The Military Coup in Egypt: Requiem for a Revolution That Never Was

by Ajamu Baraka

In the two-and-a-half years between the ouster of Mubarak by the Egyptian military and the ouster of President Morsi by that same military, no revolutionary process occurred. Yet, “the emotional response to seeing hundreds of thousands of people on the streets seems to have created a case of temporary insanity,” an imagined revolution in which the “military and the people are one.”

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.” – Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

[pullquote] The popular use and acceptance of the term revolution to describe the events in Egypt over the last two years demonstrates the effectiveness of global liberal discourse to “de-radicalize,” with the collusion of some radicals, even the term “revolution.” [/pullquote]

As the military in Egypt consolidates its putsch against the leadership and political structures of the Muslim Brotherhood, it should be obvious that the initial narrative rationalizing intervention by the military as a necessary corrective to a “revolutionary process” has lost all credibility. Yet many liberals and radicals appear united in a fanciful reading of the events in Egypt that not only legitimizes the coup but characterizes the collection of small-minded state-capitalists thugs who make up the top officer corps of the military as part of the people and the revolutionary process.

From bourgeois intellectual hacks like Isabel Coleman [14] to venerable Marxist materialists like Samir Amin, who implied that the Egyptian army was a neutral class force [15], the emotional response to seeing hundreds of thousands of people on the streets seems to have created a case of temporary insanity, or as Frantz Fanon refers to it as – cognitive dissonance. This can be the only explanation for the theoretical and rhetorical acrobatics many are engaged in to reconcile their beliefs in democratic rights and revolutionary transformation with what is occurring right before their eyes in Egypt.

A revolution in name only

The popular use and acceptance of the term revolution to describe the events in Egypt over the last two years demonstrates the effectiveness of global liberal discourse to “de-radicalize,” with the collusion of some radicals, even the term “revolution.”

Eschewing the romanticism associated with revolution and the sentimentality connected to seeing the “masses in motion,” it has to be concluded that between February 2011, when Mubarak was ousted, and July 3, 2013, when the military officially reassumed power, there was no revolutionary process at all, in the sense that there was no transfer of power away from the class forces that dominated Egyptian society. No restructuring of the state; no new democratic institutions and structures created to represent the will and interests of the new progressive social bloc of students, workers, farmers, women’s organizations etc.; and no deep social transformation. In fact, the rapes and sexual assaults that occurred during the recent mobilizations were a graphic reminder that sexist and patriarchal ideas still ruled, untouched by this so-called revolutionary process.

A revolutionary process is a process by which structures of power are created by a broad mass of people that allow them to eventually transform every aspect of their society – from the structure and role of the State and the organization of the economy to inter-personal relations – all with a view to eliminating all forms of oppression. There were some important organizational advances made by some elements of the labor movement in Egypt, including the creation of independent trade unions. However, the organizational imperative for revolutionary change that requires the building of popular structures to sustain mass struggle and represent dual power, was not as strong as it should have been in Egypt.

“The liberal appropriation of the term ‘revolution’ to describe everything from the events in Libya and Syria to the Green movement in Iran not only distorts social reality but also advances a dangerous narrative.”

Early 2011 in Egypt saw mass agitation for social change and a mass rebellion against a dictatorship that galvanized previously disparate social forces and classes – Westernized secular liberals, labor rights activists, radical students, women’s rights activists and Islamic fundamentalists – into one oppositional social bloc. The initial demand was for the end of the Mubarak dictatorship and the creation of a democratic system that respected democratic rights – the essential component of an authentic national democratic revolutionary process. However, the maturation of this process was arrested due to three factors: (i) the seizure of power by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) on February 11, (ii) the channeling of mass dissent primarily into the electoral process, and (iii) the failure of the oppositional forces to organize sustainable mass structures to safeguard and consolidate the developing revolutionary situation.

The concern with characterizing the nature of mass struggle in Egypt and in Tunisia that eventually was branded as the “Arab spring,” is not driven by a desire for some kind of neat, categorical purity that abstracts complex social phenomenon from its historical context. But instead the concern is the need to differentiate politically and programmatically the specific political challenges and tasks between an insurrectionary phase of struggle and one that has entered a pre-revolutionary or revolutionary phase.

This is important because the liberal appropriation of the term “revolution” to describe everything from the events in Libya and Syria to the Green movement in Iran not only distorts social reality but also advances a dangerous narrative. That narrative suggests that revolutionary change takes place as a result of spectacle. It devalues organizing and building structures from the bottom up as unnecessary because it is the theater that is important; the episodic show; the display that refutes Gil Scott Heron’s admonition that “the revolution will not be televised!”

The perverted logic of this approach is reflected in both the failure of the opposition to organize itself beyond the spontaneous mobilizations of 2011 and the knowledge of Morsi’s opponents, the Tamarod – thanks to signals from their patrons in the U.S. – that if they demonstrated significant street opposition to President Morsi the U.S. would have the cover to support intervention by the military.

The military’s pre-emptive strike against revolution

To have a clearer view of the current situation in Egypt, we must debunk the nonsensical, a-historical gibberish that suggests that the Egyptian military is a neutral, grand mediator of contending social and political forces, and stepped into the political scene in January 2011 and again July 2^nd as a national patriotic force allied with the interests of the “people.”

The reality is that what we have witnessed in Egypt is a lateral transfer of power, in class terms, from the civilians in the Mubarak government, representing capitalist interests tied to the State, to the military, which has similar economic interests, with their enterprises and retired officer corps populating companies connected to the State sector. In fact, under President Morsi, the military never really went away. It maintained an independent space in the Egyptian state and economy. Critical ministerial positions in the Morsi cabinet [16], such as the Interior Ministry, Defense and Suez Canal Authority, were given to individuals associated with the Mubarak regime that were allied with the military. And the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court, populated by Mubarak-era appointees, was the main instrument used by the military to limit and control any efforts to restructure the state or expand Morsi’s power.

For U.S. policy-makers, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Morsi government were never seen as an alternative to Hosni Mubarak. Despite the repression meted out to members of the Muslim Brotherhood by the Mubarak regime, it was well understood that the Brotherhood was part of the Egyptian economic elite and open to doing business with the West. Therefore, Morsi was seen as an acceptable and safe civilian face to replace Mubarak while the U.S. continued its influence behind the scenes through the military.

“We must debunk the nonsensical, a-historical gibberish that suggests that the Egyptian military is a neutral, grand mediator of contending social and political forces.”

Both the U.S. government and the Egyptian military had objective interests in making sure that the power of the Morsi Presidency remained more symbolic than real. The military, working through the Constitutional Court and the bureaucracy, made sure that President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood only had nominal control of the State. Morsi did not control the intelligence or security apparatus, the police, the diplomatic corps, or the bureaucracy, which was still staffed with Mubarak holdovers.

