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"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
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Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by vanlose kid » Mon Aug 19, 2013 6:12 pm
by AlicetheKurious » Mon Aug 19, 2013 6:42 pm
"Go home. Churches can be rebuilt, but if we lose you, nothing will console us."
by JackRiddler » Mon Aug 19, 2013 7:00 pm
AlicetheKurious » Mon Aug 19, 2013 4:36 pm wrote:Notice something strange? They identify his great-grandmother, and his grandfather, but no mention of his own father and mother! Why do you think that is? Could it be because his father, Mohamed Abdel-Quddous, is a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood? Sharif's mother also happens to be the daughter of Sheikh Mohamed al-Ghazali, the late Mufti of the Muslim Brotherhood. Sharif comes from the Muslim Brotherhood aristocracy. Unless he has explicitly rejected the Muslim Brotherhood, that means he is one as well. Now that's what I call a credible source.
Sharif Kouddous @sharifkouddous 29 Mar
The National Committee to Defend the Oppressed, a new group co-founded by my uncle, Mohamed Abdel Quddous pic.twitter.com/C0GGqzQJfg
One final piece of advice, take it or leave it, but it comes from hard experience. The universal characteristic of the MB is that they lie. They lie like nobody else. If their Supreme Guide tells them that a pencil is really an elephant, they will insist that it's an elephant no matter what, and there will be no way to convince him or her otherwise, but by disagreeing with the Supreme Guide, you will have placed yourself among those whom it is acceptable to kill without remorse. This is what NPR is bringing you, Jack.
by vanlose kid » Mon Aug 19, 2013 7:50 pm
JackRiddler » Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:00 pm wrote:... it may be most important to just keep these particular fanatics out, since they are (as I think you are saying) the ones who would create the most absolute and irreversible oppression. ...
[
The Revenge of the Police State
Aug 17 2013 by Wael Eskandar
[14 August 2013, security officer firing tear gas on protesters as they attempt to escape the attacks by the security apparatus. Image originally posted to Flicker by tarek1991] [14 August 2013, security officer firing tear gas on protesters as they attempt to escape the attacks by the security apparatus. Image originally posted to Flicker by tarek1991]
While the ongoing violence in Egypt has contributed to a state of confusion and polarization, one thing is certain: The biggest threat facing Egypt remains the return of the police state. More specifically, the threat concerns, not only the reconstitution of a police state, which never really left since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, but also the return of the implicit, if not overt, acceptance of the repressive practices of the coercive apparatus. In this respect, the current face-off between the state and the Muslim Brotherhood holds very damaging potential. Widespread anti- Muslim Brotherhood sentiment is currently providing the state with legitimacy to use of force against the Brotherhood, and, in the future, a potential cover for using similar tactics against other dissidents as well.
There is a problem with the way security forces have violently dispersed the pro-Mohamed Morsi sit-ins, even with claims that both Nahda and Rabea sit-ins were armed. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with the Muslim Brotherhood or with the objectives of the sit-ins, the murdering of over five hundred people goes against any sense of human decency and morality. The armed protesters’ reported use of unarmed individuals as human shields is equally despicable and reprehensible. Beyond the serious moral considerations at hand, other problems persist.
The forced dispersal of Rabaa and Nahda marks a triumph of security solutions over political ones—a trend that characterized much of the Mubarak era. Security solutions rarely solve a problem without the support of a political course of action, which seems to be missing in our current context. There is no question that the Muslim Brotherhood leaders have a long history of poor negotiating behavior, showing extreme stubbornness, and failing to uphold their end of the bargain on many occasions, in power and in opposition. But this is exactly why dealing with them demands a politically savvy approach, instead of reliance on security solutions, which will only reinforce the Brotherhood’s rigidity, not to mention the heavy human costs associated with such measures.
Instead, the military and its sponsored government chose a confrontational, security path. This path will only further empower the coercive apparatus without guaranteeing any results, in terms of political stability and social peace. As extremist groups are pushed into hiding, the security leaders will find excuses to employ intrusive surveillance measures, interrogate, torture, and abuse, all with zero transparency and accountability. Supporters of the crackdown among those who oppose the Brotherhood will gladly accept. Reinforcing this trend is the fact that the crackdown has apparently empowered radicalized elements among the supporters of the deposed president.
Some may say that the increasing influence of the security sector will only be limited to “counter-terrorism” and extremist Islamist groups that espouse violence. There are clear signs that this would not be the case. For example, immediately prior to the crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins, retired generals took control of governerships in an overwhelming majority of provinces. For many, this was a clear signal that the state has opted to “securitize” governance, and political files.
