By Chris Hedges, Truthdig: Bradley Manning and the Gangster State!

The swift and brutal verdict read out by Army Col. Judge Denise Lind in sentencing Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison means we have become a nation run by gangsters. It signals the inversion of our moral and legal order, the death of an independent media, and the open and flagrant misuse of the law to prevent any oversight or investigation of official abuses of power, including war crimes. The passivity of most of the nation's citizens, the most spied upon, monitored and controlled population in human history to the judicial lynching of Manning means they will be next. There are no institutional mechanisms left to halt the shredding of our most fundamental civil liberties, including habeas corpus and due process, or to prevent pre-emptive war, the assassination of U.S. citizens by the government and the complete obliteration of privacy. Wednesday's sentencing marks one of the most important watersheds in U.S. history. It marks the day when the state formally declared that all who name and expose its crimes will become political prisoners or be forced, like Edward Snowden, and perhaps Glenn Greenwald, to spend the rest of their lives in exile. It marks the day when the country dropped all pretense of democracy, obliterated checks and balances under the separation of powers and rejected the rule of law. It marks the removal of the mask of democracy, already a fiction, and its replacement with the ugly, naked visage of corporate totalitarianism. State power is to be, from now on, unchecked, unfettered and unregulated. And those who do not accept unlimited state power, always the road to tyranny, will be ruthlessly persecuted. On Wednesday we become vassals. As I watched the burly guards hustle Manning out of a military courtroom at Fort Meade after the two-minute sentencing, as I listened to half a dozen of his supporters shout to him, "We'll keep fighting for you, Bradley! You're our hero!" I realized that our nation has become a vast penal colony. If we actually had a functioning judicial system and an independent press, Manning would have been a witness for the prosecution against the war criminals he helped expose. He would not have been headed, bound and shackled, to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His testimony would have ensured that those who waged war, tortured, lied to the public, monitored our electronic communications and ordered the gunning down of unarmed civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen were sent to Fort Leavenworth's cells. If we had a functioning judiciary the hundreds of rapes and murders Manning made public would be investigated. The officials and generals who lied to us when they said they did not keep a record of civilian dead would be held to account for the 109,032 "violent deaths" in Iraq, including those 66,081 civilians in Baghdad that left nine dead, including two Reuters journalists, would be court-martialed.

by Dave Lindorff: Crimes and Punishment or Not:

Manning gets slammed, a mass-murderer got sprung. The military judge in Pvt. Manning's kangaroo trial has announced his sentence, but right now I'm thinking about another soldier: William Laws Calley. A Second Lieutenant in the Army during the Vietnam War, Calley famously was convicted of slaughtering 22 innocent men, women and children, including babies, during as day-long slaughter-fest in which he and his men massacred over 500 unarmed Vietnamese. It was an appalling war crime, and Calley, far from accepting his responsibility, initially tried to blame the atrocity on a helicopter gunship. But at least one of the men in his unit eventually told the truth and ratted him out. If Calley had any mitigating defense it was that he, like many other unit commanders in the field in Nam, were being ordered to do this kind of thing by their senior officers, who were being ordered to do this kind of thing by their senior officers, who were getting promotions based on the "body counts" of "Viet Cong" that their men could rack up, and just as today the Pentagon calls every human being in Afghanistan or Yemen or Pakistan's Baluchistan Province that it blows up or guns down a "terrorist," back in the Vietnam war, killed Vietnamese, even those that were still to young to stand up, were labeled "VC." I'm thinking about William Laws Calley because, after he was convicted of killing those 22 human unarmed beings by a military court, he was sentenced to life in prison, doing hard labor at Leavenworth. But his trial was always controversial. The pro-war crowd had a "Kill' em all and let God sort it out" mentality when it came to the Vietnam War, and to many, Calley was a hero. Jimmy Carter, who at the time was governor of Georgia, was running for the redneck vote in 1971, not the Nobel Peace Prize, and he protested the verdict by signing an order establishing a "American Fighting Man's Day" and by calling on all red-blooded American Georgians to drive with their light on by calling on all red-blooded American Georgians to drive with their lights on for a week. In fact, Calley never served a day of that richly deserved hard time. The following morning, President Richard Nixon commuted it to house arrest at Ft. Benning, pending his appeal of the conviction. Later, a general reviewing the sentence reduced it to 20 years, which was later reduced to 10 by the Secretary of the Army. In the end, Lt. Calley's incredible shrinking sentence was cut to three and a half years of house arrest. But even before that sentence was cut to three and a half years of house arrest. But even before that sentence was served out, he was released on appeal by a federal judge, who found that Calley's trial had been prejudiced by negative pretrial publicity, one of many photo's of the slaughter he oversaw and participated in personally, and by "inadequate notice of the charges" against him. In 1974, President Nixon, himself about to be driven from office after being impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, granted a limited presidential pardon to Calley, and he was a free man.

Alternet: By Julian Rayfield: Journalist Michael Hastings Reportedly Feared His Car Had Been Tampered With!

War correspondent Michael Hastings, who died in a car crash in April, had reportedly become concerned that his car had been tempered with in the days leading up to his death, and asked friend Jordanna Thigpen to borrow hers, according to a new profile in the LA Weekly. From the report: Helicopters often circle over the hills, but Hastings believed there were more of them around whenever he was at home, keeping an eye on him. He came to believe his Mercedes was being tampered with. "Nothing I could say could console him," Thigpen says. One night in June, he came to Thigpen's apartment after midnight and urgently asked to borrow her Volvo. He said he was afraid to drive his own car. She declined, telling him her car was having mechanical problems. "He was scared, and he wanted to leave town," she says. The next day, around 11:15 a.m., she got a call from her landlord, who told her Hastings had died early that morning. His car had crashed into a palm tree at 75 mph and exploded in a ball of fire. According to the LA Weekly, this was not the only indication of Hasting's "increasingly erratic" behavior, as writer Gene Maddaus put it, in the days leading up to his death: The day before Hastings died, he sent an email to his BuzzFed bosses with the subject line "FBI investigation, re: NSA."The email informed them that "the Feds are interviewing 'my close friends and associates,' "and advised them to get a lawyer if they were contacted. No friends or associates have stepped forward to say that they were interviewed, and the FBI has denied it was investigating Hastings. As Salon's Natasha Lennard reported following the accident, conspiracy theories about Hastings' death were swirling around, largely emanating from the WikiLeaks Twitter account. A coroner's report released this week found that Hastings had drugs in his system, but they "likely did not contribute" to the accident.

