Archives for posts with tag: Egypt

It was mid afternoon on 4 November I was free in Cairo. I was able to amend my original return ticket from India and would be able to catch a plane from Cairo to New York with a plane change at London, on the 6th. I caught a taxi to Giza and checked into a ! Swiss Chalet ! or cheesy imitation thereof, a sort of motel configuration, not too expensive. I laid down and was dead-out until I heard the muezzin calling people to prayer at daybreak, or about 12 hours. It was that kind of sleep where you offload immeasurable amounts of stress. But surrealism apparently doesn’t simply vanish but follows some trips like a con-trail. Or maybe I was just tripping, but here is what I experienced: This ‘chalet’ had a dining room and I was by now thoroughly sick of curried vegetables, the mainstay on my diet for the past six weeks. I wanted red meat. English boiled beef, fine no argument with that. Feta cheese was a treat. But here is what made the journey cartoon just keep going on; the ‘chalet’ dining room had an American ‘Old West’ theme … with waiters dressed in paper-felt cowboy hats with plastic sheriff star pinned to vest and toy revolvers holstered on their hips! This was the very outfit American parents bought for their 10 year old boys and here we were in Giza, Egypt!! I understood I wasn’t hallucinating but still .. face in my palm.

Cowboy

May I take your order?

This was the evening of 5 November. Earlier in the day, I’d been visiting the home of the taxi driver who’d fetched me from the airport and brought me to Giza, his home village. We’d had lunch with his family and he was wanting to know when I’d like to see the pyramids .. Haji Hassan El-Koly was stunned to hear a westerner state, and his daughter nearly fell on the floor laughing at his amazement .. when I’d gestured to the window and said “I see them, they’re there.” It was almost inconceivable to him I was more interested in discovering who the Egyptians of the present were, than going to some presentation or touring any archaeology site. We spent part of the afternoon discussing contemporary Egypt and regional geopolitics, as well he became curious and was asking questions about myself. El-Koly stated he would never forget me on account of my name: “Where the Sun goes down.” He probably never did forget me; I had paid him an honest fare for my trip to & around Giza and return to the Cairo airport .. but then tipped him one inferior quality counterfeit USA $100 bill, courtesy of a Guardian Angel.

Cairo_to_London

Arrival in London (L) from Egypt (R)

At Heathrow in London, I had to clear customs to walk across a street into another concourse, to catch my plane to New York. Two British counter-narcotics officers were waiting for me as I entered the second concourse, they wanted a look inside my carry on day-pack. I had a collection of perfume oils I was returning with, to give to a woman friend. Eight brown glass vials about 3 inches tall and one inch wide, probably seen in some x-ray scanner my pack had been through. Asking me questions about the movie ‘The French Connection” as they pulled out the flat box containing the vials, I merely replied ‘Not everyone’s life fits a movie script.” They sorted soon enough it was oil of musk & other scents and one of them asked “What are you West, some kind of a rat?” And then let me go. I ate a ‘drop into dead sleep over the Atlantic’ pill I HAD smuggled, just for that purpose, and woke up at JFK in New York.

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My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)

Letter to the De Sousa clan of India

On 2 November in my room at the Taj Palace, watching Indian state tv was like watching science fiction; with expressionless humanoid faces telling us not to believe “rumors of communal violence.” As I watched Rajiv light his mother’s funeral pyre on television, I could coincidentally look out the window at a column of smoke rising in the distance. Indira Gandhi’s body going up in flames or another Sikh home? There was no way for me to know, as these were simultaneous phenomena. So, what was the point of the television lie? Another trait India holds in common with the western democracies – ‘what you’re told isn’t the reality.’

