Foreign Policy Category Archive

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The Arab Spring Failed But Rage Against Misery and Injustice Continues

Patrick Cockburn • February 13, 2021

• 1,200 Words • 9 Comments • Reply

Ten years ago, people across the Middle East and North Africa rose up in protest against their rulers, demanding freedom and democracy. Despotic rulers were toppled or feared that power was being torn from their grasp in countries across the region, as millions of demonstrators surged through the streets, chanting that “the people demand the... Read More

There Is a Dark and Dangerous Forest Behind These Burning Trees...

The Saker • July 14, 2020

• 5,200 Words • 175 Comments • Reply

Roughly half-way through the year 2020 it is becoming pretty obvious that there are a number of major developments which almost got our total attention, and for good reason, as these are tectonic shifts which truly qualify as "catastrophe" (under the definition "a violent and sudden change in a feature of the earth"). These are:... Read More

After the coup in Alexandria - they wanted Morsi back

Morsi Died, or Was Murdered, While Reciting a Patriotic Poem in a Cage

Andre Vltchek • June 26, 2019

• 1,900 Words • 17 Comments • Reply

Former President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, had finished his 15-minute discourse in a courtroom, while being locked inside a sound-proofed cage. He read a poem about his love for Egypt, and then collapsed, and died. His demise sent shock-waves all over Egypt, the region and the Muslim world. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to... Read More

Sinai Plane Crash: Bomb Would Derail President Sisi's Claim That He Crushed Terrorism in Egypt

Patrick Cockburn • November 6, 2015

• 600 Words • 7 Comments • Reply

Isis has carried out revenge attacks against any state or group which fights against it. When the US started bombing its forces in Iraq and Syria last year, it decapitated American journalists and aid workers. When beheadings became the norm and lost their shock value, it burned to death a Jordanian pilot in a cage.... Read More

Where's Saddam Hussein When the US Needs Him?

Robert Scheer • June 24, 2014

• 800 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

John Kerry was doing his best "Casablanca" impersonation, pretending to be police Capt. Renault and was just shocked that Egypt is still a brutal military dictatorship despite our newly revived "historic partnership." A day after chatting it up in Cairo on Sunday with now-elected dictator Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who, Kerry assured the world, "gave me... Read More

Dilip Hiro: Behind the Coup in Egypt

Tom Engelhardt • June 5, 2014

• 700 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

Think of Barack Obama's recent return to West Point at graduation time to offer his approach to an increasingly chaotic world as a bookend on an era. George W. Bush went to the Academy in June 2002 -- less than a year after 9/11, seven months after the U.S. had triumphantly invaded Afghanistan, 10 months... Read More

Clueless in Cairo

How Egypt's Generals Sidelined Uncle Sam

Dilip Hiro • June 5, 2014

• 3,300 Words • Leave a Comment

Since September 11, 2001, Washington’s policies in the Middle East have proven a grim imperial comedy of errors and increasingly a spectacle of how a superpower is sidelined. In this drama, barely noticed by the American media, Uncle Sam’s keystone ally in the Arab world, Egypt, like Saudi Arabia, has largely turned its back on... Read More

The Death of Justice in Egypt

An eight-minute trial, with no arguments for the defence, and one judge sentences 683 people to death.

Patrick Cockburn • May 1, 2014

• 900 Words • 2 Comments • Reply

After an eight-minute trial a judge in Egypt has sentenced to death 683 alleged supporters of the former President Mohamed Morsi who was ousted in a military coup last July. Among those condemned to die is the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been declared a terrorist organisation despite its tradition of non-violence... Read More

Pay No Attention to That Imperialist Behind the Curtain

Robert Scheer • November 5, 2013

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What John Kerry did this week in Egypt and Saudi Arabia is nothing short of despicable. He, and the president who appointed him, managed to honor both a vicious military dictatorship and a totalitarian medieval monarchy as examples of progress toward a more democratic Middle East, as if neither stood in contradiction to professed U.S.... Read More

Mob Versus Snob

Peter Lee • September 20, 2013

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Do you remember the end of history? I do. You know, when the collapse of Soviet communism signaled the final triumph of American style democratic republican politics and free market economics…the victory that underlies the somewhat more scientific brand of American exceptionalism practiced by President Obama and excuses the often extralegal and violent insertion of... Read More

We Need to Talk About Bandar

Peter Lee • September 3, 2013

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In the back and forth about Syria, there is surprisingly little discussion about Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar. Even though Bandar apparently took over the Saudi covert account last year and has driven the Kingdom’s hard line against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria. It’s also clear that Saudi Arabia has... Read More

Flying Blind in Egypt

Cairo's counter-intelligence has left U.S. policymakers in the dark.