By Aaron Sheldrick and Antoni Slodkowski: After disaster, the deadliest part of Japan's nuclear clean-up!

TOKYO, Aug 14 (Reuters) The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is preparing to remove 400 tonnes of highly irradiated spent fuel from a damaged reactor building, a dangerous operation that has never been attempted before on this scale. Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another earthquake hit the area. Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) is already in a losing battle to stop radioactive water overflowing from another part of the facility, and experts question whether it will be able to put off the removal of all the assemblies successfully. "They are going to have difficulty in removing a significant number of the rods,"said Arnie Gunderson, a veteran U.S. nuclear engineer and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, who used to build fuel assemblies. The operation, beginning this November at the plant's Reactor No. 4, is fraught with danger, including the possibility of a large release of radiation if a fuel assembly breaks, gets stuck or gets too close to an adjacent bundle, said Gunderson and other nuclear experts. That could lead to a worse disaster than the March 2011 nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant, the word's most serious since Chernobyl in 1986. No one knows how bad it can get, but independent consultants Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt said recently in their World Nuclear Status Report 2013: "Full release from the Unit-4 spent fuel pool, without any containment or control, could cause by far the most serious radiological disaster to date." Tepco has already removed two unused fuel assemblies from the pool in a test operation last year, but these rods are less dangerous than the spent bundles. Extracting spent fuel is a normal part of operations at a  nuclear plant, but safely plucking them from a badly damaged reactor is unprecedented. "To jump to the conclusion that it is going to work just fine for the rest of them is quite a leap of logic," said Gundersen. The utility says it recognises the operation will be difficult but believes it can carry it out safely. Nonetheless, Tepco inspires little confidence. Sharply criticised for failing to protect the Fukushima plant against natural disasters, its handling of the crisis since then has also been lambasted. Last week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the government to take a more active role in controlling the overflow of radioactive water being flushed over the melted reactors in Units 1, 2 and 3 at the plant. Giant Frame: The fuel assemblies are in the cooling pool of the No. 4 reactor, and Tepco has erected a giant steel frame over the top of the building after removing debris left behind by an explosion that rocked the unit during the 2011 disaster. The structure will house the cranes that will carry out the delicate task of extracting fuel assemblies that may be damaged by the quake, the explosion or corrosion from salt water that was poured into the pool when fresh supplies ran out during the crisis. The process will begin in November and Tepco expects to take about a year removing the assemblies, spokesman Yoshikazu Nagai told Reuters by e-mail. It's just one instalment in the decommissioning process for the plant forecast to take about 40 years and cost $11 billion.    

8 Real Spies Treated Better Than Manning

Source: Press TV

Bradley Manning received a 35-year prison sentence on Wednesday, punishment for leaking troves of classified intelligence to the website WikiLeaks in 2010. The former Army private first class faced a maximum of 90 years in prison, and the prosecution was pushing aggressively for at least 60 years, meaning the final outcome was less harsh than it could have been.
But supporters of Manning — who has maintained that his actions were driven by his desire to expose brutality and wrongdoing being carried out by America’s military and diplomatic corps — argued that he deserves to be pardoned for his part in the revelations. Anti-war activists and civil libertarians have also commended Manning for his part in the leaks, saying that he helped accelerate the drawing down of U.S. military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan and provided important fodder for the Arab revolutions in 2010 and 2011.
Was the judge’s sentence overly harsh? Does Manning deserve to be jailed at all? Below, take a look at how his 35-year sentence stacks up to those handed out to other criminals, many of whose crimes were arguably more severe than Manning’s.
William Colton Millay, 16 years for attempting to sell secrets to a Russian spy
Millay pleaded guilty earlier this year to attempted espionage and other counts, after selling secrets to an FBI undercover agent whom he believed was a Russian spy. The U.S. Army policeman had faced a maximum sentence of confinement for up to life without the possibility of parole.
David Henry Barnett, 18 years for selling classified documents to Soviet officials
Over a period of years during the 1970s, Barnett, a former CIA agent, revealed the identities of some 30 CIA officers and other classified information to the KGB in exchange for money. As part of his partnership with the Soviets, Barnett tried, but failed, to get a position on Capitol Hill. He would later be rehired by the CIA, before finally being outed as a spy. Barnett pleaded guilty to espionage charges in 1980, and served 10 years before being paroled in 1990.
Harold James Nicholson, 23 years for providing highly classified information to Russia
The highest ranking CIA official ever convicted of spying for a foreign power, Nicholson was apprehended in 1996 at a Washington-area airport with rolls of film bearing images of Top Secret documents. He was subsequently charged with espionage and accused of having taken up a two-and-a-half year operation to hack into agency computers and provide the Russians with every secret he could steal. He was ultimately convicted of espionage, and later sentenced to additional years in prison after pleading guilty to betraying his country a second time.
Ana Belen Montes, 25 years for passing classified information to Cuba’s government
For 17 years, Montes, an analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, carried out a dynamic spy operation for Cuba. She was caught in 2001, and later plead guilty to espionage.
Earl Edwin Pitts, 27 years for giving classified information to Russian intelligence services
During the late ’80s and early ’90s, Pitts, then an FBI special agent, spied for Russia, providing agents with Top Secret documents and information about key bureau assets. Pitts was alleged to have received $224,000 in payments for the information he gave between 1987 and 1992. He was caught in 1996, and pleaded guilty to two counts of espionage in 1997.
Michael Peri, 30 years for passing defense secrets to communist East Germany
As the Cold War was winding down in 1989, Peri, then a U.S. Army specialist, disappeared from his Germany-based regiment with a portable computer thought be filled with sensitive information. He was believed to have defected, but returned less than two weeks later and was arrested. He would eventually plead guilty to espionage.
Clayton Lonetree, 30 years for delivering classified information from American embassies to Soviet agents
Lonetree confessed in 1987 to selling US.embassy blueprints and the names and identities of undercover intelligence agents to the Soviet Union. Lonetree’s initial 30-year sentence was eventually reduced, and he was finally released in 1996 after serving nine years.
Albert Sombolay, 34 years for giving a Jordanian intelligence agent key information about the U.S. military buildup ahead of the first Persian Gulf War
Sombolay, a specialist 4th class with the Army artillery, ultimately pleaded guilty to charges of espionage and contacting the enemy. He was reportedly paid “about $1,300 for his activities,” and had attempted to get in touch with Iraqi intelligence officials as well. Somobolay ultimately served 12 years of his sentence.

