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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Benny B on February 12, 2011, 03:17:56 PM
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(http://www.winningprogressive.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/img-mg-egypt-protests-10_1418184273132.jpg)
Yesterday was a huge day in Egypt, as that country’s President/dictator for the past 30 years ceded power in the face of massive peaceful protests by his people. While much work remains to be done to ensure that real democracy takes hold in Egypt, we should celebrate the amazing victory by and for the Egyptian people. It was truly a day for progressives and other supporters of democracy and peaceful protest to savor.
Mubarak’s departure is also, however, a victory for the Obama Administration’s patient and reasoned approach to promoting democracy in Egypt and other countries. This approach started with President Obama’s stellar June 2009 speech in Cairo that signaled that the peoples of Egypt and other countries would have to choose democracy, but we would be there to support them if they made moves to achieve it peacefully. And it has continued over the past 18 days of protests, as President Obama has taken a measured approach of private diplomacy with Mubarak, Egypt’s military, and other Egyptian leaders, combined with slowly increasing public pressure that focused on supporting the will of the Egyptian people. As yesterday’s developments show, President Obama’s approach is working.
Throughout the protests, many on the left and from the Bush Administration have harshly criticized President Obama for not being more publicly vocal about the need for Mubarak to leave and in support of the protesters. Apparently these folks wanted President Obama to try to lead the protest movement, demand democracy and regime change immediately, and/or engage in the type of loud public saber rattling that marred our foreign policy under the Bush Administration. Such an approach (which, notably, did not lead to the peaceful toppling of any leaders in the Middle East under Bush) would have been misguided for a number of reasons.
* First, the publicly vocal approach that the critics wanted President Obama to take would have made the protesters look like tools of the U.S., which would undermine their credibility at home.
* Second, such an approach would have limited President Obama’s ability to work privately to make the protests successful by making sure that Mubarak or the Egyptian military did not overreact and have the situation devolve into chaos. It is remarkable that a thirty year dictator did not violently crush the protests and stepped down with hardly a shot fired, and the Obama Administration’s private diplomacy is likely a large reason why such violence did not occur.
* Third, the critics’ approach ignores the fact that democracy has to come from the people of Egypt, not outside pressure from the U.S. That is not to say that we had no role in how things turn out in Egypt, but the thought that we could essentially dictate the results in Egypt reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how politics and foreign policy works, as both leaders and citizens of countries do not react well to outsiders publicly meddling in their affairs.
Peacefully toppling a dictatorial regime is a difficult thing to achieve. It requires more than just protests from a country’s citizens and demands of “regime change” from other world leaders. Instead, it requires patient and reasoned diplomacy focused on moving the dictator out of power and supporting the will of the people that a protesting. This is the approach that the Obama Administration has taken so far and now, as a result, we are in a position to help the people of Egypt establish a path to a peaceful transition to democracy.
As progressives, it is important that we help spread the word of the success of the Obama Administration’s approach to Egypt for at least two reasons. First, it helps counteract the misconception that the Administration is not being successful. Second, and more importantly, it helps build support for the more reasoned approach of this Administration and helps push back on the supporters of the loud saber rattling that led our foreign policy so far astray under the Bush Administration.
So, we urge you to write a letter to your local newspaper editor celebrating the events in Egypt, and highlighting the importance of the Obama Administration’s approach to enabling those events to occur.
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Lmao. Which approach was that?
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Stickie this thread so when the Muslim Brotherhood takes over and things go south Benny can look like the leftist douchbag he is. Barry had no idea what he was doing.....if the economy was better that would get hell of alot more air play.
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I was laughing so hard at this article. Bama taking a victory lap already? Ha ha ha.
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Benny I know you don't know how to read so I can't get angry at you for being a moron. Did you pay attention to anything that happened this week that didn't involve picking lice out of your baby momma's weave? Obama's reasoned approach so far has amounted to having every member of his cabinet make contradictory statements that make the United States look totally incompetent.
Obama has handled Egypt the way he has handled America; Like an affirmative action imbecile who was given the job because of his skin color and is utterly overmatched by his day to day responsibilities. I wouldn't be surprised if the secret service has to dress him in the morning, wipe his ass and fuck his hideous aardvark looking wife because he's busy playing solitaire on his PC.
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Bump for me being in a bad mood.
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(http://www.winningprogressive.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/img-mg-egypt-protests-10_1418184273132.jpg)
Yesterday was a huge day in Egypt, as that country’s President/dictator for the past 30 years ceded power in the face of massive peaceful protests by his people. While much work remains to be done to ensure that real democracy takes hold in Egypt, we should celebrate the amazing victory by and for the Egyptian people. It was truly a day for progressives and other supporters of democracy and peaceful protest to savor.
Mubarak’s departure is also, however, a victory for the Obama Administration’s patient and reasoned approach to promoting democracy in Egypt and other countries. This approach started with President Obama’s stellar June 2009 speech in Cairo that signaled that the peoples of Egypt and other countries would have to choose democracy, but we would be there to support them if they made moves to achieve it peacefully. And it has continued over the past 18 days of protests, as President Obama has taken a measured approach of private diplomacy with Mubarak, Egypt’s military, and other Egyptian leaders, combined with slowly increasing public pressure that focused on supporting the will of the Egyptian people. As yesterday’s developments show, President Obama’s approach is working.
Throughout the protests, many on the left and from the Bush Administration have harshly criticized President Obama for not being more publicly vocal about the need for Mubarak to leave and in support of the protesters. Apparently these folks wanted President Obama to try to lead the protest movement, demand democracy and regime change immediately, and/or engage in the type of loud public saber rattling that marred our foreign policy under the Bush Administration. Such an approach (which, notably, did not lead to the peaceful toppling of any leaders in the Middle East under Bush) would have been misguided for a number of reasons.
* First, the publicly vocal approach that the critics wanted President Obama to take would have made the protesters look like tools of the U.S., which would undermine their credibility at home.
* Second, such an approach would have limited President Obama’s ability to work privately to make the protests successful by making sure that Mubarak or the Egyptian military did not overreact and have the situation devolve into chaos. It is remarkable that a thirty year dictator did not violently crush the protests and stepped down with hardly a shot fired, and the Obama Administration’s private diplomacy is likely a large reason why such violence did not occur.
* Third, the critics’ approach ignores the fact that democracy has to come from the people of Egypt, not outside pressure from the U.S. That is not to say that we had no role in how things turn out in Egypt, but the thought that we could essentially dictate the results in Egypt reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how politics and foreign policy works, as both leaders and citizens of countries do not react well to outsiders publicly meddling in their affairs.
Peacefully toppling a dictatorial regime is a difficult thing to achieve. It requires more than just protests from a country’s citizens and demands of “regime change” from other world leaders. Instead, it requires patient and reasoned diplomacy focused on moving the dictator out of power and supporting the will of the people that a protesting. This is the approach that the Obama Administration has taken so far and now, as a result, we are in a position to help the people of Egypt establish a path to a peaceful transition to democracy.
As progressives, it is important that we help spread the word of the success of the Obama Administration’s approach to Egypt for at least two reasons. First, it helps counteract the misconception that the Administration is not being successful. Second, and more importantly, it helps build support for the more reasoned approach of this Administration and helps push back on the supporters of the loud saber rattling that led our foreign policy so far astray under the Bush Administration.
So, we urge you to write a letter to your local newspaper editor celebrating the events in Egypt, and highlighting the importance of the Obama Administration’s approach to enabling those events to occur.
Benny, awesome post....makes me want to cry... since you never see a reasonable and well thought-out post like this showing Obama being a leader and showing his responsible leadership in the area. :'(
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Ha ha ha ha - are you kidding?
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Benny I know you don't know how to read so I can't get angry at you for being a moron. Did you pay attention to anything that happened this week that didn't involve picking lice out of your baby momma's weave? Obama's reasoned approach so far has amounted to having every member of his cabinet make contradictory statements that make the United States look totally incompetent.
Obama has handled Egypt the way he has handled America; Like an affirmative action imbecile who was given the job because of his skin color and is utterly overmatched by his day to day responsibilities. I wouldn't be surprised if the secret service has to dress him in the morning, wipe his ass and fuck his hideous aardvark looking wife because he's busy playing solitaire on his PC.
naturally, just like 3333 you reach for the race card and stupid name - calling because you refuse to give Obama his due.
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Ha ha ha ha - are you kidding?
nope...not lidding.....Benny did an awesome job in showing you guys how Obama handled this delicate situaton which could have degenerated into a civil war.....Obama got Mubarak to leave and kept Egypt from falling apart....but of course....criticism from you is all he gets
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obama should have said way less. he should have told his team to STFU. he shouldn't have celebrated anythign before it happened.
When in doubt, read the company line, and work like hell behind the scenes.
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Hey andre- if this descends into mass chaos, can we blame obama?
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Andre are you retarded? Not looking to flame you, I'm honestly curious. How could you possibly reach the conclusion that Obama handled the situation well? Do you read the newspapers or follow current events at all? Do you know how to read?
240 actually got this correct for once.
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BF's thread on this outlines several articles that detail Obama's idiotic approach to Egypt-- Andre if you can't understand the big words in the articles, try to sound them out or have someone explain them to you.
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=365902.0
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This has "mission accomplished" written all over it.
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240 actually got this correct for once.
Even a garbage can gets a steak every once in a while :)
His team is immature. The second people got rowdy there, the memo should have went out that all positions and info on this issue comes from the White House press box. Then he should have sent Gibbs on vacation. One statement - "Egypt is a valuable ally and we are hopeful for a peaceful resolution of this situation" is all they needed to say.
Obama likes to hear his own voice, it's the ego thing. Biden even worse. Sometimes it's presidential to NOT comment on things. I mean, if your 2 bosses are fighting for the top job, you STFu and stay out of the way, siding with both behind the scenes and being quiet publicly. Obama just can't help himself.
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Even a garbage can gets a steak every once in a while :)
His team is immature. The second people got rowdy there, the memo should have went out that all positions and info on this issue comes from the White House press box. Then he should have sent Gibbs on vacation. One statement - "Egypt is a valuable ally and we are hopeful for a peaceful resolution of this situation" is all they needed to say.
Obama likes to hear his own voice, it's the ego thing. Biden even worse. Sometimes it's presidential to NOT comment on things. I mean, if your 2 bosses are fighting for the top job, you STFu and stay out of the way, siding with both behind the scenes and being quiet publicly. Obama just can't help himself.
Great post. Obama is one of those people who just likes to hear himself talk.
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Wanted: A Grand Strategy for America
NEWSWEEK’s new columnist on Obama’s Egypt debacle and the vacuum it exposes.
by Niall FergusonFebruary 14, 2011
Mandel Ngan / AFP-Getty Images
President Barack Obama in front of the Sphinx during a tour of the Great Pyramids of Giza following his landmark speech to the Muslim World on June 4, 2009.
“The statesman can only wait and listen until he hears the footsteps of God resounding through events; then he must jump up and grasp the hem of His coat, that is all.” Thus Otto von Bismarck, the great Prussian statesman who united Germany and thereby reshaped Europe’s balance of power nearly a century and a half ago.
Last week, for the second time in his presidency, Barack Obama heard those footsteps, jumped up to grasp a historic opportunity … and missed it completely.
In Bismarck’s case it was not so much God’s coattails he caught as the revolutionary wave of mid-19th-century German nationalism. And he did more than catch it; he managed to surf it in a direction of his own choosing. The wave Obama just missed—again—is the revolutionary wave of Middle Eastern democracy. It has surged through the region twice since he was elected: once in Iran in the summer of 2009, the second time right across North Africa, from Tunisia all the way down the Red Sea to Yemen. But the swell has been biggest in Egypt, the Middle East’s most populous country.
In each case, the president faced stark alternatives. He could try to catch the wave, Bismarck style, by lending his support to the youthful revolutionaries and trying to ride it in a direction advantageous to American interests. Or he could do nothing and let the forces of reaction prevail. In the case of Iran, he did nothing, and the thugs of the Islamic Republic ruthlessly crushed the demonstrations. This time around, in Egypt, it was worse. He did both—some days exhorting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave, other days drawing back and recommending an “orderly transition.”
The result has been a foreign-policy debacle. The president has alienated everybody: not only Mubarak’s cronies in the military, but also the youthful crowds in the streets of Cairo. Whoever ultimately wins, Obama loses. And the alienation doesn’t end there. America’s two closest friends in the region—Israel and Saudi Arabia—are both disgusted. The Saudis, who dread all manifestations of revolution, are appalled at Washington’s failure to resolutely prop up Mubarak. The Israelis, meanwhile, are dismayed by the administration’s apparent cluelessness.
Last week, while other commentators ran around Cairo’s Tahrir Square, hyperventilating about what they saw as an Arab 1989, I flew to Tel Aviv for the annual Herzliya security conference. The consensus among the assembled experts on the Middle East? A colossal failure of American foreign policy.
This failure was not the result of bad luck. It was the predictable consequence of the Obama administration’s lack of any kind of coherent grand strategy, a deficit about which more than a few veterans of U.S. foreign policy making have long worried. The president himself is not wholly to blame. Although cosmopolitan by both birth and upbringing, Obama was an unusually parochial politician prior to his election, judging by his scant public pronouncements on foreign-policy issues.
Yet no president can be expected to be omniscient. That is what advisers are for. The real responsibility for the current strategic vacuum lies not with Obama himself, but with the National Security Council, and in particular with the man who ran it until last October: retired Gen. James L. Jones. I suspected at the time of his appointment that General Jones was a poor choice. A big, bluff Marine, he once astonished me by recommending that Turkish troops might lend the United States support in Iraq. He seemed mildly surprised when I suggested the Iraqis might resent such a reminder of centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule.
The best national-security advisers have combined deep knowledge of international relations with an ability to play the Machiavellian Beltway game, which means competing for the president’s ear against the other would-be players in the policymaking process: not only the defense secretary but also the secretary of state and the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. No one has ever done this better than Henry Kissinger. But the crucial thing about Kissinger as national-security adviser was not the speed with which he learned the dark arts of interdepartmental turf warfare. It was the skill with which he, in partnership with Richard Nixon, forged a grand strategy for the United States at a time of alarming geopolitical instability.
The essence of that strategy was, first, to prioritize (for example, détente with the Soviets before human-rights issues within the U.S.S.R.) and then to exert pressure by deliberately linking key issues. In their hardest task—salvaging peace with honor in Indochina by preserving the independence of South Vietnam—Nixon and Kissinger ultimately could not succeed. But in the Middle East they were able to eject the Soviets from a position of influence and turn Egypt from a threat into a malleable ally. And their overtures to China exploited the divisions within the Communist bloc, helping to set Beijing on an epoch-making new course of economic openness.
The contrast between the foreign policy of the Nixon-Ford years and that of President Jimmy Carter is a stark reminder of how easily foreign policy can founder when there is a failure of strategic thinking. The Iranian Revolution of 1979, which took the Carter administration wholly by surprise, was a catastrophe far greater than the loss of South Vietnam.
Remind you of anything? “This is what happens when you get caught by surprise,” an anonymous American official told The New York Times last week. “We’ve had endless strategy sessions for the past two years on Mideast peace, on containing Iran. And how many of them factored in the possibility that Egypt moves from stability to turmoil? None.”
I can think of no more damning indictment of the administration’s strategic thinking than this: it never once considered a scenario in which Mubarak faced a popular revolt. Yet the very essence of rigorous strategic thinking is to devise such a scenario and to think through the best responses to them, preferably two or three moves ahead of actual or potential adversaries. It is only by doing these things—ranking priorities and gaming scenarios—that a coherent foreign policy can be made. The Israelis have been hard at work doing this. All the president and his NSC team seem to have done is to draft touchy-feely speeches like the one he delivered in Cairo early in his presidency.
These were his words back in June 2009:
America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles—principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
Those lines will come back to haunt Obama if, as cannot be ruled out, the ultimate beneficiary of his bungling in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, which remains by far the best organized opposition force in the country—and wholly committed to the restoration of the caliphate and the strict application of Sharia. Would such an outcome advance “tolerance and the dignity of all human beings” in Egypt? Somehow, I don’t think so.
Grand strategy is all about the necessity of choice. Today, it means choosing between a daunting list of objectives: to resist the spread of radical Islam, to limit Iran’s ambition to become dominant in the Middle East, to contain the rise of China as an economic rival, to guard against a Russian “reconquista” of Eastern Europe—and so on. The defining characteristic of Obama’s foreign policy has been not just a failure to prioritize, but also a failure to recognize the need to do so. A succession of speeches saying, in essence, “I am not George W. Bush” is no substitute for a strategy.
Bismarck knew how to choose. He understood that riding the nationalist wave would enable Prussia to become the dominant force in Germany, but that thereafter the No. 1 objective must be to keep France and Russia from uniting against his new Reich. When asked for his opinion about colonizing Africa, Bismarck famously replied: “My map of Africa lies in Europe. Here lies Russia and here lies France, and we are in the middle. That is my map of Africa.”
Tragically, no one knows where Barack Obama’s map of the Middle East is. At best, it is in the heartland states of America, where the fate of his presidency will be decided next year, just as Jimmy Carter’s was back in 1980.
At worst, he has no map at all.
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Andreisawoman and Butthead will cry after reading this.
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The approach should have been Mum.. nothing..
But then 333 would have said. "obama is a weenee because he isnt speaking on this"..
True story
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The approach should have been Mum.. nothing..
But then 333 would have said. "obama is a weenee because he isnt speaking on this"..
True story
No, obama always INTENTIONALLY chooses the side that will yield the worst outcome for us.
Iran - check
Honduras - check
Egypt - check
I have no doubt whatsoever, given the close contacts obama has with the MB, that he is intentionally trying to collapse that nation to allow the MB to take over so they can implement Sharia.
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HAHAHAHA!!!
If the cure for AIDS is found, the twinks on this board will give Obama all the credit in the world.
Epic fishing for anything positive from the most incompetent administration EVER.
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Mika - OWNED
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Andre, Mal, Benny, Danny, Blacken, 240, etc - DO NOT WATCH THAT CLIP WHILE IN THE PRESENCE OF FIREARMS OR SHARP OBJECTS.
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Hey andre- if this descends into mass chaos, can we blame obama?
Nope because democracy is messy....the U.S. can't control 80 million people...if there is a smoothe election and Egypt transitions well into a democracy will Obama get the blame???
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BF's thread on this outlines several articles that detail Obama's idiotic approach to Egypt-- Andre if you can't understand the big words in the articles, try to sound them out or have someone explain them to you.
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=365902.0
these are opinion pieces..do you believe everything you read???..if so then believe the pro-Obama articles as well
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The thing I found most idiotic and perplexing was the threat to stop thier foriegn aid if they continued to fire at protesters. What are these people smoking? I just cant believe they actually said that. This Egypt sitiuation is another example of Obama's pathetic lack of management skills. If America re-elects this guy I will be thourougly pissed.
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Do you guys think that we can get a sizable amount of Democrats to atleast admit that they nominated the wrong person in the Democrat Primary? Im sure theyre still too pridefull to admit that McCain would have been better. But I think atleast 50% of them would say they should have nominated Hillary. I miss George W. Bush more than I ever thought I would have, and its a sad day when I am fantasizing about a having a President John McCain in the White House.
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these are opinion pieces..do you believe everything you read???..if so then believe the pro-Obama articles as well
I don't need an opinion piece to comprehend the stupidity and wild contradictions that originate from someones mouth. I have eyes and ears and was able to finish the 5th grade before I turned 23. Anyone who shares similar traits would be able to reach the same conclusion as the authors of those articles. It seems that in your situation you have poor hearing, bad eyesight and haven't figured out how to tie your shoes despite being almost thirty years of age.
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Obama Is Helping Iran
How Washington's awkward handling of Middle East uprisings is playing into the hands of the Islamic Republic.
BY FLYNT AND HILLARY MANN LEVERETT | FEBRUARY 23, 2011
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/23/obama_is_helping_iran?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full
We take billionaire financier George Soros up on the bet he proffered to CNN's Fareed Zakaria this week that "the Iranian regime will not be there in a year's time." In fact, we want to up the ante and wager that not only will the Islamic Republic still be Iran's government in a year's time, but that a year from now, the balance of influence and power in the Middle East will be tilted more decisively in Iran's favor than it ever has been.
COMMENTS (76) SHARE: Twitter Reddit Buzz More...
Just a decade ago, on the eve of the 9/11 attacks, the United States had cultivated what American policymakers like to call a strong "moderate" camp in the region, encompassing states reasonably well-disposed toward a negotiated peace with Israel and strategic cooperation with Washington: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf states, as well as Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey. On the other side, the Islamic Republic had an alliance of some standing with Syria, as well as ties to relatively weak militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Other "radical" states like Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya were even more isolated.
Fast-forward to the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration as president of the United States, in January 2009. As a result of the Iraq war, the collapse of the Arab-Israeli peace process, and some fairly astute diplomacy by Iran and its regional allies, the balance of influence and power across the Middle East had shifted significantly against the United States. Scenarios for "weaning" Syria away from Iran were becoming ever more fanciful as relations between Damascus and Tehran became increasingly strategic in quality. Turkey, under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), was charting a genuinely independent foreign policy, including strategically consequential partnerships with Iran and Syria. Hamas and Hezbollah, legitimated by electoral successes, had emerged as decisively important political actors in Palestine and Lebanon. It was looking progressively less likely that post-Saddam Iraq would be a meaningful strategic asset for Washington and ever more likely that Baghdad's most important relationships would be with Iran, Syria, and Turkey. And, increasingly, U.S. allies like Oman and Qatar were aligning themselves with the Islamic Republic and other members of the Middle East's "resistance bloc" on high-profile issues in the Arab-Israeli arena -- as when the Qatari emir flew to Beirut a week after the 2006 Lebanon war to pledge massive reconstruction assistance to Hezbollah strongholds in the south and publicly defended Hezbollah's retention of its military capabilities.
On Obama's watch, the regional balance of influence and power has shifted even further away from the United States and toward Iran and its allies. The Islamic Republic has continued to deepen its alliances with Syria and Turkey and expand its influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. Public opinion polls, for example, continue to show that the key leaders in the Middle East's resistance bloc -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad, Lebanon's Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas's Khaled Mishaal, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- are all vastly more popular across the region than their counterparts in closely U.S.-aligned and supported regimes in Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and Saudi Arabia.
And, now, the Obama administration stands by helplessly as new openings for Tehran to reset the regional balance in its favor emerge in Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and perhaps elsewhere. If these "pro-American" Arab political orders currently being challenged or upended by significant protest movements become at all more representative of their populations, they will no doubt become less enthusiastic about strategic cooperation with the United States. And, if these "pro-American" regimes are not replaced by salafi-dominated Islamist orders, the Arab governments that emerge from the present turmoil are likely to be at least somewhat receptive to Iran's message of "resistance" and independence from Israel and the West.
Certainly, any government in Cairo that is even mildly more representative than Hosni Mubarak's regime will not be willing to keep collaborating with Israel to enforce the siege of Gaza or to continue participating in the CIA's rendition program to bring Egyptians back to Egypt to be tortured. Likewise, any political order in Bahrain that respected the reality of that country's Shiite-majority population would be firmly opposed to the use of its territory as a platform for U.S. military action against Iranian interests.
Over the next year, all these developments will shift the regional balance even more against the United States and in favor of Iran. If Jordan -- a loyal U.S. client state -- were to come into play during this period, that would tilt things even further in Iran's direction.
Against this, Soros, other American elites, the media, and the Obama administration all assert that the wave of popular unrest that is taking down one U.S. ally in the Middle East after another will now bring down the Islamic Republic -- and perhaps the Assad government in Syria, too. This is truly a triumph of wishful thinking over thoughtful analysis.
Many of these same actors, of course, worked themselves up into quite a frenzy after the Islamic Republic's June 2009 presidential election. For months, we were subjected to utterly unsubstantiated claims that the election had been stolen and that the Green Movement would sweep aside the Iranian "regime." Like Soros today, many pundits who predicted the Islamic Republic's demise in 2009 or 2010 put various time frames on their predictions -- all of which, to the best of our knowledge, have passed without the Iranian system imploding. (But don't worry about the devastating impact of such egregious malpractice on the careers of those who proved themselves so manifestly incompetent at Iran analysis. In today's accountability-free America, every one of the Iran "experts" who were so wrong about the Green Movement in 2009 and 2010 is back at it again.)
From literally the day after Iran's 2009 presidential election, we pointed out that the Green Movement could not succeed in bringing down the Islamic Republic, for two basic reasons: The movement did not represent anything close to a majority of Iranian society, and a majority of Iranians still support the idea of an Islamic Republic. Two additional factors are in play today, which make it even less likely that those who organized and participated in scattered demonstrations in Iran over the past week will be able to catalyze "regime change" there.
First, what is left of the Green Movement represents an even smaller portion of Iranian society than it did during the summer and fall of 2009. The failures of defeated presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi to convincingly document their assertions of electoral fraud and the Green Movement's pivotal role in the West's progressive demonization of the Islamic Republic since June 2009 have not played well with most Iranians inside Iran. That's why, for example, former President Mohammad Khatami has quietly distanced himself from what is left of the Green Movement -- as has every reformist politician who wants to have a political future in the Islamic Republic. As a result of these highly consequential miscalculations by the opposition's ostensible leaders, those who want to try again to organize a mass movement against the Islamic Republic have a much smaller pool of troops that they might potentially be able to mobilize. This is not a winning hand, even in an era of Facebook and Twitter.
Second, the effort to restart protests in Iran is taking place at a moment of real strategic opportunity for Tehran in the Middle East. The regional balance is shifting, in potentially decisive ways, in favor of the Islamic Republic and against its American adversary. In this context, for Mousavi and Karroubi to call their supporters into the streets on Feb. 14 -- just three days after the Obama administration had started issuing its own exhortations for Iranians to revolt against their government and as Obama and his national security team reeled from the loss of Mubarak, America's longtime ally in Egypt -- was an extraordinary blunder.
The Iranian people are not likely to recognize as their political champions those whom they increasingly perceive as working against the national interest. Two of Ahmadinejad's most prominent conservative opponents -- former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former Revolutionary Guard commander and presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai -- have publicly and severely criticized Mousavi and Karroubi over their recent actions and statements. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani, another Ahmadinejad opponent, told his colleagues last week, "The parliament condemns the Zionists, American, anti-revolutionary, and anti-national action of the misled seditionists," accusing the two Green Movement leaders of falling into "the orchestrated trap of America."
U.S. attempts to intervene in the Islamic Republic's internal politics are typically maladroit and often backfire. But the Obama administration's performance is setting new standards in this regard. Among other consequences, the administration's latest initiative to stir up unrest in Iran will put what is left of the reform camp in Iranian politics at an even bigger disadvantage heading into parliamentary elections next year and the Islamic Republic's next presidential election in 2013, because reformists are now in danger of being associated with an increasingly marginalized and discredited opposition movement that is, effectively, doing America's bidding.
At a more strategic level, the Obama administration's post-Ben Ali, post-Mubarak approach to Iran is putting important U.S. interests in serious jeopardy. It is putting at risk, first of all, the possibility of dealing constructively with an increasingly influential Islamic Republic in Iran. More broadly, at precisely the time when the United States needs to figure out how to deal with legitimate, genuinely independent Islamist movements and political orders, which are the most likely replacements for "pro-American" autocracies across the Middle East, the Obama administration's approach to Iran is taking U.S. policy in exactly the opposition direction.
The United States faces serious challenges in the Middle East. Its strategic position in this vital part of the world is eroding before our eyes. Indulging in fantasies about regime change in Iran will only make the situation worse.
Save big when you subscribe to FP. ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
Flynt Leverett teaches international affairs at Pennsylvania State University and is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. Hillary Mann Leverett teaches international affairs at Yale and American University. Together, they write www.RaceForIran.com.
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END OF THREAD.
- TODAYS NY POST
Untested & unready
O, Hill both inept on Mideast
Last Updated: 12:37 AM, February 28, 2011
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/untested_unready_duALvtfHBTM2z5VPKHnx1J#ixzz1FJLMcNil
By Michael A. Walsh
Remember the ad Hillary Clinton ran against Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign?
"It's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep," it began. "But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Something's happening in the world.
"Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it's someone who already knows the world's leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world . . . Who do you want answering the phone?"
Now we know the answer: neither of the above.
Since the winds -- and fires -- of change began to sweep North Africa two months ago, first in Tunisia, then in Egypt and now in Libya, the Obama administration has distinguished itself by its utter ineptitude in dealing with what is both a crisis and a historic opportunity to change the governments and the culture of the Arab world.
She said it: Clinton warned in '08 that O couldn't handle a foreign crisis -- but she's bombing, too.
The intelligence community failed to see the revolutions coming. The president adopted a strangely dispassionate, disinterested stance -- hanging his spokesmen, both in the White House and at the State Department, out to dry.
"The president puts out statements on paper sometimes," said new White House Press Secretary Jay Carney last week, in reply to a reporter's question about what was taking Obama so long to weigh in on Libya. Carney also blamed a "scheduling issue" for the lack of a rapid response.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton -- "someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world" -- came off like she'd literally woken up at 3 a.m. and stumbled out to face the cameras armed only with a mouthful of platitudes. Sounding more like a grief counselor than secretary of state, she said:
"The world is watching the situation in Libya with alarm. We join the international community in strongly condemning the violence in Libya. Our thoughts and prayers are with those whose lives have been lost, and with their loved ones . . . We are working urgently with friends and partners around the world to convey this message to the Libyan government."
The Maria Dolores, a US chartered ferry hired to evacuate American citizens from Tripoli to Malta, was too small to sail in rough seas and had to delay its departure. To add insult to injury, the White House even misspelled the name of the country as "Lybia" on Twitter.
And UN ambassador Susan Rice? She blew off a Security Council meeting on the Libyan crisis in order to attend a UN panel discussion on "global sustainability" in South Africa. The Roxy had better amateur nights than this.
Once again, President "Present" has signally failed to lead, preferring instead to hide behind a fog of "consultations with allies." True, on Saturday he finally -- in a phone call to German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- called for Khadafy to step down, and also took diplomatic action against the beleaguered regime, issuing an executive order that blocks property and other transactions.
Insiders say that Obama hesitated to take a public stand against the doomed dictator for fear that US diplomats might be taken hostage. But a great power can't conduct a robust foreign policy in fear; that way lies the path of Jimmy Carter, whom Obama is coming more and more to resemble. As Christopher Hitchens pointed out recently, America is starting to look like Switzerland in its international irrelevance. Is that what Obama meant by "fundamental change"?
There are only two explanations. Either the White House, Langley and Foggy Bottom really are staffed by blithering incompetents, hopelessly out of their depth and unable to deal with the rapid pace of developments, or Obama is doing exactly what he wants to do -- which is basically nothing.
So now we know where Obama is at 3 a.m. A pretty speech here, a basketball game there, another round of golf, another costly vacation and the endless whirl of White House parties take a lot out of a guy.
After Mao defeated Chiang Kai-Shek in 1949, the cry went up: "Who lost China?" Scholars are still arguing about that one, but when the question arises, "Who lost North Africa?" we'll all know exactly where to look.
Michael Walsh, a former Time as sociate editor, is the author (writing as David Kahane) of "Rules for Radical Conservatives."
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/untested_unready_duALvtfHBTM2z5VPKHnx1J#ixzz1FJL0nSAx
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;)
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Benny, awesome post....makes me want to cry... since you never see a reasonable and well thought-out post like this showing Obama being a leader and showing his responsible leadership in the area. :'(
Do you still want to cry?
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The thing I found most idiotic and perplexing was the threat to stop thier foriegn aid if they continued to fire at protesters. What are these people smoking? I just cant believe they actually said that. This Egypt sitiuation is another example of Obama's pathetic lack of management skills. If America re-elects this guy I will be thourougly pissed.
The US had to do this or else we would be accused of condoning murder...it was the best thing to do..all of this is Mubarak's fault because he never tried to reform in the 30 years he was in power...
He could have given the [people something and still remained in power...his own arrogance did him in
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I don't need an opinion piece to comprehend the stupidity and wild contradictions that originate from someones mouth. I have eyes and ears and was able to finish the 5th grade before I turned 23. Anyone who shares similar traits would be able to reach the same conclusion as the authors of those articles. It seems that in your situation you have poor hearing, bad eyesight and haven't figured out how to tie your shoes despite being almost thirty years of age.
I seriously doubt this quote
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Do you still want to cry?
Bump.
Andre did you cry or not?
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Bump.
Andre did you cry or not?
Benny posted an awesome article.....for reasonable people
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Benny posted an awesome article.....for reasonable people
Did it bring you to tears?
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Did it bring you to tears?
it brought you to tears because it destroyed your nonsense
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it brought you to tears because it destroyed your nonsense
The Christians whose churches have been pillaged disagree.
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Benny, awesome post....makes me want to cry... since you never see a reasonable and well thought-out post like this showing Obama being a leader and showing his responsible leadership in the area. :'(
Do you still want to cry in joy for what obama did douchebag?
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Editorials
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U.S. Influence in Middle East Hits New Low Under Obama: View
By the Editors Sep 20, 2011 8:00 PM ET 1 Comment Q.
One reason the U.S. is scrambling to find a compromise that would spare it the need to veto Palestinian membership in the United Nations is the fear of sparking a new round of anti-Americanism in the Middle East.
Great powers wield influence in the world as a result of being admired, respected or feared. The U.S. is now suffering from an unprecedented loss of influence in this important region because all three indicators are at an all-time low.
In truth, the U.S. has never been wildly popular in the Middle East. But distrust hit new highs during the George W. Bush administration, largely because of the invasion of Iraq; the decision during Bush’s first term to ignore the Israeli- Palestinian issue; the illegal treatment of detainees; and the unfair perceptions that the war on terrorism was really a war on Islam and that Bush’s policies were incompatible with Arab aspirations. Taken together, polls by Zogby International (July, 2011) and the Pew Research Center (May, 2011) indicate that in 2008 less than 25 percent of respondents in a broad range of Arab countries had a favorable view of the U.S.
The hope was that the election of Barack Obama would change all that. And from the beginning of his administration, Obama made reconciliation with the Muslim world one of his highest foreign policy priorities. In his June 4, 2009, speech at Cairo University, he called for “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world” based on common interests, respect and principles.
Given those sentiments, it is troubling in the extreme that, some 2 1/2 years later, the U.S. is actually more unpopular in the Middle East than it was in the last year of the Bush administration. According to the Pew poll, the U.S.’s favorability rating in Egypt dropped to 20 percent in 2011 from 22 percent in 2008, and in Jordan, in that same period, fell to 13 percent from 19 percent. The Zogby poll had similar results.
Views of Obama personally are also starkly negative. In the Pew poll, only 35 percent of Egyptians and 28 percent of Jordanians expressed confidence in him, and majorities disapproved of his handling of issues they care about, such as political change in the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Afghanistan. Zogby found that in five of six Arab countries surveyed, at most 11 percent of respondents said that Obama has met the expectations he set in the Cairo speech.
Even worse, Obama’s unpopularity has been accompanied by a sense that the U.S. can be defied with impunity, as doing so will have no negative consequences. The most recent example is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to ignore U.S. objections and proceed with a UN Security Council resolution recognizing a Palestinian state -- even though the U.S. threatens to veto it, and even though such a veto would endanger Obama’s ability to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
But Abbas is not alone. While Obama has called on Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to step down, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki, who owes his survival and that of his government to the U.S., received Assad’s emissaries and publically urged Syrian demonstrators to not “sabotage” their country.
On Aug. 18, al-Maliki went even further, stating in a speech that “Zionists and Israel are the first and biggest beneficiaries” of the democratic revolutions threatening autocracies throughout the Arab world. This mimicked Iranian statements on Syria. Although there are some indications that al-Maliki is changing his position, until now, when faced with a choice of saying nothing, siding with the Americans or agreeing with Iran, it seems he felt that heeding Tehran was the safest course.
Administration officials have asserted that recent polls still reflect region-wide opposition to the Bush administration, not Obama. It is fair to point out that Bush left his successor with a deep hole to climb out of, but that is not the whole story. Although we don’t accept the idea that simple polling can reflect the complicated emotions U.S. policy generates in the region, polling data is a significant indicator.
In our view, there are three main reasons for the drop in support for the U.S. First and foremost, Arab commentators generated unrealistic expectations after Obama’s election for what any president can do for the Middle East.
Second, in the one case where the West could have provided unique assistance to the Arab Spring -- that is, air power to help the rebels in Libya defeat Muammar Qaddafi -- the Obama administration limited its involvement in favor of supporting Britain and France. And third, with respect to both the Israeli- Palestinian issue and the Arab Spring, the U.S. president has generally made grand policy announcements but provided little follow-through.
There is no magic solution that will restore U.S. influence in this volatile region. One thing is certain: Promising more than you can deliver is no way to start. As Abbas has noted, it was Obama who first mentioned the goal of Palestine becoming a member of the UN by September 2011. Rather, it is the accumulation of small successes over a considerable time that will have the best chance of restoring U.S. standing.
To contact the Bloomberg View editorial board: view@bloomberg.net.
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I guess CNN's Nic Robertson wasn't able to convince enough of them of how great Obama is.
Couple that with Obama's saying next-to-nothing when one of our reporters gets gang-raped and nearly killed, and there you have it.
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Published on The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com)
For Young Women, a Horrifying Consequence of Mubarak’s Overthrow
Betwa Sharma October 29, 2011 | 12:00 am
Cairo—Ali, a 34-year-old Cairo businessman who asked that his real name not be used, is weighing whether or not to circumcise his 12-year-old daughter. Female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM), as it also known, involves removing part or the entire clitoris. In more severe forms of the procedure, the labia minora is removed and the vaginal opening is stitched up. Ali’s wife has told him about her own experience; describing her story to me, he said, “It is her most terrible memory.” He has heard discussions on television of potential harm the procedure can cause, but he feels a responsibility to protect the chastity of his daughter until she is married. Three thousand years of tradition instruct him that circumcision is the best means to this end. And, in the post-Mubarak Egypt, there are fewer and fewer voices offering an alternative view. The decades-long movement to stop FGM has become a casualty of the power struggle in Egypt.
The campaign to end FGM in Egypt was fighting an uphill battle before the revolution. Although FGM was outlawed in 2007 after a 12-year-old girl died from the procedure, the practice is still widespread. Despite efforts to reduce it, the number of girls aged 15 to 17 who underwent FGM only dropped from 77 percent in 2005 to 74 percent in 2008, according to the 2008 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS). EDHS also showed that 91 percent of all women in Egypt between the ages of 15 and 49 have undergone FGM. The practice is common not only among Muslims, but also in the Christian community, which constitutes 10 percent of the Egyptian population. A sanitized version of FGM has gained increased prevalence in recent years, presenting additional challenges. In 1995, only 45 percent of all FGM operations were conducted by doctors; by 2008, the percentage had risen to 72 percent. A young woman working as a maid and living in Cairo, who asked to be referred to only as Ayesha, did not even know that FGM is illegal. Her mother had put her through the procedure, and she told me that she would do the same. (Experts have found that the practice is mostly perpetuated by mothers making decisions for their daughters.) “Unless someone can show me what is wrong with it I don’t think there is any reason to change,” she said.
Since the revolution, international support for this fight has significantly waned. Political instability has led to a 75 percent cut in Egypt’s FGM-related donor funds to the United Nations since January, according to Marta Agosti, the head of the anti-FGM program for the U.N.Changeover among government ministers has also slowed official work. The National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, the government body charged with addressing the problem, was shuttered after the revolution, and there is concern among activists that the capacity of the Council will shrink in its new home under the Ministry of Health. Instability and a lack of funds have curtailed the day-to-day work of NGOs; less field work and fewer workshops are taking place, according to Agosti.
In addition to the general shrinking of U.N. and NGO funds and efforts, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood as one of the strongest political forces attempting to fill the void left by Mubarak’s departure presents potential obstacles to the campaign to end FGM. While the Muslim Brotherhood does not have an official position on FGM, the group has, in the past, opposed a complete ban on the practice. “Nothing in Islam forbids circumcision,” said Saad El Katani, the leader of the Brotherhood in parliament in 2008. Some members of the Brotherhood have argued that opposition to a complete ban does not indicate support of the practice, but they generally don’t speak out against it.
For instance, Manal Abul-Hassan, a female leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who plans to run for parliamentary elections in November, told me that FGMis “not halal (permissible) and it’s not a haram (forbidden).” She does not favor its complete ban and disagrees with the U.N. characterization of FGM as a human rights violation. (Many parents share Hassan’s view and reject the word “mutilation”—especially for procedures like removing the excess skin around the clitoris. Young women argue that certain kinds of circumcisions are no different from plastic surgery in the West.) Like others in the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan sees the campaign against FGM as stealth promotion by NGOs of a Western agenda. Activists fear that the more traditionalist elements in the group pose a threat to their work—that attitudes like the one expressed by Hassan might harden to condone the procedure.
In addition, activists are also fighting the shadow of Suzanne Mubarak, who, for all her husband’s transgressions, was a force behind the campaign to end FGM. As the former dictator’s wife,Mubarak gave speeches and organized conferences opposing the practice, making her one of the most recognizable faces in the international fight against FGM. She played a key role in getting Christian and Muslim religious leaders to forbid the procedure, which had a far greater impact than the legal ban. After declaring their position, the fatwa office in Cairo—the office of the Grand Mufti of Egypt—set up a hotline; several anecdotes emerged about women changing their decision to go ahead with the practice based on advice they received from this hotline. Activists assert that their efforts to eliminate FGM were well underway before Suzanne Mubarak demonstrated interest in the issue. “We didn’t wait for Madame Mubarak to talk about FGM,” Sidhom Magdi, head of the Egyptian Association for Comprehensive Development, told me. But they do not deny that her involvement gave the movement political momentum that it had previously lacked.
Now, however, anything attached to the Mubaraks’ legacy is, if not explicitly tainted, an easy target. Civil society groups characterize Mubarak’s efforts as self-promoting. “She was devoid of a feminist vision or a socialist vision,” said Nihad Abu Kumsan, a lawyer and head of the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights. Hassan insists that FGM-related figures were exaggerated by the Egyptian government so that the former first lady could pocket international funds. “Suzanne Mubarak used these numbers to make money and steal money,” she told me. While most activists were not Mubarak supporters, the backlash troubles them. Agosti worries that Suzanne Mubarak’s previous involvement will “become an excuse to undo all the past work.”
For years, activists combating FGM in Egypt have described their fight as “painfully slow.” In the post-revolution Egypt, the process has become glacial. “We have no leader and we have no strategy,” said Kumsan. The U.N., aware of that the issue is a minefield, is also keeping a low profile for the time being. “We have to be very careful right now as we don’t want the issue to be captured by the ultra-orthodox,” said Agosti, expressing a fear that the U.N. will be characterized as an agency promoting the Western agenda or worse, Mubarak’s legacy.
Ali, the Cairo businessman, and his wife ultimately decided against FGM for their daughter. “We don’t want to change what God has created,” he told me. In making this decision, Ali is already among the minority of parents who reject FGM. This minority is in danger of shrinking further in the new Egypt.
Betwa Sharma is a New York-based journalist who covers human rights. Her work can be found at www.betwasharma.com.
Source URL: http://www.tnr.com/article/world/96555/egypt-genital-mutilation-fgm-muslim-brotherhood
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Egypt: "Dozens of Muslims" burn Christian houses over rumor of "cartoons mocking Islam" on Facebook
jihadwatch.org ^ | 12-30-11 | robert spencer
What is your first thought when you see something offensive? It's probably not to get together with a few dozen of your closest friends and burn stuff. As has been the case in similar incidents, the ease of the transition to violence here all but suggests a rampage waiting for an excuse.
Then comes the collective punishment. "Muslim villagers burn houses of Christian family Upper Egypt," from Al Masry Al Youm, December 30:
Dozens of residents of the village of Baheeg in Assiut, Upper Egypt, burnt three houses owned by a Christian family after a Christian villager allegedly published cartoons mocking Islam on his Facebook account.
Cartoon alleged to offend Islam = three houses on fire. This mindset threatens a future of poverty and instability for Egypt, as no one is going to invest in a country where assets can be destroyed in a fit of rage at the drop of a hat.
There can be no prosperous society without stability, and no stability without a sense of priorities and self control on the individual, familial, and societal level. Stable self-government, as Egypt is said to want, depends on the government of the self.
A number of Muslim students attacked their Coptic classmate for posting the cartoons, a Muslim student told Al-Masry Al-Youm.
The Muslim students attacked the Coptic student on Thursday at Monqebad Secondary School in Assiut. Eyewitnesses said the military intervened to break up the fight and escorted the Coptic youth and his family away from the village. Later, Muslim villagers set fire to the family’s houses.
Firefighters extinguished the blaze and armed forces and police imposed a security cordon around the site of the incident.
Major General Mohamed Ibrahim, director of security in Assiut, said security forces are attempting to coordinate with Muslim clerics to calm citizens and contain the situation....
The fact that it takes this much to settle the situation speaks volumes.
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Benny, awesome post....makes me want to cry... since you never see a reasonable and well thought-out post like this showing Obama being a leader and showing his responsible leadership in the area. :'(
Do you still feel like crying Andre?
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Foot meet mouth.
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Muslim Brotherhood Plans to Cancel Peace Pact with Israel
Arutz Sheva ^ | 1/1/2012 | Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Posted on January 1, 2012 8:43:39 AM EST by Never A Dull Moment
The Muslim Brotherhood comes up with a neat trick to break the peace treaty with Israel without formally doing so. Egypt’s next likely ruling party says it simply will hold a plebiscite and let the people do it.
Rashad Bayoumi, deputy Supreme Leader of the Brotherhood, told the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat on Sunday it respects international treaties and will leave the issue of the peace treaty in the hands of the people. The pact was signed by then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, but a "cold peace" has set in over the past several years.
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
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The Year We Lost Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and Most of the Middle East
Sultan Knish ^ | Saturday, December 31, 2011 | Daniel Greenfield
Posted on January 1, 2012 7:28:48 AM EST by expat1000
About the only people having a Happy New Year in the Muslim world aren't the Christians who are huddling and waiting out the storm, but the Islamists who use a different calendar but are having the best time of their lives since the last Caliphate.
The news that the Obama Administration has brought in genocidal Muslim Brotherhood honcho Yusuf Al-Qaradawi to discuss terms of surrender for the transfer of Afghanistan to the Taliban caps a year in which the Brotherhood and the Salafists are looking up carve up Egypt, the Islamists won Tunisia's elections, Turkey's Islamist AKP Party purged the last bastions of the secular opposition and Libya's future as an Islamist state was secured by American, British and French jets and special forces.
Time Magazine declared that 2011 was the Year of the Protester, they might have more honestly called it the Year of the Islamist. In 2010 the Taliban were still hiding in caves. In 2012 they are set to be in power from Tunisia to Afghanistan and from Egypt to Yemen. They won't go by that name of course. Most of them will have elaborate names with the words "Justice" or "Community" in them, but they will for the most part be minor variations on the Muslim Brotherhood theme.
2011 will indeed be remembered, but not because of any Arab Spring or OWS nonsense. It will be a pivotal year in the rise of the next Caliphate. A rise disguised by angry protesters waving cell phones and flags. And clueless media coverage that treated Tahrir Square as the new fall of the Berlin Wall.
This was the year that Obama helped topple several regimes that served as the obstacles to Islamist takeovers. The biggest fish that Ibn Hussein speared out of the sea for Al-Qaradawi was Egypt, a prize that the Islamists had wanted for the longest time, but had never managed to catch. That is until the Caliph-in-Chief got it for them. Egyptian Democracy splits the take between the Brotherhood and the Salafists, whom the media is already quick to describe as moderates. First up against the wall are the Christians. Second up against the wall are the Jews. Third up is all that military equipment we provided to the Egyptian military which will shortly be finding its way to various "moderate militants" who want to discuss our foreign policy with us.
But there's no reason to sell the fall of Tunisia short or the transition in Yemen. And when mob protests didn't work, NATO sent in the jets to pound Libya until Al-Qaeda got its way there. Turkey's fate had been written some time ago, but 2011 was the year that the AKP completed its death grip on the country with a final crackdown on the military, which has now ceased to be a force for stability.
Left out of the picture is Somalia. Liberals fulminated when Bush helped drive out Al-Shaab and its jolly Muslim lads with a habit of beheading people who didn't grow beards or watched too much soccer. Any number of editorials complained that we had destabilized the country and that the Islamic Courts Union were really a bunch of moderates in disguise.
Sadly Obama has not been able to salvage the position of Al-Shabab which is low on money and has turned to forcing 12 year old girls into prostitution and torturing and murdering those who refuse. They're also forcing the elderly to join its militias. But there is good news. Like every terrorist group, Al-Shabab has gotten itself a Twitter account and when O finds 5 minutes in between vacations and golf tournaments, the White House will order neighboring African countries to withdraw their armies and send in Al-Qaradawi to negotiate.
But even if the Islamists don't get Somalia, they've got a nice chunk of North Africa to chew over, not to mention a few more slices of the Middle-Eastern pie, and Afghanistan will be back in their hands as soon as they manage to outmaneuver Karzai, which given his paranoia and cunning may admittedly take a while. But the Taliban are not big on maneuvers, they have the manpower, which means it's only a matter of time until they do what the Mujaheddin did to the puppet Soviet regime. A history that everyone in the region is quite familiar with.
The ugliest part of this story isn't what Obama did. It's when he did it. If he really had no interest in winning Afghanistan, and if as he had said, the Taliban are not our enemy, then why did we stay for so long and lose so many lives fighting a war that the White House had no intention of winning? The ugly conclusion that must be drawn from the timing of the Iraq and Afghanistan withdrawals is that the wars were being played out to draw down around the time of the next election.
What that means is Obama sacrificed the thousands of Americans killed and wounded in the conflict as an election strategy. The idea that American soldiers were fighting and dying for no reason until the time when maximum political advantage could be gained from pulling them out is horrifying, it's a crime beyond redemption, an act worse than treason-- and yet there is no other rational conclusion to be drawn from the timetable.
If the Taliban were not our enemy, then the war should have ended shortly after the election. Instead Obama threw more soldiers into the mix while tying their hands with Rules of Engagement that prevented them from defending themselves or aggressively going after the Taliban. Casualties among US soldiers and Afghan civilians increased. Now the Taliban are no longer our enemy and we are negotiating a withdrawal.
There are only two possible explanations. Either we lost the war or Obama never intended to win it and was allowing the Taliban to murder American soldiers until the next election. If so we're not just looking at a bad man at the teleprompter, we are looking into the face of an evil so amoral that it defies description.
But whatever motives we may attribute to the Obama Administration the outcome of its policies in backing the Arab Spring with influence, training and even weapons is indisputable. What Carter did to Persia, Obama has done to Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and that's not the whole of the list.
Iraq will likely fall to Iran in a bloody civil war, whether it will be parts of the country or the whole country depend on how much support we provide to the Kurds. Under the Obama Administration the level of support is likely to be none.
Once the Islamists firmly take power across North Africa they will begin squeezing the last states that have still not fallen. Last month the leader of the murderous Enhada Islamists who have taken power in Tunisia stopped by Algeria. Morocco has not yet come down, but at this rate it's only a matter of time.
Syria remains an open question. The Muslim Brotherhood is in a successor position there and would welcome our intervention against the Assad regime. The Assads are no prize and they're Iranian puppets, but shoving them out would give the Brotherhood yet another country and its sizable collection of weaponry.
All that is bound to make 2012 an ugly year in its own right, especially if the Obama Administration continues allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to control its foreign policy. For all that Time and other mainstream media outlets continue splashing the same protest pornography photos on every page, the region has become an indisputably worse place this year with the majority of moderate governments overthrown and replaced, or in the process of being replaced by Islamist thugs.
Carter can breathe a sigh of relief. In one year the Obama Administration has done far more damage than the bucktoothed buffoon did in his entire term. After 2011 we can look back with nostalgia on the days when all that an incompetent leftist in the White House did was lose one country, one canal and a bunch of hostages. Things have gotten so bad that we can safely say that Obama on a good day is worse than Jimmy Carter on a bad day.
Forget the usual end of the year roundups which focus on pop stars, dead celebrities and who wore what and when. None of that really matters. It didn't matter four years ago. It certainly doesn't matter now.
2011 was not the year that Steve Jobs died, it was the year that any hope that we were not headed for a violent collision of civilizations died as Western governments helped topple the few moderates and let the worst have their harvest of power.
Will that be considered a bad thing in the long run? It's hard to say. What Obama did was speed up the date of an inescapable conflict. A day when it will no longer be state-supported terrorists setting off bombs, but when much of the Muslim world will look like Iran and will openly declare that they are at war with us. That was almost certainly bound to happen anyway, but bringing the day forward by ten or twenty years means that we will be less weaker than we might have been when it happens.
Evil has a way of destroying itself, and in his own backward way, Barry Hussein may have helped save civilization. It will be a long time before we know for sure, but giving the Brotherhood what it wanted before they were ready for it, and before we are so completely crippled by the left's political correctness that we are left helpless, may be our best hope.
2011 was the year we lost Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and many others, but it should not be the year that we lose hope. For all that the bad guys have been gaining and domestic prospects don't look good, the bad guys have a way of destroying themselves. Give evil its head and it will kill millions, but it will also self-destruct in a spectacular way. Even when it seems as if we have run out of productive things to do, it is instructive to remember that there is a Higher Power in the destinies of men and that the aspirations of evil men to play at being gods eventually leads them to complete and utter ruin through their own arrogance.
But 2011 is also a reminder that the world cannot afford another year of Obama. That it cannot afford the appeasement, the destructive policies or the post-American politics that have made his regime the worst administration in this country's history. 2011 may be the year that we lost the Middle East, but let's work to make 2012 the year that this country loses one Barack Hussein Obama.
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Muslim Brotherhood vows not to recognize Israel
By JPOST.COM STAFF AND REUTERS
01/01/2012 11:42
Egyptian party's deputy leader tells 'al-Hayat' that they won't negotiate with Israel, will seek to cancel peace treaty.
Talkbacks (100)
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood will not recognize Israel “under any circumstance,” the party’s deputy leader Dr. Rashad Bayoumi told Arabic daily al-Hayat in an interview published on Sunday.
In recent Egyptian elections the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won 36.3 percent of the list vote, while the ultra-conservative Salafi al-Nour Party took 28.8%.
When asked whether it is a requirement for the government in Egypt to recognize Israel, Bayoumi responded by saying: “This is not an option, whatever the circumstances, we do not recognize Israel at all. It’s an occupying criminal enemy.”
The deputy leader stressed during the interview that no Muslim Brotherhood members would ever meet with Israelis for negotiations.“I will not allow myself to sit down with criminals.”
Bayoumi went on to say that the Muslim Brotherhood would take legal procedures towards canceling the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel that was signed in 1979.
“The Brotherhood respects international conventions, but we will take legal action against the peace treaty with the Zionist entity,” he told the paper.
At the beginning of December, Egypt’s two leading Islamist parties won about two-thirds of votes for party lists in the second round of polling for a parliament that will help draft a new constitution after decades of autocratic rule.
The vote, staged over six weeks, is the first free election Egypt has held after the 30-year rule of president Hosni Mubarak, who routinely rigged polls before he was overthrown by a popular uprising in February.
The West long looked to Mubarak and other strongmen in the region to help combat Islamist militants, and has watched warily as Islamist parties have topped votes in Tunisia, Morocco and now Egypt.
The Egyptian Parliament’s prime job will be appointing a 100-man assembly to write a new constitution which will define the president’s powers and parliament’s clout in the new Egypt.
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Hey - lets focus on Newt crying and other "real issues" like Santorum being chased out of a bar. Anything to avoid FailBama's disastrous record of incompentence, failure, and collapse right?
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/04/us-egypt-election-idUSTRE8010W020120104
Hey Benny and andre you two racist pofs - defend this.
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Overtures to Egypt’s Islamists Reverse Longtime U.S. Policy
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/world/middleeast/us-reverses-policy-in-reaching-out-to-muslim-brotherhood.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
CAIRO — With the Muslim Brotherhood pulling within reach of an outright majority in Egypt’s new Parliament, the Obama administration has begun to reverse decades of mistrust and hostility as it seeks to forge closer ties with an organization once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to United States interests.
The administration’s overtures — including high-level meetings in recent weeks — constitute a historic shift in a foreign policy held by successive American administrations that steadfastly supported the autocratic government of President Hosni Mubarak in part out of concern for the Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology and historic ties to militants.
The shift is, on one level, an acknowledgment of the new political reality here, and indeed around the region, as Islamist groups come to power. Having won nearly half the seats contested in the first two rounds of the country’s legislative elections, the Brotherhood on Tuesday entered the third and final round with a chance to extend its lead to a clear majority as the vote moved into districts long considered strongholds.
The reversal also reflects the administration’s growing acceptance of the Brotherhood’s repeated assurances that its lawmakers want to build a modern democracy that will respect individual freedoms, free markets and international commitments, including Egypt’s treaty with Israel.
And at the same time it underscores Washington’s increasing frustration with Egypt’s military rulers, who have sought to carve out permanent political powers for themselves and used deadly force against protesters seeking an end to their rule.
The administration, however, has also sought to preserve its deep ties to the military rulers, who have held themselves up as potential guardians of their state’s secular character. The administration has never explicitly threatened to take away the $1.3 billion a year in American military aid to Egypt, though new Congressional restrictions could force cuts.
Nevertheless, as the Brotherhood moves toward an expected showdown with the military this month over who should control the interim government — the newly elected Parliament or the ruling military council — the administration’s public outreach to the Brotherhood could give the Islamic movement in Egypt important support. It could also confer greater international legitimacy on the Brotherhood.
It would be “totally impractical” not to engage with the Brotherhood “because of U.S. security and regional interests in Egypt,” a senior administration official involved in shaping the new policy said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic affairs.
“There doesn’t seem to me to be any other way to do it, except to engage with the party that won the election,” the official said, adding, “They’ve been very specific about conveying a moderate message — on regional security and domestic issues, and economic issues, as well.”
Some close to the administration have even called this emerging American relationship with the Brotherhood a first step toward a pattern that could take shape with the Islamist parties’ coming to power around the region in the aftermath of the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Islamists have taken important roles in Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt in less than a year.
“You’re certainly going to have to figure out how to deal with democratic governments that don’t espouse every policy or value you have,” said Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and recently joined with the ambassador to Egypt, Anne W. Patterson, for a meeting with top leaders of the Brotherhood’s political party.
He compared the Obama administration’s outreach to President Ronald Reagan’s arms negotiations with the Soviet Union. “The United States needs to deal with the new reality,” Mr. Kerry said. “And it needs to step up its game.”
In the meeting with the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, he said, the Brotherhood’s leaders said they were eager to work with the United States and other Western countries, especially in economic areas.
“They certainly expressed a direction that shouldn’t be a challenge to us, provided they follow through,” he said, adding, “Obviously the proof will be in the pudding.”
Brotherhood leaders, for their part, often talk publicly here of their eagerness for Egypt to have cooperative relations “as equals” with the United States. The Brotherhood renounced violence as a political tool around the time the 1952 revolution overthrew the British-backed monarchy. Over the years, many of its leaders said they had become comfortable with multiparty electoral democracy while serving as members of a tolerated — if marginalized — parliamentary minority under Mr. Mubarak.
They also seem to revel in their new standing. After the meeting with Senator Kerry and Ambassador Patterson, the Brotherhood’s newspaper and Web site reported that Mr. Kerry said “he was not surprised at the progress and leading position of the Freedom and Justice Party on the electoral landscape in Egypt, emphasizing his respect for the public will in Egypt.”
“Egypt is a big country with a long honorable history and plays an important role in Arab, Islamic and international issues, and therefore respects the conventions and treaties that were signed,” the Brotherhood leaders said they told Mr. Kerry.
But, on the group’s English language Web page, the report also urged the United States “to hear the peoples, not to hear of them,” and advised “that America could play a role in the economic development and stability of various peoples of the world, if it wished.”
On Tuesday, the administration intensified its criticism of Egypt’s military rulers over raids that last week shut down 10 civil society groups, including at least 3 American-financed democracy-building groups, as part of an investigation of illicit foreign financing that has been laden with conspiratorial and anti-American rhetoric.
“It is, frankly, unacceptable to us that that situation has not been returned to normal,” a State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said, charging that Egypt’s military rulers had broken pledges last week to top American officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta.
She called the officials behind the campaign against the organizations “old Mubarak holdover types who clearly are not on the new page with the Egyptian people.”
The administration’s willingness to engage with the Brotherhood could open President Obama to new attacks by Republicans who are already accusing him letting Islamists take over a pivotal ally. Some analysts, though, said the overtures amounted to a tacit admission that the United States should have begun such outreach to the region’s Islamist opposition long ago.
Discreet American contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood go back to the early 1990s, although they were previously limited to unpublicized meetings with members of Parliament who also belonged to the Brotherhood but were elected as independents. And even those timid encounters evoked vitriol from Mr. Mubarak.
“Your government is in contact with these terrorists from the Muslim Brotherhood,” he reportedly told the American journalist Mary Anne Weaver in 1994. “Very secretly, without our knowledge at first,” he said, adding, “I can assure you these groups will never take over this country.”
Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, argued that the United States missed chances to build ties to moderate Islamists earlier. When Mr. Mubarak jailed thousands of prominent Brotherhood members in 2005 and 2006, for example, the organization reached out to Washington.
“Now the Brotherhood knows it is in a stronger position and it is almost as if the U.S. is chasing them and they are sitting pretty,” Mr. Hamid said. “But what can the U.S. do, intervene and change the election results?” he asked. “The only alternative is to be against democracy in the region.”
Egypt’s elections are expected to continue to Wednesday, with runoffs next week, and Parliament’s first session is expected to open Jan. 23, two days before the anniversary of the protests that forced out Mr. Mubarak.
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, and Steven Lee Myers from Washington.
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Benny, awesome post....makes me want to cry... since you never see a reasonable and well thought-out post like this showing Obama being a leader and showing his responsible leadership in the area. :'(
Do you still want to cry you racist incompetent pofs?
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Awsome job pulling this up. I swear Obama can't sink lower. Do you think Obama will make a deal with them but require them to recognize Israel and respect the previous treaty they had..........ok ok stop laughing. The more shit he does like this, the better chance Israel burns the Middle East.
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Awsome job pulling this up. I swear Obama can't sink lower. Do you think Obama will make a deal with them but require them to recognize Israel and respect the previous treaty they had..........ok ok stop laughing. The more shit he does like this, the better chance Israel burns the Middle East.
Obama's goal is to collapse the ME and cause an energy crisis. This way he gets two goals accomplished.
Create a pan-islamist caliphate to take out israel and at the same time cause americans to stop driving and not be mobile.
He gets a two'fer according to his communist america-last ideaology.
Not kidding - if every obama voter dropped dead tommorow of some horrible disease - I would throw a party.
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Obama's goal is to collapse the ME and cause an energy crisis. This way he gets two goals accomplished.
Create a pan-islamist caliphate to take out israel and at the same time cause americans to stop driving and not be mobile.
He gets a two'fer according to his communist america-last ideaology.
Not kidding - if every obama voter dropped dead tommorow of some horrible disease - I would throw a party.
why bother arguing with you
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Do you still want to cry?