Additionally, those who believe that security sector will not overstep its boundaries clearly overlook the long history of the Egyptian state’s meddling in political and private affairs in the name of counter-terrorism and national security. Given that rich history, we could safely conclude that today domestic intelligence agencies are quickly gaining a blank check to meddle in our affairs for the sake of national security. Soon Egyptians will be asked to support their government in whatever decisions it takes on the grounds that the government is at the frontlines of the fight against “violent Islamists.” Political dissidents of all orientations will be vulnerable to the accusation of being soft on “terrorism” or supportive of “radical Islamists.” Will anyone care in the confusing state of insecurity?
Egypt, in other words, is on a dangerous path. There are many reasons to believe that police forces will employ their brutal practices at Mubarak era rates. The policing establishment itself has not changed in any way, never reformed, and never held to account for its past crimes. Minister of Interior Mohamed Ibrahim has even signaled that such a return is imminent, pledging, “Security will be restored to this nation as if it was before January 25, and more."
Tacit supporters of the security state will respond that there was no other way, that there was no room for negotiating with the Brotherhood, and that the forcible dispersal of the sit-ins was necessary.
Such a response, however, overlooks the major limitations of the security solution to the underlying problem, namely that calling on the police—unreformed and lacking the proper training—to resolve the standoff between the Brotherhood and the government is like asking a butcher to do a heart surgeon’s job. Additionally, one could counter and ask: Was it necessary for the police to target unarmed civilians carrying cameras? Was it necessary for security forces to shoot at unarmed crowds? Was it necessary for the police to leave unprotected all the churches that suffered attacks in the aftermath of the sit-ins’ dispersal?
But setting aside analyses of what the police could have done differently, it remains that the recent violence has only deepened people’s reliance on the security state and will exempt politicians from devising solutions to political differences. With the increase in social conflict, particularly along sectarian lines, security services will once again regain their traditional role as an arbiter of these conflicts, as well as their license to employ abusive, repressive tactics. This sustained sense of insecurity will only steer Egypt away from real justice. With the empowerment of the security sector, there will be no reason or motivation to push for revolutionary demands for real reforms inside the policing establishment. It is also likely that the escalation in violence and the pro-security rhetoric that the state has been touting will make it difficult for political dissidents, who are equally opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood and the military, to employ street action.
In some ways, the MB’s confrontational approach, wittingly or not, is handing back the coercive apparatus its license to kill and repress with impunity, but so are all those who are cheering on the security forces’ crackdown against the Brotherhood. Many such voices have criticized Mohamed ElBaradie for resigning his post as vice president in the wake of the recent violence. But in reality there is no role for a politician in a state that is poised to pick a security solution in dealing with every pressing challenge.
As we confront the question of whether or not Egypt will witness the “return” of the police of the Mubarak era, a number of critical questions arise, such as: Is there any revolutionary fervor left to resist this route? Or have revolutionary commitments been drained through all the blood and the failed attempts at establishing a democratic political order?
Whether or not a new wave of revolutionary mobilization will emerge to push back against the growing power of the security state is an open question. But it is clear that the persistence of the confrontation between the state and the Muslim Brotherhood will only deepen the securitization of politics by reinforcing demands for security solutions. What it will take to reverse the return of the police state, which revolutionary activists have worked hard to resist, is uncertain. One could argue that the brutal injustices that the police are bent on committing will always make resistance structurally inevitable. But that suggests that reviving resistance will come at a high price, one that Khalid Said, Jika, Mohamed al-Guindy, and many others have paid.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13 ... lice-state
The Officers’ War of Terror
Jul 27 2013 by Jadaliyya Egypt Editors
[In this image released by the Egyptian Presidency, Egypt's interim President Adly Mansour, center, Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi, left, and Defense Minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi attend a ceremony at a military base east of Cairo, Egypt, on 22 July 22, 2013. Photo Sherif Abd El Minoem via Associated Press] [In this image released by the Egyptian Presidency, Egypt's interim President Adly Mansour, center, Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi, left, and Defense Minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi attend a ceremony at a military base east of Cairo, Egypt, on 22 July 22, 2013. Photo Sherif Abd El Minoem via Associated Press]
Since the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has become a battlefield of narratives. Each narrative has sought to appropriate and define the January 25 Revolution. The wielders of power, most notably the army, along with its allies, advanced a narrative claiming that the revolution succeeded—thanks to the intervention of the officers. The time had come, this narrative went, for protesters to vacate the streets and the squares, and for workers to end their strikes and return to the factories. The revolution could only continue through the military-engineered transition, through people “going home,” through deferring to elections, constitution writers, and the officers and elites bargaining over Egypt’s future.
But for many, the January 25 Revolution was not simply a quest for an elected government. It encompassed a host of demands for far-reaching institutional reforms and social and economic rights. These revolutionaries did not leave that narrative unchallenged. They pushed back against the military and its civilian partners, who sought to negotiate and construct a political system that could contain rather than amplify revolutionary demands for transformative change.