Meanwhile I’d picked up a security detail shadowing me, no one believed for a New York second I was Old Babette’s grandson. It’d been better if she’d said nothing. I took care of that with fortuitous circumstance. I was sitting in a lounge in the morning when some vile looking, dowdy and incredibly wealthy (her gold and jewels hanging on her like kites tangled in utility wires) old woman decided to abandon her huge purse that appeared to be so heavy as to be filled with gold bars and leave the room. I spotted my security man across the room in a doorway, looking the other way. I walked swiftly over to him and, without mentioning the owner, I told him “There is an untended bag.” He immediately followed me into the lounge where I pointed out the purse, as it happened the old woman was returning to claim it. After, there was no further suspicions; they didn’t care who I was, other than an extra set of security eyes. No one wanted a bomb going off. A little later I frightened the ‘bejezuz’ out of myself with a stupid trick. Heading back to my room I turned the corner to see the elevator doors were beginning to close. With a sprint & leap worthy of some caped hero, I flew into the elevator as the door closed behind me: squarely into some VIP”s armed security detail! And fortunately for me, sans VIP. I wasn’t shot. If only they’d taken a photo of my face in that moment, some things are absolutely priceless. Recovering my composure in the stare of several ‘men-in-black’ security types, I simply said “Sorry” and pushed the elevator button to my level.

3 November simply dragged on in some sort of time warp that makes a day seem as though it will never end, as Indian television insisted despite rumors, there was no communal violence. Meanwhile I’d encountered an American who said a mob had boarded at a stop and killed Sikhs on the train he’d taken to Delhi.

Meanwhile Old Babette had been showering me with promises. Grateful, at least momentarily, for engineering our escape, she insisted I was going to be put up in Cairo and take a boat tour with her on the Nile, all on her dime. I listened but said nothing. Underneath, both of us knew we were absolutely incompatible personalities. That, and I recalled her brief episode of delusional belief she was a siren of eternal youth. That made me more paranoid than the rioting city we were looking to escape.

On the morning of the 4th, the Guardian Angel Sister’s Muslim travel agent manifest, to be certain Old Babette and myself made it onto the airport shuttle. For that fact, I totally forgive her for -on my departing the Hotel Imperial- passing off to me two, inferior quality, counterfeit USD$100 bills as a means of getting rid of them. On the other hand, her Bandit Sister was prone to absolutely angel moments (time to time.)

Cairo

Cairo

In our (cheap) silk kimono jackets courtesy of 1st class tickets on Japan Airline, we were among the first people out of Delhi. No sooner than we we’re in the air, Old Babette’s immense gratitude began to wane; she  was certain I wouldn’t mind a 2nd class hotel in Cairo. The truth is, other than reassurance as escort on absolutely insane taxi rides, there hadn’t been much I’d done she couldn’t have done for herself. It was the Muslim friend of the Guardian Angel Sister had made our departure possible. I don’t know if Old Babette had ‘male companion’ in mind for Egypt, but as far as I was concerned we were parting ways. As we were disembarking our plane in Cairo, her plans for us were getting reiterated and I said nothing until we’d passed through customs; her needing assistance with luggage, and myself with two carry on totality of luggage, I turned to her and said “I’ll take a rain-check” with a wave of the hand I strode away .. and the look of complete surprize-shock-amazement on her face was the last I ever saw of Old Babette.

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My Madcap Adventure (all episodes)

Letter to the De Sousa clan of India

 

Spy

A Mad Magazine inspired ‘spy versus spy’ episode

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The Arab Spring for Dummies, Egypt & the Generals

The neo-liberal New York Times is plastered with photos and gruesomely detailed stories of Egypt this week, roundly condemning the violence initiated by the generals in the wake of what the political cartoonists are depicting as ‘the road to democracy’ paved with bodies by tank and machine guns.