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US State Department: Don't worry, the Muslim Brotherhood has a nice side
worldthreats.com ^ | January 8, 2012 | Ryan Mauro
Posted on January 9, 2012 9:57:29 PM EST by MamaDearest
On Thursday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland reacted to a statement by the Deputy Leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that it would “not recognize Israel under any circumstances” with a mind-bogglingly naïve reassurance that we shouldn’t worry:
“We’ve seen this press report. I would say that it is one member of the Muslim Brotherhood. We have had other assurances from the party with regard to their commitment not only to universal human rights, but to the international obligations that the Government of Egypt has undertaken.”
Riiight. So, according to the State Department, we should believe the private assurances from the Muslim Brotherhood that they’ll respect the peace treaty with Israel instead of the public statements of its top leaders?
The Muslim Brotherhood is already setting the stage to end the treaty. The same leader that said the Brotherhood wouldn’t recognize Israel said that it would honor current treaties during the “interim” period. After that, the peace treaty with Israel will be submitted to a referendum.
The writing is on the wall. If the ruling Egyptian military council actually lets the Islamists take over (a big if), the Muslim Brotherhood will tell the U.S., “Don’t blame us. We honored the commitment, just like we told you we would. The people chose to cancel it.”
Am I the only one that sees this as obvious?
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Egypt's next parliament to be led by Islamist
By Leila Fadel and Ingy Hassieb, Published: January 16
CAIRO — Liberals and Islamists in Egypt announced a temporary agreement Monday on a power-sharing plan that would install a Muslim Brotherhood leader as speaker of the country’s newly elected parliament.
The agreement among six political parties all but guarantees that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party will lead Egypt’s first elected parliament since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in February, with the Islamist party expected to control as many as half the seats.
Under the power-sharing agreement, the ultraconservative Salafist Nour party and the liberal al-Wafd party would also claim top positions, with their representatives serving as deputy speakers, the parties announced during a news conference Monday at the Freedom and Justice Party’s headquarters.
With a week left until the lower house of the parliament meets, the Freedom and Justice Party said its nominee for speaker would be Mohamed Saad Katatny, the party’s secretary general.
During the announcement, the party heads said the agreement would be a temporary alliance to put their voting weight behind agreed-upon candidates for the parliament’s leadership positions.
“This is a one-day agreement for the day the parliament opens,” Mohamed Abou el-Ghar, the head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party said in an interview. “We have to cooperate so the main posts in the parliament are distributed fairly to all parties, including the people who won the elections.”
Abou el-Ghar said it was possible that his own party could still be allotted one of the deputy positions if the Wafd party chose not to go along with the accord. The Social Democratic Party is part of an alliance of liberals and leftists that is expected to take the fourth most seats after the Freedom and Justice Party, the Nour party and al-Wafd.
This week the agreed parties will begin discussions to divvy up the chairmanships of political committees in the lower house of the parliament, known as the People’s Assembly. On Monday, the body will convene for the first time.
Final results of the elections are expected this week, but party projections and early returns show that Islamists are expected to take about two-thirds of the seats, most of which will go to the political wing of the historic Muslim Brotherhood organization.
The powers of the People’s Assembly are unclear and will be laid out in a still-unwritten constitution. The People’s Assembly is supposed to choose members of a constituent assembly that will write the country’s constitution.
But Egypt’s military rulers have made clear that they would like to oversee the constitution-writing process and possibly influence the selection of the constituent assembly. Political party leaders said the ruling generals would have no influence over the selection of parliament leaders.
The head of the Freedom and Justice Party, Mohammed Morsi, said during the news conference that the short-term agreement was to guarantee a “parliament that expresses national unity.”
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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120121/D9SDIG480.html
Nice. Islamists now have 75 percent of the govt.
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Photo by: REUTERS
The Region: Who’s winning in the Middle East?
By BARRY RUBIN
22/01/2012
The West may misread the current atmosphere, but residents in the region know full well what’s going on.
Nawal al-Saadawi, now 80 years old, is a unique figure in Egypt. She is a pioneer feminist and a radical Arab nationalist. Al- Saadawi has lived in the United States but hates America and, of course, Israel. You can imagine that she also loathes the Islamists. So how does someone like Saadawi react to the Egyptian elections won by the Islamists?
She brands it an American conspiracy. “Democracy is not elections and America uses religion to divide Egypt,” she said in a recent television interview. You are going to be hearing – or not hearing, if you depend on the Western mass media – a lot more of this kind of thing.
How often have I heard Iranian exiles complaining that the United States deliberately didn’t help the Shah in order to bring Ayatollah Khomeini to power? The Turkish opposition has been talking this way for years. In Iran, Lebanon, Syria and probably soon in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, people will be saying: Why do we live under Islamist oppressive dictatorships? Answer: The Americans brought them to power.
It’s an irony of history. Why do the Iranians hate us? The Left tends to say that this is because the United States backed a coup in 1953 against the democratic regime of Muhammad Mossadegh (a regime that was already collapsing, in which the Communists were getting stronger, and the Islamic clerics supported the coup) and the Shah afterward.
Now we are being told that America has been bad to back the dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia, though the United States opposed the far bloodier dictatorships in Iraq and Syria.
Yet now the Obama administration is backing new regimes that are also going to be rather nasty (though there’s hope for Tunisia) and is failing to help democratic oppositions. It is pursuing a pro- Muslim Brotherhood policy. One day some future American president may be apologizing for that.
IN CONTRAST, the real Middle East isn’t full of revolutionary Islamists who only want an American apology or a boost into power in order to be friends of the United States. It is full of a lot of people, maybe a majority in a number of countries, that would like not to live under radical and repressive dictatorships. It also has a number of governments that want Western help against what they see as their real enemies – Iran and revolutionary Islamists.
There are a hundred anecdotes I could tell but here are some from the last few hours, through personal sources. A Gulf Arab was asked about his country’s strategic priorities. He replied that the Iranian regime, “hates everyone. We need more guns” to defend ourselves from Tehran. A close observer in another Arab country writes me that in contrast to the West, “Everyone inside the region seems to ‘get it,’” regarding the threat from Iran’s government.
Funny how clear actual Middle Easterners are about what’s going on – at least when they are talking to each other – compared to those across the seas whose interpretations are merely wrong-headed, bizarre and soon proven to be wrong.
On the other side of the battle, the Islamists are very happy. In an interview with a British newspaper, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh spoke frankly about his analysis of the situation. What he has to say tells more than all the analyses from all the Western talking heads, journalists and politicians.
“The Palestinian cause is winning. With the Muslim Brotherhood part of the government [in Egypt], they [the Egyptians] will not besiege Gaza. They will not arrest Palestinians. They will not give cover to Israel to launch a war.... Israel is disturbed by this. It knows the strategic environment is changing. Iran is an enemy. Relations are deteriorating with Turkey. With Egypt, they are really cold. Israel is in a security situation they have never been in before.”
I don’t agree with him that Palestinians are “winning” now and are those who gained most from the “Arab Spring.” But there is much truth in what he says. Egypt will now let Hamas do pretty much as it pleases, including smuggling terrorists, money and weapons across the border into the Gaza Strip or setting up bases in Sinai. The Brotherhood in Egypt will use the country’s resources to help Hamas.
Why would anyone even think of making peace with Israel when they are enthusiastic believers in total victory, the idea that events are on their side for wiping out Israel? Everyone in the Middle East understands these attitudes are triumphing, no matter which side they are on. Few in positions of power in Europe or America do.
It is not true, though, that Israel has never faced such a situation before. That’s precisely the way things were in the first three decades of Israel’s existence and many elements of the contemporary situation are better than they were for Israel in the last three decades, following peace with Egypt. Still, this is quite different from the rosy picture of moderation breaking out all over that prevails in Western governing circles.
Haniyeh and the kind of people ruling Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya are not rolling over in the flower field of democracy and peace but rather exulting about how they are on the road to bloody victory over Israel and the West. If you actually listen to what they say most of the time, it couldn’t be more obvious.
The writer is director of the GLORIA Center at the IDC Herzliya, and is editor of MERIA Journal. His new book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press.
http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=254697
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Obama Ambassador To Egypt Meets With Muslim Brotherhood Leaders…
Weasel Zippers ^ | 1/25/12 | zip
Posted on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 6:09:26 PM by Nachum
(Egypt Independent) — Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Bureau member Abdel Rahman al-Barr on Tuesday met with Assistant US Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights Michael Posner and US Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson at the embassy’s headquarters in Cairo.
“The Egyptian people consider America’s claims that it respects democracy and freedom as mere words,” Barr said during the meeting, according to a statement on the group’s website.
“US President Obama’s promises, made during his visit to Egypt, have not been fulfilled, and Egyptians want to see more concrete steps in this regard,” the statement added.
(Excerpt) Read more at weaselzippers.us ...
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U.S. outrage as Egypt bars Americans from leaving
CAIRO | Thu Jan 26, 2012 2:33pm EST
CAIRO (Reuters) - Six Americans working for publicly funded U.S. organizations promoting democracy in Egypt have been barred from leaving the country, provoking angry demands in Washington that Cairo's new military rulers stop "endangering American lives".
Among those hit by travel bans - one of those targeted called it "de facto detention" - is a son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, as well as other foreign staffers of the International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute, officials at the two organizations said on Thursday.
The United States said Egypt should reverse them: "We are urging the government of Egypt to lift these restrictions immediately and allow these folks to come home as soon as possible," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
A month after police raided the Cairo offices of the IRI, NDI and eight other non-governmental organizations, it raises the stakes for Washington, which had already indicated it may review the $1.3 billion it gives the Egyptian military each year if the probe into alleged breaches of local regulations went on.
Some see it as a poor omen for Egypt's fledgling democracy following last year's overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.
John McCain, the leading Republican senator who chairs the IRI, voiced "alarm and outrage" at a "new and disturbing turn" which included a travel ban on Sam LaHood, the group's Egypt director and son of President Barack Obama's transport chief.
The younger LaHood said he was stopped at Cairo airport on Saturday and prevented from boarding a flight out.
McCain, in a statement referring to Egypt's ruling military council, said: "I call on the Egyptian government and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to cease the harassment and unwarranted investigations of American NGOs operating in Egypt.
"This crisis has escalated to the point that it now endangers the lives of American citizens and could set back the long-standing partnership between the United States and Egypt."
US-EGYPT TIES
Mubarak had a close alliance with Washington which is now trying to build a relationship with an Egypt run by his old army colleagues but expecting to be ruled eventually by a parliament in which Islamists have won a big majority in a free vote.
Visiting Cairo, the U.S. State Department's top human rights official, Michael Posner, declined to comment on the travel bans, which some of the NGO officials affected said Egyptian officials have yet to confirm in writing.
However, of the dispute over NGO registration in general, he urged the Egyptian government to "redress this situation". He noted that the release of aid was dependent on Congress, where many disapprove of Egypt's actions against the NGOs and which is waiting for reports from the State Department before voting.
"The NGO issue is very much part of that package and as you know there has been considerable attention in the Congress to the restrictions on NGOs," Posner told reporters.
"So we are very much engaged in trying to encourage progress on that issue."
Cairo-based political analyst Elijah Zarwan said the move would give ammunition to those in Congress seeking a review of aid: "This will clearly strain an already tense relationship between Egypt military rulers and Washington," he said.
Sam LaHood told Reuters that a judge had charged him and three other IRI employees with managing an unregistered NGO and being paid employees of an unregistered organization, charges that carry a penalty of up to five years in jail.
His counterpart at the NDI, which like the IRI receives U.S. public funding and is loosely affiliated with one of the two major political parties in Washington, said she, too, was on the banned list for travel. But Julie Hughes told Reuters she was unaware of any formal charges against her or her staff.
NGO officials said the ban affects four IRI staff, including three Americans and one other foreigner, and six foreigners from the National Democratic Institute (NDI), also including three U.S. citizens.
Egyptian officials have made no comment on the bans.
"These organizations have been operating for years. They meet with the government. Their funding is known," said Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch in Cairo.
"There can be no motivation except a desire to control and silence the human rights community."
NDI's Hughes said her organization had submitted a registration request when it started up in Egypt in 2005, but after dealing with queries in 2006 the request went no further. She said the group was in regular contact with the authorities.
"We have never received any official correspondence from the government of Egypt with problems or requesting us to cease," Hughes said. "We are hoping ... this controversy yields a more constructive dialogue."
(Reporting by Ashraf Fahim, Sherine El Madany and Marwa Awad; Writing by Edmund Blair and Tom Perry; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-egypt-usa-idUSTRE80P1QC20120126
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Lol, yup, Obama's "reasoned" approach sure worked, the man has done more to increase the strength of Muslim Extremists in the middle east in the last year than the extremists themsevles have done in the last 10.
Go Obama, every decision you make backfires in your face and little by little you are destroying what little strength and dignity the United States has left.
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COPTS AND ROBBERS: 3,000 Muslims Burn, Loot Egyptian Christian Village
www.webtoday.tv ^ | 01/29/2012 | WebToday.tv
On the surface, it’s another attack on a Coptic Christian village by a Muslim mob, this time 3,000 of them, burning homes and shops to the ground and looting where they could on January 28th. The violence started after a rumor was spread that a Coptic man had an allegedly intimate photo of a Muslim woman on his mobile phone. The Coptic man, Mourad Samy Guirgis, surrendered to the police for his protection.
But, as Wendy Wright of Christian Freedom International (CFI), can explain, beneath the story is an even greater concern—a systemic case of Christian persecution that is growing since Mubarak was toppled, the military assumed control and the Muslim Brotherhood continues to win parliament seats.
(Excerpt) Read more at 888webtoday.com ...
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Egypt Islamists look to build on success in polls
Jan 29 07:17 AM US/Eastern
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.e3279cd8102c4774e58ea43a6d69de60.3a1&show_article=1
Egyptians cast ballots on Sunday for the upper house, with Islamists looking to build on their success in voting for the lower assembly as part of the first polls since a revolt ousted Hosni Mubarak.
Polling got under way with only a handful of voters at several stations, in sharp contrast to the long lines and enthusiasm around the elections for lower house of parliament.
The election for the Shura Council, an advisory body, takes place over two stages, after which members of both houses will choose a panel to draft a new constitution.
The elections are part of a roadmap for a transition to democratic rule laid out by the ruling military council that took power after the popular uprising that overthrew Mubarak last year.
The first phase of voting takes place over two days in 13 provinces, including the largest cities Cairo and Alexandria, and the second in the remaining 14.
Under the complex system adopted after Mubarak's ouster, two thirds of the Shura's 180 elected members will be elected via a party-list system, while one third will be elected directly.
One third of the Shura Council will be nominated by the head of state.
Under the framework for a transfer to civilian rule, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has said the two chambers, once elected, should choose 100 members of a constitutional commission.
But voters in Cairo appeared split on the importance of the latest poll.
"I voted in the referendum (on constitutional amendments in March), I voted for the (People's) Assembly, and so I will vote for the Shura," said a voter who only gave her name as Seham.
"If this chamber had no importance, authorities would not be seeking to revive it," she added.
In contrast, voter Zainab al-Sadawi, said: "If the Shura had an important role to play drafting the future constitution, there should have been campaigns on the subject. Otherwise, the People's Assembly is enough."
Most political parties are pressing for the constitution to be completed ahead of presidential elections due to be held before the end of June.
The powerful Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party won a crushing victory in the lower house of parliament elections, which were contested over three months, to clinch 47 percent of seats.
The Al-Nur, representing the ultra-conservative Salafist current of political Islam, came second place, with liberal parties trailing far behind.
The election comes amid nationwide protests calling for the immediate ouster of the ruling military council led by Mubarak's longtime defence minister, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets on Wednesday to mark one year since the start of the uprising that ousted Mubarak after 30 years of autocratic rule.
A year on, protesters accuse the military council of mismanagement and human rights abuses.
Demonstrators are demanding an end to military trials of civilians, the restructuring of the interior ministry and a guarantee of freedoms and social justice.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been less vocal in calling for the army to step down, prompting tensions with some anti-military protesters.
The SCAF has vowed to cede power to civilian rule by June when a new president is to be elected, and has repeatedly pointed to the parliamentary elections as proof of its intention to abandon politics.
But protesters accuse the military of seeking to maintain some degree of control over Egypt, even after June.
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Brotherhood would cancel Camp David Agreement, says Hezbollah official
Haitham Dabbour Egypt Independent
Author: Haitham Dabbour
http://www.egyptindependent.com/print/629041
Tehran — Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood will eventually cancel the Camp David Agreement, despite the group’s announcement that it respects international agreements Egypt has signed, said Amin al-Sayed Ibrahim, head of Hezbollah’s political council.
Speaking to the “International Conference on Islamic Awakening and the Youths,” Ibrahim said that the Egyptian military, so as not to lose its clout, would never allow the Brotherhood to write the constitution or even form a constituent assembly to write the constitution.
Following their electoral victories in Parliament, Egypt's most organized political group has offered assurances that it would respect the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
When asked early this month whether Washington believed that the Islamist party would uphold the treaty, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that the party "has made commitments to us in this regard.”
Ibrahim said that the current unrest in Syria is a conspiracy and not a revolution, as western media claims. The Egyptian delegation clashed with him over the remarks.
“The Syrians transfer arms to the Palestinian resistance,” he said.
Over 1,200 young people from Iran as well as 73 other countries are participating in the two-day conference, Iran’s Fars news agency reported on Monday.
hezbollah Archived Photo?: 0
Publishing Date: Mon, 30/01/2012 - 20:11
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What a complete thread backfire for the failed Benny B. It doesn't take a political scientist to realize what was going to happen in a country who's majority wants Islamic rule. But we're supposed to believe the state department knows more about Egypt than Egyptians do.
We'll of course continue to send them over a billion dollars a year in funds though.
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Has anyone on here been wrong more than Benny the Idiot?
No.
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What a complete thread backfire for the failed Benny B. It doesn't take a political scientist to realize what was going to happen in a country who's majority wants Islamic rule. But we're supposed to believe the state department knows more about Egypt than Egyptians do.
We'll of course continue to send them over a billion dollars a year in funds though.
its not like we incited the riots that forced Mubarak out...that was Mubarak's fault...Egypt has always been ruled by Islamists....Almost everyone on Egypt is Muslim...c'mon!
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its not like we incited the riots that forced Mubarak out...that was Mubarak's fault...Egypt has always been ruled by Islamists....Almost everyone on Egypt is Muslim...c'mon!
LOL!!!!! we spent 200 million popping this up assole!!!
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Egyptian MP Mustafa Bakri: America and Israel Are Responsible for Port Said Soccer Bloodbath
MEMRI TV ^ | 2-2-12 | Sawt Al-Sha'b TV (Egypt)
Posted on 02/02/2012 3:32:29 PM PST by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyran nis
Following are excerpts from a statement by Egyptian MP Mustafa Bakri, which aired on Sawt Al-Sha'b TV on February 2, 2012.
Mustafa Bakri: Our country is entering a state of anarchy. This anarchy is caused by America, Israel and the former regime. Look at the New Middle East scheme. Don't talk about all the minute details. What happened in Port Said is a continuation of what happened in Muhammad Mahmoud Street, in Al-Qasr Al-Ayni Street, across from the government, across from Maspero, and in the soccer match against Tunisia. They are all connected. It is an attempt to bring this country down.
[...]
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U.S. tourists seized in Egypt's Sinai released
11:00am EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/03/us-egypt-kidnapping-idUSTRE8120MD20120203
CAIRO (Reuters) - Two American women kidnapped by gunmen in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Friday were released into army custody hours after they were seized, security sources said.
The two tourists were among a party of five travelling from Saint Catherine's monastery in central Sinai to the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh when a vehicle carrying men armed with machineguns stopped their small bus, the sources said.
The gunmen were apparently seeking a ransom, they said.
(Reporting by Patrick Werr)
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Egypt Will Try Son Of Former Illinois Congressman
My Stateline (Fox 39) ^ | February 6, 2012 | Colin Clarke
Posted on February 6, 2012 12:30:39 PM EST by Qbert
(Cairo, Egypt) -- Egypt is set to try 19 Americans, including the son of former Illinois Congressman Ray LaHood.
Egyptian officials announced yesterday that Sam LaHood is among the 43 people to be tried for what prosecutors called using funds from their non-profit organizations to foment unrest in their country.
(Excerpt) Read more at mystateline.com ...
Lol. Notice how ande and Benny won't post in this thread any more?
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Egypt Will Try Son Of Former Illinois Congressman
My Stateline (Fox 39) ^ | February 6, 2012 | Colin Clarke
Posted on February 6, 2012 12:30:39 PM EST by Qbert
(Cairo, Egypt) -- Egypt is set to try 19 Americans, including the son of former Illinois Congressman Ray LaHood.
Egyptian officials announced yesterday that Sam LaHood is among the 43 people to be tried for what prosecutors called using funds from their non-profit organizations to foment unrest in their country.
(Excerpt) Read more at mystateline.com ...
Lol. Notice how ande and Benny won't post in this thread any more?
there is nothing to say..Egypt has to find its own way and what works for them...we gave them their freedom..the rest is up to them as I have said..//you look for every negative article you can find to prove your point....be less biased....
this is your cue to post a cry-baby picture
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You are a pathetic liar. Thugbama set all this in motion and that is the best you can muster up?
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HAHAHAHA!!!
If the cure for AIDS is found, the twinks on this board will give Obama all the credit in the world.
Epic fishing for anything positive from the most incompetent administration EVER.
he is the president you moron, hence international affairs are very dependant on his decisions, much more so then other departments. Stop being a fucking nit wit.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/06/us-egypt-usa-whitehouse-idUSTRE8151YX20120206
Going great - right Benny?
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Egypt risks 'disastrous' rupture in ties: US senators
yahoo.com ^ | 2/7/12 | AFP
Posted on February 7, 2012 9:14:12 PM EST by ColdOne
A trio of leading US senators on Tuesday warned Egypt that the risk of a "disastrous" rupture in ties had "rarely been greater" amid an escalating row over the planned trial of US pro-democracy activists.
Republican senators John McCain and Kelly Ayotte, joined by independent Joe Lieberman, also warned that US congressional "support for Egypt -- including continued financial assistance -- is in jeopardy."
"The current crisis with the Egyptian government has escalated to such a level that it now threatens our long-standing partnership," the three senators wrote in a joint statement.
"There are committed opponents of the United States and the US-Egypt relationship within the government in Cairo who are exacerbating tensions and inflaming public opinion in order to advance a narrow political agenda."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
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NGO workers could face 5 years in prison, Egyptian judges say ("Democracy" Islamic Style)
Washington Post ^ | 2/8/2012 | Ernesto Londoño and Ingy Hassieb
Investigative judges in Egypt said Wednesday that the Americans and Egyptians who have been charged in the government’s crackdown on U.S.-funded pro-democracy groups could face up to five years in prison for working at unlicensed organizations.
The remarks — the most extensive description of the government’s case against the pro-democracy workers to date — did not suggest that investigators had determined that the workers were engaged in nefarious or subversive activities. Rather, the investigative judges, who in Egypt’s judicial system serve as the American equivalent of prosecutors, accused the NGO workers of failing to pay taxes, entering the country on tourist visas and training political parties even though the Egyptian government had refused to accredit their employers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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Egypt will not be swayed by aid threat in NGOs case: PM
Reuters via Yahoo News ^ | 2/8/2012 | Tamim Elyan & Yasmine Saleh
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt said on Wednesday it would not be swayed by threats to aid when investigating foreign-funded pro-democracy groups and NGOs, a case that has prompted Washington to warn that U.S. military support worth $1.3 billion a year may be in jeopardy.
The United States wants Egypt to drop travel bans on at least 19 U.S. citizens involved in the case but Egypt's government says it cannot intervene in a judicial probe of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) over whether they violated laws such as receiving foreign cash without official approval.
A total of 43 foreign and local activists are banned from leaving Egypt and their case has been referred to a criminal court. "Egypt will apply the law ... in the case of NGOs and will not back down because of aid or other reasons," army-appointed Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri told a news conference.
The case has put a deep strain on relations with Washington, which counted Egypt as a close strategic ally under ousted President Hosni Mubarak. Both U.S. Congress and the White House have warned that the crackdown could threaten the aid budget.
[Snip]
Judge Sameh Abu Zaid, one of two judges leading the probe, told a separate news conference on Wednesday that the raids on NGO offices at the end of last month, and which first drew U.S. criticism, were conducted in line with Egyptian criminal law.
He said a travel ban was imposed when some called for questioning left the country. Lawyers produced travel documents as proof of absence. "In such situations, the judges place a travel ban to be able to continue the investigation," Abu Zaid said.
"There is a lot of evidence, some of it dangerous. We have about 160 pages of evidence," the judge said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
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Muslim Brotherhood Warns U.S. Aid Cut May Affect Egypt’s Peace Treaty With Israel
By Patrick Goodenough
February 13, 2012
Egyptian students shout anti-military slogans during a protest at Cairo University on Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012.
Egyptian authorities accuse U.S. and other foreign-funded non-governmental organizations of formenting protests in the country. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
(CNSNews.com) – A top Muslim Brotherhood official has warned that any cuts in U.S. aid to Egypt could affect Cairo’s peace treaty with Israel – the latest sign that Egypt’s emerging political forces intend to call Washington’s bluff over the diplomatic dispute triggered by a crackdown on non-governmental organizations.
Egyptian judges have referred 16 Americans and 27 others linked to NGOs for trial, accusing them of using foreign funds to encourage disruptive protests. Among the targeted NGOs whose assets and funds have been seized are the U.S. government-funded International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute.
On Capitol Hill, the chorus of senior lawmakers calling for aid to Egypt to be suspended over the affair is growing, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that the funds could be in jeopardy.
So far, the defiant response from Cairo has been attributed mostly to government figures with links to the deposed Mubarak regime, including the anti-Western minister for international cooperation, Fayza Abul-Naga. The military-appointed Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri – who also served during the Mubarak era – told reporters last Wednesday that the authorities “won’t change course because of some aid.”
But now the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which won almost 50 percent of the seats in recent legislative elections and dominates parliamentary committees, is making its position clear, too.
Egyptians pass a police checkpoint near the Interior Ministry in Cairo on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
Any U.S. aid cut to Egypt, top MB lawmaker Essam el-Erian told the pan-Arabic al-Hayat newspaper, would violate the U.S.-brokered 1979 peace agreement with Israel.
The Jerusalem Post quoted Erian as saying that if the U.S. cuts aid to Egypt, the MB would consider changing the terms of the peace treaty. He is warning that the U.S. should understand that “what was acceptable before the revolution is no longer.”
Erian chairs the parliamentary foreign affairs committee and is deputy leader of the MB’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).
The FJP was an early critic of the crackdown on the NGOs (although it also said Egyptian NGOs should get their funding from Egyptians). But threats to cut U.S. aid appear to have rallied various factions behind the government, feeding into long-held suspicion of and hostility towards the West.
“This is only the beginning of the anti-American populism/nationalism/Islamism we are going to be seeing in Egypt from now on,” Mideast expert Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Israel, wrote in a column Sunday.
“What’s amazing is that nobody is pointing out that if an Egyptian government is willing to risk U.S. aid and have a confrontation on this small issue, what are they going to do regarding big issues?’ Rubin said. “What happens when the Egyptian government moves toward Islamism or helps Hamas fight Israel on some level? We have been told that fear of losing U.S. aid will constrain Egypt. But we are now seeing that this simply isn’t true.”
Egyptians don’t want US aid
Among the biggest uncertainties sparked by the toppling of Mubarak a year ago was the future of the peace treaty. After four wars involving the two neighbors – in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 – the treaty negotiated at Camp David led to Israel handing back to Egypt the Sinai Peninsula, an area three times bigger than Israel itself, which it had captured in the 1967 Six Day War.
Although never particularly popular in Egypt, the agreement kept the peace between the former foes for three decades and secured Egypt more than $1.3 billion in U.S. military and economic aid each year.
Legislation signed into law last December ties the provision of $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt in fiscal year 2012 to certification that the government in Cairo “is supporting the transition to civilian government including holding free and fair elections; implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion, and due process of law.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s foreign operations subcommittee, inserted the language. He warned this month that the NGO clampdown would affect the certification requirements.
Other lawmakers who have warned the aid is in jeopardy include House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.); Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee’s foreign operations subcommittee; and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).
A Gallup poll, released last week, but conducted before the furor over the NGO prosecutions, found that a large majority of Egyptians – 71 percent – are opposed to U.S. aid.
About half of the poll respondents said they supported Egypt receiving aid from international institutions, and 68 percent were in favor of aid from other Arab countries.
James Lindsay, senior vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that while Americans would naturally be upset if the recipients of their hard earned money are ungrateful, “gratitude isn’t the primary objective of U.S. foreign aid”
“Washington doles out aid primarily based on calculations about how to advance U.S. strategic interests. And the United States certainly has great interests at stake in how Egypt’s political transition plays out even if it doesn’t have a lot of influence over where it ends up.”
Over the past year, Americans’ views of Egypt have deteriorated significantly. A Gallup poll a year ago found favorable ratings had dropped from 58 percent in 2010 to 40 percent a year later, with more Americans having a negative than a positive view of Egypt for the first time since Gallup began polling the issue in 1991.
The trend was borne out in a survey by the Arab American Institute (AAI), released on Thursday, in which only 33 percent of respondents said their attitudes regarding Egypt were favorable, compared to 34 percent who said they viewed Egypt unfavorable light.
The AAI said Egypt’s favorable ratings among Americans in polls since the 1990s had been much higher – between 55-65 percent.
ANDRE ARE YOU STILL IN TEARS OVER OBAMA'S HANDLING OF EGYPT?
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Muslim Brotherhood Warns U.S. Aid Cut May Affect Egypt’s Peace Treaty With Israel
By Patrick Goodenough
February 13, 2012
Egyptian students shout anti-military slogans during a protest at Cairo University on Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012.
Egyptian authorities accuse U.S. and other foreign-funded non-governmental organizations of formenting protests in the country. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
(CNSNews.com) – A top Muslim Brotherhood official has warned that any cuts in U.S. aid to Egypt could affect Cairo’s peace treaty with Israel – the latest sign that Egypt’s emerging political forces intend to call Washington’s bluff over the diplomatic dispute triggered by a crackdown on non-governmental organizations.
Egyptian judges have referred 16 Americans and 27 others linked to NGOs for trial, accusing them of using foreign funds to encourage disruptive protests. Among the targeted NGOs whose assets and funds have been seized are the U.S. government-funded International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute.
On Capitol Hill, the chorus of senior lawmakers calling for aid to Egypt to be suspended over the affair is growing, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that the funds could be in jeopardy.
So far, the defiant response from Cairo has been attributed mostly to government figures with links to the deposed Mubarak regime, including the anti-Western minister for international cooperation, Fayza Abul-Naga. The military-appointed Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri – who also served during the Mubarak era – told reporters last Wednesday that the authorities “won’t change course because of some aid.”
But now the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which won almost 50 percent of the seats in recent legislative elections and dominates parliamentary committees, is making its position clear, too.
Egyptians pass a police checkpoint near the Interior Ministry in Cairo on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
Any U.S. aid cut to Egypt, top MB lawmaker Essam el-Erian told the pan-Arabic al-Hayat newspaper, would violate the U.S.-brokered 1979 peace agreement with Israel.
The Jerusalem Post quoted Erian as saying that if the U.S. cuts aid to Egypt, the MB would consider changing the terms of the peace treaty. He is warning that the U.S. should understand that “what was acceptable before the revolution is no longer.”
Erian chairs the parliamentary foreign affairs committee and is deputy leader of the MB’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).
The FJP was an early critic of the crackdown on the NGOs (although it also said Egyptian NGOs should get their funding from Egyptians). But threats to cut U.S. aid appear to have rallied various factions behind the government, feeding into long-held suspicion of and hostility towards the West.
“This is only the beginning of the anti-American populism/nationalism/Islamism we are going to be seeing in Egypt from now on,” Mideast expert Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Israel, wrote in a column Sunday.
“What’s amazing is that nobody is pointing out that if an Egyptian government is willing to risk U.S. aid and have a confrontation on this small issue, what are they going to do regarding big issues?’ Rubin said. “What happens when the Egyptian government moves toward Islamism or helps Hamas fight Israel on some level? We have been told that fear of losing U.S. aid will constrain Egypt. But we are now seeing that this simply isn’t true.”
Egyptians don’t want US aid
Among the biggest uncertainties sparked by the toppling of Mubarak a year ago was the future of the peace treaty. After four wars involving the two neighbors – in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 – the treaty negotiated at Camp David led to Israel handing back to Egypt the Sinai Peninsula, an area three times bigger than Israel itself, which it had captured in the 1967 Six Day War.
Although never particularly popular in Egypt, the agreement kept the peace between the former foes for three decades and secured Egypt more than $1.3 billion in U.S. military and economic aid each year.
Legislation signed into law last December ties the provision of $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt in fiscal year 2012 to certification that the government in Cairo “is supporting the transition to civilian government including holding free and fair elections; implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion, and due process of law.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s foreign operations subcommittee, inserted the language. He warned this month that the NGO clampdown would affect the certification requirements.
Other lawmakers who have warned the aid is in jeopardy include House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.); Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), who chairs the House Appropriations Committee’s foreign operations subcommittee; and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).
A Gallup poll, released last week, but conducted before the furor over the NGO prosecutions, found that a large majority of Egyptians – 71 percent – are opposed to U.S. aid.
About half of the poll respondents said they supported Egypt receiving aid from international institutions, and 68 percent were in favor of aid from other Arab countries.
James Lindsay, senior vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that while Americans would naturally be upset if the recipients of their hard earned money are ungrateful, “gratitude isn’t the primary objective of U.S. foreign aid”
“Washington doles out aid primarily based on calculations about how to advance U.S. strategic interests. And the United States certainly has great interests at stake in how Egypt’s political transition plays out even if it doesn’t have a lot of influence over where it ends up.”
Over the past year, Americans’ views of Egypt have deteriorated significantly. A Gallup poll a year ago found favorable ratings had dropped from 58 percent in 2010 to 40 percent a year later, with more Americans having a negative than a positive view of Egypt for the first time since Gallup began polling the issue in 1991.
The trend was borne out in a survey by the Arab American Institute (AAI), released on Thursday, in which only 33 percent of respondents said their attitudes regarding Egypt were favorable, compared to 34 percent who said they viewed Egypt unfavorable light.
The AAI said Egypt’s favorable ratings among Americans in polls since the 1990s had been much higher – between 55-65 percent.
ANDRE ARE YOU STILL IN TEARS OVER OBAMA'S HANDLING OF EGYPT?
Lol -"If you stop giving us hundreds of millions of dollars for no reason (even though we are now an unfriendly/hostile country to you) we might not abide by our peace treaty with Israel" ::) ::)
What a fucking joke - if we dont cut them off - its going to cement us in the worlds eye as bitches.
Cut em off - let Israel wipe em off the face of the earth.
Fuck those people for threatening us in the 1st place with all the money we give them for NO good goddamn reason.
If we give them what we want - itll be official, we've cut our balls off and handed them to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Last I checked, the United States doesnt negotiate with Terrorists. Oh, wait, I forgot, that changed when Barack HUSSEIN Obama stepped into office.
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Obama's Chickens Come Home To Roost In Egypt
IBD Editorials ^ | February 14, 2012
Posted on February 14, 2012 8:48:21 PM EST by Kaslin
Mideast: As the president sneaks more money in the budget for Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood thugs he helped install in Cairo show their gratitude by threatening to attack Israel.
For three decades, the U.S. essentially paid Egypt not to attack our closest ally in the region. The policy worked to maintain peace. But Obama nullified that deal by backing Islamist revolutionaries against reliably pro-U.S. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Now the bribe has lost its effect.
The new Egyptian leadership, led by the virulently anti-Jewish Muslim Brotherhood, this week issued a warning to Washington that it should understand that "what was acceptable before the revolution is no longer." It made clear that this includes the peace treaty with Israel.
The warning came in response to calls by Congress to suspend aid to Cairo unless it releases jailed pro-democracy American aid workers.
The U.S. sends $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt each year. A top Brotherhood official warned that the new regime would tear up the 30-year peace treaty with Israel if that aid was cut.
"We have been told that fear of losing U.S. aid will constrain Egypt," said Mideast expert Barry Rubin. "But we are now seeing that this simply isn't true. What happens when the Egyptian government helps Hamas fight Israel?"
This has been the plan of the new ruling Islamists all along. The Brotherhood, which created Hamas, backs Palestinian terrorists. And they have already turned a blind eye to, if not orchestrated, several attacks on Israel from the demilitarized Sinai.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
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The Muslim Brothers Get Paid to Threaten America
FrontPage Magazine ^ | February 16, 2012 | Bruce Thornton
Remember last year’s giddy bipartisan enthusiasm over the “Arab Spring”? President Obama claimed that Egyptians merely wanted “a government that is fair and just and responsive,” Senator John McCain asserted that Libyans were aiming for “lasting peace, dignity, and justice,” while Senator Joseph Lieberman wrote in Foreign Affairs that the Arab Spring was a struggle for “democracy, dignity, economic opportunity, and involvement in the modern world.” Every day that passes shows these assessments to be not just delusional, but dangerous to America’s interests and security.
The most recent repudiation of the “democracy delusion” is the arrogant threat made by a member of the Muslim Brothers, who control almost 50% of the new Egyptian parliament, to abrogate their treaty with Israel if the U.S. cuts off $1.5 billion in annual aid over the indictment of 16 American NGO workers, and the detention of 6 of them. In this the Brothers are in accord with the interim military government, whose prime minister Kamal el- Ganzouri told reporters last week that the Egyptians “won’t change course because of some aid.”
These are the same Muslim Brothers, remember, anointed as “moderates” and “largely secular” by Obama’s director of intelligence, foreign policy wonks, and New York Times columnists, an opinion based solely on propaganda and wishful thinking. Ignored are the many mosque sermons that vow to “kill all the Jews,” or that assert, as Muslim Brothers spiritual leader Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb has, “In order to build Egypt, we must be one. Politics is insufficient. Faith in Allah is the basis for everything.” This advice is seconded by Brothers’ Supreme Guide Muhammad al-Badi’, who finds “a practical role model in Allah’s Messenger, [the Prophet Muhammad] . . . who clarified how to implement the values of the [Koran] and the Sunna at every time and in every place,” and who advises that the “improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.” If you want more specifics about what sort of Egypt the Muslim Brothers will build, consult the speeches of the Brothers’ Grand Mufti Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who commands a global audience of millions. Qaradawi has approved of suicide bombing, wife-beating, death for homosexuals, support for Hezbollah, and the righteousness of the Holocaust.
Not much here, pace President Obama, that one can call “fair and just and responsive,” or that can justify the opinion of the New York Times that the Muslim Brothers “want to build a modern democracy that will respect individual freedoms, free markets and international commitments, including Egypt’s treaty with Israel.” And why would they? As their spectacular electoral success has shown––the Brothers and the Salafists won almost 75% of the recent voting–– the Brothers merely reflect the beliefs and goals of most Egyptians. In Pew surveys from the last few years, 84% of Egyptians support the death penalty for apostates, 82% support stoning adulterers, 85% said Islam’s influence on politics is positive, 95% said that it is good that Islam plays a large role in politics, 59% identified with Islamic fundamentalists, 54% favored gender segregation in the workplace, 82% favored stoning adulterers, 77% favored whippings and cutting off the hands of thieves and robbers, 84% favored death for those leaving Islam, and 60% said that laws should strictly follow the teachings of the Koran. Those views don’t sound like a people yearning for liberal democracy.
It’s not hard, then, to see why the Brothers would want to follow the Iranian playbook from 1979 and proclaim its Islamist bona fides by publicly humiliating the infidel global hegemon, the “Great Satan” whose dominance stands in the way of Muslims’ regaining their rightful global preeminence. As Muslim Brother founder Hassan al-Banna wrote, “It is the nature of Islam to dominate not to be dominated, to impose it laws on all nations, extend its power to the entire planet.” Confronting America also will help unify the nation around shari’a law, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism, not to mention marginalizing whatever moderate remnants are left in Egypt and rallying other factions around hatred of America. The Islamist revival has always made fidelity to the creed and Muslim chauvinism the centerpiece of jihadist violence and propaganda, the ties that can bind Muslims into a powerful community.
Less clear is the appeasing behavior of the Obama administration. It seems oblivious to the damaging effects on our prestige that can follow when we allow such threats to go unpunished, particularly when our citizens have in effect been kidnapped. And such craven behavior is especially dangerous when the aggressor has been the recipient of $60 billion in U.S aid. Now the message is not only you can attack American prestige with impunity, but also get paid to do so. What is equally unclear is why Obama would pursue this tack given the utter failure of his earlier solicitous “outreach” to various regimes in the Middle East, especially Iran and Syria. Obama entered office offering to talk with the mullahs in Iran “without preconditions,” sent a letter to Khamenei calling for “co-operation in regional and bilateral relations,” and assured the regime that it “remain committed to serious, meaningful engagement.” What it got in response was contempt, insults, genocidal threats against Israel, terrorist plots in our own country, more support for the terrorists killing our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an intensified effort to acquire nuclear weapons. At some point Obama should realize that the Islamists see flattery, appeasement, foreign aid, and offers to parley as signs of weakness and fear, the expected behavior of infidels whose spiritual poverty makes them vulnerable to the spiritual strength of the faithful. And this perception of weakness is increasingly being shared not just by our enemies, but by many of our friends.
Finally, the administration’s refusal to punish the new regime in Egypt for their arrogance in kidnapping our citizens and threatening us not to stop giving them money endangers our key ally Israel. The border to the south is already more open and dangerous, even with the peace treaty supposedly still in effect. Weapons like surface-to-air missiles–– looted from Gaddafi’s arsenals in Libya by other “peace, dignity, and justice” -loving democrats––have been pouring into Gaza. Barry Rubin has drawn the obvious conclusion from such fecklessness: “If an Egyptian government is willing to risk U.S. aid and have a confrontation on this small issue, what are they going to do regarding big issues? What happens when the Egyptian government moves toward Islamism or helps Hamas fight Israel on some level? We have been told that fear of losing U.S. aid will constrain Egypt. But we are now seeing that this simply isn’t true.” Indeed, we could very soon see another war against Israel, this time fought by an Egyptian army trained and armed by the United States, its ally a Palestinian Authority force likewise trained and funded by us. Such would be the wages of this administration’s penchant for indulging delusional wishful thinking rather than facing reality.
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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/02/16/the-muslim-brothers-get-paid-to-threaten-america/
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Egypt trial on U.S. democracy activists set for February 26
CAIRO | Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:16am EST
CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court will start the trial on February 26 of activists from mostly American civil society groups accused of working illegally in Egypt, in a case which has strained U.S.-Egyptian ties.
A judicial source told Reuters that the 43 accused, including around 20 Americans, would go on trial next Sunday, charged with working in the country without proper legal registration.
The state new agency MENA said the hearing would take place at North Cairo Criminal Court.
Investigators swooped down on the offices of civil society groups on December 29, confiscating computers and other equipment and seizing cash and documents.
The American defendants have been banned from leaving Egypt and some have taken refuge in the U.S. embassy. Among those accused is Sam LaHood, Egypt director of the International Republican Institute and the son of the U.S. transportation secretary.
"The date of the first hearing in the case of foreign funding involving foreign civil society organizations has been set for February 26," a judicial source told Reuters.
The American groups raided were the IRI and the National Democratic Institute, both democracy-building groups loosely affiliated with the U.S. political parties, as well as the human rights group Freedom House, and the International Center for Journalists.
Egyptian Minister of Planning Faiza Abul Naga has linked U.S. funding of civil society initiatives to an American plot to undermine Egypt. The democracy groups' leaders denied their activists had done anything improper or illegal.
The spat is one of the worst in more than 30 years of close U.S.-Egyptian ties and has complicated Washington's efforts to establish relations with the military council that took power from Hosni Mubarak after his overthrow in a popular revolt a year ago.
A delegation of U.S. lawmakers is scheduled to arrive to Egypt Monday headed by Senator John McCain who has said he hoped Egyptian officials understood the situation was unacceptable to the United States.
(Reporting by Marwa Awad: Writing by Shaimaa Fayed)
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Egyptian pres. candidate: Egypt will go to war with U.S., Germany and Israel within 3 months
MEMRI ^ | 02/2012
Posted on February 21, 2012 9:28:04 PM EST by PRePublic
Egyptian presidential candidate: Egypt will go to war with U.S., Germany and Israel within three months
Egyptian Presidential Candidate Tawfiq Okasha Predicts that Egyptian Army Will Open Fire on "Its Enemies" – the US, Germany, and Israel – Within Three Months; States That If Not for the Holocaust, the Jews Would Have Annihilated the Germans Al-Faraeen TV (Egypt) - February 9, 2012 - 09:37
(Excerpt) Read more at memritv.org ...
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Egyptian pres. candidate: Egypt will go to war with U.S., Germany and Israel within 3 months
MEMRI ^ | 02/2012
Posted on February 21, 2012 9:28:04 PM EST by PRePublic
Egyptian presidential candidate: Egypt will go to war with U.S., Germany and Israel within three months
Egyptian Presidential Candidate Tawfiq Okasha Predicts that Egyptian Army Will Open Fire on "Its Enemies" – the US, Germany, and Israel – Within Three Months; States That If Not for the Holocaust, the Jews Would Have Annihilated the Germans Al-Faraeen TV (Egypt) - February 9, 2012 - 09:37
(Excerpt) Read more at memritv.org ...
Hahahaha. It's almost like they forget losing 3/4 of their country to Israel in six days.
They're more than welcome to try.
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The best part is that Benny and andre refuse to defend this thread.
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Egyptian pres. candidate: Egypt will go to war with U.S., Germany and Israel within 3 months
MEMRI ^ | 02/2012
Posted on February 21, 2012 9:28:04 PM EST by PRePublic
Egyptian presidential candidate: Egypt will go to war with U.S., Germany and Israel within three months
Egyptian Presidential Candidate Tawfiq Okasha Predicts that Egyptian Army Will Open Fire on "Its Enemies" – the US, Germany, and Israel – Within Three Months; States That If Not for the Holocaust, the Jews Would Have Annihilated the Germans Al-Faraeen TV (Egypt) - February 9, 2012 - 09:37
(Excerpt) Read more at memritv.org ...
Really?
Well, must be time to wipe another middle eastern country from the map... sigh.
I only can come up with one idea why theyd be so stupid.
They must want to try and trigger a muslim/western culture war. They probably figure if they attack us and call for a Muslim Jihad that Iran and all the other Muslim countries will unite in their hate for us and kickstart a world war.
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February 21, 2012
Egypt’s Step Backward
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Sadly, the transitional government in Egypt today appears determined to shoot itself in both feet.
On Sunday, it will put on trial 43 people, including at least 16 U.S. citizens, for allegedly bringing unregistered funds into Egypt to promote democracy without a license. Egypt has every right to control international organizations operating within its borders. But the truth is that when these democracy groups filed their registration papers years ago under the autocracy of Hosni Mubarak, they were informed that the papers were in order and that approval was pending. The fact that now — after Mubarak has been deposed by a revolution — these groups are being threatened with jail terms for promoting democracy without a license is a very disturbing sign. It tells you how incomplete the “revolution” in Egypt has been and how vigorously the counter-revolutionary forces are fighting back.
This sordid business makes one weep and wonder how Egypt will ever turn the corner. Egypt is running out of foreign reserves, its currency is falling, inflation is rising and unemployment is rampant. Yet the priority of a few retrograde Mubarak holdovers is to put on trial staffers from the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, which are allied with the two main U.S. political parties, as well as from Freedom House and some European groups. Their crime was trying to teach Egypt’s young democrats how to monitor elections and start parties to engage in the very democratic processes that the Egyptian Army set up after Mubarak’s fall. Thousands of Egyptians had participated in their seminars in recent years.
What is this really about? This case has been trumped up by Egypt’s minister of planning and international cooperation, Fayza Abul Naga, an old Mubarak crony. Abul Naga personifies the worst tendency in Egypt over the last 50 years — the tendency that helps to explain why Egypt has fallen so far behind its peers: South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brazil, India and China. It is the tendency to look for dignity in all the wrong places — to look for dignity not by building up the capacity of Egypt’s talented young people so they can thrive in the 21st century — with better schools, better institutions, export industries and more accountable government. No, it is the tendency to go for dignity on the cheap “by standing up to the foreigners.”
That is Abul Naga’s game. As a former Mubarak adviser put it to me: “Abul Naga is where she is today because for six years she was resisting the economic and political reforms” in alliance with the military. “Both she and the military were against opening up the Egyptian economy.” Both she and the military, having opposed the revolution, are now looking to save themselves by playing the nationalist card.
Egypt today has only two predators: poverty and illiteracy. After 30 years of Mubarak rule and some $50 billion in U.S. aid, 33 percent of men and 56 percent of women in Egypt still can’t read or write. That is a travesty. But that apparently does not keep Abul Naga up at night.
What is her priority? Is it to end illiteracy? Is it to articulate a new vision about how Egypt can engage with the world and thrive in the 21st century? Is it to create a positive climate for foreign investors to create jobs desperately needed by young Egyptians? No, it’s to fall back on that golden oldie — that all of Egypt’s problems are the fault of outsiders who want to destabilize Egypt. So let’s jail some Western democracy consultants. That will restore Egypt’s dignity.
The Times reported from Cairo that the prosecutor’s dossier assembled against the democracy workers — bolstered by Abul Naga’s testimony — accused these democracy groups of working “in coordination with the C.I.A.,” serving “U.S. and Israeli interests” and inciting “religious tensions between Muslims and Copts.” Their goal, according to the dossier, was: “Bringing down the ruling regime in Egypt, no matter what it is,” while “pandering to the U.S. Congress, Jewish lobbyists and American public opinion.”
Amazing. What Abul Naga is saying to all those young Egyptians who marched, protested and died in Tahrir Square in order to gain a voice in their own future is: “You were just the instruments of the C.I.A., the U.S. Congress, Israel and the Jewish lobby. They are the real forces behind the Egyptian revolution — not brave Egyptians with a will of their own.”
Not surprisingly, some members of the U.S. Congress are talking about cutting off the $1.3 billion in aid the U.S. gives Egypt’s army if these Americans are actually thrown in prison. Hold off on that. We have to be patient and see this for what, one hopes, it really is: Fayza’s last dance. It is elements of the old regime playing the last cards they have to both undermine the true democratic forces in Egypt and to save themselves by posing as protectors of Egypt’s honor.
Egyptians deserve better than this crowd, which is squandering Egypt’s dwindling resources at a critical time and diverting attention from the real challenge facing the country: giving Egypt’s young people what they so clearly hunger for — a real voice in their own future and the educational tools they need to succeed in the modern world. That’s where lasting dignity comes from.
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Really?
Well, must be time to wipe another middle eastern country from the map... sigh.
I only can come up with one idea why theyd be so stupid.
They must want to try and trigger a muslim/western culture war. They probably figure if they attack us and call for a Muslim Jihad that Iran and all the other Muslim countries will unite in their hate for us and kickstart a world war.
The Muslim Brotherhood has stated that their goal is the rebirth of the caliphate. And this is very well documented. Naive little morons who think their moderate or progressive are nothing more than fools.
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The best part is that Benny and andre refuse to defend this thread.
nothing to defend...I couldn't care less...the egyptians fuck up thats their business
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Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood file lawsuits against a number of Egyptian female artists and actresses
Atlas Shrugs ^ | 2/28/2012 | Pam Geller
More of the lethal cosmic fallout from Obama's cosmic wager.
Egypt. I told ya so.
Demands to prosecute Summaya Al Khashab and Ghada Abd Al Raziq February 28, Albawaba 2012 tip david Wilson
A group of Egyptian lawyers, who belong to the Muslim Brotherhood political party, have filed lawsuits against a number of Egyptian female artists. The top of the list of artists to be sued are Egyptian actresses Summaya Al Khashab.
In the lawsuit filed, it was claimed that the said actresses present roles that are too provocative and encourage sexuality and other inappropriate behaviors.
According to the London based Elaph, the lawyers had gathered a number of public statements made by the actresses that insult religious people. The same lawyers had previously filed a lawsuit against Egyptian comedian actor Adel Imam for insulting and ridiculing Islam. The lawyers stressed that these actors and actresses should be severely prosecuted by the law and even stoned.
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasshrugs2000.typepad. com ...
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Benny, awesome post....makes me want to cry... since you never see a reasonable and well thought-out post like this showing Obama being a leader and showing his responsible leadership in the area. :'(
Egyptian Presidential Candidate & Former CAIR Official: "I Never Loved the US, the...
MEMRI TV ^ | 3-14-12 | Al-Hekma TV (Egypt)
Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian presidential candidate Bassem Khafagy, which aired on Al-Hekma TV on March 14, 2012 :
Interviewer : What is your position with regard to the Shiites and Iran?
Bassem Khafagy : In my view, there are two enterprises of equal importance: a Persian enterprise and a Shiite enterprise. When it comes to the Shiite enterprise, I embrace the Sunni view: We are Islam, and there is a deviant sect. This deviant sect cursed the Prophet Muhammad and his wives, and they invoke the idols of the Quraysh tribe in their prayers.
There is not a single book on the Shia that I have not read. When I was in the US, I held many discussions with Shiites. I know very well all their claims about the Koran of Fatima, and regarding the notions of taqiyya, bada'a, and so on. In terms of theology, I am, of course, completely in line with the Sunni view, without any doubt. I don't need to expand on this.
With regard to the other issue – the Persian enterprise – I view it as equally dangerous. The establishment of a
Shiite-Persian Crescent should be prevented at all costs, because it aims to divide the Sunnis in the region. They would like to sever Turkey from the Arabian Peninsula and from Egypt. In my view, the revival of this region is based upon Egypt, first and foremost, and upon its allies in its living space, particularly Turkey and Saudi Arabia. These three countries are of great importance, because together they have tremendous power, not to be ignored, for the revival of the region. This powerful entity should not be allowed to be divided up…
Interviewer : So you are saying that you will not have any dealings with Iran – neither in their capacity as Persians nor in their capacity as Shiites?
Bassem Khafagy : I am prepared to deal even with the devil, but on one condition.
Interviewer : What do you mean by "the devil"?
Bassem Khafagy : I will do absolutely anything that serves the main strategic interests of Egypt. I am not ashamed of myself, and I am not ashamed of my country…
Interviewer : We are now hearing of billions being invested in Egypt by Iran. Do you accept such financial aid or investment in the economy of Egypt?
Bassem Khafagy : I will first examine if there are – and I'm sure there are – ulterior motives, which undermine Egypt's national security. I will not allow any threat to Egypt's national security for the sake of billions, regardless of their source – be it the Zionist entity or anyone else. I want investments in Egypt to come from friends of Egypt. Any party that wants to declare its friendship with Egypt is welcome.
Interviewer : The US, for example?
Bassem Khafagy : The US has never declared its friendship with Egypt. It declared its friendship with Mubarak. But its entire conduct… Whoever finances and supports my main enemy in the region is no friend of mine.
[…]
When I first went to America – like many Islamists who went there – I loved Islamic preaching there. I loved the place I lived in, but I never loved the US, the infidel country.
[…]
I wrote in my article that the US constitutes a criminal element in this world. All my writings in recent years explain the unacceptable Western subjugation enterprise. I discussed the RAND report, which was read by most of the Muslim world's elite. I was the first to write about this report and the first to translate it into Arabic. I was the first to expose the notion of "moderate Islam," which is used as a means to canonize a "non-Islamic Islam." I don't know why they call it "moderation." This "moderation" means violation [of the laws] of Islam.
[…]
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Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood file lawsuits against a number of Egyptian female artists and actresses
Atlas Shrugs ^ | 2/28/2012 | Pam Geller
...According to the London based Elaph, the lawyers had gathered a number of public statements made by the actresses that insult religious people. The same lawyers had previously filed a lawsuit against Egyptian comedian actor Adel Imam for insulting and ridiculing Islam. The lawyers stressed that these actors and actresses should be severely prosecuted by the law and even stoned.
...
I hope that people, if there are any left on this globe, realize what rampage psychopaths are pushed into power by foreign intervention.
Here is a sinful clip of the chick...
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How DARE that bitch show me her eyes.
TO THE DEATH!
OFF WITH HER HEAD!
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Benny never defends this drivel. He's far to stupid to to actually defend the obama agenda.
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Benny is a fucking idiot.
He actually calls Wigg's a "house ni**er" because he's educated and doesnt just tow the stereotypical "black line", and cause he doesnt hate whitey. ::)
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Egypt: Ayman al Zawahiri's brother, 7 others acquitted of terrorism
Global Post ^ | March 19, 2012 | Priyanka Boghani
Posted on March 19, 2012 10:14:49 PM EDT by OddLane
Mohamed al Zawahiri and seven others were cleared of terrorism charges by an Egyptian military court, according to Reuters.
Zawahiri is the brother of Al Qaeda's current leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, who acted as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man for years before bin Laden's death.
The court overturned an earlier conviction of Zawahiri and the others based on charges of "committing terrorist crimes, harming national security, and planning to overthrow the state," lawyer Mamdouh Ismail told Reuters.
The case was 14 years old, and also involved another prominent person, Mohamed al Islambouli, the brother of Khalid al Islambouli, the man who killed Egypt's former president Anwar Sadat, according to Ahram Online.
(Excerpt) Read more at globalpost.com ...
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Muslim Brotherhood asserts its strength in Egypt with challenges to military
The Washington Post ^ | March 25, 2012 | Leila Fadel
Posted on March 26, 2012 12:52:13 AM EDT by MinorityRepublican
CAIRO — As Egypt’s ruling generals near the end of their formal reign, the country’s main Islamist party is asserting increasing authority over the political system and openly confronting the powerful military.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s growing influence came into sharp focus Sunday as its political wing and other Islamists established a dominant role in the 100-member body chosen by the parliament to write the country’s new, post-revolutionary constitution. Liberals and leftists vowed to boycott the assembly, and at least eight withdrew from it, accusing the Islamist parties of taking over the process.
The move came just days after the Brotherhood said it was considering putting forth a presidential candidate from its ranks, something it had promised not to do.
The rift between the once-underground group and the military burst into the open this weekend, with the Brotherhood issuing a scathing statement calling the military-appointed government a failure and raising concern over the credibility of the upcoming presidential election. The military council fired back Sunday, condemning the Brotherhood for “doubting” the institution and making “fabricated” allegations.
The Brotherhood and its political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, were initially hesitant to challenge the military after the revolt that ousted President Hosni Mubarak last year. But the Islamist movement became emboldened after winning nearly half the seats in parliament in elections that ended in February.
Now, its leaders are going so far as to oppose the generals’ private requests for immunity from prosecution for accusations of killings and mistakes committed during Egypt’s political transition, something they were open to just two months ago. They are demanding the dissolution of the military-appointed government of Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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Benny, awesome post....makes me want to cry... since you never see a reasonable and well thought-out post like this showing Obama being a leader and showing his responsible leadership in the area. :'(
STILL WANT TO CRY ASSHOLE?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17620925
5 April 2012
Rocket fired from Egypt hits Israeli city of Eilat
Israeli police inspecting the Grad rocket in Eilat Continue reading the main story
Israel and the PalestiniansGazans 'inured' to endless conflict
Israel's Iron Dome defence
Palestinians' geographic divide
The world's most expensive lemons
A Grad rocket has landed in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, but has caused no damage or injuries, Israeli security officials said.
District police chief Ron Gertner told Israeli radio the rocket had been fired from Egypt's Sinai peninsula.
He said it struck a construction site close to a residential area shortly after midnight (21:00 GMT).
The blast took place as thousands congregated in the resort town for the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Rocket attacks from Egyptian soil are uncommon. Attacks on Eilat and the nearby Jordanian town of Aqaba in 2010 killed one person and injured another four.
Sinai unrest
Eilat Mayor Meir Yitzhak-Halevy told the Jerusalem Post that the city would function as normal despite the attack.
A wave of unrest has hit the restive Sinai peninsula recently.
Israel says militants have become active in the region since former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February 2011.
In August 2011, an armed group crossed the border into Israel from the Sinai peninsula and killed eight Israelis.
Israel blamed Palestinian militants but five Egyptian policemen were killed as Israeli forces pursued the gunmen, sparking a diplomatic row between the two countries.
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Muslim Brotherhood chooses chaos
Asia Times ^ | April 11, 2012 | Spengler
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood signaled its intent on Sunday to push the country into economic chaos. With liquid foreign exchange reserves barely equal to two months' imports and panic spreading through the Egyptian economy, the Brotherhood's presidential candidate Khairat al-Shater warned that it would block a US$3 billion emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) unless the military government ceded power.
"We told them [the government], you have two choices. Either postpone this issue of borrowing and come up with any other way of dealing with it without our approval, or speed up the formation of a government," Khairat al-Shater said in a Reuters interview. [1]
The news service added that al-Shater "said he realized the country's finances were precarious and a severe crunch could come by early to mid-May as the end of the fiscal year approached, but that this was the government's problem to resolve".
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17808954
Nice. What a fng disaster.
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Egypt Says Gas Agreement 'Suspended, Not Cancelled'
nn ^ | 4/22/12 | Elad Benari
Posted on April 23, 2012 12:45:34 AM EDT by Nachum
Gas Pipeline Gas Pipeline Reuters
A senior official in the Egyptian army said on Sunday the agreement of supply of gas between Egypt and Israel was not cancelled but only suspended.
According to a report on Army Radio, the official said that the suspension came about following a dispute regarding the transfer of funds.
Earlier, Channel 2 News reported that Egypt had informed Israel that it is unilaterally cancelling the agreement. The announcement was made to EMG, the firm that receives the gas from Egypt.
Egypt’s natural gas company declared, according to the Army Radio report, that the gas agreement was cancelled for business reasons and not political ones. According to the report, the company said that Israel had failed to honor its obligations under the contract and did not pay for the gas for months.
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
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PM: Egypt's Sinai turning into a 'Wild West'
Jerusalem Post ^ | 04/24/2012
Earlier this month, Jerusalem said a rocket fired at Eilat originated in Sinai; Egypt warns against inflaming the border situation.
Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has turned into a "kind of Wild West," which terrorist organizations use to smuggle weapons with Iranian assistance and initiate attacks on Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Israel Radio on Tuesday.
The open desert border between Israel and Egypt has been relatively quiet since the 1979 peace treaty. But various Israeli officials have said that since the fall of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Cairo lost control of the desolate Sinai, exacerbating tensions.
Earlier this month, Jerusalem said a rocket that hit Eilat was fired from Sinai. Last August, cross-border infiltrators shot dead eight Israelis.
"We are acting against this reality and we are in ... continuous discussions with the Egyptian government, which is also troubled by this," said Netanyahu.
Iran denies supporting terrorist attacks on Israel from the Sinai.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Sunday that the situation in Sinai was more worrying than what was happening in Iran, and called for a significant boost to troop numbers along the southern border.
In an apparent response Monday, Egypt's interim military ruler, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, cautioned against any interference along the long desert frontier.
"Our borders, especially the northeast ones, are inflamed. We do not attack neighboring countries but will defend our territory," Egypt's state news agency MENA quoted him as saying.
"We will break the legs of anyone trying to attack us or who come near the borders."
Hey andre and Benny you two incompetent thugs - still cryin over obama's handling of this?
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Unbelievable how everything that administration does or whomever they support, in the end it makes the situation worse. They don't know what the hell they are doing.
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:). Notice how thw idiots who shilled obama are silent on his failures?
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That is the problem with the Dems. They can claim certain things were done under Obama's watch. But, was there any postive outcome of such actions?
Everything Obama touches turns to crap.