In fact, one of the major sources of tension between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood was the threat – and real moves – made by the Morsi government to use their nominal state power to curtail the economic activity of the military, which holds interests controlling anything from 15 to 40 percent of the economy, in favor of the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood itself, representing sectors of the competitive capitalist class.

One way of looking at the assault on the Muslim Brotherhood is that it was nothing more than a militarized solution to an intra-bourgeois class struggle within the context of Egyptian society, and had nothing to do with the interests of the fragmented and institutionally-weak opposition.

So the idea that the military, as a neutral force, allied itself with “the people” and only stepped in to resolve a political crisis is nothing more than a petit-bourgeois fantasy.

The class-based, social and economic interests of the military mean that it will oppose any fundamental transformation of the Egyptian economy and society, the ostensible aim of the “revolution.” Significantly, this means that the power of the military is going to have to be broken if there is to be any prospect of revolutionary change in Egypt.

A National Democratic Revolution: One step forward, three steps back

This analysis, however, should not be read to suggest that the people were just bit-players in a drama directed by powers they had no control over. The mass rebellion in Egypt created a crisis of governance for the corrupt elite that were in power and their U.S. patron. The demand for the end of the dictatorship was an awesome demonstration of people-power that created the potential for revolutionary change. The problem was that the dictatorship had severely undermined the ability of alternative popular forces to develop and acquire the political experience and institutional foundations that would have positioned them to better push for progressive change and curtail the power of the military. Unfortunately for Egypt, the force that had the longest experience in political opposition and organizational development was the Muslim Brotherhood.

The call by a sector of the “people” for the Morsi government to step down was a legitimate demand that expressed the position of a portion of the population that was dissatisfied with the policies and direction of the country. Yet, when the Egyptian military – a military that has not demonstrated any propensity for supporting democratic reforms – intimated that it would step in, the mass position should have been “no to military intervention, change only by democratic means” – a position that a more mature and authentically independent movement might have assumed if it was not being manipulated by powerful elite forces internally and externally [17].

“The mass position should have been ‘no to military intervention, change only by democratic means.’”

It was wishful thinking that bordered on the psychotic for liberal and radical forces in the country and their allies outside to believe that a democratic process could be developed that reflected the interests of the broad sectors of Egyptian society while disenfranchising the Muslim Brotherhood, a social force that many conservatively suggest still commands the support of at least a third of the Egyptian population, and is the largest political organization in the country. Liberals and some radicals that supported the coup did not understand that the construction of the “people” is a social/historical process that requires both struggle and engagement. Not understanding this basic principle has resulted in the killing of the national democratic revolution in its infancy.

The powerful national elites that bankrolled the anti-Morsi campaign [18] and their external allies, including Saudi Arabia and the U.S., have successfully set in motion a counter-revolutionary process that will fragment the opposition and marginalize any radical elements. The Egyptian elite understood much more clearly than the Tamarod or the National Salvation Front that a revolutionary process would entail the development of a political program that has as its objectives the subordination of the military to the people, the public appropriation of state capitalist sector and the rejection of neoliberal capitalist development. Because of that understanding, they moved with textbook precision over the last year and a half to protect their interests.

Sadly, the liberal and radical collusion with the anti-democratic forces of the Egyptian military and economic elite has provided legitimacy for the same retrograde forces that dominated Egyptian society under Mubarak to continue that domination, but this time in the name of “revolution.”

Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist and veteran of the Black Liberation Movement. He is currently a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Baraka can be reached at www. Ajamubaraka.com.

Listen to us on the Black Talk Radio Network at www.blacktalkradionetwork.com

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Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/military-coup-egypt-requiem-revolution-never-was

A letter from Professor Geoffrey R. Stone, liberal advocate of a police state

By Tom Carter, wsws.org

G.S. Stone, typical of corporatist liberals.

G.R. Stone, corporatist liberal through and through.

We invited Professor Geoffrey R. Stone to respond to the article, “Liberal advocates of a police state turn savagely against Edward Snowden,” by David North and Eric London, posted on the World Socialist Web Site on June 14. In the article, the authors condemned those erstwhile liberal commentators who had jumped on the reactionary campaign to label NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a “traitor” and a “criminal.” Specifically, North and London observed that Professor Stone’s recent anti-Snowden article in the Huffington Post “advances arguments in support of authoritarian rule that totally contradict positions” he previously advanced.

Professor Stone responded by email to Eric London on June 19. His letter, in its entirety, reads as follows:

“Thanks for sharing. What you seem not to understand is that situations are different and not everything is or should be on one side of the line or the other. Everything I’ve said about Snowden is perfectly consistent with everything I’ve ever said on this subject. Although I think we need a healthy distrust of our public officials, I also oppose the arrogance of a single, unelected individual who takes it upon himself, with no lawful authority or justification, to disclose properly classified information to persons unauthorized to receive it just because HE thinks the information shouldn’t be classified. The plain and simple fact is that Snowden betrayed the rule of law and the trust of the American people when he decided, without any legal authority, to disregard the judgments of the executive branch, the Congress and the judiciary in a way that put the security of the nation at risk. Even if what he did has beneficial consequences, he had no legal or moral right to do it. He is a criminal.”

The WSWS takes the opportunity presented by Professor Stone’s response to reply to his letter and explain its significance. From the first line to the last, Professor Stone’s letter confirms the WSWS’s frequent warning that the entire political establishment—including its “liberal” sections—is openly hostile to the democratic principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and in the later Civil War amendments. Professor Stone speaks for a significant section of academic intellectuals who are repudiating their previous commitment to democratic rights and advancing positions that would legitimize the establishment of a military-police dictatorship in the United States.

Let us proceed to an examination of Stone’s condemnation of Edward Snowden.

1. The Rule of Law

Despite being written by an American law professor, Professor Stone’s letter consists of conceptions that are utterly alien to the democratic legal tradition of the United States.

Reiterating his previous statements, Professor Stone announces that it is contrary to the “rule of law” for a “single, unelected individual” to take it upon himself “to disclose properly classified information to persons unauthorized to receive it.” In the context of Snowden’s revelations, this formulation inverts the “rule of law,” turning it upside down and transforming it into its opposite. For Professor Stone, the “rule of law” becomes the duty of unquestioning obedience to superiors.

This is not what the “rule of law” means. As Thomas Paine wrote in his revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense (1776), “in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

The “rule of law” means that the acts of every person, up to and including the highest public official, are beneath the law. The Constitution provides that even the “President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States” may be impeached for violating the law. This is the essence of the phrase, “a government of laws not of men.” In other words, the “rule of law” means that public officials who engage in illegal conduct run the risk of having their behavior exposed, their orders disregarded, and their official powers terminated.

