Monday, January 30, 2012

Heat Gets Too Hot For D.C. Lobbyists Of Egyptian Military Oligarchy


The heavy-hitting lobbyists of Washington, D.C. [capital city of the U.S. Empire] hired by the Egyptian military dictators to spread their propaganda among the movers and shakers of D.C. and protect that oppressive regime's “interests” (namely keep the money for weaponry flowing and don't impinge on how they run their country) have resigned their “Egyptian account” after a son of a U.S. cabinet secretary and 5 other Americans working for U.S. organizations recently raided by the Egyptian military, were prevented from leaving Egypt. Apparently the lobbyists felt they went as far out on a limb for this particular gang of killers as they could. Holding a child of a U.S. cabinet secretary hostage- hard to tap dance around that one. [On Monday January 30th it was reported that 2 of the Americans are hiding out in the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.]

The lobbyists were taking heat already for trying to defend the original raids on the U.S. organizations, which are U.S.-funded and supposedly support development of “democracy.” Seems their “talking points” didn't go over too well among the D.C. elites. Obviously their ability to “advocate” on behalf of other clients would be compromised by the stench of disloyalty arising from defending a regime that is targeting U.S. agents. [On Sunday January 29th, a gaggle of Egyptian generals flew into Washington to do their own lobbying of the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. Government.]

The lobbyists are the “Livingston Group,” based around influence-peddling former Lousiana GOP Representative and adulterer Robert L. Livingston; the “Moffett Group,” the kernel of which is former Connecticut Democratic Toby Moffett, an alleged liberal; and the “Podesta Group,” which revolves around Tony Podesta, a Clinton gang henchman who currently is tight with the Obama regime, and who is rated by the NY Times as “one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington.” [Source: article referenced at end.] These 3 Musketeers of amorality formed a joint operation for the purpose of protecting Mubarak by keeping the U.S. in his corner, called the “PLM Group.” (Gee, wonder what those clever initials stand for. Probably not Pusillanimous Loathsome Motherfuckers.) According to filings required by law, this “group” raked in about $4.5 million since 2007 doing this dirty work.

Moffitt is a “liberal,” and Livingston a “conservative,” and I guess Podesta would be ”moderate” or “centrist.” Which just goes to show how those ideological distinctions can actually be meaningless.

The embargoed son in question is Sam LaHood, spawn of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. The organizations the military raided a few weeks ago were “Freedom [sic] House,” a cold war organization which specialized in anti-Soviet propaganda, and which even today is mostly funded by the U.S. Government through the State Department; and two “Institutes” affiliated with the two corporate oligarchic U.S. parties; the “International Republican Institute,” and the “International Democratic Institute.”  (You probably can guess which is affiliated with which party.) Both are entirely funded by Congress (i.e. we taxpayers), and were created to outsource the kinds of political operations the CIA used to perform. Since those operations were thoroughly exposed over time, the U.S. decided  that, what the heck, let's just be brazen and do them openly. Doing them covertly highlighted their illegitimacy (interfering in internal political affairs of sovereign countries, often to subvert existing governments). Doing it overtly is not only easier and more efficient than having to set up multiple cut-outs and conduits and engage in serpentine maneuvers to hide what they're doing, it also enables the U.S. to act like it's perfectly natural to interfere in the political affairs of other nations.

Of course, the U.S. doesn't allow foreign governments to run such operations in the U.S., but that's different, because the U.S. are the Good Guys. (An analogous situation would be a foreign government funding and advising the despised Occupy movement, for example.)
As for the reasons the U.S. spends some pocket change to finance these beachheads of U.S. ideology in Egypt in the first place, one is to hedge its bets on who's up and who's down in Egypt, and second is to feign sympathy for people struggling for democracy in the Arab world, while continuing to prop up the dictatorship with $1.5 billion a year in aid, mostly for weapons, and tear gas to use on demonstrators, “rubber” bullets to shoot out their eyes with, etc.

 In response to holding the Americans semi-hostage and exposing them to the tender mercies of the Egyptian legal system, such as it is- at least they (probably) won't be “tried” in military “court”- the U.S. let out a low growl, hinting that it might suspend the payout to the Egyptian military (an ongoing bribe for staying pacific towards Israel, selling it cheap natural gas, and helping oppress the Palestinians in the Gaza strip, which it has a history of doing anyway, before Israel conquered the territory in 1967).