This is all just fine reporting except for the absolute hypocrisy and complete masking of the fact of how this latest episode of carnage came about in the Middle East. Here is a retrospective on the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ in Egypt:

Known CIA front ‘Freedom House’ (ever since rogue CIA officer Phillip Agee, among others, had fingered the organization) and associated organizations such as the National Democratic Institute, had been training the leadership of the initial secular and student youth movement, with apple technology for revolutionary coordinating purposes. Meanwhile, the Mubarak regime had acquired all the necessary electronic snooping technology to analyze, identify and isolate the secular movement’s leadership, they were rounded up and sent off to USA torture darling Omar Sulieman’s jails. The Muslim Brotherhood stepped in and hijacked the revolution they had initially refused to support, together with taking over the new constitutional process, perfectly happy the secular movement had been marginalized for them. The Brotherhood now wrote the secular movement out of the ‘democratic’ process with a biased constitution and by speeding an election other interested parties had no time to regroup and properly prepare for, and Morsi won in this biased electoral circumstance by the skin of an onion.

To claim Morsi was freely elected overlooks the western meddling that backfired on democracy in Egypt from day one.

To top it off, Morsi lacked the political maturity to include ‘pluralism’ in the emerging ‘democratic’ model, broke promise after promise relating to restraint and in the process, and wrote inclusiveness out of the equation. Of course all of this is just dandy if you are fundamentalist. But the consequence was another revolution in the works with mass anti-Morsi demonstrations gaining daily momentum. Morsi refused the generals demands he meet and make concessions to the secular opposition in a spirit of inclusiveness for the people who’d been cheated throughout the process.

If, by chance, the generals stepped in for less than democratic reasons, it  cannot overlook the preceding facts and why there actually is much popular support for the so-called ‘coup.’ The generals stepping in could be called a coup, I suppose, if the CIA manipulation that backfired and put the Brotherhood in office could be called a free and fair election (it certainly was not.)

The upshot is, now the Muslim Brotherhood rank and file membership sees themselves as deposed winners of the democratic process despite the facts and the outcome points to civil disturbance for quite some time. Perfect for those who wish to see Egypt weakened, divided and Muslims killing Muslims.

For the conspiracy buffs, Muslim on Muslim violence having now overtaken everywhere the western democracies have been heavily involved in backing the ‘spring’ movements, Libya, Syria, and now Egypt, well, it fits nicely with David Patraeus having set up civil war in Iraq. Certainly neo-conservative Christian dominionists (read crusaders) are sitting at home in front of FOX NEWS cheering on the sand niggers killing the ragheads and loving every drop of Muslim blood spilled. But there could be a more benign explanation:

The CIA is sorely incompetent and the present circumstance is little more than an episode of ‘spy versus spy’ in Mad Magazine, where a ‘democratic’ bomb exploded in the CIA deliveryman’s face; also known as beware of Americans bearing gifts of ‘democracy’

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The Arab Spring for Dummies

Overview Egypt, Libya & Syria

Egypt Round Two The Generals take it back

Syria Part One Al Jazeera (Stooge TV)

Syria Part Two Chemical Madness

Syria Part Three  Obama-McCain-al Qaida alliance

Syria Part Four Syria, al Qaida & Iraq

The Islamic State for Dummies The K.I.S.S. principle

NATO, God & Military Mafia Islamic State for Dummies Part 2

 

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Uploaded at a wifi cafe in Berlin, the New York Times lies are often so egregious it simply defies reality (and compel a response despite this being my ‘vacation’ time)

Observation: So long as political lies are a protected form of speech as opposed to felonies, democracy is only as factual as any liar(s) controlling the apparatus of state-

When politicians serve up a platter of lies to the world, as Obama, Cameron and Hollande have presented what is happening in Syria, who then are we to think democracy is superior to a dictator? The soon to more than 100,000 dead Syrians and already over one million refugees, are by far more the work of western democracies paramilitary intelligence operations than Assad’s so-called Arab Spring ‘crackdown’ which would have been long over were it not for ‘democracies’ support for the ‘resistance.’ In fact, ‘democracy’ has already murdered more Syrians, by far, than Assad, left alone, ever would have. But first, a thumbnail sketch of what can only be described as an Arab Spring sandstorm, a literally blinding event.