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:). Notice how thw idiots who shilled obama are silent on his failures?
thats because its not Obama's failures idiot...its Egypt's failures.....you probably blame Obama for your failures in trying to get an erection as well don't you ::)
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Egypt: Husbands can have sex with DEAD wives up to six hours after their death
Daily Mail UK ^ | 26 April 2012
Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives - for up to six hours after their death. The controversial new law is part of a raft of measures being introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament. It will also see the minimum age of marriage lowered to 14 and the ridding of women's rights of getting education and employment.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
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Leading candidate in Egypt presidential race calls Israel peace accord 'dead and buried'
Haaretz ^ | 4/30/12 | Zvi Bar'el
The leading candidate in Egypt's presidential race said on Sunday that the Camp David Accords should be consigned to the shelves of history, describing the agreement as "dead and buried."
At a mass rally in southern Egypt, Amr Moussa, who is currently ahead in Egypt's race for president, spoke of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, saying that "the Camp David Accords are a historical document whose place is on the shelves of history, as its articles talk about the fact that the aim of the agreement is to establish an independent Palestinian state."
Moussa went on to say that there is "no such thing" as the Camp David agreement.
"This agreement is dead and buried. There is an agreement between Israel and Egypt that we will honor as long as Israel honors it. The Jewish document that defines relations between Israel and the Arabs is an Arab initiative from 2002 whose advancement should be bilateral: step for step, progress for progress."
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
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11 dead in Egyptian clashes ahead of presidential elections
May 2, 2012 | 5:45am
CAIRO -- At least 11 people were killed Wednesday when unknown attackers armed with guns and firebombs clashed with protesters near the Defense Ministry in an escalation of violence symbolizing the country's political divisions ahead of this month's presidential elections.
The assailants rushed from an adjoining neighborhood at dawn and fought about 500 demonstrators, many of them supporters of Hazem Salah abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist preacher recently disqualified from the presidential race. Authorities said at least 49 people were wounded.
The violence adds to the turmoil that has engulfed Egypt since last year's overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak. The elections scheduled for May 23-24 are seen as the final transition to democracy. But the unrest and the military's hold on power have fueled anger and political uncertainty and led to new calls for large street marches.
The protesters were a mix of Ismail backers and activists opposed to the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. As in previous protests against the military, thugs sympathetic to the old regime or hired by unnamed forces appeared amid a lack of police. Neighborhood residents exasperated with demonstrations have also reportedly attacked the protesters.
Authorities said the deaths and injuries early Wednesday were caused by live ammunition, rocks, clubs and other weapons. The protests began nearly one week ago. Army forces were reportedly moving into the area to disperse the sit-in and stop other protesters from marching toward the Defense Ministry.
The army has promised to hand power to a civilian government by July 1.
ALSO:
Ex-opposition leader Tzipi Livni quits Israeli parliament
British police arrest 2 in slaying of girl found near royal estate
French far-right leader refuses to endorse presidential candidate
-- Jeffrey Fleishman
Photo: An Egyptian woman wears a face-covering niqab with Arabic writing that reads "Down with military rule," and carries a metal pole as a weapon at the road leading to the Defense Ministry in Cairo. Credit: Fredrik Persson / Associated Press
Twitter: @latimesworld
Facebook: World Now
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Senator Kerry in Talks with Muslim Brothers Presidential Candidate
jewishpress.com ^ | 5/2/12 | Yori Yanover
Posted on May 2, 2012 9:04:37 PM EDT by ColdOne
Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate foreign relations committee, arrived in Cairo Tuesday evening, as part of his tour of the region, to hold talks with Egyptian officials about the “democratic transformation” of Egypt, according to the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA. Kerry and his Egyptian hosts will be discussing the presidential elections due late in May, and the conflicts in the region, including Syria, the Sudan and Israel.
According to Al Ahram, Senator Kerry and US Ambassador to Cairo Ann Patterson will meet with Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate and head of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) Mohamed Mursi, at the FJP headquarters on Wednesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishpress.com ...
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Egyptian troops, (Islamist) protesters clash in Cairo
Google/AP ^ | 5/4/2012 | MAGGIE MICHAEL
Posted on Friday, May 04, 2012 1:26:44 PM by mojito
Egyptian armed forces and protesters clashed in Cairo on Friday, with troops firing water cannons and tear gas at demonstrators who threw stones as they tried to march on the Defense Ministry, a flashpoint for a new cycle of violence only weeks ahead of presidential elections.
For the first time in Egypt's stormy transition, hardline Islamists were in the forefront of street fighting with the troops, a shift for groups that previously had largely stayed out of direct confrontation with the ruling military.
The clashes centered around a sit-in that has been held for a week in a square several blocks away from the Defense Ministry, mainly by ultraconservatives known as Salafis, who were protesting the disqualification of their favored candidate from the presidential election. On Wednesday, still unidentified assailants attacked the gathering, sparking clashes that killed nine.
Wednesday's violence fueled anger at the military and now more groups are taking to the streets.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
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Egypt vote: Brotherhood advances to second round
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May 25, 7:55 AM (ET)
By MAGGIE MICHAEL
(AP) Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi, casts his vote inside a polling...
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CAIRO (AP) - The candidate of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood won a spot in a run-off election, according to partial results Friday from Egypt's first genuinely competitive presidential election. A former prime minister an a leftist were in a tight race for second place and a chance to run against him to become the country's next leader.
The run-off will be held on June 16-17, pitting the two top contenders from the first round of voting held Wednesday and Thursday. The victor is to be announced June 21.
The landmark vote - the fruit of last year's uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak - turned into a heated battle between Islamist candidates and secular figures rooted in Mubarak's old regime. The most polarizing figures in the race were the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi and former air force commander and former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, a veteran of Mubarak's rule.
By midday Friday, the counting had been completed in at least 20 of the country's 27 provinces, representing around half the votes cast - though workers were still plowing through the paper ballots from Egypt's biggest metropolis, the capital Cairo and its sister city Giza. The election commission said turnout in the election's first round was about 50 percent of more than 50 million eligible voters.
(AP) An Egyptian election official counts the ballots following the presidential election in Cairo,...
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Morsi was in the lead with 28 percent of the ballots so far, according to the independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, which was compiling reports from counting stations. That is likely enough to secure him a spot in the run-off.
But the race for second place was neck-and-neck between Shafiq and leftist Hamdeen Sabahi, who was a darkhorse during months of campaigning but had a surprising surge in the days before voting began as Egyptians looked for an alternative to both Islamists and the former regime figures known as "feloul" or "remnants."
Sabahi is a leftist who claims the mantle of the nationalist, socialist ideology of Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Egypt's president from 1956 to 1970.
"The results reflect that people are searching for a third alternative, those who fear a religious state and those who don't want Mubarak's regime to come back," said Sabahi campaign spokesman Hossam Mounis.
Earlier in the day, Al-Masry Al-Youm's tally had Shafiq with 21 percent of the vote so far, and Sabahi at 20 percent. But then Sabahi scored a surprise win in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, where he came in first and Morsi and Shafiq lagged far behind. That vaulted Sabahi into a narrow second place lead for the moment.
(AP) Egyptian election workers count the ballots following the end of the two day presidential election...
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The count from Cairo and Giza was not expected to be finished until late Friday or early Saturday, Mounis said.
Alexandria is the traditional stronghold of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis. But the powerful Salafi vote there was split between Islamist candidates. The result is "a great loss to the Brotherhood who lost their credibility in the street," Mounis said.
The Brotherhood is hoping for a presidential victory to seal its political domination of Egypt, which would be a dramatic turnaround from the decades it was repressed under Mubarak. It already holds nearly half of parliament after victories in elections late last year.
The group has promised a "renaissance" of Egypt, not only reforming Mubarak-era corruption and reviving decrepit infrastructure, but also bringing a greater degree of rule by Islamic law. That prospect has alarmed more moderate Muslims, secular Egyptians and the Christian minority, who all fear restrictions on civil rights and worry that the Brotherhood shows similar domineering tendencies as Mubarak.
"I think we are on the verge of a new era. We trusted God, we trusted in the people, we trusted in our party," prominent Brotherhood figure Essam el-Erian said at a news conference late Thursday night, just hours after polls closed, when the group first claimed a Morsi victory.
(AP) U.S. Congressman David Dreier, R-Calif.,top right facing to camera, and former U.S. Congressman...
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A Morsi verus Shafiq runoff would likely be a particularly heated race.
Each has repeatedly spoken of the dangers, real or imaginary, if the other becomes president. Morsi has said there would be massive street protests if a "feloul" wins, arguing it could only be the result of rigging.
Shafiq, on his part, has said it would be "unacceptable" if an Islamist takes the presidential office, echoing the rhetoric of Mubarak, his longtime mentor who devoted much of his 29-year rule to fighting Islamists. Still, Shafiq's campaign has said it would accept the election's result.
And each fires up strong emotions among the public.
Shafiq drew support among Egyptians who fear Islamists or want a perceived "strongman" to bring stability after 16 months of economic and political turmoil and bloodshed since Mubarak's fall. But he also raises the venom of many who see him as another Mubarak-style autocrat, rooted in a regime that was notorious for corruption and police brutality.
(AP) An Egyptian policeman stands by posters of presidential election candidate Mohammed Morsi Thursday,...
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Secular Egyptians fear the prospect of greater religion in government if Morsi wins. Moreover, the Brotherhood faced a backlash from many of the voters who supported it in the parliament election but later grew disillusioned. Some accused it of trying to overly monopolize power like Mubarak's ruling party once did.
Morsi's showing in the partial results was a considerable drop from the around 50 percent support the Brotherhood received in the parliament vote.
Still, Morsi benefited from the might of the Brotherhood's well-organized electoral machine, the nation's strongest.
"We need a president who gets rid of the former corrupt and oppressive system and brings Egypt back to the position it deserves economically and internationally," said Rizk Mohammed, a contractor voting with his family in Cairo on Thursday - all for Morsi.
At another station Thursday in the Cairo district of el-Zawiya el-Hamra, several women in line to vote debated.
"I like the personality of Shafiq. He is strong enough to lift the country," said Suheir Abdel-Mumin.
Somaiya Imam, still undecided on whom to choose, replied with a reference to Islamist candidates, saying: "Don't you think we should vote for the candidate who holds the Quran?"
"We voted for them before and they let us down," Abdel-Mumin responded, referring to the Brotherhood's victories in last year's parliamentary elections. "They want everything - the presidency, parliament and government. They are never satisfied."
(This version corrects that Al-Masry Al-Youm had Morsi at 28 percent, instead of 30 percent)
HEY HAIRY ARMPIT LOVER - ARE YOU STILL CRYING OVER OBAMA'S HANDLING OF THIS?
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HEY HAIRY ARMPIT LOVER - ARE YOU STILL CRYING OVER OBAMA'S HANDLING OF THIS?
;D
In his mind, Obama is never wrong.
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http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/egypts-imperiled-democratic-hopes-6995
Total fail. Where for art thou Benny 180 and andre?
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http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/egypts-imperiled-democratic-hopes-6995
Total fail. Where for art thou Benny 180 and andre?
Drinking malt liquor, blaming whitey for their 53rd pregnancy out of wedlock+ the price of pork rinds increasing by 16%
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Drinking malt liquor, blaming whitey for their 53rd pregnancy out of wedlock+ the price of pork rinds increasing by 16%
I like how 3333 brings out the true racist in you...always suspected you were....now we see you for what you really are...therefore all of your previous arguments are voided due to biased thinking
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I like how 3333 brings out the true racist in you...always suspected you were....now we see you for what you really are...therefore all of your previous arguments are voided due to biased thinking
Pretty sure he's black. Epic lulz @ you calling your own people "racist".
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Pretty sure he's black. Epic lulz @ you calling your own people "racist".
believe me..they can be,,,
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believe me..they can be,,,
Only the educated ones.
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Who Lost Egypt?
The Brotherhood is Poised to Take Control.
Egyptian presidential candidate Ahmed Shafik poses for a portrait photo, November 28, 2011. | Photo: Associated Press | Related: Ahmed Shafik, Egypt, President, candidate
The Presidential race in Egypt is now down to two candidates, who will confront each other in a runoff election on June 16th and 17th to determine who will replace the deposed ruler Hosni Mubarak. One of those candidates, Ahmed Shafik, was the last Prime Minister under Mubarak. The other, Mohammed Morsi, represents the Muslim Brotherhood. Given that Morsi took the most votes in the first round of voting, that the Brotherhood already effectively controls Egypt's Parliament and that the Brotherhood has a massive organizational machine to support him, Morsi must be considered the clear favorite to claim the Presidency.
To understand the implications of that for the United States and the world, we would do well to remember a little history. The Brotherhood is an overtly religious, that is to say Islamic, party. In the West, a party which calls for prayer to be allowed in schools or for a Nativity scene to be permitted in front of the court house may be branded as being threatening and reactionary. That is not what we mean when we say that the Brotherhood is "religious".
The Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by an Egyptian schoolteacher and admirer of Adolf Hitler, Hasan al-Banna. The group was created in accordance with Banna's belief that Islam should be granted "hegemony" in all matters of life. The Brotherhood was dedicated to the destruction of all non-Islamic governments wherever they existed and to making Islamic sharia law the basis for all jurisprudence everywhere on the planet. It gave birth in a very literal sense to Hamas and Al Qaeda.
In 1948 a member of the Brotherhood assassinated Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi Nuqrashi. In 1954, a member of the Brotherhood tried to assassinate Egyptian President Abdel Nasser. In 1981, members of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyya, a militant terrorist group spawned by the Brotherhood, murdered Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Khalid Shaykh Mohammed, the planner of the 9/11 attacks was a member of the Brotherhood. So was Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current head of Al Qaeda.
The Brotherhood remains committed to this day to the imposition of sharia law, the creation of an Islamic caliphate and violent jihad. During the first round of campaigning for the Presidency in Egypt, the Brotherhood's candidate, Morsi, repeatedly and explicitly promised to implement sharia law in Egypt if elected. His rallies included pledges to work for the release of the release of the group's "spiritual leader," Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Islamic cleric imprisoned in the United States for plotting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Morsi has also called for a reexamination of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
All of Morsi's events were liberally punctuated by references to the Koran and his prophet Muhammed and frequently included calls for mass prayer. Morsi's campaign rallies also featured numerous appearances by Safwat el-Hegazi, a radical cleric who has called repeatedly for the destruction of the state of Israel and the recreation of an Islamic caliphate with Jerusalem as its capital.
Speaking on his own television program in 2009, al-Hegazi had to this to say about the caliphate and Jerusalem. "Jerusalem belongs to us. Al-Aqsa belongs to us. Jerusalem belongs to us, and the whole world belongs to us. Every land upon which Islam has set foot will return to us. The caliphate will return to us, on the platform of prophecy. The greatness and glory of Islam will return."
Egypt is in many ways the crown jewel of the Islamic world. It has by far the largest population, over at 83 million at last count. It also has an ancient political and cultural history and tremendous influence over the course of events throughout the Middle East. Egyptian music, television programs and films are hugely popular throughout the Arab world, and what happens inWhat happens then may well be catastrophic.
Egypt has immense symbolic significance in the region.
Egypt is also the linchpin in American national security policy in the Middle East. Prior to the signing of the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, there were four wars fought over the existence of Israel as an independent nation. Since then there have been none.
Egypt, once a virtual client state of the Soviet Union, and virulently hostile to American interests, has become one of our most dependable allies. Military to military cooperation is extensive as are similar efforts in the realm of security and intelligence. Last year alone, the United States gave Egypt $1.3 billion in military aid.
Ahmed Shafik
Ahmed Mohamed Shafik, born November 1941, is an Egyptian politician and candidate for the presidency of Egypt. He was a senior commander in the Egyptian Air Force and later served as Prime Minister of Egypt from the 31st of January 2011 to the 3rd of March 2011, a period of 33 days. | Photo: Associated Press
China was not always a Communist state. It became one when the People's Liberation Army and Mao Tse-Tung drove the Nationalist Chinese, lead by Chiang Kai Shek off the mainland to the island of Taiwan. The United States made no significant effort to prevent that occurrence, and the emergence of a powerful Communist state in East Asia became a significant campaign issue for years to come. The debate over who "lost China" resonated for years in American politics and had a major impact on our willingness to come to the defense of South Korea and attempt to halt the further spread of Communism.
Similarly, Iran was not always a radical Islamic regime with a covert nuclear weapons program and a close relationship to anti-American terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. It was once a close American ally and a key element of our national security policy in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. All of that ended with the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, and we have yet to hear the end of the debate over who bears responsibility for the "loss" of this key ally.
Since the beginning of the "Arab Spring", the Obama Administration has chosen to view all of the revolutions and uprisings across the Arab world through the prism of American politics and the American experience. Rather than seeing the complexity of upheavals caused by a powerful brew of economic and social forces, it has chosen to imagine that the Middle East is simply awakening to the need to become more "like us", that is more liberal, more secular, more tolerant and more inclusive.
Underlying this attitude has been the unstated assumption that left to their own devices, the people of these nations, most of which have no tradition of democratic institutions or the rule of secular law, will somehow "do the right thing". That is, they will experience some bumps along the way, but what will emerge will ultimately be to our liking and to the benefit of the citizens of that nation as a whole. We should not intervene in an attempt to moderate the unfolding events. We should trust simply that it will all end well.
It is not necessarily so. The brutal truth is that those that take power need not be friendly to us nor that they govern in the most responsible and progressive manner. What will happen in Egypt is as yet unknown. It may yet be that Egyptians will pull back from electing a President from the Muslim Brotherhood. Right now, however, it appears most likely that they will elect a candidate from a party dedicated to the creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state and that this new President will enjoy the support of a Parliament dominated by his own party and its ideological allies.
What happens then may well be catastrophic. Absent intervention by the Egyptian military, something this Administration has strongly opposed, we may see the Egypt we have known for decades dissolve before our eyes to be replaced by a hard line Islamic state once again threatening the state of Israel and the stability of the region as a whole. We may find ourselves, in short, in very much the same posture vis a vis Egypt as we are now with Iran.
By this time next year, we may have a new question. "Who lost Egypt?"
http://www.andmagazine.com/content/phoenix/12270.html
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Alarming assaults on women in Tahrir Square
Egypt Independent ^ | 6-7-12
Posted on June 7, 2012 8:19:23 PM EDT by SJackson
Her screams were not drowned out by the clamor of the crazed mob of nearly 200 men around her. An endless number of hands reached toward the woman in the red shirt in an assault scene that lasted less than 15 minutes but felt more like an hour.
She was pushed by the sea of men for about a block into a side street from Tahrir Square. Many of the men were trying to break up the frenzy, but it was impossible to tell who was helping and who was assaulting. Pushed against the wall, the unknown woman's head finally disappeared. Her screams grew fainter, then stopped. Her slender tall frame had clearly given way. She apparently had passed out.
The helping hands finally splashed the attackers with bottles of water to chase them away.
The assault late Tuesday was witnessed by an Associated Press reporter who was almost overwhelmed by the crowd herself and had to be pulled to safety by men who ferried her out of the melee in an open Jeep.
Reports of assaults on women in Tahrir, the epicenter of the uprising that forced Hosni Mubarak to step down last year, have been on the rise with a new round of mass protests to denounce a mixed verdict against the ousted leader and his sons in a trial last week.
The late Tuesday assault was the last straw for many. Protesters and activists met Wednesday to organize a campaign to prevent sexual harassment in the square. They recognize it is part of a bigger social problem that has largely gone unpunished in Egypt. But the phenomenon is trampling on their dream of creating in Tahrir a micro-model of a state that respects civil liberties and civic responsibility, which they had hoped would emerge after Mubarak's ouster.
"Enough is enough," said Abdel Fatah Mahmoud, a 22-year-old engineering student, who met Wednesday with friends to organize patrols of the square in an effort to deter attacks against women. "It has gone overboard. No matter what is behind this, it is unacceptable. It shouldn't be happening on our streets let alone Tahrir."
No official numbers exist for attacks on women in the square because police do not go near the area, and women rarely report such incidents. But activists and protesters have reported a number of particularly violent assaults on women in the past week. Many suspect such assaults are organized by opponents of the protests to weaken the spirit of the protesters and drive people away.
Mahmoud said two of his female friends were cornered Monday and pushed into a small passageway by a group of men in the same area where the woman in the red shirt was assaulted. One was groped while the other was seriously assaulted, Mahmoud said, refusing to divulge specifics other than to insist she wasn't raped.
Mona Seif, a well-known activist who has been trying to promote awareness about the problem, said Wednesday she was told about three different incidents in the past five days, including two that were violent. In one incident, the attackers ripped the woman's clothes off and trampled on her companions, she said.
Women, who participated in the 18-day uprising that ended with Mubarak's 11 February 2011 ouster as leading activists, protesters, medics and even fighters to ward off attacks by security agents or affiliated thugs on Tahrir, have found themselves facing the same groping and assaults that have long plagued Egypt's streets during subsequent protests in the square.
Women also have been targeted in recent crackdowns on protesters by military and security troops, a practice commonly used by Mubarak security that grew even more aggressive in the days following his ouster. In a defining image of the post-Mubarak state violence against women, troops were captured on video stomping with their boots on the bare chest of a woman, with only her blue bra showing, as other troops pulled her by the arms across the ground.
A 2008 report by the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights says two-thirds of women in Egypt experienced sexual harassment on a daily basis. A string of mass assaults on women in 2006 during the Muslim feast following the holy month of Ramadan prompted police to increase the number of patrols to combat it but legislation providing punishment was never passed.
"If you know you can get away with sexual harassment and assault, then there is an overall impunity," Human Rights Watch researcher Heba Morayef said.
The case is more paradoxical in Tahrir, which has come to symbolize the revolution, but has lost its original luster among Egyptians weary of more than a year of turmoil.
Women say they briefly experienced a "new Egypt," with strict social customs casually cast aside during the initial 18-day uprising — at least among the protesters who turned the square into a protected zone. But that image was marred when Lara Logan, a US correspondent for CBS television, was sexually assaulted by a frenzied mob in Tahrir on the day Mubarak stepped down, when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians came to the square to celebrate.
The post-Mubarak political reality for women also has deteriorated. They have lost political ground in the 16 months since Mubarak's ouster — even winning fewer seats in Parliament in the first free and fair elections in decades. The 508-member Parliament has only eight female legislators, a sharp drop from the more than 60 in the 2010 Parliament thanks to a Mubarak-era quota. Women's rights groups also fear the growing power of Islamist groups will lead to new restrictions.
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Implementing Religious Law Will Make Egypt the Mightiest Country in World, Richer Than Sweden
MEMRI ^ | 6-7-12 | Sheikh Muhammad Sallah
Posted on June 7, 2012 8:16:20 PM EDT by SJackson
Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Sallah: Implementing Religious Law Will Make Egypt the Mightiest Country in World, Richer Than Sweden
Following are excerpts from a Friday sermon delivered by Egyptian cleric Sheikh Muhammad Sallah, which aired on Al-Hekma TV on May 4, 2012:
Muhammad Sallah: "[In the West] they want to clone the civil strife that has afflicted Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Afghanistan. Yet the Islamic world has not collapsed. They have realized that the collapse of the Islamic world must begin in Egypt. Be sure not to allow any room for civil strife to afflict this country. If civil strife afflicts Egypt, it will spell the death of Islam. I say this loud and clear.
"If you consider all the triumphs over the oppressors and infidels in modern times – they were all achieved under Egyptian commanders. In Afghanistan, with the help of the Arab mujahideen, they brought down the Soviet Union. The commanders of the Arab mujahideen were from Egypt. When the first Arab mujahideen reached Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, they defeated Serbia. That’s right, my dear brothers. When the first mujahideen reached Libya, they improved the military equipment there, they defeated and toppled Al-Qadhafi.
"Now Syria pleads for your help. It pleads for Egypt to save it from Bashar. This is proof that the collapse of Egypt would spell the collapse of the Islamic world, and the success of Egypt would mean the success of the Islamic world.
"Your country is the Mother of the World, where the best of soldiers are. The [West] does not want this courageous people to enjoy stability or security. [...]
"You are wrong in your assessment that if Islam comes to power, people's hands will be chopped off. This would mean that we are thieves. Are we really thieves? They say that Islam will stone people. This would mean that we are fornicators. Are we really fornicators? They say that people's hands and feet on alternate sides will be chopped off. This would mean that we have committed hiraba. But we are not like that. This people rejects sin and rebels against tyranny. The shari'a of Allah is the way to resolve crises. [...]
"If we accept the demands of Allah and implement His laws, we will live according to His words: 'If the people of the towns had but believed and feared Allah, we should have opened for them all kinds of blessings from heaven and earth.'
"The best proof of this is Saudi Arabia. Abraham said [to Allah]: 'My Lord, I have made some of my offspring dwell in a valley without cultivation, near Thy Sacred House.' But this 'valley without cultivation' exports wheat, this 'valley without cultivation' received bounty from the skies. Thus, airplanes carrying pilgrims in their millions have landed there. The people in that country live a life of plenty, after having lived a life of hardship, poverty, and deprivation. The land gives forth minerals and petroleum, and it has become one of the wealthiest countries. Why? It is thanks to the law of Allah.
"If a country with no potential for wealth can live in such abundance and joy, it is needless to say what would become of a country full of natural resources, if it implemented the law of Allah. By Allah, [Egypt] would be the mightiest nation of the world. It would be richer than Sweden, and its per capita income would be higher than any European country. Hence, our enemies do not want us to have stability, prosperity, or security, and they are constantly instigating civil strife, which afflicts the people like wildfire.
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http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/14/egyptian-court-calls-for-parliament-to-be-dissolved/?hpt=hp_t1
Great job obama!
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/egypts-high-court-keeps-shafiq-in-race-suggests-partial-disbandment-of-parliament/2012/06/14/gJQA0h2GcV_allComments.html?ctab=all_&
Breaking down.
240/Andre/Benny/Vince/Option FAIL/Straw/Blackass still in tears.
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Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Thursday, June 14, 2012 -- 10:47 AM EDT-----
Egypt’s Highest Court Says Parliament Must Dissolve
Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled that the Islamist-led parliament must be immediately dissolved, while also blessing the right of Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister to run for president, escalating a battle for power between the remnants of the toppled order and rising Islamists.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/world/middleeast/new-political-showdown-in-egypt-as-court-invalidates-parliament.html?emc=na
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Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Thursday, June 14, 2012 -- 10:47 AM EDT-----
Egypt’s Highest Court Says Parliament Must Dissolve
Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled that the Islamist-led parliament must be immediately dissolved, while also blessing the right of Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister to run for president, escalating a battle for power between the remnants of the toppled order and rising Islamists.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/world/middleeast/new-political-showdown-in-egypt-as-court-invalidates-parliament.html?emc=na
Obama was right not to get involved with that shit.....there's really nothing he could do regarding the sovereign of another country...they have to work out their own problems....same with Syria
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Obama was right not to get involved with that shit.....there's really nothing he could do regarding the sovereign of another country...they have to work out their own problems....same with Syria
Are you fucking kidding?
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http://cnsnews.com/news/article/biden-praises-arab-spring-same-day-egypt-dissolves-its-parliament
LMFAO. Talk about fucking moronic. Obama and his delusional SLAVES like benny, Andre, blackass, straw, 180, option FAIL, all deserve each other.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/17/us-egypt-election-idUSBRE85G01U20120617
Islamists in the lead.
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_EGYPT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-06-17-23-11-03
Great job Obama. Muslim brotherhood just took over. Great Job 180, andre, blackass, straw, Benny, etc.
Fucking morons.
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_EGYPT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-06-17-23-11-03
Great job Obama. Muslim brotherhood just took over. Great Job 180, andre, blackass, straw, Benny, etc.
Fucking morons.
You are against government intervention yet blame the government for everything
You are totally fucked up homie
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18483018
Chaos breaking out.
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Militants cross into Israel from Egypt, 1 killed
Jun 18, 8:56 AM (ET)
By AMY TEIBEL
(AP) Israeli security forces secure the area after an attack, near the southern Israeli city of...
Full Image
JERUSALEM (AP) - Militants crossed from Egypt's turbulent Sinai Peninsula into southern Israel on Monday and opened fire on civilians building a border security fence, defense officials said. One of the Israeli workers was killed, and two assailants died in a gunbattle with Israeli troops responding to the attack.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, which underscored the growing lawlessness in the Sinai desert since longtime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was toppled by a popular uprising last year.
Military spokeswoman Lt. Col Avital Leibovich said the assailants have not been identified but acknowledged that defense officials suspected Palestinian militants in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, which also borders the Sinai desert in that same area, might have been involved.
Several hours after the attack, an Israeli airstrike killed two men riding a motorcycle in the northern Gaza Strip near the Israeli border. The Islamic Jihad militant group said the men were members on a "reconnaissance" mission and vowed revenge. Military officials said the incident was not connected to the earlier infiltration from Egypt.
(AP) Palestinians bring a wounded man to the treatment room of Al Najar Hospital following an Israeli...
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Israeli security officials have grown increasingly anxious about the security situation in the Sinai since Mubarak's ouster. Continued political turmoil in Egypt, weak policing in the Sinai and tough terrain have all encouraged Islamic militant activity in the area. The mountainous desert now harbors an array of militant groups, including Palestinian extremists and al-Qaida-inspired jihadists, Egyptian and Israeli security officials say. The tumultuous situation surrounding Egyptian elections, in which Islamic groups made a strong showing, has added to Israeli unease.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Army Radio that there has been "a worrisome deterioration of Egyptian control" over the Sinai. Barak said he expected the winner of this week's presidential elections in Egypt to honor the country's international obligations - an apparent reference to Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood has said it would respect the historic peace accord but that it would also seek modifications.
Vice Premier Shaul Mofaz, a former defense minister and military chief, said he hoped Israel could conduct a security dialogue with the Egyptians and demand more forceful policing in the Sinai.
"No doubt Sinai has become a security problem," Mofaz told Army Radio. "Today's incident ratchets it up a notch."
There was no immediate comment from Egypt on the attack.
Following Mubarak's ouster, Israel stepped up construction of a security fence across the 230-kilometer (150-mile) border with Egypt in a bid to keep out both militants and illegal migrants from Africa. The government has said it expects the fence to be completed by the end of the year.
In Monday's attack, two civilian vehicles carrying construction workers were driving toward the security fence when militants activated a roadside bomb and opened light arms and anti-tank fire at them, said Leibovich, the military spokeswoman.
One of the vehicles was struck and turned over into a nearby ditch, killing one worker, she said. Israeli troops rushed to the area and engaged in a gunbattle with the militants. One militant, who was carrying a large explosive device, blew up, she said. Another militant, and possibly two others, also died, but other gunmen may have escaped back into Egypt, she said.
The militants were carrying camouflage uniforms, flak jackets, helmets and assault rifles, she said. There was no word on their identities or membership in any of a wide range of armed groups.
Leibovich said Israelis living in five small communities in the area were instructed to lock themselves inside their homes, and two major southern roads were closed to civilian traffic while troops scoured the area for other militants. The military later concluded no other gunmen were in the area.
Israel had been bracing for the possibility of more attacks from the Sinai after two rockets believed fired from there struck southern Israel over the weekend, though Leibovich said it was unclear whether the two events were related.
The magnitude of the growing threat from Sinai was driven home last August, when gunmen from Sinai infiltrated Israel and ambushed vehicles on a desert highway, killing eight Israelis. Six Egyptians were killed in Israel's subsequent hunt for the militants, causing a diplomatic crisis between the two neighbors that ended with an Israeli apology.
The deadly August attack shattered decades of calm along the frontier area, prompting officials on both sides of the border to examine security arrangements and pushing Israel to speed up construction of the border fence.
As part of its landmark first peace treaty with an Arab state, Israel agreed in 1979 to return the Sinai, captured in the 1967 Mideast war, to Egypt, but insisted the vast desert triangle separating Asia from Africa be significantly demilitarized. As the frontier area grew more volatile following Mubarak's ouster, Israel allowed thousands more Egyptian troops to police the area and has beefed up its own military deployment along the border.
The reinforced security deployment has not quieted the Sinai, however, and democratic elections for parliament and president did not resolve the instability in Egypt, which has Israel worried about the future of the 1979 peace accord.
The ruling Egyptian military dissolved the newly elected parliament and assumed sweeping powers subordinating the president and ensuring their hold on the state. The Muslim Brotherhood, which declared early Monday that its candidate, Mohammed Morsi, won this week's presidential election, has challenged the military's power grab, raising the prospect of a power struggle between Egypt's two strongest forces.
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Islamists, Military on a Collision Course in Egypt
FrontPage Magazine ^ | June 18, 2012 | Rick Moran
Posted on Monday, June 18, 2012 8:07:45 AM by SJackson
- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com -
Islamists, Military on a Collision Course in Egypt
Posted By Rick Moran On June 18, 2012 @ 12:55 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 3 Comments
Egyptians finished two days of voting on Sunday, the first relatively free election for president in their history. But indications are that only about 15% of Egypt’s 50 million eligible voters bothered to cast ballots. The low turnout was a direct result of a Supreme Court decision on Thursday that dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament and struck down a law that would have prevented former Mubarak-era prime Minister, Ahmed Shafiq, from running for president. The twin blows caught the Muslim Brotherhood flat footed as the military moved incredibly swiftly to seize legislative power and will now issue a “constitutional declaration” that defines the powers of the president in the absence of a new constitution. This forces the Muslim Brotherhood to make a choice: Either deal with the military on power sharing or take to the streets and put pressure on the generals to give in to their demands.
While many Egyptians were angry at the “soft coup” pulled off by the military, the actions of the court and military council had the effect of generating enormous cynicism among the population, which now sees the revolution as being overturned by the old regime. We have no choice at all,” said Eid Muhamed, who works in a tea house in Cairo. “Both of them are awful,” he added.
This belief is widespread across Egypt and no doubt contributed to the ennui that has gripped the electorate. Egypt’s political culture, which already sees a “hidden hand” that manipulates events so that they redound in favor of the rich and powerful, seems vindicated in that belief with the actions of the military and especially their allies in the courts. Most judges are Mubarak-era holdovers who are vehemently opposed to democratic change. Ahmed al-Zend, head of the influential Judges Club, representing most of Egypt’s jurists, denounced the parliament and threatened to overturn legislation passed by the elected body. “From this day forward, judges will have a say in determining the future of this country and its fate. We will not leave it to you to do with what you want.”
Some observers wonder whether the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t blow their chance at presiding over a transition to democracy in Egypt. Although there is no evidence, it was widely believed that the Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, Mohammed Morsi, struck a deal with the military on the election. Regardless of whether that’s true, many Egyptians believe that the Muslim Brotherhood overreached and tried to acquire too much power, too quickly. The resulting backlash hurt Morsi’s vote total in the first round of presidential voting last month, and may have affected the sympathy of voters who look upon the court’s action in dissolving parliament not as unfavorably as one might expect.
What then, do the Egyptian people want, if not a transition to democracy? The political chaos and demonstrations of the previous 16 months have not worn well on most ordinary Egyptians who have seen food become scarce, the economy near collapse, and their personal security threatened by gangs of thugs who have taken advantage of the lapse in police protection to terrify neighborhoods. “We have no security. Every day there are attacks against people in the neighborhood, and there are absolutely no police, no one to turn to for help,” said Hajja Fatma, a woman from a poor Cairo neighborhood. “They hurt old people, rob homes, and kidnap children for ransom. Allah, Allah, we need order,” she added.
Many observers are saying that the military council ruling Egypt has already won the presidential race. That’s because no matter who is elected, they will have to serve under a parliament elected by rules set down by the military, act under a constitution that will be drawn up by an assembly that will probably be appointed by the military, and would likely be constrained to act by laws approved by the military.
The military council took another step to augment their power by issuing a constitutional decree that the Washington Post reports “gave the armed forces vast powers and appeared to give the presidency a subservient role.”
The declaration, published in the official state gazette, establishes that the president will have no control over the military’s budget or leadership and will not be authorized to declare war without the consent of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
The document said the military would soon appoint a body to draft a new constitution, which would be put to a public referendum within three months. Once a new charter is in place, an election will be held to chose a parliament that will replace the Islamist-dominated one dissolved Thursday by the country’s top court.
The Muslim Brothers, who were caught by surprise when the court destroyed their power base by dissolving parliament, appear to be regaining their equilibrium. After the polls closed Sunday night, the Brotherhood announced that it had rejected the court order dissolving parliament, calling it a “coup against the entire democratic process.” They also rejected the constitutional decree and vowed that the constituent assembly they appointed in parliament last week to create the new constitution will write the new charter, not the generals.
This would seem to put the two power centers of Egyptian politics on a collision course. But the Islamists have struck deals with the military previously, and it is possible they will accede to the new order as long as Morsi is declared the winner of the election and new rules governing the election of members of parliament don’t shut them out of power. For their part, the generals might accept sharing power with the Brotherhood as long as they maintain their independence from government — much like the Pakistani generals enjoy in that country.
The military is gambling that the kind of massive protests that upended the Mubarak regime will not rematerialize, and that whatever unrest occurs can be handled. The Brotherhood may also realize this, which is why it may reluctantly make the deal and bide time until another opportunity presents itself. But the push to institute sharia law — slowly in the case of the Brotherhood but much more quickly as the salafis desire — might throw any arrangement between the two sides out the window.
It is thought that the generals acted because they feared an Islamist takeover of government with the election of Morsi, and a loss of their power and prerogatives. Marc Lynch (“Abu Aardvark”) put it this way:
The SCAF likely believes that a renewal of massive, sustained protest is no longer in the cards through a combination of its own repression and relentless propaganda, along with the strategic mistakes by protestors themselves. It doesn’t feel threatened by a few thousand isolated protestors in Tahrir, and probably is gambling that they won’t be joined by the masses that made the Jan. 25 revolution last year. They may also feel that the intense rifts of suspicion and rage dividing the Muslim Brotherhood from non-Islamist political trends are now so deep that they won’t be able to cooperate effectively to respond. Or they may feel that the MB would rather cut a deal, even now, than take it to the next level. They may be right, they may be wrong. But I wouldn’t bet on stability.
Early returns show Mohammed Morsi with the lead, but millions of votes still need to be counted. The tally won’t be “official” for a few days, but any result that gives the election to Ahmed Shafiq will likely be seen as illegitimate by the majority of Egyptians, despite most of them desiring the stability and law and order promised by the ex-prime minister. If Morsi wins, the Brotherhood will have a decision to make regarding whether they will accept a presidency with limited powers, and literally under the thumb of the generals, or whether they will contest the military council’s actions in the streets.
Whatever they decide, stability for a nation riven by divisions along political and religious lines will prove elusive.
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Egyptian elected 'fascist Muslim Brotherhood' Mohamed Mursi's FACTSHEET
Posted on Monday, June 18, 2012 12:30:57 PM by Milagros
Egypt's fascist Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi, growing danger against Women, Christians, Israel...
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Candidate Wants Christians to "convert, pay tribute, or leave." Christian Post, May 31, 2012.
http://www.christianpost.com/news/egypts-muslim-brotherhood-candidate-wants-christians-to-convert-pay-tribute-or-leave-the-country-75821/
"Egypt's Copts back Shafiq as anti-Islamist bulwark," Egyptian Gazette, June 16, 2012.
http://213.158.162.45/~egyptian/index.php?action=news&id=26152&title=Egypt's%20Copts%20back%20Shafiq%20as%20anti-Islamist%20bulwark
Egypt's presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq has tried to establish his democratic credentials and said his Muslim Brotherhood rival would bring back the "dark ages".
Shafiq added the Muslim Brotherhood tried to blackmail the Christian Copts and prevent them from exercising their voting rights. While on
Tuesday, his competitor Mohammed Morsi vowed to ensure the full rights of Christians and women if he is elected.
Ahmed Shafiq: Muslim Brotherhood pushing Egypt backwards," CCTV News, June 4, 2012.
http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20120604/101394.shtml
Oren Kessler: "Egypt Islamist vows global caliphate in Jerusalem," JPost, May 8, 2012.
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=269074
If Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Mursi became president, Egypt's new capital will no more be Cairo, but the new capital will be Jerusalem, a prominent Egyptian cleric said at a presidential campaign rally, which was aired by an Egyptian private TV channel.
"The United States of the Arabs will be restored on the hands of that man [Mursi] and his supporters. The capital of the [Muslim] Caliphate will be Jerusalem with God's will," Hegazy said, as the crowds cheered, waving the Egyptian flags along with the flags of the Islamist Hamas group, which rules the Gaza Strip.
"Tomorrow Mursi will liberate Gaza," the crowds chanted.
"Yes, we will either pray in Jerusalem or we will be martyred there," Hegazy said.
Abeer Tayel, "Jerusalem to become Egypt's capital under Mursi's rule, says Muslim cleric," Al Arabiya, June 7, 2012.
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/06/07/219272.html
"Egypt Presidential Candidate Seeks Constitution Based on Sharia Law," RIA Novosti, May 13, 2012.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20120513/173419752.html
Billy Hallowell: "Mohammed Mursi of Muslim Brotherhood Calls for Sharia & Jihad in Egypt," The Blaze, May 14, 2012.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/muslim-brotherhoods-egyptian-presidential-candidate-jihad-is-our-path-death-in-the-name-of-allah-is-our-goal/
Egyptian women fear fewer rights, more harassment after elections," RT, June 7, 2012.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/25/us-egypt-election-mursi-idUSBRE84O0CZ20120525
IN the latest edition of Foreign Policy magazine, Muslim reformer Mona Eltahawy called for a genuine revolution in the Middle East. Unlike the Arab Spring, this one would release women from oppression. "First we stop pretending," she said. "Call out the hate for what it is." Is misogyny prevalent and gaining traction in the Muslim world and why did most women vote for Islamists in Middle East elections?
Recently, Muhammad Morsi, a leading Egyptian presidential candidate and head of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, called for instituting sharia law and banning women from running for president.
Even women who observe Islamic dress codes are harassed in Cairo, and during last year's demonstrations for freedom in Tahrir Square, women were molested and subjected to virginity tests.
Ida Lichter: "Real reform for women a must in Muslim world," The Australian, May 20, 2012.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/real-reform-for-women-a-must-in-muslim-world/story-e6frg6ux-1226361561456
Today, brandishing signs such as 'democracy will bring oppression' and 'Islam is the solution for Egypt', women in burkas were joined by men in traditional dress for a rally calling for sharia law to be imposed.
"London embassy protesters demand sharia law amid continuing chaos in Egypt," Daily Mail Reporter, February 4, 2011.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353787/London-embassy-protesters-demand-sharia-law-amid-continuing-chaos-Egypt.html
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Muslim Brotherhood - epitome of Islamic fascism
The affinities between the Muslim Brotherhood and fascism were observed in the I930s...
Roger Griffin, Matthew Feldman: "Fascism: Post-war fascisms," Taylor & Francis, 2004, p 31.
http://books.google.com/books?id=kne26UnE1wQC&pg=PA31
The collapse of fascist and Nazi ideology taking place in postwar Europe was simply not in evidence in the program of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Jeffrey Herf: "Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World," Yale University Press, Nov 30, 2009, p. 251.
http://books.google.com/books?id=YzQNSTvHv-sC&pg=PA251
Islamism, or fascism with an Islamic face, was born with and of the Muslim Brotherhood. It proved (and improved) its fascist core convictions and practices through collaboration with the Nazis in the run-up to and during World War II.
Marc Erikson: "Islamism, fascism and terrorism," (Part 3), Asia Times Online, December 4, 2002.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DL04Ak01.html
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Breaking news
One Israeli was killed as gunmen from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula attacked workers constructing a border security fence with small arms and explosives, an Israeli Defense Ministry official said.
The Israeli was a civilian contract employee, the official said, speaking anonymously as he was not authorized to comment on record. At least two of the gunmen were killed after Israeli forces returned fire, an army spokesman said, speaking anonymously in accordance with military regulation.
The attack, which followed rockets fired from Sinai into southern Israel over the weekend, raised concerns in Israel about security on the border with Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state more than three decades ago.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which has criticized the accord with Israel, says its candidate Mohamed Mursi is set to win Egypt's first free presidential election. The group says Mursi took 52 percent of ballots, beating Ahmed Shafik, who served as premier under Hosni Mubarak. Votes are still being counted after the runoff election between the two men ended yesterday, and official results are due June 21.
“We see here a disturbing deterioration in Egyptian control in the Sinai,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, according to an e-mailed statement from his office. “We are waiting for the results of the election. Whoever wins, we expect them to take responsibility for all of Egypt's international commitments, including the peace treaty with Israel.”
'Wild West'
Israeli officials have voiced concern about the close links between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic movement that controls the Gaza Strip and opposes the Oslo peace deal with Israel that is supported by the Palestinian Authority.
The relationship between Israel and Egypt has frayed since Mubarak, who maintained the peace agreement, was forced out by street protests in February last year.
The Sinai is turning into a “kind of Wild West” used by militant Islamic groups to smuggle weapons and attack Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in April. Eight Israelis were killed in a cross-border attack by Palestinian militants near the southern resort city of Eilat last August.
,br> A natural gas pipeline running through Sinai to Israel has been bombed 14 times by Islamic militants since February 2012. The supply cuts resulted in Egyptian exports to Israel dropping to $179 million last year compared with $355 million in 2010, and Egypt terminated the supply agreement in April.
'Different Egypt'
Israel is building a fence along the 240-kilometer (150- mile) border to block militants and African migrants from entering the country from Sinai. The government has said the estimated 1.35-billion shekel ($360-million) project is expected to be completed by year's end.
Israeli officials have also expressed concern over the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip through tunnels dug underneath the Sinai border. The Israeli Air Force targeted what it said were two terror-activity sites in Gaza overnight, according to an e-mailed statement from the army. At least five Palestinian civilians were injured in the airstrikes, according to Adham Abu Selmeya, a spokesman for Gaza's emergency medical services.
“This isn't Mubarak's Egypt and it definitely isn't an Egypt of peace or quiet,” Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a member of the Israeli parliament and former defense minister who was close to Mubarak, said on Army Radio. “This is a different Egypt. What it will be and how it will act only heaven knows.”
Gwen Ackerman and Calev Ben-David: "One Israeli Killed as Gunmen Attack From Across Egypt Border," Bloomberg News, June 18, 2012
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-18/one-israeli-killed-as-gunmen-attack-from-across-egypt-border
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IDF tanks move closer to Egypt border
ynetnews ^ | 6/18/2012 | Yoav Zitun
The IDF has deployed Armored forces near the Israel-Egypt border, moving tanks closer to the fence, Ynet has learned. The unusual move followed Monday's terror attack on defense contractor crews building the new security fence.
The attack claimed the life of Said Phashpashe, 36, from Haifa. Golani soldiers who were scrambled to the area killed two terrorists.
Ynet was able to document the presence of Israeli tanks in close proximity to the border – maneuvers which are barred by Jerusalem's peace treaty with Cairo.
The last time the IDF boosted its front-line combat vehicle presence in the sector was in August 2011, following a murderous terror attack by the Islamic Jihad, which left nine Israelis dead.
At the time, the military deployed several armored personnel carriers along the border, as part of the heightened security measures in the sensitive area.
Ynet's chief military commentator Ron Ben Yishai noted that several months ago, Israel and Egypt arrived at an agreement by which Cairo would be able to deploy 20 tanks near the border, to ward off attacks by Bedouins on Egyptian forces, despite the fact that such a move contradicts the peace treaty.
It is likely that the deal also allowed Israel to do the same in favor of increased protection for the area's communities.
Gaza Division Southern Brigade Commander Col. Tal Harmoni held a press briefing Monday, following the terror attack: "We are in a race against the clock to close the border," he told reporters. "We have to seal off the border as soon as we can to prevent exactly these kinds of attacks."
Harmoni added that as tragic as the attack's result were, "It could have been far worse – a large-scale attack was prevented.
"The IDF has strong ties with the Egyptians forces, who are working tirelessly to thwart such incidents," he concluded.
________________________ ______________
crickets from team kenya
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That article sounds like an instruction manual. Benny B and Andreisman act like a fuckin' pre-programmed wind-up toy.....just wind 'em up and off they go, on their politically correct All-Hail-Obama track.......
In fact, I don't even think they are real people.....just some server in a chilly room putting out automated Democratic Party approved messages.
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That article sounds like an instruction manual. Benny B and Andreisman act like a fuckin' pre-programmed wind-up toy.....just wind 'em up and off they go, on their politically correct All-Hail-Obama track.......
In fact, I don't even think they are real people.....just some server in a chilly room putting out automated Democratic Party approved messages.
this is funny....... :)....I guess 3333 isn't an anti-Obama bot as well. huh?..its funny that you go after me and say I might be a bot but the guy with 88,000 anti-Obama posts is just a regular nice guy?>???
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Obama Threatens Any Opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt with the Withdrawal of All
Atlas Shrugs ^ | 6/19/12 | Pamela Geller
Posted on June 19, 2012 1:16:24 AM EDT by Nachum
The Obama administration warned Egypt's military leaders on Monday to speedily hand over power or risk losing billions of dollars in U.S. military and economic aid to the country.
It wasn't enough that Obama invited the Muslim Brotherhood to his submission speech in Cairo in June 2009, despite the fact that the group was banned at that time for obvious reasons: they wanted to install a Sharia government, and the draconian, barbaric code of Sharia in Egypt. It wasn't enough that after he invited the Brotherhood to his speech, he had officials in his administration meeting with this Islamic supremacist group. It wasn't enough that he abandoned the true freedom movement, when the women of Iran and the Persians, Zoroastrians rose up after 30 years of oppressive Sharia rule. He spit on them and left them to die. They met bullets with bare flesh and broken bricks. It was a squandered historical moment - remove the head of the snake of Hezb'allah, Hamas, the shiite fighting American soldiers in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the shia agitation in Bahrain. Obama could have saved the free world and gone down in history as one of the magnificent heroes for good. But that is not who he is. He is a tool, a malevolent subversive who managed to seize the most powerful office in the world with the PR expertise of the enemedia.
Obama's war on the good continued.
It wasn't enough that he abandoned our 30-year ally in Egypt, the first Muslim country to make peace with the Jewish people despite the Jew-hatred mandated in the Quran. It wasn't enough that he threw our great friend and ally out with both hands, the most liberal of reformers in the Muslim countries in that region.
On January 25,
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasshrugs2000.typepad. com ...
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http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=274345
Egypt in chaos and in the hands of the muslim brotherhood - JUST LIKE MANY OF US WARNED!
FUCK YOU OBAMA, ANDRE, 240, BENNY, BLACKEN, VINCE, OPTION FAIL, ETC.
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http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=274345
Egypt in chaos and in the hands of the muslim brotherhood - JUST LIKE MANY OF US WARNED!
FUCK YOU OBAMA, ANDRE, 240, BENNY, BLACKEN, VINCE, OPTION FAIL, ETC.
fuck you schizo bitch. I said nothing about egypt. This again proves you just do the blind fire. Facts mean nothing to you... go get a sound byte from somewhere.. HAHAHAHAHA this chump is a surface thinker. Easily swayed... Very sad.. Sad indeed... Chump
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fuck you schizo bitch. I said nothing about egypt. This again proves you just do the blind fire. Facts mean nothing to you... go get a sound byte from somewhere.. HAHAHAHAHA this chump is a surface thinker. Easily swayed... Very sad.. Sad indeed... Chump
LOL - just chalk this up to another thing many of us predicted from Day 1 that you obama cunnts got wrong.
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LOL - just chalk this up to another thing many of us predicted from Day 1 that you obama cunnts got wrong.
What comments have i posted about egypt?
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LOL - just chalk this up to another thing many of us predicted from Day 1 that you obama cunnts got wrong.
So Mr. Oracle what would you have done?
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What comments have i posted about egypt?
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So Mr. Oracle what would you have done?
Nothing at all and let Mubarak stay in power.
Would not have given 200 million of taxpayer dollars for their election.
Would not have called for mubaraks ouster like ghettobama did.
Would not have members on the MB comiserating with my admn like ghettobama is.
We warned you obama cult members many times that this was going to happen. but nnnnoooooooo, you slavish drones so in love with your messianic cult leader refused to listen.
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What comments have i posted about egypt?
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Don't remember, but considering you melt down when anyone attacks the messiah, its fun to lump you in w the likes of andre, 180, benny, blackass.
:P :P
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Don't remember, but considering you melt down when anyone attacks the messiah, its fun to lump you in w the likes of andre, 180, benny, blackass.
:P :P
So you admit you got nothin
hahahahaha
Factcheck/getbig.org says youre full of shit...
I blasted Obama for his last shit with the mexicans... and Gitmo....and Weak healthcare and im on record with my support for Ron Paul
Fatality!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Scorpion Wins
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41 rockets slam into Southern Israel
Israel National News ^ | June 19, 2012 | Gil Ronen
41 Rockets Slam into South, IAF Strikes Kill Six Terrorists killed Monday were an Egyptian and a Saudi, who dedicated attack to Osama Bin Laden. By Gil Ronen First Publish: 6/19/2012, 6:36 PM (Flash 90)Forty-one terrorist rockets slammed into southern Israel between midnight and 8:30 p.m. Monday. The IAF has carried out three strikes on terror targets in Gaza in the last 24 hours, killing at least six terrorists. An IAF strike Tuesday afternoon severely injured a man who was on a motorcycle, Gaza sources said. Hamas has taken responsibility for the rocket fire at the Negev. It said it was trying to hit the IDF's Zikim base, and that the rockets were a response to IAF strikes last night. No Israeli casualties have been reported but thousands of residents have been forced to spend the day in shelters. The two terrorists who infiltrated Israel Monday were a Saudi citizen and an Egyptian belonging to a hitherto unknown group called the Shura Council of the Mujahedeen at Al Quds, Associated Press reported. The two appear in a video made public by the group in which they can be seen reading their final wills before launching the attack. In a leaflet published along with the video, the group dedicates the attack to the Al Aqsa Mosque, Arab terror prisoners held in Israel, and Osama bin Laden. The terrorists killed one person before being killed themselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
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Bump for straw and fagbear
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By Yasmin Helal
Al Arabiya
An Egyptian plumber in Alexandria beat his pregnant wife to death upon learning that she had not voted for Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammed Mursi, reported the Egyptian daily al-Wafd on Sunday.
According to police reports, the initial argument between the couple who was not named escalated into violence, despite her pleas. Battered and bruised, she was reported to have died at the hospital from injuries sustained.
Domestic fights have dominated Egyptian news headlines when the bid fell on the two most feared and most controversial candidates, Mursi and former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq.
Voters, along with Egyptian media personalities, heatedly defended their chosen candidates and eagerly await the result which will be announced Sunday.
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/06/24/222413.html
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White House 'Congratulates' Morsi on Winning Egyptian Presidential Election
weeklystandard.com ^ | June 24, 2012 | DANIEL HALPER
Posted on June 24, 2012 2:31:47 PM EDT by Free ThinkerNY
White House spokesman Jay Carney issued the following statement in response to the Egyptian presidential election:
"The United States congratulates Dr. Mohamed Morsi on his victory in Egypt’s Presidential election, and we congratulate the Egyptian people for this milestone in their transition to democracy.
"We look forward to working together with President-elect Morsi and the government he forms, on the basis of mutual respect, to advance the many shared interests between Egypt and the United States. We believe that it is important for President-elect Morsi to take steps at this historic time to advance national unity by reaching out to all parties and constituencies in consultations about the formation of a new government. We believe in the importance of the new Egyptian government upholding universal values, and respecting the rights of all Egyptian citizens – including women and religious minorities such as Coptic Christians. Millions of Egyptians voted in the election, and President-elect Morsi and the new Egyptian government have both the legitimacy and responsibility of representing a diverse and courageous citizenry.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
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Flashback- W.H.: Muslim Brotherhood "Secular," Won't Seek Presidency
Pundit Press ^ | 6/24/12 | Aurelius
Posted on June 24, 2012 11:47:48 AM EDT by therightliveswithus
The White House does not want you to remember some facts today. Unfortunately for them, the internet never forgets.
In February of last year, the White House was very busy giving the Muslim Brotherhood free PR. This prompted the Telegraph to write an article entitled, "The Muslim Brotherhood gets a PR makeover from the Obama administration."
In the piece, Administration officials are quoted as saying that the Muslim Brotherhood is a "largely secular" organisation that "eschewed violence." Today, after winning the Presidency, the M.B. declared that, "Allah willing," their new capital would be in Jerusalem. Something tells me that they are planning something that does not "eschew violence."
And the most ironic piece of news is that, back when the White House was giving the Brotherhood free publicity, the M.B. decided to declare that they would not seek the Egyptian Presidency. The White House welcomed the news. And this is the most ironic screenshot of the day (click on the image for better quality):
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Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi: “Jihad Is Our Path & Death in the Name of Allah Is Our Goal”
Gateway Pundit ^ | 6/24/12 | Jim Hoft
Posted on June 24, 2012 9:47:10 PM EDT by Nachum
Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood told supporters last month, “Jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal.” Lovely. Voice of Russia reported, via ROP:
Egypt’s Constitution should be based on the Koran and Sharia law, presidential candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist movement Mohamed Morsi said.
“The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal,” Morsi said in his election speech before Cairo University students on Saturday night.
Today Egypt is close as never before to the triumph of Islam at all the state levels, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
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Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi: “Jihad Is Our Path & Death in the Name of Allah Is Our Goal”
Gateway Pundit ^ | 6/24/12 | Jim Hoft
Posted on June 24, 2012 9:47:10 PM EDT by Nachum
Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood told supporters last month, “Jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal.” Lovely. Voice of Russia reported, via ROP:
Egypt’s Constitution should be based on the Koran and Sharia law, presidential candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist movement Mohamed Morsi said.
“The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal,” Morsi said in his election speech before Cairo University students on Saturday night.
Today Egypt is close as never before to the triumph of Islam at all the state levels, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Great success!
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/flashback-obama-in-cairo-2009-america-will-not-support-an-egyptian-govt-ruthless-in-suppressing-the-rights-of-others-will-only-welcome-new-govt-with-respect-for-all
Obama = fail.
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Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi: “Jihad Is Our Path & Death in the Name of Allah Is Our Goal”
Gateway Pundit ^ | 6/24/12 | Jim Hoft
Posted on June 24, 2012 9:47:10 PM EDT by Nachum
Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood told supporters last month, “Jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal.” Lovely. Voice of Russia reported, via ROP:
Egypt’s Constitution should be based on the Koran and Sharia law, presidential candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist movement Mohamed Morsi said.
“The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal,” Morsi said in his election speech before Cairo University students on Saturday night.
Today Egypt is close as never before to the triumph of Islam at all the state levels, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Of course its going to be based on Sharia Law...its an Islamic Country. We are a nation that has laws based on Christian Laws.
That was never going to change no matter who was elected to office. It would be silly to think that it would somehow become like the U.S. Its an Arab country...deal with it
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Of course its going to be based on Sharia Law...its an Islamic Country. We are a nation that has laws based on Christian Laws.
That was never going to change no matter who was elected to office. It would be silly to think that it would somehow become like the U.S. Its an Arab country...deal with it
Shame on you.
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Shame on you.
Get your head out of ass.....the vast majority of people in that country is Muslim so obviously they are going to follow Sharia Law....that was never going to change
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Get your head out of ass.....the vast majority of people in that country is Muslim so obviously they are going to follow Sharia Law....that was never going to change
Big Ach resents this remark.
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Get your head out of ass.....the vast majority of people in that country is Muslim so obviously they are going to follow Sharia Law....that was never going to change
If imam asked you TP commit hari Kari would you?
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Egypt’s hopes betrayed
Telegraph View: the liberal, secularist dream of Egypt's revolution has been betrayed by the army and Islamists.
By Telegraph View
7:34AM BST 25 Jun 2012
Pity those liberal, secularist Egyptians who drove the revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak 16 months ago. Like a nut, they have been cracked between the military, who have dominated the country for the past 60 years, and the Muslim Brotherhood, who claim to be moderate, but whose ultimate goal remains the imposition of sharia.
Yesterday’s announcement of Mohammed Morsi’s victory in the presidential election results from a deal between the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood’s political arm, and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Under it, the military will control internal security, defence and foreign policy, leaving domestic matters largely in Mr Morsi’s hands. For the moderates, this means the threat of repression on one hand and Islamicisation on the other.
At least the Brotherhood have a legitimate claim to power, after winning both parliamentary and presidential elections. By contrast, the military – in conjunction with the supreme court – has done all it can to retain its authority. On June 14, the court ruled that the electoral law was unconstitutional and that parliament, elected last year, should be dissolved. The SCAF then arrogated to themselves the right to legislate, and to select the body producing the new constitution.
The best that can be expected is that the rival ambitions of the two sides will ensure mutual constraint. But the reversal of the timetable for democratic transition by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is more likely to produce bitter frustration and possibly chaos, with competing centres of power strangling desperately needed attempts to revive Egypt’s economy. Whatever happens, the hopes raised by those heady weeks in Tahrir Square have been cruelly betrayed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/9353445/Egypts-hopes-betrayed.html
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Brothers’ Day
By Mark Steyn
June 25, 2012 4:29 A.M.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/303860/brothers-day-mark-steyn#
Last year at NRO I wrote: “The short 90-year history of independent Egypt is that it got worse” — and was about to get “worse still.” Eighty years ago, Egypt was ruled by a ramshackle, free-ish monarchy in mimicry of the Westminster system; forty years ago, it was under the control of authoritarian, secular pan-Arab nationalists; and now the Muslim Brotherhood guy has won the election.
But don’t worry, on the day Mubarak stepped down, America’s director of national intelligence, who presides over the most lavishly funded intelligence bureaucracy on the planet, was telling the world that the Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular.” So that’s okay.
The linked clip of me and Megyn Kelly aired an hour or so after Mubarak’s resignation, and is the same interview in which I said this was the dawn of the post-Western Middle East. “Experts” can get a lot of things wrong, but rarely on the scale of the Western media in February 2011, even as they were on the sharp end of the ”Facebook Revolution”:
Within minutes of Mubarak’s resignation, the CBS reporter Lara Logan, covering events in Tahrir Square, was set upon by a 200-strong mob who stripped her, punched her, beat her with flagpoles, and subjected her to a half-hour sexual assault by multiple participants while shouting “Jew! Jew!…”
What’s striking about this story is not so much that her own employer, CBS News, chose not to run it until over three days later - on the following Monday – but that in the intervening period they pumped out the same sappy drivel as everybody else – ”Egypt’s New Age Revolution” (60 Minutes), “Egypt Proved Change Is Possible, Sexy And Cool!” (CBS Sunday Morning) – even as they knew there was another side to the story, and that their own correspondent was lying in the hospital traumatised because of it.
We can’t do anything about the disposition of the Egyptian electorate, but we could at least stop deluding ourselves. Mubarak, according to various reports, is in a coma, or “clinically dead,” or near death. Let’s suppose the “Facebook Revolution” had never happened, and he’d continued ruling until stricken by ill health a year or so later. Does anyone suppose his successor would have been any worse than the Brotherhood/military carve-up Egypt’s wound up with?
Or, as CBS would put it, any less “sexy and cool”?
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Obama Phones to Congratulate Muslim B'hood on Victory in Egypt’s ‘Milestone’ Election
CNS News ^ | 6/24/2012 | Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com) – President Obama phoned the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi on Sunday evening to congratulate him on becoming Egypt’s new president, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo said in a Twitter message around 7 PM eastern time.
Earlier, White House press secretary Jay Carney in a statement called the Islamist’s election a “milestone” in Egyptians’ transition to democracy.
“Millions of Egyptians voted in the election, and President-elect Morsi and the new Egyptian government have both the legitimacy and responsibility of representing a diverse and courageous citizenry,” he said.
Egypt’s election commission earlier announced that Morsi had beaten his second-round opponent, former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, by a margin of 51.7 to 48.3 percent – or just 800,000 votes.