If a citizen is ordered by a public official to participate in illegal conduct, then the “rule of law” does not mean that citizen should obey the order without question. On the contrary, the “rule of law” means that going along with the illegal conduct of one’s superiors, even when ordered to do so, may itself be illegal.

In American history, this principle found perhaps its fullest expression in the arguments of Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, which took place from November 1945 to October 1946. The Nazi defendants famously asserted that they were merely “following orders,” and that they did not have any legal or moral right to question the orders they were given or to refuse to carry them out. Rejecting these arguments with contempt, Justice Jackson declared that modern civilization “cannot tolerate so vast an area of legal irresponsibility.”

Nuremberg Principle IV reads, “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility. .. provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

Professor Stone’s phrases such as “no lawful authority” and “ properlyclassified information” simply beg the question. Can a criminal conspiracy to violate the fundamental rights of hundreds of millions of innocent people be “properly” classified, or “lawfully” kept secret?

Professor Stone’s letter does not actually address the substance of Snowden’s revelations. Nor could it. Edward Snowden brought to light what is perhaps the most spectacular breakdown of the “rule of law” in American history. The pervasive illegal spying on Americans revealed by Snowden makes the criminal conduct of figures such as Richard Nixon seem petty and trivial by comparison.

If all the criminals in the Obama administration who deserved to be actually were impeached, the White House, the West Wing, and the rest of the Washington executive office buildings would resemble a ghost town.

Figures such as Professor Stone who are invoking the “rule of law” in their condemnations of Snowden have nothing to say about the “rule of law” in relation to the gigantic, unprecedented criminal spying operation Snowden revealed. The words Justice Jackson used to describe the hypocritical posturing of the Nuremberg defendants applies in full force to Snowden’s persecutors. These men, Jackson declared, “are surprised that there is any such thing as law. These defendants did not rely on any law at all. Their program ignored and defied all law.. .. International Law, natural law, German law, any law at all, was to these men simply a propaganda device to be invoked when it helped and to be ignored when it would condemn what they wanted to do.”

2. The Pentagon Papers and “national security”

Professor Stone announces, as though it was an established fact, that Snowden’s revelations “put the security of the nation at risk.” This argument, which is also made in relation to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, is false and misleading.

Similar arguments were made in the case of the Pentagon Papers, famously leaked by Daniel Ellsberg and published on the front page of the New York Times in 1971. The Pentagon Papers consist of 47 volumes cataloguing the dirty and bloody history of US involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers revealed systematic deceit and lying by successive American administrations, from which the trust of the American population for the government has never fully recovered.

Seeking to prevent publication of the Pentagon Papers, the government sued the New York Times. Government lawyers argued that “national security” required the papers to remain secret. The argument was even made that, as a direct and foreseeable result of publication, thousands of American soldiers overseas would be killed.

In its defense of the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the New York Timesinsisted that it was not sufficient for the government to invoke a general and abstract connection between publication and a subsequent event injurious to security. It had to demonstrate a clear, unambiguous, and virtually immediate threat to the lives of citizens or soldiers. In other words, the causal connection between the exposure of government secrets and a specific bad event had to be irrefutably direct.

The Nixon administration’s argument was rejected by the Supreme Court in the case of New York Times Co. v. United States (1971). It is worth quoting at some length from the concurring opinion by Justice Hugo L. Black:

“The word ’security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic. The Framers of the First Amendment, fully aware of both the need to defend a new nation and the abuses of the English and Colonial governments, sought to give this new society strength and security by providing that freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly should not be abridged. This thought was eloquently expressed in 1937 by Mr. Chief Justice Hughes… when the Court held a man could not be punished for attending a meeting run by Communists.

“The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government.”

Justice Black and Professor Stone are both titled as experts in US law, but that is where the similarities end. Justice’s Black’s writing is recognizable as the language of bourgeois democracy. Professor Stone writes in the language of a police state: “authority,” “security,” “betrayal,” the “judgments of the executive.”

In the final analysis, the only “security” put at risk by Snowden’s disclosures is that which shields government officials from the public exposure of their criminal and unconstitutional practices.

3. What Professor Stone does not say

The WSWS article by North and London took issue with Professor Stone’s emphatic declaration that there was “no reason on earth” that anyone in Snowden’s position could ever disclose classified information to the public.

North and London wrote: “This is an astonishing declaration! ‘No reason on earth… ’? In other words, an employee of the state must keep his mouth shut and refrain from exposing criminal activity no matter how injurious it may be to the rights of the American people. ‘No reason on earth ’! What if a civil servant uncovers a secret memorandum authorizing the assassination of a citizen? Or plans for the mass incarceration of political dissidents?”

Professor Stone does not reply to these questions. The conclusion can be reasonably drawn that that Stone meant what he wrote: There is “no reason on earth” that justifies the exposure of classified information, even when the information exposes blatantly criminal activity.

4. “Elected” officials and the Führer principle

Professor Stone, in his initial comment on the Huffington Post as well as in his reply to the WSWS, goes out of his way to declare that Snowden is “unelected” and that he is disregarding the orders of “elected” officials, presumably such as Obama. This is a tendentious and deceitful argument. In effect, it endows an election with the character of a plebiscite—that is, an empty ritual which serves only to provide a pseudo-democratic veneer for dictatorial rule. Those who carried out the American Revolution never conceived of an election as a blank check for those who win office. Once elected, officials have no right to expect the obedience of the citizenry, let alone unquestioned submission to their will. They confront constitutional restraints on the exercise of their limited powers, and violations of the law expose them to impeachment and prosecution.

President Obama, for the record, won a tightly controlled, heavily manipulated, and closely scripted election in 2012. His campaign, as with his Republican opponent, was funded to the hilt with unprecedented contributions from corporate and financial backers, while third parties were systematically excluded from the ballot. As Snowden has pointed out, moreover, Obama’s election victories were the result of lies.

According to the latest polls, a majority of Americans disapprove of this “elected” president’s handling of issues affecting democratic rights. The NSA spying program, in particular, is profoundly unpopular. Despite being “unelected,” Snowden enjoys a base of support far broader than Obama.

More importantly, there is a strong whiff of fascism in this emphasis on the powers of “elected” versus “unelected” individuals. According to fascist logic, the dictator is elected, therefore he represents the “will of the nation.” Further, because the dictator represents the national will, he is above the law, and it is “undemocratic” to oppose him or to disobey his directives. In Germany this was known as the Führerprinzip (“the Führer principle”). Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, in one infamous speech, declared: “The Führer is always right!”

