Obama Regime Supporting Egyptian Repression of Journalists

As I previously wrote about, three journalists working for Al-Jazeera, the Qatari-owned news organization, were convicted in an Egyptian kangaroo court of “broadcasting false information” for the “terrorist” Muslim Brotherhood. Two were sentenced to 7 years, and the third got an extra 3 years for the “crime” of possessing an empty bullet shell casing he had as a souvenir. (Come to think of it, the same thing could happen in the U.S., particularly if you’re a black or leftist.)

Nine other journalists (among 20 other defendants) have been sentenced to 10 years in absentia, including a Dutch journalist who had to flee the country with the help of her embassy in Cairo. None of these people dare travel to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, or the “United Arab Emirates” (a collection of medieval Arab monarchs), for those three are paymasters of the Sisi dictatorship in Egypt an despise the Muslim Brotherhood. Nor can they now travel anywhere in Africa, as the gang of African rulers have welcomes the Egyptian regime into their fold, and are bound to hand over Egyptian convicts to Egypt should any land in their territories. Here is another example of human beings held hostage to the vagaries of the politics of national rulers. We are like corks in the ocean, tossed about by forces much larger than ourselves.

New Egyptian military dictator Abdel Fattah El-Sisi hates Qatar for supporting the government he overthrew, the elected Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi. (Who Sisi threw in prison after his coup.) The imprisonment of Al-Jazeera is Sisi’s petty, vindictive way to last out at Qatar. Except it doesn’t hurt Qatar, just the journalists and their families. (Similarly, Bill Clinton’s sanctions against Iraq didn’t hurt Saddam Hussein, but they sure hurt the over half a million Iraqi children Clinton thereby murdered, and their families.)

Secretary of State John “I’m a Hawk Now!” Kerry had a congenial meeting with military dictator

Sisi the day before the “verdict.”

The Obama regime has cleared $575 million worth of military armaments for the Egyptian military dictatorship, strengthening its repressive hold on that country. Apache attack helicopters are being delivered for use inside Egypt (since Egypt is not going to attack any external enemies, nor be invaded by any) against any rebellious Egyptians. Since actions speak louder than words, and what a military dictatorship craves above all else is weapons and munitions, we can discount whatever hypocritical, cynical, phony, insincere “expressions of concern” the Obama regime will emit. It’s just the usual U.S. guff.

But to be fair to Obama, he supports regimes that are a lot more repressive towards journalists than Egypt is. So why can’t he back Egypt’s repression too? Obama supported the Honduran coup, and supports the government there, which MURDERS journalists (and many other people also). He of course supports the Guatemalan permanent fascist military government, which murders journalists (and many others) routinely. He’s a big fan of the Colombian rulers, who murder many journalists (and union organizers and others). Why not Egypt? All they did was imprison some journalists- and ones working for the hated-by-the-U.S. Al-Jazeera, to boot.

And Obama himself imprisons journalists. So you could say he’s avoiding being hypocritical (for once) by not opposing Sisi for doing what Obama does. (Although saying that would be a bit perverse. Or ironic, if you prefer.) Obama has imprisoned an Al-Jazeera employee in his military gulag torture center at Guantanamo Bay in U.S.-occupied Cuban territory. He ordered the U.S.-client regime in Yemen to imprison the reporter who dared expose a drone attack atrocity by the U.S. He criminally investigates U.S. journalists, such as the Fox “News” reporter who was targeted. (Numerous Fox phone lines were tapped in that “investigation.”) He surreptitiously obtained voluminous AP phone records to track down and persecute an unauthorized leaker. He is trying to force New York Times reporter James Risen to testify in a criminal persecution of a former government employee in another unauthorized leak case. (Risen faces imprisonment if he refuses to testify- the Supreme Court just rejected his last attempt to quash the subpoena demanding his testimony.) [1]

Obama’s lawyers reserved the right in court to imprison journalists (and anyone else) in a military gulag, indefinitely, without charges, under the section of the “National Defense Authorization Act” that he sneakily signed into law on the last day of 2012 (New Year’s Eve, trying to sneak under the media radar). Obama’s lawyers did this in the course of defending against a lawsuit brought by American dissidents (including Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky) challenging the Constitutionality of this totalitarian law.

So no one should expect Obama or his henchmen like Skull and Bonesman Kerry to man the ramparts for journalistic freedom. People like that use the media to plant their propaganda, but despise it for acting independently.

1] Here is an excerpt from an interview conducted by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! with journalist Jeremy Scahill and filmmaker Rick Rowley about their film “Dirty Wars.” It starts with a description of a U.S. military death squad raid on the home of an Afghan police chief (which was a “mistake,” apparently) and the murder of the chief and several pregnant women during a family celebration. This occurred in Gardez. The soldiers then conspire to concoct a cover story, digging bullets out of their victims’ bodies. (Rowley subsequently obtained cellphone videos shot surreptitiously by survivors in the house recording the voices of the soldiers and showing their hands tampering with the corpses.) NATO then put out a cover story blaming the butchery on the Taliban. However one journalist acted as an actual journalist instead of as a stenographer for official propaganda. He was then branded a liar and his character assassinated.

Scahill then discusses the case of a Yemeni journalist who exposed Obama atrocities against Yemeni villagers, blowing the Yemeni government’s lies that it was their own airstrikes against “terrorist training camps,” not U.S. cruise missile and drone attacks which massacred civilians. (In one case the target was a retired veteran of the U.S.-backed jihadist war against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, who could have easily been arrested in the village where he lived.) Obama had this journalist imprisoned to silence him.

Scahill then returns to the Gardez case.

The full interview, "Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley’s New Film Exposes Hidden Truths of Covert U.S. Warfare," is at democracynow.org.