EGX ends week mostly higher on Oct. 16    Egypt, Qatar sign MoU to boost cooperation in healthcare, food safety    Egypt, UK, Palestine explore financing options for Gaza reconstruction ahead of Cairo conference    Egyptian Amateur Open golf tournament relaunches after 15-year hiatus    Egypt's Kouchouk: IMF's combined reviews will give clearer picture of fiscal performance    Egypt will never relinquish historical Nile water rights, PM says    Oil prices rise on Thursday    Fragile Gaza ceasefire tested as humanitarian crisis deepens    Egypt explores cooperation with Chinese firms to advance robotic surgery    CBE, China's National Financial Regulatory sign MoU to strengthen joint cooperation    Avrio Gold to launch new jewellery, bullion factory in early 2026    AUC makes history as 1st global host of IMMAA 2025    Al Ismaelia launches award-winning 'TamaraHaus' in Downtown Cairo revival    Al-Sisi, Burhan discuss efforts to end Sudan war, address Nile Dam dispute in Cairo talks    Egypt's Sisi, Sudan's Al-Burhan renew opposition to Ethiopia's unilateral Blue Nile moves    Egypt's Cabinet hails Sharm El-Sheikh peace summit as turning point for Middle East peace    Gaza's fragile ceasefire tested as aid, reconstruction struggle to gain ground    Egypt's human rights committee reviews national strategy, UNHRC membership bid    Al-Sisi, world leaders meet in Sharm El-Sheikh to coordinate Gaza ceasefire implementation    Egypt's Sisi warns against unilateral Nile actions, calls for global water cooperation    Egypt unearths one of largest New Kingdom Fortresses in North Sinai    Egypt unearths New Kingdom military fortress on Horus's Way in Sinai    Egypt Writes Calm Anew: How Cairo Engineered the Ceasefire in Gaza    Egypt's acting environment minister heads to Abu Dhabi for IUCN Global Nature Summit    Egyptian Open Amateur Golf Championship 2025 to see record participation    Cairo's Al-Fustat Hills Park nears completion as Middle East's largest green hub – PM    El-Sisi boosts teachers' pay, pushes for AI, digital learning overhaul in Egypt's schools    Egypt's Sisi congratulates Khaled El-Enany on landslide UNESCO director-general election win    Syria releases preliminary results of first post-Assad parliament vote    Karnak's hidden origins: Study reveals Egypt's great temple rose from ancient Nile island    Egypt resolves dispute between top African sports bodies ahead of 2027 African Games    Egypt reviews Nile water inflows as minister warns of impact of encroachments on Rosetta Branch    Egypt aims to reclaim global golf standing with new major tournaments: Omar Hisham    Egypt to host men's, juniors' and ladies' open golf championships in October    Germany among EU's priciest labour markets – official data    Paris Olympic gold '24 medals hit record value    It's a bit frustrating to draw at home: Real Madrid keeper after Villarreal game    Russia says it's in sync with US, China, Pakistan on Taliban    Shoukry reviews with Guterres Egypt's efforts to achieve SDGs, promote human rights    Sudan says countries must cooperate on vaccines    Johnson & Johnson: Second shot boosts antibodies and protection against COVID-19    Egypt to tax bloggers, YouTubers    Egypt's FM asserts importance of stability in Libya, holding elections as scheduled    We mustn't lose touch: Muller after Bayern win in Bundesliga    Egypt records 36 new deaths from Covid-19, highest since mid June    Egypt sells $3 bln US-dollar dominated eurobonds    Gamal Hanafy's ceramic exhibition at Gezira Arts Centre is a must go    Italian Institute Director Davide Scalmani presents activities of the Cairo Institute for ITALIANA.IT platform    







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Big Brother and us
Published in Al-Ahram Weekly on 11 - 06 - 2013