Our fable begins with WikiLeaks and released diplomatic cables as the demiurge creating a universal movement for democracy in the Arab world. Meanwhile, Julian Assange has been the house guest of Miss Egypt, that nations number one corporate prostitute whose commercial sponsor (Pantene) ties directly to Procter and Gamble, a major supporter of FOX NEWS. Amy Goodman sucks up Assange’s story of Miss Egypt’s concerns for social justice and how he managed live with her literally wedged into American security, and what he was up to unbeknownst to them:

Amy Goodman: “You lived in Egypt for a time”

Julian Assange: “I lived in Egypt during 2007, so I’m familiar with the Mubarak regime and the tensions within the Egyptian environment. Actually, I was staying at the time, rather unusual circumstance, I was staying in Ms. Egypt’s house. And, Ms. Egypt’s house – other than having paintings of Ms. Egypt all throughout – was clustered right between the U.S. Embassy and the U.N. High Commission with a van outside fueled with 24 soldiers in front of my front door. So, for the type of work we were doing, this seemed to be the ultimate cover to be nested right amongst this”

NOT. You don’t live with neo-conservative Procter and Gamble’s premier Arab World corporate prostitute located between buildings crawling with American, United Nations, and Egyptian security & intelligence, other than with an official nod of approval. I think we’ll find out now who was ‘providing cover.’

How did Egypt’s ‘Spring’ pan out? Known CIA front ‘Freedom House’ (ever since rogue CIA officer Phillip Agee, among others, had fingered the agitators behind so-called ‘color revolutions’) and associated organizations such as the National Democratic Institute, had been training the leadership of the initial secular student and youth movement, with apple technology for revolutionary coordinating purposes. Meanwhile, the Mubarak regime had been provided all the necessary electronic snooping technology to analyze, identify and isolate the secular movement’s leadership, they were rounded up and sent off to USA torture darling Omar Sulieman’s jails. The Muslim Brotherhood stepped in and hijacked the revolution they had initially refused to support, together with taking over the new constitutional process, perfectly happy the secular movement had been marginalized for them. The Brotherhood now wrote the secular movement out of the ‘democratic’ process. The result being, the USA does business in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood as the ‘legitimate’ government. Meanwhile, the predecessor Mubarak regime’s CIA ‘renditions to torture’ darling Omar Sulieman falls ‘ill’ and is whisked away to the United States for treatment where he dies, silencing a seriously problematic witness. With friends like the CIA…

Now, let’s move over to Libya. Gaddafi is a problem for France and Britain because after his ‘rehabilitation’, he’s not buying high end weapons packages to enrich those nations armaments industries and after all, Gaddafi has maintained his relationships with Syria and Iran. Other than torturing CIA and British MI6 renditioned prisoners, the new business arrangement with Libya is not working out.

Gaddafi is not handing over his oil industry for thorough exploitation, he’s kept Libya out of debt to the IMF, so no leverage there. Libyans live in a society approaching the American middle class standard of living. If you’re not particularly political, you have no problems, there is freedom to travel abroad, free university , women’s emancipation that is radical by Arab world standards and Libya is stable. But it is ‘spring time’ in the Arab world and Gaddafi is not performing political fellatio on the western democracies. Suddenly there is armed resistance in the vicinity of the border with Egypt, France’s neo-con ‘moral conscience’, Bernard-Henri Lévy, gives Nicolas Sarkozy a political blow-job, claiming a failure to intervene in Libya for ‘humanitarian’ reasons “would be a stain on the flag of France.” Sarkozy calls Hillary Clinton and not long after, the cruise missiles are raining down.