Results had been delayed for four days, worsening an already tense atmosphere after an incident-laden campaign, including a recent court ruling dissolving the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated parliament and claims of a power grab by the ruling military council.
Carney commended both the election commission and the military council “for their role in supporting a free and fair election, and look forward to the completion of a transition to a democratically-elected government.”
“We look forward to working together with President-elect Morsi and the government he forms, on the basis of mutual respect, to advance the many shared interests between Egypt and the United States,” the statement read.
“We believe that it is important for President-elect Morsi to take steps at this historic time to advance national unity by reaching out to all parties and constituencies in consultations about the formation of a new government.
“We believe in the importance of the new Egyptian government upholding universal values, and respecting the rights of all Egyptian citizens – including women and religious minorities such as Coptic Christians.”
Muslim Brotherhood supporters celebrate the victory of Mohammed Morsi, in Cairo on Sunday. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
In his first address after the results were announced, Morsi said on state television he would be the leader “of all Egyptians.” Copts were widely reported to have supported non-Islamist candidates in the first round of voting, and Shafiq in the runoff.
Iran’s foreign ministry hailed Morsi’s victory, declaring that Egypt was in the “final stages of the Islamic Awakening and a new era of change in the Middle East.”
Celebrations were reported in the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands of Palestinians demonstrated. Hamas leader called Morsi’s win “a victory for all Arabs and Muslims.”
Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza, was set up in 1987 as a Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its founding charter calls for Jews to be killed and says all Muslims are duty-bound to join a jihad to destroy Israel. The U.S. government has designated Hamas as a “foreign terrorist organization” since 1997.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office said in a brief statement it respected the outcome of the Egyptian election.
“Israel looks forward to continuing cooperation with the Egyptian government on the basis of the peace treaty between the two countries, which is a joint interest of both peoples and contributes to regional stability,” it said.
Egypt in 1979 became the first Arab country to sign a peace agreement with the Jewish state, and U.S. governments have over the ensuing decades given Egypt more than $60 billion in military aid linked to the treaty.
The fall of the Mubarak regime last year and the rise of Islamist forces prompted concerns about the future of the agreement. In a recent Pew Global Attitudes Project poll 61 percent of Egyptian respondents favored ending the treaty, up from 54 percent a year earlier.
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The New Egyptian President Reportedly Said 'Jihad Is Our Path And Death In The Name Of Allah Is Our Goal'
Ashley Lutz|Jun. 25, 2012, 2:40 PM|3,736|40
Comments reportedly made just over a month ago by new Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi have some spooked.
The Voice of Russia radio website reported that Mordi made the following remarks on May 13:
“The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal,” Morsi said in his election speech before Cairo University students on Saturday night.
Today Egypt is close as never before to the triumph of Islam at all the state levels, he said.
“Today we can establish Sharia law because our nation will acquire well-being only with Islam and Sharia. The Muslim Brothers and the Freedom and Justice Party will be the conductors of these goals,” he said.
While the comments have not been widely reported, they appear to have been reported by the respectable Ria Novosti news-wire, and are no doubt worrying to Middle East observers.
Morsi was the presidential candidate for the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has some ideological links to radical Jihadist movements. For the most part, the Muslim Brotherhood have promised to rule Egypt in a relatively secular manner, for example denying any expansion of sharia law within the country. These comments seem to directly contradict that position.
Egypt is the largest Arab nation with a population of 90 million. Morsi, a former prisoner who holds a doctorate from USC, was elected to a four-year term in an election marred by violence and confusion.
DON'T MISS: Egypt's New Islamist President Has Already Said He Wants To Reopen Ties With Iran >
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/morsi-says-jihad-is-our-path-and-death-in-the-name-of-allah-is-our-goal-2012-6#ixzz1yqJeoSX0
Option FAIL, Benny, Andre, Straw?
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is doing her part to help the Muslim Brotherhood implement the Turkey Strategy in Egypt. As I’ve pointed out before, if you want to see what’s going to happen in Egypt, look at Turkey, where the military was Atatürk’s bulwark against what would otherwise be the certainty that Islamists would overwhelm the pro-Western civil society the Kemalists labored against Islamic norms to build. (Caroline Glick makes a similar argument in a characteristically sharp post.)
It has taken Turkey’s Islamic supremacist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a decade of meticulous, determined gradualism to return Turkey to the Islamist camp. Things will go downhill much faster in Egypt, especially with the U.S. government suicidally siding with the America-hating Brotherhood. In Egypt, they have not had a nine-decade secularization project and the military, far from being committed to Western democracy, has always been rife with Islamic supremacists — several of whom went on to iconic careers in al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations (after getting their start, of course, in the Muslim Brotherhood).
Here’s what Mrs. Clinton is telling the Arabic press:
Egyptian military authorities must cede power to the winner of the country’s first post-Mubarak presidential elections, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted Wednesday.
“We think that it is imperative that the military fulfill its promise to the Egyptian people to turn power over to the legitimate winner,” Clinton said in a discussion hosted at the State Department.
Some of the actions by the military leadership in past days were “clearly troubling,” Clinton said, sitting with former secretary of state James Baker at the event to support the creation of the first US museum for diplomacy. ”The military has to assume an appropriate role which is not to interfere with, dominate or try to subvert the constitutional authority,” she warned.
That’s the Turkey strategy in small compass. Erdogan exploited the bleating of American and European progressives to weaken Turkey’s pro-Western military — transferring control to the Islamist civilian government he controls, and installing Islamists loyal to him in place of the Kemalist military officers he has sacked. Interestingly, Mrs. Clinton does not have much to say about “subvert[ing] the constitutional authority” when Erdogan — who Obama hails as his closest regional ally — jails political opponents, military officers, and journalists.
The secretary of state paid lip-service to the need for the Brotherhood’s New Egypt to support “an inclusive democratic process, the rights of all Egyptians, women and men, Muslims and Christians, everyone has to be respected.” I’m sure Coptic Christians are very impressed, as are the smattering of authentic democrats whom the administration helped the Brotherhood steamroll.
A real opportunity here for Mitt Romney — but is he listening so much to the Brotherhood-friendly counsel of the GOP’s McCain wing that he’ll blow it?
Www.national review.com
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Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org)
Source URL (retrieved on Jun 26, 2012): http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/time-give-mideast-democracy-7105
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Waking from the Democratic Dream
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Robert W. Merry [2]
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June 25, 2012
Robert W. Merry [2]
The time has come for the United States to give up on the notion of democracy in the Middle East. It isn’t going to happen, at least not anytime soon, and the country is starting to look silly with so many of its intellectuals clinging to a notion that has no basis in reality. Just look at Iraq, set upon a course that many Americans thought would lead to democracy, and paid for with the blood of more than four thousand American dead and some thirty-three thousand wounded. What do we see in today’s Iraq? A budding dictatorship moving in the direction of the last one—but with a big difference: this one is dominated by Shiites, a power arrangement that appreciably enhances the regional influence of neighboring Iran, considered by many Americans as their country’s most nettlesome adversary.
Look at Egypt, where the “Arab Spring” set American hearts aflutter with the prospect of democratic pluralism. The lesson there is that it’s impossible to overestimate the willingness of the traditional power blocs to upend any democratic structures or procedures that threaten their position and prerogatives in that venerable land. Consider tiny Kuwait, where the highest court just annulled the duly run parliamentary elections of February, in which opposition forces made serious gains against the country’s status quo forces. And look at Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where any democratic sentiments are quickly quashed whenever they gain any apparent traction at all.
And yet in the face of all this, and more, many idealistic Americans hold fast to the idea that if we can just provide assistance and guidance and apply sufficient military power against the bad guys, democratic institutions eventually will blossom in the region. The problem here isn’t just that this notion lacks any shred of realism; more significantly, it undergirds the constant call for America to apply military force in the region on behalf of democracy . . . or the prospect of democracy . . . or at least the prospect that some Middle Eastern nation might begin a long journey toward democracy. Consider, for example, Libya, where the demise of the dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi led many Americans to visualize the stirrings of a democratic impulse, made possible in large measure by America’s judicious application of force.
But then it turned out that the militias that emerged during the anti-Qaddafi fervor weren’t about to relinquish their weapons or their territorial gains and that the country couldn’t rise above the chaos of tribal, ethnic and sectarian strife. It isn’t clear that Libya is really a nation at present. True, we don’t often hear today the kind of rhetoric that President George W. Bush unfurled during his second inaugural address in January 2005, when he proclaimed America’s “ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” That now is seen as idle talk without any foundation in serious thought. But that perception doesn’t stop many from still seeing America’s goal as the spread of democracy—and democracy’s goal as eradicating tyranny.
The essential problem with all this is that it is grounded in ignorance. Americans can’t fathom the power of the Islamic idea that there is no spiritual “I,” but only a spiritual “We” that has entered into the quickened body as a reflection of the divine light. The Arabic word for this, as Oswald Spengler points out, is Islam—submission. He adds that the Western religious sacrament of contrition “presupposes the strong and free will that can overcome itself. But it is precisely the impossibility of an Ego as a free power in the face of the divine that constitutes ‘Islam.’” He explains that the Islamic prime sacrament is Grace, which knows no such thing as free will.
As Islam emerged in the seventh century, the consensus of the community became by definition infallible. As Muhammad put it, “My people can never agree in an error.” This concept of an infallible community consensus lies at the heart of two fundamental Islamic religious ideas—first, that the individual is meaningless outside this infallible consensus and, second, that government and religion remain inseparable. Those ideas were incorporated into Islam in the seventh century and remain to this day bedrock maxims of Islamic thought—and powerful doctrinal impediments to the democratic impulse.
Americans know that a central tenet of Islam is an absolute conviction that government and religion are intertwined as one. But they can’t bring themselves to see that this perception is fundamental and embedded in the culture of the region. Nor can they see that this reality will always militate against the democratic impulses that inevitably spring up from time to time within the hopes and dreams of many people of the region.
Further, many Americans can’t see that many secular mores and folkways of the region are the product of the bedouin culture, developed over centuries of isolation in an austere and unforgiving land. As David Pryce-Jones writes in his book The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs, Middle Eastern nationalism “simply adds what might be called an outer ring” to the tribal customs and judgments of Middle Eastern society.
This is particularly true of what he calls the "power-challenge dialectic," a residue from the tribal experience that both guides and constricts behavior at the national level. In tribal society, all males are theoretically equal and capable of exercising authority. Thus, to gain power a man must develop a following by demonstrating that he is heroic, ruthless, tough, cruel and understanding—in short, commanding. Since there are no formal means of selecting leaders, the informal realities unleash the power-challenge dialectic, in which challenge is the only way to get power and the accumulation of power invites challenge. As Pryce-Jones explains, the power-challenge dialectic has survived as a tribal legacy, perpetuating “absolute and despotic rule, preventing the evolution of those pluralist institutions that alone allow people to participate in the processes of the state and so to identify with it.”
The story of Western civilization is in significant measure the story of the slow, inexorable ascent of liberal democracy. It is a grand story, full of civic tension, brutality, sacrifice, intellectual exploration, heroism and triumph. But this is not the story of Middle Eastern Islam, which emanates from a separate cultural etymology and distinct cultural sensibility. It isn’t realistic to expect that the peoples of this cultural heritage will embrace in any serious way the structures, sensibilities and practices of an alien culture, however successful it has been in comparison.
But don’t take my word for it. Just look at developments in the Middle East in the wake of the American effort to remake Iraq and the Arab Spring of 2011. Do we see there an inexorable push toward democracy, or rather Pryce-Jones’s power-challenge dialectic at work? Anyone who sees the former should probably take a second look, but with a cold eye of realism.
Robert W. Merry is editor of The National Interest [3] and the author of books on American history and foreign policy. His next book, Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians [4], is due out on June 26 from Simon & Schuster.
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Robert W. Merry [2]
Topics:Democracy [5]
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Regions:Middle East [7]
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[2] http://nationalinterest.org/profile/robert-w-merry-0
[3] http://nationalinterest.org/
[4] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451625405/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=thenatiinte-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1451625405%22%3EWhere%20They%20Stand:%20The%20American%20Presidents%20in%20the%20Eyes%20of%20Voters%20and%20Historians%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thenatiinte-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1451625405%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%20border=%220%22%20alt=%22%22%20style=%22border:none%20%21important;%20margin:0px%20%21important;%22%20/%3E%20
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[7] http://nationalinterest.org/region/middle-east
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Get your head out of ass.....the vast majority of people in that country is Muslim so obviously they are going to follow Sharia Law....that was never going to change
The Obama administration should have taken your advice. If they would have, they would have never labeled the Muslim Brotherhood as a "secular" organization.
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The Obama administration should have taken your advice. If they would have, they would have never labeled the Muslim Brotherhoos as a "secular" organization.
I almost pity the 95ers like Vince blackass benny Option Fail et al at this point for how low they have had to sink to defend obama.
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I almost pity the 95ers like Vince blackass benny Option Fail et al at this point for how low they have had to sink to defend obama.
So...
what are we talking about here..lol...Wheres you beef this time?
Muslims took over in Egypt?.
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So...
what are we talking about here..lol...Wheres you beef this time?
Muslims took over in Egypt?.
Basically - obama, andre, benny, and the rest of the idiot obama cult members got proven dead wrong once again.
Easiest way to predict the outcome of something is take the opposite view of obama and the leftists. Works everything.
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visit http://www.wnd.com/2012/06/hillary-tied-to-new-muslim-brotherhood-president/
WND EXCLUSIVE
Hillary tied to new Muslim Brotherhood president
Radical links run through secretary of state's chief of staff
Published: 20 hours ago
byAaron KleinEmail | Archive
Aaron Klein is WND's senior staff reporter and Jerusalem bureau chief. He also hosts "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on New York's WABC Radio. Follow Aaron on Twitter and Facebook.
Saleha Mahmood Abedin, the mother of Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, reportedly served in the women’s division of the Muslim Brotherhood alongside the wife of Egypt’s new president, the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi.
WND previously exposed Abedin represented a Muslim charity known to have spawned terror groups, including one declared by the U.S. government to be an official al-Qaida front.
WND also reported Clinton spoke at Abedin’s Saudi women’s college, where she was introduced by Abedin alongside the Islamic activist’s daughter, Huma, who serves as Clinton’s chief of staff. At the speech, Clinton praised Saleha’s “pioneering work.”
Saleha Abedin is also the mother-in-law of disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.
Now, author Walid Shoebat is reporting that while she acted as one of 63 leaders of the Muslim Sisterhood, the de facto female version of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saleha Abedin served alongside Najla Ali Mahmoud, the wife of Mursi. Both were members of the Sisterhood’s Guidance Bureau, found Shoebat.
Get a FREE copy of Aaron Klein’s “Manchurian President” with every purchase of “Red Army: The Radical Network That Must Be Defeated to Save America.”
Saleha Mahmood Abedin is an associate professor of sociology at Dar Al-Hekma College in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which she helped to create. She formerly directed the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs in the U.K. and served as a delegate for the Muslim World League, an Islamic fundamentalist group Osama bin Laden reportedly told an associate was one of his most important charity fronts.
In February 2010, Clinton spoke at Abedin’s college, where she was first introduced by Abedin and then praised the work of the terror-tied professor:
“I have to say a special word about Dr. Saleha Abedin,” Clinton said. “You heard her present the very exciting partnerships that have been pioneered between colleges and universities in the United States and this college. And it is pioneering work to create these kinds of relationships.
“But I have to confess something that Dr. Abedin did not,” Clinton continued, “and that is that I have almost a familial bond with this college. Dr. Abedin’s daughter, one of her three daughters, is my deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, who started to work for me when she was a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.”
As WND was first to report, Abedin once reportedly represented the Muslim World League, or MWL, a Saudi-financed charity that has spawned Islamic groups accused of terror ties. One of the groups was declared by the U.S. government to be an official al-Qaida front.
Abedin has been quoted in numerous press accounts as both representing the MWL and serving as a delegate for the charity.
In 1995, for example, the Washington Times reported on a United Nations-arranged women’s conference in Beijing that called on governments throughout the world to give women statistical equality with men in the workplace.
The report quoted Abedin, who attended the conference as a delegate, as “also representing the Muslim World League based in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim NGO Caucus.”
The U.N.’s website references a report in the run-up to the Beijing conference also listing Abedin as representing the MWL at the event.
The website posted an article from the now defunct United States Information Agency quoting Abedin and reporting she attended the Beijing conference as “a delegate of the Muslim World League and member of the Muslim Women’s NGO caucus.”
In the article, Abedin was listed under a shorter name, “Dr. Saleha Mahmoud, director of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs.”
WND has confirmed the individual listed is Huma Abedin’s mother. The reports misspelled part of Abedin’s name. Her full professional name is at times listed as Saleha Mahmood Abedin S.
Al-Qaida links
The MWL, meanwhile, was founded in Mecca in 1962 and bills itself one of the largest Islamic non-governmental organizations.
But according to U.S. government documents and testimony from the charity’s own officials, it is heavily financed by the Saudi government.
The MWL has been accused of terror ties, as have its various offshoots, including the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO, and Al Haramain, which was declared by the U.S. and U.N. a terror financing front.
Indeed, the Treasury Department, in a September 2004 press release, alleged Al Haramain had “direct links” with Osama bin Laden. The group is now banned worldwide by United Nations Security Council Committee 1267.
There long have been reports citing accusations the IIRO and MWL also repeatedly funded al-Qaida.
In 1993, bin Laden reportedly told an associate that the MWL was one of his three most important charity fronts.
An Anti-Defamation League profile of the MWL accuses the group of promulgating a “fundamentalist interpretation of Islam around the world through a large network of charities and affiliated organizations.”
“Its ideological backbone is based on an extremist interpretation of Islam,” the profile states, “and several of its affiliated groups and individuals have been linked to terror-related activity.”
In 2003, U.S. News and World Report documented that accompanying the MWL’s donations, invariably, are “a blizzard of Wahhabist literature.”
“Critics argue that Wahhabism’s more extreme preachings – mistrust of infidels, branding of rival sects as apostates and emphasis on violent jihad –laid the groundwork for terrorist groups around the world,” the report continued.
An Egyptian-American cab driver, Ihab Mohamed Ali Nawawi, was arrested in Florida in 1990 on accusations he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent and a former personal pilot to bin Laden. At the same time he was accused of serving bin Laden, he also reportedly worked for the Pakistani branch of the MWL.
The MWL in 1988 founded the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, developing chapters in about 50 countries, including for a time in Oregon until it was designated a terror organization.
In the early 1990s, evidence began to grow that the foundation was funding Islamist militants in Somalia and Bosnia, and a 1996 CIA report detailed its Bosnian militant ties.
The U.S. Treasury designated Al Haramain’s offices in Kenya and Tanzania as sponsors of terrorism for their role in planning and funding the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa. The Comoros Islands office was also designated because it “was used as a staging area and exfiltration route for the perpetrators of the 1998 bombings.”
The New York Times reported in 2003 that Al Haramain had provided funds to the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, which was responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. The Indonesia office was later designated a terrorist entity by the Treasury.
In February 2004, the U.S. Treasury Department froze all Al Haramain’s financial assets pending an investigation, leading the Saudi government to disband the charity and fold it into another group, the Saudi National Commission for Relief and Charity Work Abroad.
In September 2004, the U.S. designated Al-Haramain a terrorist organization.
In June 2008, the Treasury Department applied the terrorist designation to the entire Al-Haramain organization worldwide
Bin Laden’s brother-in-law
In August, 2006, the Treasury Department also designated the Philippine and Indonesian branch offices of the MWL-founded IIRO as terrorist entities “for facilitating fundraising for al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups.”
The Treasury Department added: “Abd Al Hamid Sulaiman Al-Mujil, a high-ranking IIRO official [executive director of its Eastern Province Branch] in Saudi Arabia, has used his position to bankroll the al-Qaida network in Southeast Asia. Al-Mujil has a long record of supporting Islamic militant groups, and he has maintained a cell of regular financial donors in the Middle East who support extremist causes.”
In the 1980s, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, ran the Philippines offices of the IIRO. Khalifa has been linked to Manila-based plots to target the pope and U.S. airlines.
The IIRO has also been accused of funding Hamas, Algerian radicals, Afghanistan militant bases and the Egyptian terror group Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya.
The New York Post reported the families of the 9/11 victims filed a lawsuit against IIRO and other Muslim organizations for having “played key roles in laundering of funds to the terrorists in the 1998 African embassy bombings,” and for having been involved in the “financing and ‘aiding and abetting’ of terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.”
‘Saudi government front’
In a court case in Canada, Arafat El-Asahi, the Canadian director of both the IIRO and the MWL, admitted the charities are near entities of the Saudi government.
Stated El-Asahi: “The Muslim World League, which is the mother of IIRO, is a fully government-funded organization. In other words, I work for the Government of Saudi Arabia. I am an employee of that government.
“Second, the IIRO is the relief branch of that organization, which means that we are controlled in all our activities and plans by the Government of Saudi Arabia. Keep that in mind, please,” he said.
Despite its offshoots being implicated in terror financing, the U.S. government never designated the MWL itself as a terror-financing charity. Many have speculated the U.S. has been trying to not embarrass the Saudi government.
With research by Brenda J. Elliott
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What hath ‘Cairo’ wrought?
Last Updated: 12:42 AM, June 26, 2012
Posted: 10:32 PM, June 25, 2012
Is this the democratic Muslim world President Obama called for in his much-publicized Cairo address three years ago?
Chaos there and a US impotent to do much of anything about it?
With the election this past weekend of Mohammed Morsi as president, Cairo became capital to an Egypt under the banner of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama’s 2009 speech, recall, was a mishmash of moral equivalence — apologizing for US intervention in the Middle East; comparing the CIA’s alleged role in the 1953 Iranian coup to the 1979 Iranian Revolution’s hostage-taking and subsequent state-sponsorship of terror.
Most reasonable people were at least skeptical as Obama stretched out a hand to the Muslim world, urging it to reject extremism and move closer to Washington.
Such skepticism has proved warranted.
Egypt’s Arab Spring democracy movement, for better or for worse, led to longtime US ally Hosni Mubarak being nudged aside — and the rise of the Brotherhood.
In Libya, the US “lead from behind” strategy to push out Moammar Khadafy accomplished that goal — but a dangerous leadership vacuum persists and the future is dark.
And in Syria, a full-blown civil war rages.
In a nutshell, the US has far less influence in Egypt today than at any point during the last four decades — a fact of serious consequence strategically and economically.
Morsi says Egypt will remain steadfast to its international commitments — including the Camp David accords with Israel.
Time will tell; the military — which retains strong strategic relationships with the United States — has a say in that.
But as a popularly elected leader, Morsi could be a focus for continued unrest and protest against military rule.
The White House calls Morsi’s election a milestone in Egypt’s road to democracy.
What else can it say?
But, in truth, Obama has demonstrated that while he had nice words three years ago, he has no clue — no vision — as to what Egypt or the rest of the Middle East should look like years from now.
In 1979, the United States stood helplessly on the sidelines as once-ally Iran slipped into Islamist hands.
Is there cause for optimism today?
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/what_hath_cairo_wrought_pDGTPxwPqkO51xBOEp5BLP#ixzz1yzjXhxwQ
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Only in America are people interested in spreading democracy around the world, but only when the outcome suits them.
I don't agree with the majority vote of an admitted extremist group, but that is the way the people voted. I would hope going forward that a more secular Egypt can exist. However, any time democracy is exercised over dictatorships that is a step in the right direction.
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Egypt's Islamist President Wants Close Ties with Iran
Monday, 25 Jun 2012 06:05 AM
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inShare inShare1 Egypt's Islamist President-elect Mohammed Morsi has said he wants to restore long-severed ties with Tehran to create a strategic "balance" in the region, in an interview published on Monday with Iran's Fars news agency.
Morsi's comments may unsettle Western powers as they seek to isolate Iran over its disputed nuclear programme, which they suspect it is using to build atomic bombs. Tehran denies this.
Diplomatic relations between Egypt and Iran were severed more than 30 years ago, but both countries have signalled a shift in policy since former president Hosni Mubarak was toppled last year in a popular uprising.
"We must restore normal relations with Iran based on shared interests, and expand areas of political coordination and economic cooperation because this will create a balance of pressure in the region," Morsi was quoted as saying in a transcript of the interview.
Rivalry between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite giant Iran has been intensified by "Arab Spring" revolts, which have redrawn the political map of the Middle East and left the powerful Gulf neighbours vying for influence.
Fars said it had spoken to Morsi a few hours before the result of the vote was announced on Sunday.
Asked to comment on reports that, if elected, his first state visit would be to Riyadh, Morsi said: "I didn't say such a thing and until now my first international visits following my victory in the elections have not been determined".
Iran subsequently hailed Morsi's victory over former general Ahmed Shafik in Egypt's first free presidential election as a "splendid vision of democracy" that marked the country's final phase of an "Islamic Awakening".
The West, Gulf states and Israel reacted with caution to the result, welcoming the democratic process that led to Morsi's election, but stressing that Egypt's stability was their main priority.
CAMP DAVID REVIEW
In contrast to comments he made in a televised address after his victory was announced on Sunday, Fars news quoted Morsi as saying Egypt's Camp David peace accord with Israel "will be reviewed", without elaborating.
The peace treaty remains a lynchpin of U.S. Middle East policy and, despite its unpopularity with many Egyptians, was staunchly upheld by Mubarak, who also suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood movement to which Morsi belongs.
The Sunni Brotherhood, whose Palestinian offshoot Hamas rules the Gaza Strip, is vehemently critical of Israel, which has watched the rise of Islamists and ongoing political upheaval in neighbouring Egypt with growing concern.
Egypt's formal recognition of Israel and Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution led to the breakdown of diplomatic relations in 1980. The two countries - among the biggest and most influential in the Middle East - still have reciprocal interest sections, but not at ambassadorial level.
Egypt's foreign minister said last year that Cairo was ready to re-establish diplomatic relations with Iran, which has hailed most Arab Spring uprisings as anti-Western rebellions inspired by its own Islamic Revolution.
Yet Iran has steadfastly supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Tehran's closest Arab ally, who is grappling with a revolt against his rule, and at home has continued to reject demands for reform, which spilled onto the street following the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009.
© 2012 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.
Read more on Newsmax.com: Egypt's Islamist President Wants Close Ties with Iran
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State Dept. Won’t Explain Terrorist WH Visit
Victoria Nuland / AP
BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff - June 26, 2012 10:45 am
The U.S. State Department “refuses to explain” how a member of an Egyptian terrorist group was allowed into the White House for a visit. According to a daily briefing transcript published by Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post:
QUESTION: . . . .It has to do with the visa for the Gama’a al-Islamiyya member. You said last week that there was a – you were looking into the circumstances of how this was issued. Has – have you determined how this – how it happened? And are you aware that Representative King has asked – formally asked Homeland Security to find out how he was in fact allowed entry, quite apart – separate from the visa issue?
MS. NULAND: On the latter, yes, I’ve seen the reporting. As we promised, we did look into it. Unfortunately, you’re not going to be happy with me when I tell you that we are not going to get into the details of confidential visa issuance. He and the rest of that delegation who were here last week have all now returned to Egypt.
QUESTION: Do you regard it as a mistake to have issued him a visa, given that he is self-proclaimed a member of Gama’a al-Islamiyya?
MS. NULAND: Well, let’s start with the fact that we have an interest in engaging a broad cross-section of Egyptians who are seeking to peacefully shape Egypt’s future.
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Calls to Destroy Egypt’s Great Pyramids Begin
Posted By Raymond Ibrahim On July 10, 2012 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 20 Comments
According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids—or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not.”
This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity. While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself—deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran—was destroyed under bin al-As’s reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar’s command.
However, while book-burning was an easy activity in the 7th century, destroying the mountain-like pyramids and their guardian Sphinx was not—even if Egypt’s Medieval Mamluk rulers “de-nosed” the latter during target practice (though popular legend still attributes it to a Westerner, Napoleon).
Now, however, as Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sheikhs” observes, and thanks to modern technology, the pyramids can be destroyed. The only question left is whether the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt is “pious” enough—if he is willing to complete the Islamization process that started under the hands of Egypt’s first Islamic conqueror.
Nor is such a course of action implausible. History is laden with examples of Muslims destroying their own pre-Islamic heritage—starting with Islam’s prophet Muhammad himself, who destroyed Arabia’s Ka‘ba temple, transforming it into a mosque.
Asking “What is it about Islam that so often turns its adherents against their own patrimony?” Daniel Pipes provides several examples, from Medieval Muslims in India destroying their forefathers’ temples, to contemporary Muslims destroying their non-Islamic heritage in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Malaysia, and Tunisia.
Currently, in what the International Criminal Court is describing as a possible “war crime,” Islamic fanatics are destroying the ancient heritage of the city of Timbuktu in Mali—all to Islam’s triumphant war cry, “Allahu Akbar!”
Much of this hate for their own pre-Islamic heritage is tied to the fact that, traditionally, Muslims do not identify with this or that nation, culture, heritage, or language, but only with the Islamic nation—the Umma.
Accordingly, while many Egyptians—Muslims and non-Muslims alike—see themselves as Egyptians, Islamists have no national identity, identifying only with Islam’s “culture,” based on the “sunna” of the prophet and Islam’s language, Arabic. This sentiment was clearly reflected when the former Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Akef, declared “the hell with Egypt,” indicating that the interests of his country are secondary to Islam’s.
It is further telling that such calls are being made now—immediately after a Muslim Brotherhood member became Egypt’s president. In fact, the same reports discussing the call to demolish the last of the Seven Wonders of the Word, also note that Egyptian Salafis are calling on Morsi to banish all Shias and Baha’is from Egypt.
In other words, Morsi’s call to release the Blind Sheikh, a terrorist mastermind, may be the tip of the iceberg in coming audacity. From calls to legalize Islamic sex-slave marriage to calls to institute “morality police” to calls to destroy Egypt’s mountain-like monuments, under Muslim Brotherhood tutelage, the bottle has been uncorked, and the genie unleashed in Egypt.
Will all those international institutions, which make it a point to look the other way whenever human rights abuses are committed by Muslims, lest they appear “Islamophobic,” at least take note now that the Great Pyramids appear to be next on Islam’s hit list, or will the fact that Muslims are involved silence them once again—even as those most ancient symbols of human civilization are pummeled to the ground?
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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/muslim-brotherhood-destroy-the-pyramids/
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/world/middleeast/fast-changing-arab-world-is-upending-us-assumptions.html?_r=1&hp
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July 9, 2012
As Islamists Gain Influence, Washington Reassesses Who Its Friends Are
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON — In his first major speech last month, Mohamed Morsi, the new Egyptian president, pledged to seek the release of a notorious Egyptian terrorist from a North Carolina prison. Not long before that, a member of a designated terrorist organization, Gamaa al-Islamiyya — who also happens to be a recently elected member of the Egyptian Parliament — was welcomed to Washington as part of an official delegation sponsored by the State Department.
Obama administration officials made no public comment on Mr. Morsi’s promise and struggled to explain why the Egyptian Parliament member, Hani Nour Eldin, got a visa, citing privacy rules and declining to say whether he had been granted a waiver from the ban on such visitors or whether his affiliation simply escaped notice.
Pressed by reporters after the visa quickly became a Congressional controversy, a State Department spokeswoman, Victoria J. Nuland, said Mr. Eldin had been judged to pose no threat to the United States.
“It’s a new day in Egypt,” she added. “It’s a new day in a lot of countries across the Middle East and North Africa.”
For the Obama administration, as it navigates the tumultuous effects of the Arab Spring, it’s a complicated day, as well. Long-held assumptions about who is a friend of the United States and who is not have been upset, leaving many Americans confused.
“Right now, the United States is kind of in a trance when it looks at the Middle East,” said Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic studies at American University. “Everything has changed.”
The overthrow of dictators across the Arab world and the rise of Islamists to new influence or power is forcing Washington to reassess decades-old judgments. The most important is in Egypt, where Mr. Morsi, representing the region’s most powerful Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, won a close election. His move on Sunday to revive the dissolved Parliament had Western experts scrambling to understand his strategy.
In Tunisia, a once-banned Islamist party, Ennahda, won a plurality of seats in elections last year, and Islamists have won new support in Yemen as well. In Saturday’s voting, Libya appeared to buck the trend, when a coalition led by a moderate political scientist seemed to edge out two Islamist parties.
But in a sign of the political potency of religion, the leader of the winning coalition, Mahmoud Jibril, went out of his way to reject the “secular” label for his National Forces Alliance and reached out to the Islamists. “There are no extremists,” he said.
In the decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans largely viewed the Middle East and Islam through the lens of the terrorism threat. The United States exercised stark judgments, encapsulated by President George W. Bush’s warning to the world nine days after the attacks: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
Foreign Muslim scholars were denied visas because of outspoken views at odds with American policy. American officials did not always carefully distinguish between Islamists, who advocate a leading role for Islam in government, and violent jihadists, who espouse the same goal but advocate terrorism to achieve it.
American hostility to Islamist movements, in fact, long predated Sept. 11, in part because of the United States’ support for secular autocrats in Arab countries. During the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was officially banned, so American diplomats in Cairo kept contacts quiet and informal.
“We have not engaged the Muslim Brotherhood,” Condoleezza Rice, then the secretary of state, declared in a 2005 speech in Cairo, “and we won’t.”
Experts on the Middle East suggest that the recent controversies over Mr. Morsi’s statement and Mr. Eldin’s visa are only the beginning of a long, contentious process of adjustment for the United States, with implications for American aid and Arab countries’ relations with Israel.
But they suggest that Americans should not assume that the rise of Islamists puts the United States in greater danger from terrorists. The opposite may well be the case, they say.
“I would say people should not be too alarmed by the anti-American rhetoric,” said Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, based in Washington. The end last year of the Mubarak rule in Egypt, he said, “is an important step in combating terrorism in the region and undermining its appeal.”
“People can freely vent their frustrations and go to the polls to vote,” he added.
For some members of Congress, the latest developments are nonetheless disturbing. Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said Mr. Morsi’s call for the release of Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian sheik who is serving a life term, was “the kind of talk you hear on the street — not from the president of the country.”
“We have to be concerned,” Mr. King added.
He wrote to Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, demanding an explanation for Mr. Eldin’s visa. “If we’re going to allow someone from a notorious terrorist group into the country, it should be the result of a long, public process of decision-making,” Mr. King said.
There are historical precedents, Mr. King acknowledged, citing one he knows intimately. A longtime supporter of the Irish Republican Army, Mr. King lobbied for years for a visa for Gerry Adams, head of what was the I.R.A.’s political wing, Sinn Fein, before it was granted in 1994.
“But that took years of negotiation, and it was done openly,” Mr. King said, by contrast with the visit by Mr. Eldin, which was not known about publicly until it was reported by The Daily Beast.
An earlier precedent might be the Zionist militants who took part in terrorist acts against the British before the creation of the State of Israel, then became leading politicians who were warmly welcomed in Washington.
Gamaa al-Islamiyya appears to be another case of a terrorist organization gradually changing its tactics. The group carried out a brutal campaign of violence in the 1990s, killing Egyptian soldiers and police officers and foreign tourists. But it renounced violence in 2003, and since then has sought to enter the political mainstream.
The sheik, 74, now in a federal prison for ailing convicts at Butner, N.C., was a leading figure in the group during its violent days. He was sentenced in 1996 for plotting a “war of urban terrorism” against the United States, beginning with the bombings of tunnels and landmarks in New York City.
But his guilt is questioned by many Egyptians, who see him as the victim of a conspiracy by the United States and Mr. Mubarak.
Michele Dunne, an Egypt expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research institution, said Mr. Morsi’s mention of the case was a political gesture toward ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafis, like Mr. Eldin. It remains to be seen, she said, whether Mr. Morsi will follow up with American officials, who are certain to dismiss any request for the sheik’s release.
The major Egyptian terrorists, including the sheik and the current leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, were shaped by their rage against the Mubarak dictatorship, Ms. Dunne said. The movement of Islamists into mainstream politics should reduce the terrorism threat, she said.
When it appeared last month that the Egyptian military might intervene and block Mr. Morsi from taking power, Ms. Dunne said, that development appeared to hang in the balance.
“If Islamist groups like the Brotherhood lose faith in democracy,” she said, “that’s when there could be dire consequences.”
David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Cairo.
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The Obama Administration Is Setting up a Bloodbath in Egypt
Posted By David P. Goldman On July 9, 2012 @ 11:34 am In Uncategorized | 23 Comments
The economics of confrontation in Egypt
(Cross-posted from Asia Times Online)
By Spengler
Egypt has enough foreign exchange on hand to cover six weeks’ of its imports (US$7.8 billion in liquid reserves, against a $5.5 billion monthly import bill). It would have run out of cash in June except for emergency loans from Saudi Arabia, which backs the Egyptian military but abhors the Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidate Mohammed Morsi won Egypt’s presidential election last month. Total reserves are listed at $15 billion, but this includes gold, International Monetary Fund (IMF) drawing rights and other non-liquid items.
The economic context is necessary to make sense of Egypt’s politics: it points to an important conclusion, that no path exists to stable rule by the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi help has kept Egypt’s economy away from the brink of collapse, but only just. A paralyzing fuel shortage threatens to shut down essential functions, including bread supplies. If the Muslim Brotherhood were to push the military out of power, the Saudis almost certainly would pull the plug and leave Egypt in chaos.
Figure 1: Egypt’s Liquid Reserves Cover Six Weeks of Imports
A situation of dual power, to use the old Bolshevik term, prevails between the Brotherhood and the military. At this writing the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had called an emergency meeting to respond to President Morsi’s attempt to revoke the military’s earlier decree dissolving Egypt’s Islamist-dominated parliament. Morsi announced that the dismissed parliament would meet within hours; some news reports from Cairo expect the military to refuse entry to members of parliament. The speed with which Morsi moved to confront the military surprised most analysts, who expected a few months of regroupment before the Islamists tested the military’s resolve.
There are two likely explanations for the Muslim Brotherhood’s gamble. One is that economic distress requires the Brotherhood to rally its base in a dramatic action; another is that the Brotherhood has been emboldened by the perception that it enjoys the tacit support of the White House against the military. A test of wills between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, though, would lead to disaster.
A number of observers, for example Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council, and ex-CIA official Robert Grenier, predict that the military will crush Egypt’s Islamists like Algeria’s military regime two decades ago. By supporting the Muslim Brotherhood against the military, the Obama administration has raised the probability of bloodshed.
It is not clear, moreover, whether Saudi generosity can stabilize Egypt even under the best of circumstances. With its trade deficit running at $3 billion a month, and other sources of revenue much reduced, the country’s annual financing needs probably exceed $20 billion. Egypt is the world’s largest importer of wheat and depends on imports for half its caloric consumption.
Exhibit 2: Egypt Imports and Exports
Source: Bloomberg
President Morsi will visit Saudi Arabia later this week, presumably to persuade the Saudis to support his regime (and perhaps to threaten them if they do not). It will be a difficult dialogue, after the Muslim Brotherhood staged riots against Saudi diplomatic installations in Egypt late in April (see The horror and the pita, Asia Times Online, May 1, 2012), and a senior Saudi advisor told Egypt’s largest daily al-Ahram June 21 that the Muslim Brotherhood lacks the vision and experience to govern the country. The Saudi-sponsored Islamist party in Egypt, the Salifi Nour Party, has threatened to boycott Morsi’s cabinet on a number of religious grounds that probably express Saudi discontent.
The volume of aid for which Egypt present is negotiating is tiny relative to its financing requirements. On June 2, the Saudis put $1 billion into Egypt’s foreign exchange reserves and bought $500 million in Egyptian government bonds on June 4. And on June 8, the Saudis announced that Egypt could use a $750 million credit line to import fuel “based on the severe oil-products shortage faced by Egypt,” according to an e-mailed statement from the Saudi Embassy in Cairo. In addition, Egypt is expected to receive a US$1 billion loan to finance energy and food imports from the Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB).
Almost as soon as the checks cleared, the Egyptian military dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament.
It appears that the authorities are trying to skimp on foreign exchange by restricting fuel imports. Diesel fuel and gasoline have been in chronic short supply for the past year, and the shortage appears to be getting worse. As the Egypt Independent reported July 3: “This summer season, already hectic with election fever, has only seen worse shortages and longer lines, with diesel, the gasoline 80 that is commonly used by taxis, and other fuels all but disappearing from many pumps. …In the Upper Egypt city of Minya, on the first day of the presidential runoff, gas stations had longer lines than polling stations.”
Egypt is also negotiating with the International Monetary Fund for a $3.2 billion loan, which presumably will open up other possible funding sources. The IMF loan is contingent upon the president’s negotiations with the SCAF on a new government.
Evidently the Saudis are keeping Egypt on a short leash. They do not want to let the country slide into financial distress as long as the military remains in charge, but neither do they want to provide resources to a Muslim Brotherhood regime that might subvert the monarchy.
The problem is that Egypt’s economy is a dog that cannot hunt now and cannot be made to hunt in the future. Without the Saudi lifeline, Egypt will stop some essential imports in a matter of weeks.
Why, then, is Mohamed Morsi picking a fight with the military?
As Jackson Diehl put it in the Washington Post July 8, “Last month the administration leaned heavily on the ruling military council to recognize Morsi’s victory in a runoff election. Lobbying by [US Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta may have prevented the council from handing the presidency to its favored candidate, a former prime minister. But it infuriated the generals, Egyptian Christians and some US supporters of Israel, who fear the Islamists more than the old regime.”
With backing from the Obama administration, and enormous pressure from his political base, Morsi has rolled the dice with the military. The result is likely to blow up in his face as well as the Obama administration’s.
At best, international aid will allow the status quo to continue a while longer. But the status quo involves a barely-adequate supply of bread, a dreadfully inadequate supply of fuel, and no outlook for the future except poverty and insecurity. It seems most unlikely that a political or economic equilibrium can be established on such a wobbly base. The uneasy modus vivendi between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military most likely will fail, and probably sooner than later.
Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman. His book How Civilizations Die (and why Islam is Dying, Too) was published by Regnery Press in September 2011. A volume of his essays on culture, religion and economics, It’s Not the End of the World – It’s Just the End of You, also appeared this fall, from Van Praag Press.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Article printed from Spengler: http://pjmedia.com/spengler
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/07/09/the-obama-administration-is-setting-up-a-bloodbath-in-egypt/
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July 13, 2012 / 23 Tamuz, 5772
Obama's spectacular failure
By Caroline B. Glick
Rather than contend with the bitter consequences of his policy, Obama and his surrogates have opted to simply deny the dangerous reality he has engendered through his actions. Even worse they have come up with explanations for maintaining this policy despite its flagrant failure
JewishWorldReview.com | Two weeks ago, in an unofficial inauguration ceremony at Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi took off his mask of moderation. Before a crowd of scores of thousands, Morsi pledge to work for the release from US federal prison of Sheikh Omar al Rahman.
According to the New York Times' account of his speech, Morsi said, "I see signs [being held by members of the crowd] for Omar Abdel Rahman and detainees' pictures. It is my duty and I will make all efforts to have them free, including Omar Abdel Rahman."
Otherwise known as the blind sheikh, Rahman was the mastermind of the jihadist cell in New Jersey that perpetrated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. His cell also murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York in 1990. They plotted the assassination of then president Hosni Mubarak. They intended to bomb New York landmarks including the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the UN headquarters.
Rahman was the leader of Gama'at al-Islamia — the Islamic Group, responsible, among other things for the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. A renowned Sunni Muslim religious authority, Rahman wrote the fatwa, or Islamic ruling permitting Sadat's murder in retribution for his signing the peace treaty with Israel. The Islamic Group is listed by the State Department as a specially designated terrorist organization.
After his conviction in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Rahman issued another fatwa calling for jihad against the US. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Osama bin Laden cited Rahman's fatwa as the religious justification for the attacks.
By calling for Rahman's release, Morsi has aligned himself and his government with the US's worst enemies. By calling for Rahman's release during his unofficial inauguration ceremony, Morsi signaled that he cares more about winning the acclaim of the most violent, America-hating jihadists in the world than with cultivating good relations with America.
And in response to Morsi's supreme act of unfriendliness, US President Barack Obama invited Morsi to visit him at the White House.
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Morsi is not the only Rahman supporter to enjoy the warm hospitality of the White House. His personal terror organization has also been the recipient of administration largesse. Despite the fact that US federal law makes it a felony to assist members of specially designated terrorist organizations, last month the State Department invited group member Hani Nour Eldin, a newly elected member of the Islamist-dominated Egyptian parliament to visit the US and meet with senior US officials at the White House and the State Department, as part of a delegation of Egyptian parliamentarians.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refused to provide any explanation for the administration's decision to break federal law in order to host Eldin in Washington. Nuland simply claimed, "We have an interest in engaging a broad cross-section of Egyptians who are seeking to peacefully shape Egypt's future. The goal of this delegation� was to have consultations both with think tanks but also with government folks, with a broad spectrum representing all the colors of Egyptian politics."
Morsi is not the only Arab leader who embraces terrorists only to be embraced by the US government. In a seemingly unrelated matter, this week it was reported that in an attempt to satisfy the Obama administration's urgent desire to renew negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel, and satisfy the Palestinians' insatiable desire to celebrate terrorists, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered to release 124 Palestinian terrorist murderers from Israeli prisons in exchange for a meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas.
Alas, Abbas refused. He didn't think Netanyahu's offer was generous enough.
And how did the Obama administration respond to Abbas's demand for the mass release of terrorists and his continued refusal to resume negotiations with Israel?
By attacking Israel.
The proximate cause of the Obama administration's most recent assault on Israel is the publication of the legal opinion of a panel of expert Israeli jurists regarding the legality of Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Netanyahu commissioned the panel, led by retired Supreme Court justice Edmond Levy to investigate the international legal status of these towns and villages and to provide the government with guidance relating to future construction of Israeli communities beyond the armistice lines.
The committee's findings, published this week concluded that under international law, these communities are completely legal.
There is nothing remotely revolutionary about this finding. This has been Israel's position since 1967, and arguably since 1922.
The international legal basis for the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 was the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. That document gave the Jewish people the legal right to sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, as well as all the land Israel took control over during the 1948-49 War of Independence.
Not only did the Mandate give the Jewish people the legal right to the areas, it enjoined the British Mandatory authorities to "facilitate�close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes."
So not only was Jewish settlement not prohibited. It was required.
Although this has been Israel's position all along, Netanyahu apparently felt the need to have its legitimacy renewed in light of the all-out assault against Israel's legal rights led by the Palestinians, and joined enthusiastically by the Obama administration.
In a previous attempt to appease Obama's rapacious appetite for Israeli concessions, Netanyahu temporarily abrogated Israel's legal rights by banning Jews from exercising their property rights in Judea and Samaria for ten months in 2010. All the legal opinion published this week does is restate what Israel's position has always been.
Whereas the Obama administration opted to embrace Morsi even as he embraces the Omar Rahman, the Obama administration vociferously condemned Israel for having the nerve to ask a panel of senior jurists to opine about its rights. In a press briefing, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell banged the rhetorical hammer.
As he put it, "The US position on settlements is clear. Obviously, we've seen the reports that an Israeli government appointed panel has recommended legalizing dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but we do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts."
In short then, for the Obama administration, it is all well and fine for the newly elected president of what was until two years ago the US's most important Arab ally to embrace a terror mastermind indirectly responsible for the murder of nearly three thousand Americans. It is okay to invite members of jihadist terror groups to come to Washington and meet with senior US officials in a US taxpayer funded trip. It is even okay for the head of a would-be-state that the US is trying to create to embrace every single Palestinian terrorist, including those that have murdered Americans. But for Israel's elected government to ask an expert panel to determine whether Israel is acting in accordance with international law in permitting Jews to live on land the Palestinians insist must be Jew-free is an affront.
The disparity between the administration's treatment of the Morsi government on the one hand and the Netanyahu government on the other places the nature of its Middle East policy in stark relief.
Obama came into office with a theory on which he based his Middle East policy. His theory was that jihadists hate America because the US supports Israel. By placing what Obama referred to as "daylight" between the US and Israel, he believed he would convince the jihadists to put aside their hatred of America.
Obama has implemented this policy for 3 and a half years. And its record of spectacular failure is unbroken.
Obama's failure is exposed in all its dangerous consequence by a simple fact. Since he entered office, the Americans have dispensed with far fewer jihadists than they have empowered.
Since January 2009, the Muslim world has become vastly more radicalized. No Islamist government in power in 2009 has been overthrown. But several key states — first and foremost Egypt — that were led by pro-Western, US-allied governments when Obama entered office are now ruled by Islamists.
It is true that the election results in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and elsewhere are not Obama's fault. But they still expose the wrongness of his policy. Obama's policy of putting daylight between the US and Israel, and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood against US allies like Mubarak involves being bad to America's friends and good to America's enemies. This policy cannot help but strengthen your enemies against yourself and your friends.
Rather than contend with the bitter consequences of his policy, Obama and his surrogates have opted to simply deny the dangerous reality he has engendered through his actions. Even worse they have come up with explanations for maintaining this policy despite its flagrant failure.
Nowhere was this effort more obvious than in a made-to-order New York Times analysis this week titled, "As Islamists gain influence, Washington reassesses who its friends are."
The analysis embraces the notion that it is possible and reasonable to appease the likes of Morsi and his America-hating jihadist supporters and coalition partners. It quotes Michele Dunne from the Atlantic Council who claimed that on the one hand, if the Muslim Brotherhood and its radical comrades are allowed to take over Egypt, their entry into mainstream politics should reduce the terrorism threat. On the other hand, she warned, "If Islamist groups like the Brotherhood lose faith in democracy, that's when there could be dire consequences."
In other words, the analysis argues that the US should respond to the ascent of its enemies by pretending its enemies are its friends.
Aside from its jaw-dropping irresponsibility, this bit of intellectual sophistry requires a complete denial of reality. The Taliban were in power in Afghanistan in 2001. Their political power didn't stop them from cooperating with al Qaida. Hamas has been in charge of Gaza since 2007. That hasn't stopped them from carrying out terrorism against Israel. The mullahs have been in charge of Iran from 33 years. That hasn't stopped them from serving as the largest terrorism sponsors in the world. Hezbollah has been involved in mainstream politics in Lebanon since 2000 and it has remained one of the most active terrorist organizations in the world.
And so on and so forth.
Back in the 1980s, the Reagan administration happily cooperated with the precursors of al Qaida in America's covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It never occurred to the Americans then that the same people working with them to overthrow the Soviets would one day follow the lead of the blind sheikh and attack America.
Unlike the mujahadin in Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood has never fought a common foe with the Americans. The US is supporting them for nothing — while seeking to win their support by turning on America's most stable allies.
Can there be any doubt that this policy will end badly?
Comment by clicking here.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, where her column appears.
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Clinton's Calls Fall Flat in Egypt Political Fight
AP via ABC News ^ | CAIRO July 15, 2012 (AP) | BRADLEY KLAPPER and HAMZA HENDAWI Associated Press
Posted on July 15, 2012 7:50:31 PM EDT by Olog-hai
The head of Egypt's military took a tough line Sunday on the Muslim Brotherhood, warning that he won't let the fundamentalist group dominate the country, only hours after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged him to work with Egypt's elected Islamist leaders.
Clinton's visit to Egypt underscored the difficulty Washington faces in trying to wield its influence amid the country's stormy post-Hosni Mubarak power struggles.
Islamist Mohammed Morsi, a longtime Brotherhood figure, was sworn two weeks ago as Egypt's first democratically elected president. Led by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the military handed over power to him June 30 after ruling Egypt for 16 months. The military, however, dissolved the Brotherhood-led parliament and stripped Morsi of significant authorities in the days before his inauguration, while retaining overwhelming powers for itself, including legislative power and control of the writing of a new constitution.
The United States is in a difficult spot when it comes to dealing with post-Mubarak Egypt—eager to be seen as a champion of democracy and human rights after three decades of close ties with the ousted leader despite his abysmal record in advancing either. …
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
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http://uk.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=UKBRE86E09V20120715
Hillary attacked w tomatoes inEgypt.
FAIL.
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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was taunted by chants of "Monica, Monica" by tomato-throwing demonstrators as she visited the Egyptian port city of Alexandria on Sunday.
The chants, referring to the Monica Lewinsky scandal when her husband, Bill Clinton, was president, were heard outside the US consulate as she visited for its reopening.
An embarrassed Egyptian security official said they were chanting "Monica, Monica" and "Irhal, Clinton" (Get out, Clinton.)
Tomatoes, shoes and a water bottle were thrown at part of Clinton's motorcade as it pulled up, protected by riot police, although a US official said Clinton's own vehicle was not hit.
The protest appears to have been the result of suspicions that Washington had helped the Muslim Brotherhood win elections in Egypt in the wake of last year's ouster of president Hosni Mubarak after 18 days of massive street protests.
"I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt, of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which, of course, we cannot," Clinton said at the opening of the consulate.
The consulate was closed in 1993 due to budget cuts but has been reopened to assist the Egyptian economy in a key port city.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/monica-monica-chants-taunt-clinton-egypt-191217298.html
LMFAO!!!!
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Cairo (CNN) -- Egyptian protesters threw tomatoes and shoes at U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade Sunday and shouted, "Monica, Monica, Monica" as she left the newly reopened U.S. Consulate in Alexandria.
Clinton said she was in the city to answer critics who believe Washington has taken sides in Egyptian politics. There were already vocal protesters at the start of her visit to the consulate, forcing the ceremony to be moved inside.
"I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt, of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which, of course, we cannot," Clinton said at the ceremony to reopen the consulate, which was closed in 1993 because of budget constraints.
Son of kidnapped American: Dad didn't know of danger
"I have come to Alexandria to reaffirm the strong support of the United States for the Egyptian people and for their democratic future."
The protesters threw the tomatoes, shoes and a water bottle as the staff walked to their vans after the ceremony and riot police had to hold back the crowd. A tomato hit an Egyptian official in the face.
Clinton urges smooth Egypt transition Clinton meets with Morsy in Egypt
Clinton's van was around the corner from the protesters, and a senior State Department official said her car was not hit.
The chants of "Monica" refer to Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern who had an affair with Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton.
Earlier Sunday, Clinton held a closed-door meeting with the head of Egypt's military leadership, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, whose military council is in a political tug of war with new President Mohamed Morsy.
Opinion: Does U.S. matter anymore in Egypt and Israel?
Egypt's military leaders took control of the government after a popular uprising toppled former President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, promising to hand over control after elections.
But after this year's elections, the military council issued a decree stripping the presidency of much of its power. And more than two weeks after Morsy took office, the country remains in the throes of domestic political chaos. The president has no Cabinet and the country has no parliament.
Clinton met with Morsy on Saturday and urged him to assert the "full authority" of his office. She stressed that it is up to the Egyptian people to shape the country's political future, but also said the United States would work "to support the military's return to a purely national security role."
Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi greets U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before a meeting in Cairo.
Clinton and Tantawi, who met for just over an hour Sunday, discussed the political transition and the military ruling council's ongoing dialogue with Morsy, said a senior State Department official, who described the meeting on condition of anonymity.
Later Sunday, in meetings with representatives from civil society groups and Christian leaders, Clinton addressed concerns from some who have been skeptical of the United States' neutrality in Egypt's political transition, another senior State Department official said.
"There has been some suspicion, some assertion, and we heard some of that today, that somehow the U.S. has put its finger on the scale in favor of one side or another in this transition," the official said. "And she wanted in very, very clear terms, particularly with the Christian group this morning, to dispel that notion and to make clear that only Egyptians can choose their leaders, that we have not supported any candidate, any party, and we will not."
As she left the country Sunday night, Clinton said her two days of meetings showed her the Egyptian people "have legitimate concerns, and I will be honest and say they have legitimate fears about their future."
Egypt's fragile economy has been a top item on Clinton's agenda during the trip. The secretary of state also met with business entrepreneurs affiliated with Flat6Labs, an organization that provides seed money, mentoring and work space to small Egyptian companies to help them realize their concepts.
"Thanks to all of you for being willing to take a risk," she said.
Clinton aides said the secretary of state wanted to visit Cairo early after Morsy's swearing-in to show that the Obama administration wants to help the new government improve Egypt's economy.
In meetings with Morsy and Tantawi, Clinton discussed a U.S. economic package that would relieve as much as $1 billion in Egyptian debt and help foster innovation, growth and job creation, officials said. She also said the United States is ready to make available $250 million in loan guarantees to Egyptian businesses.
Tantawi told Clinton that what Egyptians need most now is help getting the economy back on track, one senior State Department official said.
Egypt's military is the foundation of the modern state, having overthrown the country's monarchy in 1952. Tantawi, a 76-year-old career infantry officer, fought in Egypt's 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which Tantawi heads, currently wields legislative power, having ordered the dissolution of parliament after the country's highest court ruled that it had been elected under invalid laws.
Morsy tried to call it back into session after he was sworn in, but the court reaffirmed its decision, so the military council retains lawmaking powers until a new parliament is sworn in near the end of the year.
In the presidential election, Morsy edged out Ahmed Shafik -- the last prime minister under Mubarak -- winning nearly 52% of the votes cast.
He resigned from the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party shortly after the results were announced, in an apparent effort to send a message that he will represent all Egyptians.
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:)
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Christians snub Cairo meeting with Clinton, claim US (Obama) backs Islamists
msnbc ^ | 7/15/2012 | Charlene Gubash
Posted on Sunday, July 15, 2012
Prominent Christian Egyptians snubbed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday because they feel the U.S. administration favors Islamist parties over secular and liberal forces in society at the expense of Egypt's 8 million Christians.
The critical theme was repeated by others Sunday in Cairo and Alexandria despite Clinton denying U.S. interference in Egyptian elections.
The politicians, businessmen and clerics who snubbed Clinton were supposed to take part in meetings between Clinton and influential members of civil society.
Coptic Christian businessman and politician Naguib Sawiris and three other Coptic politicians said in a statement they were objecting to Clinton's policies in solidarity with the mainstream Egyptian.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnews.msnbc.msn.com ...
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Egypt Attaches Strings to Peace with Israel - Clinton silent as Egyptian officials
Washington Free Beacon ^ | 7/16/12 | Adam Kredo
Posted on Monday, July 16, 2012 1:17:02 PM by Nachum
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was silent as a senior Egyptian official stated during a joint press conference that his country would only uphold its peace treaty with Israel if the Jewish state returns to its 1967 borders and gives Palestinians control over portions of Jerusalem.
During a press conference Saturday in Cairo, Clinton and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr were asked about Egypt’s longstanding peace treaty with Israel, which has come under scrutiny in recent months by officials of Egypt’s new, Muslim Brotherhood-led government.
“Egypt’s understanding of peace is that it should be comprehensive, exactly as stipulated in the treaty itself,” Amr said, referring to the original 1978 Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt.
“And this also includes the Palestinians, of course, and its right to—their right to have their own state on the land that was—the pre-June 4, 1967, borders with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Clinton remained silent following Amr’s statement. (The Obama administration also backs a return to the pre-1967 borders—a decision that was roundly condemned by Jewish leaders when it was announced by the president in May 2011.)
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
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Only in America are people interested in spreading democracy around the world, but only when the outcome suits them.
I don't agree with the majority vote of an admitted extremist group, but that is the way the people voted. I would hope going forward that a more secular Egypt can exist. However, any time democracy is exercised over dictatorships that is a step in the right direction.
+1
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Only in America are people interested in spreading democracy around the world, but only when the outcome suits them.
I don't agree with the majority vote of an admitted extremist group, but that is the way the people voted. I would hope going forward that a more secular Egypt can exist. However, any time democracy is exercised over dictatorships that is a step in the right direction.
great post.....something that the idiots here don't understand......Obama brought democracy to the middle east...something GWB wanted as a goal as well with his invasion of IRAQ....Obama did it without a shot being fired.....places like Egypt, Libya, etc have and their first real elections EVER....and sometimes things don't turn out how you want it to.....
But Obama gave them a gift...what they choose to do with it is on them.....the Palestinians fucked up and elected Hamas...now they are worse off.....
but the alternative would have been worse...had the Muslim Brotherhood taken power without elections, it would have been an Islamic dictatorship..that would have been really disastrous
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Skip to comments.
Hillary Blames Israel for Middle East Woes
FrontPage Magazine ^ | July 17, 2012 | P. David Hornik
Posted on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 8:04:07 AM by SJackson
Hillary Rodham Clinton was in Israel Monday for her fourth visit as secretary of state; the third, however, was 22 months ago. On the other hand, Clinton’s visit came hard on the heels of one by National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, and it was further reported on Monday that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta would be coming to Jerusalem at the end of July.
While Donilon’s visit was kept rather hushed-up, clearly part of the motive for Clinton and Panetta’s visits is political with GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney also scheduled to be here at the end of July. With President Obama himself never having stopped by the Holy Land since taking office, and his party nervous about the Jewish vote, visibly dispatching Clinton and Panetta here is intended to offset some of the political capital that Romney hopes to gain with his visit.
Undoubtedly, though, more than mere politicking is at play in this flurry of high-level contacts. Clinton’s previous stop was Egypt, where the election of Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi as president has given Israel the jitters while—publicly at least—evoking mainly plaudits and encouragement from Washington.
But while Morsi’s capacity to wreak harm remains uncertain, as Egypt’s Supreme Military Council tries to curb his powers and the country remains mired in a severe economic crisis, two other Middle Eastern flashpoints pose much more imminent threats. In Syria, chaos looms with Islamist elements now spearheading the rebels and the country’s vast chemical and biological weapons stockpiles in danger of falling into radical hands. And in Iran, the race to the bomb continues unimpeded by insufficient sanctions, let alone the ludicrously hollow “negotiations” between Iran and the P5+1 countries.
With war clouds darkening the putative “Arab Spring,” then, one might have expected a much lower profile for the “peace”—that is, Palestinian—issue in Clinton’s visit on Monday compared to her earlier stopovers. A day earlier, Obama, asked by a TV interviewer where he felt he had failed as president, replied that he had “not been able to move the peace process forward in the Middle East the way I wanted.” Reports in the Israeli media on Monday night said Clinton had met only briefly at her Jerusalem hotel with Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad, without making the once-obligatory stop in Ramallah.
On the other hand, hopes that the last three and a half years have sobered the administration on this score had to be tempered by Obama’s added remark that “the truth of the matter is that the parties, they’ve got to want [peace] as well”—an equivalency that indicates an ongoing inability to distinguish between Israel, a democracy that has sometimes made desperate concessions in the hope of peace, and a Palestinian side that systematically instills hatred and rejection of Israel in its population.
Indeed, the Palestinian issue appears to have figured heavily in Clinton’s meeting Monday night with Israel’s prime minister, with the secretary of state reportedly pressuring Binyamin Netanyahu to woo the Authority back to the negotiating table with gifts of small weapons and released prisoners. Clinton was said to have further told Netanyahu that time was of the essence in “achieving peace” with Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas since it’s not known who will be replacing them. The perception, then, that Israel can do something to bribe and entice “peace” out of a Palestinian side that negates its very existence seems an implacable article of faith for the Obama administration.
And it wasn’t only the Palestinian issue. Clinton also urged Netanyahu to mend Israel’s rift with Turkey, seemingly impervious to the fact that it was—among other things—Ankara’s dispatching of the terrorist-laden Mavi Marmara vessel to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza, and Islamist prime minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s subsequent obsessive excoriation of Israel for its commandos’ having defended themselves against a lynch attempt on the ship, that widened what was already a growing rift. Again, despite professions of commitment to Israel and an undeniable degree of security cooperation, the ability to blame the Jewish state for its troubles in a hostile and unstable Middle East appears embedded in this administration’s DNA.
