Senator John McCain on July 8 2013:

“[I]t is difficult for me to conclude that what happened was anything other than a coup in which the military played a decisive role,” McCain said in a statement posted to his Senate website on Monday.

“Current U.S. law is very clear about the implications for our foreign assistance in the aftermath of a military coup against an elected government, and the law offers no ability to waive its provisions,” McCain said. “I do not want to suspend our critical assistance to Egypt, but I believe that is the right thing to do at this time.”

Senator John McCain on July 31 2013:

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky's amendment to next year's transportation bill would have halted the $1.5 billion in mainly military assistance the U.S. provides Egypt each year.

…
The vote laid bare a stark division among Republicans, pitting libertarians like Paul against hawks such as Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who plan to visit Egypt next week at President Barack Obama's request to press for new elections. They were joined by Sens. Bob Corker and Jim Inhofe, the top Republicans on the Senate's foreign relations and armed services committees, in speaking out against the amendment.

"It's important that we send a message to Egypt that we're not abandoning them," McCain said. Right now, Egypt is "descending into chaos. It's going to be a threat to the United States."

Finally the lobby called McCain and let him know how to vote.

While I am busy … Your news & views …

Building on the recent progress the Syrian army will have cleared Homs city of insurgents in a week or two. The next step then should be consolidation in Homs governate and a build up for a fight to kick the insurgents out of Aleppo.

The various insurgency groups are continuing their competition for the booty they have yet to make. The Muslim Brotherhood faction of the insurgency, the so called free Syrian Army, continues its decline while the Salafi/Wahabi groups and the Al-Qaeda types (only a gradual distinction) of Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are on the rise:

Today, opposition military forces can be divided into three categories: groups loyal to the SMC, most of whom maintain the FSA brand name; Salafists, whose ranks are dominated by Syrians; and jihadists, who increasingly recruit from across the Islamic world and many of whom have at least sympathy for Al Qaeda.

…
As such, Salafist groups, notably Harakat Ahrar Al Sham Al Islamiyya, now represent the most strategically powerful players in the conflict and serious rivals to the moderate SMC leadership.

The Syrian Military Council under General Idriss is begging for weapons from "western" states. But as it is losing cloud on the ground it is seeking alliances that will make any weapon delivery less likely:

Cont. reading: Syria: Erdogan’s Kurdish Problem

Some very damaging additional stuff about the NSA domestic spying will come up this week. A preview was given today on Face The Nation and on Meet The Press. The emphasis is now not on "collect it all" but the much more interesting question of how to "access it all". How does the NSA get the information out of the raw data.

@FaceTheNation

"The #NSA is literally collecting every phone record of every American every day…that is a violation of Americans' privacy" @MarkUdall

Senator Udall says that all "phone records" are collected. But that is only half the beef. The NSA is collecting much more.

"Phone records" are the metadata of a call: Date/time of call, call length, originating number, location of originating number, destination number, destination location. If the implicated phones are mobiles additional information about the phone type and serial as well as location changes during the call may be included.

This metadata is useful to find connections between people, to reconstruct where they have been when and to find out about certain habits of the people involved.

But the content of the calls may be much more interesting.

Cont. reading: NSA – Access It All

News & views …

What does it say about a country when it has to assure another country that it will not torture a fugitive should he be returned?

U.S. Says Snowden Wouldn't Face Death Penalty – Holder Also Rules Out Torture in Bid to Reassure Russia

U.S. authorities say National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden wouldn't face the death penalty—and also promise he wouldn't be tortured—in a new letter hoping to persuade Russia not to grant him asylum or refugee status.

The Obama administration is handling the Snowden case the most stupid way it could. Wasn't there once some bureau for public diplomacy and strategic communication in the State Department?

The administration should have shut up as soon as Snowden went public. Instead it is creating a hero in the eyes of many U.S. people and in the eyes of everyone in the rest of the world. Trying to justify its spying on the whole world, threatening other states over Snowden's asylum and pushing "allies" to bring down foreign presidential planes will endear the U.S. to no one.