But the partisans of “bread, freedom, and social justice” remained on the margins long after Mubarak’s ouster. They struggled to resist the narratives of power. In doing so they faced one of the major paradoxes of revolutionary popular mobilization in Egypt that 25 January revealed. Those who took to the streets could build enough pressure to “veto” particular political realities. However, they had little to no sway to replace the realities they overturned. The people, in other words, possess the power to subvert, but without necessarily challenging the ability of the wielders of power to dictate what comes next.
The relevance of this paradox to the events and aftermath of 30 June 2013 cannot be more apparent. In the prelude to the 30 June protests, millions of disgruntled Egyptians signed the Tamarod Campaign petition, declaring:
As a member of the Egyptian people, I hereby declare that I withdraw my confidence from the President of the Republic Dr. Mohammed Morsi and call for early presidential elections. I vow to stay true to the goals of the revolution and work towards achieving them, as well as publicizing the Tamarod campaign amongst the ranks of the masses until together we can achieve a society of dignity, justice, and freedom.
This initiative began as an attempt to gather popular support for early presidential elections after Morsi’s failure to deliver on the demands of the January 25 Revolution. That effort is now ceding ground to actors that are even more hostile to the aspirations that the Tamarod petition articulated. It is true that those who took to the streets may have succeeded in overturning one the largest hurdles to revolutionary change in Egypt, namely the uneasy alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the entrenched centers of powers known as the “deep state.” The popular mobilization that culminated on 30 June made it impossible for the officers and the security establishment to hide their anti-democratic privileges behind the façade of democratic institutions and civilian punching bags. Yet the fact remains: the murderers of Khaled Said, Sayed Bilal, Mina Danial, and Gaber Salah “Jika” are emerging triumphant in the aftermath of Morsi’s ouster. They are actively exploiting popular disdain for Muslim Brotherhood rule to carve out an equally, if not more, regressive political order than the one that preceded it.
Similar to what they have done after 11 February 2011, the officers today are promoting a narrative in which they have (once again) intervened heroically to save the day and “protect the revolution.” Accordingly, after they helped oust Morsi out of power, the officers are now asking Egyptians for pay back. The people are now to offer a blind, if not supportive, eye to the military practices as it employs deadly force, repression, and xenophobia to force its challengers into submission. The fear mongering discourse that the military has used as part of its “war on terror” initiative has clearly turned into more than just “words,” after security forces killed dozens of Muslim Brotherhood protesters Friday night, and dozens others in previous attacks. Yesterday’s brutal attacks came right after millions of Egyptians rallied in nationwide public gatherings in support of Minister of Defense Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s request for a popular mandate to deal with imminent “terrorist” threats. Many media outlets and opinion shapers in Egypt have uncritically expressed support for this alarming development. This pattern only highlights the extent to which advocates of dignity and justice in the country face an uphill battle in countering the attempts of the military and their allies to liquidate political dissent and dictate the terms of the new political order.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s record in power may have been so horrendous as to justify Morsi’s impeachment. But even so, what is undeniable is that the military’s violent campaign against Brotherhood supporters and the propagation of xenophobic discourse against its activists, as well as any explicit or implicit endorsement of such efforts stand in complete contradiction with the professed principles of the January 25 Revolution. They also defy the vision of a humane, just social order that many individuals have sacrificed their lives or body parts for the past two and a half years. There can be no freedom in a country where media outlets are shut down because they fail to toe the official line and where individuals face the threat of arrest, slander, and violent retribution for their political views. There can be no justice in a country where a former president and his associates are being held accountable for suspected wrong-doings through a process dominated by the very system that has killed unarmed protesters, conducted virginity tests, and have long subjected Egyptians to torture, humiliation, and abuse. There can be no dignity in a country where the coercive apparatus of the old Mubarak regime is reconstituting itself under the guise of a counter-terrorism initiative. The Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders are guilty for failing to build an Egypt that lives up to the demands of the January 25 Revolution. But their former allies among the officers who are ruling today are just as guilty.
What is next for Egypt? There is little doubt that the military-sponsored transitional framework—like its predecessor—is structurally unfit to deal with the rampant social inequalities that have long animated the conflict between large social segments and the Egyptian state. The current transition is primarily aimed at shielding state institutions from popular demands for revolutionary change. Simply replacing the Muslim Brotherhood with a new cadre of military-allied civilians, even under the framework of democratic institutions, will not quell the struggle for bread, freedom, and social justice. Thus, some might argue that it is only a matter of time before an open clash ensues between advocates of transformative change and the military-led political order. But even if such a clash is probable, the minority who opposes both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood face significant challenges. The events of this last week are painful evidence of the tough road ahead. The January 25 Revolution now faces a fight for its existence in an environment in which power and resistance are more convoluted than ever.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13 ... -of-terror
Discourse Polarization and the Liberal Triumph in Egypt
Aug 19 2013 by Bassam Haddad
[Thousands of mostly Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members shout slogans during a protest in front of the the Supreme Judicial Council in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, April 19, 2013. Arabic reads, [Thousands of mostly Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members shout slogans during a protest in front of the the Supreme Judicial Council in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, April 19, 2013. Arabic reads, "yes to clean media." Thousands of supporters of Egypt's Islamist president have taken to the streets of Cairo, calling on him to "cleanse the judiciary." Mohammed Morsi and the judiciary have had tense relations since he came to power in June last year. Judges accused him of trampling on their authority, while Morsi supporters charge that the judiciary is controlled by supporters of ousted President Hosni Mubarak. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)]
I cannot profess to be more than a close observer of Egyptian politics and history. I hope my Egypt interlocutors allow me to make some observations about what might end up concerning all of us who care about, or teach about, the region.