On the Egyptian issue, Clinton reportedly sought to convey a calming message to Netanyahu and Defense Secretary Ehud Barak, telling them the newly crowned President Morsi is currently preoccupied with domestic issues and not with unraveling the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. And on Iran, the secretary of state told a press conference late Monday evening that the U.S. would “use all elements of American power” to stop Tehran from going nuclear.
One can conjecture that, given this administration’s difficulty grasping Middle Eastern realities and trouble distinguishing friends from foes and moderates from radicals, the Israeli leaders were not necessarily pacified by Clinton’s reassurances about Morsi. And as for Iran, how much stock to put in Obama and his lieutenants’ repeated avowals and tough words is the central and most difficult question now confronting Jerusalem.
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Sinai Descends Towards Chaos
Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian|Aug. 8, 2012, 6:19 AM|750|4
The Sinai has long been an area beyond the writ of Cairo. The vast desert peninsula is inhabited largely by Bedouin tribes, who for decades have been marginalised, neglected and impoverished.
But in the 18 months since the Egyptian revolution forced out the former president Hosni Mubarak, the Sinai has become more chaotic and violent. And Israel has become increasingly alarmed by deteriorating security across its southern border.
The peninsula is a wild frontier, a "new hotspot with an expanding terrorist infrastructure", according to a report, Sinai: A New Front, by Israeli analyst Ehud Yaari for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, released earlier this year. "Measures are needed to prevent the total collapse of security in and around the peninsula [and] avoid the rise of an armed runaway Bedouin statelet."
Israel has urged the Egyptian government to take firm action against Bedouin militants and smugglers, and has enlisted the support of the US in its efforts. During a visit to Cairo last month, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, warned that Sinai could become an "operational base" for jihadists if security was not stepped up.
The region has suffered from chronic under-investment in education, health and transport. Its inhabitants are among the poorest in Egypt. Added to the potent mix of poverty, alienation and tribal loyalties is a sizeable Palestinian population in the north of the peninsula, with family, political and economic connections to Gaza.
In the south, massive investment since the 1990s in upscale resorts in the former Bedouin fishing village of Sharm el-Sheikh, and a programme to create a "Red Sea Riviera" along the coast, has further alienated the Bedouin. They are routinely excluded from employment in swanky resorts, and consequent resentment may have contributed to a spate of tourist kidnappings and armed robberies in the past year.
In the north, there is markedly more violence. A pipeline supplying gas to Israel has been blown up more than a dozen times, disrupting flow and causing millions of dollars worth of damage. Armed gangs are trafficking huge numbers of people fleeing persecution, war or poverty in other parts of Africa, charging thousands of dollars for passage across the Sinai into Israel. Camps have been established, from which emanate horrific stories of rape, torture, extortion, misery and desperation. The smuggling of drugs and arms is also a major industry.
And there has been an increase in militant Islamism. Israel says it detects the presence of "global jihad" militants and groups, some loosely connected to al-Qaida. "There is a problem with Bedouin tribes drifting towards a fundamentalist Islamic ideology, making themselves part of the Islamic jihad movement, by which I mean a loose network of small terror organisations trying to fight the current order," Major General Dan Harel, former deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces, said earlier this week.
Israel cannot risk jeopardising its 33-year-old peace treaty with Egypt by taking action itself. Under the terms of the treaty, the Sinai is a demilitarised zone. But the overnight military attack by the Egyptian military may be the first step in Cairo's efforts to regain control and impose order.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-sinai-is-descending-into-chaos-2012-8#ixzz22xS7zny0
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http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/158831#.UChmX6N5mSN
Failsville x 100.
FUBO, FU Andre, FU Benny.
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Egypt: There Goes the Army; There Goes the Free Media; There Goes Egypt
Pajamas Media ^ | August 11,2012 | Barry Rubin
Posted on Mon Aug 13 2012 12:23:23 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) by Hojczyk
Oh and to put the icing on the cake, Mursi will apparently decide who will be on the commission that writes the new Consttitution.
Behind the scenes note: Would Mursi dared have done this if he thought Obama would come down on him like a ton of bricks? Would the army give up if they thought America was behind it? No on both counts.
This is a coup. Mursi is bound by no constitution. He can do as he pleases unless someone is going to stop him. And the only candidate–the military–is fading fast, far faster than even we pessimists would have predicted.
Muslim Brotherhood President al-Mursi has also just named the editors of the top Egyptian newspaper and other media outlets. They are state-owned, you know, and there are a half-dozen good little independent news pap
But one of them, al-Destour (ironically meaning “The Constitution”), has just had a full issue seized on charges of “fueling sedition” and “harming the president through phrases and wording punishable by law.” We know this through a report in the Middle East News Agency, the state-owned monopoly.
And what was the inflammatory report? That the Brotherhood was going to seize power and that liberals and the army should join together to stop the country from being turned into an Islamist regime.
Seems to me that if it weren’t true there wasn’t any need to confiscate the issue, right? After all, everybody would have seen that it wouldn’t happen and all would have shared a good laugh!
Other columnists are charging that the Brotherhood is trying to turn their newspapers into reliable house organs rather than let them be free.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
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Only in America are people interested in spreading democracy around the world, but only when the outcome suits them.
I don't agree with the majority vote of an admitted extremist group, but that is the way the people voted. I would hope going forward that a more secular Egypt can exist. However, any time democracy is exercised over dictatorships that is a step in the right direction.
excellent post...you said it better than I could....Obama has brought democracy to the middle east....that is always a positive step in the right direction....what they choose to do with it is there concern...but now there can't be any more chants of "blame America"...they are chosing their own destiny right now.....That the gift that america gave them. The Neo-cons want to paint this as an Obama failure.....this is actually Obama's greatest success...he was able to help remove stagnant dictatorships and replace them with more reasonable governments
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excellent post...you said it better than I could....Obama has brought democracy to the middle east....that is always a positive step in the right direction....what they choose to do with it is there concern...but now there can't be any more chants of "blame America"...they are chosing their own destiny right now.....That the gift that america gave them. The Neo-cons want to paint this as an Obama failure.....this is actually Obama's greatest success...he was able to help remove stagnant dictatorships and replace them with more reasonable governments
Muslim Brotherhood is more reasonable?
Are you in the Choom Bus w obama?
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Clampdown on Egypt’s media raises fears
By Heba Saleh in Cairo
Human rights groups in Egypt have condemned a recent clampdown on media critical of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood amid concerns the new Islamist government is starting to imitate the practices of Hosni Mubarak, the dictator ousted by a popular uprising last year.
Al-Faraeen, a television channel owned and largely hosted by Tawfik Okasha, was taken off air for 45 days and warned it could be closed permanently. The authorities also temporarily stopped production of al-Dostour newspaper and slapped a travel ban on its editor-in-chief, Islam Afifi, as well as on Mr Okasha.
More
ON THIS STORY
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Sinai violence strains Hamas-Cairo ties
Roula Khalaf Dark imaginings
Yemen suicide bomber kills 45
Egypt urged to retake control of Sinai
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Syrian rebels shell Aleppo air base
Tzipi Livni Arab spring or Islamic winter
Two die after arrest of Saudi Shia cleric
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Jordan toughens stance on Syria
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On Monday, the state prosecutor referred both men to trial in a criminal court on charges including insulting Mohamed Morsi the president, spreading false rumours and inciting violence.
“We note that these attacks have come at the same time as statements from the president’s office and from leaders of the Freedom and Justice party [the political arm of the Brotherhood] which have warned against criticising the president. These statements implicitly give a green light to attacks against media freedom using legal and security methods,” 18 human rights groups said in a joint statement.
A maverick who appeared out of nowhere as a TV host, Mr Okasha’s shrill and vitriolic attacks have outraged almost everyone across the political spectrum – from the military to the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Dostour is also virulently hostile to the Islamists and given to sensational headlines warning of impending catastrophe as a result of the Brotherhood’s political dominance.
Even so, journalists and press freedom advocates have been alarmed by the tough curbs, fearing the new authorities will revive the repressive methods of Mr Mubarak, especially now that the recently appointed information minister comes from the Brotherhood.
Concerns about attempts to intimidate the press have also been fuelled by last week’s mob attack on Khaled Salah, the editor of al-Youm al-Sabei, a newspaper critical of the Islamists. Mr Salah said he was assaulted by Muslim Brotherhood supporters protesting against programmes critical of the president outside television studios on the outskirts of Cairo. The Brotherhood has denied it was behind the violence.
“We have nothing to do with the moves against the press,” said Mohsen Rady, a Brotherhood official. “Members of the public have filed complaints against a libellous channel and newspaper and the prosecutor took action. We are opposed to closure and confiscation even if a media outlet is hostile to us, but we support holding accountable those who make mistakes.”
Many Egyptian journalists have also been infuriated in recent days by changes in the senior editorial staff of some 55 media organisations owned by the state. The Islamist-dominated upper chamber of parliament made the appointments despite opposition to its choices from the journalists’ union that contested the professional credentials of the new editors-in-chief.
Sayed Mahmoud, the literary editor of the online portal of al-Ahram, the main state-owned daily, said one of the first actions of the newspaper’s new editor-in-chief was to shelve a series tracking Mr Morsi’s progress in his first 100 days in office. The coverage, said Mr Mahmoud, was unflattering to Mr Morsi because it showed that little was being achieved.
“They are following in Mubarak’s footsteps and trying to buy loyalty,” Mr Mahmoud said.
Traditionally, the state press in Egypt has functioned as the mouthpiece for whoever is in power. Although some criticism of the ruling establishment, if not of Mr Mubarak himself, was in the past tolerated in government newspapers, editors had to demonstrate their loyalty by writing pieces praising the president’s decisions
“The difference is that under Mubarak, a degree of professional and administrative ability was required, and then loyalty was bought after the appointment was made,” Mr Mahmoud said.
There has also been outrage following the banning of an opinion piece criticising the Brotherhood in Al-Akhbar, another state-owned paper. Abla al-Ruweini, a senior writer, said her Friday column did not run after she refused to soften her criticism and remove a reference to “the Brotherisation of the press”.
“The state press was run by people who made billions from corruption, and restructuring it should have been a priority in this transitional period,” said Khaled al-Sirgany, a journalist who heads the National Coalition for Media Freedom, a lobbying group. “If using it to influence public opinion was going to work, it would have done so under Mubarak. All that happened was that it lost its credibility.”
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Reportjimpeel | August 16 9:14am | Permalink This will be Mubarak on steroids with a radical Islamist theocracy thrown in for good measure. They deserve the government they voted for and it will bite them in the nether regions.
ReportKhalid | August 16 8:08am | Permalink
LOL -- the leftists and the socialists were forewarned that this WILL happen, and they still decided to go in bed with the MB, and against SCAF.
So now we have an Islamist coup, and its first victims will be the leftists and socialists.
They have no one to blame but themselves.
They were so jealous of those 1000 families who had fancy cars and homes, that they were willing to trade away their freedoms and get the Islamists in power, only to learn the hard way that Islamists are neither socialist nor liberal. Nobody more historically illiterate than the leftists and socialists.
ReportOldOllie | August 16 12:31am | Permalink
Why is anyone surprised by this? The Muslim Brother never pretended to be anything but fascists.
Reportmitch77 | August 15 11:51pm | Permalink
What I REALLY like to see from the 'main stream media' and even here is the acknowledgement of how Glenn Beck and others before him warned from the days after the fruit sellers self-immolation in Tunisia, that this muslim unrest would indeed spread all over the arab world. And how they SPECIFICALLY predicted that the muslim brotherhood were going to steal it from those seeking more freedom and use it for suppression and to further their CLEARLY and OFTEN PUBLICLY stated goal of creating the next caliphate.
Beck et al stated this well BEFORE the 1st short was fired in Egypt.
The MSM and hence the public have little recollection of this type truth because the MSM makes a habit of refusing to tell the truth about those they hate. Beck is on the air about 25 hrs pr week and yet there are almost n o clips of him being wrong. How is it possible in culture that posts every error made by most famous ppl that Beck is over looked? How is it when NPR got a grant from Soros JUST to catch Beck out they could not?
Why is it when you ask about Sarah Palin almost no one knows that every story accusing her of wrongdoing, or some other failure has been proved false?
This story is factual, as far as it goes, but really late news.
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Arab Spring run amok: 'Brotherhood' starts crucifixions Opponents of Egypt's Muslim president
WND ^ | 8/16/12 | Michael Carl
Posted on August 17, 2012 9:54:27 PM EDT by Nachum
The Arab Spring takeover of Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood has run amok, with reports from several different media agencies that the radical Muslims have begun crucifying opponents of newly installed President Mohammed Morsi.
Middle East media confirm that during a recent rampage, Muslim Brotherhood operatives, “crucified those opposing Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
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NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT
Egypt’s Military and the Arab Spring
By Andrew C. McCarthy
August 18, 2012 12:00 A.M.
Earlier this week, I wrote about Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. He is a Muslim Brotherhood adherent who rose to the rank of general in Egypt’s military — the armed forces he has just been tapped to command by Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood eminence who was elected president of Egypt a few weeks back. My column was prompted by the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of Sissi’s appointment, which strained to put a positive spin on an unfolding catastrophe.
The Journal has been “all in” on the “Arab Spring” fairy tale from the get-go, joining the bipartisan Beltway chorus in presenting the rise of Islamist totalitarianism as a spontaneous eruption of freedom fervor. Even so, it was jarring to find the paper burying General Sissi’s Brotherhood sympathies at the bottom of a lengthy profile. The thud came only after paragraph upon sunny paragraph of conceit that Sissi’s decades of exposure to American military counterparts and his high standing in the eyes of Obama-administration officials boded well for future Amercan-Egyptian relations and Israeli security.
The mainstream media, it seems, have their template: We’ve spent 30 years and about $45 billion cultivating the Egyptian military, so rest assured it is not going to stand by and let Egypt fall under the yoke of Islamist rule. Pretty soon, though, they’ll have to fire up Story Line B: Islamist rule is actually quite moderate and perfectly compatible with democracy . . . On Friday, the New York Times reported on yet another key Islamist military appointment in the Brotherhood’s new Egypt: General Sedky Sobhi, who was just named army chief of staff.
Sobhi, it turns out, is author of an academic paper that sharply rebukes American foreign policy as both insufficiently deferential to sharia (Islamic law) and too one-sided in favor of Israel. He’s on record calling for “the permanent withdrawal of United States military forces from the Middle East and the Gulf.”
Feel better now?
To its credit, the Times does not repeat the Journal’s sleight of hand. Rather than being obscured, General Sobhi’s sympathies are, for the most part, fronted. We quickly learn that he has forcefully argued against our military presence in the region, claiming that the U.S. has itself to blame for being (as the Times phrases it) “mir[ed] . . . in an unwinnable global war with Islamist militants.”
Still, while one can guess why the general feels this way, the Times is elliptical about his Islamist convictions and rationalizations until we come to the end of the story. Only then do we hear of Sobhi’s complaint about (as the Times puts it) U.S. “hostility toward the role of Islamic law” (if only!) and his objection to the American characterization of al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants as “irrational terrorist organizations” (Sobhi’s words).
Sobhi was no doubt correct about the latter charge, though not for the reason he offers. The general posited the vapid (albeit commonly voiced) Islamist talking point that America created global terrorism by adopting policies that inevitably resulted in “popular grievances,” which al-Qaeda and other militants “tapped into.”
Obviously, there has to be a reason U.S. national-security policies gave rise to “popular grievances” in the Muslim Middle East — that’s the elephant in the parlor that no one cares to notice. The pursuit of American interests and promotion of American principles are unpopular because they collide with classical sharia doctrine. Yes, as the general says, the jihadists are rational actors, not wanton killers — they are acting on the commands of a coherent doctrine. But that doctrine is also ardently anti-Western. Any policy we would adopt to further our ends is bound to be unpopular in an environment where the presence of a Western army is deemed to trigger a duty to expel that army by violent jihad. Any policy we would adopt to shore up Israel’s security is bound to be unpopular in an environment where the Jewish state’s destruction is unapologetically proclaimed to be an Islamic duty.
Withal, the Times report is very enlightening. As NR readers know, I’ve been arguing for the better part of a decade that the Islamic democracy project is a fool’s errand because Islamist ideology, far from being an outlier, is the mainstream Islam of the Middle East. I even wrote a book, The Grand Jihad, that both explains Islamic supremacism and illustrates that this ideology’s chief proponent — the Muslim Brotherhood, backed by deep Saudi pockets — rightly perceives itself as the avant-garde of a dynamic mass movement. Other than a few appearances on the bestseller list, which I’m sure must have pained the Gray Lady, the book was studiously ignored by the Times. Elsewhere, it was pooh-poohed as Islamophobic tripe. Imagine my surprise, then, to find that my theory, virtually overnight, has gone from an object of ridicule to a truth so undeniable it warrants judicial notice.
Now, the Times tells us:
Samer Shehata, a professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University, said American policy makers would be naïve to think that the positions held by Mr. Morsi and the Brotherhood — including criticisms of the United States and strong support for the Palestinians — represented fringe thinking.
On those issues, “the Brotherhood is the Egyptian Kansas,” said Professor Shehata. Their positions on foreign policy “reflect rather than oppose what the Egyptian center is thinking,” he said.
Well, I’ll be darned. I thought it was hysterical “Islamophobia” to believe that such thinking represented “the Egyptian Kansas.”
Also remarkable is the paper’s matter-of-fact mention of the source of General Sobhi’s anti-American broadside. Turns out he wrote it seven years ago, when he was a student at the United States Army War College in Pennsylvania.
Think about that. As we’ve illustrated here time and time again, it is delusional to assume the Egyptian military is pro-American and thus a reliable bulwark against the advance of Islamic supremacism. Cairo’s armed forces reflect the broader society, whose able-bodied men are required to serve — and, as even the Times now concedes, the Egyptian mainstream is Islamist. Plus, the Egyptian army has always had Islamists (including violent jihadists) in its ranks. Its historical tendency, moreover, has not been to lead; it has been to follow the shifting political programs of whatever dictator happened to be running the show.
Nonetheless, you’ve spent nearly two years being told not to worry: Bet the farm on these generals we’ve been training and funding. Yet, now we see that our government is not only well aware of the Egyptian army’s Islamist streak (or shall we say swath?); Egyptian officers, who often study in the U.S., actually submit sharia-driven “get out of Dar al-Islam” term papers to their American military professors. And I’m betting he got an “A.”
Finally, the military promotions are not occurring in a vacuum. Things are going very badly in Egypt, and the reporting ought not be so vested in a rose-tinted narrative that it evades this unhappy bottom line. Contemporaneous with ousting the pro-American Mubarak remnants, President Morsi assumed dictatorial powers. He indicated that he would unilaterally oversee the drafting of a new constitution. There is not much mystery about what it will say: During the campaign, he vowed that Egyptian law would be “the sharia, then the sharia, and finally, the sharia.”
Meanwhile, dissenters and journalists are already being imprisoned and beaten — if not worse. (There are unconfirmed reports that crucifixion is making a comeback.) Terrorist leaders have been sprung from the prisons. The Sinai has become a jihadist haven. Women are attacked in the street if they fail to don the veil. A fatwa that prohibited eating during Ramadan was issued. Christians are fleeing in droves, their churches torched behind them. And the emirs of Hamas are warmly received as brotherly dignitaries.
No amount of whistling can obscure the graveyard. Things are bad, and they are going to get worse.
— Andrew C. McCarthy is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.
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Who Lost Egypt?
By Caroline Glick - August 19, 2012
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In 1949, the Communist takeover of China rattled the US foreign policy establishment to its core. China’s fall to Communism was correctly perceived as a massive strategic defeat for the US. The triumphant Mao Zedong placed China firmly in the Soviet camp and implemented foreign policies antithetical to US interests.
For the American foreign policy establishment, China’s fall forced a reconsideration of basic axioms of US foreign policy. Until China went Red, the view resonant among foreign policy specialists was that it was possible for the US to peacefully coexist and even be strategic allies with Communists.
With Mao’s embrace of Stalin this position was discredited. The US’s subsequent recognition that it was impossible for America to reach an accommodation with Communists served as the intellectual architecture of many of the strategies the US adopted for fighting the Cold War in the years that followed.
Today the main aspect of America’s response to China’s Communist revolution that is remembered is the vindictive political hunt for scapegoats. Foreign Service officers and journalists who had advised the US government to support Mao and the Communists against Chiang Kai Shek and the Nationalists were attacked as traitors.
But while the “Red Scare” is what is most remembered about that period, the most significant consequence of the rise of Communist China was the impact it had on the US’s understanding of the nature of Communist forces. Even Theodore White, perhaps the most prominent journalist who championed Mao and the Communists, later acknowledged that he had been duped by their propaganda machine into believing that Mao and his comrades were interested in an alliance with the US.
As Joyce Hoffmann exposed in her book Theodore White and Journalism as Illusion, White acknowledged that his wartime report from Mao’s headquarters in Yenan praising the Communists as willing allies of the US who sought friendship, “not as a beggar seeks charity, but seeks aid in furthering a joint cause,” was completely false.
As he wrote, the report was “winged with hope and passion that were entirely unreal.”
What he had been shown in Yenan, Hoffmann quotes White as having written, was “the showcase of democratic art pieces they (the Communists) staged for us American correspondents [and] was literally, only showcase stuff.”
Contrast the US’s acceptance of failure in China in 1949, and its willingness to learn the lessons of its loss of China, with the US’s denial of its failure and loss of Egypt today.
On Sunday, new president Mohamed Morsy completed Egypt’s transformation into an Islamist state. In the space of one week, Morsy sacked the commanders of the Egyptian military and replaced them with Muslim Brotherhood loyalists, and fired all the editors of the state-owned media and replaced them with Muslim Brotherhood loyalists.
He also implemented a policy of intimidation, censorship and closure of independently owned media organizations that dare to publish criticism of him.
Morsy revoked the military’s constitutional role in setting the foreign and military policies of Egypt. But he maintained the junta’s court-backed decision to disband the parliament. In so doing, Morsy gave himself full control over the writing of Egypt’s new constitution.
As former ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel wrote Tuesday in The Jerusalem Post, Morsy’s moves mean that he “now holds dictatorial powers surpassing by far those of erstwhile president Hosni Mubarak.”
In other words, Morsy’s actions have transformed Egypt from a military dictatorship into an Islamist dictatorship.
The impact on Egypt’s foreign policy of Morsy’s seizure of power is already becoming clear. On Monday, Al-Masri al-Youm quoted Mohamed Gadallah, Morsy’s legal adviser, saying that Morsy is considering revising the peace accord with Israel. Gadallah explained that Morsy intends to “ensure Egypt’s full sovereignty and control over every inch of Sinai.”
In other words, Morsy intends to remilitarize Sinai and so render the Egyptian military a clear and present threat to Israel’s security. Indeed, according to Haaretz, Egypt has already breached the peace accord and deployed forces and heavy weaponry to Sinai without Israeli permission.
The rapidity of Morsy’s moves has surprised most observers. But more surprising than his moves is the US response to his moves.
Obama administrations officials have behaved as though nothing has happened, or even as though Morsy’s moves are positive developments.
For instance, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, one administration official dismissed the significance of Morsy’s purge of the military brass, saying, “What I think this is, frankly, is Morsy looking for a generational change in military leadership.”
The Journal reported that Egypt’s new defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sissi, is known as a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer. But the Obama administration quickly dismissed the reports as mere rumors with no significance. Sissi, administration sources told the Journal, ate dinner with US President Barack Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan during Brennan’s visit to Cairo last October. Aside from that, they say, people are always claiming that Morsy’s appointments have ties to Morsy’s Muslim Brotherhood.
A slightly less rose-colored assessment came from Steven Cook in Foreign Affairs. According to Cook, at worst, Morsy’s move was probably nothing more than a present-day reenactment of Gamal Abel Nasser’s decision to move Egypt away from the West and into the Soviet camp in 1954.
Most likely, Cook argued, Morsy was simply doing what Sadat did when in 1971 he fired other generals with whom he had been forced to share power when he first succeeded Nasser in 1969.
Certainly the Nasser and Sadat analogies are pertinent. But while properly citing them, Cook failed to explain what those analogies tell us about the significance of Morsy’s actions. He drew the dots but failed to see the shape they make.
Morsy’s Islamism, like Mao’s Communism, is inherently hostile to the US and its allies and interests in the Middle East. Consequently, Morsy’s strategic repositioning of Egypt as an Islamist country means that Egypt – which has served as the anchor of the US alliance system in the Arab world for 30 years – is setting aside its alliance with the US and looking toward reassuming the role of regional bully.
Egypt is on the fast track to reinstating its war against Israel and threatening international shipping in the Suez Canal. And as an Islamist state, Egypt will certainly seek to export its Islamic revolution to other countries. No doubt fear of this prospect is what prompted Saudi Arabia to begin showering Egypt with billions of dollars in aid.
It should be recalled that the Saudis so feared the rise of a Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt that in February 2011, when US President Barack Obama was publicly ordering then-president Hosni Mubarak to abdicate power immediately, Saudi leaders were beseeching him to defy Obama. They promised Mubarak unlimited financial support for Egypt if he agreed to cling to power.
The US’s astounding sanguinity in the face of Morsy’s completion of the Islamization of Egypt is an illustration of everything that is wrong and dangerous about US Middle East policy today.
Take US policy toward Syria.
Syria is in possession of one of the largest arsenals of chemical and biological weapons in the world. The barbarism with which the regime is murdering its opponents is a daily reminder – indeed a flashing neon warning sign – that Syria’s nonconventional arsenal constitutes a clear and present danger to international security. And yet, the Obama administration insists on viewing Syrian President Bashar Assad’s murderous behavior as if it were a garden variety human rights crisis.
During her visit with Turkey’s Islamist Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu last Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t even mention the issue of Syria’s chemical and biological weapons. Instead she continued to back Turkey’s sponsorship of the Islamist-dominated opposition and said that the US would be working with Turkey to put together new ways to help the Islamist opposition overthrow Assad’s regime.
Among other things, she did not rule out the imposition of a no-fly zone over Syria.
The party most likely to be harmed from such a move would be Israel, which would lose its ability to bomb Syrian weapons of mass destruction sites from the air.
Then of course, there is Iran and its openly genocidal nuclear weapons program. This week The New York Times reported a new twist in the Obama administration’s strategy for managing this threat. It is trying to convince the Persian Gulf states to accept advanced missile defense systems from the US.
This new policy makes clear that the Obama administration has no intention of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Its actions on the ground are aimed instead at accomplishing one goal: convincing Iran’s Arab neighbors to accept Iran as a nuclear power and preventing Israel from acting militarily to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The missile shields are aspects of a policy of containment, not prevention. And the US’s attempts to sabotage Israel’s ability to strike Iran’s nuclear sites through leaks, political pressure and efforts to weaken the Netanyahu government make clear that as far as the US is concerned, Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is not the problem.
The prospect of Israel preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is the problem.
Several American commentators argue that the Obama administration’s policies are the rational consequence of the divergence of US and Israeli assessments of the threats posed by regional developments. For instance, writing in the Tablet online magazine this week, Lee Smith argued that the US does not view the developments in Egypt, Iran and Syria as threatening US interests. From Washington’s perspective, the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran is more threatening than a nuclear-armed Iran, because an Israeli strike would immediately destabilize the region.
The problem with this assessment is that it is nonsense. It is true that Israel is first on Iran’s target list, and that Egypt is placing Israel, not the US in its crosshairs. So, too, Syria and its rogue allies will use their chemical weapons against Israel first.
But that doesn’t mean the US will be safe. The likely beneficiaries of Syrian chemical weapons – Sunni and Shi’ite terrorist organizations – have attacked the US in the past. Iran has a history of attacking US shipping without a nuclear umbrella.
Surely it would be more aggressive in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz after defying Washington in illegally developing a nuclear arsenal. The US is far more vulnerable to interruptions in the shipping lanes in the Suez Canal than Israel is.
The reason Israel and the US are allies is that Israel is the US’s first line of defense in the region.
If regional events weren’t moving so quickly, the question of who lost Egypt would probably have had its moment in the spotlight in Washington.
But as is clear from the US’s denial of the significance of Morsy’s rapid completion of Egypt’s Islamic transformation; its blindness to the dangers of Syrian chemical and biological weapons; and its complacency toward Iran’s nuclear weapons program, by the time the US foreign policy establishment realizes it lost Egypt, the question it will be asking is not who lost Egypt. It will be asking who lost the Middle East.
caroline@carolineglick.com
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Ailing Egypt seeks $4.8 billion IMF loan
Yahoo! News ^ | 8/22/12 | Maggie Michael - ap
Posted on August 22, 2012 9:22:26 PM EDT by NormsRevenge
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt formally asked the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8 billion loan on Wednesday, seeking a desperately needed rescue package for its faltering economy but raising the possibility of painful restructuring in a country still reeling since its revolution more than 18 months ago.
The loan deal, which Egypt says it will reach by the end of the year, presents a major test to the Muslim Brotherhood-rooted president, Mohammed Morsi, the country's first ever freely elected leader, brought to power after the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
The IMF has avoided making specific conditions for a loan but it seeks a cohesive government plan for restarting economic growth and reducing a deficit that has grown to $23.6 billion, some 8.7 percent of gross domestic product.
A key part of that will likely be reducing subsidies that suck up a third of the government budget every year. Touching those subsidies, however, could bring social upheaval, since they keep commodities like fuel and bread cheap for a population of around 82 million, some 40 percent of whom live near or below the poverty line.
"The government will have to take urgent measures, at the top of them cutting energy subsidies," said Mohammed Abu Basha, a Cairo-based economist at investment bank EFG-Hermes Holding SAE. The biggest subsidies are those on fuel — including gasoline and cooking gas — costing the government some $16 billion a year.
Egypt's upheaval since the 18-day uprising that led to Mubarak's ouster on Feb. 11, 2011, has pushed its economy toward the brink. Amid near constant instability since, foreign investment has dried up. Revenues from tourism — one of the country's biggest money makers and employers — fell 30 percent to $9 billion in 2011 and the industry is only making a meager recovery.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
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Analysis: Brotherhood taking total control of Egypt
By ZVI MAZEL
08/23/2012 03:24
With rise of Morsy, a new dictatorship may be replacing the old while world persists in looking for signs of pragmatism.
Photo: Mohamed Abd el-Ghany/Reuters
While the world persists in looking for signs of pragmatism in the Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsy is quietly taking over all the power bases in the country.
Having gotten rid of the army old guard, he replaced them with his own men – officers belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood or known sympathizers. Then he turned his attention to the media, replacing 50 editors working for the government’s extensive and influential press empire – including Al- Ahram, Al-Akhbar, Al-Gomhuria. He is now busy appointing new governors to the 27 regions of the country.
Related: •
'Egypt's tanks are in Sinai for fighting terrorism'
•
US urges Egypt to retake control of Sinai
Hosni Mubarak used to choose retired generals he could depend on for these sensitive posts; Morsy is hand picking party faithful. At the same time upper echelons in government ministries and economic and cultural organizations are methodically being replaced. The Muslim Brotherhood is fast assuming total control. For many observers, the deployment of army units is Sinai is more about proclaiming Egyptian sovereignty in the face of Israel than actually fighting Islamic terrorism.
Drafting the new constitution is their next objective. Brothers and Salafis make up an absolute majority in the Constituent Assembly. Liberal and secular forces are boycotting its sessions, and the Supreme Constitutional Court is examining a request to have it dissolved since it does not conform to the constitution because of its overly Islamic composition; a decision is expected in September.
The assembly, however, is not waiting. According to various leaks it is putting the final touch to a constitution where all laws have to conform to the Shari’a and special committees will supervise the media and forbid any criticism of Islam and of the Prophet. In the wings is the creation of a Committee of Islamic Sages supervising the law-making process and in effect voiding of substance the parliament elected by the people, though it is not clear yet if, when and how it will work. What is clear is that a parliament made of flesh and blood individuals is against the very nature of the Shari’a, where all laws are based on the Koran and the hadiths. This is a far cry from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Morsy has been careful to speak about creating “a civil society”; it is now obvious that what he meant was a society not ruled by the army, and not a secular society. Indeed he had promised to appoint a woman and a Copt as vice presidents, but chose Mohamed Maki, a Sunni known for his sympathy for the Brotherhood and incidentally or not the brother of the new minister of justice, Prof. Ahmed Maki, known for his independent stands and opposition to Mubarak, but who had carefully concealed his support for the Brothers.
It is worth stressing that the Brotherhood is still operating under conditions of utmost secrecy, as it had been doing during the decades of persecution. How it is getting its funds, who are its members and how they are recruited is not known, nor is its decision-taking process. The movement has no legal existence since Gamal Abdel Nasser officially disbanded it in 1954.
That state of affairs was not changed while the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces ruled the country, since apparently the movement did not apply for recognition, fearing perhaps it would have to reveal some of its secrets. Now that it has created its own political party, that the members of that party make up nearly 50 percent of the parliament and that one of their own has been elected president, can the movement remain in the shadows?
Morsy did announce that he was resigning from the Brotherhood, but there is no doubt that he will remain true to the tenets and the commands of its leaders. This is making people increasingly uneasy. They had other expectations of the revolution.
Opposition to an Islamic regime is growing, though it is far from being united. The three small liberal parties that had had very little success in the parliamentary elections have now set up a new front, The Third Way, to fight the Brotherhood’s takeover. Hamdeen Sabahi, leader of the nationalistic Karama (Dignity) Party, who had garnered 18% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election, has launched “The Popular Current” promoting the old Nasserist pan-Arab ideology.
Some of the nongovernmental media are vocal in their criticism of Morsy, though it can be costly: Private television station Al- Pharaein – “the Pharaohs” – was shut down after it called to get rid of Morsy; its owner, Tawfik Okasha, well known for his hostility to the Brothers (and to Israel) and who called for a massive demonstration this Friday, was put under house arrest, as was the editor of the daily Al-Dostour that had criticized the president. The editors of two other dailies – Al-Fajer and Saut el-Umma – were questioned. Other papers such as Al-Akhbar stopped publishing opinion pieces from their regular collaborators known for their opposition to the Brothers; well-known publicists left their page blank in a gesture of solidarity for their colleagues.
Morsy knows that his takeover will strengthen the opposition. He has not forgotten that he barely mustered 25% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election – down from the nearly 50% who voted for his party’s candidates in the parliamentary elections. He also knows that the people are no longer afraid to take to the streets to protest – and that it is now said that a new dictatorship is replacing the old – the only difference being that the new ruler has a beard....
However, for now he is devoting all his energy to his fight with the judiciary, long known for its independent stands. The Supreme Constitutional Court is being asked to rule the Brotherhood Movement illegal, and therefore to proclaim that the Liberty and Justice party it created – and which won 50% of the seats in the parliament – is illegal as well, and therefore to invalidate the election of Morsy, candidate of a movement and a party that are both illegal. Morsy sent his new justice minister to browbeat the court, but the judges refused to back down. The president is now working to limit the prerogatives of the court in the new constitution and will start “retiring” senior justices appointed by Mubarak.
Friday’s demonstration will be the first real test for the Brotherhood. It is taking no chances and security forces will be deployed around its institutions throughout the country. A cleric at Al-Azhar issued a fatwa calling for the killing of whoever protests against the rule of the Brotherhood; the resulting uproar was such that he was disavowed by some of the leaders of the movement. However, whatever happens Friday will not deter them from their goal – a thoroughly Islamist Egypt.
The writer is a former ambassador to Egypt.
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http://www.worldnewstribune.com/2012/08/27/egypt-allows-iranian-warship-through-suez-despite-u-s-objection
Monday, August 27th, 2012 | Posted by WorldTribune.com
Egypt allows Iranian warship through Suez despite U.S. objection
CAIRO — Egypt has again allowed an Iranian Navy ship to pass the Suez
Canal toward Syria.
A senior official said the Egyptian Navy approved the passage of an
Iranian ship loaded with weapons to move from the Red Sea to the
Mediterranean Sea
The Iranian Navy frigate IS Alvand passes through the Suez Canal at Ismailia, Egypt, on Feb. 22. The frigate, accompanied by the replenishment ship IS Kharg, entered the Suez Canal en route to Syria. /AP
The official said Egypt dismissed a request by the United
States to stop the Iranian ship at the canal.
“The Egyptian Navy refused a U.S. request to strike an Iranian ship
loaded with weapons that was on its way to Syria through the Suez Canal,” Mohab Mamish, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, said.
In an Aug. 26 interview with an Egyptian television station, Al Hayat,
Mamish, replaced as Egyptian Navy commander earlier this month, did not say when the Iranian weapons ship traveled through the canal.
Mamish, a former member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, said he was authorized to make all decisions on the canal, a leading earner of revenue for Egypt.
Mamish, whose remarks were also reported by Egypt’s official daily Al
Ahram, said the Egyptian military objected to deployment of U.S. Navy ships at the southern entrance of the canal in January 2011. At the time, President Hosni Mubarak faced massive unrest, which led to his ouster by the military 18 days later.
In the interview, Mamish said the Egyptian Navy has maintained tight
control over the canal. The retired vice admiral said no foreign navy could
conduct operations in the narrow waterway without Egypt’s approval.
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September 3, 2012
U.S. Is Near Pact to Cut $1 Billion From Egypt’s Debt
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON — Nearly 16 months after first pledging to help Egypt’s failing economy, the Obama administration is nearing an agreement with the country’s new government to relieve $1 billion of its debt as part of an American and international assistance package intended to bolster its transition to democracy, administration officials said.
The administration’s efforts, delayed by Egypt’s political turmoil and by wariness in Washington about new leaders emerging from its first free elections, gained new urgency in recent weeks, even as the United States risks losing influence and investment opportunities to countries like China. President Mohamed Morsi chose China for his first official visit outside of the Middle East.
In addition to the debt assistance, the administration has thrown its support behind a $4.8 billion loan being negotiated between Egypt and the International Monetary Fund. Last week, it dispatched the first of two delegations to work out details of the proposed debt assistance, as well as $375 million in financing and loan guarantees for American financiers who invest in Egypt and a $60 million investment fund for Egyptian businesses.
The assistance underscores the importance of shoring up Egypt at a time of turmoil and change across the Middle East, including the relatively peaceful uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, the still-unfinished transition in Libya, the showdown over Iran’s nuclear program and the war in Syria.
Given Egypt’s influence in the Arab world, the officials said, its economic recovery and political stability could have a profound influence on other nations in transition and ease wariness in Israel about the tumultuous political changes under way.
The administration’s revived push came after Mr. Morsi won the presidency in June and overcame a constitutional showdown with the country’s military rulers.
Mr. Morsi and his party, the Muslim Brotherhood, have since made it clear that the struggling economy is their most urgent priority, brushing aside reservations about American and international assistance and outright opposition to it from other Islamic factions.
In fact, American officials say they have been surprised by how open Mr. Morsi and his advisers have been to economic changes, with a sharp focus on creating jobs.
“They sound like Republicans half the time,” one administration official said, referring to leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic movement turned political party that was long barred from office under the former president, Hosni Mubarak, a close American ally.
Hoping to capitalize on what they see as a ripening investment climate, the State Department and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will take executives from nearly 50 American companies, like Caterpillar and Xerox, to Cairo beginning Saturday as part of one of the largest trade delegations ever organized. The officials and executives will urge the government to make changes in taxation, bankruptcy and labor laws to improve the investment climate.
“It’s important for the U.S. to give Egypt a reason to look to the West, as well as the East,” said Lionel Johnson, the chamber’s vice president for the Middle East and North Africa.
From the start of the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, President Obama and others argued that the United States and the rest of the world needed to address the poverty and joblessness that fueled popular anger and ultimately opposition to authoritarian governments in the region.
The assistance that Mr. Obama first pledged in a speech at the State Department in May 2011 has been slow in coming, however, because of the political turmoil and street unrest in Egypt, the sluggish bureaucracy in Washington and anger in Congress over the prosecution by Egypt of American nongovernmental organizations that promote democracy.
The delay has frustrated officials who fear that the United States has risked missing an opportunity to reshape a relationship that for decades was focused more on arms sales and security than on economic prosperity for a broad group of Egyptians.
“Our goal is to send a very strong message to Egypt that the government understands it’s not just about assistance,” Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides, who will travel with the Chamber of Commerce delegation, said in an interview. “It’s about growth and business.”
Egypt’s economy is increasingly precarious, with dwindling foreign-exchange reserves and nagging unemployment. The instability that followed the toppling of Mr. Mubarak devastated tourism, one of the country’s greatest sources of foreign currency.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have stepped in to provide emergency infusions totaling $3 billion, while China offered Mr. Morsi a $200 million loan for Egypt and signed investment contracts in agriculture and telecommunications.
The director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, took the unusual step of attending the opening negotiations for its $4.8 billion loan, underscoring the urgency of Egypt’s crisis and the international community’s determination to help. A year ago, when the military leaders dominated the transitional government, Egypt refused to even discuss a loan.
Egypt’s new prime minister, Hesham Qandil, said he hoped the loan would be completed by the end of the year. Officials from this week’s delegation have remained in Egypt to hammer out the details of the American debt assistance, which they said would be completed in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund program.
Egypt’s debt to the United States exceeds $3 billion, most of it from a program called Food for Peace that offered loans to buy American agricultural products after the Camp David peace accords with Israel during the Carter administration. The $1 billion in debt relief proposed by Mr. Obama has been cobbled together from money from assistance programs that has not been spent over the last few years.
The administration is negotiating whether to waive some debt payments altogether or allow “debt swaps,” in which the money that would otherwise pay down the American debt instead is spent on training and infrastructure projects in Egypt intended to attract private investment and create jobs. Congress has attached conditions to American assistance in Egypt, requiring Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to certify, among other things, that the country continues to abide by its treaty with Israel.
American and Israeli officials, including Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, have sought to assure members of Congress that assistance should proceed, despite reservations about the Muslim Brotherhood’s political rise, the officials said.
They have argued that persistently high unemployment, especially among women and young people, could undermine Mr. Morsi’s government, causing further instability in Egypt and beyond. Robert D. Hormats, the under secretary of state for economic affairs, who led last week’s delegation, lavished praised on Mr. Morsi’s early stewardship. “The groundwork has been set with a new political leadership, a new level of energy and new opportunities to reform,” he said in Cairo on Wednesday.
Egypt also had some requests for the United States. Mr. Qandil, the new prime minister, raised the State Department’s longstanding travel warning for Egypt, which warned of “the continuing possibility of sporadic unrest.”
Mr. Qandil asked Mr. Hormats to emphasize that disruptions were limited to small parts of the country.
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http://www.timesofisrael.com/egyptian-cleric-advises-men-beat-your-wife-so-she-will-mend-her-ways
Sweet!
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Obama aids Egypt as it tries to buy U-boats,
Daily Caller ^ | Septembe 10, 2012 | Neil Munro
Posted on Monday, September 10, 2012 3:44:18 PM by opentalk
President Barack Obama’s deputies are negotiating a $1 billion aid package with Egypt’s new Islamist government, even as Egypt’s cash-strapped military revealed that it is trying to buy $1 billion worth of German submarines that could threat Israel’s fast-growing offshore energy projects.
The Germans government has pointedly declined to deny the incendiary revelation about Egypt’s request to buy the two submarines. Instead, the German government offered vague support for Israel, which is facing renewed threats from Iran’s nuclear program and the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
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CNN Breaking News @ 14:06 EDST, from Egypt
http://www.cnn.com/ | September 11, 2012 | CNN
Posted on Tuesday, September 11, 2012 2:29:40 PM by
Angry protesters climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo today and hauled down its U.S. flags, replacing them with black flags with Islamic emblems.
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http://www.chron.com/news/article/Egyptian-protesters-scale-US-Embassy-wall-in-Cairo-3856652.php
Real success huh Benny you ghetto piece of shit?
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http://www.chron.com/news/article/Egyptian-protesters-scale-US-Embassy-wall-in-Cairo-3856652.php
Real success huh Benny you ghetto piece of shit?
Hey 3333,,,any good bars up in Woodlawn?.....seeing an Irish gal now and want to take her to a nice bar with good drinks....we've been going to the Mexican bar, Montezumas, on University and Kingsbridge Road......any place you can recommend?
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Hey 3333,,,any good bars up in Woodlawn?.....seeing an Irish gal now and want to take her to a nice bar with good drinks....we've been going to the Mexican bar, Montezumas, on University and Kingsbridge Road......any place you can recommend?
They wont like that up on McLean Ave. or Katanoh Ave.
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Egypt's economy dealt another blow
12 September 2012, 7:17 GMT | By Aaron Greenwood
Current account and balance of payments deficits rose significantly in last financial year
Investor confidence in Egypt’s troubled economy has been dealt another blow, with central bank data revealing the country’s balance of payments deficit rose to $11.3 billion in the 2011-12 financial year, up 14 per cent year-on-year.
Preliminary figures show the country’s current account deficit rose 23 per cent year-on-year to $7.9bn, while its trade deficit increased by $4.6bn to $31.7bn.
Foreign investors have fled Egypt in the wake of Hosni Mubarak’s ousting in February 2011. Despite the election of Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in June, political instability has continued to impact the economy.
In a bid to restore confidence and kickstart its economy, the government has requested a $4.8bn loan from the Washington-headquartered IMF. Egypt has already received $2bn and $1bn cash injections from Qatar and Saudi Arabia respectively.
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How Obama Engineered Mideast Radicalization
Posted 07/19/2012 06:46 PM ET
The Obama Record
The Obama Record: After angry Egyptians pelted her motorcade with shoes, chanting "Leave!," Secretary of State Clinton insisted the U.S. wasn't there to take sides. Too late.
'I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt, of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which of course we cannot," Hillary Clinton intoned earlier this week.
Of course, the administration could, and it did, picking and even colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood. And one of its hard-liners, Mohammed Morsi, now sits in the presidential palace, where he refused to shake unveiled Clinton's hand.
This administration favored Islamists over secularists and helped them overthrow Hosni Mubarak, the reliable U.S. ally who had outlawed the terrorist Brotherhood and honored the peace pact with Israel for three decades. The Brotherhood, in contrast, has backed Hamas and called for the destruction of Israel.
Now the administration is dealing with the consequences of its misguided king-making. Officials fear the new regime could invite al-Qaida, now run by an Egyptian exile, back into Egypt and open up a front with Israel along the Sinai. Result: more terrorists and higher gas prices.
In fact, it was Hillary's own department that helped train Brotherhood leaders for the Egyptian elections. Behind the scenes, she and the White House made a calculated decision, and took step-by-step actions, to effectively sell out Israel and U.S. interests in the Mideast to the Islamists.
The untold story of the "Arab Spring" is that the Obama administration secretly helped bring Islamofascists to power. Consider this timeline:
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2009: The Brotherhood's spiritual leader — Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi — writes an open letter to Obama arguing terrorism is a direct response to U.S. foreign policy.
2009: Obama travels to Cairo to deliver apologetic speech to Muslims, and infuriates the Mubarak regime by inviting banned Brotherhood leaders to attend. Obama deliberately snubs Mubarak, who was neither present nor mentioned. He also snubs Israel during the Mideast trip.
2009: Obama appoints a Brotherhood-tied Islamist — Rashad Hussain — as U.S. envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which supports the Brotherhood.
2010: State Department lifts visa ban on Tariq Ramadan, suspected terrorist and Egyptian-born grandson of Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna.
2010: Hussain meets with Ramadan at American-sponsored conference attended by U.S. and Brotherhood officials.
2010: Hussain meets with the Brotherhood's grand mufti in Egypt.
2010: Obama meets one-on-one with Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who later remarks on Nile TV: "The American president told me in confidence that he is a Muslim."
2010: The Brotherhood's supreme guide calls for jihad against the U.S.
2011: Qaradawi calls for "days of rage" against Mubarak and other pro-Western regimes throughout Mideast.
2011: Riots erupt in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Crowds organized by the Brotherhood demand Mubarak's ouster, storm buildings.
2011: The White House fails to back longtime ally Mubarak, who flees Cairo.
2011: White House sends intelligence czar James Clapper to Capitol Hill to whitewash the Brotherhood's extremism. Clapper testifies the group is moderate, "largely secular."
2011: Qaradawi, exiled from Egypt for 30 years, is given a hero's welcome in Tahrir Square, where he raises the banner of jihad.
2011: Through his State Department office, William Taylor — Clinton's special coordinator for Middle East transitions and a longtime associate of Brotherhood apologists —gives Brotherhood and other Egyptian Islamists special training to prepare for the post-Mubarak elections.
2011: The Brotherhood wins control of Egyptian parliament, vows to tear up Egypt's 30-year peace treaty with Israel and reestablishes ties with Hamas, Hezbollah.
2011: Obama gives Mideast speech demanding Israel relinquish land to Palestinians, while still refusing to visit Israel.
2011: Justice Department pulls plug on further prosecution of U.S.-based Brotherhood front groups identified as collaborators in conspiracy to funnel millions to Hamas.
2011: In a shocking first, the State Department formalizes ties with Egypt's Brotherhood, letting diplomats deal directly with Brotherhood party officials in Cairo.
April 2012: The administration quietly releases $1.5 billion in foreign aid to the new Egyptian regime.
June 2012: Morsi wins presidency amid widespread reports of electoral fraud and voter intimidation by gun-toting Brotherhood thugs — including blockades of entire streets to prevent Christians from going to the polls. The Obama administration turns a blind eye, recognizes Morsi as victor.
June 2012: In a victory speech, Morsi vows to instate Shariah law, turning Egypt into an Islamic theocracy, and also promises to free jailed terrorists. He also demands Obama free World Trade Center terrorist and Brotherhood leader Omar Abdel-Rahman, a.k.a. the Blind Sheik, from U.S. prison.
June 2012: State grants visa to banned Egyptian terrorist who joins a delegation of Brotherhood officials from Egypt. They're all invited to the White House to meet with Obama's deputy national security adviser, who listens to their demands for the release of the Blind Sheik.
July 2012: Obama invites Morsi to visit the White House this September.
The Muslim Brotherhood's sudden ascendancy in the Mideast didn't happen organically. It was helped along by a U.S. president sympathetic to its interests over those of Israel and his own country.
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Egyptian Father Kills Three Daughters with Snakes
Algemeiner ^ | 9-9-12 | Raymond Ibrahim
Posted on Wednesday, September 12, 2012 8:36:25 AM
The three dead sisters, killed by snakes from their father for being girls.
A tragic story concerning an Egyptian father who killed his three young daughters with snakes last April was largely missed in the West. According to Emirates24:
An Egyptian man killed his three young daughters aged 7, 5 and 3 by letting a poisonous snake bite them. According to ‘Al Youm Al Sabea’a’ newspaper, the three kids were found dead in their bed in Bani Mazar town of Al Minya governorate of upper Egypt. Forensic reports confirm the kids died due to snake poison. The man allegedly bought two cobras and let them bite the children while they were asleep so as not to be caught. He was divorced from their mother because he doubted her. He alleged that the children’s mother was in a relationship before marrying him and, therefore, denied that he fathered the kids. But she insisted he support the three daughters. However, when his second wife gave birth to a boy, he decided to do away with the children, he confessed to police under arrest.
While Emirates24 gives the story a Western spin—saying the man doubted his wife’s fidelity, the true parentage of his daughters, and did not want to pay child-support—the Egyptian show, Al Haqiqa (“the Truth”), which devoted an episode to this matter, never mentioned this angle, but rather portrayed him as killing his daughters simply because they were girls. Among the many people interviewed who verified this was the maternal grandmother, who said that, beginning with the birth of the first daughter, the man became hostile saying “I hate girls” and had to be placated to return to his wife. This scenario was repeated more dramatically with the birth of the second daughter. When he discovered his wife was pregnant with a third daughter, he tried to poison the pregnant woman but failed. He then spent a year plotting how to kill the girls without getting caught and had even tried with different snakes earlier, which proved ineffective, until he finally succeeded.
After stressing that the father was clearly not insane, but acted in a very deliberate manner, the host of Al Haqiqa, Wael Ibrashi, explained that “this matter deserves discussion, since these mentalities are present in Egyptian society. We never thought that these understandings that existed in pagan [jahiliyya] times concerning female infanticide would ever return, but they have returned.”
By “pagan times,” or jahiliyya, Ibrashi was alluding to a famous narrative: according to Muslim tradition, pre-Islamic Arabs used to bury their newborn infants alive, if they were daughters, but the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, outlawed female infanticide.
While this was a positive step, unfortunately, it is only half the picture. Indeed, this brutal filicide is a reminder of an often overlooked phenomenon of the Muslim world: oftentimes it is not the specific teachings of Islam that inform the actions of the average Muslim—many of whom are wholly unaware what the Koran teaches, let alone Sharia—but rather the general culture born of 14 centuries of Islam. Marshall Hodgson originally coined the term “Islamicate” to describe this phenomenon, which refers “not directly to the religion, Islam, itself, but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims…” (The Venture of Islam, vol. 1, p.59).
Consider the issue of forced conversion. While the Koran states that “there is no coercion in religion”—even Koran 9:29, which is said to abrogate such verses, allows Christians and Jews to remain in their faiths—from the dawn of history till the present, forced conversions have been a normal aspect of Islam. Why? Because while the average Muslim may not know the letter of the law, based on Islamic culture, they know being an infidel is a terrible thing. Hence, “compelling” such hell-bound infidels to embrace Islam can be seen as an act of altruism.
As for the issue of female infanticide, while Islam certainly does not promote killing females simply because they are female, it does teach any number of things which dehumanize and devalue them in Muslim society, including the notion that women are deficient in intelligence (which even an Egyptian female political candidate agrees with); men are permitted to beat their wives; a woman’s testimony is worth half a man’s; and infidel women taken in jihad raids can be bought and sold as sex slaves (which even a Kuwaiti female political activist agrees with). Muhammad even likened women to dogs and devils, and said most of hell’s inhabitants would be women.
In this context, while Islam did not cause this man to murder his daughters, it certainly helped mold his low opinion of females, which was the seed of his misogynistic bloodlust.
Hence the great irony of Islam: it often matters less that Muhammad once said there is no coercion in religion or that female infanticide is wrong. His many other statements that characterized non-Muslim infidels and all women as “bad” have been more influential throughout the course of history, and seen any number of people forced to convert to Islam and any number of women abused and killed.
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Storming Embassies, Killing Ambassadors, and ‘Smart’ Diplomacy
By Victor Davis Hanson
September 12, 2012 8:31 A.M.
Comments
5
The attacks on the U.S. embassy yesterday in Cairo and the storming of the American consulate in Libya, where the U.S. ambassador was murdered along with three staff members — and the initial official American reaction to the mayhem — are all reprehensible, each in their own way. Let us sort out this terrible chain of events.
Timing: The assaults came exactly on the eleventh anniversary of bin Laden’s and al-Qaeda’s attack on America. If there was any doubt about the intent of the timing, the appearance of black al-Qaedist flags among the mobs removed it. The chanting of Osama bin Laden’s name made it doubly clear who were the heroes of the Egyptian mob. Why should we be surprised by the lackluster response of the Egyptian and Libyan “authorities” to protect diplomatic sanctuaries, given the nature of the “governments” in both countries? One of the Egyptian demonstration’s organizers was Mohamed al-Zawahiri, the brother of the top deputy to Osama bin Laden, and a planner of the 9/11 attacks, which were led by Mohamed Atta, an Egyptian citizen. In Libya, the sick violence is reminding the world that the problem in the Middle East is not dictators propped up by the U.S. — Qaddafi was an archenemy of the U.S. — but the proverbial Arab Street that can blame everything and everyone, from a cartoon to a video, for the wages of its own self-induced pathologies. So far, all the Arab Spring is accomplishing is removing the dictatorial props and authoritarian excuses for grass roots Middle East madness.
Ingratitude: Egypt is currently a beneficiary of more than $1 billion in annual American aid, and its new Muslim Brotherhood–led government is negotiating to have much of its sizable U.S. debt forgiven. Libya, remember, was the recipient of the Obama administration’s “lead from behind” intervention that led to the removal of Moammar Qaddafi — and apparently gave the present demonstrators the freedom to kill Americans. This is all called “smart” diplomacy.
Appeasement: Here are a few sentences from the statement issued by the Cairo embassy before it was attacked: “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. . . .We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”
The Problem? The embassy was condemning not those zealots who then stormed their own grounds, but some eccentric private citizens back home who made a movie.
One would have thought that the Obama administration had learned something from the Rushdie fatwa and prophet cartoon incidents. This initial official American diplomatic reaction — to condemn the supposed excess of free speech in the United States, as if the government is responsible for the constitutionally-protected expression of a few private American citizens, while the Egyptian government is not responsible for a mass demonstration and violence against an embassy of the United States — is not just shameful, but absurd. The author of this American diplomatic statement should be fired immediately — as well as any diplomatic personnel who approved it. Obviously our official representatives overseas do not understand, or have not read, the U.S. Constitution. And if the administration claims the embassy that issued the appeasing statement did so without authority, then we have a larger problem with freelancing diplomats who across the globe weigh in with statements that supposedly do not reflect official policy. Note, however, that the initial diplomatic communiqué is the logical extension of this administration’s rhetoric (see below).
Shame: As gratitude for our overthrowing a cruel despot in Libya, Libyan extremists have murdered the American ambassador and his staffers. The Libyan government, such as it is there, either cannot or will not protect U.S. diplomatic personnel. And the world wonders why last year the U.S. bombed one group of Libyan cutthroats only to aid another.
The attacks in Egypt come a little over three years after the embarrassing Obama Cairo speech, in which the president created an entire mythology about the history of Islam, in vain hopes of appeasing his Egyptian hosts. The violence also follows ongoing comical efforts of the administration to assure us that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is not an extremist Islamic organization bent on turning Egypt into a theocratic state. And the attacks are simultaneous with President Obama’s ongoing and crude efforts to embarrass Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The future. Expect more violence. The Libyan murderers are now empowered, and, like the infamous Iranian hostage-takers, feel their government either supports them or can’t stop them. The crowd in Egypt knew what it was doing when it chanted Obama’s name juxtaposed to Osama’s.
Obama’s effort to appease Islam is an utter failure, as we see in various polls that show no change in anti-American attitudes in the Middle East — despite the president’s initial al Arabiya interview (“We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.”); the rantings of National Intelligence Director James Clapper (e.g., “The term ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ . . . is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.”); and the absurdities of our NASA director (“When I became the NASA administrator . . . perhaps foremost, he [President Obama] wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science.”) — to cite only a few examples from many.
At some point, someone in the administration is going to fathom that the more one seeks to appease radical Islam, the more the latter despises the appeaser.
These terrible attacks on the anniversary of 9/11 are extremely significant. They come right at a time when we are considering an aggregate $1 trillion cutback in defense over the next decade. They should give make us cautious about proposed intervention in Syria. They leave our Arab Spring policy in tatters, and the whole “reset” approach to the Middle East incoherent. They embarrass any who continue to contextualize radical Islamic violence. The juxtaposed chants of “Osama” and “Obama” in Egypt make a mockery of the recent “We killed Osama” spiking the football at the Democratic convention. And they remind us why 2012 is sadly looking a lot like 1980 — when in a similar election year, in a similarly minded administration, the proverbial chickens of four years of “smart” diplomacy tragically came home to roost.
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Government
U.S. Near Deal to Forgive $1 Billion in Egypt Debt: ‘It’s About Growth and Business’
Posted on September 3, 2012 at 10:30pm by Erica Ritz
»
Comments (110)
(Photo: AP)
The United States is finalizing a pact with Egypt’s newly-established Islamist government to forgive $1 billion in debt as part of an international assistance package intended to “bolster [the country's] transition to democracy,” in the words of the New York Times.
Apparently the matter is becoming increasingly urgent as Egypt turns to China and the East as its major allies instead of the United States, which gives the country $1.3 billion in military aid annually.
In his first international trip outside of the Middle East, for instance, Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi chose to visit China over the U.S.
The New York Times adds:
In addition to the debt assistance, the administration has thrown its support behind a $4.8 billion loan being negotiated between Egypt and the International Monetary Fund. Last week, it dispatched the first of two delegations to work out details of the proposed debt assistance, as well as $375 million in financing and loan guarantees for American financiers who invest in Egypt and a $60 million investment fund for Egyptian businesses.
The assistance underscores the importance of shoring up Egypt at a time of turmoil and change across the Middle East, including the relatively peaceful uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, the still-unfinished transition in Libya, the showdown over Iran’s nuclear program and the war in Syria.
Given Egypt’s influence in the Arab world, the officials said, its economic recovery and political stability could have a profound influence on other nations in transition and ease wariness in Israel about the tumultuous political changes under way.
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“It’s important for the U.S. to give Egypt a reason to look to the West, as well as the East,” Lionel Johnson, the chamber’s vice president for the Middle East and North Africa, explained.
President Obama’s administration has faced significant resistance from Republicans, however, who note that the United States is in the middle of its own debt crisis and that Egypt’s new government may not be entirely trustworthy.
But, according to the New York Times, the Muslim Brotherhood has been incredibly open with the administration.
“They sound like Republicans half the time,” one administration official inexplicably said, according to the New York Times.
Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides, who will travel with the Chamber of Commerce delegation, added: “Our goal is to send a very strong message to Egypt that the government understands it’s not just about assistance…It’s about growth and business.”
The Wall Street Journal notes Morsi’s government has assumed nearly absolute control over the country, replacing the top military leaders who once provided a balance of power, censoring the media, and failing to control the Sinai Peninsula or the diminishing rights of women and Christians.
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Related:
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Exclusive: No Record of Intel Briefings for Obama Week Before Embassy Attacks
Big Peace ^ | Sept. 12, 2012 | Wynton Hall
Posted on Wednesday, September 12, 2012 1:14:16 PM by Free ThinkerNY
According to the White House calendar, there is no public record of President Barack Obama attending his daily intelligence briefing--known as the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB)--in the week leading up to the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the murder of U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American members of his staff:
9/6/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-06
9/7/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-07
9/8/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-08
9/9/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-09
9/10/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-10
9/11/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-11
The last time prior to the slayings that the White House calendar publicly confirms Mr. Obama attending his daily intelligence briefing was September 5th. (The White House did not provide an official public calendar for September 8-10.) Mr. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at 5:00 p.m. yesterday.
According to a recent study by the Government Accountability Institute, Mr. Obama has only attended 43.8 percent of his Presidential Daily Briefs in the first 1,225 days of his Administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
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http://weaselzippers.us/2012/09/12/occupy-graffiti-spray-painted-by-egyptian-protesters-on-u-s-embassy-walls
Great job right Benny you piece of ghetto slime?
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Disgrace, tragedy at US embassy in Cairo
Jerusalem Post ^ | 09/12/2012 | SETH J. FRANTZMAN
Posted on September 12, 2012 7:38:58 PM EDT by SJackson
Just because someone is offended does not mean freedom of speech has been “abused,” it certainly isn't “abused” by critiques of religion.
September 11, 2012, should go down in history as the day the American diplomatic corps officially attacked one of its country’s most cherished values, one that has set it apart from much of the world for the past 236 years of independence.
On that day, US Embassy grounds were invaded by an Egyptian mob of soccer hooligans and Islamist fanatics who tore down the US flag as it was flying at half-staff in commemoration of 9/11 and replaced it with a black flag encouraging the world to convert to Islam: “There is one God and Muhammad is his prophet.”
The US Cairo Embassy’s response? “We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”
Ostensibly, the riot was brought on by Egyptian television and incitement by Salafist preachers who had spread a rumor that a movie was being shown in the US which insulted Islam. The film is unknown in the West and the US, as CNN reported, “it is not clear which film upset the protestors in Cairo.”