Technically of course the Egyptians are correct: the U.S. groups really are “subverting” the military government with their mostly verbal support for greater democracy in Egypt, since more democracy can only undermine the military's power. That's what subversion is- eroding the basis of rule for rulers. Thus the Occupy movement in the U.S. is indeed subversive, whatever it's conscious intent, and the politicians are “right” in a strictly utilitarian sense to unleash their police punishers on them all across the nation. Of course, from a human perspective, this is totally immoral and vicious and underlines the illegitimacy of the rule of these creeps. The creeps would disagree, of course, but that's the beauty of living in a “free” country- we can disagree about that and the worse that happens to us is we get pepper sprayed, and beaten, and arrested, and jailed, and have our property stolen/destroyed by the state, and once in awhile we get murdered. And much fewer of us are blinded by the police- or brain-damaged as the Oakland police did to that military vet for the crime of standing at a protest- than in Egypt.

I should say- much fewer so far.  (1)

One note about “Freedom House” before I move on: its main propaganda stunt was issuing maps of the world that rated countries as “free,” “partially free,” or “unfree.” Of course the U.S. was “free.” All socialist countries were “unfree.” U.S.-backed dictatorships, like the murderous regimes of Latin America, were “partially free.” There's a lot more that demonstrates that “Freedom House” was nothing but a cold war propaganda mill, but that makes the point sufficiently for now. Castro never killed thousands of Cubans with death squads, never tortured prisoners, etc. Dictator, yes, but those a thousand times worse got an indulgence from “Freedom House.” Of course the very word “freedom” was long ago appropriated as a banner for U.S. ideology, used in ideological warfare against U.S. enemies.

We know, thanks to WikiLeaks, that these three groups have long been sore points with the Egyptian rulers, who complained to the U.S. Also they were actually illegal under Egyptian law, insofar as they were unregistered. (Kind of like AIPAC being an unregistered lobbyist for Israel.) During the raids, computers, cellphones, documents were seized. This is of course reminiscent of how progressive dissidents have been treated for years in the U.S., most recently during the destruction of the Occupy Wall Street movement's encampment at “Liberty” nee Zuccotti Park in New York City, during which the regime of Michael Bloomberg Billionaire seized and destroyed tens of thousands of dollars of personal property, deliberately smashing  seized laptops and ruining 5,000 books the occupiers had assembled for their library (unlike the Egyptian military, which apparently did not destroy the seized property); and the Obama regime's repression of Midwestern peace activists, whose homes have been raided and their computers, personal papers, etc. seized by the FBI pursuant to an “investigation” by political hitman, Chicago-based U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. A grand jury has been empaneled to force activists to provide intel on peace activities. See, dissent IS a crime in America,. All these activists ever do is protest nonviolently. Of course in many ways Obama has been more repressive than his predecessor, but that's a topic for another essay. In any event, I have written a good deal about his various crimes against human rights.

Speaking of repressive raids, these predate the Palmer raids after World War I, going back to the 19th century. And under FBI instigation, police conducted raids with premeditated murder in mind against Black Panther Party headquarters in various cities. So the Egyptian raids on the U.S. operatives is really kid glove stuff compared to what the U.S. does,  regardless of the outraged squawkings of the U.S. media and government. (As usual, it's redundant to add “hypocritical.” The U.S. establishment is virtually always hypocritical.) In any event, it's been standard procedure for the last decade at least for police to “preemptively” raid the headquarters of protesters they don't like to confiscate (steal) their equipment, banners, puppets, sound equipment, etc. Oftentimes bogus “terrorism” or other criminal charges are fabricated. This occurs at attempts to protest WTC meetings, political conventions, whatever. Mass roundups are common, and of course the usual teargassing and clubbings to “disperse” protesters. The FBI is engaged in an ongoing criminal conspiracy with other Federal repressive agencies and state and local “law enforcement” to conduct this repression and fabricate criminal charges, commit premeditated acts of violence, and make false arrests.

Egypt has been a military oligarchy since officers led by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the King and ended the monarchy in the early 1950s, becoming the first military dictator of the modern era. He was succeeded by Anwar Sadat, hailed by the U.S. for splitting the Arab bloc against Israel by trading peace and recognition of Israel for getting back the Sinai peninsula. (Although the Israelis tried to chisel the Egyptians by holding onto a desirable resort location at Taba, which they ultimately had pried loose from their fingers.) After Sadat was assassinated by Islamic fundamentalist soldiers angered by the rapproachement with Israel, as they marched past Sadat during a military parade, his right hand man and “Vice President,” General Hosni Mubarak, formerly head of the air force, became “President.”