According to the democratic legal tradition, the law applies in full force to both elected and unelected individuals without making any distinction among them. If a person is charged with a crime, it is no defense to say, “But I was elected!” If an elected person ignores the law, is it is the duty of everyone who finds out about such illegal conduct to disclose it to the public. This, it is hoped, will facilitate the impeachment of the crook who was elected.

5. A few words about morality

It is one thing to argue, however flimsy the argument may be, that Snowden had no legal right to disclose the NSA’s spying programs to the public. It is quite another to argue, as Professor Stone does in his letter, that Snowden had no moral right to do so. Since Professor Stone raises the issue of morality, we include a few words of our own on the subject.

Professor Stone does not comment on whether the Obama administration has a “legal or moral right” to all of the information it is gathering about hundreds of millions of innocent people around the world, including innocent Americans. He does not comment on the morality of government agents snooping into intimate phone calls between lovers and spouses, private medical records, internet browsing activity, emails, text messages, and so forth.

We submit that from a moral standpoint, the NSA spying program revealed by Snowden is disturbing, depraved, and repulsive.

With respect to the actions of Snowden, on the other hand, there is a long tradition in American history of deliberately disobeying the law on the grounds that the law is wrong and disobedience is the morally right thing to do. A hundred examples come to mind: Henry David Thoreau and Civil Disobedience; the Fugitive Slave Act and the Underground Railroad; conscription and its dissenters; segregated train cars, buses, and schools.

From a Birmingham jail, where he was imprisoned for violating a lawful injunction, Martin Luther King, Jr. famously wrote, “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” Would Professor Stone call this the “arrogance of a single, unelected individual” who was acting “without any legal authority?”

If what Snowden did is not moral, then nothing is moral. If Snowden had no moral right to disclose the most far-reaching criminal conspiracy against the American public in history, then nobody ever has a moral right to disclose anything.

Professor Stone includes, in a concessive clause, the phrase, “I think we need a healthy distrust of our public officials.” However, the rest of Professor Stone’s letter, including his admonition that Snowden had “no legal or moral right” to disobey orders, reveals this “healthy distrust” to be an impotent, wispy, passive sort of distrust: a professed mental state that is never connected in any way with real, living activity. This certainly is not the vigilant distrust championed by the revolutionaries from whom the American legal system originated.

Conclusion

The revelation by Snowden that the US government is engaged in flagrant and unprecedented violations of fundamental democratic rights does not carry any weight in Professor Stone’s analysis. This underscores the extent to which Professor Stone and the social layer he represents has become detached from and even hostile to basic democratic principles and traditions.

The Declaration of Independence—the document from which Lincoln said all of his political thinking flowed—announces the principle that when a government becomes destructive of fundamental, “unalienable” rights, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government …”

This principle is firmly rooted in the oldest traditions of the Enlightenment. John Locke wrote in 1690, “Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.”

Among the basic rights set forth in the Bill of Rights is the Fourth Amendment “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” To anyone with an ounce of democratic consciousness, when Snowden discovered a massive government conspiracy to violate the Fourth Amendment, he was “absolved from any further obedience.” It was his legal and moral duty to disclose it to the world.

American democracy is breaking down under the weight of staggering levels of social inequality and a decade of bloody imperialist warfare. The capitalists and financial aristocrats who have profited from the crisis and plundered the economy look to a police state as a means of further entrenching their wealth and power.

No significant constituency remains anywhere in the political establishment for democracy. Not a single figure within the establishment has stepped forward to defend Snowden. The debate is instead over whether Snowden should be imprisoned or whether he should be executed.

While he has no support in the political establishment, Snowden enjoys extremely broad support within the working class, including in the US and internationally. In contrast to the opportunism and pragmatism of the more privileged sections of the middle class, the working class is not so quick to trade away its hard-won rights. Workers instinctively recognize in Snowden a courageous man who has risked everything to tell the truth.

It is in the working class that democratic consciousness is deeply rooted. The struggle to defend and expand basic democratic protections thus requires an orientation to the proletariat. While figures such as Professor Stone line up to call for Snowden’s incarceration or liquidation, the Socialist Equality Party is mounting a campaign in his defense.

The World Socialist Web Site recently marked the anniversary of both the Declaration of Independence and the Battle of Gettysburg. “To halt and reverse the drive toward dictatorship,” we wrote, “a movement must be built in the working class, a movement that begins with the understanding that democracy is incompatible with capitalism, and that true freedom must be rooted in social equality. All that was progressive in the history of the United States can be carried forward only through a revolutionary struggle for socialism.”

We therefore conclude our response to Professor Stone with the words of Samuel Adams (1722-1803), revolutionary, philosopher, statesman, and possible organizer of the Boston Tea Party:

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; may your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

* * *

The World Socialist Web Site and Socialist Equality Party are waging a campaign to defend Edward Snowden. For more information and to get involved, click here .

Egypt’s Groundhog Day Revolution

By Jim Kavanagh

Morsi-Mubarak: The more it changes, the more it says the same. Only a revolutionary program advanced by a steeled vanguard can get Egypt or any country out of the capitalist quagmire.

I watch the unfolding events in Egypt with a sense of unease, even dread. In the accounts I’ve read so far from the Egyptian street, I get the sense that, where two years ago there was an elation married with great hope, now there is something more like muted glee accompanied by a sinking feeling.

I am someone who thinks it is extremely important that the centrality of Islam in Middle East politics and ideology in general, and the specific parties of “political Islam” (like the Muslim Brotherhood) be challenged. I’m also someone who is not at all opposed to extra-electoral revolutionary mobilization, including the possibility of revolutionary insurrection. Still, I watch the unfolding events in Egypt with a sense of unease, even dread. In the accounts I’ve read so far from the Egyptian street, I get the sense that, where two years ago there was an elation married with great hope, now there is something more like muted glee accompanied by a sinking feeling. Mohamed ElBaradei’s quote from the great American philosopher, “It’s déja vu all over again,” is decidedly lacking its original charm in this context.

Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) won the elections last year. In fact, I’m sorry to say, with the highest voter participation in fifty years, the MB and the more fanatical Salafists parties dominated the seven elections that were held over the last two years, crushing the secular left and liberal forces in every electoral contest. Given that the Election Commission and the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), which oversaw the elections, were composed of Mubarak appointees, and considered in league with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), there were suspicions that there would be vote-rigging, but the numbers were such as to leave no doubt that the elections reflected hard truths about the relative strength of the parties. On the basis of those electoral victories, Morsi, as presidents are wont to do, used his office to consolidate power for his political allies. It is fair to argue that he and the MB were too aggressive in that regard, but I do not think he closed the door on the opposition parties and factions. [See Al-Amin, “Showdown in Egypt.”]

