Voice of Russia

July 12, 2013

The US operates behind the backs of the world’s governments – Rick Rozoff

Recorded on July 6, 2013

AUDIO

Part I:

The U.S. has a role with every faction or group in Egypt – Rozoff

The recent overthrow of Mohamed Morsi underlined and brought to the forefront once again the duplicitous, short-sighted and self-serving way that the United States interferes with the internal politics and policies of sovereign nations and has no loyalty to anyone that they support when such and individual is longer in a position of power or susceptible to manipulation. Voice of Russia regular contributor Rick Rozoff shared his views on the situation in Egypt and the one year presidency of Mohamed Morsi.

Previous part: Part 1

You are listening to an interview in progress with Rick Rozoff, the owner and manager of the Stop NATO website and mailing list. You can find part 1 of this interview on our website at English.ruvr.ru.

Robles: Is there anyone in the Egyptian political landscape that is not US backed or connected, that you know about?

Rozoff: I sincerely hope so, but the question is who? And we hope that legitimate political organizations around the world, political parties and genuine non-governmental organizations, not the ones that are pretending to be while being funded by the U.S. State Department or worse, that such groups do have internal security checks where they are able to weed out provocateurs and infiltrators and such like.

One incident or one anecdote I’d like to share if I may and this is 25 years ago, I recall listening to the local affiliate of National Public Radio in Chicago. There was a minor incident: the US ambassador to Cairo, Egypt (this was roughly 25 years ago) was called to the foreign ministry office in Cairo to account for having secretly met with officials of the Muslim Brotherhood behind the back of the then-Hosni Mubarak government and the statement I can recall is the US ambassador said something to the effect that “we try to maintain dialogue with all actors on the political scene in Egypt”.

In other words, they will operate behind the back, They do this in every place of course, I mean, the current U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, is a sterling example. He had no sooner unpacked his bags, if he had even done that, in the Russian capital than he is meeting with any number of alleged opposition groups, which is something that I can assure you would not be tolerated should the situation be reversed and an ambassador to the United States from any other country were to attempt to do something like that.

Moreover, to meet with a group that would have been considered illegal, perhaps seditious, the way the US ambassador a quarter of a century ago talked openly and unapologetically about meeting secretly with the leaders of Muslim Brotherhood behind the back of the US client regime in Cairo.

It is a very unpleasant topic. We’re going to have to take some anti-nausea medication, I think.

Robles: What can you tell us about the fact that Morsi now, he’s being tried for high treason? Before he became president somebody let all the prisoners out of their special prison there, near Cairo and Morsi came out of his cell with many of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda fanatics etc. He was charged for treason at that point. Do you know anything about that?

Rozoff: The current charge of high-treason, which would have to be a capital crime, I am certai, in any state but certainly in Egypt. Meaning that if convicted of such a crime, he is likely to be executed. So, whoever wants to dispose of him and it is quite likely his former puppet-masters want to cut the strings and disavow any association with him, if indeed the US is that puppet master.

And the fact that such a severe, I am sure it will be phrased a little more delicately under treason to the Constitution of the Egyptian Republic, or something to that effect, but treason is treason and capital punishment is capital punishment and if you are executed I guess the legal technicalities of what sort of treason you’re accused kind of pales in comparison to the severity of the punishment that is meted out to you.

Robles: You don’t think it has anything to do with his US connections?

Rozoff: It is quite possible it does. We’ve talked about it before. I don’t think it is too strained an analogy but it is not unusual: I can remember vividly in my youth seeing somebody pull off…a photographer pull off a mob killing in Philadelphia and within seconds he himself had been shot dead. The very people, I am sure, who hired him to commit the crime got rid of him, got rid of him almost instantaneously.

I could speculate, but that is a possibility in the case of Morsi. We should also remember that Morsi recently had come out pretty forcefully in calling for support to the religious-led mercenaries and extremists in Syria to overthrow the government of Bashar Assad in Damascus. So I think it is ironic again, just as you had mentioned that Morsi is charged with treason, released, in a kind of storming the Bastille scenario two years ago only to become the head of state himself and then to be charged with treason again and moreover high treason. Just as there is an irony there, I think there is certainly one that Egypt…Morsi, attempting to overthrow his brother, Arab head of state, Assad in Damascus, himself is overthrown, and we also know of the particularly close ideological links between Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the ruling party, the AKP, in Turkey, the Justice and Development Party, which are very clearly ideologically connected.

And it was clear that Turkey and Egypt had in some ways effect some kind of a pincer movement against the government in Syria. A couple of things worth recollecting, Egypt is of course the most populous Arab country, far and away, and it controls the Suez Canal, which is one of the major choke points in the world, it is a bona fide military partner of NATO under the Mediterranean Dialogue partnership and in 2007 it became the only the second country to be granted an Individual Cooperation Program with NATO, Israel having been the first.

Robles: Hey, What happened with Colombia, can we jump off topic for a minute?

Rozoff: This is a case where you were very alert and you anticipated developments. We talked several weeks ago about NATO beginning a military partnership for the first time ever with a country in Latin America, and that was Colombia. And not too terribly long after our interview, John, on the NATO website, to be exact on June 25th, NATO’s Deputy Secretary General, Alexander Vershbow, who is former US ambassador to Russia, met with Colombia’s defense minister, Juan Carlos Pinzon Bueno, and that’s again on June 25th signed what was called an Agreement on the Security of Information, which is not in and of itself not a major military document but it’s a foot in the door. It’s the first formal agreement signed between the two countries and the first to be made with any country south of the Rio Grande, you know with the United States and Canada of course being founding members of NATO. So this now is, we were talking about the last..

Robles: Well that was your prediction I think, you predicted this.

Rozoff: It would mark the expansion of NATO into every inhabited continent in the world. Up until now there have been military partnerships, we’ve just talked about Egypt and Africa for example, and there are numerous partners in Asia and of course Australia is a major NATO partner, but the only continent up until now that, excluding Antarctica, had not been roped into the NATO international nexus was South America, and here we go, in the case of Colombia…

.

Robles: Do you think there is going to be strong reaction from more independent thinking Latin American countries towards Colombia?

Rozoff: Yeah, there were statements immediately after the first rumor. It wasn’t merely a rumor, it was somebody if you recall we talked about it in your program, a member of the State Department was talking about a military partnership with Colombia. That was maybe six weeks ago and there were statements made by several of Colombia’s neighbors particularly: to Columbia’s east, Venezuela, and to its south Ecuador, both of which have suffered armed aggression from Colombia in the last few years, not full invasions but attacks on their territory by Colombian military personnel who were trained and armed by the United States under Plan Colombia. Colombia is the third largest recipient of US military aid in the world next to Israel and Egypt.

Robles: You were listening to an interview in progress with Rick Rozoff, the Owner and Manager of the Stop NATO website and mailing list. You can find the continuation and part one of this interview on our website at english.ruvr.ru. Thanks for listening and stay with us.