Mac Slavo: Presidential Meeting Signals Catastrophic Event!

"There Is a Crisis Unfolding Somewhere in the Background" If there's one thing we know how the US government operates, it's that the American people are often the last to know about serious problems that may be taking place behind the scenes. This week, in a move that has spooked a lot of economic and financial analysts, President Barack Obama held a special, closed door meeting with the heads of the U.S. government's financial, monetary and oversight agencies. It included members of the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the CFTC, the SEC, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. This has left many wondering what is really going on, and if a serious event is about to take place yet again. I guess I'm always unnerved as a result of what is happened in April, the last time the President of the United States had a meeting with all of the bank heads, and two days later the price of gold was smashed for over $200. Now, the President is meeting with all of the heads of the various agencies, institutions, the Fed, and all the other key money entities in the United States today. What's that all about? But clearly if the President is having this meeting, there is a crisis unfolding somewhere in the background, and it could very well relate to the dollar, interest rates, and the massive derivatives market associated with interest rates. This surge in interest rates may have already seriously destabilized the entire financial system, and that's why there is this meeting taking place in the White House today. The fact is that the vast majority of derivatives in the global financial system are related to interest rates. Now, the entire financial system may be on the precipice of some sort of catastrophic event unfolding because of what we have already seen in the bond market, and how the derivatives are so heavily intertwined. Meaning, we may be on the verge of another disastrous meltdown. John Embry, King World News via Steve Quayle. Ahead of the 2008 collapse, as the pillars of our financial system were undergoing a controlled detonation, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve assured us the crisis had been contained. Experts and pundits on television were screaming to investors that everything was fine and to keep buying the dips. Behind the scenes, however, President Bush, the Federal Reserve, and the world's leading financial institutions were scrambling to figure out how to keep the whole thing from falling apart. As former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson noted, we were on the brink of a historic collapse, and they knew it well ahead of time. The American people were not as fortunate. Most of us came to the realization things had taken a turn for the worse only after 50% of our wealth had been wiped out in a stock market and housing crash. Today, like before, all of the experts in Washington and the mainstream media are making a point to reassure us that we are in the midst of an economic recovery. However, key economic indicators suggest otherwise. We are seeing a plunge in global shipping, a halt in consumer spending, and perhaps most importantly, a significant rise in interest rates and the US government's borrowing costs. Now, as the President meets with a veritable who's who of government finance, lending and monetary policy one can't help but think something is amiss.. Are we on the brink of another global disaster?  

By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News: Stop Military Aiid to Egypt,

Says Me and the Neocons. "American aid makes the U.S. complicit in the Egyptian army's acts," read the headline in the Washington Post back on August 1. It appeared nearly a month after the U.S. supported coup that dared not speak its name, but well before this week's horrific massacre of Muslim Brotherhood protestors. Surprising to many, including the generally anti-interventionist senator Ron Paul, the author was a neocon guru Robert Kagan, a former member of Mitt Romney's foreign policy team and a gung-ho proponent of America's "benevolent global hegemony." One of the prime organizers of the Project for a New American Century, the bright lights who used 9/11 to lure President George W. Bush into Iraq, Kagan is a founding director of the new neocon flagship, the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), which is urging Obama to give greater aid to the Sunni rebels in Syria a stepping stone, I would argue to launching a military attack on Iran. But, on Egypt, Kagan and his fellow neocons and liberal interventionist allies saw the reality of the military coup well before many of our own readers here at RSN. "The stage is set for a deadly government assault not only against the Muslim Brotherhood but also against the millions of Egyptians who voted for the Brotherhood in elections over the past two years," he predicted with a flawless eye."Combined with the arrests on trumped-up charges of Morsi and others linked to the Brotherhood, the military appears intent on eradicating from Egypt's politics, jailing its leaders and followers or driving them underground." Kagan also foresaw that giving $1.3 to $1.5 billion in U.S. aid provided Washington absolutely no leverage. Why? Because the generals believed that the Obama administration would not withdraw the aid. Failed attempts to stop this week's massacre show how little influence Obama and his European allies exercised over the generals, and Obama has responded by cancelling the previously scheduled Bright Star military exercises with Egypt. Photographs of U.S. soldiers training shoulder-to-shoulder with their Egyptian counterparts would have been terribly embarrassing when juxtaposed against images of Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's troops massacring civilian protestors. Earlier, Obama halted the delivery of F-16 jets. The question now is whether he will suspend the military aid. "Suspending aid now is not merely a matter of principle or even of abiding by our own laws, although that ought to count for something," Kagan argued. "As a practical security matter, we may pay a heavy price doen the road for our complicity in the military's actions over the coming months." The price will be "a whole new generation of Islamist fighters, some percentage pf whom will turn to terrorism," he concluded. "If and when we do, the United States, as the Egyptian military's great and unwavering backer, will again become a target." As early as July 8, only 5 days after the coup, Kagan and his Foreign Policy Initiative issued a statement from "The Working Group on Egypt,"which Kagan co-chairs, clearly calling for suspending military and economic aid to Egypt.  

The Excavator: Saman Mohammadii: How America Lost Egypt: Washington's Support For Al-Qaeda