Besides that – who will believe anything Holder promises? Wasn't it the U.S. which redefined torture into "enhanced interrogation"? Is that the plan for Snowden? Wasn't it the Obama administration and Holden who refused to prosecute anyone but the victims over torture? Isn't the Obama administration accused by the UN special rapporteur on torture of cruel, inhuman and degrading treating of a prisoner in a case similar to Snowden's?

By writing that Holden letter the U.S. has publicly humiliated itself. It is a total embarrassment.

Putin has made it clear from the very beginning that any extradition of Snowden is not going to happen. Fullstop. Russian officials have repeated that again and even today:

Asked by a reporter whether the government's position had changed, Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies that "Russia has never extradited anyone and never will."

Is that so difficult to understand? Why then is the U.S. even trying?

It seems that this an Obama personality issue. He personally asked Putin to extradite Snowden even after Putin had publicly (thereby leaving zero chance to later change that decision) said he would not. Now Obama is miffed. How can HE get rebuked by country like Russia?

Two weeks ago, Obama phoned Putin and asked him to send Snowden back to the U.S., but Putin refused, according to one official who was briefed on the call. Following that perceived rebuke, the Obama team doubled down on its new policy to show the Russian government the cold shoulder.

“The Snowden affair is definitely affecting U.S.-Russia relations, no question. When you make it clear that something is very important to the U.S. and we are asking for cooperation and that request is rejected, that rejection is going to have an impact on the broader relationship,” said Samuel Charap, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “There’s only so many times you can thumb your nose at a U.S. president and not expect consequences. When the president himself has gotten involved personally and been rebuffed, the rule book kind of goes out the window.”

Ahh – the rule book is out of the window. Screw public diplomacy. Just don't care how the world sees the U.S.. It is all about Obama miffed that Putin is "thumbing his nose" at him. Who is this President of the Russian Federation that dares to do so to King Obama of the United States?

Obama's open personal arrogance will cost the U.S. dearly. 

The NSA's decision to have a four-eyes rule for system administration was predicted to create a lot of hassle. We already appear to see some of the fall out. There are now obvious difficulties in the process of synchronizing the talking points of various administration robots.

July 22 – Official: Snowden did not get 'crown jewels'

U.S. intelligence now believes Edward Snowden did not gain access to the "crown jewels" of National Security Agency programs that secretly intercept and monitor conversations around the world, CNN has learned.

…
The ongoing damage assessment indicates he did not gain access to what is called ECI or "extremely compartmentalized information," according to a U.S. official familiar with the review.

July 24 – Snowden Damage Still Being Assessed; ‘Deepest Of Deep Secrets’ At Risk, Says STRATCOM’s Kehler

[Gen. Bob Kehler, commander of US Strategic Command,] referred to the type of information Snowden released as ”the deepest of the deep secrets.”

While Gen. Kehler was his usual careful self, a former senior allied intelligence official recently described Snowden’s actions to me as “catastrophic.”

I sincerely doubt that the NSA knows what Snowden has or does not have. It will have to assume that he accessed everything within is reach. A serious system administrator has ways and means to extend the official reach she is supposed to have. Rules that are supposed to prevent access can be circumvented or temporarily turned off. System logs that may register such action can be manipulated which then would make the access undetectable. These are ways and means the NSA is using itself against the people, organizations and countries it is spying on. The NSA's toolkit is designed to beat the best available protection which necessarily includes the ones the NSA itself is using. If one develops weapons for cyber wars one can be quite certain to n also become a victim of these.

The situation in Egypt keeps escalating. After the military coup against former president Morsi the Muslim Brotherhood decided to not accept it and to regain power. They took to the streets to demonstrate and are holding sit-ins. There was violence against their demonstrations as well as violence coming from them. But the situation seemed somewhat stable as the coup government established itself without much trouble and the protests in Cairo seemed to dwindle.

The ruling military though has a different view. For them the situation in the Sinai is a crucial issue. There militant Jihadists, some of them foreigners and equipped with weapons smuggled in from Libya, have attacked army position and camps and seem to develop capabilities that could soon allow them to launch attacks into the Nile delta. Under former president Morsi those Jihadist were relatively safe. Morsi pardoned many of them and freed them from Egypt's jails. The army was not allowed to go after them. This was one of the main motives for the coup.