Fox News initially attributed promotion of the film to Egyptian Coptic Christian activists in the US, one of whom was named as Morris Sadek, who was promoting the movie on his website. The movie had been dubbed into Arabic by someone other than its creator. The BBC noted that it was primarily the protestors who alleged the film was offensive.
“The film which sparked the protest is said to have been produced by US pastor Terry Jones and co-produced by some Egyptian Copt expatriates.”
WHAT HAPPENED was that a few radical Islamist activists led by Salafist Wesam Abdel-Wareth, found a home-made movie online, dubbed it into Arabic and then began passing it off as a “film shown in the US.”
This galvanized the radical Egyptian media, which incited the public further. Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa on Sunday the 9th added incitement and misinformation when he condemned “the actions undertaken by some extremist Copts who made a film offensive to the prophet.” Two days later Al- Ahram online reported, “angry demonstrators torch American flag to protest anti-Islam film made by USbased Coptic group.”
Egyptians of all stripes, from the spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood to an engineer on the street, demanded that the filmaker be prosecuted, even though they had received false information about who made the film and how it came to be dubbed into Arabic.
No attempt was made, by the US Embassy or the Egyptian government, to explain that the movie was not a mainstream production, that it was not made by Coptic Christians, and that it was probably watched more in the Islamic world, pushed on people in order to offend them, than in the US.
This is very similar to an incident recently in Pakistan in which a Christian girl named Rimsa Masih, who is disabled, was accused of burning the Koran.
Mobs were whipped into a frenzy by an imam named Khalid Christi and the fanatics were told to destroy the Christian’s house and remove all the Christians from the area. The girl was arrested for “blasphemy.”
However on September 9, she was released when the police discovered that it was in fact the imam who had inserted pages of the Koran into some burned garbage at the girl’s house. He said it was “a way of getting rid of Christians.”
In Egypt the similar Elders of Zion-style fabrication was passed off with easy perfection. The US Embassy staff, it has been reported, were almost all sent home by security “after learning of the upcoming protest.”
The Egyptian police were noticeably unattentive and absent when the protesters attacked the embassy compound, scaled its walls, which are several meters high, and tore down the US flag. Later the police “negotiated” with the protesters to get them to leave.
Egyptians told reporters that “If [American] freedom of speech has no limits, may you accept our freedom of action.”No one has asked why the “rage” suddenly erupted on 9/11 of all days.
WHAT IS fascinating is that, as if in lock-step with the religious fanatics and hooligans, the US Embassy condemned not the violation of its diplomatic post or the incitement, but rather America. Yes, the US Embassy condemned America by blaming freedom of speech that “hurt religious feelings.”
Freedom of speech in America, especially as it pertains to religion, has always been held to be a fundamental principle of American law and culture. In one of the most famous Supreme Court cases, Cantwell v.
Connecticut (1940), Newton Cantwell and his two sons were arrested for distributing offensive religious literature to Catholics. They were charged with “inciting a common law breach of peace” because they had handed out pamphlets that condemned the pope and mocked organized religion.
The Cantwells were accused of “breach of peace” because their pamphlet led several Catholics to physically attack them.
In a unanimous decision the judges found in favor of the Cantwells: “Freedom of conscience and freedom to adhere to such religious organization or form of worship as the individual may choose cannot be restricted by law. On the other hand, it safeguards the free exercise of the chosen form of religion. Thus the [First] Amendment embraces two concepts – freedom to believe and freedom to act. The first is absolute but, in the nature of things, the second cannot be.”
Luckily, Cairo’s US State Department flunkies who trampled on the US Constitution so as not to offend religious “feelings” were never given the opportunity to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court. The US Embassy statement, titled “US condemns religious incitement,” claimed: “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.”
Let’s understand the full implication of this. The US Embassy was aware that a riot would take place on 9/11. In order to be aware of the riot, it had to have been aware of its cause, namely a home-made movie.
Yet the embassy staff saw fit to condemn the “continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.”
What “continuing efforts”? Which “misguided individuals”? Rather than condemn the radical Egyptian preachers and misguided television hosts who dubbed the video and claimed it was an “American” and “Coptic” film, the US Embassy turned on its own country’s most cherished values.
In the Pakistan blasphemy case, a lie was created in order to stir up a mob. Why didn’t the US Embassy rush to join the mob there, too, and condemn the Christian girl for her “misguided” acts that “hurt the religious feelings of Muslims”? Perhaps the US Embassy would have felt strange standing with those persecuting someone for blasphemy.
We can only guess what the position of the the US Cairo embassy would have been had it been around during the Spanish Inquisition in the 16th century.
Would it have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the inquisitors, demanding the heretics stop their “misguided...
abuse of free speech to hurt the religious feelings of others”? After all, the Catholic inquisitors’ feelings had been hurt by the rejection of the papacy; they had been deeply offended by those Jews and Muslims who faked their conversions. What will the Cairene branch of the State Department do about Egyptians’ “hurt feelings” regarding gay marriage? Will the US Embassy say that gay marriage will have to go, because those “misguided” gays have dared to hurt someone’s religious feelings? THE US government must immediately remove from their positions whoever penned this offensive condemnation of freedom of speech. Towards that end it appears the statement has been removed from the front of the website and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has condemned the embassy attack, which has now also cost the lives of US diplomats in Libya, but she nevertheles attacked those whose “intentional efforts denigrate the religious beliefs of others.”
Nevertheless, an investigation should be launched by the US Congress into why the State Department knew that a riot was going to occur and nevertheless left the US flag flying so it could be destroyed.
A separate line of investigation should examine why the Egyptian police abandoned their posts and why the Egyptian government did not protect sovereign US territory. A stern warning must be sent to Egypt that collaborating with fanatical mobs will not be rewarded.
But whatever actions are taken, the damage has already been done. Instead of using this as an opportunity to illustrate to Egyptians how they are being misled by radical incitement in their media, the Cairo embassy shamed itself by siding with a mob of fanatics acting on baseless claims, and condemned freedom of speech.
Just because someone is offended does not mean freedom of speech has been “abused,” and it certainly is not “abused” by critiques of religion. When we condemn every form of speech that “hurts feelings,” we will find that “hurt feelings” are used as an excuse for all sorts of thuggish behavior. Socrates, Galileo and Charles Darwin were all accused in their life of hurting religious feelings and denigrating beliefs. When we throw away our values because others claim to be “offended,” we surrender to mobs of intimidation, censorship and intolerance.
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Egypt’s Islamist president tells embassy to take legal action in U.S. against makers of Mohammed film; Update: I don’t consider Egypt an ally, says Obama
POSTED AT 9:16 PM ON SEPTEMBER 12, 2012 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
I wonder if he knows that there’s no legal action available to him (yet) and is simply grandstanding for the locals’ sake or if he actually thinks he can sue to shut this thing down. Silly Morsi: There won’t be a blasphemy exception added to the First Amendment for critiques of Islam for another, oh, 10-20 years at least, I figure. Although if the Pentagon pushes really hard on national-security grounds, who knows how fast change might come?
Morsi’s silence on the embassy mob is deafening:
WhiIe Egypt’s prime minister called Tuesday’s incident “regrettable” and unjustified, President Mohamed Morsy condemned the anti-Muslim film that incited the protesters.
Morsy made a reference to Egypt’s duty to protect diplomatic missions and its opposition to unlawful protesters, but did not mention or criticize those who stormed the embassy.
“The presidency condemns in the strongest terms the attempt of a group to insult the place of the Messenger, the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and condemns the people who have produced this radical work,” the president said in a statement posted on his Facebook page. “The Egyptian people, both Muslims and Christians, refuse such insults on sanctities.”
His statement went on to say that the Egyptian government respects the right to free expression, a common Orwellian flourish whenever Islamists call for cartoons or films or books insulting the faith to be banned. Marc Lynch frets that the Brotherhood’s silence is negligent insofar as it might alienate the U.S. government, and wonders if they’re caught in a political trap where they can’t apologize for the embassy mob or else the Salafists will demagogue them as being sellouts to the Great Satan. I think David Frum’s closer to the mark:
More serious is the exploitation by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president of the incident as support for anti-Islam blasphemy laws. It’s important to understand that Morsi is concerned with Egyptian, not American, laws. Morsi is taking a page from the 1979 Khomeini playbook, fabricating an international incident to mobilize religious passions as a weapon for his political grouping against more secular blocs in Egyptian society – the Egyptian military very much included.
Yeah, I think Morsi and his advisors are savvy enough to understand that, once you’re an official “ally” of the United States, the White House will let you get away with all sorts of Islamist nutbaggery. In fact, the nuttier you are, the more eager the White House is to retain you as an “ally”: Better to have you behaving horribly while inside our orbit, where we can theoretically exercise some sort of restraint on you, than let you spin entirely out of it and run wild across the region. (The ultimate example of that farcical reasoning is, of course, Pakistan.) So yeah, why not let a mob terrorize American diplomats on 9/11? And why bother apologizing? We’re not going to risk a new Egyptian/Israeli war by cutting off aid from Cairo entirely and Morsi knows it, so he feels fully entitled to tell us implicitly to kiss his ass. And meanwhile, as Lynch and Frum both note, Morsi earns cred with the swaths of Islamists in Egypt’s electorate. The Libyan government and even some Libyan citizens showed remorse today for the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, but Libya needs us more than we need it. Not so Egypt. That’s a key difference in the two countries’ reactions, I think.
Exit question: Which western nation will be the first to appease the rising Islamist bloc in the Middle East by reinstituting anti-blasphemy laws for Islam? It won’t be us, I think; despite the best intentions of cretinous academics, there are too many constitutional and ideological roadblocks to abridging free speech that dramatically in the U.S. A better bet would be Canada, but the “human rights” Star Chamber that’s tormented people like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant has gotten enough bad press over the last few years that I’m thinking Canadians might now think twice about new restrictions. No, I’m going to put my money on the UK. They’ve got just the right mix, I think, of surveillance-state paranoia and sweaty multicultural dogmatism (replete with robust hate-crime prosecutions) to give an anti-blasphemy regime a go. I’ll leave you with this from today’s op-ed page of the Guardian, a leading light of British “progressivism”:
Some people will want to defend the [Mohammed] film as critical of an idea, or of a belief. But I don’t think that will do. No Muslim could think of Muhammad as he is portrayed in the film, and very few can suppose that Islam commands them to behave the way the Muslims in the film do. The beliefs criticised are entirely imaginary. If any other group but Muslims were the target this would be obvious at once.
This film is purely and simply an incitement to religious hatred. It stokes hatred in both of its intended audiences – Christians and Jews in the US, and Muslims in the wider world. If jihadi videos are banned in this country, and their distributors prosecuted, the same should be true of this film and for the same reasons.
Update: I was surprised yesterday when he snubbed Netanyahu, and now I’m surprised again — although I think there’s a common thread that explains both reactions.
Anthony Terrell@AnthonyNBCNews
In an exclusive @BarackObama tells @jdbalart "I don't think that we would consider (Egypt) an ally" #
12 Sep 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite
Is The One throwing Egypt under the bus, and right after I made that nifty Pakistan comparison up top, too? Well, no. He’s putting some distance between himself and Morsi now because Americans are, understandably, righteously PO’d about what happened yesterday in Cairo and Benghazi, and no amount of media caterwauling about Romney’s gaffes is going to change that. O snubbed Bibi because a war with Iran could wreak havoc with his reelection bid; he’s snubbing Morsi now for the same reason, because he knows that Romney’s “apology tour” critique of Hopenchange could hurt him badly if it gains traction. And one way for it to gain traction would be to act chummy with Egypt at a moment when they still haven’t properly apologized for the Cairo embassy mob. Egypt will be an “ally” again once he’s safely reelected, rest assured.
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U.S. State Dept. alerts travelers in wake of embassy protests
By Laura Bly, USA TODAY
Updated 20h 16m ago
Comments
U.S. embassies in at least seven countries in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucuses are warning of possible anti-American protests following an attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, the Associated Press reports.
The killings in Libya followed demonstrations in front of Cairo's U.S. Embassy Tuesday, where protesters tore down the U.S. flag and scaled the embassy's wall. That protest was planned by conservative Salafists well before news circulated of an objectionable video ridiculing Islam's prophet, Mohammed, Eric Trager, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told USA TODAY.
Embassies in Armenia, Burundi, Egypt, Kuwait, Sudan, Tunisia and Zambia all issued warnings on Wednesday that don't report any specific threat but note that demonstrations can become violent and advise Americans in those countries to be particularly vigilant.
Also on Wednesday, between 300 and 400 Muslims protested outside the U.S. consulate in Morocco's largest city, Casablanca, an AFP photographer reported.
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http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2012/09/13/americas_reputation_in_the_muslim_world_is_worse_than_ever
LOL WORST EVER!
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http://news.yahoo.com/obama-says-egypt-neither-ally-nor-enemy-133302861--abc-news-politics.html
President Obama says the U.S. would no longer consider the Egyptian government an ally, "but we don't consider them an enemy."
In an interview with the Spanish-language network Telemundo, less than 24 hours after violent mobs stormed American diplomatic outposts in Cairo and Benghazi, Libya, Obama said the new Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt was still "trying to find its way."
"They were democratically elected. I think we are going to have to see how they respond to this incident, to see how they respond to maintaining the peace treaty with Israel," he said.
Egyptian security forces were slow to respond to attacks on the U.S. embassy Tuesday night when crowds infiltrated the compound and tore down the U.S. flag. The incident occurred shortly before an attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya left four Americans dead. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi did not offer a public response to either incident until 24 hours later.
"What we've seen is that in some cases, they've said the right things and taken the right steps. In others, how they've responded to other events may not be aligned with some of our interests, so I think it's still a work in progress," Obama told Telemundo. "But certainly in this situation what we're going to expect is that they are responsive to our insistence that our embassy is protected that our personnel is protected. And if they take actions that indicate they are not taking those responsibilities like all countries do where we have embassies, I think that's going to be a real big problem."
The White House said Obama phoned Morsi on Wednesday night to underscore "the importance of Egypt following through on its commitment to cooperate with the United States in securing U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel" in the wake of violent anti-American protests outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo. Morsi told Obama "that Egypt would honor its obligation to ensure the safety of American personnel," according to a statement released by the administration.
In his interview with Telemundo, Obama stopped short of calling for a reconsideration of the more than $1 billion in U.S. aid to Egypt. "The United States doesn't have the option of withdrawing from the world. We're the one indispensable nation. Countries around the world look to us for leadership, even countries where sometimes you experience protest," he said.
You really can't make this up any more how demented this sick fuck is
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You cant declare war on an nation before you now they were responsible. Use your brain
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You cant declare war on an nation before you now they were responsible. Use your brain
STFU - obama put Morsi into office and now tosses him under the bus?
94er please.
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STFU - obama put Morsi into office and now tosses him under the bus?
94er please.
First he is kneepadding then tossing them under the bus? Make sense dude
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First he is kneepadding then tossing them under the bus? Make sense dude
Yes - because obama does not like the results of his horrible policies so close to an election.
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Obama Admits He Lost Egypt as American Ally
by John Nolte
13 Sep 2012, 8:30 AM PDT
In a stunning admission a media currently obsessed with manufacturing a gaffe for Romney can hardly bring itself to report, President Obama made a tacit admission yesterday that he has lost Egypt as an American ally:
President Obama says the U.S. would no longer consider the Egyptian government an ally, “but we don’t consider them an enemy.”
In an interview with the Spanish-language network Telemundo, less than 24 hours after violent mobs stormed American diplomatic outposts in Cairo and Benghazi, Libya, Obama said the new Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt was still “trying to find its way.”
“They were democratically elected. I think we are going to have to see how they respond to this incident, to see how they respond to maintaining the peace treaty with Israel,” he said.
This morning, on MSNBC of all places, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel obviously didn’t get the memo about protecting The One throughout this crisis and hammered Obama over losing one of three allies America has in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and Israel being the other two):
CHUCK TODD: I just want to get your first reaction, before you give me a report, of the President saying Egypt was not an ally or an enemy.
RICAHED ENGEL: Yeah, I almost had to sit down when I heard that. For the last forty years, the United States has had two main allies in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the other ally in the Middle East being Israel. For the President to come out and say, well, he’s not exactly sure if Egypt is an ally any more but it’s not an enemy, that is a significant change in the perspective of Washington toward this country, the biggest country in the Arab world. It makes one wonder, well, was it worth it? Was it worth supporting the Arab Spring, supporting the demonstrations here in Tahrir Square, when now in Tahrir Square there are clashes going on behind me right in front of the US embassy?
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey fills in the rest:
Who lost Egypt? Barack Obama. His administration waited eight whole days when those demonstrations erupted to demand Mubarak’s ouster, and then insisted on immediate elections — even though the only opposition organized well enough at that point in time for elections was the radical Muslim Brotherhood. In both Egypt and even more in Libya — where Obama applied military force to dislodge and topple Moammar Qaddafi — the White House left power vacuums that allowed the most radical elements to seize control. Critics of Obama’s policies in both regards warned of this very outcome eighteen months ago, to no avail.
The point Morrissey makes here about the White House pushing for elections when the only possible outcome was the Muslim Brotherhood taking over is a crucial one.
This is leading from behind and refusing to get your hands dirty in the crucial role of filling a power vacuum you helped to create with American influence.
And don’t buy the spin that this wasn't an either/or proposition. We weren't boxed in by events that said we either stand by our ally Mubarak or live with the Muslim Brotherhood after democratically held elections.
We had a third option and that was to get in there, engage, and work our will to create the kind of power structure that wouldn't have allowed what happened on Tuesday to happen. What stops attacks like the one on our embassy is cooperation from the host country's government in the form of intel and muscle.
For all the hell it cost us, we we're able to foster that kind of government In Iraq and Afghanistan. The only question now is whether or not President Lead From Behind is doing the difficult work to retain those relationships.
Announcing the date of our Afghan withdrawal to our enemies surely didn't help.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
EPIC FAIL
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;)
ddduuuhhhooooo!!!!!!!!!
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LOL.
Even the NYT reporter sees reality of obama's failed policies.
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New regime closes Egypt’s last synagogue
Special to WorldTribune.com
WASHINGTON — Egypt’s new Islamist regime has stopped the last
synagogue from holding services.
“The Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue, which had operated in Alexandria, was the last functioning center of Jewish life in the country,” the Gatestone Institute said.
The Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue was told by the regime of President
Mohammed Morsi that Jews would not be allowed to pray during High Holiday services in September. The synagogue’s rabbi was told that Egyptian police could not guarantee security.
Eliayahu Hanavi was called the last functioning synagogue in Egypt. The Jewish community, most of which was driven out after Israel was established in 1948, was said to number no more than 100.
Jewish groups have criticized the prevention of services in Egypt, which receives $1.3 billion in annual U.S. defense assistance. The Zionist Organization of America questioned the motivation for Morsi’s decision after his predecessor allowed the synagogue to conduct services on the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur.
“If the Hosni Mubarak regime was able to protect Jews worshipping in synagogue on the High Holidays, why cannot the Mohammed Morsi regime?” ZOA
asked in a statement on Sept. 13. “This seems to be more an act of enmity
towards Jews rather than one of concern for their security.”
Shiraz Maher, a leading analyst, went further. Maher, a senior research
fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation Kings
College in London, said Morsi’s decision would destroy Jewish life in Egypt.
“The news that Egypt’s last synagogue, the Eliyahu Hanavi, will now be
unable to hold services effectively brings an end to any remaining semblance
of Jewish life in Egypt,” Maher said.
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Egypt to try US citizen, seven others over anti-Islam video
The Hill ^ | Sept. 18, 2012 | Julian Pecquet
Posted on Tuesday, September 18, 2012 1:05:15 PM
Egypt's general prosecutor on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for Florida Pastor Terry Jones and seven Coptic Christian Egyptians linked to an anti-Islam video on YouTube that sparked riots across the Middle East, The Associated Press is reporting.
The eight individuals, none of whom are believed to be in Egypt, are charged with harming national unity, insulting and publicly attacking Islam and spreading false information. They could face the death penalty.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
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Egypt Threatens to Execute American Citizens
18 September 2012
Egypt is looking more like post-1979 Iran every day.
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Cairo has issued international arrest warrants for eight Americans—seven of them Coptic Christians from Egypt—who are allegedly involved with the anti-Mohammad video everyone’s rioting over. The prosecutor’s office also issued a warrant for Terry Jones, the Koran-burning nutjob in Florida, just because, and says if convicted the defendants may get the death penalty.
Mahmoud Salem (aka “Sandmonkey”) was interviewed on CNN yesterday. He says the new Muslim Brotherhood government is much more oppressive than the Mubarak regime. That should have been obvious to everyone in advance, though astonishingly it was not. And Mahmoud is hardly a Mubarak apologist. He was one of the most outspoken critics of the ancien régime in the world, and he was arrested and beaten for it.
He also says explicitly that Egypt’s government isn’t an ally and that “if the United States wants to cut the aid [money], please, do it…The majority of the aid goes to the military anyway. We don’t see it.”
Egypt's threat is most likely an empty one, but don't be so sure. Anti-Islamic blasphemers in the West have been hunted or even killed a number of times. Salman Rushdie and Theo Van Gogh are just the most famous cases. Just yesterday Iran upped the bounty on Rushdie's head to 3.3 million dollars.
Either way, how long is the United States going to pretend that Egypt is still friendly? The government just threatened individual American citizens by name with arrest and execution. Will the Muslim Brotherhood regime have to take hostile action against American citizens before something changes?
Perhaps. But even Barack Obama has figured out that Egypt is no longer an ally. He said so on television. He’s having a hard time standing by that statement because he’s Obama, but he knows. He knows. We’re bound to break off with Cairo at some point whether we like it or not.
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Morsi sets terms for US-Arab ties (and Obama will accept those "terms")
Indian Express ^ | 9/23/2012 | DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK & STEVEN ERLANGER
Posted on Sunday, September 23, 2012 6:48:45 PM by tobyhill
On the eve of his first trip to the US as Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi said the US needed to fundamentally change its approach to the Arab world, showing greater respect for its values and helping build a Palestinian state, if it hoped to overcome decades of pent-up anger.
A former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Morsi sought in a 90-minute interview with The New York Times to introduce himself to the US public and to revise the terms of relations between his country and the US after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
He said it was up to Washington to repair relations with the Arab world and to revitalise the alliance with Egypt.
(Excerpt) Read more at indianexpress.com ...
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http://www.nationaljournal.com/egyptian-president-morsi-tepid-on-u-s-egypt-relationship-20120925
Total FAIL
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Reporter Lara Logan brings ominous news from Middle East
BY LAURA WASHINGTON LauraSWashington@aol.com October 7, 2012 4:04PM
CBS correspondent Lara Logan covers the reaction in Cairo's Tahrir Square the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February 2011. | CBS News photo
Updated: October 8, 2012 2:18AM
This was no ordinary rubber chicken affair. That was my reaction to the extraordinary keynoter at Tuesday’s Better Government Association annual luncheon.
Lara Logan, a correspondent for CBS’ “60 Minutes,” delivered a provocative speech to about 1,100 influentials from government, politics, media, and the legal and corporate arenas. Such downtown gatherings are a regular on Chicago’s networking circuit. (I am a member of the BGA’s Civic Leadership Committee, and the Chicago Sun-Times was a sponsor).
Her ominous and frightening message was gleaned from years of covering our wars in the Middle East. She arrived in Chicago on the heels of her Sept. 30 report, “The Longest War.” It examined the Afghanistan conflict and exposed the perils that still confront America, 11 years after 9/11.
Eleven years later, “they” still hate us, now more than ever, Logan told the crowd. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished, she added. They’re coming back.
“I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . .” Logan declared in her native South African accent.
The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.
“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!”
Logan stepped way out of the “objective,” journalistic role. The audience was riveted as she told of plowing through reams of documents, and interviewing John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a Taliban commander trained by al-Qaida. The Taliban and al-Qaida are teaming up and recruiting new terrorists to do us deadly harm, she reports.
She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”
Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.
As a journalist, I was queasy. Reporters should tell the story, not be the story. As an American, I was frightened.
Logan even called for retribution for the recent terrorist killings of Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other officials. The event is a harbinger of our vulnerability, she said. Logan hopes that America will “exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil. That its ambassadors will not be murdered, and that the United States will not stand by and do nothing about it.”
In the “good old days,” reporters did not advocate, crusade or call for revenge.
In these “new” days in a post-9/11 world, perhaps we need more reporters who are willing to break the rules.
BENNY WHERE ARE YOU NOW YOU 94ER% GHETTO SLUM TURD?
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STRATFOR: Egypt Is Prepared To Bomb All Of Ethiopia's Nile Dams
Michael Kelley and Robert Johnson|Oct. 13, 2012, 11:34 AM|10,644|29
Central Asia Could Go To War Over Water
In 2010 Egypt discussed taking military action in cooperation with Sudan against Ethiopia to protect their stake in Nile River, according to internal emails from the U.S. private-security firm Stratfor.
Egypt and Sudan get 90 percent of the river’s water under colonial-era accords while upstream countries including Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia have been clamoring for a new deal during more than a decade of talks.
The Nile flows south to north, making it one of only a handful of rivers in the world to do so and one of only two in Africa.
So, rather than Cairo sitting at the mouth of the massive water supply, it sits dead last—subject to all the whims and fancies of each upstream nation. With several factional governments upstream and the premium on fresh water, diplomacy only goes so far.
A dispatch from May 26, 2010, that cited information from a Egyptian diplomatic source points to the country's frustration:
Sudanese president Umar al-Bashir has agreed to allow the Egyptians to build an a small airbase in Kusti to accommodateEgyptian commandos who might be sent to Ethiopia to destroy water facilities on the Blue Nile... It will be their option if everything else fails
The Blue Nile, which begins in Ethiopia, contributes about 85 percent of the flow that passes through Egypt to the Mediterranean.
wikipedia commons
Egypt's Aswan Dam
Ethiopia became an even bigger threat a month after the Egyptian Revolution toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 when they announced new details about the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
In April of this year Bradley Hope of the The National reported that construction had begun and that the massive project "could destabilize Egypt in a way that would make the last year of political upheaval look minuscule."
"It would lead to political, economic and social instability," Mohamed Nasr El Din Allam, Egypt's minister of water and irrigation until early last year, told Hope. "Millions of people would go hungry. There would be water shortages everywhere. It's huge."
Ethiopia is also currently struggling to fund the dam, which would need foreign aid to be completed. Egypt and Sudan have lobbied foreign donors to refrain from funding the project while they try to find a diplomatic solution to the increasingly dire water situation.
A dispatch from June 1, 2010, that cited a "high-level Egyptian security/intel source, in regular direct contact with Mubarak and [then-intelligence head Omar] Suleiman" said:
The only country that is not cooperating is Ethiopia. We are continuing to talk to them, using the diplomatic approach. Yes, we are discussing military cooperation with Sudan. ... If it comes to a crisis, we will send a jet to bomb the dam and come back in one day, simple as that. Or we can send our special forces in to block/sabotage the dam... Look back to an operation Egypt did in the mid-late 1970s, i think 1976, when Ethiopia was trying to build a large dam. We blew up the equipment while it was traveling by sea to Ethiopia.
A dispatch from July 29, 2010, that cited the Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon said that Egypt and leaders of the soon-to-be independent southern region of Sudan "agreed on developing strategic relations between their two countries," including Egypt training the South Sudan military, and noted that "the horizons for Egyptian-southern Sudanese cooperation are limitless since the south needs everything."
In 1979 Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s second president, said: “The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water."
The government of current Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi described the Stratfor emails as hearsay “designed to disturb Egyptian-Ethiopian relations.”
WikiLeaks has published 53,860 out of what it says is a cache of 5 million internal Stratfor emails (dated between July 2004 and December 2011) obtained by the hacker collective Anonymous around Christmas. Check out our coverage here.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/hacked-stratfor-emails-egypt-could-take-military-action-to-protect-its-stake-in-the-nile-2012-10#ixzz29EigoEuQ
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Bump for TU.
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http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3614.htm
Benny and Andre - is this what you stupid fucking dolts cheer on?
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New FJP (Muslim Brotherhood) leader in Egypt calls for Sharia law
Jpost.com ^ | 10/20/2012 | Jpost Staff
Posted on Sunday, October 21, 2012 10:51:18 AM by Qbert
Saad al-Katatny was elected chairman of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, Egyptian media reported Friday. He beat out FJP’s acting leader Essam al- Erian in a vote that took place October 6.
The FJP is Egypt’s largest political party, currently occupying 47 percent of all seats in the country’s lower house of parliament.
Katatny hailed his election as “a first step” towards achieving the goals of the FJP, according to Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper.
In this respect, Katatny was quoted as saying that “The Muslim Brotherhood established the [FJP] to represent the Brotherhood’s political project, which, in the end, will be a wise government that will institute Islamic Shari’a law.”
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi earlier this year ran for office on the FJP ticket. However, he resigned from the party immediately after being elected.
Last week Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Muhammad Badie called on Muslims worldwide to liberate Jerusalem by means of jihad.
According to AFP, in his weekly message to supporters, Badie asserted that “The jihad for the recovery of Jerusalem is a duty for all Muslims,” stressing that the city’s conquest “will not be done through negotiations or at the United Nations.”
The Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide previously vowed that if the Muslim Brotherhood ever rose to power in Egypt, it would work to sever relations with Israel. “We are certainly not happy with the illegitimate marriage between Cairo and Tel Aviv,” he said.
“Once we rise to power we will change many things in Egypt’s policy, starting with the country’s relations with Israel which have caused us great harm.”
(Excerpt) Read more at jpost.com ...
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Egyptian Salafi Sheikh: Destroy Pyramids, Tax Christians, Bin Laden Greater Than Saladin
MEMRI ^ | 11-14-12
Posted on November 14, 2012 8:00:21 PM EST by SJackson
Following are excerpts from a show featuring Egyptian Salafi sheikh Murgan Salem; the show aired on Dream 2 TV, on November 10 and 13, 2012.
Click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV.
"Jews, Christians, And Zoroastrians Are Welcome To Live In The Abode Of Islam, As Long As They Pay The Jizya"
Murgan Salem: "They must pay the jizya poll tax. They cannot be exempted."
TV host Wael Al-Abrashi: "You mean the Christians...?"
Murgan Salem: "I'll tell you, just bear with me. Yes, this should be one of the sources of income of the state. The Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians are welcome to live in the Abode of Islam, as long as they pay the jizya poll tax, and abide by the terms set by the Emir of the Believers, who rules the country."
Wael Al-Abrashi: "What if they serve in the military?"
Murgan Salem: "They don’t need to. We will defend them. We will defend them." [...]
"All Pagan Statues And Monuments" Including The Pyramids "Must Be Destroyed"
Wael Al-Abrashi: "When you say that you will destroy the statues, the Sphinx, and the pyramids, just like you destroyed the Buddha statues in Afghanistan – isn't this a cause for fear?"
Murgan Salem: "What is there to be afraid of?"
Journalist Nabil Sharaf al-Din: "This is a universal heritage. It doesn't belong only to you."
Murgan Salem: "Let me ask you a question: Why are you afraid of shattering these idols? Do you worship these idols?"
Nabil Sharaf al-Din: "No sir, but this is a universal heritage that must be respected."
[...]
Wael Al-Abrashi: "If you were in power, you would destroy the Sphinx, the pyramids, and all the Pharaonic statues and antiquities?"
Murgan Salem: "All pagan statues and monuments – whether they are worshipped now or there is fear that they will be worshipped again, even if by a single person in the world – must be destroyed by us or others." [...]
"I Consider Sheikh Osama Bin Laden To Be Greater Than Saladin"
Wael Al-Abrashi: "You met Osama bin Laden in [Afghanistan]. You worked with him and fought with him."
Murgan Salem: "First of all, I won't allow anyone to say 'Osama bin Laden' without the title 'sheikh.'"
Wael Al-Abrashi: "Fine, Sheikh Osama bin Laden. That's your call."
Murgan Salem: "Sheikh bin Laden is one of the greatest leaders of the Muslims to this day. I consider Sheikh Osama bin Laden to be greater than Saladin. Saladin had supporters in his day..."
Wael Al-Abrashi: "Sheikh Murgan, don't get me worked up..."
Murgan Salem: "Okay, I won't. Let me explain. When Saladin wanted to liberate the Islamic world and expel the Tatars, there were emirates and armies that, although they were weak, supported him. Bin Laden had no supporters. Everybody was against him."
Wael Al-Abrashi: "And you consider the killing of innocent women and children to be a glorious deed?"
Murgan Salem: "Sheikh Osama bin Laden did not kill a single innocent woman or child who was a Muslim. Who says Sheikh Osama killed innocent people? Where exactly?" [...]
"Three Ministries Must Be Abolished; The Ministry Of Tourism Is The First... [It] Is Based On Prostitution And Depravity"
Murgan Salem: "This [Buddha] statue was worshipped by over 800 million people in the world – in the Koreas, Japan, Burma, Thailand, part of the Philippines, much of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. They are all Buddhists, who worship Buddha, a god other than Allah. This statue was worshipped rather than Allah. Its destruction was not an act of destroying a universal heritage. We have no respect for idols that are worshipped instead of Allah.
[...]
"If I were president of Egypt, I would have destroyed those idols, whether worshipped or not. This is the law of the Prophet Muhammad.
[...]
"Three ministries must be abolished. The Ministry of Tourism is the first one. This ministry is based on prostitution and depravity..."
Wael Al-Abrashi: "Sheikh Murgan, it seems that you want to close the country, and turn it into darkness. No tourist would come here. Do you want to destroy this country's economy?"
Murgan Salem: "I want to purify the economy.
[...]
"Anyone who thinks what I am saying is an exaggeration..."
Wael Al-Abrashi: "You want to destroy the pyramids and the Sphinx. Can there be anything more exaggerated than that?"
Murgan Salem: "This exaggeration is in keeping with the shari'a..."
Wael Al-Abrashi: "What more would you like to destroy? Would you fill up the Nile with earth? Are we to wake up tomorrow morning and hear a fatwa about filling up the Nile?"
Murgan Salem: "We will dig another river for you, Allah willing." [...]
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Report: Rockets Fired from Egypt Hit Israel
7:27 PM, NOV 16, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER Single PagePrintLarger TextSmaller TextAlerts
Two major Israeli newspapers are reporting that rockets fired from Egypt have hit Israel.
"Terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula launched rockets into Israel Friday night," reports the Jerusalem Post. "The rockets fell near an Israeli village on the southern border, causing some damage, but no injuries."
The Israeli daily Haaretz reports, "Rockets fired from direction of Egypt toward Eshkol Regional Council."
It appears no damage was reported in connection with the rocket fire from Egypt. Earlier today, the Egyptian prime minister visited Gaza to express solidarity with the Palestinians there.
This new front comes a day after a rocket landed near Tel Aviv and on the same day Israel's capital Jerusalem was the target of rocket fire. Those attacks were courtesy of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
"After Tel Aviv metropolitan area, capital under fire too: An air raid siren was sounded in Jerusalem and surrounding communities early Friday evening. After residents reported hearing blast sounds, security forces confirmed that one rocket had landed in the Gush Etzion area near a Palestinian village," Ynet reports.
"There were no reports of injuries or damage. This was the first air raid siren sounded in the area since the IDF launched Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip. Air raid sirens were sounded in southern communities throughout the day and a barrage of missiles hit the area."
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http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3614.htm
Benny and Andre - is this what you stupid fucking dolts cheer on?
no one cheered on anything....let the Egyptians decide what kind of government they want for themselves....if they want to continue to be opressed and want to fall behind the rest of the civiled world then so be it....Mubarak fucked this whole thing up by not sharing power sooner or at least democratizing.....
same thing with Ghaddafi...same thing with saleh in Yemen...same thing with Bashir in Syria....why can't you see that???..how long is your ignorance going to go on??????????????????????????????????????????
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no one cheered on anything....let the Egyptians decide what kind of government they want for themselves....if they want to continue to be opressed and want to fall behind the rest of the civiled world then so be it....Mubarak fucked this whole thing up by not sharing power sooner or at least democratizing.....
same thing with Ghaddafi...same thing with saleh in Yemen...same thing with Bashir in Syria....why can't you see that???..how long is your ignorance going to go on??????????????????????????????????????????
Andre - is this what they voted for?
LMFAO!!!! TOTAL OBAMA/BENNY/ANDRE FAIL
http://www.businessinsider.com/egypt-morsi-protest-powers-constitution-2012-11
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Andre - is this what they voted for?
LMFAO!!!! TOTAL OBAMA/BENNY/ANDRE FAIL
http://www.businessinsider.com/egypt-morsi-protest-powers-constitution-2012-11
they desewrve what they get..just like you keep saying that we do as well
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they desewrve what they get..just like you keep saying that we do as well
So after all is said and done they got an Islamist corrupt dictator and muslim scumbag vs a more secular tolerant musclim dictator scumbag correct?
Not tear inducing any more is it?
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So after all is said and done they got an Islamist corrupt dictator and muslim scumbag vs a more secular tolerant musclim dictator scumbag correct?
Not tear inducing any more is it?
again ....thats their choice....not ours...we can't control the entire world like you think we can.....and if Obama wasn't president you wouldn't give a rats ass
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again ....thats their choice....not ours...we can't control the entire world like you think we can.....and if Obama wasn't president you wouldn't give a rats ass
Yes I would - i would still be throwing my block party if he were ousted a few weeks ago.
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So after all is said and done they got an Islamist corrupt dictator and muslim scumbag vs a more secular tolerant musclim dictator scumbag correct?
Not tear inducing any more is it?
Stop crying its sad.
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Stop crying its sad.
I predicted this from day 1.
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I predicted this from day 1.
You predict a lot of things..
Obama taking guns, Obama soft on terrorism, Romney landslide, death camps etc etc..
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Egypt's Morsi grants himself far-reaching powers (Hillary and Huma's MuzBro debacle)
CBS ^ | 11/22/12 | AP
Posted on Friday, November 23, 2012 10:26:16 AM
Egypt's Islamist president unilaterally decreed greater authorities for himself Thursday and effectively neutralized a judiciary system that had emerged as a key opponent by declaring that the courts are barred from challenging his decisions.
Riding high on U.S. and international praise for mediating a Gaza cease-fire, Mohammed Morsi put himself above oversight and gave protection to the Islamist-led assembly writing a new constitution from a looming threat of dissolution by court order.
But the move is likely to fuel growing public anger that he and his Muslim Brotherhood are seizing too much power.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
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You predict a lot of things..
Obama taking guns, Obama soft on terrorism, Romney landslide, death camps etc etc..
Well I was wrong about some stuff, agreed, but right on others.
I was right about this. Muslim Bros are trying to create a pan arab caliphate to take over the entire ME , destroy israel, collapse SA and then take over Eurabia
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Well I was wrong about some stuff, agreed, but right on others.
I was right about this. Muslim Bros are trying to create a pan arab caliphate to take over the entire ME , destroy israel, collapse SA and then take over Eurabia
Thats life always has always will there be challenges deal with it like a man.
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Thats life always has always will there be challenges deal with it like a man.
you forget... he's not a man
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you forget... he's not a man
Can you please read the new rules and follow them. They were made for the stalkers and trolls.
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Can you please read the new rules and follow them. They were made for the stalkers and trolls.
I didn't call you any names....its the truth :)
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Protesters torched the headquarters of the Brotherhood after Morsi turned himself into another dictator overnight.
"Awesome revolution", claims the 50-year-old college student.
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Morsi grabs dictatorial powers in Egypt
Hotair ^
Posted on Friday, November 23, 2012 10:34:18 AM by chessplayer
Say, how has Barack Obama’s Arab Spring policy worked out for us so far? Well, we bombed one dictator out of power in Libya, which set that nation free … to have terrorist networks openly operate and control the eastern part of the country, which resulted in the sacking of our consulate in Benghazi, and four American deaths. In Egypt, we pushed our longtime ally out of power after just eight days of peaceful protests, and then insisted on immediate elections in which only the radical Muslim Brotherhood could organize effectively — and they took over the government and the military.
But at least Egypt transitioned to democracy, right? Right? Er … didn’t The Who warn us about not getting fooled again?
Egypt’s president on Thursday issued constitutional amendments that placed him above judicial oversight and ordered the retrial of Hosni Mubarak for the killing of protesters in last year’s uprising.
Mohammed Morsi also decreed immunity for the Islamist-dominated panel drafting a new constitution from any possible court decisions to dissolve it, a threat that had been hanging over the controversial assembly. …
The Egyptian leader also decreed that all decisions he has made since taking office in June and until a new constitution is adopted and a new parliament is elected — which is not expected before next spring — are not subject to appeal in court or by any other authority. He also barred any court from dissolving the Islamist-led upper house of parliament, a largely toothless body that has also faced court cases.
But hey, these are just window-dressing issues, right? Morsi is still accountable under the law, unlike that monster Hosni Mubarak, who only represented US interests and defended peace with Israel for over thirty years. He’s still constrained by the new democratic law that the Muslim Brotherhood ushered into Cairo in the Arab Spring.
Actually … no:
The moves effectively remove any oversight on Morsi, the longtime Muslim Brotherhood figure who became Egypt’s first freely elected president last summer after the Feb. 11, 2011 fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak. They come as Morsi is riding high on lavish praise from President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for mediating an end to eight days of fighting between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
Morsi not only holds executive power, he also has legislative authority after a previous court ruling just before he took office on June 30 dissolved the powerful lower house of parliament, which was led by the Brotherhood. With two branches of power in his hands, Morsi has had repeated frictions with the third, the judiciary, over recent months.
“Morsi today usurped all state powers & appointed himself Egypt’s new pharaoh,” pro-reform leader Mohamed ElBaradei wrote on his Twitter account. “A major blow to the revolution that could have dire consequences.”
So we went from having a US-friendly dictator who managed to keep a lid on the Muslim Brotherhood and enforced the peace treaty with Israel, to having a dictator from the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of the Suez Canal. And the only people who couldn’t apparently predict this very outcome were the people in the White House proclaiming their foreign policy as “smart power.”
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Protesters torched the headquarters of the Brotherhood after Morsi turned himself into another dictator overnight.
"Awesome revolution", claims the 50-year-old college student.
You support the brotherhood?
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You support the brotherhood?
Your reading comprehension skills continue to amaze, Simple Jack.
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Your reading comprehension skills continue to amaze, Simple Jack.
Indeed.
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Protesters torched the headquarters of the Brotherhood after Morsi turned himself into another dictator overnight.
"Awesome revolution", claims the 50-year-old college student.
sigh.................... I wish you would add something to a thread even occasionally ??? ??? ???
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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Through Obama's brilliant leadership we facilitated the removal of a US ally who worked closely with Israel and kept the militants in check. We replaced him with an anti American, anti Israeli dictator who is now going to use the billions and billions of dollars Egypt has received from the US to arm militants and destabilize the entire region. Bravo!
Libya was also a stunning success!
Iran is also going great!
The well reasoned approach is a "how to manual" on the most immediate way to run American foreign policy off a cliff.
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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Through Obama's brilliant leadership we facilitated the removal of a US ally who worked closely with Israel and kept the militants in check. We replaced him with an anti American, anti Israeli dictator who is now going to use the billions and billions of dollars Egypt has received from the US to arm militants and destabilize the entire region. Bravo!
Libya was also a stunning success!
Iran is also going great!
The well reasoned approach is a "how to manual" on the most immediate way to run American foreign policy off a cliff.
playing the blame game again I see and wrong again as usual..Obama didn't remove anyone...the Egyptians got tired of Mubarak's greed and his trying to perpetuate a monarchy by installing his son as president....they removed him....funny how you don't see how Mubarak contributd to his own downfall....how blind are you?
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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Through Obama's brilliant leadership we facilitated the removal of a US ally who worked closely with Israel and kept the militants in check. We replaced him with an anti American, anti Israeli dictator who is now going to use the billions and billions of dollars Egypt has received from the US to arm militants and destabilize the entire region. Bravo!
Libya was also a stunning success!
Iran is also going great!
The well reasoned approach is a "how to manual" on the most immediate way to run American foreign policy off a cliff.
So Obama should have invaded Egypt to protect Mubarak, right?
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http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/11/25/251637.html
Chaos back. Great job Obama you Muslim filt.
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http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/11/25/251637.html
Chaos back. Great job Obama you Muslim filt.
sigh.,...you never stop do you???.....can't
you see how worthless your posts have become???
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White House silent as Egypt’s president grabs power, moves toward Shariah law
Daily Caller ^ | 11/26/12 | Neil Munro
Posted on November 26, 2012 1:45:06 AM EST by Nachum
White House officials remained silent during the extended Thanksgiving weekend, as Egypt’s pro-democracy groups called on President Barack Obama to condemn Thursday’s power grab by their country’s Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi.
Morsi decreed Nov. 22 that his pronouncements and edicts were beyond the reach of judicial review. The announcement was met by resistance from the nation’s top judges, who said they would fight Morsi’s unusual self-elevation to near-dictator status.
“I am waiting to see, I hope soon, a very strong statement of condemnation by the U.S., by Europe and by everybody who really cares about human dignity,” declared Mohamed ElBaradei, who is one of Egypt’s more visible non-Islamist politicians.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/27/egypt-protesters-descend-tahrir-square
100k protesting in the square = o-tug - benny andre option FAIL blacken stra -
fail
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/27/egypt-protesters-descend-tahrir-square
100k protesting in the square = o-tug - benny andre option FAIL blacken stra -
fail
Stop blaiming the government for everything crybaby liberal.
You are promoting big government and big spending with your constant demands on the government.
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Egypt court sentences 8 to death over prophet film
CAIRO (AP) -- An Egyptian court has convicted in absentia seven Egyptian Coptic Christians and a Florida-based American pastor and sentenced them to death on charges linked to an anti-Islam film that had sparked riots in parts of the Muslim world.
Egypt's official news agency said the court found the defendants guilty Wednesday of harming national unity, insulting and publicly attacking Islam, and spreading false information. The charges carry the death sentence in Egypt.
The case was largely symbolic since the seven men and one woman are outside of Egypt and unlikely to travel to the country to face the charges. The trial was seen as an attempt to absorb public anger over the film, which portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, womanizer and buffoon.
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Egypt Crisis Raises Fears Of 'Second Revolution'
By HAMZA HENDAWI 11/28/12 07:10 PM ET EST
CAIRO -- Faced with an unprecedented strike by the courts and massive opposition protests, Egypt's Islamist president is not backing down in the showdown over decrees granting him near-absolute powers.
Activists warn that his actions threaten a "second revolution," but Mohammed Morsi faces a different situation than his ousted predecessor, Hosni Mubarak: He was democratically elected and enjoys the support of the nation's most powerful political movement.
Already, Morsi is rushing the work of an Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly at the heart of the power struggle, with a draft of the charter expected as early as Thursday, despite a walkout by liberal and Christian members that has raised questions about the panel's legitimacy.
The next step would be for Morsi to call a nationwide referendum on the document. If adopted, parliamentary elections would be held by the spring.
Wednesday brought a last-minute scramble to seize the momentum over Egypt's political transition. Morsi's camp announced that his Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists will stage a massive rally in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the plaza where more than 200,000 opposition supporters gathered a day earlier.
The Islamists' choice of the square for Saturday's rally raises the possibility of clashes. Several hundred Morsi opponents are camped out there, and another group is fighting the police on a nearby street.
"It is tantamount to a declaration of war," said liberal politician Mustafa al-Naggar, speaking on the private Al-Tahrir TV station.
Morsi remains adamant that his decrees, which place him above oversight of any kind, including by the courts, are in the interest of the nation's transition to democratic rule.
Backing down may not be an option for the 60-year-old U.S.-educated engineer.
Doing so would significantly weaken him and the Brotherhood at a time when their image has been battered by widespread charges that they are too preoccupied with tightening their grip on power to effectively tackle the country's many pressing problems.
Morsi's pride is also a key factor in a country where most people look to their leader as an invincible figure.
He may not be ready to stomach another public humiliation after backing down twice since taking office in June. His attempt to reinstate parliament's Islamist-dominated lower chamber after it was disbanded in July by the Supreme Constitutional Court was overturned by that same court. Last month, Morsi was forced to reinstate the country's top prosecutor just days after firing him when the judiciary ruled it was not within his powers to do so.
Among Morsi's first acts after seizing near-absolute powers last week was to fire the prosecutor again.
Unlike last year's anti-Mubarak uprising, calls for Morsi's ouster have so far been restricted to zealous chants by protesters, with the opposition focusing its campaign on demands that he rescind his decrees, disband the constitutional panel and replace it with a more inclusive one, and fire the Cabinet of Prime Minister Hesham Kandil.
"There is no practical means for Morsi's ouster short of a coup, which is very, very unlikely," said Augustus Richard Norton, a Middle East expert from Boston University.
Still, the opposition, whose main figures played a key role in the anti-Mubarak uprising, may be tempted to try to force Morsi from office if they continue to draw massive crowds like Tuesday's rally, which rivaled some of the biggest anti-Mubarak demonstrations. They will also likely take advantage of the growing popular discontent with Morsi's government and the fragility of his mandate – he won just 51 percent of the vote in a presidential election fought against Mubarak's last prime minister.
With the country still reeling from the aftershocks of the 18-day uprising that toppled Mubarak's 29-year regime, activists and analysts warn that any escalation carries the risk of a second, and possibly bloody, revolution – pitting Islamists against non-Islamists, including liberals, women and minority Christians.
Ominous signs abound. Anti-Morsi crowds have attacked at least a dozen offices belonging to the Brotherhood across the nation since last week. Clashes between the two sides have left at least two dead and hundreds wounded.
The violence and polarization has led to warnings from some newspaper columnists and the public at large of the potential for "civil war."
"As opposed to seeking face-saving compromises, (escalation by Morsi) would indicate starkly that Egypt's leaders have increasingly come to understand the current moment in zero-sum terms," said Michael W. Hanna, an Egypt expert from the New York-based Century Foundation.
"Beyond the political dangers it poses, the move will increase the risks that the contests for power will spill over into the streets, with civil strife a real possibility."
While potentially destabilizing, Morsi's tug-of-war with the liberal opposition pales in comparison to his battle with the powerful judiciary, which considers the president's decrees an unprecedented assault on its authority.
On Wednesday, judges of the nation's highest appeals court and its lower sister court went on strike to protest the decrees, joining hundreds of other judges who have not worked since Sunday.
The Supreme Constitutional Court, which is to rule Sunday on the legality of the constitutional panel and parliament's upper chamber – both dominated by Morsi's Brotherhood and other Islamists – admonished the president for accusing it of trying to bring down his government.
The loss of the judiciary's goodwill could prove costly for Morsi.
Already, the judges are warning that, unless their demands are met, they will not assume their traditional role of supervising a referendum on a new constitution or the parliamentary elections that would follow. Without them, the legitimacy of any vote would be in question.
"This is the highest form of protest," said Nasser Amin, head of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession. "The judges felt that the constitutional declaration has taken away from them the dearest and most important mandates" – oversight of government decisions.
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Egypt: Mass Protests After Constitution Draft Approved
Arutz Sheva ^ | 30/11/12 | Elad Benari
Posted on Saturday, December 01, 2012 5:59:12 PM by Eleutheria5
An Egyptian panel rushed through a draft constitution seen as undermining basic freedoms on Friday, resulting in mass protests in Cairo.
AFP reported that tens of thousands of protesters rallied as the opposition piled pressure on President Mohammed Morsi.
"Down with the constitutional assembly," vast crowds armed with megaphones chanted as they filed into Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the uprising that overthrew Hosni Mubarak in early 2011.
Banners condemned "dictatorial Morsi" while protesters shouted "down with the rule of the Guide," a reference to the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, through whose ranks Morsi rose before becoming president.
The marches, led by opposition figures, set off from several Cairo districts early in the day to join the protesters in the square.
The Islamist-dominated assembly, tasked with drafting a new charter to replace the one suspended after Mubarak's ouster, approved the draft early on Friday after an almost 24 hour-long session boycotted by liberals and Christians.
The panel's head, Hossam el-Ghiriani, said a delegation from the Constituent Assembly would visit Morsi on Saturday to present him the draft constitution. Morsi is expected to call for a referendum within two weeks.
Rights activists say the charter undermines freedoms of women and religious minorities while the opposition says it was rushed through to force an early referendum.
.....
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
HA HA HA HA HA HA1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2241374/Muslim-Brotherhood-paying-gangs-rape-women-beat-men-protesting-Egypt-thousands-demonstrators-pour-streets.html#ixzz2DqJEpW4p
TOTAL FAIL
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2241374/Muslim-Brotherhood-paying-gangs-rape-women-beat-men-protesting-Egypt-thousands-demonstrators-pour-streets.html#ixzz2DqJEpW4p
TOTAL FAIL
Yes its Obama who has ordered the rapes we get it ::)
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Yes its Obama who has ordered the rapes we get it ::)
Yup.
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Yup.
He probably had his own rape van back in Chicago (driving around high on meth) infact thats where he found Michelle, no?
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He probably had his own rape van back in Chicago (driving around high on meth) infact thats where he found Michelle, no?
Your finally catching young buck.
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Your finally catching young buck.
Lol :)
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http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/01/15578733-egyptians-fear-decades-of-muslim-brotherhood-rule-warn-morsi-is-no-friend-to-us
Total Obama fail.
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Thousands ready to march on Egypt president palace
Dec 4, 10:04 AM (ET)
By HAMZA HENDAWI
(AP) Egyptian protesters chant anti-Muslim Brotherhood slogans during a rally in front of the...
Full Image
CAIRO (AP) - Thousands of Egyptians massed in Cairo Tuesday for a march to the presidential palace to protest the assumption by the nation's Islamist president of nearly unrestricted powers and a draft constitution hurriedly adopted by his allies.
The march comes amid rising anger over the draft charter and decrees issued by Mohammed Morsi giving himself sweeping powers. Morsi called for a nationwide referendum on the draft constitution on Dec. 15.
It is Egypt's worst political crisis since the ouster nearly two years ago of authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak. The country has been divided into two camps: Morsi and his fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, as well as ultraconservative Salafi Islamists versus youth groups, liberal parties and large sectors of the public.
Hundreds of black-clad riot police deployed around the Itihadiya palace in Cairo's district of Heliopolis. Barbed wire was also placed outside the complex, and side roads leading to it were blocked to traffic. Protesters gathered at Cairo's Tahrir square and several other points not far from the palace to march to the presidential complex.
(AP) An Egyptian walks past a stand displaying state-owned newspapers in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, Dec. 4,...
Full Image
"Freedom or we die," chanted a crowd of several hundred outside a mosque in the Abbasiyah district. "Mohammed Morsi! Illegitimate! Brotherhood! Illegitimate!" they also yelled, alluding to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood from which Morsi hails.
"This is the last warning before we lay siege on the presidential palace," said Mahmoud Hashim, a 21-year-old student from the city of Suez on the Red Sea. "We want the presidential decrees cancelled."
Several hundred protesters also gathered outside Morsi's residence in an upscale suburb not far from the Itihadiya. "Down with the sons of dogs. We are the power and we are the people" They chanted.
Morsi, who narrowly won the presidency in a June election, appeared to be in no mood for compromise.
A statement by his office said the Egyptian leader met on Tuesday with his deputy, prime minister and several top Cabinet members to discuss preparations for the referendum. The statement appeared also to suggest that it is business as usual at the presidential palace despite the planned rally.
(AP) An Egyptian newspaperman arranges state-owned newspapers being sold on the street in Cairo, Egypt,...
Full Image
A large turnout would signal sustained momentum for the opposition, which brought out at least 200,000 protesters to Cairo's Tahrir Square a week ago and a comparable number on Friday, demanding that Morsi's decrees be rescinded. Hundreds of protesters also have camped out in Tahrir, birthplace of last year's uprising, for close to two weeks.
The Islamists responded by sending hundreds of thousands of supporters into Cairo's twin city of Giza on Saturday and across much of the country. Thousands also imposed a siege on Egypt's highest court, the Supreme Constitutional Court.
The court had been widely expected Sunday to declare the constitutional assembly that passed the draft charter on Friday to be illegitimate and to disband parliament's upper house, the Shura Council. Instead, the judges went on strike after they found their building under siege by protesters.
The opposition has yet to say whether it intends to focus its energy on rallying support for a boycott of the Dec. 15 vote or defeating the draft with a "no" vote.
"We haven't made any decisions yet, but I'm leaning against a boycott and toward voting 'no'," said Hossam al-Hamalawy of the Socialist Revolutionaries, a key group behind last year's uprising. "We want a (new) constituent assembly that represents the people and we keep up the pressure on Morsi."
The strikes were part of a planned campaign of civil disobedience that could bring in other industries.
Already Tuesday, at least eight influential dailies, a mix of opposition party mouthpieces and independent publications, suspended publication for a day to protest against what many journalists see as the restrictions on freedom of expression in the draft constitution.
The country's privately owned TV networks planned their own protest Wednesday, when they will blacken their screens all day.
Morsi's Nov. 22 decrees placed him above oversight of any kind, including the courts. The constitutional panel then rushed through a draft constitution without the participation of representatives of liberals and Christians. Only four women, all Islamists, attended the marathon, all-night session.
The charter has been criticized for not protecting the rights of women and minority groups, and many journalists see it as restricting freedom of expression. Critics also say it empowers Islamic religious clerics by giving them a say over legislation, while some articles were seen as tailored to get rid of Islamists' enemies.
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Egypt's Mursi leaves palace as police battle protesters
Islam’s status unchanged in Egypt draft constitution, al-Azhar made reference
By Yasmine Saleh and Marwa Awad
CAIRO | Tue Dec 4, 2012 3:25pm EST
(Reuters) - Egyptian police battled thousands of protesters outside President Mohamed Mursi's palace in Cairo on Tuesday, prompting the Islamist leader to leave the building, presidency sources said.
Officers fired teargas at up to 10,000 demonstrators angered by Mursi's drive to hold a referendum on a new constitution on December 15. Some broke through police lines around his palace and protested next to the perimeter wall.
The crowds had gathered nearby in what organizers had dubbed "last warning" protests against Mursi, who infuriated opponents with a November 22 decree that expanded his powers. "The people want the downfall of the regime," the demonstrators chanted.
"The president left the palace," a presidential source, who declined to be named, told Reuters. A security source at the presidency also said the president had departed.
Mursi ignited a storm of unrest in his bid to prevent a judiciary still packed with appointees of ousted predecessor Hosni Mubarak from derailing a troubled political transition.
Facing the gravest crisis of his six-month-old tenure, the Islamist president has shown no sign of buckling under pressure.
Riot police at the palace faced off against activists chanting "leave, leave" and holding Egyptian flags with "no to the constitution" written on them. Protesters had assembled near mosques in northern Cairo before marching towards the palace.
"Our marches are against tyranny and the void constitutional decree and we won't retract our position until our demands are met," said Hussein Abdel Ghany, a spokesman for an opposition coalition of liberal, leftist and other disparate factions.
Protesters later surrounded the palace, with some climbing on gates at the rear to look down into the gardens.
At one point, people clambered onto a police armored vehicle and waved flags, while riot police huddled nearby.
The Health Ministry said 18 people had been injured in clashes next to the palace, according to the state news agency.
YEARNING FOR STABILITY
Despite the latest protests, there has been only a limited response to opposition calls for a mass campaign of civil disobedience in the Arab world's most populous country and cultural hub, where many people yearn for a return to stability.
A few hundred protesters gathered earlier near Mursi's house in a suburb east of Cairo, chanting slogans against his decree and against the Muslim Brotherhood, from which the president emerged to win a free election in June. Police closed the road to stop them from coming any closer, a security official said.
Opposition groups have accused Mursi of making a dictatorial power grab to push through a constitution drafted by an assembly dominated by his supporters, with a referendum planned for December 15.
They say the draft constitution does not reflect the interests of Egypt's liberals and other groups, an accusation dismissed by Islamists who insist it is a balanced document.
Egypt's most widely-read independent newspapers did not publish on Tuesday in protest at Mursi's "dictatorship". Banks closed early to let staff go home safely in case of trouble.
Abdelrahman Mansour in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the cradle of the anti-Mubarak revolt, said: "The presidency believes the opposition is too weak and toothless. Today is the day we show them the opposition is a force to be reckoned with."
But after winning post-Mubarak elections and pushing the Egyptian military out of the political driving seat it held for decades, the Islamists sense their moment has come to shape the future of Egypt, a longtime U.S. ally whose 1979 peace treaty with Israel is a cornerstone of Washington's Middle East policy.
The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, who staged a huge pro-Mursi rally in Cairo on Saturday, are confident enough members of the judiciary will be available to oversee the mid-December referendum, despite calls by some judges for a boycott.
"The crisis we have suffered for two weeks is on its way to an end, and very soon, God willing," Saad al-Katatni, leader of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Cairo stocks closed up 3.5 percent as investors took heart at what they saw as prospects for a return to stability after the referendum in a country whose divisions have only widened since a mass uprising toppled Mubarak on February 11, 2011.
Mohamed Radwan, at Pharos Securities brokerage, said the Supreme Judicial Council's agreement to supervise the vote had generated confidence that it would go ahead "despite all the noise and demonstrations that might take place until then".
"NO WAY PERFECT"
Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, a technocrat with Islamist sympathies, said in an interview with CNN: "We certainly hope that things will quiet down after the referendum is completed."
He said the constitution was "in no way a perfect text" that everyone had agreed to, but that a "majority consensus" favored moving forward with the referendum in 11 days' time.
The Muslim Brotherhood, now tasting power via the ballot box for the first time in eight decades of struggle, wants to safeguard its gains and appears ready to override street protests by what it regards as an unrepresentative minority.
It is also determined to prevent the courts, which have already dissolved the Islamist-led elected lower house of parliament, from further obstructing their blueprint for change.
Despite charges that they are anti-Islamist and politically motivated, judges say they are following legal codes in their rulings. Experts say some political changes rushed through in the past two years have been on shaky legal ground.
A Western diplomat said the Islamists were counting on a popular desire for restored normality and economic stability.
"All the messages from the Muslim Brotherhood are that a vote for the constitution is one for stability and a vote against is one for uncertainty," he said, adding that the cost of the strategy was a "breakdown in consensus politics".
(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Tamim Elyan and Edmund Blair; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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Egypt army erects barriers at Cairo presidential palace (clashes leave 5 dead, 644 injured)
BBC News ^ | 12/6/12 | BBC
Posted on Thursday, December 06, 2012 2:27:36 PM
The Egyptian army has set up barricades outside the presidential palace, after ordering protesters to leave the area.
It follows violent overnight clashes between supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi that left five people dead and 644 injured.
Most protesters left the palace by the 15:00 (13:00 GMT) deadline, though some opposition activists remained.
Meanwhile, Egypt's top Islamic body has called on the president to suspend his decree claiming sweeping powers.
The Al-Azhar institution also demanded an unconditional dialogue between the president and his opponents.
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo says this move by one of the most respected bodies in Sunni Islam has put President Morsi - who was largely brought to power by the powerful Islamist Muslim Brotherhood - under more pressure.
But he adds that it is difficult to see what compromise is possible between President Morsi and the opposition.
Mr Morsi is expected to address the nation on Thursday evening, although his statement appears to have been delayed.
The president adopted new powers in the decree on 22 November, and stripped the judiciary of any power to challenge his decisions.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
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For Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government, more battle tanks and jet fighters are on their way from the United States.
Cairo’s military link to Washington has remained intact, meaning the U.S. will continue to modernize the biggest military in Africa — even as President Mohammed Morsi has decreed near-absolute power for himself and his supporters and opponents battle outside his palace.
