chilling heights in Clinton’s words. What difference does it make whether the Palestinians — who are dominated by Israel and have not only no right to vote but whose most basic rights are granted only at the whim of the Israeli government or Civil Administration — are a majority or not? Does it really matter if Palestinians are less than half the population under Israeli control? Would we tolerate that in any other context?

By Clinton’s reasoning, slavery in the United States never would have ended, or certainly Jim Crow laws would not have been abolished, as African Americans have never been a majority here. In one way, this is the trap of the apartheid argument, with its inevitable comparisons to South Africa, where a white minority had a democracy for themselves while denying the rights of citizenship to a much larger black majority.

But ultimately, it was not the demographics that undermined the Apartheid regime in South Africa; it was the more basic principles of justice. Constitutions in democratic societies routinely have provisions or amendments to prevent a “tyranny of the majority.” This is to ensure that all citizens who live under the roof of the government have equal rights. If Israel wants to be an exception to that rule, it may be able to do so for some time longer. But, aside from the political pressure applied by Israel’s lobby in the United States, why should the United States support such a regime? Supporting that system has nothing to do with either Israeli security or US geo-political interests. Of course, we have long supported many dictatorships, but never with the loving embrace, passion and massive devotion of resources that we devote to Israel.

It is only through the ignorance, or willful blindness, of most US citizens and leaders that the sort of thinking Clinton reflected could possibly take root. As Munayyer said, “Palestinian rights are reduced to an Israeli prerogative.” This sort of thinking is reflected throughout US discourse on the subject, including those who oppose Benjamin Netanyahu’s intransigence, as Clinton does.

Some would argue that the occupation is an outgrowth of Israel’s security situation, but that Palestinian citizens of Israel, while perhaps facing some discrimination, have full legal rights and Israelis are simply battling the same issues of bigotry that we see in the US and Europe. Current events, however, expose the falsity of that argument.

On Tuesday, the Knesset passed a first reading of a bill that would, if it eventually becomes law, summarily evict tens of thousands of Israeli Bedouin from their homes and lands. The Bedouin in the Negev desert live in villages, many which are classified as “unrecognized” and therefore have few or no basic services, such as plumbing, electricity and sanitation. They have lived on these lands for generations, most pre-dating Israel’s existence.

Let me be clear: these are Israeli citizens, and they are being stripped of what little they have so that their government can use their land. One concurrent plan is for new Jewish communities to be built in some measure on the lands the Bedouin would be evicted from.

Apparently, for Bill Clinton, since these Bedouin and Palestinians living under occupation do not yet constitute a demographic majority, this sort of treatment, while perhaps distasteful, is something the US can live with. It’s long past time that the rest of us in the United States, and Europe as well, asked if we can also live with our countries supporting this sort of thing. This is not about Israeli military imperatives, Jewish safety, or whether one supports a one- or two-state solution. This is a basic question of universal rights. Can we really live with being complicit in the denial of such rights to millions of people?

Lungomare

Artist: René Aubry

The Surveillance-Marketing Complex

Credit: sweeticons/Shutterstock

By Kevin Drum

Here's a quote that should probably scare you:

"We are all in these Big Data business models."

Why scary? Because the "we" in this case is Silicon Valley and the American intelligence community. As James Risen and Nick Wingfield reported yesterday in the New York Times, the interests of tech companies and the NSA have been converging over the past decade in two ways. 

The first way is fairly prosaic: Lots of Silicon Valley companies are in the business of selling stuff to the NSA: storage hardware, sophisticated communications equipment, data analytics software, and more. But while this may have increased recently, it's not fundamentally new. It's just the latest high-tech twist on the good old military-industrial complex.

But there's a second way that the interests of Fort Meade and Santa Clara County have converged: These days, they're fundamentally in the same business. The NSA calls it surveillance, and all the rest of us just call it spying. Silicon Valley, conversely, wouldn't be caught dead calling it that. They call it "targeted advertising" or "monetizing the social network." But it's pretty much the same thing.

When your local grocery chain gives you a loyalty card, do you think they're doing it in order to make you a loyal customer? Of course not. After all, every other supermarket offers loyalty cards too. So why are they willing to offer such eye-watering discounts if you use one? Because it allows them to track every single purchase you make and dump the information into a gigantic database. That's useful to them, and, more importantly, it's valuable data to sell to others. That's why they want it so badly.

Online, of course, similar things are happening. High-tech marketing firms are busily figuring out ways to merge data from lots of different sources to build a profile of you that would probably put your own mother to shame. Why? Because it's worth a lot of money. Advertisers are willing to pay huge amounts of money to be able to target the 1 percent of prospects who are actually likely to buy their wares, instead of simply blasting their message out to everyone. Target, for example, figured out the shopping habits of pregnant women and used that to create highly effective advertising campaigns aimed at expectant mothers. That's a lucrative market.