I will focus my observations on the reasons behind the polarized discourse on Egypt, both inside and outside the country, and conclude with commentary about the advent of a new liberalism. These observations are based on more than six weeks of monitoring closely Egyptian media of all varieties, Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiyya, and a coterie of European and American media outlets and publications, including the usual suspects (Washington Post, New York Times, Economist, Guardian, etc.) and numerous blogs and twitter accounts, as well as some reporting/interviews I conducted in/on Egypt in the past year. The words below are intended as a reflection, not an account, and will not include particular authors/media in question so as not to single out venues. It is all around us.
“Good Morning, I’m Late, But an Egypt Expert Now!”
Many commentators, on all sides of the political spectrum, come to the Egyptian scene as spectators who did not closely follow the events between 11 February 2011 and 30 June 2013. And they know much, much less about the Egyptian polity prior to 2011. Thus, judgments often proceed from a priori positions regarding false binaries such as “Islamism” vs. “secularism,” as though there is no history prior to 2011, or as though there was no record of policies to judge during Morsi’s presidency. More often than not, analyses embrace all-encompassing narratives that present Egypt as a battlefield featuring only a few actors (“Islamists vs. liberals”; “Army vs. Muslim Brotherhood”; “Revolutionaries vs. Counter-Revolutionaries”). Such accounts effectively erase the many processes and actors that do not fit into these binary categories. As with Syria, we end up witnessing entrenched ideational/impression-based camps rather than dynamic analysis that is amenable to revision. The discourse on Egypt becomes more important than what is actually happening in Egypt. The same applies to local Egyptian media if observers are glued to one venue.
“The Brotherhood is Only a Party that Opposed Dictatorship”
Many commentators know about the Egyptian state or dictatorship under Mubarak, including its economic exploits and the marriage of money and power; concessions to, and collaboration with, Israel; and the repression of political alternatives. However, most know little about the history of the Muslim Brotherhood nor for that matter the organization’s preferences, behavior, and policies after Morsi’s election. The most egregious common mis-analysis is the jettisoning of the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in cajoling the army and re-entrenching the security state and some of its social and political corollaries under Morsi’s leadership, and before. The idea that the Brotherhood was also being used by the army (as Tamarod was) is noted. More important, however, is that there were explicit decisions by the Brotherhood/Morsi to strengthen the hand of the ancient regime and a near absence of an institutional curtailing of the security state’s power or the probability of its abuse of power. The Brotherhood, for those who only see a past of an underdog opposing authoritarian rule, is much more than and much less than that. Their social and economic record prior to 2011, notwithstanding the services they provided, is very much of a black box, or irrelevant, to many commentators and instant “experts.”
The Media’s Binary
The media have played an exceptionally delusional role inside and outside Egypt, supporting partisan narrative in their maximalist version. Unending and thorough demonization of the Muslim Brotherhood was countered by most Brotherhood supporters/defenders with utter neglect of their excesses, complicity with the army/fuloul, and transgressions, especially after 2011. Watching one or the other type of television stations (or reading one or the other publication) exclusively prejudices outcomes beyond reason. Most dangerous has been the vitriol in most liberal Egyptian media against the Muslim Brotherhood and pretty much everything they stand for today or stood for in the past. This discourse mobilized not just bodies, but minds, preparing them to anticipate, accept, and perhaps justify violent and brutal action against them. The reactionary Muslim Brotherhood equivalent about the “other” is and was at play, in media and action. Perhaps we are accustomed to it and were unmoved. Yet this reactionary equivalent of the Brotherhood pales in comparison with the institutional and coercive action-backed discourse against them.
Gaze
Many proceed by privileging a regional not a local and domestic gaze. They thus interpret events inside Egypt in relation to external factors and relations that are independent from the streets and in the corridors of Egypt. Sometimes, the gaze is based on an anti-imperial lens. At other times, it proceeds from observations regarding the progress or regress of the Arab uprisings. Lessons from other uprising cases are read on to the Egyptian landscape and used to guide judgment and commentary. The regional reverberations will no doubt exponentially increase, but we are not there, quite yet. We will get there if the battle on the ground intensifies and turns into a complete zero-sum game between the Brotherhood and the state (and perhaps new players), without a possibility of a third powerful domestic player intervening. This will also increase the level of unprofessional reporting by major regional media outlets, each preserving its narrative and interests. It could invite the kind of asinine grandstanding and self-righteousness so common with respect to the Syrian abyss.
