Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan has claimed that Israel was behind the July 3 military coup in Egypt, adding that Ankara has evidence as to the country’s involvement in President Mohamed Morsi’s overthrow. ● “Now the West starts to say democracy is not the ballot box or not only the box but we know that the ballot box is the people’s will,” Erdoðan said Aug. 20 at an expanded meeting of the provincial chairs of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). The prime minister criticized Western countries' stance vis-à-vis Egypt’s coup, saying, "The West should [understand] the description of democracy, they need to learn it.” “This is what has been implemented in Egypt. Who is behind this? Israel. We have evidence,” the prime minister said, citing a meeting between a French intellectual and the Israeli justice minister in France before the 2011 elections.

Roi Tov: Egyptian Dictator and Israel Declare Mutual Love ● Chilling pictures are being published on the ongoing violent events in Egypt. The scariest one is reproduced [on the right here]. It is a snapshot from the Egyptian television taken yesterday; it shows General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi. For the fist time in that media, it shows a message in English. It reads "Egypt Fighting Terrorism" in the colors of the Egyptian flag. It illustrates the infiltration-depth of Western-propaganda. After all, on 3 July 2013, the enlightened USA-educated general, true promoter of democracy and selfless protector of the people, had violently removed President Mohamed Morsi and suspended the Egyptian constitution. He removed a democratically elected president and declared the people attempting to protect democracy "terrorists." Yet, he forgot to blame al-Qaeda; probably the CIA will fine him for this embarrassing overlook. ● Lately, Egypt is closely cooperating with the IDF. Both armies are attempting to deal with the Bedouin insurrection in the area, to the extent that on August 8, an Israeli killer-drone was recently used on Egyptian ground (Israeli Drone Bombs Egypt). The AP news agency had quoted two senior Egyptian defense sources claiming that the Israeli airstrike had been coordinated with the Egyptian authorities. Dr. Ahmed Aref—Muslim Brotherhood Media Spokesman—published a statement saying there was ongoing attempts within the army to redefine "enemy" in a bid to turn the army's power inward. "We hear about the crimes of the Zionist enemy along our borders as well as an infiltration of our borders and the killing of Egyptians," he said.

Patrick Cockburn: Egypt on the Brink of a New Dark Age, as the Generals Close in for the Kill
Alex Lantier: Egyptian military junta moves to free Mubarak

A well-known British musician has in an open letter called on his fellow musicians to boycott the Zionist Israeli regime following the example of the cultural boycott against the former South African Apartheid regime. ● “Given the inability or unwillingness of our governments [to act] …. I write to you now, my brothers and sisters … to ask you to join with me, and thousands of other artists around the world, to declare a cultural boycott on Israel,” Roger Waters said in his letter published by Electronic Intifada website. Waters said the Zionist regime has been found guilty of major breaches of human rights and the international law independently by international organizations, United Nations officials and the International Court of Justice. ● He touched on two such cases saying the regime has been identified as perpetrating the “crime of Apartheid”, including in a statement on March 9, 2012 by UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the “crime of ethnic cleansing” including in East Jerusalem (al-Quds).

Opposition is growing internationally to the nine hours detention of David Miranda, the partner of Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, under British counter-terrorism laws. Greenwald has written a series of stories exposing the mass surveillance programs carried out by the US National Security Agency (NSA), based on documents given to him by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. ● All the facts point to Miranda being seized, in a chilling episode, by the UK authorities in collusion with the US government. ● Miranda was held Sunday morning at London’s Heathrow Airport on his way from Berlin to his Rio de Janeiro home. Miranda, 28, a Brazilian citizen, was kept incommunicado and interrogated by British police without access to secure legal counsel. British officials seized the electronic equipment in his possession, including his mobile phone, laptop computer, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and game consoles. ● On Monday he described his ordeal. “I remained in a room, there were six different agents coming and going, talking to me. They asked questions about my entire life, about everything. They took my computer, video game, mobile phone, my memory cards, everything.” ● Greenwald wrote that the British authorities “are going to regret what they did...I am going to write my stories a lot more aggressively now. I am going to publish many more documents now. I am going to publish a lot about England, too. I have a lot of documents about the espionage system in England. Now my focus is going to be that as well.”