If anything, I think the opposition–especially its more militant secular and leftist elements–made a strategic choice from the outset to embark on a project to undermine the Morsi/MB regime as quickly and thoroughly as possible. The radical opposition refused any strategic cooperation with the Morsi/MB regime, because they understood–correctly, I think–that such cooperation would have helped that regime consolidate and gain long-term stability and legitimacy. They wanted to cut off any possibility of the enracination of an Islamic state in Egypt. They wanted to stop in its tracks any attempt to strengthen the social, cultural, and political foundations of such a state, which they understood–again, correctly, I think–would be a profoundly reactionary regime, in a cultural and socio-economic, if not political, sense.

Indeed, the Morsi government did nothing to stop the continuing degradation of the socio-economic plight of ordinary Egyptians. As poverty rose to over 50 percent, Morsi weighed the terms of surrender to an IMF austerity loan. Like other Islamist tendencies, the MB has a definite strain of caritative populism. The left opposition understands, however, that the MB has no structural socio-economic program that breaks with neo-liberal capitalism. As Gilbert Achcar, in Le Monde Diplomatique , quotes Sameh Elbarqy, a former member of the Brotherhood: “The core of the economic vision of [the] Brotherhood, if we are going to classify it in a classical way, is extreme capitalist…. One of the big problems with the Muslim Brotherhood now–they have it in common with Mubarak’s old political party–is the marriage of power and capital.”

So the radical opposition, taking a decidedly revolutionary posture that refused to be bound by the limits of electoral politics, mounted an extraordinary campaign to undermine and depose Morsi. They acted on the basis that street-level education and agitation were legitimate and necessary elements of an ongoing, and democratic, political process. They were confident that, especially given the dire and deteriorating social situation, such work could change the ideological ground, and move masses away from the Brotherhood’s orbit and toward more radical action. And they were right.

Coalescing around a group called Tamarrud (Rebellion), founded at the end of April, the radical opposition announced their intention to mount a weekend of protests at the end of June that would either force Morsi to resign, or, as Esam al-Amin put it, “force the military to take over the country and launch a new transitional period without the domination of the Islamist groups.” They wanted the constitution annulled, and the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court installed as interim president. Toward that end, they then began a final push, circulating a petition, which, they claimed, quickly gathered more signatures to oust Morsi than votes he received in the election. They mobilized the anger of the nearly hopeless, impoverished populace, which had seen no changes for the better in their social lives, and united it with the fears of secular liberals, who saw Brotherhood political hegemony as the encroachment of a dogmatic Islamic social and cultural order. And they succeeded.

It was an amazing, exemplary, revolutionary offensive that, within the space of a few months, instigated a popular movement that deposed the elected government, and turned Egyptian politics upside-down.

Except …

for one little thing. This “revolutionary” dynamic was also based on an alliance with elements of the “deep state” of the repressive Mubarak-era regime, known as the fulool. As is to be expected in an unfinished revolution, the fulool haven’t gone anywhere. As Esam Al-Amin points out: they are “still largely in control of the security apparatus, most of the private media, the judiciary, as well as major industries and influential economic institutions.” Al-Amin also claims that, by the end of 2012, they had become “part and parcel of the secular opposition groups and a major factor of the instability that has overwhelmed the country …reinvent[ing[ themselves [to] become major players on the side of the secular groups against the MB and the Islamists.”

Also deeply disturbing: The final offensive against Morsi and the MB was based on promoting the Egyptian army as the legitimate nationalist savior. Indeed, the events of the last week unfolded just as the opposition hoped they would, culminating with the army stepping in to depose Morsi, in response to clear demonstrations of popular anger and discontent, and sporadic and spreading episodes of violence. The SCAF, it turns out, was the key player, the go-to guy, for the Tamarrud.

This, we must remember, is the same army that was the backbone of the repressive Mubarak-era state for decades. It’s the same SCAF that was denounced by tens of thousands who jammed Tahir Square last April, partly because of its perceived alliance with the MB! At that time, for example, one student was quoted as saying: “The military council is putting the people in a very hard situation, and people are angry because their demands have not come true…. People feel like the old regime has not gone anywhere, and under the army we are living with them still.” Yet another said: “I am against the military council because the constitutional declaration they made last year was all about rigging the election…. We just want a revolutionary candidate, someone we can support and who stands with the people.”

This is the same army that is notorious for being an economic as well as a military caste. It’s an army that, according to Al-Amin, controls “as much as thirty percent of Egypt’s economy,” that, according to Shana Marshall and Joshua Stacher, “manufacture[s] everything from olive oil and shoe polish to the voting booths used in Egypt’s 2011 parliamentary elections,” through a network of “the privately owned businesses that constitute what has become known as the ‘officer economy.'” It’s the same army whose “tentacles also grasped large shares of the civilian public sector as part of the ‘privatization’ process in the 1990s,” and which, accordingly, appointed as Finance Minister “a strong advocate of free-market liberalism and the ‘rationalizing’ of state subsidies on staples.”

Even the New York Times reporter, Ben Hubbard, recognizes that this army “has never been a force for democracy. It has one primary objective…preserving national stability and its untouchable realm of privilege within the Egyptian state.” For decades, “its tens of thousands of elite officers have jealously guarded their privileged station” and “grown wealthy through government contracts and business deals facilitated by their positions.” As Hubbard says, the elite officers’ corps is virtually “a hereditary Brahmin caste, in which sons follow their fathers’ careers and they all live inside a closed social circle.” And, as he cites Steven A. Cook, of the Council on Foreign Relations: “The liberals and the revolutionaries are too quick to hop into bed with the military–it is not their friend…. The most important thing from the military’s perspective is preserving its place as the locus of power and influence in the system.”

It’s also the same military that was, with the consent of most secular and Islamist groups, in the constitution that has just been annulled, “afforded a constitutionally sanctioned special status in a supposedly democratic state run by civilians,” and given a guarantee that the Defense Minister would be appointed from its ranks. [See Al-Amin, “Egypt’s Constitution, the Opposition, and the Dialogue of the Deaf.“]

There’s no way to avoid recognizing it: The Egyptian radical opposition has delivered the government back into the hands of this army. I find it hard to imagine how anyone thinks this advances a revolutionary process. The SCAF are not the Portuguese officers of 1974 (who are still revolutionary, BTW!). The SCAF is not there to energize and support, but to control and suppress mass movements for social justice. Nothing has happened to move the Egyptian state one more inch in a progressive direction, politically or socio-economically. If anything, the opposite has occurred. Replacing Morsi-and-the-MB + SCAF with ElBaradiei-and-the-technocrats + SCAF still = IMF + SCAF. It’s neo-liberalism with a secular face, a combination more acceptable to the West.