Combine that with Facebook likes, Google searches, phone records, pharmacy records, and every other digital trail that all of us leave behind us, and what can't you predict? We don't know yet, but there are sure plenty of people beavering away to find out.

Needless to say, spy agencies have exactly the same goals. They might not be interested in whether you're pregnant—though, then again, they might be—but they're keenly interested in trying to predict future actions based on past events. So when Risen and Wingfield report that Facebook's chief security officer decamped for a job with the NSA a couple of years ago, should we be surprised? Not a bit. They're both in the same business, after all.

We can all decide for ourselves whether we think the NSA should have access to all our phone records. But the surveillance state doesn't end there. Keep in mind that DARPA's first crack at this stuff in the wake of 9/11 was called Total Information Awareness, and its goal was precisely what the name implied: a wide-ranging database that included personal emails, social networks, credit card records, phone calls, medical records, shopping records, travel data, and anything else that the marriage of high tech and modern marketing made possible. TIA got killed after public outcry, but it never really went away. How could it? The merger of public and private spying is just too powerful to ignore.

So even if you're not too worried about NSA's collection of phone records, you'd do well to think about where this is likely to go. There will be other terrorist attacks, and in their aftermath the public will be less likely to object to things like TIA than they were the first time around. After all, we're all used to Facebook spying on us these days. (There's no need to mince words about what they do, is there?) So as scary as a surveillance state may be, it's not the worst thing that could happen. That's because the private sector spies on us too, and they do it so charmingly that not only don't we object, we practically beg them to do more. Instead of a military-industrial complex, we're rapidly moving toward a marriage so perfect that eHarmony could only dream of it: the surveillance-marketing complex.

اغضب

اغضب فإن الله لم يخلق شعوباً تستكين

للشاعر الكبير فاروق جويدة وأداء الاستاذ سائد دزدار

Moby Dick

Starring: Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn, Orson Welles

Ma Che Bontà

Artist: Mina

ضد الحكومة

ضد الحكومة

(Against The Government)

Dedicated to the Egyptian people who oppose the current military coup that overthrew their democracy and kidnapped the elected President Mohamed Morsi.

This revolutionary song is as relevant today as it was in 2011.

Baltuggy and Shabihah (Thugs)

البلطجية والشبيحة

Al-Jazeera Documentary

The Army and People Are One Hand?

بعد ٤ أيام من المظاهرات الحاشدة في ميادين مصر المختلفة احتجاجا على أداء المجلس العسكري في إدارة شؤون البلاد، سقط خلالها ما يزيد عن ٣٠ شهيدا ومئات المصابين في مواجهات مع الجيش والشرطة، ألقى المشير محمد حسين طنطاوي، رئيس المجلس العسكري، خطابا أعاد لأذهان الثوار «خطاب مبارك الأول» بعد اندلاع ثورة ٢٥ يناير.

What has changed since 2011 in Egypt?

The change has been by far worse: more brutality, more deaths, more imprisonment, more torture, more human rights violations, and MORE IMPUNITY FOR THE GUILTY CRIMINALS.

The military doesn't know how to properly administer a nation.

The military knows only one mode, when dealing with any-and-all situations it encounters: The Iron Fist!

I don't believe the supporters of the coup are unaware of past abuses by the military and police, rather, they have resorted to self-induced amnesia & denials of past events.

They'd rather see the world as being rosy, while the country is falling apart around them.

God, history and the countrymen you have betrayed, will not be kind to you.

من قلب رابعة

By عبدالله الشريف

بس أمانة عليك تسامحنى ،، كنت انا يوم سكينة فضهرك
أيوة أنا حسيت ضهرك محنى ،، زى ما غيرى نال من عرضك
بس أنا شوفت بعينى خلاص ،، كان ٩٠ مليون بيحاربك
البنزين بقه بالفنطاس ،، وانت يا نور ولا حدش قطعك
والأزمات ماسمعناش بيها ،، كله يا ريس كان متفبرك

خطابك لما سمعته انا منك ،، كنت انا حاسك بتشجعنى
أتاريك كات الطلقة فصدرك ،، كنت يا ريس بتودعنى
صوتك لسه انا حاسه فودنى ،، بتقولى اوعاك تغلط يا ابنى
حط ايديك فى ايدين اخواتك ،، عمر بلدك وازرع وابنى

حاضر يابا راح أقفل بُقى ،، مصر حقيقى هى الأولىٰ
بس انا طعم الظلم فحلقى ،، وعمر الظلم ما قوم دولة

