Press Release: Halt "Ships of Shame" from the USA Carrying Weapons to Egypt. [The following press release was issued by Amnesty International on 15 March 2012.] A ship carrying a cargo of weapons with explosives en route from the USA to Egypt must not be allowed to offload because of a substantial risk the weapons will be used by Egyptian security forces to commit human rights violations, Amnesty International said on Thursday. The organization has tracked the Dutch-flagged ship, MV Schippersgracht, for the past two months. It is currently in the Mediterranean Sea and due to arrive in Egypt early next week. The vessel had previously arrived at the US Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point (MOTSU), Southport in North Carolina, USA on 24 February 2012. MOTSU is the largest ammunition port in the US and is the Department of Defense’s key Atlantic Coast ammunition shipping point.
On 3 March 2012 the ship left Sunny Point, a military-only port, carrying a class of dangerous goods that covers cartridges for weapons, fuses, and other ammunition. Amnesty urges US to stop sending tear gas to Egypt. 7 December 2011Last updated at 11:26 ET Tear gas was used against protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square last month Amnesty International has called on the United States to stop the export of tear gas and other arms to the Egyptian security forces. The human rights group says shipments have continued since clashes between protesters and authorities turned violent. Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president in February after weeks of protests. Last month saw further deadly clashes with demonstrators angry at the slow pace of reform. Amnesty International has identified three deliveries of arms to Egypt by US company Combined Systems, Inc. since the crackdown began.
"US arms shipments to Egypt's security forces must be stopped until there is certainty that tear gas and other munitions, weaponry or other equipment aren't linked to bloodshed on Egyptian streets," said spokesman Brian Wood. A protester displays empty tear gas canisters after clashes with riot police at Tahrir Square in Cairo. U.S. arming Egyptian military crackdown. When the Center for American Progress’ Think Progress blog recently compiled all of the inspiring foreign policy successes of our nation’s strong and resolute Commander-in-Chief, they listed — alongside the assassination of a U.S. citizen without due process and increased deference to Israel — what they hailed as the President’s having “supported democratic transition in Egypt.” President Obama apparently deserves credit for this notwithstanding the fact that his administration supported President Mubarak up to the very last minute; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in 2009, proclaimed: “I really consider President and Mrs.
Mubarak to be friends of my family”; and Obama, once Mubarak’s fall became inevitable, tried to engineer the empowerment of Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s long-time trusted lieutenant most responsible for its torture, brutality and domestic repression. If that’s supporting democracy in Egypt, I would hate to see what opposition entails. Egypt: Testing America's tolerance for Arab democracy.
Earlier this year, on 19 May, following months of intense behind-the-scenes debate about how the United States should respond to the mass protest movements spreading across the Arab world, President Barack Obama gave a major speech in which he defined the Arab Spring as "a historic opportunity" for the US. Rejecting those who argued that US interests could best be served by supporting embattled authoritarian leaders, Obama asserted that "failure to speak to the broader aspirations of ordinary people will only feed the suspicion that has festered for years that the United States pursues our interests at their expense.
" Instead, he said, the transformations underway in the Arab world offered the US a "chance to show that America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator. " He then declared, "It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy. " The contradictory aims of USAID in Egypt. Prior to the Egyptian revolution, the US democracy-promotion strategy helped consolidate the power of an authoritarian regime and today, the course adopted by its funding bodies is facilitating the marginalization of alternative social forces. Reports of America’s chaotic and partisan democracy-promotion strategies in Egypt met with derision this weekend as commentators pointed to the contradiction between high-minded US rhetoric and the reality of its efforts on the ground.
Yet this should come as no surprise. In the decades prior to Egypt’s January revolution, the contradictory US democracy-promotion strategy helped consolidate the power of an authoritarian regime and today, the course adopted by its funding bodies is facilitating the marginalization of social forces that do not sing from the same hymn sheet of ‘democracy-speak’. After 2005, a shift towards funding civil society as a counterweight to autocratic political structures would in fact exacerbate this trend further. Stacher and Brownlee on Democracy Prevention. New Texts Out Now: Jason Brownlee, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance. Jason Brownlee, Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the US-Egyptian Alliance .
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Jason Brownlee (JB): I had a series of experiences in 2009 that got me thinking about the intersection of US foreign policy and human rights abuses in Egypt. First, I was in Egypt in January 2009, during the massive protests against Operation Cast Lead (Israel's military assault on the Gaza Strip, which ended just before Obama took office).
The next phase of this awakening for me was reading literature of leading Egyptian dissidents that summer, books by Mohamed El Sayed Said, Tarek El Bishry, Ibrahim Eissa, and Fahmy Howeidy. J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does it address? JB: The book shows the bipartisan US tradition of backing the Egyptian regime, since 1973, to guarantee Egypt's alignment in US geostrategy. JB: I tried to keep the book concise and punchy. From INTRODUCTION [5] Ibid.