What Will Happen Now?

Shamus Cooke quite perceptively reminds us how it goes: “In Egypt, the economic interests of different groups are consciously hidden behind religion and abstract notions of democracy. The very wealthy and corporations have no problem acting extra religious or especially democratic if it pushes their interests forward.”

Now you also have this army rounding up and arresting Morsi, the elected president, as well as the leaders and who knows how many of the cadres of the MB. For what? What crime against the people have they committed? Being Islamists? Having won elections? Being too politically aggressive? For how long will they be held? Until they agree never to run in, or maybe never to win, another election?

Perhaps the anti-Morsi left opposition thinks (What else could it be?) that the undeniable mass mobilization of the people they’ve achieved will be the guarantee against a return to pre-Tahir repression, and the engine of further, more complete, revolutionary change. Now that we’ve got the Islamist menace out of the way, we can go after the rest of the obstacles to the profound change we need, or something like that.

That has a superficial plausibility, and I certainly hope it works out that way. Problem is, it will only work out that way if the masses stay mobilized, if they have a program to press for that at least outlines specific policies that will make ordinary people’s live better, if there is a political leadership and political organization capable of transforming the state in ways that will enable instituting that program, and if that mass movement and leadership have no illusions about the role the “officer economy” and the (politically) liberal (economically) neo-liberal “technocrats”–i.e. IMF robots–will play, along with the conservative and dogmatic Islamists, in obstructing such decisive revolutionary change. If what you’ve actually got is a Groundhog Day appeal to the mass of Egyptians to wake up to a new morning of million-people mobilizations every 6, 12, or 24, months; if, in the last mobilization you’ve actually strengthened everyone’s illusions about the friendly, democratic, and salvific role of the national army; if you have no political and socio-economic project besides disrupting the reign of one bad guy after another; and if you have no political leadership or organization that wants to, and will, build the capability for those masses to take power and enact progressive programs–then, well, ongoing revolution, not so much.

There’s also this tiny little thing: If you think you’ve gotten the Islamist menace out of the way, you are dreaming. There are tens of millions of people who have long-standing allegiances to the MB and groups like it. They did not all turn against it in the last few months. The MB is a party with deep roots in Egyptian history and society. It isn’t going away. You’ve got them out of democratic politics, though, that’s for sure. As one Egyptian merchant says: “Didn’t we do what they asked…? We don’t believe in democracy to begin with; it’s not part of our ideology. But we accepted it. We followed them, and then this is what they do?” And, as Essam el-Haddad, Morsi’s foreign policy adviser put it on his web page, before he was detained by the military: “The message will resonate throughout the Muslim world loud and clear: democracy is not for Muslims.” Already, thousands have been chanting in rallies in the Sinai: “The age of peacefulness is over. No more peacefulness after today.” Far from “out of the way,” the Islamists are going to be in your face, more aggressively than ever, for some time to come. So much for peaceful transition. [See “For Islamists, Dire Lessons on Politics and Power,” NYT.]

Unfortunate as it may be, Islamist parties’ conservative socio-cultural positions and simple doctrinal certainties, as well as their charity-driven populism, have wide appeal in Muslim societies. Changing that will require some years of demonstrating that democratic political dialogue and liberal social values, combined with radical structural economic changes, can more effectively guarantee people’s social security as well as a nation’s cultural integrity. It requires, in other words, another kind of long-term revolutionary project. Under any circumstances, this problem will not be arrested away, and it is the opposite of revolutionary to think that it can.

As I said above, I am not averse, in principle, to extra-electoral politics, or even insurrection. A serious revolutionary conjuncture, a real break into a new social order, usually involves both. It’s a process driven by politicized masses in motion, in ways that are not constrained within the limits of “normal”–i.e., elite-crafted–electoral politics. Let’s say you have a sclerotically corrupt and unreliable electoral process, with tepid citizen participation, largely understood as a futile exercise, obviously fixed in advance by the ruling party or elite, and riddled by obvious maneuvers to disenfranchise dangerous voters and skew the vote, as you did in Mubarak’s Egypt, or, you know, as we have now in the United States. Then, sure, that kind of electoral process is actually a tool of disempowerment and a thin facade of democracy, giving political mobilization that bypasses it a strong claim to legitimacy. If, however, you have an election cycle in the wake of a euphoric revolutionary rupture, which attracts millions of newly empowered citizen voters who are eager to help define their new polity, then, from even the most “revolutionary” democratic perspective, you should be much more reluctant to declare it null and void.

Similarly, in the midst of a revolutionary insurrection that, with the cooperation of progressive military elements, deposes the government of a small, corrupt, plutocratic elite that has little popular support, especially a government that’s been engaged in vicious repression of an insurgent popular movement, it is legitimate to arrest and detain key figures and key backers of that government. After all, a revolution involves an unapologetic, forceful, seizure and transfer of power that seeks to be irreversible, and there are crimes against the people that deserve revolutionary justice. It’s quite another thing, however, when a military that is an integral part of the corrupt elite itself finishes your insurrection for you by arresting a wide swath of the cadres of a mass popular movement, including its presidential candidate, who had been elected by tens of millions of people. This is not an exercise in revolutionary, or any other kind of, justice or democracy.

Egypt is in the midst of an upheaval that still contains a myriad of possibilities, but I’m pessimistic about how this is going to play out. It’s a tad too clever to ideologically disarm the populace in the face of the army one day, with the idea that you can quickly rearm them ideologically against the army tomorrow. I fear that we may be seeing another example, in a key Arab country, of a powerful democratic upsurge veering into a disastrous dénouement. So far, in Egypt, we have seen the unfolding of an intense and militant revolutionary process, without a revolutionary program or revolutionary leadership, and therefore without a revolutionary strategy. If we want to pursue a familiar distinction, what we’ve seen in Egypt has been a rolling rebellion, not an uninterrupted revolution. It could still become the latter, but I think the last week’s events have made that less likely.

This is the symptom of a condition that affects insurgent left movements throughout the world, especially those driven by revolutionary-minded youth. They understand both the political and socio-economic nature of the oppressive power they live under, and they understand how radical are the changes that are necessary to build a new world of peace and justice. They are smart and creative about devising ways to educate a broader public about it, and to protest and disrupt it. They fight power, disrupt power, challenge power. With few exceptions, they also refuse to assume power, or to organize for the possibility of doing so. By virtue of lived experience and liberal education, they have developed, beyond a healthy skepticism, an absolute allergy to power and organization. They inhabit an ideology in which power is not just tendentially dangerous, but intrinsically and irretrievably nefarious, and in which coherent, disciplined political organizations are dogs of this devil. Despite their positive appreciation of “empowerment” in other contexts, in the political context they cannot imagine power to be liberating as well as dangerous. They do not want to, and cannot, imagine a way of wielding power in a consistent, programmatic, progressive manner. That way lies the Gulag, always.