was the straw broke the Camel's back The Great Nation of Egypt Has Told The Evil Empire And Its Jihadist Terrorist Proxies: Go To Hell, And Take Al-Qaeda With You! In his statement on recent events in Egypt, President Obama said, "America cannot determine the political future of Egypt. That's a task for the Egyptian people. We don't take sides with any particular party or political figure. I know it's tempting inside of Egypt to blame the United States or the West or some other outside actor for what's going wrong." Not a word in that statement is true. Washington has taken sides in Egypt and the Arab world. It is on the side of terrorism, extremism, and global Jihadism. Washington took sides when it overthrew Gaddafi in Libya, financed and armed Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria, and looked the other way as Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood consolidated power in Egypt. Events in Egypt must be put in a wider regional and historical context. As Webster G. Tarpley says, there was a coup and a counter-coup in Egypt. Morsi initiated events by breaking diplomatic relations with Syria and declaring war against Egypt's historic neighbour. Washington was hoping that the Egyptian society would quietly go along with their own destruction and be submissive towards an oppressive Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship. But, the reverse happened. The Egyptian people were mobilized by the millions, and Egypt's wise generals acted to preserve the Egyptian state against threats from the Muslim Brotherhood and their bloodthirsty allies in Washington. The Evil Empire is in no way innocent in all of this. Washington has put its diplomatic, military, and media weight against liberal, democratic, and secular forces in the region in favour of petty-minded radical Islamist militias, fanatical and brainwashed Jihadist terrorists, Al-Qaeda oriented groups, Church-burning mobs, and Koran-wielding, multi-millionaire clerics who call for Jihad against fellow Muslims from the safety of their palaces in the Gulf. Read, "5 Facts That Prove Radical Islam Is A Child of American-British- Israeli Intelligence. "But there is some grain of truth in Obama's statement that the Evil Empire does not "take sides with any particular party or political figure." The United States first and foremost is on the side of chaos. It generates chaos by arming terrorists and spreading lies about popular Arab leaders like Assad. Chaos is America's beautiful bride, it is who Washington goes to sleep with and wakes up in the morning with. Chaos is what America wants in the Middle East, not stability, not democracy, not prosperity, not independence, not secularism, not political Islam, not anything. It is creating chaos in all the countries surrounding Israel. Egyptians don't want chaos. They don't want Al-Qaeda. They don't want terrorism.They don't want the Muslim Brotherhood. And they damn sure don't want the Evil Empire and Obama lecturing them.     

By Garry White, and Emma Rowley: Egyptian bloodbath threatens crucial routes for oil and gas supplies!

Egypt is a key bottleneck in the global oil industry. should the current turmoil in the North African country gets any worse, a potential oil spike could damage any nascent economic recovery. Egypt is a key bottleneck in the global oil industry. Should the current turmoil in the North African country get's any worse, a potential oil spike could damage any nascent economic recovery. After last week's bloody crackdown by the Egyptian army, fears of a disruption of oil supplies to the West have boosted the oil price. Brent crude prices were propelled to a four-month high of $111.23 on Thursday. If the turmoil gets worse, or unrest spreads to other countries, the risk premium currently factored into the price of crude is likely to increase further. Egypt is not a major energy exporter, producing a nominal amount of the world's oil and gas. The North African country appears at number 54 on the list of the world's largest oil exporters, producing about 0.9pc of the world's oil and 1.8pc of global natural gas supply. However, Egypt plays a vital role in international energy markets through the operation of the Suez Canal and the Suez-Mediterranean Sumed pipeline. These are vital pieces of infrastructure in the global oil market. Last year, about 7pc of of all seaborne traded oil and 13pc of liquefied natural gas (LNG) travelled through the Suez Canal, according to data collected by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The Suez Canal, a 101-mile link between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and the 200-mile Sumed pipeline are strategic routes for Persian Gulf oil and gas shipments to Europe and North America. Closure of these two routes would add an estimated 2,700 miles of transit from Saudi Arabia to the United States around the Cape of Good Hope, increasing costs and shipping time. Hopes are high, however, that both the canal and pipeline will continue to operate as normal. Maritime insurers appear to be relaxed about the situation at the moment, but one, Skuld, has warned ships' crews not to go ashore. "Members are advised to ensure that ships and crew calling at Egyptian ports or transiting the Suez Canal remain on alert and take suitable precautions to ensure their safety," Christian Ott, Skuld's vice-president, head of claims, said. "Given the announcement of the state of emergency, and the continued situation on the ground, vessels and crew need to exercise particular caution if any crew step ashore, even for short periods of time." The rest of the country's oil industry remains relatively unaffected. Despite the worrying headlines, most oil and gas production takes place offshore and is operating relatively undisturbed. The largest player is BP, which produces about 15pcof the country's oil and 30pc of its gas. "Operations and production are unaffected," a BP spokesman told Reuters after more than 500 people were killed lat week in a security crackdown. "We are monitoring the security situation in the areas where we have offices. All our people are safe and accounted for." Royal Dutch Shell is also a major producer in the country. "To ensure the safety and security of our staff, Shell offices in Egypt are closed for business today into the weekend, and business travel into the country has been restricted. We will continue to monitor the situation in Egypt," a Shell spokesman said on Friday.

By Aja Romano, The Daily Dot: Is Wikileaks Bluffing, or Did it Really Just Post All Its Secrets to Facebook?

Someone remind WikiLeaks that the U.S. does not respond well to blackmail. We'd think this was some kind of interactive Internet mystery if we didn't know better, but in fact WikiLeaks has released about 400 gigabytes' worth of mysterious data in a series of encrypted torrent files called "insurance." And no one can open it. With nothing better to go on, the Internet has decided that "insurance" may be code for "back off" to the U.S. government, coming just before the sentencing of WikiLeaks cause celebre Bradley Manning. File encryption means that the data is hidden and no one can see what's in the shared files without a key to unlock them, which, of course, hasn't been publicly released. The size of one of the files is 349 gigabytes, which, of course, hasn't been publicly released. The size of one of the files is 349 gigabytes, which means that there's either A) enough textual data inside to power a nationwide security crisis for the next 300 years or so, or B) a few very incriminating pieces of video footage. "I'm getting the feeling these people are spreading some serious material," commented Facebook on looker Angel Gabriell. WikiLeaks abruptly released the files and asked the public to mirror them on Facebook and Twitter, no less, hardly the place you drop off highly classified intelligence. But the most popular theories between the comments of Facebook, Reddit and Hacker News, are that the data contains information about the identities of U.S. secret agents currently serving around the world. WikiLeaks has always anonymized the names of any agents associated with the data in its leaks in order to protect their identities. But with a file-name like "Insurance," a few people are betting that the website is preparing for a fight with any governments who want to keep its info out of the hands of the public. Another popular theory is that the files contain the entirety of a dump that came from the latest WikiLeaks hero, Edward Snowden. "Could it be that Snowden did a database dump of their entire mainframe, like Manning essentially did?" speculated a user called swiddie on Reddit. "The file could contain the personal information on everyone, aka stasi files,the NSA ever spied on." That file, if it existed, could be far bigger than 400 gigs. The files, which were seeded as torrents publicly, went around 1:30 am Eastern, roughly 12 hours or so after a sentencing judge called the actions of former U.S. soldier Bradley Manning in leaking classified data to WikiLeaks "wanton and reckless." If the files are "insurance" to keep the U.S. government from tightening the noose around the necks of Manning, Snowden, and WikiLeaks "wanton and reckless." In the files actually are "insurance"to keep the U.S. government from tightening the noose around the necks of Manning, Snowden, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, then it's a risky gamble for the site to take, to say the least. Still, not everyone is convinced the info contained inside the secret files is worth kicking up a fuss. "At 349GB it better have a stable build of that virtual battlefield simulator Bohemia Interactive makes for the military," snarked Raul Ceja on Facebook. 
    

