By Michael Collins

One goal of Egypt's 2010 union inspired Tahrir Square protests was fulfilled during the December, 2011 parliamentary elections. Nearly 65% of the nation's fifty million eligible voters turned out to vote. Turnout for the June 16 and 17, 2012 presidential election dropped to an estimated 15%* according to local and press observers. What happened?

Three factors contributed to the exponential decline in voting. Egypt's courts took leading candidates off of the final presidential ballot. The disappeared candidates had the support of 68% of the electorate according to a major preelection poll in early May. Egyptian courts also disqualified one third of the recently elected parliament. Just a day before the election, military commander Mohamed Hussein Tantawi announced that the constitution had been annexed. This was a nice way of saying that the military was assuming most of the powers of the presidency, leaving the newly elected chief executive with little to do.

The entire foundation of the election vanished in plain sight. There was no point in voting. The preelection actions by the courts and military represented the most fundamental form of election fraud by making the elections meaningless.

Why vote?

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by Ellen Brown

When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on June 13, he was wearing cufflinks bearing the presidential seal. “Was Dimon trying to send any particular message by wearing the presidential cufflinks?” asked CNBC editor John Carney. “Was he . . . subtly hinting that he’s really the guy in charge?”

The groveling of the Senators was so obvious that Jon Stewart did a spoof news clip on it, featured in a Huffington Post piece titled “Jon Stewart Blasts Senate’s Coddling Of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon,” and Matt Taibbi wrote an op-ed called “Senators Grovel, Embarrass Themselves at Dimon Hearing.” He said the whole thing was painful to watch.

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by Stephen Lendman

On April 21, Security Council Resolution 2043 established UNSMIS.

It authorized 300 observers to monitor "a cessation of armed violence in all its forms by all parties and to monitor and support the full implementation of the (Annan plan) to end the conflict in Syria."

On June 16, UNSMIS suspended its activities subject to daily review. On June 17, China's Xinhua News Agency headlined "Suspension of UN observer mission serves for western 'next step' in Syria," saying:

Next steps involve "political transition." Military options may be chosen. Syria said violence escalated markedly after UN monitors arrived.

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by Stephen Lendman

Colonialism and apartheid breach international law.

The 1973 International Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (the Apartheid Convention) called it state-sanctioned discriminatory "inhuman" racism "committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them."

Apartheid is an international crime. The above definition builds on the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court calls apartheid a crime under the Court's jurisdiction. For 45 years, Israel flagrantly breached the law.

ICERD's Article 3 calls apartheid a particularly egregious form of discrimination. The Apartheid Convention and Rome Statute criminalized its practice.

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Dr. Ashraf Ezzat

“The political scene in Egypt nowadays is pretty tense and rather precarious”

As June 30, the predetermined date for Egypt’s supreme council of armed forces(SCAF) to hand over power to an elected civilian government, is drawing nearer, all the major players in post-Mubarak transitional period are ready to throw in their last card … including Israel.

Some of the key players, like the Muslim Brotherhood, have even threatened to resort to violence if things don’t come their way.

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