Yet, the thing is: If progressive, revolutionary forces are not willing or capable of taking and wielding power to build a new social order, someone else will take that power. Something else will substitute itself for the revolutionary political organization that power-averse revolutionary youth disdained to build. Some other political party or parties, formed around a relatively coherent theory and agenda and set of common interests, will step into the vacuum of political agency that is left by such an ideology at the most critical juncture. Some other organized political force will take as a prize the society in ferment that those rebellious youth created–like, say, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. That way lies the status quo, squared, always.

Still, in any real set of circumstances, the possibilities for such a takeover are not infinite. In Egypt, as one analyst says, “besides the Brotherhood, [the armed forces] are the only really cohesive institution in the country.” Globally, there are a few constellations of programmatic ideas for structuring a modern polity, and I want to focus on the one fundamental socio-economic question that’s “hidden behind religion and abstract notions of democracy” in Egypt and throughout the world today.

Everyone recognizes that a shallow program of “democracy,” limited to formally free elections and well-written constitutions, does not nearly a revolution make. Revolutionary upheaval like we’ve seen in Egypt occurs because there is widespread social discontent, and without programs that–radically, quickly and tangibly–begin to change the social lives of the majority of people for the better, no revolution will move forward. A revolution is not just about giving people a vote or a newspaper. It’s not really a question of giving people anything, but of the people themselves taking control of social capital, and changing the fundamental social relations of wealth production, accumulation, and distribution.

There can be no more pretense, in Egypt or elsewhere, that such changes can be made without a decisive break with capitalism, or, as its actually-existing variant is called, neo-liberalism. That’s a very tall order, which demands not just evoking the necessity to do it, but elaborating– in a context structured to make it extremely difficult to do so–specific policies and programs that will lead irreversibly to the end of capitalist social penury and the beginning of another, more just, social order. That way requires, always, a theory that can explain the situation, and an organization that is rooted in the lives of everyday people and capable of effectively focusing their struggle for political empowerment,

Democracy is empowerment of the people, and thoroughgoing democracy is not a question of the granting of political rights, but of the seizure and extension of political and social power. That is the dangerous, and unavoidable, challenge, of revolutionary politics. In Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will be no part of it.
Submitters Website: www.thepolemicist.net

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Former college professor, current man-about-town, native New Yorker. Blogging at www.thepolemicist.net, aiming to be intellectually rigorous, politically challenging, and occasionally snarky, from a left-socialist perspective.

Obamaheads, Be Decent Enough to Call Yourself Centrist Democrats

MSNBC’s Schultz, Maddow and O’Donnel: all certifiable Obamaheads, as is Al Sharpton and others.

By Patrick Walker, OpedNews

My shortest but perhaps most incisive OEN article, this one points out the real harm resulting from Obamaheads’ Orwellian usurpation of the word “progressive.” Not only are many voters deceived but, what’s worse, genuine progressives–the pro-democracy left–have others steal their own most effective rallying banner and are thereby crowded out and marginalized. I offer “centrist Democrats” as an honest alternative for Obamans.

There’s a reason I’m fighting over the name “progressive.” I think, for historic and linguistic reasons, it’s the best available name for the pro-democracy left–the left that believes the American people deserve and need a say in what happens to their environment, their climate, their national security, and their economic lives. Democrats like Obama clearly DON’T desire even to consult with the U.S. people on these issues–let alone seek their informed consent. Everything is left in the hands of corporations like the Wall Street bankers, military-surveillance contractors, global food conglomerates, or the fossil fuel industry. Or in those of entrenched, self-serving bureaucrats at the Pentagon and NSA. If you believe in and support that, fine. But it’s the worst kind of Orwellian language abuse to call it “progressive.

Your usurping the name “progressive” does far more harm than you realize. For one, it misleads people who like the idea of progressive change to vote for veiled enemies of progressive change like Obama. But what’s worse–and THIS is what makes me so angry–it GUARANTEES that real progressives (who, again, believe in democracy) get marginalized. Though truth is on real progressives’ side, all the power of government, mainstream media, and Big Money is on the side of anti-progressives–be they Democrat or Republican. So if you dishonestly–backed by the vast, entrenched powers I just named–seize the name “progressive,” people who really believe in democratic change will be left scrambling to look for an effective rallying banner. When the stellar name “progressive” already exists and is rightfully ours.

So I offer you a decent, honest alternative. Call yourself “centrist Democrats.” This even has a propaganda advantage, since a lot of people think the truth is in the middle (as on climate change, it often isn’t) and will consider themselves good, reasonable people for being centrists.

Or, if you like Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, this new labeling should appeal to you, because it’s NOT really honest. For “centrist” hardly applies to Obama and his political allies, who in their authoritarianism and scorn for liberty and democracy, are really to the right of Genghis Khan. So, as Clapper fans, kindly embrace the “centrist Democrats” label as the “least untruthful” you may safely use.

So my takeaway message to Obama (and Hillary Clinton) supporters is this: if you wish to be dishonest Orwellians and continue to marginalize pro-democracy voices, go on calling yourselves “progressives.” But may your language-perverting lie and the harm it does democracy be forever on your conscience.

For those who believe in the urgent need to restore democracy to our deeply imperiled republic, please join the strategy discussion at the Time to Restore Democracy Facebook page: WhoseVoiceOurVoice?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I am a veteran anti-fracking and Occupy Scranton PA activist, most recently founder of the True Blue Democrats progressive revolt movement. However, currently revamping my political strategy in light of experience, I’m gradually folding up True Blue Democrats, switching my energies instead to discussing strategies for restoring lost democracy on the Time to Restore Democracy Facebook page.

In my nonactivist life, I’m a happily if belatedly married man, a generally freelance editor and proofreader, a lover of Shelties (whom my wife brought into my life), and a bit of a bohemian individualist who loves reading, especially political philosophy and history and philosophy of religion, science for laymen, and fiction. I also love travel, studying French and Spanish (when activism gives me time), playing chess and Scrabble, and writing poetry and song lyrics. To give my poor body a break from all that sit-down mind-work and a probably excessive fondness for cholesterol and alcohol, I (in decreasing order of frequency) walk, bicycle, and play tennis badly.