Steve Watson: Infowars.com: Kucinish: "Everybody Lies To Congress, Abolish NSA, Celebrate Snowden"

There should be a 'death penalty' for government agencies that betray the American people. Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich slammed the Obama administration late last week, saying that the NSA should be celebrated with a ticker-tape parade. Kucinich, known for his strong stance on privacy and civil liberties, urged attendees at the premiere of a documentary on government and corporate abuse of digital data that was unacceptable to allow the government to continue to destroy constitutional rights. "We have the CIA, the FBI, a dozen other intelligence infrastructures. Frankly and I'm saying this with a lifetime's experience in government here, it's time to punch the NSA's ticket here." Kucinich stated at the showing of the film Terms and Conditions May Apply. Rep. Dennis Kucinich Slams NSA at "Terms & Conditions" "They've ruined the brand. They've destroyed the idea of privacy." he added. "We need some kind of symbolic and profound approach here, that says, 'look, you've violated something that's very dear to the American people, you don't get to do that." "We need some kind of symbolic and profound approach here, that says, 'look, you've violated somethingthat's very dear to the American people, you don't get to do that." Kucinich urged. "We talk
about the death penalty for individuals, which I oppose, but I think there needs to be for government agencies that so broadly betray the public interest," Kucinich added. "There needs to be a measure of responsibility. And if they go beyond the pale, which the NSA has, they just ought to be abolished. We don't need the spying." he asserted. The former Ohio Congressman, who left office earlier this year, stated "In a just world, Snowden, we'd be having ticker tape parades for him. But thay's not what's going to happen." Speaking about Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper lying to Congress about the NSA's spying techniques, Kucinich stated: "Well, you know it's legal to lie to Congress, but everyone lies to Congress. As soon as they raise their right hand, watch out! Clapper should be held responsible, but he won't be, because that's the condition we're in right now." Fresh revelations of NSA abuses were met late Friday by with a response from the agency that the spy agency was "not trying to break the law." "These are not willful violations, they are not malicious," John DeLong, NSA director of compliance, told reporters. In a blatant attempt to diffuse the revelations, Senator Diane Feinstein, Chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, echoed the comments, stating "The majority of these 'compliance incidents' are unintentional and do not involve any inappropriate surveillance of Americans." "As I have said previously, the committee has never identified an instance in which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to conduct surveillance for inappropriate purposes." Feinstein added.     

By Alexa O'Brian, Guardian UK: The Ethical Consistency of Bradley Manning's Apology!

Alexa O'Brian is the authority on all things Manning. Several times a day, reporters in the media center on depend on Alexa for context as events unfold. She has chronicled the prosecution of Manning since day 1. If you haven't visited her site yet you should. On Friday afternoon after the court recessed in the trial of Bradley Manning, Defense Attorney David Coombs addressed supporters for 20 minutes. When asked about the apology, Coombs said to read Alexa O'Brian or "AOB as I affectionately call her, I think she's tracking, so look at what Alexa's saying she has a pretty good pulse."Here is the article he was referring to. SMG/RSN. PFC Bradley Manning, the American soldier responsible for transmitting hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and US army reports to WikiLeaks, took the stand Wednesday during the sentencing phase of his trial to apologize to the presiding military judge, Col Denise Lind. His three-minute unsworn statement was delivered before defense rested its case. In July, Manning was convicted of 20 offenses. He currently faces a maximum punishment of 90 years. Manning said Wednesday: "I am sorry that my actions hurt people. I am sorry that it hurt the United States." Because much of the 19-month trial has been conducted without a public record of court documents until the 1,103rd day of the legal proceeding, many might be surprised to learn that Manning's statement on Wednesday is consistent with others he has made in court. Many readers are familiar with excerpts from a 20-page statement Manning read at a February hearing, where he pled to nine "lesser included offenses" of the Espionage Act and one failure to obey a lawful regulation for wrongly storing classified material. In that statement, Manning explained his motive for releasing charged information, including a video of a July 2007 US airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, which killed two Reuters journalists, at least 12 civilians, and injured two children. In his statement, Manning described the conduct of the Apache pilots as dehumanizing and "similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass". Audio of him delivering his statement was later leaked and published by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. In addition to the 20-page statement at the February Providence Inquiry, however, were lengthy colloquies he had with the judge about the nature of his admitted conduct. It is important to note that Manning's unsworn statement on Wednesday did not say that he "harmed" the US. While much of the sentencing hearing has been conducted in closed session away from public scrutiny. In open sessions, prosecution witnesses have testified that no actual damage occurred and no deaths resulted from Manning's leaks. During the sentencing phase, prosecutors have presented evidence of government mitigation efforts and "expert" opinion testimony by federal employees and contractors that the leaks impacted diplomatic reporting, relationships with foreign governments, and could possibly be used in the future propaganda efforts by al-Qaida.   
   

By Juan Cole: Washington's Egypt Aid Is Not About Democracy!