Philip Giraldi • August 28, 2013

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If it seems as if the United States possesses little to no leverage over the deteriorating situation in Egypt, a contributing factor might be the evident cluelessness of policymakers in Washington. That might reasonably be attributed to the inability on the part of the intelligence community and diplomatic service to obtain the kind of information... Read More

Reacting to Egypt

An Interview with Andy Libson

Mike Whitney • August 27, 2013

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Andy Libson is a member of La Voz, a schoolteacher, and member of United Educators of San Francisco and the reform caucus, Educators for a Democratic Union. He’s been keeping a close eye on Egypt, which he’s written about extensively. Below is an interview Libson did with CounterPuncher Mike Whitney on the recent happenings in... Read More

The Summer of Snowden and Egypt, and What It Means for China

Peter Lee • August 23, 2013

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[This post originally appeared at Asia Times Online on August 22, 2013 as "Denial Is Not Just a River in Egypt". I've expanded and clarified the original piece considerably, especially in material pertaining to Golden Shield and the Great Firewall, with the additions shown in red. This piece may be reposted if ATOl is credited... Read More

Few Silver Linings in Egypt for the United States...Or China

Peter Lee • August 21, 2013

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Recent events in Egypt provide significant food for thought for China policy idealists and realists. The liberal West’s chosen panacea for China—millions of young people taking to the streets and voicing democratic slogans—produced an embarrassing military coup and an appalling massacre in Egypt. If news reports can be trusted, there is a distinct lack of... Read More

Storm on the Nile

Eric Margolis • August 17, 2013

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Egypt’s US-financed armed forces have gone to war against Egypt’s people. Arab spring has become Arab winter. So far, army and security police have scored brilliant battlefield victories against unarmed men, women and children, killing and wounding thousands who were demanding a return to democratic government. The latest Cairo protests by supporters of the elected... Read More

Hi, I'm Your New Axis of Evil

Pepe Escobar • August 16, 2013

• 1,500 Words • Leave a Comment

I have argued that what has just happened in Egypt is a bloodbath that is not a bloodbath, conducted by a military junta responsible for a coup that is not a coup, under the guise of an Egyptian "war on terror". Yet this newspeak gambit - which easily could have been written at the White... Read More

Edward Snowden Is a Show-Off…and al Gore Is Fat!

Peter Lee • July 15, 2013

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There are interesting parallels between the liberal disgruntlement with Edward Snowden (typified by Melissa Harris-Perry’s anti-Snowden screed on MSNBC) and the right’s beatdown of Al Gore’s physique and carbon footprint on the global warming issue. The argument seems to be, unless the bearer of unwelcome tidings can demonstrate 100% plaster sainthood to his or her... Read More

So Much for Mideast Democracy

Eric Margolis • July 6, 2013

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The real story behind the military coup in Cairo led by General al-Sissi is much more complex than the western media is reporting. Far from a spontaneous uprising by Egyptians, – aka “a people’s revolution” – what really happened was a putsch orchestrated by Egypt’s “deep government” and outside powers – the latest phase of... Read More

Gulf States Buy Egyptian Riots

Is Saudi money undermining Cairo's Morsi government?