Burning Churches and Sectarian Violence
Sectarian and seemingly sectarian violence and the disgusting acts of burning Churches (not a recent trend) must be vehemently condemned. But as with the Iraq situation, these horrendous acts must be put in a broader perspective. Some commentators privilege these heinous acts at the expense of all else that happened in Egypt recently. This is not by any means about us needing to “understand” church burnings and sectarian violence, especially vis-à-vis a minority group. In fact, such intolerance, growing in the region, must be confronted head on at all levels. The point rather is to interrogate and debunk the segmented and abridged realities and corresponding discourses that confine one’s attention to mutually exclusive pain and atrocities. Clearly there is more to the story. Don’t get me started on belief and the right to non-belief in anything supernatural, especially the all-important “freedom FROM Religion.”
Dehumanizing the Brotherhood
This factor deserves its own category. Those who know the Brotherhood’s history, particularly their official positions and relations under Morsi, know that much of what the Brotherhood has stood for recently is not laudable, to say the least—and the list is very long and disturbing. But the degree and kind of dehumanization that Brotherhood supporters are subjected to in the Egyptian media and in many hearts and minds are not only horrendous, but also deeply blinding.
In the view of many reasonable people, including otherwise sympathetic onlookers, the Brotherhood appears like a walking political and economic disaster. Thanks to Morsi’s tenure, this stance is much less controversial now. There is much evidence for this incompetence, but the group is not where true power in Egypt lies. Designating the Brotherhood as the ultimate culprit is both immoral and analytically wrong. It is also a recipe for inviting the real culprits* with real power to rule with impunity or to invite civil war *(i.e., army, coercive apparatuses, their fuloul and business partners, and their external supporters and relations/agreements). More importantly, the precedent that was set this past month in terms of use of force is itself a liability for any notion of “popular revolution,” under different circumstances. This is not to ignore the dehumanizing voices of the Brotherhood and the reactionary views often held and propagated against those not of the same ilk. However, those who can exterminate the other are usually the ones to watch for. You can incite people to be intolerant and to burn churches. However, given the power imbalances, the incitement of a security state backed by a popular movement is more structurally lethal.
Core Issues Under the Surface
The emphasis in much, if not all, of what we write is on politics and process, siding with this or with the other party for a given set of reasons. What is missing, and what will emerge in due time is that what we are witnessing in Egypt now is also a struggle over defining or imposing a common identity. This process was suspended under Mubarak and perhaps even before due to the proliferation of the security state and the subsuming of politics and difference. Such struggles have surfaced after February 2011 with the expansion of political space and the resumption of politics, however imperfect. Not all has been lost, but it will be a long journey, and all the longer if external actors join in. I will not comment on the different options and discourses regarding “Egypt’s identity” that are being contested or supported as this merits its own independent and careful treatment. Suffice it to say that such core issues are at play whether or not they are explicitly professed. In a report I wrote after witnessing the Roxy clashes on the streets of Cairo on the infamous night of 5 December 2012, I posited that “[t]his is not just some skirmish or group clash. It is a visceral and definitive battle about the future of Egypt.” We are in the midst of it today and I am afraid the media will continue to play a divisive and unproductive role. (very sorry for quoting myself. I know, it’s horrible, but I’m trying to indicate a thread).
The State Discourse on Terrorism
Don’t get me started on how some private media have spun this discourse. I am now convinced that the mere invocation of the phrase “war on terror” (however “popular”) by any government is akin to justifying scrupulous action, or a “war of terror.” Governments as politically disparate as the United States, Israel, Syria, Egypt, and Russia have partook in this now tired portrayal. And it is a good reason to not take these governments’ claims seriously before deeper investigation. On the other hand, the mainstream discourse in the US media is astoundingly persistent in its utter disconnection from struggles on the ground. Save for the implications of US power, such reporting is best ignored.
The Triumph of Liberalism Anew
But we must also pay attention to the connections between such discourses of powerful actors and their supporters. In that vein, we are witnessing the rise of a refurbished Arab liberal discourse that mimics that of the United States, centered on a combination of privilege, membership, categorization, social hierarchies, and a healthy dose of Islamophobia. Such discourses are unique in that they sanction the right to use the utmost violence, legitimately, in fighting the kind of violence that disrupts privilege and hierarchies. And such discourses cannot proceed without distinct categorization of at least two groups such that one is somehow expendable for the sake of civility, civilization, democracy, freedom, and so on. Thanks to the media, such categorization was in ample supply, and succeeded immensely by focusing exclusively on “nation” and “progress,” with obstacles to be removed.