Another 80 people died in violence in Egypt on Friday, as Muslim Brotherhood crowds protested the military crackdown on their sit-ins that cost hundreds of lives this week. Some of the violence resulted from police heavy-handedness, some from an armed Brotherhood attack on a police station.The continued unrest upped the pressure on the Obama administration to cut off military aid to Egypt. It is the only legal and ethical thing to do, but here are some reasons it has been difficult for Washington to take that step. 1. The US doesn't give much aid to the Egyptian people per se. Only $250 mn a year out of $1.55 bn is civilian. The aid is to cement a relationship between the Egyptian officer corps and the Pentagon. 2. The military aid, $1.3 billion a year, is mostly in-kind, a grant of weaponry. It must be spent on US weapons manufacturers. It is US arms manufacturers like Lockheed-Martin and General Dynamics and their employees who would suffer if it were cut off. 3. The Congress gave the Egyptian Generals a credit card to buy weapons, and they've run up $3 billion on it for F-16s and M1A1 tanks. If the US cancelled aid, the US government would still have to pick up that bill. 4. Even most of the civilian aid is required to be spent on US goods and materiel. It is corporate welfare for the US. 5. The aid was given as a bribe to the Egyptian elite to make nice with Israel. Given the chaos in Sinai, and Egypt's instability, Congress is more worried about that issue than at any time in 40 years. 6. The Israelis asked the US not to suspend the aid. 7.Congress even structured the economic aid to require some of it to help joint Israeli-Egyptian enterprises in Egypt, so the aid to Egypt actually goes to Israel. 8. It is not generally recognized, but the Egyptian military provides a security umbrella to Saudi Arabia, Kuweit and the UAE against Iran, and sometimes Iraq. The Gulf oil states also have powerful Washington lobbies and want Egypt to continue as a Gurkha force. Children, can you say oil? 9. Many in Congress don't actually disagree with the generals' actions in overthrowing the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Freedom and Justice Party and driving it underground, since they agree it is a terrorist organization. 10. Behind the scenes Egyptian military intelligence has helped the US track down Muslim extremists and in the Mubarak era black sites where they tortured suspected al-Qaeda for Washington. The US deep state would like to ramp that relationship back up.

AlterNet: Beyond Keystone: Three Controversial Pipelines You Probably Haven't Heard Of!

While the national debate remains largely focused on President Obama's impending decision regarding the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, communities across the U.S. and Canada are grappling with the oil and gas industry's rapidly expanding pipeline network, cutting through their backyards, threatening water supplies, and leaving them vulnerable to devastating spills. As production booms in Alberta's tar sands and fracking opens up vast oil and natural gas deposits around America, companies are increasingly desperate for new pipelines to get their product to market. "We've so narrowly focused on Keystone that a lot of these other projects aren't getting the scrutiny they probably need," said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust. He explains that as production skyrockets and companies look to cash in, no one is really in charge of it all. "We're leaving it up to these individual companies to come up with their own solutions to figure out how to move energy and we don't have any national policy guiding those decisions." According to a recent analysis of federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration data, since 1986 there have been nearly 8,000 incidents, resulting in more than 500 deaths, more than 2,300 injuries, and nearly $ billion in damage. Here are three of the most recent pipeline controversies emerging around the country: 1. Bluegrass Pipeline. Opposition is growing to the proposed 500-mile bluegrass pipeline, which would transport flammable natural gas liquids across Kentucky to an existing line that terminates in the Gulf. Landowners and environmentalists gathered at the state capital last week to protest the project, which they fear would threaten water supplies and safety. Residents were caught off guard by the project, landowner Stacie Meyer said, she noticed survey markers going up near her property and had to search the internet and consult her neighbors to find out what they were for. Locals are concerned the company, Williams Co., could use imminent domain to seize the land if opposition proves too strong. As the Courier-Journal reported, "Brad Slutskin, a Woodford County landowner who spoke at the rally, said the pipeline companies are threatening condemnation based on a loose interpretation of Kentucky law, and most property owners don't have the money to mount a court challenge." Residents opposed to the pipeline - including a group of nuns and monks who are refusing to give up their land for the project, delivered a petition with more than 5,200 signatures asking Gov. Beshear to include pipeline and eminent domain-related issues in the upcoming special legislative session, which he refused. "Knowing a pipeline is coming through, is like waving a red flag to the creatures of the Earth. God created Earth as our land to use and not abuse," Sister Joetta Venneman told local WAVE News. As the gas fields north and east of Kentucky boom, the state will likely find itself in the cross-hairs of many battles to come.       

AlterNet: By Alex Kane; % Companies That Make Money By

keeping Americans terrified of terror attacks. Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, has invaded America's television sets in recent weeks to warn about Edward Snowden's leaks and the continuing terrorist threat to America. But what often goes unmentioned, as the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald pointed out, is that Hayden has a financial stake in keeping Americans scared and on a permanent war footing against Islamist militants. And the private firm he works for, called the Chertoff Group, is not the only one making money by scaring Americans. Post -9/11 America has witnessed a boom in private firms dedicated to the hyped up threat of terrorism. The drive to privatize America's national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and it's gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on private contractors, as author Tim Shorrock reported. The private intelligence contractors have profited to the tune of at least $6 billion a year. In 2010, the Washington Post revealed that there are 1,931 private firms across the country dedicated to fighting terrorism. What it all dds up to is a massive industry profited to the tune of at least $6 billion a year. In 2010, the Washington Post revealed that there are 1,931 private firms across the country dedicated to fighting terrorism. What it all adds up to is a massive industry profiting off government-induced fear of terrorism, even though Americans are more likely to be killed by a car crash or their own furniture than a terror attack. Here are five private companies cashing in on keeping you afraid. 1. The Chertoff Group. On August 11, former NSA head Michael Hayden, the man at the center of the Bush administration's 2005 surveillance scandal . Commenting on President Obama's half-hearted  promises to reform some NSA practices, Hayden told host Bob Schieffer that "the President is trying to take some steps to make the American people more comfortable about what we're doing. That's going to be hard because, frankly, Bob, some steps to make Americans more comfortable will actually make Americans less safe."Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff had a similar message when he appeared on ABC News August 4. Speaking about the purported threat from an Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen that led to the disclosure of 19 U.S. embassies, Chertoff said that "the affiliate in Yemen that led to the closure of 19 U.S. embassies, Chertoff said that "the collection of this warning information about Al Qaeda came from the kinds of programs we've been discussing about, the ability to capture communications overseas." CBS and ABC did not see fit to inform that both Hayden and Chertoff are employees of the Chertoff Group, a private firm created in 2009 that companies hire to consult on best practices for security and combating terrorism. Some of the companies the firm advises go on to win government contracts. Chertoff is the founder and chairman of the group, while Hayden serves as a principal. So they profit off a war on terror they say is crucial to keeping Americans safe.

From RT: Four journalists killed covering Egypt clashes!