We don't see a fourth overt dictator now- instead  we have an oligarchy, a group or class dictatorship, whose informal head is the ranking senior officer, one Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, longtime self-effacing backer of Mubarak until it became expedient to chuck him overboard. Maybe the generals were chafing under 30 years of Pharaonic pretensions by Mubarak, and the apparent plan to have his son inherit his dictatorship, a la the Sadats of Syria. Maybe the Mubarak clique was getting too greedy too. Anyway, with winks and nods, the U.S. and the military signalled to each other to withdraw support from Mubarak. (Cynical, opportunistic American rights now excoriate Obama for “abandoning a loyal U.S. ally” and opening the door to fundamentalists, blah blah. What can you say about such assholes? They talk out of both sides of their mouths, prattling om about “freedom,” “democracy,” “liberty,” -but never human rights, tellingly- while backing any and all dictators who will play ball with the U.S. and oppress their own people to the putative benefit of American “interests” (rarely spelled out, although doing what Israel wants is invariably one of these “interests “in the Middle East, it seems).

Of course, nobody likes the title “dictator” these days. They prefer to pretend they're democrats.  As is the custom for modern dictators, Mubarak, over his 30 year tyranny, periodically staged “elections” in which he “won” “reelection” to another “term.” Since no opposition was ever allowed to organize enough to build a big enough following to really challenge him (and fools who actually ran against him were usually clapped in prison after the “elections,” which tended to deter anyone of real stature from challenging him) he may even have “won.”  Certainly his election-stealing went more smoothly than the 2000 stolen U.S. presidential election.  (The GOP managed to steal 2004 under the radar, in Ohio.)

Egypt certainly is a dictatorship. The military rulers control the broadcast media, which they have used to blatantly lie about the current unrest and deny all the killings, maimings, and woundings they've been committing. In the year since Mubarak got his walking papers, 12,000 dissidents have been sentenced in military “courts” to prison, often bloggers guilty of “insulting” the military. This is more than were railroaded by these courts during Mubarak's 30 year reign. Also torture is routine, which means it is institutionalized, as is sexual degradation of female prisoners. (They “inspect” their vaginas, for example, calling this “virginity tests.” Very important to check women for virginity. See how virtuous the military goons are?)


(1)   The U.S. power structure just underlined my point the very day I wrote this, Sunday 1/29/12. The police in Oakland, CA, and New York City made mass arrests of Occupy movement people and reporters on the scene. In New York 300 were arrested, mostly using the standard bogus catch-all charge of “disorderly conduct” as the excuse. (The ones the cops beat up were charges with “assault,” also standard operating procedure.) In Oakland, the police went on another violence spree with their flash-bang grenades, beanbag projectiles, tear gas, etc., and arrested 400 people to prevent the movement from establishing a base in an abandoned building. This illustrates the usually invisible use of “Property rights” as a means of repression. You don’t have the right to actually be anywhere without capital to purchase space in the world. The  Oakland political machinery already has ruled the parks and streets- public spaces- off limits for the movement. They are determined, as are all the ruling powers in the U.S., to prevent this movement from taking hold. They see what happened in Egypt in elsewhwere. And the U.S. has plenty of experience smothering nascent movements in their cradles. [Of course the corporate media mostly blacks it all out, except for brief mentions that justify the police “actions” and demonize the protesters as violent, unruly, even filthy. An example of covering the butts of their thug enforcers is on page one of the Wall Street Journal the day after, January 30th: “Violence flared in Oakland, Calif., between authorities and Occupy protesters in a planned showdown.” No, violence didn’t “flare between.” The police violently attacked the protest movement. And “planned showdown” is a sinister falsehood, positing a criminal conspiracy by protesters to confront police. You have to go to genuine journalists to find out what happened, such as at democracynow.org,  “Occupy Oakland: Over 400 Arrested as PoliceFire Tear Gas, Flash Grenades at Protesters,” 1/30/12.] 

Predictably, an Oakland pol has already played the terrorism card, calling the attempt to set up a base in an abandoned building “domestic terrorism.”* That's a signal to the police, like telling a dog “sic ‘em!” Branding dissent “terrorism” is a standard move from the repression playbook. With the draconian laws pushed through using the 9/11/01 attacks as justification- the American rulers’ very own Reichstag fire, not just their “Pearl Harbor” to justify invading Iraq and waging permanent global “war,”- they now have the means to strip people of all rights and imprison them indefinitely, even without trial in military gulag, as per the “defense approrpriations” bill just signed by Obama. (“Liberal” Senator Carl Levin was behind the indefinite imprisonment without trial, charges, legal representation section of the bill.)


*[Oakland City Council member Ignacio de la Fuente: “It’s an escalation with our—I think that basically what, in my opinion, amounts to kind of a domestic terrorism, when these people start taking buildings, and they start costing the city incredible amount of resources.” Cost “them” money- taxpayer money, which protesters are forced to pay too- and you’re a terrorist. The definition of “terrorism” just keeps expanding. Pretty soon looking at one of these oppressors wrong will be a “terrorist act.” I mean, what if they got scared? That’s terrorism!]

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