قفلوا قناتى و سابونى أهاتى وترعة قناتهم مالها هويس 
وعاوزِنى أطاطى بنغمة خواتى وتمن دم أخويا عليهم رخيص
أوديها فين دموع اليتامى وكام أم حزنت فى شهر الكرامة
عيالنا اللى ماتت برش الندامة وكام طلقة فاتت فى بدلة عريس
وناس تانيه باتت فى حضن الشوارع فى كام شمس غابت وكام فجر طالع
وغربة بتاكل فى صدرى اللى والع و شاشة بخيرى وعمرو ولميس
فخلى الحكومة بتاعتهم متابعة وخلى البيادة تدوس سته سبعة
خواتى قالوها من قلب رابعه مالناش حكومة وإنت الرئيس

وغيظهم يا رابعة من حُر داسك ،، قالولنا الجرب راح وعشش فى ناسك
ونسيوا وضوء الطهاره لفريضة ،، وسواك التهجد بطعم المناسك
وقالوا اللى رايح لرابعة يا بخته ،، بنات الجهاد راح يسلوا بسلامته 
يا رب اللى قالها يشوفها فى أخته ،، بناتك يا رابعة تاج ملو راسك
فخلى اللى يشتم يشتمله ساعة ،، وخلى اللى حاسدك يطلع إشاعة
أصلك يا رابعة كايدة الجماعة ،، وكايدة رباط البيادة اللى ماسك من قلب رابعة 
ماشي يا ريس ،،،
بس أمانة عليك تسامحنى ،، كنت انا يوم سكينة فضهرك
أيوة أنا حسيت ضهرك محنى ،، زى ما غيرى نال من عرضك
بس أنا شوفت بعينى خلاص ،، كان ٩٠ مليون بيحاربك
البنزين بقه بالفنطاس ،، وانت يا نور ولا حدش قطعك
والأزمات ماسمعناش بيها ،، كله يا ريس كان متفبرك

خطابك لما سمعته انا منك ،، كنت انا حاسك بتشجعنى
أتاريك كات الطلقة فصدرك ،، كنت يا ريس بتودعنى
صوتك لسه انا حاسه فودنى ،، بتقولى اوعاك تغلط يا ابنى
حط ايديك فى ايدين اخواتك ،، عمر بلدك وازرع وابنى

حاضر يابا راح أقفل بُقى ،، مصر حقيقى هى الأولىٰ
بس انا طعم الظلم فحلقى ،، وعمر الظلم ما قوم دولة

O State Of Injustice يا دولة الظلم

يسقط حكم العسكر

و شكرا لتفويضكم

Egyptian Soldiers Will No Longer Swear Loyalty To President

Egyptian soldiers will no longer swear loyalty directly to the president of the republic, according to a published decree, a symbolic change analysts said underlined the military's independence from any civilian control.

Officers will vow to "execute the orders of my leadership", according to the amended oath of allegiance, that removes the phrase: "I will be loyal to the president of the republic".

The decree was issued on Tuesday by interim head of state Adly Mansour, head of the army-backed administration installed by the military after it deposed President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood on July 3.

قرار جمهورى بتحديد يمين الطاعة لضباط القوات المسلحة وحذف جملة «مخلصاً لرئيس الجمهورية

أصدر الرئيس المؤقت عدلي منصور، قرارًا جمهوريًّا، اليوم الأربعاء، بحذف العبارة التي يذكر فيها الانصياع لأوامر رئيس الجمهورية، في يمين الطاعة والولاء الجديد، الذي يلزم بأدائه ضباط القوات المسلحة عند بدء تعيينهم بعد تخرجهم، وتم الاكتفاء بطاعة الأوامر العسكرية، وتنفيذ أوامر قيادات القوات المسلحة.

وينص يمين «الطاعة الجديد»، رقم 562 لسنة 2013، على الآتي؛ «أقسم بالله العظيم، أقسم بالله العظيم، أقسم بالله العظيم، أن أكون جنديًّا وفيًّا لجمهورية مصر العربية، محافظًا على أمنها وسلامتها، حاميًّا ومدافعًا عنها في البر والبحر والجو، داخل وخارج الجمهورية، مطيعًا للأوامر العسكرية، منفذًا لأوامر قادتي، محافظًا على سلاحي، لا أتركه قط، حتى أذوق الموت، والله على ما أقول شهيد.


جدير بالذكر أن اليمين السابق المعمول به منذ إعلان الجمهورية، وحتى اليوم، يسمى «يمين الولاء»، وليس «يمين الطاعة»، وكان يتضمن عبارة «أن أكون مخلصًا لرئيس الجمهورية».

Du Hast

Artist: Rammstein

An Analysis Of The One Party State

At The Top Of The Political Pyramid, There Is Not Constant Trade Off Between Liberal and Conservative Agendas, There Is Only THE Agenda.

By Morgan Martell

The most widely proliferated truism of American patriotism is that the the two-party system is a beacon of democracy. Surely, our system is better than that of Iran, where presidential candidates must be approved by a religious council, or perhaps that of Venezuela, where the partly state-owned media disseminates propaganda in each election.