Four journalists were killed covering Egypt clashes. Four journalists have been killed in violent clashes which swept Egypt on Wednesday, with a number of the press core suffering serious injuries in the clashes. At least 238 civilians died in total as security forces brutally broke up pro-Morsi rallies. Egypt has been swept by horrific street violence, showers of gunfire, blazing fires and tear gas as relentless clashes have shaken cities in government attempts to break up the demonstrations. Among the 238 protesters killed were children, including the 17-year old daughter of a Muslim Brotherhood official. Police stations were torched or stormed by pro-Morsi groups amid the ruthless government suppression. The violence also took the lives of Sky News cameraman Mick Deane and Dubai-based XPRESS journalist Habeeba Abdelaziz. Both had been covering the pro-Morsi protests in Egypt's capital which security forces began to 'disperse' earlier in the day. Deane, 61, was shot as he was documenting the turmoil in Cairo. Despite receiving medical treatment for his injuries he died shortly afterwards, according to a statement from Sky. "He was an astonishingly good cameraman, took some brilliant pictures," said John Ryley, head of Sky News. Habeeba Abdelazz was a 26 year old Egyptian reporter from Dubai, who worked for XPRESS, a sister publication to the country's Gulf News. "It's hard to believe she's gone. She was passionate about her work and had a promising career ahead, "XPRESS Deputy Editor Mazhar Farooqui told Gulf News, commenting that the entire team was in a state of shock.. Abdelaziz had been covering protests for over a month, and subsequently heavy-handed crackdown by governmental security forces. They reclaimed the area late on Wednesday. The third journalist killed was Egyptian Ahmed Abdel Gawad of Al Akhbar newspaper. He died while covering the clashes at Rabaah al-Adawiya. The Egyptian Press Syndicate, a journalist union, confirmed Gawad's death, but did not provide any details. The fourth reporter to have been confirmed killed is photojournalist Mosab El-Shami Rassd of the news website (RNN), an alternative pro-Islamist media network, Ahram online reports. The agency wrote that he "was killed by the hand of betrayal while covering the Rabaa massacre at the hands of those who executed the coup," wrote the network on its Facebook page. Reuters photojournalist Asmaa Waguih also suffered serious injuries after being shot in the leg during protests. Shortly afterwards, she was moved to the international medical center to receive treatment. The Committee to Protect Journalists has released a statement on the issue, saying that the group condemned the killing of Sky News cameraman Mick Deane, prior to hearing of the second death. "We call on Egyptian authorities to issue clear orders to security forces to respect the right of journalists to work freely and safely while covering events in Cairo and the rest of the country," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. "The killing of Mick Deane underscores the urgent need for such action and for all sides to show restraint and allow the media to do their job.
  

By Noam Chomsky: The U.S. Behaves Nothing Like a Democracy,

But You'll Never Hear About it in Our 'Free Press'. The following is a transcript of a recent speech delivered Noam Chomsky in Bonn, Germany. You can read more speeches by Chomsky here. I'd like to comment on topics that I think should regularly be on the front pages but are not and in many crucial cases are scarcely mentioned at all or are presented in ways that seem to me deceptive because they're framed almost reflexively in terms of doctrines of the powerful. In these comments I'll focus primarily on the United States for several reasons: One, it's the most important country in terms of power and influence. Second, it's the most advanced, not in its inherent character, but in the sense that
because of its power, other societies tend to move in that direction. The third reason is just that I know it better. But I think what I say generalizes much more widely, at least to my knowledge, obviously there are some variations. So I'll be concerned then with tendencies in American society and what they portend for the world, given American power. American power is diminishing, as it has been in fact since its peak in 1945, but it's still incomparable. And it's dangerous. Obama's remarkable global terror campaign and the limited, pathetic reaction to it in the West is one shocking example. And it is a campaign of international terrorism, by far the most extreme in the world. Those who harbor any doubts on that should read the report issued by Stanford University and New York University, and actually I'll return to even more serious examples than international terrorism, by far the most extreme in the world. Those who harbor any doubts on that should read the report issued by Stanford University and New York University, and actually I'll return to even more serious examples than international terrorism. According to received doctrine, we live in a capitalist democracies, which are the best possible system, despite some flaws. There's been an interesting debate over the years about the relation between capitalism and democracy, for example, are they even compatible? I won't be pursuing this because I'd like to discuss a different system, what we would call the "really existing capitalist democracy", RECD for short, pronounced "wrecked"by accident. To begin with, how does RECD compare with democracy? Well that depends on what we mean by "democracy". There are several versions of this. One, there is a kind of received version. It's soaring rhetoric of the Obama variety, patriotic speeches, what children are taught in school, and so on. In the U.S. version, it's government "of, by and for the people". And it's quite easy to compare that with RECD. In the United States, one of the one of the main topics of academic political science is the study of attitudes and policy and their correlation. The study of attitudes is reasonably easy in the United States: heavily-polled society, pretty serious and accurate polls, and policy you can see, and policy you can compare them. And the results are interesting. In the work that's essentially the gold standard in the field, it's concluded that for roughly 70% of the population, the lower 70% on the wealth/income scale, they have no influence on policy whatsoever. 

 

By Noam Chomsky: A Roadmap to a Just World!

I'd like to comment on topics that I think should regularly on the front pages nut are not, and in many crucial cases are scarcely mentioned at all or are presented in ways that seem to me deceptive because they're framed almost reflexively in terms of doctrines of the powerful. In these comments I'll focus primarily on the United States for several reasons: One, it's the most important country in terms of its power and influence. Second, it's the most advanced, not in its inherent character, but in the sense that because of its power, other societies tend to move in that direction. The third reason is just that I know it better. But I think what I say generalizes much more widely, at least to my knowledge, obviously there are some variations. So I'll be concerned then with tendencies in American society and what they portend for the world, given American power. American power is diminishing, as it has been in fact since its peak in 1945, but it's still incomparable. And it's dangerous. Obama's remarkable global terror campaign and the limited, pathetic reaction to it in the West is one shocking   example. And it is a campaign of international terrorism, by far the most extreme in the world. Those who harbor any doubts on that should read the report issued by Stanford University and New York University, and actually I'll return to even more serious examples than international terrorism. According to received doctrine, we live in capitalist democracies, which are the best possible system, despite some flaws. There's been an interesting debate over the years about the relation between capitalism and democracy, for example, are they even compatible? I won't be pursuing this because I'd like to discuss a different system, what we would call the "really existing capitalist democracy", RECD for short, pronounced "wrecked" by accident. To begin with, how does RECD compare with democracy? There are several versions of this. One, there is a kind of received version. Its soaring rhetoric of the Obama variety, patriotic speeches, what children are taught in school, and so on. In the U.S. version, it's government "of, by and for the people". And its quite easy to compare that with RECD. In the United States, one of the main topics of academic political science is the study of attitudes and policy and their correlation. The study of attitudes is reasonably easy in the United States: heavily-polled society, pretty serious and accurate polls, and policy you can see, and you can compare them. And the results are interesting. In the work that's essentially the gold standard in the field, it's concluded that for roughly 70% of the population, the lower 70% on the wealth/income scale, they have no influence on policy whatsoever. They're effectively disenfranchised. As you move up the wealth/income ladder, you get a little bit more influence on policy. When you get to the top, which maybe a tenth of one percent, people essentially get what they want, i.e. they determine the policy. So the proper term for that is not democracy, it's plutocracy. Inquiries of this kind turn out to be dangerous stuff because they can tell people too much about the nature of society in which they live. So fortunately, Congress has banned funding them, so we won't have to worry about them in the future.

