Egypt’s day of shame

A hundred dead – 200, 300 “martyrs” – makes no difference to the outcome: for millions of Egyptians, the path of democracy has been torn up amid live fire and brutality. What Muslim seeking a state based on his or her religion will ever trust the ballot box again? – Robert Fisk, The Independent, London.

Today in Egypt was a day of shame: Scores killed and hundreds injured as government declares war on the country's Islamist s. The United States and the UK have condemned what can only be described as the ruthless killing of 100’s of peaceful civilian protesters by the Egyptian Armed Forces. As the full horror of the slaughter and the betrayal of the Arab Spring becomes apparent over the next few days it will be important to remind yourself that the US and UK do not mean a single hypocritical word of it and as they have amply demonstrated over many years they care diddly squat for the Egyptian People – That is why they for 40 years have supported and bankrolled a Military Dictatorship which can only with extreme kindness be described as a conspiracy against the Egyptian people.

A fire rages in the background as an Egyptian military bulldozer 

dismantles the protest camp at Cairo's Al-Nahda square after 

security forces dispersed supporters of Egypt's ousted president 

Mohamed Morsi (portrait) in two huge protest camps in the 

Egyptian capital by force

Every Egyptian male is conscripted into the military and these conscripts are brutalised and told how to conform. But the military and its professional officer caste have for over 40 years run the country with brutality and total control with its various police forces, its dreaded secret police and its network of informers. Moreover they have robbed the country blind, a country riddled with nepotism and corruption, on behalf of the officer caste and their families. Look at any Egyptian enterprise and there will be authoritarian ex-military officers prominently embedded and their extended family members planted down the line, none of who were embarrassed by actually having to apply for their jobs. Go to any Egyptian City and see the “Officer Clubs”, in reality luxury private resorts for the officers and their families. Go to Aswan and see the housing compounds, luxury villas in walled gated communities for the officer class.

Our special friend. President Mubarak spoke out against the 2003
Iraq War, arguing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should have
been resolved first. He also claimed that the war would cause
"100 Bin Ladens."

 
Hosni Mubarak may have ruled Egypt for 29 authoritarian years and stepped down after 18 days of demonstrations during the 2011 Egyptian revolution on 11 February 2011 but his cronies and collaborators in the military have held all the effective reins of power ever since. In 2005 Freedom House, a non-governmental organisation that conducts research into democracy, reported that the Egyptian government under Mubarak expanded bureaucratic regulations, registration requirements, and other controls that often feed corruption. Whenever Egyptians face such controls, money is usually required for the signature or relevant approval. Compounding the normal bureaucratic culture is the state ownership of many or most institutions of banking and finance, tourism, oil, the Suez Canal, manufacturing, the media, and so on. Government employees received low wages, while a decreasing minority of Egyptians achieved increasingly vast wealth, thus creating a growing income gap between the classes, and causing the supposed middle class to be squeezed to the smallest minority between the rich and the poor. This is what the 2011 revolt was about and nothing has changed since except a rapid economic decline. This ancient, talented, engaging people have been ripped off by their own Government and the US’s  £2 Bn + of Military Aid made the scale of this oppression possible.

So today I was looking in vain for the headline “United States follows its own laws and cuts aid after ruthless Egyptian Military Coup overthrows Democracy"?

American law forbids aid to any country where the military has overthrown the government in a coup under the Foreign Assistance Act. The law, according to its text, “restricts assistance to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.” So if the U.S. determines that there was a coup in Egypt, which would seem to require an end to its aid for the country.

Amazingly, despite oppressive and brutal rule by the Generals (the same ones who ran Mubarak’s rotten dictatorship)  and the clear triggering of the terms of the Act the Administration with the connivance of Republicans won't make the judgement call its own law requires.

The United States sends enormous amounts of aid to Egypt, much of it direct military aid contingent on the 1979 Camp David Accords that established peace between Egypt and Israel. But it’s not all military: Just in March, the Obama administration announced $250 million in aid to help Egypt through its on-going economic struggles.

Good work lads, you'll repeat the success of your 1953 coup destroying democracy in Iran, what a stormer that turned out to be? As Graham Greene might have said, you can rely on the Quiet American. Egypt, mainly as a dictatorship of Military Kleptocrats running a conspiracy against the Egyptian people has received the equivalent in today's money of $72 Bn in American aid in the past 40 years.

The assassination of a Sky TV cameraman
as he filmed the massacre in Egypt.

The Military Junta has declared a “State of Emergency.” The portends are not good – with US support and lip service to freedom the last one was in place for 31 years. The credibility of the Egyptian Army, Muslims and Copts,  stems from their victory over Israel in 1973 under Anwar Sadat, the only time despite all the bluster and hot air from the ludicrous Arab League, an Arab army has defeated Israel. Sadat was eventually assassinated by fundamentalists within the Egyptian Army and for 40 years the armed forces and their corrupt tentacles have lain heavily and greedily upon the Land of Egypt. The Egyptian Armed Forces are the problem, they will never be part of the solution.

The Arab Spring reaches Egypt - Tahrir (Liberation) Square, Cairo, February 2011