Democrats and Republicans are widely different, it seems, at least that is what their hyper-partisan bickering would imply. Bill Clinton must have been an unabashed liberal, otherwise why would the Republicans despise him so much?

But the reality is that Republican and Democrat presidents have followed the same agenda for half a century. The idea that American governance alternates as a sort of give-and-take between liberalism and conservatism is nothing more than a fantasy. I do not discount that there may be serious and significant differences between democrat and republican individuals, many of them Congressman, or perhaps state legislatures. But at the top of the pyramid, where the power to set agendas resides, there is only the Agenda.

It is fascinating how Bill Clinton began his presidential campaign with playing a Saxophone on live television, talking about his foray into Marijuana (although he claimed to have never inhaled), reminiscing about his protest of the Vietnam war, and ended up with perhaps the most reactionary (meaning maintaining the status quo) administration of any president in modern history. And Obama entered the stage as a candidate of change, only to accelerate political elite hegemony faster than any predecessor.

The scope of this article will mostly cover the period from Reagan to present, with a special emphasis on the Clinton and Obama administrations, and will address issue by issue how Democratic and Republican presidents have set the same course on a wide variety of important issues.

Crime

At the end of Reagan's administration, the incarceration rate was 247 per 100,000 citizens. The demand for prison space had been steadily increasing since the War on Drugs began. Under George H.W. Bush the incarceration rate had increased to 332 per 100,000. It is a common misconception that it is Republicans have the more punitive crime policies. Under Clinton, the incarceration rate skyrocketing to 476 per 100,000 over the next 8 years. The Clinton administration gave 30 billion dollars to states to fund their prisons, and under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act added 100,000 new police officers. The bill was written by current Vice President Joe Biden. The act also expanded the death penalty to fall under 60 more offenses, including drug trafficking, and eliminated funding for inmate education.

Private prisons flourished under Clinton. The ACLU in 2011 published a fascinating review of the private prison system you can read here. Since 1990, the private prison population has increased by 1600%. The number of private prison systems actually peaked in the year 2000 with 153 facilities.

The policy that began under Reagan and has been flourishing through both Bushes, Clinton and Obama, can only be referred to as 'mass incarceration'. As of 2013, the United States holds more prisoners than any other country in the world, including China, as well as a larger percentage of prisoners per population than any other country. For an even more sobering comparison, consider that the United States has more people imprisoned today than Stalin had under his archipelago of gulags.

Arms Sales

On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton made this promise: “I expect to review our arms sales policy and to take it up with the other major arms sellers of the world as a part of a long-term effort to reduce the proliferation of weapons.”

And then, in some astounding turn of events (or predictable, for those who have been watching closely),United States arms sales doubled in Clinton's first year in office alone.

In 2006, the United Nations convened in order to create a 'comprehensive, legally binding instrument establishing common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms.' The United States was the only country to vote against the measure. In 2008, Obama signaled that he would change the course from the Bush administration and take steps to limit arms sales internationally. And just like 2 decades earlier, United States arms sales tripled in 2011 By 2012, Obama had ended negotiations on the treaty. Is it any surprise, considering Obama received more campaign donations from the Defense Industry than McCain?

And as of a week ago from the publishing of this article, Obama has begun arming terrorist organizations in Syria.

War

It is another common misconception that during Republican presidencies we have periods of war, and during Democratic presidencies we have periods of peace. Of 'official' wars it is certainly the case that the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq war were begun by H.W. and W. Bush. Though it is important to quantify 'official' because there has not been an official declaration of war since World War II. But Bill Clinton dropped bombs on no less than 4 sovereign countries: Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Sudan.

Some of his international military endeavors were exceptionally gruesome. My personal favorite (in other terms, the one that disgusts me the most) is the bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. It is estimated that tens of thousands of civilians died once the supply of medicine was cut off.

And Clinton was able to get away with maintaining one of the darkest stains on America's soiled history, the full-force economic sanctions against Iraq that began with the first Gulf war and ended after Saddam's fall in 2003. The sanctions killed 567,000 children according to the British Medical Societies Lancet. (Later studies have argued the number 350,000 children to be more accurate, for full transparency).

United Nations ambassador Madeline Albright, when asked about these numbers, coldly stated “The price is worth it.”

Obama's first major act of war was a No-Fly zone over Libya which resulted in the removal of Muammar Gaddafi. The media had a well orchestrated propaganda campaign that garnered significant public support for this act.

His second major act of war was the arming of Syrian rebels mentioned earlier, undoubtedly prolonging the horrific civil war. Some of the groups that form the opposition group are terrorist organizations, which makes one recall the policy of Carter and Reagan arming terrorist groups in Afghanistan under Operation Cyclone.

And this section would be incomplete without mentioning the prolonging of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and their extensive use of private contractors.