Philip Giraldi • March 8, 2013

• 500 Words • 13 Comments • Reply

A great deal of reporting on the political unrest in Egypt offers simple explanations fully comprehensible to readers in London, Paris, or New York, couched in the political expressions that those audiences are accustomed to hearing. Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi has been depicted as an Islamist with an Islamist agenda who is also an inept... Read More

Cairo Bombshell

Eric Margolis • November 24, 2012

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A year ago, I was mixing with demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square calling for an end to Mubarak’s dictatorship and democracy for Egypt’s 84 million people. Being a natural-born firebrand, I find most revolutions intoxicating – if almost inevitably disappointing or even ghastly. What a difference a year makes. Tahrir Square is now packed with... Read More

Morsi Delivers His Calling Card

Pepe Escobar • August 31, 2012

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You'd better not mess with Muslim Brother Morsi. Straight out of "communist" China - where he secured a red carpet welcome from President Hu Jintao and vice-president Xi Jinping - the Egyptian president lands in "evil" Iran as a true Arab world leader. [1] Imagine conducting a poll in Tampa, Florida, among delegates at the... Read More

Rumblings in Sinai

Philip Giraldi • August 9, 2012

• 600 Words • 4 Comments • Reply

The recent killing of 16 Egyptian military police by militants in Sinai, part of an unsuccessful attempted penetration of the nearby Israeli border using a captured armored personnel carrier, appears to have been carried out by jihadi groups from the north of the peninsula along with Palestinians infiltrated from Gaza. But is the accepted narrative... Read More

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Pepe Escobar • June 28, 2012

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The whole Arab world, and the whole world for that matter, was eager to know what the newly elected president of Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood (MB) cadre Mohammed Morsi, had to say about foreign policy in his victory speech. Talk about an anti-climax. He briefly mentioned Egypt would respect its "international agreements" - code for the... Read More

Whatever Happened to the Arab Summer?

History in Reverse

Patrick Cockburn • June 26, 2012

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Remember the euphoria early last year when long-established police states across the Arab world were tumbling down. Facile comparisons were made with the fall of communist states in Eastern Europe in 1989. Commentators spoke glibly of irrepressible political change in the age of the internet, social media and satellite television. Regime change from Tunisia to... Read More

Egypt Headed for an Explosion

Eric Margolis • June 2, 2012

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The second, decisive round of Egypt’s presidential election will be held 16 and 17 June. If former general and Mubarak regime stalwart Ahmad Shafiq somehow wins, it’s almost certain the vote was manipulated. A huge popular explosion in Egypt will very likely ensue. Egyptians are already furious their first democratic election of a president was... Read More

Egypt: Marinated in Corruption

"The Biggest Source of Social Injustice"

Patrick Cockburn • April 2, 2012

• 1,100 Words • Leave a Comment

Rudyard Kipling's caustic verses denouncing the corruption of state officials sound as sharp and relevant today as they did in 1886. He drew examples from ancient Egypt, though his experience was in British-ruled India where things were supposedly better run. But Egyptians today should see nothing much to complain of in his picture of Egypt,... Read More

Egypt: A Culture of Subjugation Is Dying

“The surprise is not that there is so much violence, but that there is so little.”

Patrick Cockburn • March 29, 2012

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Cairo It is a gun battle people in the Shubra district in central Cairo still talk about six months after it happened. In a dispute over a piece of land he had seized amid the small shops and densely crowded streets, Mohammed Shaban, who had escaped from prison during the revolution, challenged the police to... Read More

Their Pope Dead, Egypt’s Copts Fear Worse Times

“What benefits were there from this revolution?”

Patrick Cockburn • March 23, 2012

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Cairo The death of Pope Shenouda, who led Egypt’s Coptic Christian Church for 40 years, has increased fears among Copts that they will face persecution and discrimination as Islamic parties become more powerful. Hundreds of thousands of mourners, many crying, packed the streets around St Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo Tuesday as they waited to file... Read More

Subversion, American Style, the NED, and Egypt

Peter Lee • February 16, 2012

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The staff of US democracy promotion NGOs, including the son of Transportation Secretary Lahood, are currently experiencing legal travails in Egypt. The Egyptian junta is well aware that democratic agitation abetted by the National Endowment for Democracy, the IRI, and the NDI is often employed to install new regimes when local strongmen running quasi-democracies (featuring... Read More

Will the US Back Real Democracy in Egypt?