What is camouflaged in such liberal categorization are real and divisive social hierarchies that are vertical, dealing with questions of labor, exploitation, distribution, and economic power. This is not to minimize the “political” crisis at hand, but to assert the importance of a deeper gaze and social reality that, unfortunately, will likely withstand any resolution of the situation at hand. And then we’re back to the forty million+ Egyptians who are destitute, and a political economy that “must” focus on investment, growth, and “trickle-down” theories with the support of international financial institutions. The media will be cheering with pockets of irrelevant resistance, long after the Muslim Brotherhood (dubbed “evil”) are out of the picture.
In the Meantime . . .
Coming from a poisoned and explosive discourse on Syria, I still believe matters are less complex, and certainly less brutal, in Egypt. But the developments in the latter case are no less consequential. We have a responsibility to ask more of ourselves as observers, writers, and analysts. Maybe a very productive place to start—away from the details of the days’ events—is in exploring the ascendance of a new liberalism allied with political and, to a significant extent in some cases, economic power.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13 ... iumph-in-n
by JackRiddler » Mon Aug 19, 2013 8:30 pm
vanlose kid » Mon Aug 19, 2013 6:50 pm wrote:JackRiddler » Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:00 pm wrote:... it may be most important to just keep these particular fanatics out, since they are (as I think you are saying) the ones who would create the most absolute and irreversible oppression. ...
Kill them all, huh? Nice.
by AlicetheKurious » Mon Aug 19, 2013 9:36 pm
Yesterday’s brutal attacks (he's NOT talking about the brutal attacks that we've actually experienced or seen on videos -- he's talking about the imaginary "brutal attacks" that the Muslim Brotherhood is saying occurred, without a shred of credible evidence!!!!! -- Alice) came right after millions of Egyptians rallied in nationwide public gatherings in support of Minister of Defense Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s request for a popular mandate to deal with imminent “terrorist” threats. (why the quotation marks? and it ain't just imminent threats; how would this idiot define terrorism? -- Alice) Many media outlets and opinion shapers in Egypt have uncritically expressed support for this alarming development. (how dare we ask our own army and our own police to protect us against being murdered by armed terrorists who are doing just that! This is what the writer finds alarming!) This pattern only highlights the extent to which advocates of dignity and justice in the country face an uphill battle in countering the attempts of the military and their allies to liquidate political dissent and dictate the terms of the new political order.
One could argue that the brutal injustices that the police are bent on committing will always make resistance structurally inevitable. But that suggests that reviving resistance will come at a high price, one that Khalid Said, Jika, Mohamed al-Guindy, and many others have paid.
by seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:13 pm
Senator: Obama Administration Secretly Suspended Military Aid to Egypt
by Josh Rogin Aug 19, 2013 7:20 PM EDT
The White House has quietly placed military aid to Egypt on hold, despite not saying publicly whether the Egyptian military takeover was a coup, Josh Rogin reports exclusively.
The U.S. government has decided privately to act as if the military takeover of Egypt was a coup, temporarily suspending most forms of military aid, despite deciding not to announce publicly a coup determination one way or the other, according to a leading U.S. senator.
US Egypt Aid Dilemma
Supporters of Egypt's top military officer, Gen. Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi, march over a bridge leading to Tahrir Square in Cairo after the ouster of democratically elected Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. For decades, foreign armies that receive U.S. assistance have been on notice that toppling their freely elected civilian leaders will have penalties, it seems the White House is making good on those threats by cutting aid. (Nariman El-Mofty/AP)
In the latest example of its poorly understood Egypt policy, the Obama administration has decided to temporarily suspend the disbursement of most direct military aid, the delivery of weapons to the Egyptian military, and some forms of economic aid to the Egyptian government while it conducts a broad review of the relationship. The administration won’t publicly acknowledge all aspects of the aid suspension and maintains its rhetorical line that no official coup determination has been made, but behind the scenes, extensive measures to treat the military takeover of Egypt last month as a coup are being implemented on a temporary basis.
The office of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the head of the Appropriations State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, told The Daily Beast on Monday that military aid to Egypt has been temporarily cut off.
“[Senator Leahy’s] understanding is that aid to the Egyptian military has been halted, as required by law,” said David Carle, a spokesman for Leahy.
The administration’s public message is that $585 million of promised aid to the Egyptian military in fiscal 2013 is not officially on hold, as technically it is not due until Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, and no final decisions have been made.
“After sequestration withholding, approximately $585 million remains unobligated. So, that is the amount that is unobligated,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday. “But it would be inaccurate to say that a policy decision has been made with respect to the remaining assistance funding.”
But two administration officials told The Daily Beast that administration lawyers decided it was best to observe the law restricting military aid on a temporary basis, as if there had been a coup designation, while at the same time deciding that the law did not require a public announcement on whether a coup took place.