But the true depths of Obama's war mongering resides in his constant and silent drone war. A policy that started under W. Bush, Obama has expanded the use of drones extensively. He has allowed the usage ofSignature Strikes, whereby drone operators bomb people they do not know, based on movements they find suspicious. Worst of all is the policy of double tapping, bombing the same scene twice after rescuers have come to try and help their fellow citizens. Obama's drones have even bombed funerals.

While the death toll of the Drone war may not be as high as the conventional wars of the Bush family, the moral depravity certainly gives them a run for their money.

Private Military and Intelligence Contractors

In the last section I mentioned Obama's extensive use of private contractors in military and intelligence operations.

It has always been hard to tell exactly how many private contractors are employed by the Federal government, and how many of those are under the umbrella of the Defense Industry. It was under Reagan that the Pentagon's privatization agenda began, and it has continued ever since. An NYU study on the size of government shows that the use of private contractors increased under the Clinton administration by about 25%. It is known that Clinton hired KBR, at the time owned by Halliburton, to build military bases and support troops in Kosovo.

Under Bush, with the Iraq war, was when the use of private contractors skyrocketed. By 2008, the number of private contractors in use in Iraq was 155,000, more than the number of troops, a degree of privatization unprecedented in modern warfare. The public became acquainted with the likes of Blackwater under the Bush administration, with events such as the unprovoked massacres in Baghdad and Fallujah.

I cannot recommend enough the work of investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill regarding Blackwater. If you don't have time for his book, check out his talk on the subject.

During his campaign, Obama promised to cut federal spending on private contractors. It soon became clear, however, that much of the stimulus money would go straight to their pockets. His Afghanistan surge was primarily accomplished through contractors, which made up half of the military forces in the country by 2009. The total number of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan quickly reached 250,000. Security contractors (i.e. private military forces) increased by over 400% under Obama and represent a quarter of all contractors employed by the Pentagon.

The most shocking use of contractors has only recently been revealed. It turns out that they represent a significant amount of the NSA workforce. 483,000 people are employed by private contractors and have 'Top Secret' access. The potential for illicit spying and extortion represented by these numbers is so high as to reach certainty. This is completely mind-blowing and perhaps the most significant threat the American people face today.

Renditions

By now, everyone is familiar with the CIA's policy of rendition, whereby they send suspected terrorists to be interrogated in foreign countries. The process was used extensively during George W. Bush's administration.

But did you know that the process began under Clinton? This PBS Frontline report confirms that the rendition process began in 1995.

In 2007, Obama wrote an article in Foreign Affairs journal stating: “To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people… This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law.”

But by 2013 it has become clear that the process of rendition has continued. The Washington Post has reported on some specific cases and I highly recommend checking out The Rendition Project which has been tracking the global rendition system extensively.

Globalization

A key process in globalization involves removing national sovereignty in favor of trade agreements that favor the rights of corporations. Bill Clinton championed the NAFTA agreement, which among other issues superseded articles in the Mexican constitution, water rights in Canada, and allows corporations to sue nations when they are in violation of the trade act.

Regardless of your opinion on NAFTA and other trade agreements, Obama has taken the concept of corporate power over national sovereignty to a whole new mind-blowing level with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a trade proposal that we only know about because the documents were leaked to the public. You can read the leaked document here. Why the secrecy? The TPP agreement would bestow radical new powers on corporations, including establishing an international tribunal that would override domestic law and would have the power to issue sanctions against governments for failing to abide by their ruling.

The TPP runs contrary to Obama's statement: "We will not negotiate bilateral trade agreements that stop the government from protecting the environment, food safety, or the health of its citizens; give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S. investors; require the privatization of our vital public services; or prevent developing country governments from adopting humanitarian licensing policies to improve access to life-saving medications.”

And to me the biggest concern is that Congress was kept in the dark along with American citizens, the treaty was negotiated between the Executive branch and corporate executives.

Congressman Alan Grayson summed it up nicely: “It's all about tying the hands of democratically elected governments, and shunting authority over to the non-elected for the benefit of multinational corporations. It's an assault on democratic government.”

But what about taxes? Gay marriage? Abortion? Marijuana?

The crux of the one-party state issue is that the issues involved are the issues that affect the political elite. Issues like gay marriage and abortion can be likened to a pressure valve: the people are forced to exert tremendous amounts of effort to affect social change, essentially utilizing all of the available activism. The minds of the populace are focused on these issues instead of the problems that are actually effecting their lives, such as predatory banks and the steady erosion of civil liberties. And what is the end result? It isn't even federal politicians that affect gay marriage or abortion in the first place, it is the courts and on a state level. Activists go home happy and pat themselves on the back for their 'symbolic victory' when their newly elected president comments on gay marriage. But what is the tangible change?

An issue such as taxes falls under the same category. Ever since Reagan slashed the top tax bracket, the tax burden has been solidly on the middle class. A few percent bump under Obama does not change this, it is simply another pressure valve. The true one percent are unaffected by a small tax increase, their wealth comes from investments and assets.

