Political Scorecard in Egypt: Tyranny 5,160 Years, Democracy 1 Year.*

Well that was quick. The first year of democracy in Egypt's 5,000-plus year history has been brought to an end by a military coup that its backers, including the Obama regime, insists wasn't a coup. DULY ELECTED president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood is now being held incommunicado as a prisoner of the army. [“For his own protection” is the line of the military regime and its lackeys, such as the Egyptian ambassador to Britain, who was given kid glove treatment by the BBC today, defending the closing down of Muslim Brotherhood media outlets to stop “hate speech,” defending a large massacre by the military of Morsi supporters by pretending it was self-defense by the military, with no pushback by the BBC interviewer at all.]

The sore losers of the presidential election were elated by the military coup.

The talking point of anti-Morsi propagandists (they're all over the U.S. media, various well-to-do Egyptians living in the U.S., citizens of whatever country) is that it was an “impeachment.” Oh.

No, it was a military coup. And impeachment (removal by an elected legislature) doesn't involve imprisonment by the military.

Mohamed El Baradei, a man I formerly admired for refusing to be a U.S. flunky when he headed the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN body tasked with inspecting Iran's nuclear program where he insisted on playing it straight, has shamed himself by parroting the “not a coup, an impeachment” line, and letting his name be floated as a military puppet replacement for Morsi. El Baradei could have stepped up the plate and ran in the elections a year ago, but copped out at the time.

Obama has studiously avoided saying the word “coup.” He thinks that if he doesn't say the word, it wasn't a coup. One big part of His Slipperiness' reason for his latest disingenuous dishonesty is that legally the U.S. isn't supposed to funnel military aid to militaries that overthrow their governments. Not to worry: the U.S. breaks its own laws all the time. Only the rest of us have to obey their laws- or go to prison for ten, twenty, thirty, forty, one hundred fifty years. (Bernard Madoff's sentence- yes, the U.S. and its various states meted out sentences of several lifetimes to people- even several “life sentences” to be served consecutively. There have been sentences of centuries imposed in America.)

The reliably pro-fascist Wall Street Journal is hailing the coup and calling for a “Pinochet” style regime, as in Chile. That deranged rag constantly sets new lows for immoral loathsomeness, so no surprise that they would start grinding one of their favorite ideological axes. They trot out the usual bogus bullshit about how great Milton Friedmanite economics are, and makes the absurd claim that Pinochet ushered in democracy. [Yeah, I know, they're nuts.] Needless to say, no mention of thousands of murders, torture, international death squads fanning out all over the globe as far away as Rome and Washington, D.C. under the dictator Pinochet. (You'd think a terrorist bombing in the U.S.' own capital city would merit a mention, if not outrage, in a U.S. propaganda rag- well, think again. I'm referring to the murder of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt by Michael Vernon Townley and some CIA Cuban fascist exile terrorists, on a contract from Pinochet's secret police, DINA.) [1]

But lest I be misunderstood, I'm not defending Morsi. It's democracy I care about. Morsi revealed himself to be power-hungry (no surprise, given the Muslim Brotherhood's years in the political wilderness) and was unable to deliver the economic goods to the Egyptians. (That's mostly because of the dire economic situation he inherited from the dictator Hosni Mubarak.) But he was elected. Basically the sore losers of the election didn't like his policies. (Nor do I, being an atheist and someone who believes women are human beings, same as men, thus fundamentally their “equals” in terms of innate worth and the rights they should have. But I don't see the Egyptian military as having a record as sterling defenders of human rights!)

Even before his overthrow, Morsi was unable to prevent the sacking and burning of some of his own party's offices around the country.

The military is the real state in Egypt. That has been true since Nasser overthrew the last King in the 1950s. Until Mubarak was ousted, a series of military dictators has ruled Egypt. With Sadat, Egypt entered the U.S. camp of stooge nations. In return, the U.S. provides about $2 billion a year in military aid. Meanwhile the Egyptian masses spend their lives in grinding poverty.

In Latest Defense of “The People's Will,” Egyptian Army Guns Down 500

The army attacked a crowd of Muslim Brotherhood supporters just after morning prayers. The crowd had gathered outside the military facility where Morsi is believed to be held. About 50 people were killed, including children and infants, and hundreds wounded.

The Egyptian army claims they were merely defending themselves from attack. Oppressors the world over always say that, including in the U.S. The people they brutalize are always painted as violent attackers. (Sometimes an agent provocateur or police infiltrator or random anarchist or hothead will throw a bottle and that is translated into a hail of Molotov cocktails.)

“We have to cleanse the square of all of you today.” Egyptian soldier attacking Muslim Brotherhood sit-in demonstrators as quoted by victim of attack, BBC radio, 7/8/13.

Five children and two babies were among those murdered. No doubt they were shooting at the military.

*The first unified kingdom of Egypt dates to around 3,150 BCE. The land itself has been inhabited since the 10^th millennium BCE.

1] This gives me an opportunity to point out one of tens of thousands of good reasons to be glad that Newsweek magazine closed down, at least in print, although that loathsome font of evil lives on on the Internet. A week after the Letelier assassination, Newsshit published an item on its “Periscope” page saying that the CIA determined it wasn't Pinochet who did it. (Of course it was.) How the CIA could know that in a week anyway wasn't explained. In fact, the CIA helped smuggle the terrorist bomb maker Townley into the U.S. (Newsweek was owned until a few years ago by the same clan that owns the reactionary rag the Washington Post, the Graham family.)

The Director of the CIA at this time was one George Herbert Walker Bush, later Vice President and President of the U.S., and father of later President George W. Bush. As President, Bush the Elder pardoned the Cuban fascist terrorist mastermind who blew up the Cubana airliner in1976, Orlando Bosch.

A good short article that makes clear the Bush family's ties to terrorism, and other unsavory pardons by Bush the Elder is "Bush's Hypocrisy: Cuban Terrorists," by Robert Parry, at consortiumnews.com

I should mention that G. H.W. Bush's father was closely tied financially to the Nazis.

What an evil clan.

Kevin Phillips' book on the Bushes is as good a place to start as any for those who want to lift up the corporate media's rock of glowing, fawning promotion of the Bushes and take a look at the slime crawling in the dark. [American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, 2004, out in paperback and ebook.]

Also see Robert Parry's book  Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.