Three days ago five people, including four army personal, were killed in a coordinated Jihadist attacks in the Sinai. Yesterday 19 army personal were injured in another attack. Today one soldier died in yet another attack. The army has deployed two additional battalions to the area but the Sinai is a wide and whoever wants to hide there will find ways to do so.

The Brotherhood has somewhat endorsed these attacks and suggested that it can control them:

Cont. reading: Egypt: Preparing The Repression

For lack of time just a link to a good writeup of the greater picture in the Middle East. Recommended reading (h/t Sophia): Musa al-Gharbi: Al-Qaeda's renaissance

However, so long as the protests remained peaceful, al-Qaeda
was, in a sense, sidelined. Ironically, the Western
interventions/escalations in Libya and Syria gave them an “in” and
subsequently al-Qaeda has played a decisive and growing role in those
theaters.

Contrary to Western assumptions (fueled by media disinformation), the Libyans did not rise up in great numbers
to overthrow Gaddhafi, and there were few military and government
defections. Accordingly, the colonel continued to advance on Benghazi
despite the NATO-imposed no-fly zone. Foreign fighters from AQIM rushed in to compensate for the lack of indigenous resistance—but even then the local population refused to provide the rebels with provisions or support, forcing NATO allies to overstep their mandate in UNSCR 1973 (just as they did in UNSCR 1441), likely in violation of international law.

…
Al-Qaeda was quick to endorse the Syrian "uprising;" they began by bombing targets in Damascus and quickly stepped up their involvement from there. The late Abu Yaya al-Libi called for a “violent jihad”
in Syria without compromise or “illusions of peacefulness” until
President al-Asad is overthrown. The al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front
was primarily responsible for the rebel gains in Aleppo, which marked a turning point in the rebellion—they have since become the most effective and influential fighting force in the Syrian theater.

…
In Libya and Syria, the U.S. and its allies essentially ceded the
narrative to al-Qaeda, agreeing that there can be no talk of democratic
reforms while "dictators" remain in power. This message is further underscored by the recent military coup in Egypt, and subsequent persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood;
to many Sunni Islamists, these developments serve as definitive proof
that oppressive regimes cannot be purged through a peaceful political
process as they (and their international supporters) have no respect for
the popular will, and they are too corrupt to be reformed.

May 19, 2011 – Obama Sees ’67 Borders as Starting Point for Peace Deal

Mr. Obama declared that the prevailing borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — adjusted to some degree to account for Israeli settlements in the West Bank — should be the basis of a deal. While the 1967 borders have long been viewed as the foundation for a peace agreement, Mr. Obama’s formula of land swaps to compensate for disputed territory created a new benchmark for a diplomatic solution.

July 20, 2013 – Palestinian officials say Kerry gave guarantees that 1967 borders are basis for new talks

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to resume peace talks with Israel only after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave him a letter guaranteeing that the basis of the negotiations will be Israel’s pre-1967 borders, two senior Palestinian officials said Saturday.

A Western official, however, later denied that the ‘67 lines would be the basis of negotiations.

So Obama, for once, actually did what he said? The “Western official” in the above is likely an Israeli. The article later refers to an “U.S. official” distinguishing it from the “Western official” source. The Israeli may be lying. But what did Kerry guarantee or not?

July 22, 2013 – Analysis: How Netanyahu averted coalition crisis

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu succeeded in preventing his governing coalition from unraveling over the weekend following the announcement of forthcoming negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu kept Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett satisfied by receiving a commitment from the Americans that they would not say the talks would be based on pre-1967 borders.

It seems to me that Kerry (and Obama) are giving each side diverging promises. That shows that they are not serious about finding any solution. The scam of negotiations between the two already very unequal sides continues with the U.S. putting its weight as always on the already too strong side of the Israelis. Meanwhile the colonizing of Palestine continues.

Anne Barnard writes for the NYT. Here recent piece, Enlisting Damascus Residents to Answer Assad’s Call, is datelined "Damascus". As usual in the NYT Barnard's piece emphasizes sectarianism again and again. But how believable is this sectarian tale?