This is all part of the illusion. Our political system is designed to make us think we have choices when in reality our voice is limited to a couple issues that are unimportant relative to the big picture.

Conclusion

In no uncertain terms, our democracy is an illusion. It is as real as 'Professional Wrestling'. The two parties have consistently followed the same policies, giving American citizens only the illusion of choice. If you took the records of Clinton and Obama and put them under a Republican name, conservatives would cheer their legacy. It is the vitriol and mud-slinging of politics that contributes most to the illusion; without the constant name calling Obama would have long ago ceased to resemble a liberal. When campaigns are in full swing, candidates will refrain from the biggest gun, such as George W. Bush commuting the sentence of only one of the 151 death row cases sent to his desk as Texas Governor: serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, responsible for between 300 and 600 deaths, never brought up on the campaign trail. And at the end of a campaign candidates will become best friends again, when only days earlier they would refer to each other as harbingers of the apocalypse.

There is no trade-off of liberal and conservative agendas in the Executive branch, as the public is led to believe. Rather, Democrat presidencies are designed to placate the populace and give cover for some of the more covert aspects of The Agenda, such as Obama's continuous erosion of civil liberties.

The political elite understand that American 'democracy' is just a game. At the end of the day, they all follow the same agenda. Who is the 'man behind the curtain?'

فرشي التراب

By مشاري العرادة

فرشي التراب يضمني وهو غطائي
حولي الرمال تلفني بل من ورائي
واللحد يحكي ظلمة فيها ابتلائي
والنور خطّ كتابه أنسي لقائي

فرشي التراب يضمني وهو غطائي
حولي الرمال تلفني بل من ورائي
واللحد يحكي ظلمة فيها ابتلائي
والنور خطّ كتابه أنسي لقائي

والأهل أين حنانهم باعوا وفائي
والصحب أين جموعهم تركوا إخائي
والمال أين هناءه صار ورائي
والإسم أين بريقه بين الثنائي
هذي نهاية حالي،فرشي التراب

فرشي التراب يضمني وهو غطائي
حولي الرمال تلفني بل من ورائي
واللحد يحكي ظلمة فيها ابتلائي
والنور خطّ كتابه أنسي لقائي

والحب ودّع شوقه وبكى رثائي
والدمع جفّ مسيره بعد البكائي
والكون ضاق بوسعه ضاقت فضائي
فاللحد صار بجثتي أرضي سمائي
هذي نهاية حالي ،فرشي التراب

والخوف يملأ غربتي والحزن دائي
وأرجو الثبات وأنه قسماً دوائي
والرب أدعو مخلصاً أنت رجائي
أبغى آلهي جنة فيها هنائي

والرب أدعو مخلصاً أنت رجائي
أبغى آلهي جنة فيها هنائي

Dust is my bed, embraces me and it's my cover now
The sand surrounds me even behind my back
And the grave tells a dankness of my affliction
And the brightness draws a line.

Where is my family's love? They sold my loyalty!
And where is my group of friends? They left my brotherhood!
Where is the bliss of money? It's behind my back now
And my name where is it shine between praises
This is my end Dust is my bed.

And love farewells its longing and my eulogizing cried
And the tears went dry after crying
And the universe became narrow and so is my space
And the grave became my ground and sky
This is my end Dust is my bed.

Fear fills my estrangement and sadness is my illness
I expect firmness and I swear it's my cure
And for Allah i pray faithfully, you are my hope
Allah! I desire heaven, to find bliss in it.

US Covert Actions In Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia

By Jack Serle and Chris Woods

Bureau data suggests the CIA is killing fewer people in each strike in Pakistan.

Lack of official transparency means it remains unclear who is carrying out strikes in Yemen.

No reports of US operations in Somalia but al Shabaab continues to launch attacks.

Pakistan

June 2013 actions

Total CIA strikes in June: 1
Total killed in US strikes in June: 7-9, of whom 0 were reportedly civilians

All actions 2004 – June 30 2013

Total Obama strikes: 318
Total US strikes since 2004: 370
Total reported killed: 2,548-3,549
Civilians reported killed: 411-890
Children reported killed: 168-197
Total reported injured: 1,177-1,480
For the Bureau’s full Pakistan databases click here.

A single CIA drone strike hit Pakistan in June. The attack, on June 7, killed seven including Mutaqi(aka Bahadar Khan), described by some sources as a ‘key Pakistan Taliban commander’.

The attack came two days after new prime minister Nawaz Sharif used his inaugural address to demand an end to US drone strikes. After the attack, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned deputy US ambassador Richard Hoagland to protest.

Tensions in the region continue to grow after the killing of Pakistan Taliban (TTP) deputy leader Wali Ur Rehman in a drone attack in May hardened the stance of the militant group. Rehman’s death dashed hopes of peace talks between the militant group and Pakistan authorities in Islamabad. The TTP has since claimed that a spate of bloody attacks were in retaliation for Rehman’s death, including the murder of ten climbers and their guide in the mountainous north of the country.