The result? Libya is a collection of competing tribal militias, standard of living, free travel and women’s emancipation vanished, Christine Lagarde, at the International Monetary Fund, spontaneously orgasms her pants at the IMF’s prospective new bond servant, Libya’s arsenal is scattered with western intelligence agencies delivering the one half of Gaddafi’s surplus weapons to ‘rebels’ in Syria, the other half of the weapons have found their way into the hands of jihadis across North Africa and a direct result is the war in Mali and more to come across the region and with no end in sight. Oh, but the Pentagon apologizes for failing to instill any standard of human decency in the Malian army it had trained, as that army goes on a war crimes rampage. “We’re sorry.”

Meanwhile, in Bahrain, the majority Shia population is brutally repressed and the USA wrings its hands and sheds a crocodile tear for public consumption as doctors and nurses who’d dared to treat wounded protestors are jailed for decades and the USA’s 5th Fleet remains securely ensconced there. This is because there will be ZERO actual pressure brought to bear on the corrupt sheik’s ruling minority, when neighboring Wahabi Saudi Arabia is the western democracies enforcer, with weapons and intelligence supplied by, you might have guessed it, none other than the very same western democracies, propping up Bahrain.

Now we can arrive back at Syria where the three stooges, the USA, France and Britain, all have had ongoing paramilitary intelligence operations employed to foment revolution to overthrow Assad since the beginning of the so-called ‘Arab Spring.’ The result? The soon to be 100,000 dead Syrians, with one million refugees already, projected to swell to three million refugees within a year, sectarian civil war, atrocities on all sides and extreme jihadis are the most competent, disciplined and well armed of the so-called ‘rebel’ (actually mercenary) militias. These extreme Wahabi  ‘Salafi’ sect are drawn out of Al Qaida ranks in neighboring Iraq, and had been armed by the western democracies allies Qatar & Saudi Arabia. All initially organized via intelligence operations sourced in the USA, France and Britain.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Save the Children, all cheer this ‘humanitarian violence’ on with finger pointing at the Syrians and the Assad regime particularly, but nothing is said about the underlying cause and here is why; former Amnesty International (USA) board director Francis Boyle had stated:

My conclusion was that a high-level official of Amnesty International at that time, whom I will not name, was a British intelligence agent. Moreover, my fellow board member, who also investigated this independently of me, reached the exact same conclusion. So certainly when I am dealing with people who want to work with Amnesty in London, I just tell them, “Look, just understand, they’re penetrated by intelligence agents, U.K., maybe U.S., I don’t know, but you certainly can’t trust them

In fact these human rights agencies are shilling propaganda at the populace of the western democracies on behalf of the very people who’d initiated, and are largely responsible for, the travesty of Syria. How sorely these intelligence co-opted ‘humanitarian’ agencies need us to perceive Assad as the sole or at least primary responsible monster, because:

The western democracies having had already arranged for the ‘rebels’ to be armed and the result is Islamists empowered and now they have to find a way out of the  fine and deadly chaos the USA, France and Britain had created when it turns out Syria has not only been destroyed by their incompetent endeavors, but their by far more dangerous (than Assad ever was) enemy presently has the upper hand to gain control in the final outcome. But if you buy this line of patent BS that ‘secular rebels’ need strengthening, you not only assure the downfall of Assad, you also plunge Syria into a post Assad regime civil war with no end in sight. The Saudi (Wahabi) support for the Western democracies meddling in Syria has its own agenda, the Saudi alliance with the Western democracies is one of in bed together for self serving interests, and has nothing to do with common values. The western democracies militarily prop up a corrupt Saudi regime with medieval social values and the democracies are assured their addiction to oil is not threatened. Employing Qatar and the Saudis to launder weapons to Syrian ‘rebels’ was the leadership of the western democracies begging for an anal rape by a misogynist, gynophobic regime with a mentality firmly rooted in the dark ages.

