Nr. 35

While Egypt may not be the most “important” country in the Middle East as regards to the United States political interests in that region, the continuation of the 1.3 billion dollars in aid to Egypt which is ruled by a murderous military / Mubarak remnant clique which has crushed the Morzi democracy, which was a democracy no matter how deficient, is to be kind to President Obama, a horrible mistake on his part. And so is our unconditional support of Israel as it continues violate international laws by its continuing occupation of Palestine.

The United States prestige and respect globally is now at stake as was clearly demonstrated yesterday at the yearly global UN General Assembly meeting when Brazilian President Dilmarousseff slammed the US for violating its sovereignty by not only spying on all of her modes of communication, but additionally by the NSA spying targeting Brazil’s Petrobras huge oil refining and exploration state enterprise  computer network, for what purpose? To sabotage it in case we would want to destabilize the Brazilian democratically elected government as the Chilean democratically elected government of Dr. Salvador Allende was destabilized and crushed by the Nixon/Kissinger/ITT/CIA/Gen. Pinochet quintet?

It is noteworthy that in a letter leaked to The New Yorker magazine and published by it, of the former head of the Foreign Affairs Committee and then of the Judiciary Committee, Congressman Henry Hyde, he wrote to the President that “…  the election of Lula to the presidency of Brazil constituted a colossal failure of the CIA… “.  Are we still in the business of determining who gets to be elected democratically anywhere in the world? Are we just a nation of “interests” leaving principles and international law behind, particularly when we show readiness to go to war without either Congressional and/or UN Security Council approval? Will the mythical and inoperative principle of “exceptionalism” still be feebly used to justify the unjustifiable?

The presidents of Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Mexico are particularly and rightfully outraged by this continuation of Cheney/Bush-era policies, but this dismay extends to the leadership of Germany, Russia, and most if not all of the most important countries in the world, most of which are our allies.

Yes, thanks to whistle – blower Robert Snowden the world and the American people have learned about these international violations of sovereignty and instead of attempting to punish this whistle – blower or journalists such as Julian Assange they should be pardoned if they are guilty of the misuse of classified information and  rewarded for the effect of it, namely the publication of vastly over-classified for politicized reasons of details of information about our unbecoming and counterproductive and often destructive conduct or our foreign affairs.

If it were not for highly principled, courageous, and yes, patriotic whistle – blowers such as, inter alia, Daniel Ellsberg, some of our misleaders such as Nixon and Kissinger and later even President Johnson when he lied about the Gulf of Tonkin so-called incident in Vietnam which resulted in an increase in the hemorrhage of blood and treasury during that war, we would have done further damage to our national best and genuine interest.

It is profoundly saddening and disappointing that so many of us can no longer admire, and support President Obama. So many of us so hopefully and joyously, voted twice for this President who promised change and we also contributed to his campaign directly or by opening websites to collect funds for his campaign.

The latest NSA violations of even the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) which was created to supervise it, coupled to the targeted assassinations of suspected literally more than a thousand “militants” by drones with all their “collateral damage” hardly being discussed, and coupled to the shameless existence of the Guantanamo veritable concentration camp in occupied Cuban territory, are totally unbecoming of who we pretend to be as a so-called beacon of inspirational democracy.

We the people, must go back to demonstrating that we the governed will not tolerate anymore in our name, practices which undermine our democracy and which threaten our national security by our elected representatives.