In Obamaland, ‘Rule of Law’ is for the Other Suckers

US (and French) Courts Have Ruled Head-of-State Immunity is Absolute

by DAVE LINDORFF

The chickens hit "Socialist" president, Francois Hollande. A stain on the honor of every child, woman and man in France. De Gaulle would have never caved in so ignominiously.

Chickenshit “Socialist” president, Francois Hollande. A stain on the honor of every child, woman and man in France. De Gaulle would have never caved in so ignominiously. But what can we ever expect from social democrats except artful betrayal?

It is clear that the entrapment and forced landing in Austria of the official airplane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales was the work of the US, which was obviously behind the decision by France and Portugal to deny air rights to the flight, and which also was obviously behind the Austrian government’s demand to be allowed to search the jet after it landed. After all, those countries have no interest themselves in capturing US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is only Obama’s and the NSA’s quarry.

So it is worth examining at how the US views the legal status of heads of state under international law and custom.

In 2004, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (New York) ruled that Robert Mugabe, the corrupt and brutal leader of Zimbabwe, enjoyed “absolute immunity” while inside the US on a visit to New York. The decision stemmed from 2001, when a group of citizens of Zimbabwe sought to have Mugabe arrested in New York on charges of “extrajudicial killing, torture, terrorism, rape, beatings and other acts of violence and destruction.” A month earlier, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (Chicago), reached a similar conclusion in a case involving then Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

[pullquote] Snowden and Syria have shown the cowardice of many powers, including Russia, which has yet to utter a peep of protest over the outrage organized by Washington on the person of Bolivia’s Evo Morales, a legitimate and sovereign president. This is a disgraceful world, indeed. [/pullquote]

The US government had filed briefs in both those cases arguing that both Jiang and Mugabe (as well as Mugabe’s foreign minister, who was traveling with him), had absolute immunity as traveling heads of state.

No surprise that, given that the head of state of the US at the time of the court proceedings and the Appellate Court hearing, George W. Bush, and his vice president Dick Cheney, were already themselves guilty of serious war crimes and crimes against humanity for their illegal invasion of Iraq, their authorization of kidnappings, extrajudicial killings and torture, and their financing of acts of terrorism.

Given that it was the French who first caved in to US pressure to block the flight home from Russia to Bolivia of President Morales, it is interesting to note too that a the French Supreme Court, in 2001, ruled in a case involving an effort to charge Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafy with the downing of a US civilian aircraft over Lockerbee, Scotland, that heads of state have absolute immunity from prosecution while in office, except for universally accepted crime of genocide.

This makes the treatment of Bolivia’s President Morales, and the behavior of the European countries involved — France, Portugal and Spain initially for trapping Morales in mid-air and forcing him to land in Austria, Austria and Italy for trapping him in Austria and Austria for insisting on searching his presidential plane, and Russia for not protesting in the most forceful way the insulting treatment of a head of state that Russia had just hosted in a summit meeting — so outrageous.

Far from being guilty of any crime, Morales was detained by the actions of the US, France, Portugal, Spain and Austria simply because the US wants to capture Snowden, and thought Morales might be transporting him on his plane back to asylum in Bolivia. But had he been doing so, it would have been entirely within the rights of the president of Bolivia, who as a head of state could legally carry anything he wanted in his plane, whether a petitioner for sanctuary or a load of cocaine. (The US has long abused diplomatic immunity to ship contraband like weapons for use in various coup attempts in so-called “diplomatic pouches,” which are exempt from customs searches.)

The US of course, is the most egregious offender in this latest saga. In its desperate effort to capture Snowden, it is trashing the Vienna Convention of 1961 and a tradition of diplomatic immunity for heads of state that is of much more ancient origin.

The US does this not because it is legal, but because it can. American military and economic power allow the US government to brazenly ignore international law and custom because at least for the present no foreign power would dare to arrest or detain a US leader in the manner that Morales was detained and forced to allow his aircraft to be searched like a common criminal suspect. That situation could, of course change in future years, at which point Washington’s role in this incident will surely be brought up in some court.

Meanwhile, though, the leaders of smaller states with less clout than the US, from France and Germany to the likes of Austria, Italy, Spain, and the nations of South America, need to contemplate a new world in which their leaders could be summarily detained, humiliated, served with criminal or civil complaints or otherwise harassed while on official state visits, with the Morales case cited as an example.

Little wonder that the leaders of many Latin American countries, long used to being humiliated by the US, have been belatedly rising to the defense of Bolivia’s president, only days after they had accommodatingly declined to offer Snowden asylum.

One has to hope that they will rethink their earlier cowardice in refusing to offer asylum to Snowden, who is still trapped in the stateless limbo of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, because of Russia’s own chickenshit cowardice about granting him some kind of at least temporary residency permit while he seeks some permanent asylum from US prosecution as a “traitor.”

The latest news is that little Iceland (pop.: 320,000), may by showing the way. The Left-Green Party there has introduced a bill in the country’s parliament, the Althing, which would offer Snowden Icelandic citizenship (and of course a passport). The odds may be long, with that party only having six seats out of 63, but Snowden is popular in that country, so pressure could be brought to bear on other members of the body.

Meanwhile, France, Germany. Italy, Spain, and Austria, which have so shamelessly caved in to US pressure, should be ashamed of themselves. So should countries like Ireland, Finland, and other European countries which have pretended that they “might” consider an offer of asylum, but for the “difficulty” that poor Snowden’s US passport has been cancelled by Washington, so he cannot travel to their soil to make an application.

What rot! First off, as I wrote earlier, the mere fact that the US, violating its own laws, cancelled the citizenship and passport of a native-born American by executive decree without even a court hearing, doesn’t mean his passport, which he still possesses, cannot be recognized as a valid travel document by another country. It still has his photo identity as before. It still has blank pages able to accept a visa application, and it still has an expiration date that shows it to be valid. Since there is no international data base for passports, which are the property of each state that issues them, there would be no international file at a nation’s border stating whether a passport from another nation is currently valid. Snowden would certainly be stopped were he to try to use his cancelled passport to attempt, for some crazy reason, to re-enter the US, but as far as going to another country, it should work fine. Unless, that is, the country in question is under the thumb of the US.

Here’s hoping that Iceland’s Althing (parliament) does the correct and courageous thing and grants citizenship to Snowden, who has said all along that he hoped to settle in that country, which he said most closely adheres to his own values of freedom, freedom of information, and support for whistleblowers. It would be a beautiful act of conscience by a tiny nation against the official hypocrisy and gutlessness of Europe’s and most of Latin America’s leaders, and the lazy unconcern of the peoples of supposedly democratic Europe and the US, to see him welcomed there.

DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an online newspaper collective, and is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).