The Guardian: British authorities told US before detaining Miranda
The Guardian: David Miranda's lawyers threaten legal action over 'unlawful' detention
The Guardian: David Miranda detention prompts outcry over 'gross misuse' of terror laws
Russia Today: The Guardian: Downing St. involved in 'Snowden materials' destruction order
Russia Today: UK ordered "Guardian" to destroy hard drives in effort to stop Snowden revelations
Reuters: UK Govt Destroyed Guardian's Snowden Docs
Jason Ditz: Britain, US Face Angry Backlash Over Miranda Detention

The Guardian: Rusbridger: destroying hard drives allowed us to continue NSA coverage Guardian editor-in-chief says he agreed to 'slightly pointless' task because newspaper has digital copies outside Britain. ● The move followed weeks of private discussions with Whitehall officials who eventually threatened legal action over the material "unless we handed it back or destroyed it", he said. "It was a rather bizarre situation in which I explained to them that there were other copies and, as with WikiLeaks, we weren't working in London alone so destroying a copy in London seemed to me a slightly pointless task that didn't take account of the way that digital information works these days," said Rusbridger. "Given that there were other copies and we could work out of America, which has better laws to protect journalists, I saw no reason not to destroy this material ourselves rather than hand it back to the government."

PressTV: Government agents force "Guardian" to destroy Snowden files ● The paper’s editor Alan Rusbridger said they were contacted by "a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister" adding that the official “demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on." "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back. There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures," he said. "The demand was the same: 'hand the Snowden material back or destroy it...You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more’ ,” he added. Later in his article on the paper’s website, Rusbridger said that despite the destruction of the computers in London, they can continue reporting on the matter from outside Britain, thanks to “international collaborations” among journalists.

Former US Congressman Dennis Kucinich has called for the National Security Agency to be abolished, saying that the US government agencies destroyed the idea of privacy. ■ “There needs to be a measure of responsibility. And if they go beyond the pale, which the NSA has, they just ought to be abolished. We don’t need the spying,” he said at the premiere of a documentary on government and corporate abuse of digital data. “We have the CIA, the FBI, a dozen other intelligence infrastructures. Frankly - and I’m saying this with a lifetime’s experience in government here - it’s time to punch the NSA’s ticket here,” Kucinich was quoted as saying by Prison Planet on Monday. “They’ve ruined the brand. They’ve destroyed the idea of privacy,” he added.

A Pakistani court indicted Pervez Musharraf in the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, escalating legal challenges to the ex-military dictator since he ended his self-exile in March. ● Charges were read out to Musharraf that he was complicit in Bhutto’s killing as he failed to provide adequate security at a political rally she was attending, public prosecutor Chaudhary Mohammad Azhar told reporters after a brief court appearance by the former general. “Musharraf was charged for murder, criminal conspiracy for murder and facilitation of murder,” Azhar said. “He denied the charges.” Six other people were also indicted and the hearing was adjourned till Aug. 27, state-run Pakistan Television reported, citing court proceedings.

The People's Voice: Blackwater involved in Bhutto and Hariri hits: former Pakistani army chief
Postings by The People's Voice with regard to the killing of Ms. Benazir Bhutto: HERE and HERE.
The Nation (Pakistan): US special squad killed Benazir
Ramtanu Maitra: The Planned Killing of Benazir Bhutto

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has for the first time published a document that confirms Washington’s role in the 1953 coup d’état against the democratically-elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadeq. ■ The open acknowledgment by the US intelligence community comes some six decades after the British- and American-backed military overthrow. "The military coup that overthrew Mosadeq and his National Front Cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy," read a brief segment from an internal report by an in-house CIA historian in the mid-1970s. The document, published on the National Security Archive website, was initially released in 1981, but most of it was blacked out at the time, including an entire section on the coup.

Robert Fisk: Disgust, shame, outrage. ● All these words apply to the disgrace of Egypt these past six weeks. A military coup, millions of enraged supporters of the democratically elected but deposed dictator – reports that indicate well over 1,000 Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers slaughtered by the security police – and what were we told by the authorities yesterday? That Egypt was subject to “a malicious terrorist plot”. ● The language speaks for itself. Not just a common or garden “terrorist” plot – but a “terrorist” plot so terrible that it is “malicious”. Naturally, the government acquired this use of the “terrorist” word from Bush and Blair, another Western contribution to Arab culture. But it goes further. The country, we are now informed, is at the mercy of “extremist forces who want to create war”. You would think, on hearing this, that most of the dead these past six weeks were soldiers and policemen, whereas in fact most were unarmed demonstrators. ● And who is to blame? Obama, of course, for “encouraging terrorism” by his wimpish complaints last week – so claim the Egyptian authorities. And our old friend, the “foreign media”. It is the infidel channels – including al-Jazeera – which has been feeding hatred into the land of the Pharaohs, according to the Egyptian press (which is now almost as wimpish as Obama in its fealty to its new rulers).