“The decision was we’re going to avoid saying it was a coup, but to stay on the safe side of the law, we are going to act as if the designation has been made for now,” said one administration official. “By not announcing the decision, it gives the administration the flexibility to reverse it.”
Several parts of the aid are now temporarily on hold, including the disbursement of the $585 million of $1.3 billion in fiscal 2013 foreign military financing still not delivered to the Egyptian military, the delivery of Apache helicopters that the Egyptian government has already paid for, and the depositing of economic support funds for programs that would directly benefit the Egyptian government, despite official administration denials, the administration officials said.
Obama Egypt
President Barack Obama makes a statement to the media regarding events in Egypt, from his rental vacation home on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Aug. 15, 2013. The president announced that the US is canceling joint military exercise with Egypt amid violence. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
“What they are trying to do is appear not to be taking sides,” he said. “But the U.S. is in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ position.”
Some aspects of U.S.-Egyptian cooperation can still go forward under the new approach, including maintenance and repair of equipment the Egyptian military already has, the funding of some government-linked programs, and funding for civilian projects in Egypt run by American organizations, although many of those programs have already been shut down after the Egyptian government cracked down on foreign NGOs.
Psaki said Monday that no final policy decision has been made on any of the Egypt aid and that various parts of the complicated package are still under review. She did acknowledge that some economic support has been temporarily suspended, as The New York Times reported Sunday.
“Programs with the government designed to promote free and fair elections, health assistance, programs for the environment, democracy, rule of law, and good governance can also continue in cases even where a legal restriction might apply,” she said. “But to the extent where there are ESF programs that would benefit the government, which is obviously, a section, we are reviewing each of those programs on a case by case basis to identify whether we have authority to continue providing those funds or should seek to modify our activities to ensure that our actions are consistent with the law.”
President Obama last week condemned the Egyptian military’s assault on civilians but did not address the aid issue directly. He said the administration was engaged in a full-scale review of all aspects of U.S-Egypt cooperation.
“While we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back,” he said.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also said Monday that all aspects of U.S. aid to Egypt were part of the ongoing review and that no final decisions had been made. He also sought to tamp down expectations that any suspension or revoking of U.S. aid to Egypt would immediately change the calculus of the Egyptian military.
“Our ability to influence the outcome in Egypt is limited,” he said. “It’s up to the Egyptian people. And they are a large, great, sovereign nation. And it will be their responsibility to sort this out.”
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers and staffers complained that the administration is trying to skirt congressional intent by refusing to say whether it believes there was a coup in Egypt while implementing its own preliminary punitive measures outside the confines of the legislation.
“This approach seems to be too cute by half, leaving the U.S. with little leverage in Egypt and appearing to condone gross violations of human rights in the process,” said one senior GOP Senate aide. “It is also unclear that Congress intended to give the Executive Branch this much leeway in implementing the coup provision in Section 7008 [of the law].”
For Egypt experts, the administration’s decision to temporarily suspend some aid but not make a public determination that a coup occurred represents not only its ongoing deliberations but also a desire to preserve options for handling the Egypt aid going forward, especially if it decides to restore the aid in the future.
The administration’s confused messaging on Egypt also has analysts scratching their heads and wondering whether temporary suspensions of aid can have any real effect.
“If this is the plan, then it seems like they are trying to maintain maximum flexibility,” said Brian Katulis, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “But I’m not certain this is the plan, and I don’t think at this stage that modest shifts in policy or even bigger ones would matter as much on the ground as much as they might have in the past. Egypt’s struggle has become so intense, polarized, and violent, and I worry that no matter what move the United States makes now, the competing power centers in Egypt might continue down the dangerous course they’ve headed.”
Some experts believe that a public announcement of the aid suspensions would raise the pressure on the Egyptian military to behave better, especially if done in conjunction with other concerned world powers.
“Cutting off the aid and announcing that puts the maximum pressure on the Egyptian government to correct its path,” said Tarek Radwan, associate director of the Atlantic Council’s Hariri Center. “Any kind of coordination with the European powers toward international delegitimization, that’s something that the Egyptian government would be highly uncomfortable with and would force them at least to do damage control.”
Overall, the administration is trying to maintain both flexibility and credibility in Egypt to play a constructive role going forward but is struggling on both fronts, Radwan said.
“What they are trying to do is appear not to be taking sides,” he said. “But the U.S. is in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ position.”
‘Back Egypt or risk peace talks,’ says Israeli official to US
Israeli source says Washington must support military-backed Egyptian government if negotiations stand any chance of moving forward
by JackRiddler » Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:30 pm
http://www.egyptindependent.com/opinion ... le-brother
My uncle, the Brother
Sharif Abdel Kouddous
Thu, 26/04/2012 - 08:30
On 13 February 2011, two days after Hosni Mubarak was forced out of office, my uncle, Mohammed Abdel Qoddous, walked into the former headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in downtown Cairo for the first time in 16 years. The office had been raided and sealed shut by security forces in 1995 in one of the regime's many crackdowns on the outlawed group.