One may estimate how credible Barnard's writing is from this vignette:

At the entrance to a Shiite Muslim quarter, Mr. Lotof inspected a new checkpoint guarded by a baby-faced 18-year-old clutching a rifle nearly his height.

The usual AK-47 has an overall length of 87cm (34.3 in). The slightly larger U.S. M-16 has an overall length of 99.0 cm (39.0 in). Even rather large snipper rifles do not exceed 125cm (49.2in). But they are mostly useless for a checkpoint guard.

Are we therefor to believe that the Syrian government has dwarfs guarding the streets of Damascus? And that everything in the war on Syria is about sectarianism?

The NSA will now push new internal rules to protect data it illegally collects from being accessed by its own staff. Those rules will include an additional layer of encryption, four-eyes rule for system administration and more compartmentalized access. That is fine because it will kill the NSA’s productivity and effectiveness.

The NSA’s says it needs all teh data it collects to find “terrorists”. If one believes that the NSA genuinely wants to find terrorists one should be worried that it has chosen the wrong method for the false problem:

General Alexander spoke in defense of the N.S.A.’s surveillance programs, including its collection of a vast database of information about all phone calls made and received in the United States. “You need a haystack to find a needle,” he said

The assertion that one needs a haystack to find a needle is incredibly stupid. It assumes that there is a needle (or “terrorist”). Something neither given nor provable. Even if there were a needle how will making the haystack bigger it easier to find it? And why is the needle the danger that must be found? Edwald Snowden set the NSA’s haystack on fire. Alexander now has his house burning because of the much too large haystack he accumulated.

That General Alexander comes up with such implausible assertions makes one wonder about the real motives behind the obsession with data collection. My hunch is that the only real reason behind it is “because we can”.

People under total observation change their behavior and change in their characters. But total observation also changes the behavior and character of the observer. It creates fantasies of unlimited power, of almightiness and leads to total arrogance.

I believe that Alexander and the politicians’ defending him show the symptoms of this disease. They assume that they are unbeatable and can act without any consequences. It is up to us to teach them that they are wrong.

Today a judge in Russia found Alexey Navalny, together with two others, guilty of defrauding a state company. It was alleged that the boss of a state forestry company colluded with some broker to sell state owned wood for lower-than market prices to the broker who then sold it at market prices to other companies. Navalny was the one who brought the broker and the company boss together, arranged the business and allegedly got illegal profits from it.

I have no idea if Navalny is guilty or not. Neither have, judging from their "Navalny Über Alles" pieces, so called journalists who write in the "western" media. They claim, without presenting any evidence, that Navalny was only accused and judged guilty because he had become a nuisance to the Russian Federation state and its president Putin.

Navalny gained some notoriety when he, in 2011 and 2012, arranged for some rather small demonstrations in Moscow. "Western" media often call him a blogger who is muckracking about alleged bribes and improprieties in various state institutions. They claim that he is a popular opponent of Putin.

But Navalny is not popular, at least not in Russia. Out of those 47% of Russians who have at all heard of him twice as many have a negative view on him than a positive opinion one. Since that Pew poll his popularity has shrunk further.

Navalny certainly has some dark sides. He was expelled from the liberal Yabloko opposition party for colluding with the Russian neo-Nazi movement.
Navalny is a arch nationalist who wants "Russia for the Russians" excluding all other ethnic groups. Only last week he publicly endorsed a race riot against Russians of Chechen heritage.

As said above I have no idea if Navalny is guilty or not. A Russian court found him guilty and that is about all we known about the case. But I do have an idea what Navalny is not. He is not a serious politician with some laudable program who a majority of Russians would vote into any office. He is rather a racist, rightwing authoritarian who, for the best interests of the Russians and the "west", should be kept as far from any public office as possible.

As I am currently very busy with not blogging just various links:

China and Russia finally getting smart over Iran. No more UN sanctions:

• UN council split on Iran missile tests

Two small but interesting developments in Syria. Palestinians and Kurds against the Jihadis:

• Palestinian refugees training to liberate camps from foreign-backed militants
• PYD gains control of Syrian border village

On Egypt. There was an alternative though the IMF issue may have been the deal breaker:

• Egypt's "road not taken" could have saved Mursi

The U.S. seems not to understand how this incredible bullying over Snowden is seen in the rest of the world. That bullying is doing more damage than whatever Snowden released:

• U.S. to Russia: Turn over Snowden or risk 'long-term problems'

The NSA is taking and checking data up to 3 hops away from any suspect. On the Internet you are only 4.71 hops away from anyone else.