More than two weeks ago, US Secretary of State John Kerry lambasted the procedures of the Iranian presidential elections, which he said have “no regard for popular will”. He described the Iranian government's steps to slow down or cut off Internet access ahead of the vote as “trouble signs” that will deprive Iranians of the ability to share information and exchange ideas.
While Kerry was rebuking the Tehran regime, former CIA operative Edward Snowden was leaking documents to The Guardian newspaper revealing how the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on the global Internet community since 2007. By participating in a secret programme called PRISM, American companies like Google, Yahoo, Skype, Apple and Facebook, among others, gave the NSA direct access to their systems, allowing for surveillance on live communications and stored information like search histories.
The documents revealed that the NSA devised a data-mining tool that maps the volume of intelligence derived from each country based on a “heat map” of colours. Green — like North America, most of Africa and Europe — are the least subject to surveillance, followed by yellow, orange and red. Iran where surveillance is highest is red, followed by Pakistan, Jordan then Egypt, which is orange.
Like his predecessors, Kerry was exercising the role of freedoms and democracy defender and spokesman. Since 1977, the US State Department has been issuing annual reports assessing human rights, religious freedoms and democracy in other countries — the way a super power positions itself superiorly. And we the people of the countries marked as worst on the US scale of human rights and democratic systems acknowledged our very real oppression and cited the violations documented by the State Department as evidence against our authoritarian regimes, which all US governments supported.
But our oxymoronic approach to the US was taken to another level when, 10 years after its invasion of Iraq and its disastrous consequences on the once powerful and important nation, we're barely criticising its involvement in Syria. While most anti-Bashar Al-Assad views have bitterly spoken against Hizbullah's active involvement and also their new archenemies the takfiris (extremist Sunni Muslim groups who brand non-conformists apostates), few are condemning the Syrian opposition's cooperation with Washington. Nobody is asking why we're horrified by the takfiris and Hizbullah, resentful of Iran and Russia, but nonchalant — if not neutral — about the American factor?
Proponents of the uprising against Al-Assad aren't questioning the meaning of a Syrian revolution that won the support of the same US establishment that continues to pledge unwavering support to Israel. And by the same token, Saudi and Qatari roles on the same side of the Syrian divide.
Despite the many differences between the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the dynamics of Syria now (even in terms of US involvement), the then metaphorical condemnation of Iraqi opposition figures entering Baghdad “on US tanks” reflected clarity towards the obvious. Today, Arab political circles exchange information on Kerry's talks with the Syrian opposition, the Barack Obama administration's willingness to arm the rebels, and the military council of the Free Syrian Army's pleas to Obama himself, without a hint of criticism.
Should we at this point of the Arab Spring wonder if it exposed our capitulation to US dominance just as we were hailing the waning of the Pax Americana two years ago? In Egypt's troubled revolution, both opposition and government continue to eye Washington's posturing towards both, because in their weakness it matters.
On the tenth anniversary of Iraq's invasion, which was in March, a shocking report by Al-Jazeera's Dahr Jamail exposed how 14.7 per cent of Fallujah's babies — the city shelled with 2,000 tonnes of depleted uranium ammunitions by US and British forces — are born with serious birth defects. This is 14 times the documented rate in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the city of Basra, as in all of Iraq, cancer rates have increased sevenfold since 2003.
In our seeming desensitisation to war crimes, our indifference towards US hypocrisy has almost been rendered cliché. We've ceased to demand that US — and British — war criminals be tried for war crimes and shied away from this discourse.
PRISM — the most important leak in US history — and the NSA's “intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them,” in Snowden's words, haven't unfazed us either. But then they shouldn't. What they should do is serve as a wake-up call to our own double standards and how we've permitted ourselves to be manipulated by US official discourse.
Officials who kill innocent civilians are not only called Bashar Al-Assad and Saddam Hussein. Terrorists aren't only “Islamist militants”. Iran isn't the only state abusing the Internet. And it's the US administration that has systematically debased the legacy and norms of international justice by resisting the International Criminal Court, invading Iraq and Afghanistan in only two years, and creating and sustaining Guantanamo, “the gulag of our times” to borrow Amnesty's words.
In the same spirit, but on a much smaller scale, the US administration has violated its own Fourth Amendment by expanding surveillance and the powers of the NSA to unprecedented levels. This is largely an American problem that brave people like Snowden refuse to accept. But in our revolutionary spirit and quest for the rule of just laws, democratic values and national independence, PRISM is only a reminder for us to hold the US administration accountable to the same values we claim to be fighting for. It can't be part of any chapter of the Arab Spring.


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