Analysts say Egypt’s military buildup presents risks for Washington — and Israel — with the growing influence of the Brotherhood, whose overriding goal is to establish Shariah, or Islamic, law worldwide.
A Pentagon statement to The Washington Times on Thursday said: “We are always reviewing our foreign assistance to make sure foreign assistance advances U.S. objectives and is being used for the right purposes.”
For now, Egypt is due 200 M1A1 Abrams battle tanks, the same mechanized firepower manned by American soldiers, bringing Egypt’s inventory to a robust 1,200.
Enlarge Photo
An opponent of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi argues Thursday with Morsi supporters, ... more >
Also in the pipeline is a squadron of the Air Force F-16 Falcon, a multipurpose warplane able to dogfight and drop ordnance.
The government awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a contract in March 2010 for 20 F-16s, the last to be delivered next year. That would increase Egypt’s total fleet to 240, according to a company press release at the time.
“Egypt has far and away the largest army in Africa,” said Egypt analyst Robert Springborg, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
The billions of dollars in U.S. military aid — in annual $1.3 billion stipends — have made the Egyptian air force the fourth-largest F-16 operator among 25 countries. Egypt’s 4,000 tanks, including the 1,000 or so M1A1s, make it the world’s seventh-largest tank army.
“This is a pretty substantial capacity that they have developed,” Mr. Springborg said.
‘A top regional priority’
In Cairo, the Egyptian army sealed off the president’s palace with M-60 tanks and barbed wire Thursday, a day after Morsi supporters and detractors clashed outside the residence. At least six people were killed Wednesday.
What’s more, another member of Mr. Morsi’s 17-member advisory board resigned to protest his handling of the growing crisis over his power grab and a controversial draft constitution approved by his Islamist allies. So far, seven people have resigned from his advisory panel.
A referendum on the constitution is scheduled for Dec. 15, and the Muslim Brotherhood is strongly advocating its ratification.
Meanwhile, Frank Gaffney, a senior defense policymaker in the Reagan administration, has been warning about the rise of the Brotherhood as it relates to the U.S.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/6/muslim-brotherhood-inherits-us-war-gear/#ixzz2EO229OvZ
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
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http://twitchy.com/2013/01/25/sign-in-cairos-tahrir-square-obama-you-jerk-muslim-brotherhoods-are-killing-the-egyptians
TOTAL FAIL
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/violence-flares-on-annive_n_2548281.html
LOL. Andre - still crying in tears?
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27 die in Egypt riot after soccer violence verdict
Email this Story
Jan 26, 12:18 PM (ET)
By AYA BATRAWY
(AP) An Egyptian soccer fan of Al-Ahly club displays scales to fans celebrating a court verdict that...
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CAIRO (AP) - Angry relatives and residents rampaged through an Egyptian port city Saturday in rioting that killed at least 27 people after a judge sentenced nearly two dozen soccer fans to death for involvement in deadly violence after a game last year.
The unrest was the latest in a bout of violence that has left a total of 38 people dead in two days, including 11 killed in clashes between police and protesters marking Friday's second anniversary of the uprising that overthrew longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.
President Mohammed Morsi canceled a scheduled trip to Ethiopia Saturday and instead met for the first time with top generals as part of the newly formed National Defense Council.
The violence in Port Said erupted after a judge sentenced 21 people to death in connection with the Feb. 1 soccer melee that killed 74 fans of the Cairo-based Al-Ahly team. Executions in Egypt are usually carried out by hanging.
(AP) Egyptians say funeral prayers in a mosque for three people who died in demonstrations marking the...
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All the defendants - who were not present in the courtroom Saturday for security reasons - can appeal the verdict.
Judge Sobhi Abdel-Maguid did not give his reasoning when he read out the verdicts for 21 out of the 73 defendants Saturday. The verdict for the remaining 52 defendants, including nine security officials, is scheduled to be delivered March 9. Some have been charged with murder and others with assisting the attackers.
Die-hard soccer fans from both teams, known as Ultras, hold the police at least partially responsible for February's violence, which was the world's worst soccer violence in 15 years, saying officers at the game did nothing to stop the bloodshed. They also criticize Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi for doing little to reform the police force or the judiciary since he took office in July.
The opposition says Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected and civilian president, and his Muslim Brotherhood allies in government have failed to restore stability amid continued political turmoil and crime, and point to a worsening economy.
In a statement Saturday, the main opposition National Salvation Front said it holds Morsi responsible for "the excessive use of force by the security forces against protesters." They threatened to boycott upcoming parliamentary elections if Morsi does not meet their demands that include amending articles in the new constitution.
(AP) Families and supporters of those accused of soccer violence from the Port Said soccer club react to...
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The Brotherhood said in its statement that "misleading" media outlets were to blame for "enflaming the people's hatred for the current regime and urging them to act violently."
Immediately after Saturday's verdict was read live on state TV, two policemen were shot dead outside Port Said's main prison when angry relatives tried to storm the facility to free the defendants. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets, as well as live rounds, at the crowd outside the prison.
In other parts of the city, residents tried to storm the governor's office, police stations, the power station and the main court building. Residents occupied one police station in the east of Port Said.
The director of hospitals in Port Said, Dr. Abdel-Raham Farah, said two local soccer players were shot to death as they were apparently on their way to practice. He identified them as Mahmoud Abdel-Halim al-Dizawi, who played for the city's Al-Marikh club, and Tamer al-Fahla, who used to play for the city's main Al-Masry team. Al-Diwazi was shot three times, the doctor said.
The club they were training at is near the prison that residents tried to storm.
(AP) Families and supporters of those accused of soccer violence from the Port Said soccer club react to...
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The military was deployed in Port Said to try to restore security, but assaults continued into the evening. The army was widely used to keep order by top generals who took over after Hosni Mubarak, but the military has kept a much lower profile since Morsi was elected.
Egyptian military forces also were sent into the canal city of Suez after eight people died in Friday's clashes between security forces and protesters opposed to the new president and the Brotherhood. Another protester was killed in Ismailiya, and security officials told the state news agency MENA that two policemen were killed in Friday's protests.
Many of the young men who led the protests and clashes hail from the Ultras. They often come from poor neighborhoods and view the police force that was the backbone of Mubarak's authoritarian rule as their nemesis.
"The police are thugs!" yelled relatives of the deceased inside the courtroom before the judge took the bench.
Near Cairo's Tahrir Square, where tens of thousands had amassed to mark the two-year anniversary a day earlier, Ultras Al-Ahly waved their team's red flag as they clashed with police who fired tear gas to disburse the crowd near Cabinet headquarters and Parliament.
(AP) Families and supporters of those accused of soccer violence from the Port Said soccer club react to...
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Underlining the distrust that lingers between much of the public and the police, survivors and witnesses say Mubarak loyalists had a hand in instigating last year's attack, which began after Port Said's home team won the match, 3-1, and that the police at the very least were responsible for gross negligence.
Al-Masry fans stormed the pitch after the game ended, attacking Cairo's Al-Ahly fans. Authorities shut off the stadium lights, plunging it into darkness. In the exit corridor, the fleeing crowd pressed against a chained gate until it broke open. Many were crushed under the crowd of people trying to flee.
Other survivors said it was simply bloodthirsty Al-Masry fans and lack of enough security that led to the deaths of their colleagues. Both sides blame police for failing to perform usual searches for weapons at the stadium.
Anger is boiling in Port Said, where residents say they have been unfairly scapegoated.
A lawyer of one of the defendants given a death sentence said the verdict was political.
(AP) Egyptian soccer fans of Al-Ahly club celebrate in front of their club in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday,...
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"There is nothing to say these people did anything and we don't understand what this verdict is based on," Mohammed al-Daw told The Associated Press by telephone.
"Our situation in Port Said is very grave because kids were taken from their homes for wearing green T-shirts," he said, referring to the Al-Masry team color.
Al-Daw and other defense attorneys said all those sentenced were Al-Masry fans. As is customary in Egypt, the death sentences will be sent to the nation's top religious authority, the Grand Mufti, for approval, though the court has final say on the matter.
Fans of Al-Ahly, whose stands were attacked by rival club Al-Masry in the incident in Port Said, had promised more violence in the days leading up to the verdict if the death penalty was not handed down.
Before the judge could read out the names of the 21, families erupted in relief, yelling "Allahu Akbar!" Arabic for "God is great," with their hands in the air and waving pictures of the deceased. One man fainted while others hugged one another. The judge smacked the bench several times to try to restore calm in the courtroom.
"This was necessary," said Nour al-Sabah, whose 17-year-old son Ahmed Zakaria died in last year's melee. "Now I want to see the guys when they are executed with my own eyes, just as they saw the murder of my son."
Thousands of Al-Ahly fans gathered outside the Cairo sports club for the verdict, chanting against the police and the government.
"We are not really that happy," Mohamed Ahmed, a survivor of the attack, said. "The government helped the Ultras of Port Said by blocking the gates of the stadium until people suffocated to death.
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Associated Press writer Mariam Rizk contributed to this report.
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By Edmund Blair and Shaimaa Fayed
CAIRO, Jan 28 (Reuters) - A man was shot dead on Monday in a fifth day of violence in Egypt that has killed 50 people and prompted the Islamist president to declare a state of emergency in an attempt to end a wave of unrest sweeping the Arab world's biggest nation.
Emergency rule announced by President Mohamed Morsi on Sunday covers the cities of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez. The army has already been deployed in two of those cities and cabinet approved a measure to let soldiers arrest civilians.
A cabinet source told Reuters any trials would be before civilian courts, but the step is likely to anger protesters who accuse Morsi of using high-handed security tactics of the kind they fought against to oust President Hosni Mubarak.
Egypt's politics have become deeply polarised since those heady days two years ago, when protesters were making most of the running in the Arab Spring revolutions that sent shockwaves through the region and Islamists and liberals lined up together.
Although Islamists have won parliamentary and presidential elections, the disparate opposition has since united against Morsi. Late last year he moved to expand his powers and push a constitution with Islamist leanings through a referendum, punctuated by violent street protests.
Morsi's call for a national dialogue meeting on Monday to help end the crisis was spurned by his main opponents.
They accuse Morsi of hijacking the revolution, listening only to his Islamist allies and breaking a promise to be a president for all Egyptians. Islamists say their rivals want to overthrow by undemocratic means Egypt's first freely elected leader.
Anti-Morsi protesters were out on the streets again in Cairo and elsewhere on Monday, the second anniversary of one of the bloodiest days in the revolution that erupted on Jan. 25, 2011, and ended Mubarak's iron rule 18 days later.
CONCERNS
Hundreds of demonstrators in Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, cities which all lie on the economically vital Suez Canal, had turned out against Morsi's decision on Sunday within moments of him speaking. Activists there pledged to defy a curfew that starts at 9 p.m. (1700 GMT).
Instability in Egypt has raised concerns in Western capitals, where officials worry about the direction of a key regional player that has a peace deal with Israel.
The political unrest has been exacerbated by street violence linked to death penalties imposed on soccer supporters convicted of involvement in stadium rioting a year ago.
In Cairo on Monday, police fired volleys of teargas at stone-throwing protesters near Tahrir Square, cauldron of the anti-Mubarak uprising. A 46-year-old bystander was killed by a gunshot, a security source said. It was not clear who opened fire.
"We want to bring down the regime and end the state that is run by the Muslim Brotherhood," said Ibrahim Eissa, a 26-year-old cook, protecting his face from teargas wafting towards him.
Propelled to the presidency in a June election by the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi has lurched through a series of political crises and violent demonstrations, complicating his task of shoring up the economy and of preparing for a parliamentary election to cement the new democracy in a few months.
"The protection of the nation is the responsibility of everyone. We will confront any threat to its security with force and firmness within the remit of the law," Morsi said, angering many of his opponents when he wagged his finger at the camera.
The president offered condolences to families of victims of violence and also called a dialogue meeting on Monday at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) between Islamist allies and their liberal, leftist and other opponents to discuss the crisis.
The main opposition National Salvation Front coalition rejected the offer as "cosmetic and not substantive" and set several conditions that have not been met in the past, such as forming a national salvation government. They also demanded that Morsi announce his responsibility for the bloodshed.
SECURITY MEASURES
"We will send a message to the Egyptian people and the president of the republic about what we think are the essentials for dialogue. If he agrees to them, we are ready for dialogue," opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei told a news conference.
The opposition Front has distanced itself from the latest flare-ups but said Morsi should have acted far sooner to impose security measures that would have ended the violence.
"Of course we feel the president is missing the real problem on the ground, which is his own policies," Front spokesman Khaled Dawoud said after Morsi made his declaration.
Other activists said Morsi's measures to try to impose control on the turbulent streets could backfire.
"Martial law, state of emergency and army arrests of civilians are not a solution to the crisis," Ahmed Maher of the April 6 movement that helped galvanise the 2011 uprising said. "All this will do is further provoke the youth. The solution has to be a political one that addresses the roots of the problem."
Thousands of mourners joined funerals in Port Said for the latest victims in the Mediterranean port city. Seven people were killed there on Sunday when residents joined marches to bury 33 others who had been killed a day earlier, most by gunshot wounds in a city where arms are rife.
Protests erupted there on Saturday after a court sentenced to death several people from the city for their role in deadly soccer violence last year, a verdict residents saw as unfair. The anger swiftly turned against Morsi and his government.
Rights activists said Morsi's declaration was a backward step for Egypt, which was under emergency law for Mubarak's entire 30-year rule. His police used the sweeping arrest provisions to muzzle dissent and round up opponents, including members of the Brotherhood and even Morsi himself.
Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch in Cairo said the police, still hated by many Egyptians for their heavy-handed tactics under Mubarak, would once again have the right to arrest people "purely because they look suspicious", undermining efforts to create a more efficient and respected police force.
"It is a classic knee-jerk reaction to think the emergency law will help bring security," she said. "It gives so much discretion to the Ministry of Interior that it ends up causing more abuse, which in turn causes more anger." (Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia; Editing by Giles Elgood and Peter Millership)
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He probably had his own rape van back in Chicago (driving around high on meth) infact thats where he found Michelle, no?
:D.....please don't give 3333 any more ideas!
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Egypt could 'collapse,' army chief warns as violence continues
Reuters via nbcnews.com ^ | January 29, 2013 | Tom Perry, Yasmine Saleh and Yusri Mohamed
Posted on Tuesday, January 29, 2013 7:35:39 AM by John W
The struggle between political forces in Egypt could “lead to the collapse of the state,” the country’s army chief said Tuesday.
In a posting to the army’s Facebook page, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said political and economic issues now represented a “real threat” to security.
"The continuation of the struggle of the different political forces ... over the management of state affairs could lead to the collapse of the state," General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said.
He added that the army would remain "the solid and the cohesive block" on which "the foundation of the state rests."
Al-Sisi, who is also defense minister, also said that the army had been deployed in cities along the Suez Canal primarily to protect the key global trade link.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnews.nbcnews.com ...
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Editorial: A failing revolution
By Ottawa Citizen Editorial, Ottawa CitizenFebruary 1, 2013
0
As Egypt descended into violence this past week you can’t help but ask: What happened to the revolution? Surely the young men and women who toppled Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorial regime didn’t intend to replace him with the authoritarian regime of Mohammed Morsi.
The Egyptian army was deployed this week after rioting broke out in various Egyptian cities. Dozens have died in the violence. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has warned that the confrontation between Islamists and the more liberal-minded, secular-oriented protesters “could lead to the collapse of the state.”
All this squeezes Morsi into a tight corner, of course. He has to suppress the riots, appease his own supporters and, at the extreme, avoid a civil war. Yet, Morsi can be faulted for having fostered the conditions that engender violence. He and his Muslim Brotherhood backers rammed through a pro-Islamist constitution with little regard for Egypt’s large secularized population, or much concern for women’s rights and religious minorities. Morsi’s recent attempt to give himself greater powers also did not go down well with many Egyptians.
Perhaps even more crucially, Morsi’s regime has done little to improve the economic prospects of Egypt’s young — 45 million are under 30 years old. Rising food prices and high unemployment were the dry tinder that sparked the Arab Spring. Yet, two years later, unemployment among those between 19 and 24 hovers at 41 per cent, while, according to one report, 86 per cent of Egyptian households don’t have enough income to cover monthly food and shelter costs. An explosion was almost inevitable.
Certainly, no one expected Morsi to turn Egypt around overnight. The problem, though, is that he’s been more concerned about ideology than the economy. He and his backers seem to want to ensure the Muslim Brotherhood’s dominance in order to remake Egypt as a fundamentalist Islamic state.
Revolutions tend to turn violent when they fail to deliver on their promises. But they also tend to breed totalitarianism because they demand the total identification of individuals with the state. There can be no dissent in a totalitarian state because that casts doubt on the new order’s legitimacy. This happened with the Russian and French Revolutions. For those who questioned the remaking of society into the revolutionary image, well, there was always the gulag or the guillotine.
Liberal political orders have generally avoided or overcome this totalitarian inclination because civil society — everything from churches and Rotary Clubs to Neighbourhood Watch and environmental groups — mediates the relationship between the state and the citizen. Civil society creates spaces between the state, the market and the family that allows people to exchange ideas and act to satisfy their political, social, psychological and spiritual needs. The state is not a “total” presence in citizens’ lives.
After decades of near-totalitarian rule, Egypt’s civil society is much weakened. Unfortunately, the Morsi regime appears bent on weakening it more.
How might the West respond? Tough-mindedly, using money as leverage. Morsi wants to borrow $5 billion from the International Monetary Fund, and seeks financial concessions from countries such as the United States and Germany. The West should grant loans only on condition that Morsi abandon the Islamist agenda, recast the constitution to foster civil society — guaranteeing religious freedom and rights for women is a good place to start — and find consensus with secularist advocates. The West should not prop up another would-be theocratic dictatorship.
OTTAWA CITIZEN
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Editorial+failing+revolution/7906715/story.html#ixzz2JwGsinjc
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Kerry urges Egypt to take difficult economic steps; opposition figures skip meetings
By Anne Gearan, Updated: Saturday, March 2, 3:27 PM
CAIRO — Well-known political opposition figures stayed away from meetings with visiting Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Saturday, some for fear of appearing too close to the United States in the still-unsettled politics of Egypt two years after the fall of a U.S.-backed dictator.
Kerry encouraged Egypt’s Islamist-led government to take politically difficult economic steps that are crucial to securing international loans and outside investment. President Mohamed Morsi, whom Kerry will see Sunday, has been unable to marshal support for such economic measures. His opponents accuse him of reneging on pledges of political and religious openness.
Meanwhile, some $450 million in U.S. aid to Egypt has been frozen in Congress and the International Monetary Fund has held off on loans and debt relief worth more than $4 billion. Egypt has been the most important Arab ally of the United States for decades, with ties built largely on Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel.
Egypt’s foreign currency reserves have fallen by roughly two-thirds since the 2011 revolution that overthrew longtime secular ruler Hosni Mubarak. Morsi’s government is trying to slow a run on the U.S. dollar. Unemployment is rampant, and a diesel-fuel crisis has led to waits of several hours at gas stations.
“We expect from friends, and particularly from the United States as a strategic partner, to stand by Egypt in this period, especially on the economic issues,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr said after a meeting with Kerry.
The ruling Islamists are at an impasse with secular and leftist opposition parties. The umbrella National Salvation Front has called for a boycott of upcoming parliamentary elections in protest of a national constitution whose strong Islamist stamp also worries some in the United States.
Political liberals and secular parties resent the U.S. push for them to take part in voting they say will further divide the country. They say the United States is showing favor to Morsi and Islamists.
Kerry addressed Egypt’s intertwined political and economic problems by meeting with opposition political and religious leaders, human rights activists and business leaders. For some, Kerry’s visit is an unwelcome public reminder that the United States is Egypt’s principal international benefactor — and that the money comes with strings.
National Salvation Front leader Hamdeen Sabahi refused to meet with Kerry, who had invited a mix of opposition figures to a roundtable meeting at his hotel. After Sabahi’s announcement Friday, fellow NSF leader Mohamed ElBaradei also decided against the meeting. Kerry spoke to him by phone after arriving in Egypt on Saturday.
Opposition figure Amr Moussa declined the group invitation but held a private session with Kerry, out of the view of cameras.
Kerry told reporters later that he had not heard anything from opposition figures to suggest they will change their minds about the vote boycott.
Ahead of the meetings, a senior State Department official traveling with Kerry said the secretary of state would press squabbling politicians to comply with IMF preconditions to increase tax revenue and cut energy subsidies. That would not only bring direct economic relief but “unlock” other foreign investment from the United States and elsewhere, the official said on the condition of anonymity to preview Kerry’s message.
Kerry called his closed-door session with opposition leaders productive, but he emerged with a warning.
“It is paramount, essential, urgent, that the Egyptian economy get stronger, get back on its feet,” Kerry said.
He offered U.S. help but said investors are spooked.
“To attract capital, to bring money back here that will invest and give business the confidence to move forward, there has to be a sense of security, and here has to be a sense of economic political viability,” Kerry said.
He added that the United States has no political favorites in Egypt.
“I come here on behalf of President Obama committed not to any party, not to any one person, not to any specific political point of view,” Kerry said.
The belt-tightening is widely unpopular, and Kerry’s appeal comes as political parties and Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed government jockey ahead of parliamentary elections set to begin April 22.
“For there to be agreement on doing the kinds of economic reforms that would be required under an IMF deal, there has to be a basic political . . . agreement among all of the various players,” the official traveling with Kerry said.
Egypt said Thursday that it would invite the IMF to reopen talks about the loans. Terms of the package were agreed to in principle in November but put on hold weeks later because of widespread violence and street protests.
The 6th of April movement, a youth opposition group that opposed Mubarak and now opposes the Muslim Brotherhood’s ruling party, said it refused to be a “checked box” on Kerry’s agenda.
The “so-called opposition meeting arranged by the U.S. Embassy is a collection of ‘feloul,’ ” or remnants of the old regime, “and minor party leaders who do not represent the youth of Egypt,” the 6th of April movement said in a statement on Facebook.
Investment Minister Osama Saleh expressed hope that a deal could be reached by the end of April, Reuters reported.
Ahmad Kamel Saleh, a spokesman for Moussa’s political party, said a deputy attended the group meeting in Moussa’s stead “because we see that we don’t have anything extra to say regarding the meeting and the opposition’s stand regarding the elections.”
“We do not see that anybody is trying to interfere,” he added.
Also Saturday, activists accused police of using excessive force and running over protesters in two Egyptian cities, killing one, the Associated Press reported. More than 70 people have been killed in clashes with police since late January, the news agency reported.
Human Rights Watch said Saturday that Morsi should “publicly acknowledge that the police’s right to use lethal force is not unlimited — even when they come under attack — and order the police to limit any use of force to what is strictly necessary."
Kerry planned to see a representative from the international human rights group during his stay.
Sharaf al-Hourani contributed to this report.
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Egyptian Protesters Accuse Kerry of Muslim Brotherhood Membership
March 3, 2013 By Daniel Greenfield Comments (20)
Kerry’s visit to Egypt did not go smoothly as protesters turned out to denounce Obama and Kerry’s support for the Islamist regime of Morsi.
Protesters held a banner reading, “They shook hands stained with the blood of children.” Others burned and stomped on photos of Kerry. They denounced American interference in Egyptian affairs and claimed that the alliance between the US and the Muslim Brotherhood is the true ruling regime in Egypt. And a simpler banned said, “Go to hell.”
Many of the protesters had camped out overnight bringing their own mattresses with them. Others reportedly set fire to car tires outside the airport to prevent Kerry from entering the country.
And some held up cartoons of Kerry, portraying him with an Islamic beard, saying “Kerry – member of the Brotherhood”.
Meanwhile one of the founding members of Free Egyptians has written an open letter to Obama.
The USA has sponsored the so-called Arab Spring and has sold it to its taxpayers as the outcry of oppressed middle-eastern people for democracy, when all it achieved was bringing to power theocratic regimes that oppressed their people even more and turned the victim countries into failed states, namely Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Tunis and now Egypt which you are visiting to ensure that it joins the happy crowd.
Is surrounding Israel by failed states your ultimate objective?
Do you think that there can be lasting peace with countries that base their decisions on fanatic religious views?
Do you think that peace can be perpetuated in a neighborhood of poverty, despair and extremism?
Are you telling your taxpayers that you are squandering their money on a failed experiment that will create new Ben Ladens who will eventually turn against your country and the freedom, equality and liberty your people hold so dearly?
Mr. Secretary, you are coming to Egypt to support Morsi and his gang who since coming to power in June of last year through a questionable election have broken the constitution and all the laws of Egypt.
Mr. Morsi has issued illegal constitution amendment declarations and decrees in flagrant breach of the constitution he swore to uphold. When popular pressure mounted against these unprecedented actions, he decided to abrogate the most illegitimate of those decrees, yet kept all its effects in force!!!!!
He sent his gang thugs to impose siege on the Supreme Court of Egypt for over 2 months to obstruct justice and prevent the court to issue sentences regarding the illegitimate Shoura Council (Upper House) and the second constituent assembly from which one third of the members withdrew. Would Mr. Obama be spared had he done the same in your country?
His security apparatus seconded by his gang militias gratuitously killed and tortured hundreds of Egyptians during peaceful demonstrations.
Irregularities and violations at the referendum for the new constitution in December of last year were called for by civil society organizations as sufficient ground to cancel and repeat the first phase of the referendum, yet you disregarded all this.
You turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to all this and are now coming to force your hand on the free will of the true people of Egypt who sacrificed hundreds of its youth to live in freedom, equality and dignity.
Mr. Secretary this is not what the constitution of the US stands for, this is not what your taxpayers are paying their government to do.
Revisit your mandate and your pledge to uphold your constitution which stands for some of the best values of human mankind, but most of all revisit your conscience and respect the plight of a people that longs for all what your forefathers died for.
Naguib Abadir, a freedom-loving Egyptian
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Mursi mulls Egypt army takeover of restive city
Clashes again as ties between security apparatus and people of Port Saeed deteriorate
Agencies
Published: 17:13 March 5, 2013
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Cairo: The Egyptian president is considering whether to give the military full control of the restive Suez Canal city of Port Saeed after days of deadly street clashes stoked by excessive use of force by riot police, officials said on Tuesday.
Police shot into the air and fired tear gas during clashes with hundreds of protesters in Port Saeed on Tuesday, the third day of violent protests in the port city.
Waves of demonstrations have been erupting in Port Saeed since January after the detention of dozens of people in connection with a football riot last year when 70 died. On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters gathered in front of a government building and hurled stones at police, who reacted by firing tear gas and warning shots in the air, the witness said.
The witness said he had seen at least three people who appeared to be unconscious.
Some 420 people have been wounded since the latest wave of protests started on Sunday, about 60 from shotgun wounds and live bullets, Syed Al Masry, head of Port Saeed’s ambulance services, said on Monday.
Mohammad Mursi met with his security chief and top military officers to discuss pulling out the police force and putting the military in charge to defuse the cycle of violence that has gripped the city, officials from the military and the president’s office said.
The latest round of rioting and violence in Port Saeed, which erupted on Sunday, has killed at least three civilians and three policemen and injured hundreds.
“The presidency is considering this option after relations between the security apparatus and the people of Port Saeed deteriorated,” said one of the officials. He added that the idea behind the proposal is that once the army takes control, it would presumably not get into confrontation with protesters.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media about the president’s deliberations.
The military sent reinforcement to Port Saeed late on Monday, after protesters torched a government building and police headquarters there. Witnesses said protesters lay down and slept on the asphalt to prevent fire engines from reaching the buildings on fire.
The officials said police have lost control over the city and the only way out was to hand it over to the military, which enjoys considerable support among Port Saeed residents.
Mursi’s deliberations come amid reports of tense relations between the president and the country’s Defence Minister Gen. Abdul Fattah Al Sissi following a rumour that the minister could be sacked because he resisted to bring the military under the sway of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood group.
Some opposition groups and figures want to see the military take over power after perceiving the country’s new Islamist leadership as incapable of ending Egypt’s deteriorating economy and increasing unrest.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/us-women-un-rights-idUSBRE92D1AK20130314
MB not giving women rights. Great job!!!
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Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Offers 10 Reasons Why Women's Rights Are A Bad Idea
Geoffrey Ingersoll | Mar. 14, 2013, 8:08 PM | 5,931 | 27
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The upcoming U.N. vote to ratify the declaration titled "End Violence against Women" has rankled Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, so much so that they released an official statement on their English language website.
They call the declaration "euphemistically" named.
They say it's misleading, deceptive, and will unravel the very fabric of the civilized world.
The rights they don't want to see include:
1. Granting girls full sexual freedom, as well as the freedom to decide their own gender and the gender of their partners (ie, choose to have normal or homo- sexual relationships), while raising the age of marriage.
2. Providing contraceptives for adolescent girls and training them to use those, while legalizing abortion to get rid of unwanted pregnancies, in the name of sexual and reproductive rights.
3. Granting equal rights to adulterous wives and illegitimate sons resulting from adulterous relationships.
4. Granting equal rights to homosexuals, and providing protection and respect for prostitutes.
5. Giving wives full rights to file legal complaints against husbands accusing them of rape or sexual harassment, obliging competent authorities to deal husbands punishments similar to those prescribed for raping or sexually harassing a stranger.
6. Equal inheritance (between men and women).
7. Replacing guardianship with partnership, and full sharing of roles within the family between men and women such as: spending, child care and home chores.
8. Full equality in marriage legislation such as: allowing Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men, and abolition of polygamy, dowry, men taking charge of family spending, etc.
9. Removing the authority of divorce from husbands and placing it in the hands of judges, and sharing all property after divorce.
10. Cancelling the need for a husband’s consent in matters like: travel, work, or use of contraception.
As if this set of rules isn't scary enough, there's a decent swath of America who would agree with these reasons.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/24/morsi-warning-egypt-cairo-violence_n_2944366.html
Total FAIL.
FAIL x 100000000
Hey Benny - eat shit TWINK
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Obama Administration Silent After Egyptian Constitution Restores Slavery
By: Jim Hoft
12/1/2012 12:31 PM
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It’s no secret that Egyptian slavery is as old as the pyramids.
It’s also common knowledge that Barack Obama’s ancestors owned slaves.
Slaves in Africa – in the early 20th century.
So it’s really no surprise that he helped usher in a radical Egpytian regime that is restoring slavery.
According to the AP Egypt’s new constitution has dropped its ban on slavery:
Omissions of certain articles, such as bans on slavery or promises to adhere to international rights treaties, were equally worrying to critics of the new draft, who pulled out from the panel before the vote.
The Obama administration declined to criticize Egypt’s constitution despite its slavery clause.
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I Witnessed A Brutal Beating From A Hotel Overlooking Cairo's Tahrir Square
Robert Johnson|Mar. 28, 2013, 7:03 AM|3,323|8
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Robert Johnson/Business Insider
The Arab Spring, where citizens all over the whole Middle East caused powerful governments to listen and even topple, didn't ignite at Tahrir Square here in Cairo, but it's certainly where the revolution blazed hottest.
Last evening on the communal balcony of my hotel (where the WiFi is strongest) about 50 yards from the square, I posted the first few photos of my trip from the airport. The pictures show the frustration evident by the people here and as I did that a conflict broke out in the square.
It turns out the "square" isn't actually much of a square so much as a patch of dirt, bordered by an 18-inch concrete curb, surrounded by a traffic circle (pictured right). Strings of large spiked barbed wire had been strung across street entrances, yesterday afternoon after police removed the barricades square dwellers had put up.
The drivers trying to get through expressed varying degrees of anger and frustration. I'm not sure that's what started the conflict seen in the pictures below, but it's possible. What my contact here assures me, is that whatever happened it wasn't revolutionary related, and things like this are not uncommon.
So while the photos were uploading, and I sat on the balcony, shouting erupted from the square. There were a few loud, soft bangs, which I assumed at the time to be backfiring vehicles or a very old firearm. Sitting here today, I've not heard any cars backfire so it may be less common than I thought.
After the bangs people ran down the street below the balcony, and at the end of the running group, a small band of men carried another man, who dangled from their arms bleeding.
A series of phone calls was made, a red pickup truck came screeching through downtown traffic and the group of men piled in the back. The wounded man's arm dangled from the bed as they drove away.
While they were loading him in the bed of the truck, the street was filled with the sounds of a wailing woman, walking from the square, her screams bouncing off the old stone buildings around us.
Perhaps a family member, she flung herself against a parked car, as the truck took off and a small boy chased it.
My contact lived in a tent in the square for four months with a group of other smart and driven men I met last night. He said he had no idea what could have happened here, but again it likely had nothing to do with his friend's goal of ridding the country of its latest president.
He just wants the violence to stop so the tourists will come back. Then, maybe, he thinks he can marry his girlfriend, have a family and start the life he always expected.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/man-injured-at-tahrir-square-march-27-2013-3#ixzz2OqHJaBHe
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Short of Money, Egypt Sees Crisis on Fuel and Food
New York Times ^ | 30 March 2013 | David D. Krikpatrick
Posted on Monday, April 01, 2013 10:29:52 PM by Lorianne
QALYUBEYA, Egypt — A fuel shortage has helped send food prices soaring. Electricity is blacking out even before the summer. And gas-line gunfights have killed at least five people and wounded dozens over the past two weeks.
The root of the crisis, economists say, is that Egypt is running out of the hard currency it needs for fuel imports. The shortage is raising questions about Egypt’s ability to keep importing wheat that is essential to subsidized bread supplies, stirring fears of an economic catastrophe at a time when the government is already struggling to quell violent protests by its political rivals.
Farmers already lack fuel for the pumps that irrigate their fields, and they say they fear they will not have enough for the tractors to reap their wheat next month before it rots in the fields.
United States officials warn of disaster unless Egypt soon carries out a package of tax increases and subsidy cuts tied to a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. That would persuade other lenders that Egypt was creditworthy enough to obtain billions more in additional loans needed to meet its yawning deficit. But fearful of a public reaction at a time when the streets are already near boiling, the government of President Mohamed Morsi has so far resisted an I.M.F. deal, insisting that Egypt can wait.
Those who say Egypt cannot afford enough fuel are “trying to make problems for Dr. Morsi and his party,” said Naser el-Farash, the spokesman for the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade and a fellow member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Embassy Cairo shuts down Twitter feed after Muslim Brotherhood spat
Posted By Josh RoginWednesday, April 3, 2013 - 11:49 AM Share
The U.S. Embassy in Cairo shut down its Twitter feed Wednesday following a public fight with the Egyptian Presidency and the Muslim Brotherhood over the arrest of an Egyptian television star.
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"Sorry, that page doesn't exist!" reads the banner atop the site where the @USEmbassyCairo Twitter feed sat until this morning. A cached version of the page shows that the last tweet was a link to the Daily Show's Jon Stewart talking about the Egyptian government's arrest of Stewart's Egyptian doppelganger Bassem Youssef, who was detained and fined by the Egyptian police on the charge of insulting Islam and President Mohamed Morsy.
"It's inappropriate for a diplomatic mission to engage in such negative political propaganda," the official Twitter feed for the Egyptian presidency said on their own feed Tuesday. The Egyptian presidency tweet was directed at the Cairo Embassy, the Daily Show, and Youssef himself.
The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political wing of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, has been lashing out at Embassy Cairo repeatedly on its own Twitter feed.
"Another undiplomatic & unwise move by @USEmbassyCairo, taking sides in an ongoing investigation & disregarding Egyptian law & culture," the FJP tweeted Tuesday.
A State Department official told The Cable Wednesday that the decision to take down Embassy Cairo's Twitter page was made by U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson without the consultation of the State Department in Washington. Foggy Bottom is urging Embassy Cairo to put the page back up, lest it appear that the United States is caving to the online pressure.
"This not a permanent shutdown. Embassy Cairo considers this to be temporary. They want to put new procedures in place," the official said.
This is not the first time Embassy Cairo has courted controversy via its Twitter account. On the fateful day of Sept. 11, 2012, Embassy Cairo put out a series of tweets seeking to calm the protests outside their walls. The campaign of Mitt Romney, the Republican challenger, seized upon those tweets to accuse President Barack Obama of apologizing for American values because the tweets referenced an anti-Islam video that contributed to the unrest.
The main Embassy Cairo tweeter at that time, Larry Schwartz, was blamed for the Sept. 11 tweets and subsequently recalled to Washington. But the combative character of the embassy's Twitter account continued.
The FJP also took issue with State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland's criticism of Youssef's treatment during an April 1 press briefing. Referring directly to Nuland's remarks about Youssef, the FJP said they are outraged at her "unreserved audacity" and her "blatant interference in the internal affairs of Egypt on an issue that is still under investigation" and is being dealt with through the Egyptian legal system.
UPDATE 12:20 : The Embassy Cairo Twitter feed is back up and running, although the controversial tweet in question has been deleted.
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http://www.businessinsider.com/prostitution-in-caro-egypt-2013-4
Total FAIL
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http://www.businessinsider.com/prostitution-in-caro-egypt-2013-4
Total FAIL
Cheap hookers :D
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/coptic-christians-under-siege-as-mob-attacks-cairo-cathedral-8563600.html
Great job O-Twink!
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Egyptian Doctors 'Ordered to Operate on Protesters Without Anaesthetic'
The Guardian (U.K.) ^ | April 10, 2013 | Patrick Kingsley and Louisa Loveluck in Cairo
Posted on April 13, 2013 3:42:41 PM EDT by DogByte6RER
Egyptian doctors 'ordered to operate on protesters without anaesthetic'
Exclusive: Leaked presidential report recommends an investigation into the highest echelons of the army leadership
Senior Egyptian army doctors were ordered to operate without anaesthetic on wounded protesters at a military hospital in Cairo during protests against military rule, according to an investigation commissioned by president Mohamed Morsi. The report into military and police malpractice since 2011 also alleges that doctors, soldiers and medics assaulted protesters inside the hospital.
The findings, which relate to the army's behaviour during the Abbassiya clashes in May 2012, are the latest leak to the Guardian of a suppressed report investigating human rights abuses in Egypt since the start of the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak. Earlier leaks alleged that the military were involved in torture, killings and forced disappearances during the uprising.
The new chapter contains testimony from doctors and protesters about the treatment of injured demonstrators at the Kobri el-Qoba military hospital in Cairo in May 2012.
It alleges that a senior military doctor ordered subordinates to operate on wounded protesters without anaesthetic or sterilisation and reports that doctors, nurses and senior officers also beat some of the wounded protesters. It also claims that a senior officer ordered soldiers to lock protesters in a basement.
The chapter concludes by recommending an investigation into the highest echelons of the army leadership – a deeply significant development. Even though the report has not been officially published, its status as a presidential document – coupled with the extent of its conclusions – represents the first acknowledgment by the state of the scale of the atrocities both during and since the 2011 uprising.
"I can't overestimate the importance of this report," said Heba Morayef, the director of Human Rights Watch in Egypt.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
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http://www.businessinsider.com/attack-at-st-marks-coptic-church-in-cairo-2013-4
Great job Obama
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http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/american-professor-who-hates-america-stabbed-in-cairo-by-muslim-who-also-hates-america
;D
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http://news.yahoo.com/brotherhoods-egypt-blasphemy-charges-against-christians-surge-ahead-142935710.html
Benny andrey option F Obama FAIL
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Stickie this thread so when the Muslim Brotherhood takes over and things go south Benny can look like the leftist douchbag he is. Barry had no idea what he was doing.....if the economy was better that would get hell of alot more air play.
lmfao!!!!! - HOW PREDICTABLE
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-muslim-brotherhood-is-ruining-egypt-2013-5#the-brotherhood-has-proposed-laws-reducing-egypts-legal-age-of-marriage-to-13-years-old-some-party-officials-indicate-marriage-at-nine-years-of-age-is-perfectly-acceptable-45
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http://www.emirates247.com/crime/region/butcher-slaughters-wife-to-sell-her-flesh-as-meat-2012-06-18-1.463417
Back to the days of savagery.
FORWARD!!!!!
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Egypt’s youth: ‘What has the revolution done for us?’
BBC News ^ | 28 May 2013 | Last updated at 10:15 ET | Shaimaa Khalil
Posted on May 29, 2013 3:37:03 AM EDT by Olog-hai
One stark change, for me, is the graffiti on the wall of the American University just off the square.
The wall once carried motivational slogans, nationalistic song lyrics and poems. Now, all I can see there are the faces of dead people, of those killed during the two years of the revolution. Some of them are quite disturbing. The faces have been deformed, apparently beaten up. Police brutality is alleged.
Most of the faces on the wall are those of young people. …
Of all Egypt’s problems, mass unemployment is the most pressing, and it is the young who are hit the hardest. …
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
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Yes, also the so called "revolution" brought out all the sexually repressed virgins raping women in mass in public protests and gatherings. Hot western reporters were a rare delicacy might i add.
But no worries, soon the islamic brotherhood will instate sharia law, and pubic stoning and lashing will take care of pesky virgins willing to rape in public like it's a god damn gang bang clip on youporn.
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Yes, also the so called "revolution" brought out all the sexually repressed virgins raping women in mass in public protests and gatherings. Hot western reporters were a rare delicacy might i add.
But no worries, soon the islamic brotherhood will instate sharia law, and pubic stoning and lashing will take care of pesky virgins willing to rape in public like it's a god damn gang bang clip on youporn.
come on dude..get off the soapbox.....rapes and sex assaults were always occurring in egypt....its just that our media wasn't interested....only now is this being talked about....also..we have the same thing going on here.....wherever there are men and women together there will be rape......when we colonize the moons of saturn, there will be rape there as well....however...I do think you are right when you say there are a lot of repressed virgins over there ;D
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come on dude..get off the soapbox.....rapes and sex assaults were always occurring in egypt....its just that our media wasn't interested....only now is this being talked about....also..we have the same thing going on here.....wherever there are men and women together there will be rape......when we colonize the moons of saturn, there will be rape there as well....however...I do think you are right when you say there are a lot of repressed virgins over there ;D
More kneepadding for obama - admit it - this is a complete O-FLOP
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By Ingy Hassieb
May 29, 2013, 7:33 a.m.
CAIRO — With temperatures climbing, Egyptians are taking to the streets and the Internet to protest daily power cuts that have paralyzed cities across the country and generated fresh anger at the embattled government.
In a memo to the Cabinet, a local medical rights group said it had received at least 50 reports in just three days from hospitals complaining about equipment failures because of the blackouts. The Egyptian Center to Protect the Right for Medicine appealed for a quick solution, noting the diesel-powered generators at most public hospitals are old and unreliable.
A patient at the state-run Medical Research Institute in the coastal city of Alexandria reportedly died when the power failed in the intensive care unit. In Kafr El Sheik, a governorate north of Cairo, residents gathered outside a local hospital to help transfer newborns to another facility when 10 incubators stopped working recently.
The power cuts have also been a problem for thousands of students across the country who are preparing for their end-of-year exams. Governors in Cairo and other cities have urged authorities to refrain from cutting the electricity when students are taking the exams, but many complain it's hard to study when the lights go out and there is no electricity to run the air conditioning.
"It's difficult to focus when you're frustrated. That's the toughest challenge," said 17 year-old Ahmad Belal, who wants to be a heart surgeon and needs top grades to get into medical school. "Trying to concentrate on your studies but being interrupted every two minutes because the weather is hot or because you're angry you don't have electricity for most of the day just makes it impossible."
Belal lives in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura, where he said the power cuts sometimes last more than four hours at a time. He studies by candlelight when the lights go out at home.
"Some of my friends go out to cafes, but it's always very crowded and loud, and it's also difficult to focus," he said. "Plus, the lights go out in cafes too."
Power disruptions are nothing new in Egypt, especially in the summer months, when consumption spikes. But this year’s blackouts are more frequent than in the past, often occurring several times a day and lasting for hours.
“God, I’m not asking you for a fancy villa, or the latest car model, or millions of pounds even … All I want is for the power not to go out,” wrote one frustrated Twitter user who goes by the handle @AmgdAboZeid.
The crisis is adding to the pressure on President Mohamed Morsi, who had promised to tackle the country’s ubiquitous power and fuel shortages, along with a host of other problems, in his first 100 days in office.
Hundreds of residents in Alexandria, Kafr El Sheikh, Aswan and other areas have taken to the streets in recent weeks to voice their displeasure, blocking roads and even railway lines while shanting anti-Morsi slogans, according to the independent daily Al Masry Al Youm. More demonstrations are planned June 30, to mark the first anniversary of Morsi’s presidency.
There have also been calls on social networking sites for Egyptians to refuse to pay their electricity bills until service improves, calls the electricity ministry said were "destructive."
A popular meme doing the rounds on Facebook complains: "Egypt is the only country in the world that collects money for the garbage that is filling the streets and the electricity that is always out from the salaries of its unemployed citizens."
Last week, the electricity ministry issued a rare apology, explaining in a statement that it had been forced to resort to load-shedding because consumption is outpacing production. It urged residents to ration their electricity use and said it was working with other departments to obtain the fuel needed to generate more power.
http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-egypt-power-cuts-20130528,0,3954138.story
LMFAO!!!!!
FORWARD!!!!
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More kneepadding for obama - admit it - this is a complete O-FLOP
so guys trying to commit rape in Egypt is Obama's fault....and the Egyptian authorities bear no responsibility..this is your biggest stretch yet...I see the mental illness is till present
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so guys trying to commit rape in Egypt is Obama's fault....and the Egyptian authorities bear no responsibility..this is your biggest stretch yet...I see the mental illness is till present
Yes. Obama - FAIL
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Yes. Obama - FAIL
AMAZING :-\
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AMAZING :-\
Agrreed. Black loyalists like youraelf to the cult of obama are a joke.
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It seems that Obama's brilliant statesmanship is finally reaping dividends for the people of Egypt and Western Civilization.
Hillary Clinton's virtuoso reign as Secretary of State should include the Arab Spring and particularly Egypt as a key achievement-- highlighting the modern miracles of political strength and unity.
Everything is turning out just like CNN said it would.
The Arab Spring has truly transformed the region into a Jeffersonian banquet of freedom, liberty and prosperity.
Forward!
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Agrreed. Black loyalists like youraelf to the cult of obama are a joke.
you're amazIng......up the dosage!
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It seems that Obama's brilliant statesmanship is finally reaping dividends for the people of Egypt and Western Civilization.
Hillary Clinton's virtuoso reign as Secretary of State should include the Arab Spring and particularly Egypt as a key achievement-- highlighting the modern miracles of political strength and unity.
Everything is turning out just like CNN said it would.
The Arab Spring has truly transformed the region into a Jeffersonian banquet of freedom, liberty and prosperity.
Forward!
sigh......I hate to waste time responding to your idiocy....but I just can't help myself.....the fact is, that all countries that undergo a conversion to democracy go through a period of time where there is some lawlessness or guys taking advantage of the looser freedoms....it happened in Eastern Europe and Russia after communism collapsed....there was lots of lawlessness, crime shot up, the local mafias moved in and set up organizations which committed murder and drug dealing, and also rapes and prostitution went way up....
By your reasoning I guess all of that was Ronald Reagan's fault huh????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Jesus the idiocy and ignorance you display is incredible
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sigh......I hate to waste time responding to your idiocy....but I just can't help myself.....the fact is, that all countries that undergo a conversion to democracy go through a period of time where there is some lawlessness or guys taking advantage of the looser freedoms....it happened in Eastern Europe and Russia after communism collapsed....there was lots of lawlessness, crime shot up, the local mafias moved in and set up organizations which committed murder and drug dealing, and also rapes and prostitution went way up....
By your reasoning I guess all of that was Ronald Reagan's fault huh????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Jesus the idiocy and ignorance you display is incredible
Oh that's right, that happens absolutely everywhere. By your measure, do you think will we be alive to see a functional democracy in action?
And your comment about taking advantage of looser freedoms is an apt observation. The rapes and cannibalism we see now, were forbidden in the past, and now its a good old fashioned Islamic free for all. I guess the best we can hope for is that all those freedom loving rapists and murders decide to settle down and take civics lessons and sensitivity training to further the cause of democracy.
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Oh that's right, that happens absolutely everywhere. By your measure, do you think will we be alive to see a functional democracy in action?
And your comment about taking advantage of looser freedoms is an apt observation. The rapes and cannibalism we see now, were forbidden in the past, and now its a good old fashioned Islamic free for all. I guess the best we can hope for is that all those freedom loving rapists and murders decide to settle down and take civics lessons and sensitivity training to further the cause of democracy.
not by my measure,,,,by the measure of recent history....it took a good 20 years for things to settle down in Eastern Europe before the democracies there started to function relatively normal......as I said earlier....rapes were occurring under Mubarak...its not something thats a recent phenomenon...we just pay more attention to it now due to the context of whats going on there
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Kerry’s Secret Gift to Egypt
Jun 6, 2013 4:21 PM EDT
Last month John Kerry quietly approved huge arms shipments to Egypt—despite Cairo’s ongoing violation of human rights. Josh Rogin reports.
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While employees of American NGOs sat in Egyptian prisons, Secretary of State John Kerry quietly waived the law that would prevent the U.S. from sending the Egyptian military $1.3 billion worth of weapons this year.
John Kerry Egypt
Secretary of State John Kerry (left) shakes hands with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi during a visit to Cairo on March 3. (Jacquelyn Martin/AFP/Getty)
Congress erupted in anger June 4, when Egyptian courts sentenced 43 NGO workers, including 16 Americans, to jail terms of up to five years for working in NGOs not registered with the government. Only one of those Americans, the National Democratic Institute’s Robert Becker, actually stayed in Egypt to await the verdict. He was given two years in prison. The other American organizations targeted included the International Republican Institute and Freedom House. All of those organizations had been operating in the open in Egypt for several years before the government raided their offices and forced them to flee the country in December 2011.
But what most in Congress didn’t know was that on May 10, Kerry had waived the restrictions lawmakers had put in place to make sure that U.S. military aid to Egypt wouldn’t continue unless Egypt made progress on its path to democracy, rule of law, and human rights. The State Department’s notification of Kerry’s move, which was never released to the public, was obtained by The Daily Beast.
The law that allows the State Department to give Egypt $1.3 billion each year in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) specifies that to get the money, the secretary of State must certify that Egypt is honoring its peace treaty with Israel as well as “supporting the transition to civilian government including holding free and fair elections; implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion, and due process of law.”
“Foreign funding of NGOs in Egypt is something that drives the Egyptian military command crazy.”
Several members of Congress said this week that Egypt’s sentencing of American NGO workers, who were there to help Egypt build up its civil society and to promote democracy, flew in the face of that very law, meaning that Egypt should not get the money.
“The unjust convictions of Egyptian and American citizens by the Egyptian government, for nothing more than working to defend the fundamental rights of all Egyptians, is appalling and offensive to people of goodwill in Egypt and across the globe,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee’s state and foreign-ops subcommittee. “If Egypt continues on this repressive path, it will be increasingly difficult for the United States to support President Morsi’s government.”
“These politically motivated prosecutions of individuals doing nothing more than attempting to assist Egypt as it moves down the path toward democracy will only serve to undermine the progress that Egypt has made since 2011,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in a statement. “The court’s order that several of the organizations ... cease operations in Egypt also raises concerns about how the United States and other countries can continue to assist Egypt as it transitions from military rule, given that these are some of the premier international organizations that focus on democratic training, the building of civil society, and establishment of the rule of law.”
Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA) are circulating a letter in the House this week to Morsi threatening a cutoff of U.S. aid and asking him to step in and reverse the policy of prosecuting foreign NGO workers.
“In order for the U.S. government and the American people to have any confidence that the Egyptian government is undertaking a genuine transition to a democratic state, under civilian control, where the freedoms of assembly, association, religion and expression are guaranteed and rule of law is upheld, we must see a swift and satisfactory resolution to this case that takes into full account the concerns expressed in this letter, including revisions to the proposed NGO law,” reads the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Daily Beast.
The lawmakers said that there was no way the Obama administration would be able to certify that Egypt was progressing toward democracy, given the jail sentences. They didn’t know that Kerry had already waived the law only weeks prior. Experts following the issue were shocked that Kerry’s team kept the decision a secret, unlike last year, when then–secretary of State Hillary Clinton also waived the law, but made sure to explain her actions and include a strong statement condemning the Egyptian government’s treatment of foreign NGOs.
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(Reuters) – Secretary of State John Kerry quietly acted last month to give Egypt $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid, deciding that this was in the national interest despite Egypt’s failure to meet democracy standards.
Kerry made the decision well before an Egyptian court this week convicted 43 democracy workers, including 16 Americans, in what the United States regards as a politically motivated case against pro-democracy non-governmental organizations.
Rights groups believe Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi is retreating from democratic freedoms, notably in a new civil society law and in proposals for judicial reform that critics see as a way to purge judges perceived as hostile to the government.
Despite stating in a May 9 memo that “we are not satisfied with the extent of Egypt’s progress and are pressing for a more inclusive democratic process and the strengthening of key democratic institutions,” Kerry said the aid should go forward.
Under U.S. law, for the $1.3 billion to flow the secretary of state must certify that the Egyptian government “is supporting the transition to civilian government, including holding free and fair elections, implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association and religion, and due process of law.”
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Thousands of Egypt Islamists rally for Syria jihad
An Egyptian man holds the old Syrian flag, now used by the opposition, during a gathering in support of the Syrian Revolution outside the Amr ibn al-As Mosque on June 14, 2013 in Cairo.
An Egyptian man holds the old Syrian flag, now used by the opposition, during a gathering in support of the Syrian Revolution outside the Amr ibn al-As Mosque on June 14, 2013 in Cairo.
An Egyptian street vendor sells he old Syrian flag, now used by the opposition, during a gathering in support of the Syrian revolution outside the Amr ibn al-As Mosque on June 14, 2013 in Cairo.
An Egyptian street vendor sells he old Syrian flag, now used by the opposition, during a gathering in support of the Syrian revolution outside the Amr ibn al-As Mosque on June 14, 2013 in Cairo.
AFP - Thousands of Islamists rallied in the Egyptian capital on Friday in support of calls by Sunni Muslim clerics for a holy war against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The demonstration took place outside a Cairo mosque where Saudi preacher Mohammed al-Oreifi called in a sermon for a "jihad in the cause of Allah in Syria."
Oreifi urged worshippers to "unite against their enemy."
Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, is an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country, and Sunnis are the backbone of the revolt against Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Demonstrators, most of them bearded and wearing the traditional white galabiya, shouted "there is no God but Allah, and Bashar is his enemy."
People waved not only the Egyptian flag but also the one adopted by the Syrian opposition.
On Thursday, influential Sunni clerics from several Arab states called for a holy war against the "sectarian" regime in Syria.
"We must undertake jihad to help our brothers in Syria by sending them money and arms, and providing all aid to save the Syrian people from this sectarian regime," they said in a statement at the end of a gathering in Cairo.
They called the "flagrant aggression" of Iran and the Lebanese movement Hezbollah -- both Shiite -- and their "sectarian allies" in Syria "a declaration of war against Islam and Muslims."
Hezbollah has been fighting alongside Assad's forces, and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said on Friday it would continue to do so.
Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia's top cleric Abdulaziz al-Shaikh has urged governments to punish the "repulsive sectarian group" while Qatar-based Sunni cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi has called on Sunnis to join the rebels.
Hezbollah's intervention in Syria, which helped Assad's troops overrun the strategic town of Qusayr, has been roundly condemned by Arab countries.
In Cairo, a senior aide to President Mohamed Morsi demanded on Thursday that the group "immediately end" its involvement in Syria.
The Shiite group's assistance to Assad could "further turn this conflict into a sectarian conflict that will spill over into the entire region," Khaled Al-Qazzaz said.
Qazzaz, Morsi's secretary on foreign relations, said the government was not trying to stop Egyptians from volunteering in Syria, mostly in relief work.
"The right of travel or the freedom of travel or taking certain positions is open for all Egyptians," he told reporters at a briefing.
"But we did not call on Egyptians to go and fight in Syria," he said.
Egypt believes the conflict will have to be resolved politically, he added.
The conflict has drawn Sunni volunteers from several Arab countries to join rebel ranks. In addition to Hezbollah, Shiites have travelled from Iraq to support Assad.
During Friday's rally, 22-year-old student Ossam Zeyd said "I am here to support the Syrian people. I am participating in jihad in Allah's cause by prayer and by sending money."
A number of Egyptian humanitarian organisations have set up stands outside mosques to collect funds for Syrians.
And Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, from whose ranks Morsi comes, will hold a gathering on Saturday at a stadium in Cairo under the slogan "in support of the Syria revolution."
WE FUCKING WARNED YOU MORONS OF THIS!
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Egypt's Coptic Christians say they are 'no longer safe'
NBC News ^ | June 20, 2013 | Charlene Gubash
Posted on Saturday, June 22, 2013 5:31:07 PM by Clintonfatigued
My sister in California wanted a better life for her and her two daughters,” explained Marianne Aziz, a 25-year-old pharmacist. “There was a big fight between us and our Muslim neighbors over our parking place ... . They cut my brother-in-law’s face with a knife.”
Aziz said that after that incident, “My sister felt she was no longer safe anymore. She got a hospital report on her husband’s injuries and a police report and when they went to the U.S., she immediately [applied for] asylum.”
Egyptian now ranks as the second highest nationality to receive asylum in the United States – although it is uncertain how many are Copts because immigration statistics do not include religious affiliation, many of the asylum seekers are believed to be Christian.
The number of Egyptians receiving asylum in the U.S. has jumped more than five-fold in recent years. In 2010, the year before the revolution, just 531 Egyptians received asylum in the U.S.; in 2012, that number jumped to 2,882, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s statistical data for 2012.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnews.nbcnews.com ...
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/23/egypt-shiites-killed-by-mob-cairo_n_3487529.html
:o :o
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Now Obama Using Troops To Prop Up Cairo's Islamofascists (Fort Hood)
Investors Business Daily ^ | June 24, 2013
Posted on Friday, June 28, 2013 12:14:45 PM by opentalk
Foreign Policy: In the latest twist in our upside-down war on terror, President Obama withdraws troops fighting terrorists in Afghanistan and sends others to Egypt to protect a regime that supports terrorists.
According to reports, the commander-in-chief is deploying a riot-control unit from Fort Hood to Egypt to help the Islamofascist regime there repel its own citizens protesting increasing human-rights violations.
More than 400 Army soldiers from the Texas base will soon man posts throughout Egypt as part of a nine-month "peacekeeping mission." They've been trained to respond to threats, including protests and riots.
"Soldiers encountered Molotov cocktails and other dangerous items in the training," according to the local TV news station that broke the story out of Killeen, Texas.
The assignment comes ahead of a planned June 30 showdown between Islamists led by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and secularists opposed to his Islamofascist crackdown.
As more and more Egyptians have called for toppling the regime on its first anniversary in power, U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson has appealed for calm. "We oppose chaos," she pleaded with protesters. "Chaos is a breeding ground for instability."
Yes, better to protect radical strongmen like Morsi, a former Muslim Brotherhood leader whom the Obama administration helped bring to power. As we warned, Morsi has stacked Egypt's courts with mullahs and unleashed religious police enforcing austere Shariah law.
Under his burgeoning theocracy, the media and the arts have been censored, churches have been burned and women have been bullied into covering their heads and bodies with Islamic garb, a la Afghanistan.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
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Egyptian clerics warn of 'civil war' ahead of mass protests
As Egypt approaches a weekend of confrontation, the divide between those who love and those who despise President Mohammed Morsi and his pro-Islamist government is wider than ever. NBC's Charlene Gubash reports.
By Charlene Gubash and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News
Egypt risks sliding into civil war, the country’s leading religious authority warned Friday, as the nation braced itself for mass nationwide protests.
Organizers of “June 30” demonstrations -- which mark one year since Islamist President Mohammed Morsi's election -- claim they have the backing of an estimated 15 million Egyptians who want him to resign.
“Only God knows what will happen [on Sunday],” said Gamal Abdul Aziz, a pro-Morsi car mechanic in Madba’a, a blue-collar district in Cairo.
NBC News
Gamal Abdul Aziz, left, a pro-Morsi car mechanic, argues with anti-Morsi computer science student Mohamed Abdul Munim, right, while being interviewed this week.
Building on discontent about a range of social and economic issues, Morsi’s opponents hope to force early presidential elections.
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His supporters, meanwhile, have promised they will also take to the streets to defend the Muslim Brotherhood-backed government.
“Vigilance is required to ensure we do not slide into civil war,” clerics of the Al-Azhar institute said in a statement broadly supportive of Morsi, Reuters reported.
It blamed “criminal gangs” who besieged mosques for street violence which the Brotherhood said has killed five of its supporters in a week.
There were ominous signs on Friday. A Health Ministry source told Reuters that at least 36 people were wounded when hundreds scuffled outside a local office of the Muslim Brotherhood.
A Reuters reporter saw about a dozen men break off from an anti-Morsi march on the seafront to throw rocks at the building's guards. They responded and bricks and bottles flew. Gunshots were also heard.
In an example of just how polarized the debate over Egypt’s future has become, Aziz and his family became embroiled in a shouting match with a nearby resident, anti-Morsi computer science student Mohamed Abdul Munim, 23, while being interviewed this week.
Amr Nabil / AP
Egyptian drivers wait outside in long lines at a gasoline station in Cairo on Tuesday.
The argument, which took place after NBC News filmed a political discussion between the two, ended when Munim stormed off.
The dispute and recent violence -- one man was shot dead and four wounded in an attack on a Muslim Brotherhood office on Thursday -- was an ill omen for Sunday’s marches that will be held a year to the day after Morsi became Egypt's first freely elected leader.
The country's powerful army, which helped protesters topple Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian regime in 2011, has reinforced its presence in cities like Cairo and Port Said.
Munim said he believed “most” of Egypt’s registered 50 million voters will be out on the streets, supporting one side or the other.
“We are sure that we will go out and get beaten up by the [Muslim] Brotherhood [but] we are going out despite this," he said. “There is no security, there is economic collapse, the electricity cuts off and everybody is suffering. They will say Morsi is not at fault, but electricity didn’t cut off when the military governed.”
Aziz, meanwhile, said his life had improved under Morsi, and accused the mostly-secular opposition of “waging a war against Islam.”
“Can you build a house in a day? No, it takes time. What can a president do in one year when a country is in ruins? The old [Mubarak] regime stole the country and left it destroyed.”
In a sign of the nervousness many felt, Egyptians were stocking up on food, fuel, water and cash in the days leading up the protests.
The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took his satire to Cairo Friday, appearing on a show hosted by the man known as "Egypt's Jon Stewart" and who has faced investigation for insulting the country's president and Islam. "If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke then you don't have a regime," said Stewart. TODAY's Jenna Wolfe reports.
Morsi’s supporters claim the demonstration– organized by an opposition umbrella group named "Tamarod," meaning "Rebel" – is setting the stage for a repeat of the 2011 Arab Spring revolution.
Mahmoud Badr, a 28-year-old journalist and founder of the Tamarod movement, dismissed a televised speech by Morsi on Wednesday night in which the president appealed for calm.
"Our demand was early presidential elections and since that was not addressed anywhere in the speech then our response will be on the streets on [Sunday]," he told the English-language Egypt Independent news site.
The U.S. Embassy announced Tuesday it would be closing its doors for the day of the demonstrations, but added that “potentially violent protest activity may occur before June 30,” and urged U.S. citizens to “maintain a low profile” from Friday onwards.
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Underscoring fears of violence, defenders of Morsi on Tuesday revealed plans to form vigilante groups to protect public buildings from opposition demonstrations, the Egypt Independent reported, quoting Safwat Abdel Ghany, a member of Islamic umbrella organization Jama'a al-Islamiya.