While peace negotiations have faltered in Pakistan, across the border the US is trying to negotiate peace talks with the Afghan Taliban. The militant group opened its political office in Qatar – a move that provoked a visceral response from the Afghan government.

Six-monthly trendsMuch has been written about the steep decline in the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan: strikes are now at their lowest level since early 2008. The number of reported civilian deaths is also at an all-time low, a trend first high-lighted by the Bureau in 2012.

The average number of people being killed in each drone strike has fallen sharply too, an analysis of the Bureau’s data shows. An average of four people now die in each attack – just a third of the rate in the first six months of 2010.

Research by the Bureau and others indicates that some of the highest casualties in the US drone war occur when the CIA carries out ‘signature strikes’ – attacks on groups of men judged to be behaving in a suspicious manner.

The rate CIA drones kill people per strike has continued to fall since the first half of 2009.

The smaller death tolls seen in recent months suggest the CIA may be limiting its use of the controversial tactic.

The Bureau showed its analysis in the graph above to law professor Rosa Brooks who recently testified before a Senate committee on the constitutional and counterterrorism implications of the US drone wars. She said the White House’s use of drones has come under pressure and the drop in the casualty rate is ‘almost certainly an effort to respond to the criticisms’. However, she added, this is ‘the optimistic theory’. ‘The less optimistic theory would simply be they have started running out of targets.’

The first half of 2013 began with a flurry of strikes in January before the CIA scaled back operations. This coincided with a move by the White House to more transparency about the drone programme. In February new CIA director John Brennan discussed the Agency’s targeted killing programme with the US Senate during his confirmation hearing. And in May President Obama for the first time acknowledged US drone strikes have killed civilians, in a major foreign policy speech.

The past six months have been bookended with the death of two significant militant leaders.Maulvi Nazir, one of the most senior commanders of the so-called ‘Good Taliban’, was killed in January. And Wali Ur Rehman, deputy leader of the Pakistan Taliban (TTP) was killed in May.

In February a leak to NBC provided a summary of the secret legal justification that allows the US to kill its own citizens in drone strikes. In April another leak to the McClatchy news agency was reported as showing the that US is not clear who it has been killing in Pakistan. According to the leaked secret documents many killed by drones were merely classified as ‘unknown‘.

Yemen

June 2013 actions

Confirmed US drone strikes: 0
Further reported/possible US strike events: 2
Total reported killed in US operations: 0-15
Civilians reported killed in US strikes: 0-1

All actions 2002 – June 30 2013*

Confirmed US drone strikes: 46-56
Total reported killed: 240-349
Civilians reported killed: 14-49
Children reported killed: 2
Reported injured: 62-144

Possible extra US drone strikes: 80-99
Total reported killed: 284-454
Civilians reported killed: 25-50
Children reported killed: 9-11
Reported injured: 78-101

All other US covert operations: 12-77
Total reported killed: 148-377
Civilians reported killed: 60-88
Children reported killed: 25-26
Reported injured: 22-111
Click here for the full Yemen data.

A 10-year-old boy reportedly died in a suspected US drone strike in June, alongside up to six alleged al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) militants. The boy, Abdulaziz, was the younger brother of alleged AQAP commander Hassan al-Saleh Huraydan - described as a key figure in enabling the movement of money and fighters from Saudi Arabia to Yemen. They were killed, reportedly along with Saudi nationals, in a vehicle as they travelled through the northern province of al Jawf on June 9.

The strike was the second of the month. The first hit Abyan province on June 1, killing alleged senior AQAP militant Awadh Ali Lakra and a second alleged militant, Lawar.

There was strong evidence to suggest both were drone strikes. Yemen Air Force commander Rashid al Janad said he was ‘unaware of any air strikes that have been launched’ by Yemeni planes. And June’s second attack targeted a moving vehicle which is potentially beyond the Yemen Air Force’s capability. However the Bureau could not confirm US involvement – or the use of drones - in either.

Six-monthly trendsThe covert drone war has been openly discussed by senior figures in the US administration. So too has President Obama’s wish to become more transparent about the drone programme – an effort to ‘push back against a lot of these allegations that are not true‘. And Brennan hinted at giving the Pentagon control of drone strikes outside Pakistan during his Senate hearing. Some suggest this would make the programme more transparent because unlike CIA strikes, Pentagon drone strikes can be publicly acknowledged by the government.

Moving the programme to military control is not a guarantee of more transparency. Earlier this year the US military significantly reduced its openness about its use of drones in Afghanistan, reversing an earlier decision to regularly publish data about the use of drones. It had originally agreed to declassify the data following months of discussions with the Bureau, but reclassified the data, claiming attention had ‘disproportionately focused’ on drones.