Eric Margolis • January 28, 2012

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Last Monday, Egyptians celebrated the first anniversary of the revolution that overthrew the 30-year Mubarak regime. By contrast, America’s reaction this historic event was tellingly muted. Egypt contains a quarter of the Arab world’s people. In Egypt, the US had a golden opportunity to encourage genuine democracy. Instead, it long opposed demands by Egyptians for... Read More

Time to Apologize for the West's Shameful Support of Dictatorship in Egypt

Eric Margolis • December 10, 2011

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CAIRO – Tahrir Square, epicenter of the earthquake that ousted Egypt’s western-backed dictator, Husni Mubarak, is quiet – for the moment. There are banner-wavers, speakers, and youngsters milling about. But the by now world-famous square has a forlorn, leftover look, with more street people than revolutionaries. Violence crackles like static electricity. Heavily armed riot and... Read More

Dateline: Tahrir Square

Eric Margolis • December 2, 2011

• 700 Words • Leave a Comment

CAIRO – Standing at Tahrir Square, ground zero of Egypt’s revolution, is exciting and intimidating. The explosive anger, pent-up frustrations, and yearning for revenge of tens of thousands of demonstrators and onlookers breaks like waves across this vast, unsightly plaza. This is the raw material of all revolutions. The whiff of near-toxic riot gas supplied... Read More

The Egyptian Revolution in Identity Crisis

Illusions and Reality

Patrick Cockburn • May 31, 2011

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Cairo Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip last week in a radical move that upends the 30-year-old alliance between the US, Israel and Egypt under the rule of President Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian foreign minister described the blockade of 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza as “disgusting”. Soon Egypt will reopen diplomatic links with... Read More

Can a Tomb Bring Egyptian Tourism Back to Life?

Thousands Idle and Discontented

Patrick Cockburn • May 27, 2011

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Egypt has opened to the public the tombs of leading retainers of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun at Saqqara, south of Cairo, in a desperate bid to lure back tourists who have avoided the country since the revolt in February that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. Unemployed guides at Saqqara, one of the great archaeological sites of the... Read More

Mubarak in the Dock

Crimes Against the People

Patrick Cockburn • May 25, 2011

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The former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is to be tried for conspiring to kill demonstrators whose protests brought an end to his 30-year rule. The move by the military government is seen as an attempt to satisfy growing popular anger in Egypt at its failure, since taking over from 83-year-old Mubarak on February 11, to... Read More

Church Burning in Egypt

Copts Demand End to Post-Revolution Sectarianism

Patrick Cockburn • May 24, 2011

• 800 Words • Leave a Comment

Cairo "I shouldn't have told them I am a Copt," says Hani Armanius Agib, recalling how his admission, as he tried to join a Coptic demonstration, that he is a Christian to a crowd of Muslims led to him being beaten up and his wallet and mobile phone stolen. Taken to hospital, he was arrested... Read More

Revolution and Confusion

The Great Arab Awakening

Patrick Cockburn • April 20, 2011

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Cairo Egypt is filled with signs of an unfinished revolution. Politics and everyday life are in a state of flux. Even the skylight high in the ceiling of the Cairo Museum, through which thieves entered at the height of the uprising, has not been mended. The robbers lowered themselves by rope and stole items discovered... Read More

Egypt's Revolution Has Just Begun

Eric Margolis • April 19, 2011

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There has been a revolution in Egypt, but we still don't know what kind it is, how far will it go, and who stands to gain. Last week, deposed president Husni Mubarak and his two sons were arrested and are facing judicial interrogation. Egyptians are jubilant. Few Egyptians believed the man they called "Pharaoh" would... Read More

Revolution or Coup?

Egyptians on March to Keep Revolutionary Spirit Alive

Patrick Cockburn • April 4, 2011

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Cairo Demonstrators fearful that the tide of revolution is on the ebb in Egypt staged a mass protest in Tahrir Square in Cairo last Friday to demand that a less authoritarian form of government be introduced. The protesters appeared to sense that political power is drifting away from them and the old system is reasserting... Read More

Mummies and Models in the New Middle East

Pepe Escobar • March 15, 2011

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Three mummies were recently found in an underground temple in Luxor, Egypt. Translated hieroglyphs identified them as the Clash of Civilizations, the End of History, and Islamophobia. They ruled in Western domains into the second decade of the 21st century before dying and being embalmed. That much is settled. Without them, the Middle East is... Read More

Is Egypt the Future IndoTurkeZil?