“If chaos sweeps across the country, Islamist groups will secure state institutions and vital facilities against robbery by thugs and advocates of violence," he was quoted as saying.
Members of Tamarod were so confident that they would force Morsi from power that the organization set out a constitutional “road map” that it said would take Egypt forward without a president until new elections.
Eric Trager, fellow at the Washington Institute think tank, said this week that battle lines were drawn between “an enraged opposition” and “an utterly incapable, confrontational ruling party that now counts some of Egypt's most violent political elements as its core supporters.”
“Rising food prices, hours-long fuel lines, and multiple-times-daily electricity cuts -- all worsening amidst a typically scorching Egyptian summer -- have set many Egyptians on edge, with clashes between Brotherhood and anti-Brotherhood activists now a common feature of Egyptian political life," he said.
“Whatever happens on [Sunday], it can't end well,” he added.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Related:
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/28/19169157-egyptian-clerics-warn-of-civil-war-ahead-of-mass-protests?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=1
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US Marines Put On Alert To Move Into Egypt Amid Planned Demonstrations
Brian Jones Jun. 28, 2013, 5:51 PM 43
Reuters - Jonathan Ernst
Amid anti-government demonstrations planned for this weekend, roughly 200 combat-capable U.S. Marines in southern Europe have been put on an alert status should they need to protect the U.S. Embassy or American citizens in Egypt, CNN is reporting.
The Marines were told to be ready to deploy within an hour, and would be flown in via MV-22 Osprey, the Marine Corps’ rapid deployment aircraft.
A state department spokesman told CNN that the move is precautionary, and that the U.S. fully expects the Egyptian security forces to be able to protect the American diplomatic facilities.
The move comes less than a year after a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by Islamic extremists who killed four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens.
The Obama administration has faced harsh, largely partisan, criticism for what some have deemed as a failure to respond to the attack in Libya.
Military experts have stated that there was no way military assets could have reached Benghazi in time. Officials appear committed to ensure that doesn’t happen again.
President Obama is presently on the second day of a five-day trip to Africa.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/marines-prepared-to-move-into-egypt-2013-6#ixzz2XYQHkGbN
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BUMP
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http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-egypt-obama-urges-restraint-20130701,0,7704464.story
LMFAO!!!!
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/02/obama-calls-mohamed-morsi-egypt-protests_n_3531883.html?ref=topbar
LOL!!!!
Fuck Obama - stay in Africa you worthless 3rd world tin pot slug
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what Egypt is going through is normal you fuck
LOL!!!! Maybe for the South Bronx or Crown Heights - but most other places? No.
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I guess the fag moderators are protecting you again....deleting my posts
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I guess the fag moderators are protecting you again....deleting my posts
Why the hate speech?
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Why the hate speech?
how would you feel if you were an Obama supporter seeing a what complete failure the Arab sprin has been?
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Why the hate speech?
no hate speech at all...calling him what he is.....I guess its only hate speech when its not referenced toward blacks
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how would you feel if you were an Obama supporter seeing a what complete failure the Arab sprin has been?
Oh it's a failure alright. The whole democracy arising in the middle east narrative was created by the media. Anyone who has a rudimentary understanding of the cultures and politics of the region understood very quickly that all this talk of democracy was wishful thinking.
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no hate speech at all...calling him what he is.....I guess its only hate speech when its not referenced toward blacks
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no hate speech at all...calling him what he is.....I guess its only hate speech when its not referenced toward blacks
That seems to be the trend. Fag is a pejorative for homosexual. It's as bad ss calling you a n*****. Why would you use that word when it's insulting to so many people?
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Oh it's a failure alright. The whole democracy arising in the middle east narrative was created by the media. Anyone who has a rudimentary understanding of the cultures and politics of the region understood very quickly that all this talk of democracy was wishful thinking.
its not wishful thinking.....its the only long term solution to getting rid of terrorism and getting the Arab world to stop hating america and embracing western values.....
I guess democracy in eastern europe was wishful thinking as well???..a lot of people felt the same way about that as well
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That seems to be the trend. Fag is a pejorative for homosexual. It's as bad ss calling you a n*****. Why would you use that word when it's insulting to so many people?
you and I both know that this term is thrown around on GetBig more than there are stars in the sky......you know Im not prejudiced just as I know you're not when you make the odd racial reference about blacks which you have done often....funny though that your sense of morality is quite absent when people on here are saying openly racist stuff about blacks....
interesting
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its not wishful thinking.....its the only long term solution to getting rid of terrorism and getting the Arab world to stop hating america and embracing western values.....
I guess democracy in eastern europe was wishful thinking as well???..a lot of people felt the same way about that as well
Different forces at play in Eastern Europe. How is it a solution, when the people who have taken power despise the United States?
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you and I both know that this term is thrown around on GetBig more than there are stars in the sky......you know Im not prejudiced just as I know you're not when you make the odd racial reference about blacks which you have done often....funny though that your sense of morality is quite absent when people on here are saying openly racist stuff about blacks....
interesting
Not true. The difference is, the people who make racist remarks about black people admit their prejudice. The black guys perform all kinds of mental gymnastics to deny their prejudice and homophobia.
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Not true. The difference is, the people who make racist remarks about black people admit their prejudice. The black guys perform all kinds of mental gymnastics to deny their prejudice and homophobia.
me thinks you are the one doing the mental gymnastics now my friend....you have NEVER made a statement of indignation when blacks have been the subject of race tirades and name-calling....now all of a sudden due to my comment, you have become Martin Luther King....just want you to look at your own hypocracy ..thats all....
but you won't do it........lets move on....
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me thinks you are the one doing the mental gymnastics now my friend....you have NEVER made a statement of indignation when blacks have been the subject of race tirades and name-calling....now all of a sudden due to my comment, you have become Martin Luther King....just want you to look at your own hypocracy ..thats all....
but you won't do it........lets move on....
Andre - did O-T W I N K fail in Egypt - yes or no?
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me thinks you are the one doing the mental gymnastics now my friend....you have NEVER made a statement of indignation when blacks have been the subject of race tirades and name-calling....now all of a sudden due to my comment, you have become Martin Luther King....just want you to look at your own hypocracy ..thats all....
but you won't do it........lets move on....
I'm not a hypocrite. I don't make sanctimonious statements about oppression and descrimination and then insult an entire group of people who have themselves been discriminated against.
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Andre - did O-T W I N K fail in Egypt - yes or no?
no....absolutely not.,..he brought democracy to Egypt for the first time in their history......what they choose to do with it is their business
just as in Eastern Europe and Iraq
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I'm not a hypocrite. I don't make sanctimonious statements about oppression and descrimination and then insult an entire group of people who have themselves been discriminated against.
sigh..........I told you that you wouldn't admit it...lets move on.....this will go on all day
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sigh..........I told you that you wouldn't admit it...lets move on.....this will go on all day
Admit what?
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Admit what?
now we're playing dumb...this is beneath you
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now we're playing dumb...this is beneath you
How about you admit Obama is a failure and piece of garbage?
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now we're playing dumb...this is beneath you
Do you want me to admit to being a foaming at the mouth racist? I don't consider myself racist. I've lived among black people for the majority of my like like a modern day Tarzan.
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AndreIsADouche looking like a real moron here.
This is blowing up in his and his God-King's face.
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Do you want me to admit to being a foaming at the mouth racist? I don't consider myself racist. I've lived among black people for the majority of my like like a modern day Tarzan.
no I don't....because I know you're not.....I would defend you against that accusation any day...All I said was why would you jump on me when I made that comment toward 3333 when all types of racist vitriol has been spread all across GetBig by others and you have said nothing previously???..that was my point....there is some hypocrisy there...I never accused you of being racist...just hypocritical
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AndreIsADouche looking like a real moron here.
This is blowing up in his and his God-King's face.
sigh...I wish you had one brain cell in your head...then I could argue with you.....you are a child intellectually compared to me
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no I don't....because I know you're not.....I would defend you against that accusation any day...All I said was why would you jump on me when I made that comment toward 3333 when all types of racist vitriol has been spread all across GetBig by others and you have said nothing previously???..that was my point....there is some hypocrisy there...I never accused you of being racist...just hypocritical
stop crying
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no I don't....because I know you're not.....I would defend you against that accusation any day...All I said was why would you jump on me when I made that comment toward 3333 when all types of racist vitriol has been spread all across GetBig by others and you have said nothing previously???..that was my point....there is some hypocrisy there...I never accused you of being racist...just hypocritical
I concede that I probably shouldn't have jumped on you. I will remain on topic but I'm watching you. You're on double secret probation
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stop crying
crying???..with your endless Obama posts?....you're the one crying...Obama has been kicking your ass for years.....
get over it.....go back to living your life instead of hugging Obama's nuts
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crying???..with your endless Obama posts?....you're the one crying...Obama has been kicking your ass for years.....
get over it.....go back to living your life instead of hugging Obama's nuts
Lol. You are as delusional as your boy Vince.
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no....absolutely not.,..he brought democracy to Egypt for the first time in their history......what they choose to do with it is their business
just as in Eastern Europe and Iraq
He didn't bring them democracy, nor do they have it now.
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/07/01/2-Jul-13-World-View-In-stunning-intervention-Egypt-s-army-sides-with-protesters-against-Morsi?utm_content=bufferbbe85&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Buffer
Total FAIL
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What the fuck does Obama have to do with Egypt. American arrogance is disgusting.
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What the fuck does Obama have to do with Egypt. American arrogance is disgusting.
he forced out Mubarak remember?
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http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-inc-threatens-to-cut-military-aid-to-egypt-if-morsi-is-overthrown
SICk!!!
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United States To Morsi: Call Early Elections
The Tower ^ | July 2, 2013 | The Tower.org Staff
Posted on July 2, 2013 7:26:09 PM EDT by
In a dramatic development, the Obama administration now appears to be urging Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi to call for early elections. Speaking to CNN’s Elise Labott, a senior administration official explains, “We are saying to him, ‘Figure out a way to go for new elections…That may be the only way that this confrontation can be resolved.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thetower.org ...
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http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/01/krauthammer-obama-bystander-policy-on-egypt-a-shocking-position
Obama = FAIL
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/03/us-egypt-protests-finalhours-idUSBRE96202920130703?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
Civil war coming. Good job obama!
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I concede that I probably shouldn't have jumped on you. I will remain on topic but I'm watching you. You're on double secret probation
double secret probation is serious business.........I'll be mighty careful from now on :)
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double secret probation is serious business.........I'll be mighty careful from now on :)
Next thing you're going to tell me is that dogs and cats are living in harmony.
I'm going to go play the lottery today.
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He didn't bring them democracy, nor do they have it now.
I guess all those millions of people who went to the polls, had a choice for the first time, and voted for Morsi were an illusion?????
I know you like to fight with me to prove to 3333 that you're on his side but dude.....sober up
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I guess all those millions of people who went to the polls, had a choice for the first time, and voted for Morsi were an illusion?????
I know you like to fight with me to prove to 3333 that you're on his side but dude.....sober up
Yes - we warned you that Obama was installing the MB to create a radical islamist caliphate over there and you refused to listen.
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he forced out Mubarak remember?
the Arab spring forced out Mubarak....REMEMBER???????????????
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the Arab spring forced out Mubarak....REMEMBER???????????????
::) ::) ::)
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Yes - we warned you that Obama was installing the MB to create a radical islamist caliphate over there and you refused to listen.
holy wow.......your mental illness is amazing.....why would Obama install a muslim gov't?????????...does that actually make sense to you????????
and your followers on here who worship your every word and protect you are even nuttier because they know you are wrong and follow you blindly
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What kind of policy should Obama have regarding Egypt? Im curious what people think he should do or should have done.
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What kind of policy should Obama have regarding Egypt? Im curious what people think he should do or should have done.
He should have done nothing at all and not make alliances w the MB who are radical islamists aligned w terrorists.
Now he and we look like utter shit even worse since the MB took our money - pissed it away, and is even worse than mubarack
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He should have done nothing at all and not make alliances w the MB who are radical islamists aligned w terrorists.
Now he and we look like utter shit even worse since the MB took our money - pissed it away, and is even worse than mubarack
Sounds reasonable enough. I agree that we have a history of making terrible long term deals with disreputable groups and individuals. Anybody else?
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What kind of policy should Obama have regarding Egypt? Im curious what people think he should do or should have done.
Obama helped usher in democracy in Egypt through his famous speech to the muslim masses in 2009 where he called out Muslim leaders and Arab dictators for ignoring the will of the people and basically told them to get their act together ..he basically called a spade a spade..the first time a U.S. prez had done so.......he set the climate for change and gave the people a green light because they knew the POTUS was behind their cause.....when the people started to rebel in the different Arab countries, Obama encouraged peaceful transition to democracy but Mubarak wanted to transfer power to his son and never made any serious reforms....he caused his own downfall by holding on to power for 30 years as did Ghaddafi for 40 years...there was no going back....Mubarak had to go...Obama did the right thing...why prop up a dictator that the people clearly don't want?....Not to mention, this has always been U.S. policy..stay with the dictator until the people clearly don't want him,,,,,look what happened to Ferdinand Marcos of the phillipines, and a few others I could mention....
Bush brought democracy to Iraq....what they choose to do with it is on them..same as Egypt..its a fallacy that the POTUS can dictate the kind of gov't other countries have....Obama has done a good job simply by following the example previous presidents have set..stay with the dictator as long as you can and then let the people remove him when they get tired ,and help push him out so as to avoid bloodshed...which of course we would be blamed for
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Obama helped usher in democracy in Egypt through his famous speech to the muslim masses in 2009 where he called out Muslim leaders and Arab dictators for ignoring the will of the people and basically told them to get their act together ..he basically called a spade a spade..the first time a U.S. prez had done so.......he set the climate for change and gave the people a green light because they knew the POTUS was behind their cause.....when the people started to rebel in the different Arab countries, Obama encouraged peaceful transition to democracy but Mubarak wanted to transfer power to his son and never made any serious reforms....he caused his own downfall by holding on to power for 30 years as did Ghaddafi for 40 years...there was no going back....Mubarak had to go...Obama did the right thing...why prop up a dictator that the people clearly don't want?....Not to mention, this has always been U.S. policy..stay with the dictator until the people clearly don't want him,,,,,look what happened to Ferdinand Marcos of the phillipines, and a few others I could mention....
Bush brought democracy to Iraq....what they choose to do with it is on them..same as Egypt..its a fallacy that the POTUS can dictate the kind of gov't other countries have....Obama has done a good job simply by following the example previous presidents have set..stay with the dictator as long as you can and then let the people remove him when they get tired ,and help push him out so as to avoid bloodshed...which of course we would be blamed for
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This andre fella is quite naive.
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Sounds reasonable enough. I agree that we have a history of making terrible long term deals with disreputable groups and individuals. Anybody else?
Don't agree with him, because he's wrong as usual...the U.S. did not make an alliance with the muslim brotherhood.....the U.S. simply did what all democracies do..they supported the winner of a democratic election.....which is something you have to do or else you would be involved in a massive hypocrisy..all other Western democracies did the same..so I guess their policies are all wrong too???
George Bush had to support the election of HAMAS in the Gaza Strip even though he hated the organization and knew they were violent and against Israel, because they were democratically elected
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This andre fella is quite naive.
you need to read the papers dude...FOX news isn't really news
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Don't agree with him, because he's wrong as usual...the U.S. did not make an alliance with the muslim brotherhood.....the U.S. simply did what all democracies do..they supported the winner of a democratic election.....which is something you have to do or else you would be involved in a massive hypocrisy..all other Western democracies did the same..so I guess their policies are all wrong too???
George Bush had to support the election of HAMAS in the Gaza Strip even though he hated the organization and knew they were violent and against Israel, because they were democratically elected
MB, like Obamas butt boy Erdogen in Turkey, are pushing islamist policies against the will of their people - no we should not support these theocracies
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you need to read the papers dude...FOX news isn't really news
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MB, like Obamas butt boy Erdogen in Turkey, are pushing islamist policies against the will of their people - no we should not support these theocracies
I truly wish you had a brain.....you're the true-to-life tin man
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Don't agree with him, because he's wrong as usual...the U.S. did not make an alliance with the muslim brotherhood.....the U.S. simply did what all democracies do..they supported the winner of a democratic election.....which is something you have to do or else you would be involved in a massive hypocrisy..all other Western democracies did the same..so I guess their policies are all wrong too???
George Bush had to support the election of HAMAS in the Gaza Strip even though he hated the organization and knew they were violent and against Israel, because they were democratically elected
Good counterpoint. Whats the evidence that Obama supported the muslim brotherhood in Egypt? I am curious.
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Good counterpoint. Whats the evidence that Obama supported the muslim brotherhood in Egypt? I am curious.
We gave them BILLIONS of dollars so far.
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you need to read the papers dude...FOX news isn't really news
I think you're naive because you believe Bush brought democracy to Iraq.
..and Obama is just a puppet that has no say in world affairs, he just dictates what his corporate handlers tell him.
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Good counterpoint. Whats the evidence that Obama supported the muslim brotherhood in Egypt? I am curious.
there is no evidence...he supported their ELECTION......he had to...or else the US would have massive egg on its face.....the US wanted the opposition formerly run by Mubarak which was pro-US...
what purpose would it serve to want to have the muslims win???...they are more hostile to us...
what people don't realize is that 3333 could couldn't care less about Egypt or anything going on in the world except to somehow link it to Obama being wrong..thats his whole purpose in life..he never takes an opinion beforehand, waits to see what Obama does, then automatically jumps on the opposite side
He is good at fooling gullible idiots on here with wrong information and a re-telling of history to simply spread his anti-Obama propaganda...why on earth would Obama want an islamic caliphate???????????
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I think you're naive because you believe Bush brought democracy to Iraq.
..and Obama is just a puppet that has no say in world affairs, he just dictates what his corporate handlers tell him.
you're amazing........they had the first free elections ever and the gov't they have now is democratically elected.....its not a perfect gov't...but the people put them there
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you're amazing........they had the first free elections ever and the gov't they have now is democratically elected.....its not a perfect gov't...but the people put them there
Whatever - believe what you want tool
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We gave them BILLIONS of dollars so far.
we've always given BILLIONS to the Epyptian gov't......if not, the country would collapse..we've been doing this since Anwar Sadat
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Whatever - believe what you want tool
unlike you, its not what I believe..its actually fact
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So lets entertain that the idea for a moment that Obama did not directly support the Muslim Brotherhood. What is Obama suppose to do about their rise to power in Egypt. Completely cut off funding? Andre, do you think the elections were on the up and up?
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So lets entertain that the idea for a moment that Obama did not directly support the Muslim Brotherhood. What is Obama suppose to do about their rise to power in Egypt. Completely cut off funding? Andre, do you think the elections were on the up and up?
I think they were done as well as they could have been.,.....at least no one has accused the U.S. of tampering with the results, and then blaming us for the situation.....thats a good thing.....our job right now is to work with the muslim gov't to steer them in a more positive and moderate direction which is what we do any time a radical gov't is elected anywhere....also notice how millions of people have demonstrated in the past few days and there has been no mass slaughter....this proves that Egypt is making the transition to a true democracy
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I think they were done as well as they could have been.,.....at least no one has accused the U.S. of tampering with the results, and then blaming us for the situation.....thats a good thing.....our job right now is to work with the muslim gov't to steer them in a more positive and moderate direction which is what we do any time a radical gov't is elected anywhere....also notice how millions of people have demonstrated in the past few days and there has been no mass slaughter....this proves that Egypt is making the transition to a true democracy
False - the people there now detest Obama and feel he is supporting terrorism and the rise of Islamism
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I think they were done as well as they could have been.,.....at least no one has accused the U.S. of tampering with the results, and then blaming us for the situation.....thats a good thing.....our job right now is to work with the muslim gov't to steer them in a more positive and moderate direction which is what we do any time a radical gov't is elected anywhere....also notice how millions of people have demonstrated in the past few days and there has been no mass slaughter....this proves that Egypt is making the transition to a true democracy
I wish I could share your optimism on the state of Egypt and its chances at a legitimate democracy but I cannot. In my opinion, old ways are to entrenched.
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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-02/guest-post-egyptians-love-us-our-freedom
Andre - please respond to this.
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Egyptian Military Takes over Egypt's TV
CTV News ^ | July 3, 20013 | Jeff Head
Posted on Wednesday, July 03, 2013 10:36:02 AM by Jeff Head
Latest Egypt News: July 3, 2013 10:00 AM EDT
Egyptian Military Occupies TV Stations
10:05 EDT
CAIRO, Egypt -- Egypt's military moved to tighten its control on key institutions Wednesday, even putting officers in the newsroom of state TV, in preparation for an almost certain push to remove the country's Islamist president when an afternoon ultimatum expires.
Mohammed Morsi has vowed not to step down in the face of millions of protesters in the streets in the biggest anti-government rallies the country has seen.
His Islamist supporters have vowed to resist what they call a coup against democracy, and have also taken to the streets by the tens of thousands. At least 39 people have been killed in clashes since Sunday, raising fears the crisis could further explode into violence
The clock was ticking on the military's deadline, expiring around 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. (11 a.m. ET).
The military beefed up its presence inside the mammoth headquarters of state television on the banks of the Nile River in central Cairo. Crack troops were deployed in news-production areas. Officers from the army's media department moved inside the newsroom and were monitoring output, though not yet interfering, staffers said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the arrangements.
The state TV is run by the information minister, a Muslim Brotherhood member put in the post by Morsi, and its coverage had largely been in favour of the government. But already in the past two days, the coverage saw a marked shift, with more balanced reporting showing the anti-Morsi protests along with pro-Morsi ones. State radio has seen a similar shift.
The authoritative, state-run Al-Ahram newspaper -- which also seemed to be following a military line -- reported that the military had placed several leaders of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood under surveillance and issued a foreign travel ban on the Islamist group's top leaders.
The head of the army, Defence Minsiter Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, held a group meeting with leading reform advocate Mohammed ElBaradei, Egypt's top Muslim cleric -- Al-Azhar Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb -- and Coptic Pope Tawadros II to discuss its political road map, a spokesman for the senior opposition National Democratic Front, Khaled Daoud, said on state TV.
Also attending the meeting were a representative of the new youth movement behind this week's protests and some members of the ultraconservative Salafi movements, a defence ministry official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
It appears that the Egyptian military is preparing to take down Morsi.
The Egyptian military has been very smart in how they have done things. 1st, last Thursday, they announced they were moving troops into the vicinity of all the major cities but would take no action unless there were massive civil violence. Morsi thought they were doing so to help support his government...but it became apparent that the troops were actually there to prepare for Morsi's deposing when, on Monday, after reveiwing the size of the protests, the military issued an ultimatum to Morsi to step down...with troops already deployed across the country to enforce it.
Now, in the face of Morsi's refusal, the military is occupying the State run TV and newspaper, and is meeting with all of the opposition, the leading reform advocate Mohammed El Baradei, Egypt's top Muslim cleric, the Coptic Christian Pope, the leader of the new youth movement behind Sunday's protests and members of the conservative Salafi movement. Clearly, a coalition that will help the nation be governed in the absence of Morsi and the Musilm Brotherhood.
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HEY BENNY...how's that Obama supporting Morsi thing working out for ya? lol
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Just got off the phone with Egyptian IFBB Pro Tarek ElSetouhi... As soon as he's done with this schmoe he will take over the Military taking over the TV station to take over the country! ;D
(http://www.o2worldnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/%D8%B5%D9%88%D8%B1-%D8%B7%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%82-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%B7%D9%88%D8%AD%D9%8A-%D8%A8%D8%B7%D9%84-%D9%83%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AC%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%81-2013-Tarek-Elsetouhi-IFBB-Pro-Bodybuilder-photo-131.jpg)
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http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/03/19261466-supporters-of-egyptian-president-say-military-coup-is-underway?lite
Military Coup underway.
Great job Obama and Benny and Andre you morons - never put in charge a ghetto street pimp to do a mans' job
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My major disagreement is with the idea that stability by whatever means will eventually lead to democracy. That the people will demand freedom and equality as if it is innate desire shared by all human beings. This is a naive and ethnocentric world view which is unfortunately shared by both the left and the right and has been proven to be false over and over again. What the majority of people desire is the Middle East is not democracy.
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http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/07/03/knives_come_out_for_us_ambassador_to_egypt_anne_patterson
FAILBAMA
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http://rt.com/on-air/opposition-rally-egypt-morsi/
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My major disagreement is with the idea that stability by whatever means will eventually lead to democracy. That the people will demand freedom and equality as if it is innate desire shared by all human beings. This is a naive and ethnocentric world view which is unfortunately shared by both the left and the right and has been proven to be false over and over again. What the majority of people desire is the Middle East is not democracy.
I think the problem is that the people in the middle east do want democracy but don't understand how it works in reality..they are politically immature and not used to debate or seeing the other guys point of view....they have no history with democracy and they feel the group in powere will just settle old scores...but thats not Obama's fault....again blame Mubarak for not doing any kind of reform or preparing his people for democracy
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HEY BENNY...how's that Obama supporting Morsi thing working out for ya? lol
Obama supported the [process...not Morsi....its amazing that I have to explain this to you guys.....but I suspect you know this already but need to continue your bizarre anti-Obama rants
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I guess all those millions of people who went to the polls, had a choice for the first time, and voted for Morsi were an illusion?????
I know you like to fight with me to prove to 3333 that you're on his side but dude.....sober up
As usual, you're fucking clueless.
Morsi was a blip in every poll. But he was backed by MB.
Then, miraculously, he won the election. ::)
Then, he gave him self practically unlimited power and suspended judicial review.
Only after threat was that decree retracted but ALL of this policies implemented during the dictatorial period were to remain in effect.
And now the military may have even pounded him
Yeah...that's some 'democratic' process.
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http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/07/03/Report-While-Egypt-Burns-John-Kerry-Goes-Yachting
LMFAO!!!!
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http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-statement-egypt-morsi-takeover-mohamed-coup-aid-2013-7#comments
LOL!!!! Obama is concerned. Cry me a river Obama you slug
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As usual, you're fucking clueless.
Morsi was a blip in every poll. But he was backed by MB.
Then, miraculously, he won the election. ::)
Then, he gave him self practically unlimited power and suspended judicial review.
Only after threat was that decree retracted but ALL of this policies implemented during the dictatorial period were to remain in effect.
And now the military may have even pounded him
Yeah...that's some 'democratic' process.
as usual you are making yourself look like an idiot by picking a fight with me without actually reading what was written....you need to stop jumping into the middle of threads to lick 3333's balls..
Obama supported the democratic elections...he did not want Morsi in power..no one did....and it was hoped that Morsi wouldn't abuse his power once elected..he did unfortunately...I guess you blame Bush for Hamas abusing their power as well???
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as usual you are making yourself look like an idiot by picking a fight with me without actually reading what was written....you need to stop jumping into the middle of threads to lick 3333's balls..
Obama supported the democratic elections...he did not want Morsi in power..no one did....and it was hoped that Morsi wouldn't abuse his power once elected..he did unfortunately...I guess you blame Bush for Hamas abusing their power as well???
Lol!!!! Everyone w a clue knew the MB was coming n.
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Obama supported the [process...not Morsi....its amazing that I have to explain this to you guys.....but I suspect you know this already but need to continue your bizarre anti-Obama rants
Holy shit you're dense. Obama and I think Kerry just gave them billions on two separate occasions. Your boy is a traitor and terrorist sympathizer. This is a fact, son!
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http://www.businessinsider.com/on-the-ground-in-cairo-live-blog-with-journalist-wafaa-badry-2013-7
Nice -
Egypt to Obama - FUCK YOU!
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Holy shit you're dense. Obama and I think Kerry just gave them billions on two separate occasions. Your boy is a traitor and terrorist sympathizer. This is a fact, son!
wow.......... ???....this is scary......I don't even know how to react to this...I'm at a loss for words....the dumbness displayed in this post is breathtaking
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wow.......... ???....this is scary......I don't even know how to react to this...I'm at a loss for words....the dumbness displayed in this post is breathtaking
Egyptians believe Obama is a terrorist and supporting terrorists
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-02/guest-post-egyptians-love-us-our-freedom
Fuck Obama - the most worthless piece of garbage ever to hold public office
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Lol!!!! Everyone w a clue knew the MB was coming n.
lol...EXACTLY.
What a grade school response I got....uh, uh, uh...Obama supports Democracy!
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http://www.businessinsider.com/al-tahrir-news-message-to-obama-2013-7
;D
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/04/mohammed-badie-khairat-el-shater-arrest_n_3545762.html
Nice!
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http://www.businessinsider.com/on-the-ground-in-cairo-live-blog-with-journalist-wafaa-badry-2013n-7
Nice -
Egypt to Obama - & YOU!
Either andreisdaman can't read or like.most libs is in complete denial.
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Either andreisdaman can't read or like.most libs is in complete denial.
Andreisatwink worships Obama - that supercedes all else
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http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-07-03/what-really-caused-coup-against-egyptian-president
Good - and hopefully Obama gets deposed as well
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Obama orders US to review aid to Egypt after Morsi ousted
Fox News ^ | July 03, 2013 | Associated Press
Posted on Wednesday, July 03, 2013 8:16:28 PM by No One Special
Edited on Wednesday, July 03, 2013 8:19:51 PM by Admin Moderator. [history]
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama urged Egypt's military Wednesday to hand back control to a democratic, civilian government without delay, but stopped short of calling the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi a coup d'etat.
In a carefully worded statement, Obama said he was "deeply concerned" by the military's move to topple Morsi's government and suspend Egypt's constitution. He said he was ordering the U.S. government to assess what the military's actions meant for U.S. foreign aid to Egypt -- $1.5 billion a year in military and economic assistance.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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lol...EXACTLY.
What a grade school response I got....uh, uh, uh...Obama supports Democracy!
you're on the side of a moron so you've lost already.......use some intelligence
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Either andreisdaman can't read or like.most libs is in complete denial.
you let your hatred of Obama affect you ability to think
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you're on the side of a moron so you've lost already.......use some intelligence
LOL!!!! Going down w the ship w Obama like we all know most blacks will do solely due to race - no surprise
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you let your hatred of Obama affect you ability to think
::) ::)
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LOL!!!! Going down w the ship w Obama like we all know most blacks will do solely due to race - no surprise
sigh.........your idiocy would be so entertaining if it weren't so sad :'( :'(
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Andre, he's literally supporting terrorism,.how is it you see nothing wrong with this?
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Andre, he's literally supporting terrorism,.how is it you see nothing wrong with this?
Because Obama is 1/2 black
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sigh.........your idiocy would be so entertaining if it weren't so sad :'( :'(
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Egyptians believe Obama is a terrorist and supporting terrorists
1) every US president since 1799 has dealt with someone that someone else considers terr'ists. Many incorrect 3rd world people even call US terrorists!
2) I am not concerned with what "egyptians believe"... Do you give a flying fvk what some illiterate fool in a hut on other side of earth thinks?
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1) every US president since 1799 has dealt with someone that someone else considers terr'ists. Many incorrect 3rd world people even call US terrorists!
2) I am not concerned with what "egyptians believe"... Do you give a flying fvk what some illiterate fool in a hut on other side of earth thinks?
Obama Doubles Down on Egypt Folly
Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 07.03.2013 - 7:30 PM
Late Wednesday afternoon, the silence from the White House about events in Egypt finally ended. In a statement, President Obama claimed that he is neutral on the question of who controls Egypt but wishes to uphold certain principles. The text contains anodyne proclamations about democracy and the participation of all groups in the government of Egypt that are unexceptionable. But it also clearly states that the president is “deeply concerned” about the ouster of Morsi and the suspension of the Egyptian constitution that brought him to power, calls upon the military not to arrest the deposed leader or other Muslim Brotherhood officials, and then pointedly says that he has “directed the relevant departments and agencies to review the implications under U.S. law for our assistance to the Government of Egypt.”
In other words, you don’t have to read too closely between the lines to understand that Obama is angrier about regime change in Cairo than he ever was about the Islamist attempt to remake Egypt in their own image.
President Obama stood by passively for a year as Morsi and the Brotherhood began to seize total power, repress critics and pave the way for a complete transformation of Egypt into an Islamist state without threatening a cutoff of U.S. aid. Now Obama has finally found the guts to use America’s leverage over the country but only to register his protest against the downfall of the Brotherhood.
This will do nothing to help Morsi and the rest of his authoritarian crew that had already topped the excesses of the Mubarak regime in only a year. The Egyptian military knows–despite the attempt of the Brotherhood to sell the West on the myth that a fascist-style movement like their brand of Islamistm is democratic in nature–that the only way to prevent it from fomenting violence is to use the same tactics it wanted to employ against Morsi’s critics.
But by doing so in this manner, the president has made it clear again to the Egyptian people that his sympathies are not with those who want a government that doesn’t wish to impose Islamism on the country or the minority that actually want democracy but with Morsi and the Brotherhood. Rather than repair the damage he has done in the last three years, the president sounds as if he is determined to double down on his mistakes.
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Because Obama is 1/2 black
I guess in your mind every time a black guy agrees with another black guy its racial
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Andre, he's literally supporting terrorism,.how is it you see nothing wrong with this?
he's supporting the process..not the individual..just like Bush supported Palestinian elections.....but did not support HAMAS
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he's supporting the process..not the individual..just like Bush supported Palestinian elections.....but did not support HAMAS
Bush was a pos too - hope that helps
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I think the problem is that the people in the middle east do want democracy but don't understand how it works in reality..they are politically immature and not used to debate or seeing the other guys point of view....they have no history with democracy and they feel the group in powere will just settle old scores...but thats not Obama's fault....again blame Mubarak for not doing any kind of reform or preparing his people for democracy
I think their cultural values are in direct contradiction with the values of democracy, particularly the rights of women and children, a free press and religious tolerance. They will always see society through the prism of their cultural and religous beliefs. Democracy in the west is really a gradual progression of ideas and movements that those in the Middle East do not share.
Bush supported the Saudis. All presidents have supported disreputable groups. Obama isn't anymore guilty than any other president. The fact is, there isn't much Obama can do about Egypt without getting directly involved and we can all agree none of us want that.
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I think their cultural values are in direct contradiction with the values of democracy, particularly the rights of women and children, a free press and religious tolerance. They will always see society through the prism of their cultural and religous beliefs. Democracy in the west is really a gradual progression of ideas and movements that those in the Middle East do not share.
Bush supported the Saudis. All presidents have supported disreputable groups. Obama isn't anymore guilty than any other president. The fact is, there isn't much Obama can do about Egypt without getting directly involved and we can all agree none of us want that.
good post.......agreed
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http://www.businessinsider.com/on-the-ground-in-cairo-live-blog-with-journalist-wafaa-badry-2013-7
FAILBAMA!
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you're on the side of a moron so you've lost already.......use some intelligence
So, I destroy your Democracy nonsense and your comeback is to make up a position that I haven't taken.
Way to show off that ....... education. ::)
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http://www.businessinsider.com/on-the-ground-in-cairo-live-blog-with-journalist-wafaa-badry-2013-7
FAILBAMA!
Exactly.
For anybody dumb enough to think elections = Democracy (only one that dumb on this board, I think):
The Maspero youth union is sending this message to the American people : Stop Supporting the new Fascism
"Dear Americans,
We are not addressing the American administration, we address you the American people who believe in freedom.
Your administration is supporting the new fascism, your president and his ambassador supporting a terrorist group rejected by the Egyptian people, a Fascist group oppresses minorities, women's rights wasted group that destroy civilizations and cultures.
Your ambassador makes pressure on our national Egyptian army to stand with terror group not with his Peaceful people who demand freedom and justice, equality and citizenship.
Dear Americans, you have to stand against terrorist supportive administration, against tax money scattered by an administration which support a terrorist group having the same ideology of the one that killed your sons before and killing ours now."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/on-the-ground-in-cairo-live-blog-with-journalist-wafaa-badry-2013-7#ixzz2YPse0ED2
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So, I destroy your Democracy nonsense and your comeback is to make up a position that I haven't taken.
Way to show off that ....... education. ::)
DEMOCRACY NONSENSE?????????????????????????????????????????????....free and fair elections were held......where the fuck have you been??????????????????????????...the moon????????????????
you're getting worse than horseface Fury
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DEMOCRACY NONSENSE?????????????????????????????????????????????....free and fair elections were held......where the fuck have you been??????????????????????????...the moon????????????????
you're getting worse than horseface Fury
You are as delusional as Vince. F Obama. F the mb he put in power and f mooche too
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On Egypt, Obama Still Winging It
Share on email Share on twitter Share on facebook Share on digg | More Sharing ServicesMore [1]
Robert W. Merry [2]
|
July 5, 2013
Robert W. Merry [2]
If it has seemed at times that President Obama has been winging it on foreign policy, his handling of the ongoing Egyptian crisis pretty thoroughly ices the question. He has been winging it, and on no matter is this more evident than on Egypt.
With Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi now evicted from office by the country’s military and the constitution suspended, one might ask where Obama has stood on the momentous questions facing the Egyptian polity in recent days. The answer is that he has stood at various locations at various times—and hence nowhere at any time. This fits the president’s pattern since the Egyptian Revolution erupted back in early 2011.
Back then, as throngs of Egyptian protesters jammed Cairo’s Tahrir Square bent on ending the thirty-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, Obama cast his lot with the protesters—and against the man who had been a steadfast U.S. ally throughout his long tenure. But Obama responded to events during late January and early February in a rather haphazard fashion.
First he called Mubarak to say America expected him to offer democratic reforms to his people as a way of assuaging the civic angers in the square. As he put it during a White House session with reporters following his call to Mubarak: “This moment of volatility has to be turned into a moment of promise.” When reporters asked the White House press spokesman if Mubarak’s time had passed, he responded, “Absolutely not.”
But within just three days, Obama changed his tune entirely. Now he wanted Mubarak out, and he didn’t merely express his hopes on that score publicly but also called the man to admonish him to vacate his office. After the call, he went before the cameras again to say Mubarak must leave and that the process of his departure “must begin now.”
What drove this assault on the U.S. ally at his greatest moment of travail? The answer seems to be: the widespread Western view that democracy must triumph wherever people are aggrieved and spirits are wounded. This view has been driving U.S. foreign policy to a considerable extent since the end of the Cold War.
Eventually, Mubarak abandoned his presidency as the country’s powerful military sought to blaze a path to some kind of democratic system that would leave intact its own highly preferential societal position. The process was messy, as such efforts usually are, and progress was halting. But eventually a presidential election took place, and Morsi, a figure of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, was elected president.
He hasn’t been much of a president—heavy-handed, not particularly inclusive or transparent, seemingly incapable of improving the lot of his people, particularly economically. So the protesters returned to Tahrir Square demanding an end to his rule.
And where has President Obama been on this one? Well, if you were reading the words of his ambassador to Cairo, Anne Patterson, you would think one thing. Early on, as protest stirrings began in Egypt, she warned that another Egyptian coup sparked by street demonstrations would undermine the country’s democratic project. “Some say that street action will produce better results than elections,” she said. “To be honest, my government and I are deeply skeptical.”
But almost immediately Obama seemed to reject that position as he cast his lot once again with the protesters—unmoved, it appeared, by the fact that Morsi was the duly elected ruler of Egypt. “What is clear right now,” said Obama, “is that although Mr. Morsi was elected democratically, there’s more work to be done to create the conditions in which everybody feels that their voices are heard.”
By way of clarification, the White House later issued a statement saying that “democracy is about more than elections.” It is also, said the statement, “about ensuring that the voices of all Egyptians are heard and represented by their government, including the many Egyptians demonstrating throughout the country.”
Let’s parse these expressions as an exercise in political science. True enough, democracy is about more than elections. There’s the rule of law, protection of citizens from arbitrary governmental action, equal treatment of all countrymen, etc. But, while democracy can exist without these things, it can’t exist without elections. Nor can it exist without a fundamental national respect for electoral outcomes.
We can draw a lesson from American history of the 1960s and 1970s, when hundreds of thousands of Vietnam War protesters jammed the streets and parks of Washington to convey their civic frustration and anger. They brought down a president and changed the direction of the war, but they never managed to get a war policy they liked or to end the conflict on a timetable they deemed appropriate. They certainly didn’t upend the electoral cycle. And in fact history tells us that they never represented a national majority. After all, they never managed to get a candidate they liked nominated by a major party for the 1968 election, and a man they revered was soundly rejected by the American people in 1972.
One must ask: Did America pass the Obama test during those turbulent times? Did the protesters feel that their government was listening to them? Were their voices represented in Congress and the White House as the government struggled with the issues that generated so much frustration and anger? Did anyone ever even hint with a straight face that non-electoral democratic principles should take precedence over the electoral schedule?
True, Morsi is a lousy president. So was Herbert Hoover in the American polity. So was James Buchanan. So was Jimmy Carter. In a democratic society, the only way to deal with such unfortunate democratic outcomes is to wait for the next election and vote the guy out.
So what is Obama’s real view on Egyptian democracy? Difficult to tell. On the evening of Morsi’s departure, he issued a statement that offers little real clarification. After having credited the street demonstrations as a legitimate expression of democracy that needed to be taken into account by the government, the president now said the United States was “deeply concerned” by the Egyptian military’s decision to remove Morsi and suspend the constitution in response to the street demonstrations. So was it back to the Anne Patterson position?
In the statement, Obama also called on the Egyptian military to “move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President [Morsi] and his supporters.” Nice sentiment. Whether there is much prospect that things will progress as smoothly as that, in the wake of this antidemocratic coup, remains a very open question. Already, within two days of the coup, the new leaders have commenced a crackdown against Morsi's Islamist followers.
What’s clear, though, is that Obama has brought to the matter of Egypt’s internal struggle a lack of intellectual rigor, and this has undermined any consistency in his thinking. If Mubarak had to go because he had been entrenched for too long and was standing in the way of an Egyptian path toward democracy, then Morsi should probably have stayed because he had not been in office through his duly designated electoral term and his forced departure likely will wreck Egypt’s prospects for keeping on a democratic path.
But that’s for the Egyptians to decide. What’s the lesson for America? It is that we should stay out of the internal politics of other nations because our involvement inevitably tosses us into inconsistent and even hypocritical postures and makes us look like a sanctimonious nation. Further, such meddling always has unintended consequences. Why did Obama have to get involved in Mubarak’s fate in the first place? What standing did he have to lecture the head of a foreign state—and an ally, at that—on when his time had passed? And what standing did he have to suggest, as he subtly did, what Morsi needed to do to legitimize his rule?
With Mubarak, as with Morsi, an appropriate approach might have been to say something like this: “The president of the United States, representing the American people, wishes the government of Egypt and the Egyptian people well as they struggle with the internal issues before them. We have abiding respect for the Egyptian people and the Egyptian nation, and we fully expect to remain friends with Egypt into the future, as we have in the past, irrespective of the outcome of the country’s current efforts to define its future. So long as Egypt conducts itself in ways that are consistent with U.S. interests, we will continue to support it with due regard for the fact that it is a great nation in an important region of the world.”
Robert W. Merry is editor of The National Interest [3] and the author of books on American history and foreign policy. His most recent book is Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians [4].
More by
Robert W. Merry [2]
Topics: The Presidency [5]
Politics [6]
Regions: Egypt [7]
United States [8]
Tags: White House [9]
Herbert Hoover [10]
Hosni Mubarak [11]
James Buchanan [12]
Jimmy Carter [13]
Mohamed Morsi [14]
Obama [15]
Arab World [16]
Egypt [17]
Egyptian revolution [18]
Hosni Mubarak [19]
Politics [20]
Politics of Egypt [21]
Protests in Egypt [22]
Tahrir Square [23]
.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source URL (retrieved on Jul 8, 2013): http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/egypt-obama-still-winging-it-8693
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US State Department Unsure Who Is Current Ruler Of Egypt
Zero Hedge ^ | July 8, 2013
Posted on Monday, July 08, 2013 5:23:39 PM by Zakeet
From the world's suddenly most confused State Department:
•PSAKI WON'T CONFIRM IF U.S. RECOGNIZES MURSI AS EGYPT'S LEADER: it did in this picture
•PSAKI: WE EXPRESSED CONCERNS ON ARBITRARY ARRESTS IN EGYPT: but unconcerned by un-arbitrary arrests of politcal opponents
•PSAKI: U.S. HAS NOT BEEN IN TOUCH WITH MURSI SINCE HIS ARREST: the whole "under arrest" part may the reason why
•PSAKI: US CALLS ON EGYPT'S MILITARY TO EXERCISE "MAXIMUM RESTRAINT" IN RESPONDING TO PROTESTERS: just harsh language instead of live ammo?
•PSAKI: US "DEEPLY CONCERNED" BY INCREASING VIOLENCE ACROSS EGYPT: because the tear gas used is Made In Russia (or Taiwan) and not American
One wonders, however, at this point what difference does it make
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Old Benny kind of over shot with this thread didnt he?
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DEMOCRACY NONSENSE?????????????????????????????????????????????....free and fair elections were held......where the fuck have you been??????????????????????????...the moon????????????????
you're getting worse than horseface Fury
Yeah, ok tard. ::)
Military set all the rules.
Supreme Election Commission disqualifying people and all the reasoning kept secret.
Dead people still on registers.
Only 600k of the 10 million or so Egyptians out of the country were allowed to vote.
Yep, that's real free and fair, moron.
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Yeah, ok tard. ::)
Military set all the rules.
Supreme Election Commission disqualifying people and all the reasoning kept secret.
Dead people still on registers.
Only 600k of the 10 million or so Egyptians out of the country were allowed to vote.
Yep, that's real free and fair, moron.
Lol.
Yeah, Egypt's elections were a bad joke. More of a farce than Russia's elections.
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JERUSALEM, Israel -- From the West Coast of Africa to the deserts of Sinai, Bedouin tribes are conducting a human trafficking trade on a massive scale.
It's no secret. The trade reaps millions of dollars and deals with human misery. It could be stopped but so far no one has dared.
"By that time I had lost sense (sensation) in both my hands," an Eritrean torture victim told CBN News. "It was a result of the accumulated torture but mainly because (both) of my wrists were tied up so tightly, (and I was) hanged up from the ceiling for three days, the blood was cut off from my hands and the flesh started to literally drip from my hands."
Torture in the Sinai
This man is just one victim of this widespread modern-day slavery, kidnapping, and torture trade in the Sinai desert. There are many pictures and videos of this horrible practice on the Internet.
For this story, this Christian man from the African country of Eritrea is going by "Philip," but that's not his real name. CBN News covered his identity for his protection.
"In some cases, we were tortured simply because we were Christians," he told us, his chest trembling slightly as he spoke.
"Sinai was always a place for human smuggling, but since around two years ago -- even a bit more -- it started also to be a place of human torture," Shahar Shoham, director of Physicians for Human Rights, told CBN News.
Shorham has documented more than 1,300 cases of torture in the Sinai. Those survivors, like Philip, made it to Israel. But most of the cases of torture are not documented.
"They torture them in horrible methods, like hanging upside down from the ceiling, like using electric shocks, like burning them on their bodies," Shorham said.
Kidnapped for Ransom
This story begins in Eritrea, where many like Philip fled from its brutal dictatorship. He traveled to a United Nations refugee camp in Sudan. There he was kidnapped by a Bedouin tribe.
They transferred him -- along with many others -- through Sudan, Egypt, and all the way to the Sinai desert and their torture camps.
What happens next in these camps is diabolical.
"What they make you do is call your family and ask them for the money," Philip explained. "Usually they will do the asking. They will say, 'Either send this money or your brother will die or your father will die or your son will die.' It depends on whoever is picking up the phone."
"While you're talking to your family they would pour molten plastic on your body so that you would scream and perhaps they thought that would persuade your family to pay or collect the money faster," he said.
The tribesmen demand what for most poor Eritrean families is a king's ransom.
"The ransom fees can go up to $40,000 for an individual and even $50,000, and until the ransom fees (are) paid, the people will not be released," Shoham explained. The financial burden on the families is devastating."
Killing a Soul
Sister Azziza is a Catholic nun from Eritrea who is based in Jerusalem. She has interviewed many of the Sinai survivors.
"People are destroyed physically (and) psychologically because of what they know they did to their family, how they are living," Sister Azziza told CBN News.
But many do not make it out alive.
"We estimate that around 4,000 people died in the Sinai, some of them from torture," Shoham said. Many who were with Philip died.
"We couldn't help them; that was the most horrible thing," he recalled. "Some you know. You have experienced some of the harshest treatment in this world and yet they're dying and you couldn't do anything to help them. That was horrible."
Hanged Like Christ
Yet the torture and the dying go on.
CBN News talked with a 35-year-old Eritrean woman named Segen. She is five month's pregnant.
Meron Estefanos, an Eritrean human rights activist living in Sweden, arranged our conversation. The kidnappers give them cell phones so they can call their family and friends.
We talked via Skype, linking Sweden, Jerusalem, and the Sinai.
It was sobering. You could hear the strain in Segen's voice.
"They are asking for money every minute and they hit us and they put us -- they will make us lie down on the floor and you know their feet would be up and they would hit their feet and melt with melted plastic bags," Estefanos said.
"And so that way they cannot stand because they will torture their feet, and every day they hang them the way they hang Jesus Christ," she said.
"What does she mean when they hang them like Jesus Christ?" CBN News asked.
"They hang us the way He was hanged and they take off their clothes. While they are naked they will hang them. And they will just hit them with big bats like all day for hours," she said.
No Secret to the World
Many of the Etritreans, like Segen and Philip, are Christians. Many don't survive.
"There are around 7,000 that went through these torture camps and 4,000 that died. Those are huge numbers and I don't think that the world needs to keep quiet about that," Shoham said.
Philip miraculously survived and made it to Israel where he received life-saving medical treatment.
The location of these torture camps is no secret.
"Their location and whereabouts is known already by many high officials," human rights activist Majed El Shafie told CBN News.
"The only way out of this problem is for the international society or the international community to put pressure on the Egyptian government to release the victims, to stop these human traffickers," he said.
Shafie believes some of the American financial aid to Egypt could be used -- with conditions -- to help these victims.
"Every American listening to us right now -- not only Americans but anybody in the world -- can make a difference," he said.
"You can contact your congressman. You can contact your senator. You can show them that you care about these issues," he said. "If you send an email, or fax or make a telephone call, he can save a life."
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http://www.businessinsider.com/egypt-is-on-the-brink-of-its-worst-government-yet-2013-7
Awesome - both sides hate us now
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Skip to comments.
Egyptian Politician: U.S. Ambassador Member of Muslim Brotherhood 'Sleeper Cells'
Breitbart ^ | July 18, 2013 | DR. SUSAN BERRY
Posted on Thursday, July 18, 2013 6:10:02 AM by RobinMasters
Mustafa Bakari, an Egyptian politician, issued a brutal assessment of U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson. Bakari stated, “In my opinion, she [Patterson] is a member of the sleeper cells of the Brotherhood, likely recruited by Essam al-Erian or Muhammad al-Baltagi.”
In a June 18 speech, Patterson made the following statement in a speech about the turmoil in Egypt:
“Some say that street action will produce better results than elections,” Patterson said. “To be honest, my government and I are deeply skeptical.”
John Hudson at Foreign Policy wrote of her reluctance to criticize Morsi:
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/egypt-ignores-washington-after-us-policy-missteps/2013/07/17/7c26fdb2-ef0b-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html
Otwink policies is tatters
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http://www.businessinsider.com/egypt-is-on-the-brink-of-its-worst-government-yet-2013-7
Awesome - both sides hate us now
everybody is united in hating you
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everybody is united in hating you
Yeah yo. We be united in dat. Justice fo Trayvon! He be white yo who he think he be withall dem numberz n shit? He aint shit- 333 times he can suk my dick yo. dat dere make him racis n stuff like me be andreduhman with 3.0 "G" PA ya herd?
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Yeah yo. We be united in dat. Justice fo Trayvon! He be white yo who he think he be withall dem numberz n shit? He aint shit- 333 times he can suk my dick yo. dat dere make him racis n stuff like me be andreduhman with 3.0 "G" PA ya herd?
you obviously have nothing better to do......you are the dumbest poster on here....add something substantive for a change...
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you obviously have nothing better to do......you are the dumbest poster on here....add something substantive for a change...
UHURRURURRRURHURRRRRHURR RRRRR TRAYVON HURRHRHRHHRRHHRURURURHRH RHRHRHHRRR OBAMA HURHRHUURRRRRHRHRHRH RACISM HURHRRRRRRRHRHRHSSSSHSHS HS WELFARE.
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UHURRURURRRURHURRRRRHURRRRRRR TRAYVON HURRHRHRHHRRHHRURURURHRH RHRHRHHRRR OBAMA HURHRHUURRRRRHRHRHRH RACISM HURHRRRRRRRHRHRHSSSSHSHS HS WELFARE.
I never realized what a self-hater you are....wow
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Pro-military masses in Cairo wave banners saying “Obama Out! Putin in!”
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators filled Cairo’s streets and squares Friday, July 26 in rival rallies shortly after deposed president Mohamed Morsi was formally charged and detained for 15 days. Tahrir Square was packed with crowds responding to Defense Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s call for a mandate to support the military fight on “terrorists.” Another huge crowd of Morsi supporters packed the streets around the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Nasser City. Instead of directing their ire at the overthrown Muslim Brotherhood, the pro-military demonstrators shouted “Bye Bye America!” as huge placards waved over their heads depicting as a threesome Gen. El-Sisi, Vladimir Putin and Gemal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Egypt in the 60s in close alliance with the Soviet Union. Their rivals in a separate part of Cairo chanted "Sisi out! Morsi is president! Down with the army!" In Alexandria, two people were killed and a dozen injured in clashes between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and opponents.
The anti-American banners represented a message: No matter if President Barack Obama denies the Egyptian people US support because of the military’s steps against the Muslim Brotherhood, Cairo has an option in Moscow.
Reports began appearing Friday morning on the social networks including Facebook from sources close to Putin that Moscow is considering supplying Egypt with advanced fighter bombers to replace the F-16 planes, whose delivery Obama suspended Wednesday, July 24. This was a gesture to show the US President’s displeasure over Gen El-Sisi’s rejection of the demand to release the ousted president and integrate the Muslim Brotherhood in the interim government. The military gave the Muslim Brotherhood an ultimatum to endorse the new situation by Friday. The Brotherhood, whose supporters have maintained a sit-in in Nasser City for 20 days, did not respond.
The military accordingly gave the screw another turn.
A Cairo investigating judge Friday ordered deposed president Morsi detained for 15 days pending investigation into charges of plotting with the Palestinian Hamas to orchestrate a jailbreak during the 2011 revolution and conniving with Hamas in killing police officers and soldiers.
He has been held at an unknown location since the coup. These charges carry potential death sentences.
They relate to the attack by armed men who on Aug. 5, 2012 killed 16 Egyptian border policemen in their camp in northern Sinai near Rafah. The prosecution claims to have evidence that the raid was plotted by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to depict the Egyptian military as a spent force. That attack kicked off the current armed Salafist mutiny against Egyptian military and police targets in Sinai
The other charge relates to the raid on Wadi Natroun prison at the tail end of the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak, which broke out of jail thousands of inmates including Morsi and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders. According to debkafile’s intelligence sources, the jailbreak was executed by special networks of Hizballah and Hamas which had been planted in Cairo and Suez Canal cities for subversion and terrorism. The radical Hamas, offspring and ally of the Egyptian Brotherhood, is now solidly in the military regime’s sights as a hostile entity.
The military takeover of power in July 3 is gaining the aspect of a neo-Nasserist revolution. Many Egyptians are beginning to turn to Moscow in search of their country’s primary world ally rather than Washington. They have taken note that Putin has shown himself to be the foe of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria as well as Egypt.
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http://ca.news.yahoo.com/violence-deepens-egypt-turmoil-deposed-leader-probed-murder-020435120.html
Great job by otwink
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Egypt claims jihadists fired US Hellfire missile at government office
Fox News ^ | August 5, 2013 | Perry Chiaramonte
Posted on Monday, August 05, 2013 5:33:43 PM by penelopesire
Edited on Monday, August 05, 2013 6:43:26 PM by Admin Moderator. [history]
Jihadists in Egypt's lawless Sinai Peninsula are using U.S. weapons to carry out attacks against the temporary government in the wake of the military's ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, according to the embattled nation's Interior Ministry.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324823804579011880172936694.html?mod=WSJ_Home_largeHeadline
>:(
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/obama-press-conference_n_3761323.html#comments
LMFAO - another speech from this piece of trash while he is golfing and partying.
What a waste of time this schmuck is
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Funny...no comments from the asshole who started this thread.
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Funny...no comments from the asshole who started this thread.
Remember when andre was in tears reading the article? LMFAO!!!!
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/obama-egypt_n_3761482.html?ir=World&ref=topbar
LMFAO!!!!
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AP Reporter: Are Obama’s Policies in Syria and Egypt Worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize Winner?
BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
August 15, 2013 3:22 pm
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki curtly replied Thursday to Associated Press reporter Matt Lee that the policies of the Obama administration regarding Egypt and Syria were in fact worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
LEE: All right. And then my last one — and I will stop, I promise, after this — do you think or is the administration confident that the steps — that the policy that you have pursued thus far in Egypt and also in Syria are worthy of a president who not so long ago won the Nobel peace prize?
PSAKI: Yes, Matt.
LEE: You do. OK.
Obama’s support for Muslim Brotherhood Islamists in Egypt is driving the powerful military there against the United States and toward Moscow, Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon reported. The administration’s handling of the turmoil there has drawn intense scrutiny in the six weeks since Morsi was removed from office, particularly the refusal of officials to say whether or not Morsi’s removal constituted a coup, even leading to a sharp rebuke from the Washington Post editorial board.
The administration’s response to the Syrian civil war has also been criticized as weak, particularly with regard to so-called “red line” Syria crossed that did not lead to immediate aid to the rebels. It has been nearly two years since Obama demanded President Bashar al-Assad step aside, yet he remains in power and the civil war is destabilizing the Levant.
Obama received the Nobel prize in 2009 for what the committee called his “extraordinary efforts” to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. Given he had been in office less than nine months when the decision was announced, many called it premature.
This entry was posted in Middle East, Obama Administration, Video and tagged Barack Obama, Jen Psaki, Matt Lee. Bookmark the permalink.
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http://www.defenseone.com/management/2013/08/now-what-pentagon-has-lost-its-leverage-egypt/68831
Obama legacy in ruins for his failures and treason
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As Egyptian Churches Are Put To the Torch, Obama’s Reputation Goes Up in Flames
New York Sun ^ | 8-18-13 | Youssef Ibrahim
Posted on Monday, August 19, 2013 2:58:05 AM by kingattax
As church after church is put to the torch in Egypt by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, one of the things that is going up in flames is the reputation of President Obama.
In the past 48 hours alone, some 57 Egyptian churches have been burned to the ground in the Nile valley. It will not be lost on the Egyptians that Mr. Obama has spent the crisis playing golf at Martha’s Vineyard.
Scores of Christians are being consumed in this conflagration, some burned beyond recognition defending their churches, even as Mr. Obama’s much-despised envoy in Egypt, Ambassador Patterson, still tries to effect a reconciliation between the the Muslim Brotherhood conducting this devastation and the Egyptians who revolted against the Brotherhood’s rule.
Mr. Obama came out against a pastoral background to urge the Egyptian military and government to take it easy on his favored Islamists and to hint at even more sanctions if they do not. As Mr. Obama retreated back to the beach, his aides warned of a cutoff of the $1.5 billion a year that American has been providing, though such aid is now being overwhelmed with a package of $12 billion that began flowing from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates only last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
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Benny, awesome post....makes me want to cry... since you never see a reasonable and well thought-out post like this showing Obama being a leader and showing his responsible leadership in the area. :'(
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http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/23/does-obama-support-the-muslim-brotherhood-in-egypt
Obama is a terrorist
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;)
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Where is Benny the idiot?
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http://www.businessinsider.com/egypt-is-the-worst-place-in-the-arab-world-to-be-a-woman-2013-11
:o
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http://www.businessinsider.com/egypt-is-the-worst-place-in-the-arab-world-to-be-a-woman-2013-11
:o
worse than Saudi Arabia? or Afghanistan?
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worse than Saudi Arabia? or Afghanistan?
Now - YES! All bc the ghetto commie drug addict Obama had his way
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Now - YES! All bc the ghetto commie drug addict Obama had his way
His next step is to invade Columbia.
He needs the coke...
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/24/egypt-protest-law-adly-mansour-_n_4333893.html
FAIL
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http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/us-egyptian-relations-the-brink-10072
FAIL
FAIL
FAIL
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Bump to educate the sheep...
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bump - lmfao
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http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Egypt-FM-says-strained-relations-with-US-due-to-insistence-on-including-Islamists-in-politics-374338
>:(
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Attack on Egypt army post kills 30
Associated Press ^ | Oct. 24 2014 | ASHRAF SWEILAM and MAGGIE MICHAEL
Posted on 10/24/2014 4:02:39 PM by AU72
EL-ARISH, Egypt (AP) -- A coordinated assault on an army checkpoint in the Sinai Peninsula killed 30 Egyptian troops on Friday, making it the deadliest single attack in decades on the military, which has been struggling to stem a wave of violence by Islamic extremists since the overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
Officials described it as "well-planned" attack that began with a car bomb which may have been set off by a suicide attacker. Other militants then fired rocket-propelled grenades, striking a tank carrying ammunition and igniting a secondary explosion. Roadside bombs intended to target rescuers struck two army vehicles, seriously wounding a senior officer.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
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Benny, awesome post....makes me want to cry... since you never see a reasonable and well thought-out post like this showing Obama being a leader and showing his responsible leadership in the area. :'(
BUMP - LMFAO!!!! :'( :'( :'( :'(
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:-[
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BUMP - LMFAO!!!! :'( :'( :'( :'(
WHY??????
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Now - YES! All bc the ghetto commie drug addict Obama had his way
Nah, Egypt was a true shit-hole for women long before Obama or the Arab Spring.
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Nah, Egypt was a true shit-hole for women long before Obama or the Arab Spring.
Failbama made it drastically worse
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Failbama made it drastically worse
For women?
I doubt this very seriously but am willing to read any links you want to share that seem to show that.
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For women?
I doubt this very seriously but am willing to read any links you want to share that seem to show that.
For everyone.
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For everyone.
Sorry, personal thing with me but I couldn't give 2 shits for most Egyptian men.
If Ebola spread to Egypt I'd be advocating the purifying fire of nuclear weapons to stop the spread to other countries.
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Sorry, personal thing with me but I couldn't give 2 shits for most Egyptian men.
If Ebola spread to Egypt I'd be advocating the purifying fire of nuclear weapons to stop the spread to other countries.
I'm just looking at the view point of how to tag misery around the world to Obama's doing.
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For everyone.
uh huh....I guess Obama has total control over a country that haqs been here for thousands of years before the United States and has mistreated their own people for ages...... ???....
Get a grip man...you make absolutely no sense
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I'm just looking at the view point of how to tag misery around the world to Obama's doing.
I guess thats your bag...but try using your brain and thinking logically.....instead of trying to score cheap shots which make absolutely no sense and have no basis in fact whatsoever
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I guess thats your bag...but try using your brain and thinking logically.....instead of trying to score cheap shots which make absolutely no sense and have no basis in fact whatsoever
Has a lot of basis in fact - failbama ousted Mubarak and now things are a disaster
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Has a lot of basis in fact - failbama ousted Mubarak and now things are a disaster
The Egyptians ousted Mubarak....and will probably put him back in again....you never know....but thats Obama's fault huh?...I guess you blame Obama for riling up the Scots to secede as well ???