Other than Wahabi jihadis, the winners in this wanton murder of the people of Syria are those corporate boards that sponsor the likes of Julian Assange’s liaison ‘Miss Egypt’ and FOX NEWS. ‘Christian Dominion’ corporate board personalities you commonly see at The Federalist Society, with names like Dick Cheney, Shannen Coffin, John Roberts and Condoleezza Rice. People like Blackwater’s ‘ethics advisor’ John Ashcroft, anywhere and everywhere profit from chaos enriching criminals believing in fascism, these people feel justified and blessed.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Save the Children see the money pour in as highly placed officials in those organizations draw a second salary from intelligence agencies, and so they are blessed as well.

And not only neo-cons but neo-liberal serial-killers of nations Hillary Clinton and ‘middle east envoy’ Tony Blair who concealed his conversion to Catholic fundamentalism from the British people until he was out of office. He must be having wet dreams over Syria and wishing he could climb into bed with Cameron.

The armaments industry is blessed. The private security modern mercenary industry, employing ‘Christian Dominion’ commandos who are veterans of the western democracies special operations forces are blessed. Since Iraq, prospective business has never looked this good.

The nearly twenty thousand extreme ‘Christian Dominion’ fundamentalist members of the “Officers’ Christian Fellowship” whose senior members control the Pentagon, as documented by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, are feeling exceedingly blessed. Their apocalyptic vision of Armageddon precipitating the literal return of Jesus seems within reach. The likes of American Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who never encountered a proposed intervention she did not approve and will go on to become ultra rich in the private/corporate security apparatus, are blessed. People who either believe in or would profit from literal Armageddon, feel blessed.

In the end, ‘Le grand canard’ is an interesting expression, possible translations from the original French could include; ‘a big duck’, ‘the great hoax’ or ‘a grand fable.’

The Arab Spring overall, meets the definition ‘great hoax’ and the present public posturing (political lies) of Barack Obama, David Cameron and Francois Hollande, claiming a sudden and urgent need to arm the ‘rebels’, as though they had not arranged this already, precisely meets the definition of a ‘grand fable.’ Or perhaps merely a collective insanity in a nuclear armed world led by mediocre mentalities whose claims to leadership are founded on little more than an incompetent and self-serving narcissism.

And the biggest ‘duck’ in all of this is WikiLeaks, the factual outcomes point to WikiLeaks as a criminal enterprise unleashing chaos. Who has actually profited from the actions of WikiLeaks? Neo-con corporate boards populated by personalities who proliferate weapons sales worldwide. Police state apparatus with renewed/accelerated geo-political instability justifying greater ‘security’ expenditures via rationale of social disorder and attending ‘terror’ fear-mongering. All of the preceding overlapping at “The Family” of “C Street” infamy, whose ‘Christian Dominion’ personalities are as insane as Hitler’s inner circle ever were, now more firmly entrenched than ever, and forever indebted to Julian Assange.

I would suppose the typical western mentality would normally, happily, imagine ‘Spring’ to be a time of blossoming landscapes. But they have failed to recognize any ‘Arab Spring’ is a season and geography of sandstorms.

C’est la vie –

Analysis by open source intelligence method with multiple confirming sources

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The Arab Spring for Dummies

Overview Egypt, Libya & Syria

Egypt Round Two The Generals take it back

Syria Part One Al Jazeera (Stooge TV)

Syria Part Two Chemical Madness

Syria Part Three  Obama-McCain-al Qaida alliance

Syria Part Four Syria, al Qaida & Iraq

The Islamic State for Dummies The K.I.S.S. principle

NATO, God & Military Mafia Islamic State for Dummies Part 2

 

 

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Ronald Thomas West is a former U.S. intelligence professional

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Related:

WikiLeaks and Spy Agencies

Recommended articles:

BBC pretends the west is not arming Al Qaida (political spin)

New York Times admits the USA armed Al Qaida (weapons laundered through Saudi Arabia)

Books:

“The Least Of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence From Arendt to Gaza” by Eyal Weizman

“C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy” by Jeff Sharlet

“No Snowflake in an Avalanche” by Mikey Weinstein

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