So Many Ways to Strut Your Democratic Stuff in a New World

Pepe Escobar • March 13, 2011

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They can’t help themselves. Really, they can’t. Like children, the most monstrous of secret police outfits evidently come to believe themselves immortal. They lose all ability to imagine that they might ever go down and so keep records to the very moment of their collapse. Those records, so copious, damning, and unbearably detailed (which doesn’t... Read More

Counterpunch on the Egyptian Revolution

Peter Lee • March 10, 2011

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Counterpunch has a remarkable wrap-up of the Egyptian Revolution, courtesy of one Esam El-Amin, that goes beyond self-congratulating and self-justifying spin to deliver just-the-facts-ma'am reporting of what happened, combined with trenchant analysis. Here's the link to When Egypt's Revolution Was at the Crossroads. Here's a taste: February 2: Displaying Courage and Steadfastness in The Battle... Read More

Rage Against the House of Saud

Pepe Escobar • March 10, 2011

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The key slogan in Tahrir Square in Egypt was "the people want the downfall of the regime". When it comes to Saudi Arabia, it's more like "the House of Saud wants the downfall of its people". Which brings us to the US$36 billion question; can an ailing monarch (Saudi King Abdullah) bribe his subjects with... Read More

Democracy in Egypt

Philip Giraldi • March 8, 2011

• 500 Words • 4 Comments • Reply

Sometimes one has to wonder whether words have lost their meaning when used by neoconservatives. Yesterday’s Washington Post featured an op ed by Robert Kagan of Brookings and Michelle Dunne of the Carnegie Endowment. Together, the two are co chairs to the Working Group on Egypt. The op ed headline in the printed edition was... Read More

American Zionism Against the Egyptian Pro-Democracy Movement

James Petras • February 20, 2011

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One of the least analyzed aspects of the Egyptian pro-democracy movement and US policy toward it, is the role of the influential Zionist power configuration (ZPC) including the leading umbrella organization – the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CPMAJO) – Congressional Middle East committee members, officials occupying strategic positions in the Obama... Read More

Fall of the Raj

Egyptians revolted against American rule as well as Mubarak’s.

Eric Margolis • February 17, 2011

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The Mideast house of cards so laboriously constructed by Washington over the past four decades threatens to collapse. One can’t help but be reminded of the revolts across Eastern Europe in 1989 that began the fall of the Soviet Empire. Now it may be the turn of America’s Mideast empire, an empire constructed of Arab... Read More

Egypt's Workers Revolt

This Isn't All About Mubarak

Mike Whitney • February 17, 2011

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The real story about what's going on in Egypt is being suppressed in the US because it doesn't jibe with the "ain't capitalism great" theme that the media loves to reiterate ad nauseam. The truth is that the main economic policies that Washington exports through bribery and coercion have ignited massive labor unrest which has... Read More

Egypt’s Faux Revolution: Bait and Switch on the Nile

Eric Margolis • February 15, 2011

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"Plus a change,” say the cynical French, “plus c'est la mme chose." Many thoughtful Egyptians will be recalling this "bon mot" as the watch one ruler, the ousted Husni Mubarak, replaced by a military junta led by Field Marshall Mohammed Tantawi. Egyptians are getting more Mubarakism, sans Mubarak, at least for now. This is not... Read More

Egypt: Social Movements, the CIA and the Mossad

James Petras • February 15, 2011

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The Limits of Social Movements :: The mass movements which forced the removal of Mubarak reveal both the strength and weaknesses of spontaneous uprisings. On the one hand, the social movements demonstrated their capacity to mobilize hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in a successful sustained struggle culminating in the overthrow of the dictator in... Read More

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Category Classics

American Pravda: Our Coronavirus Catastrophe as Biowarfare Blowback?

Ron Unz

• 1,638 Comments • Reply

9/11 Was an Israeli Job

How America was neoconned into World War IV

Laurent Guyénot

• 444 Comments • Reply

John McCain and the POW Cover-Up

The “war hero” candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.