AlterNet. By Chris Hedges: The Massacres in Egypt are a Precursor to a Wider Global Conflict

Between the Elites and the World's Poor. Radical Islam is the last refuge of the Muslim poor. The mandated five prayers a day give the only real structure to the lives of impoverished believers. The careful rituals of washing before prayers in the mosque, the strict moral code that prohibits alcohol, along with the understanding that life has an ultimate purpose and meaning, keep hundreds of millions of destitute Muslims from despair. The fundamentalist ideology that rises from oppression is rigid and unforgiving. It radically splits the world into black and white, good and evil, apostates and believers. It is bigoted and cruel to women, Jews, Christians and secularists along gays and lesbians. But at the same time it offers to those on the very bottom of society a final refuge and hope. The massacres of hundreds of believers in the streets of Cairo signal not only an assault against a religious ideology, not only a return to the brutal police state of Hosni Mubarak, but the start of a holy war that will turn Egypt and other poor regions of the globe into a cauldron of blood  and suffering. The only way to break the hold of radical Islam is to give followers of the movement a stake in the wider economy, the possibility of a life where the future is not dominated by grinding poverty, repression and hopelessness. If you live in the sprawling slums of Cairo or the refugee camps in Gaza or the concrete hovels in New Delhi, every avenue of escape is closed. You cannot get an education. You cannot get a job. You cannot get married. You cannot challenge the domination of the economy by the oligarchs and the generals. The only way left to you to affirm yourself is to become a martyr or shahid. Then you will what will take place in Egypt will be defined as a religious war, and the acts of violence by the insurgents who will rise from the bloodied squares of Cairo will be defined as terrorism, the engine for this chaos is not religion but the collapsing global economy, a world where the wretched of the Earth are to be subjugated and starved or shot. The lines of battle are being drawn in Egypt and across the globe. Adli Mansour, the titular president appointed by the military dictator of Egypt, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el Sisi, has imposed a military-led government, a curfew and state of emergency. It will not be lifted soon. The lifeblood of radical movements is martyrdom. The Egyptian military has provided an ample supply. The faces and names of the sanctified dead will be used by enraged clerics to call for holy vengeance. And as violence grows and the lists of martyrs expand it will ignite a war that will tear Egypt apart. Police, Coptic Christians, secularists, westerners, businesses, banks, the tourism industry and the military will become targets. Those radical Islamists who were convinced by the Muslim Brotherhood that electoral politics could work and brought into the system will go back underground, and many of the rank-and-file of the Muslim Brotherhood will join them. Crude bombs and explosive devices will be set off. Random attacks and assassinations by gunmen will puncture daily life in Egypt as it did in the 1990s when I was in Cairo for the New York Times, although this time the scale of the attacks will become fiercer and wider, far harder to control or ultimately crush.       

AlterNet: By Pepe Eascobar: The New Axis of Evil: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Pentagon

Are backing Egypt's Bloody Crackdown. I have argued that what has happened in Egypt is 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 news-peak gambit, which easily could have been written at the White House, is just part of the picture. Amid a thick fog of spin and competing agendas, a startling fact stands out. A poll only 10 days ago by the Egyptian Center for Media Studies and Public Opinion had already shown that 69% were against the July 3 military coup orchestrated by the Pinochet-esque Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. So the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath cannot possibly be considered legitimate, unless for a privileged coterie of Mubarakists, the so-called fulool, a bunch of corrupt oligarchs and the military-controlled Egyptian "deep state". The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government led by Mohamed Morsi may have been utterly incompetent trying to rewrite the Egyptian constitution, inciting hardcore fundamentalists, and bowing in debasement in front of the International Monetary Fund. But it should not be forgotten this was coupled with permanent, all-out sabotage by the "deep state". It's true that Egypt was, and remains, on the brink of total economic collapse, the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath only followed a change in the signature on the checks, from Quatar to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As Spengler has demonstrated on this site see Islam's civil war moves to Egypt, Asia Times Online, July 8, 2013, Egypt will remain a banana republic without the bananas and dependent on foreigners to eat any. The economic disaster won't go away, not to mention the MB's cosmic resentment. The winners, as it stands, are the House of Saud, Israel, Pentagon axis. How did they pull it off? When in doubt, call Bandar. In theory, Washington had been in relative control of both the MB and Sisi's Army. So on the surface this is a win-win situation. Essentially, Washington hawks are pro-Sisi's Army, while "liberal imperialists" are pro-MB, the perfect cover, because the MB is Islamic, indigenous, populist, economically neoliberal, it wants to work with the International Monetary Fund, and has not threatened Israel. The MB was not exactly a problem for either Washington and Tel Aviv, after all ambitious ally Quatar was there as a go-between. Qatar's foreign policy, as everyone knows, boils down to cheer-leading the MB everywhere. So Morsi must have crossed a pretty serious red line. It could have been his call for Sunni Egyptians to join a jihad against the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria, although that's formally in tune with Barack Obama's "Assad must go" policy. Arguably, it was his push to install some sort of jihadi paradise from the Sinai all the way to Gaza. The Sinai, for all practical purposes, is run by Israel. So that points to a green light for the coup from both the Pentagon and Tel Aviv.