• The NSA Admits It Analyzes More People's Data Than Previously Revealed

We know that the CIA is long involved in distributing weapons and intelligence to the Syrian insurgents. The CIA organized weapons from Croatia and Libya and distributed those. The bills for those weapons were payed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. New weapons are still arriving. There are also U.S. military special operation detachments in Jordan and Turkey training some of the insurgents. As this involvement is already well known and has been reported on by several outlets it is a bit weird that the Obama administration is now somewhat agonizing about "officially" delivering weapons to the insurgents:

A month ago Obama administration officials promised to deliver arms and ammunition to the Syrian rebels in the hope of reversing the tide of a war that had turned against an embattled opposition.

But interviews with American, Western and Middle Eastern officials show that the administration’s plans are far more limited than it has indicated in public and private.

There is a lot of whining in that piece about "legal restrains" and question of who the weapons should go to. The legal restrains, which the Wall Street Journal explores in detail, are not the real issue. As usual international law means nothing to the U.S. and Obama simply ignores it. The real reason the weapons are a no go is that some grown ups are holding them up in fear of putting them into the wrong hands:

Cont. reading: Syria: The “West’s” Muddled Policy

The Washington Post has a somewhat schizophrenic piece on General Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency and of the military Cyber Command. The piece starts with lauding Alexander for a few paragraphs but then goes into some rather unflattering details of what the man has been doing. The general's approach is to "collect it all" and it started not in the United States but in Iraq where the U.S. military was totally unable to control the insurgency and tried in vane to get ahead of the game with total spying:

[T]he NSA director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, wanted more than mere snippets. He wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency’s powerful computers.

“Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’ ” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official who tracked the plan’s implementation. “Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”

What is good for unsuccessfully fighting an insurgency in Iraq, as earlier in other places, must also be good for controlling U.S. citizens and the rest of the world. Thus the "collect it all" scheme was extended to the United States as well as the globe:

Cont. reading: “Collect It All” Is Illegal, Stupid And Dangerous

It is well known that the Syrian insurgents have received, with U.S. help, many new weapons from various Arab states:

Salim Idriss, head of FSA’s military command, said that the new weapons have allowed the rebel army to “destroy more than 90 armored vehicles for Syrian regime.”

But even those new weapons are not enough for them. They, and their Arab and "western" supporters, are still pressing for more weapons. Obama seems to be willing to give more weapons:

President Barack Obama told Saudi Arabia’s king on Friday that he is committed to providing U.S. support to Syrian rebels who have been waiting for shipments of light arms that have been stalled in Washington.

Congress has so far blocked any official U.S. supplies. To change the opinion of some Congress leaders the war on Syria must now be redefined. From the left of the stage now appears the "moderate rebel". Instead of asking for weapons to fight the "bloody dictator" the "moderate rebel" will now request weapons to fight the "dangerous terrorists" with whom they have partnered all along.

We therefor now read about Pakistani Taliban setting up shop in Syria and can see some insurgents raise a monster size white "Taliban flag" at the Turkish-Syrian border. Suddenly there are many, many, many reports about strife between the "moderate" insurgents and the "terrorists":

Kamal Hamami, the Free Syrian Army commander killed on Thursday in the coastal province of Latakia, had just met with others in the group about getting weapons.

…
Last week, members of the Islamic State were accused of beheading two Free Syrian Army fighters and leaving their severed heads beside a garbage can in a square in Dana, a rebel-held town in Idlib Province near the Turkish border. The attack came after clashes broke out at a demonstration against the Islamic State, leaving 13 people dead.

Recently, a fighter from the area, Abu al-Haytham, claimed that the rebel dispute began when a foreign fighter with the Islamic State raped a local boy — “the last straw,” he said — and Free Syrian Army commanders complained.

At least some of these stories are false. But they will be used for a new push to arm the "moderate" insurgents.