In Yemen the Pentagon has also run a targeted killing programme for four years or more, and does not publish details of these operations.

So far this year the Bureau has recorded four confirmed US strikes on Yemen. However it is not clear who carried out up to 12 other reported strikes. In the first half of 2012 this pattern was more pronounced – the Bureau recorded at least 21 confirmed US drone strikes, but cannot confirm US involvement in 42 more reported attacks.

US involvement cannot be confirmed in the majority of reported drone strikes.

The Yemen government has claimed its airforce carried out many of the ‘other’ attacks. But the Yemen Air Force is incapable of flying missions at night, let alone carrying out precision strikes such as many of those reported in Yemen.

At least 183 people died in these unconfirmed drone attacks in the first half of 2012 – more than double the dead from confirmed US operations. And at least 28 people have died in possible drone strikes so far in 2013, double those killed in confirmed US attacks.

Journalists have struggled at times to investigate reported drone strikes, particularly in 2012 when neither government nor AQAP forces would allow journalists into areas under al Qaeda’s control. Retrospective investigations have uncovered evidence of US involvement in strikes, and discovered previously unreported civilian casualties.

This year investigators from human rights charities HOOD and al Karama and, independently, journalists from a Swedish radio programme visited the site of a January strike. They found fragments of Hellfire missiles, confirming it was a US attack. And they discovered the Yemeni government had acknowledged the deaths of two civilians in the strike, a university student and a teacher. This is despite anonymous government sources previously naming all the dead as al Qaeda militants.

More than half of this year’s reported strikes took place in January, before an 85-day pause while Yemen’s numerous tribes convened for the start of reconciliation talks in the capital. As this conference continued the drones returned in April killing at least four people in Wessab. A week later journalist and activist Farea al Muslimi, who was born in Wessab, testified before the US Congress about the effect of drones on Yemen and its people.

* All but one of these actions have taken place during Obama’s presidency. Reports of incidents in Yemen often conflate individual strikes. The range in the total strikes and total drone strikes we have recorded reflects this.

Somalia

June 2013 actions

Total reported US operations: 0

All actions 2007 – June 30 2013

US drone strikes: 3-9
Total reported killed: 7-27
Civilians reported killed: 0-15
Children reported killed: 0
Reported injured: 2-24

All other US covert operations: 7-14
Total reported killed: 47-143
Civilians reported killed: 7-42
Children reported killed: 1-3
Reported injured: 12-20
Click here for the Bureau’s full data on Somalia.

Once again there were no US drone strikes reported in Somalia in June – the tenth consecutive month with no reported US operations in the country. However al Shabaab continues to threaten Somali security. The militant group once again successfully penetrated the heightened security area around Mogadishu airport to attack the UN Development Programme offices on June 19. As many as 22 people were killed in the assault and ensuing 90-minute gun battle.

Al Shabaab militants were driven from Kismayo late last year by a combination of Kenyan soldiers and local militia. Yet the government in Mogadishu has failed to exert sufficient influence on the southern port, and fighting between competing clans and militia on June 7 and 8 left 31 civilians dead and 38 injured, according to the World Health Organisation. At least seven were killed infurther clashes on June 26 and 27.

It emerged that the US operates its drones over Somalia using a satellite relay station in Ramstein, Germany.

Another drone reportedly crashed in Somalia, this time in the north of the country in the autonomous region of Puntland. It is unclear who the drone belonged to, in contrast with an earlier incident in May when the Pentagon unusually claimed a crashed surveillance drone as its own.

Six-monthly trends
The Bureau has not recorded a single US drone attack or other covert operation in Somalia in the first half of 2013. Whether this is due to poor reporting from the region or an absence of attacks is unclear.

This is in contrast to 2012 when there were a number of reports of US drone strikes in the African country including two that killed British citizens. This was reported on in a major Bureau investigation published by the Independent in February which revealed that two former British citizens died in US drone strikes in Somalia in 2012 after having their British citizenships removed. Bilal al Berjawi was killed by a drone in January 2012, with his childhood friend and fellow alleged militant Mohammed Sakr dying in a US drone strike the following month.

Both were UK citizens until Home Secretary Theresa May signed an order in 2010 removing their UK nationality while they were out of the country. May has the power to remove someone’s citizenship on national security grounds. Only individuals with dual nationality can be deprived of their British citizenship. But being born in the UK is not a protection. The Bureau has identified five dual nations who were born in the UK who have been deprived of their British nationality - including Mohamed Sakr. 

Sakr’s lawyer Saghir Hussain told the Bureau there appeared to be a link between thedeprivation of citizenship and subsequent US action. Leading immigration lawyer Ian McDonald QC said that stripping people of their citizenship ‘means that the British government cancompletely wash their hands if the security services give information to the Americans who use their drones to track someone and kill them’.