But there are reasons to doubt that small local clashes over loot between some factions are really showing a principal split between the various insurgency groups:

Despite growing frictions, moderate factions and jihadist groups do still coordinate on the ground, said Charles Lister, an analyst at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center. He said that is unlikely to change, although the FSA may use the assassination for political gain.

“Moderate forces could use this as a way to prove to the West that they are willing to break relations with jihadis in order to get more Western assistance,” he said. “The reality is very different for the commanders on the ground.”

These groups have been working together from the very beginning of the insurgency. While the Syrian locals may have been a bit more moderate in the beginning they were still religious radicals who named all their battalions after historic Sunni warriors. Their differences with the foreign jihadis fighting in Syria is smaller than with the general Syrian population. That infamous guy who was filmed eating the raw lung of a dead Syrian soldier? A "moderate" local Free Syrian Army guy. Is he now supposed to get more weapons because he also clashes with some other jihadis about his share of the loot?

To suggest that there are "good" and "moderate" insurgents is falling for a trivial ploy. If there are at all ideological differences between the various groups they are only gradual. Besides – any weapon given to any insurgent will be matched by the government and only cost more blood and lives.

The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden just announced that he requested temporary asylum in Russia. He said that this is the only way he can have guaranteed safety. Some other upright countries also offered asylum – Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador – but there is currently no safe way for Snowden to reach them. ACLU points out that the U.S. with its threats towards those countries willing to grant asylum to Snowden is thereby destroying a guaranteed human right.

Snowden's asylum in Russia is exactly what I predicted two weeks ago:

As for Snowden. He is also fucked. There is no way out for him. The U.S. intelligence community will try to get him now and forever. If only to set an example. Even if he manages to get to Ecuador the country is too small and too weak to be able to protect him. The only good chance he has is to ask the Russians for asylum and for a new personality. They will ask him to spill the beans and to tell them everything he knows. He should agree to such a deal. The NSA already has to assume that the Russians know and have whatever Snowden knows and has. The additional security damage Snowden could create for the U.S. is thereby rather minimal. Snowden can wait and work in the Moscow airport transit area until most of what needs publishing from his cache is published. He can then "vanish" and write the book that needs to be written. How one lone libertarian sysadmin found a conscience, screwed the U.S. intelligence community and regained some internet freedom for the world.

Snowden may take a while to recognize that the "temporary" asylum will have to be indefinite one. The change of personality and the spilling of the beans the Russians will ask in return may have to wait for a while.

The Russian president Putin had asked that Snowden stop publishing the NSA secrets if he wants to stay in Russia. Most secrets of public interest are likely already in the hand of trustworthy journalists who will publish what they deem to be publishable. Anything additional that Snowden says or publishes only helps the NSA with its damage assessment. That is not in Russia's interest.

I want to thank Edward Snowden, wish him a good time in Russia and success in writing his book.

(while i am busy)

News & views …

Some developments in Egypt:

Over night the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces put out a new constitutional declaration and the path to a rewritten constitution and new elections. A first analysis shows that it is along the line of the not well written old constitution but with some changes that the Salafis had demanded. It is not good on rights and vague on essentials. The winner here are the judges, the military and the Salafis. There were some rather candid comments about this process and the "liberal" organizers of the protests that brought the coup called it "dictatorial".

There is a list of some 16 senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders that the army had put under house arrest or arrested.

The New Yorker found a witness who saw yesterday's shooting in Cairo in which some 50 people lost their life. It seems that indeed the army was attacked by some unknown men on motorcycles who did not belong to the Muslim Brother demonstrators who were holding a sit in. The army then shot back and likely in error hit lots of demonstrators. There are surely several parties who might have had a motive to instigate this clash.

A former finance minister was named for the premier minister position and former IAEA official ElBaradei was named as vice president for foreign affairs.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE promised $8 billion, partly as gift, partly as loan, for the Egyptian state and economy. The lasted offer from Qatar before the coup against Morsi was $5 billion. Egypt should reject all such offers.

Twenty-two AlJazeerah staff have resigned over the channels partisan pro-Muslim Brotherhood reporting on Egypt.