Nothing had moved since. A teacup with a stubbed out cigarette lay on its side atop a newspaper dated from the day of the raid. Wisps of sunlight filtered in through the shuttered window slats. A blanket of dust, layered precariously high after years of painstaking accumulation, trembled and filled the air as he walked from room to room.
"I was born here," he said with a smile.
My uncle has been a devoted member of the Muslim Brotherhood for the past 36 years. He joined the group in 1976 — the same year he got married — and has spent much of his adult life committed to the group's view of the world and codes of conduct. His allegiance to the brotherhood forms a part of his religious identity. He was drawn to its legacy of resistance in Egypt and has stood by it through decades of political oppression and systematic persecution.
The first of his dozen imprisonments was as a Brotherhood member in a 1981 police raid on the Guidance Council office that also housed the group's magazine, "Al-Dawaa," where he worked. He spent four months behind bars and says he was happy and proud to serve the time with then-Supreme Guide Omar Tilmisany. Over the years that followed, while he may not have always toed the line set out by the organization, his commitment to it has remained steadfast.
Now, a little over a year after the January 25 revolution, with the Muslim Brotherhood's ascent from a banned opposition movement to the most powerful party in Egyptian politics, hairline fissures that have long existed between my uncle and the group's leadership have begun to crack apart and deepen. As the Brotherhood strains to wrap its hands around the levers of state power in Egypt, my uncle finds himself having to confront the pressing reality that the group he has considered himself a member of for so long may very well be one he will have to begin openly protesting.
For more than he ever was a Brother, my uncle is, by his very nature, a dissident.
To chronicle his history is to map out a lifetime of dissent. He took part in his first protest in 1968 during the student revolt against Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime. In 1981 he was jailed as part of Anwar Sadat's widespread crackdown on opposition groups. After Sadat's assassination he was placed under close surveillance by state security (he casually recalls being openly tailed on the desert road to Alexandria whenever he drove north for family vacations).
As a career journalist, he wrote for opposition papers throughout Hosni Mubarak's reign. Leila Soueif, the professor and longtime rights activist, recalled that when she was advocating for her husband, attorney Ahmed Seif al-Islam Hamad, after he was imprisoned and tortured in 1983 for his involvement in the socialist movement, the only journalist that dared to write a story about his ordeal was Mohammed Abdel Qoddous.
But it wasn't until the 2000s that my uncle cemented his stature as one of the country's leading dissidents against the Mubarak regime. Famed for taking to the streets with his trademark megaphone in one hand and Egyptian flag in the other, he led protest after protest against the regime's increasingly oppressive rule. Incredibly soft-spoken in conversation, his voice would rise to a roar on the streets.
As the head of the Freedoms Committee at the Journalists' Syndicate, he helped turn the steps of the syndicate headquarters into the symbolic heart of the protest movement in the years leading up to the revolution. For his efforts he was frequently jailed, occasionally beaten and often harassed.
In 2004, he helped co-found the Kefaya movement and hosted many of their press conferences at the syndicate. He also built ties with the April 6 Youth Movement and the National Association for Change while continuing to advocate and raise awareness for political prisoners.
None of this behavior was very palatable to the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had increasingly come under the control of more conservative elements of the organization, led predominantly by Khairat al-Shater. This wing was more concerned with ensuring the survival of the group and frowned upon provoking any confrontation with the ruling regime.
"The leadership was very upset at me because I was always protesting and speaking out against Mubarak," my uncle says. "Khairet al-Shater most of all. He is a person who likes law and order and he thought of me as rebellious and disobedient."
But when Shater was imprisoned by a military tribunal in 2007, my uncle invited his family to the syndicate for a press conference to condemn his jailing. Hundreds of Brotherhood members attended, the first time they went to one of his events. Shater wrote to my uncle from prison, thanking him for his help and support, and their relationship warmed.
"They have always left me to do what I want," my uncle says. "There are few members like me who act independently, outside of the organization."
The January 25 revolution will always be regarded as a miracle to my uncle, something he had been dreaming about for most of his life. A picture of him being dragged away during a protest on January 26 by five plainclothes police officers as a group of baton-wielding central security forces look on was widely circulated on television and the internet, provoking outrage.
He spent many nights in Tahrir during the historic sit-in that led to Mubarak's ouster. To walk with him in the square was to be in the presence of a revolutionary celebrity. Scores of people — men and women, young and old — would approach him to shake his hand, kiss him on the cheek and pose for pictures alongside him. He would be elated and humbled by the attention. "I never wanted to be a leader," he would say. "This is all I ever wanted, the love of ordinary people."
It was in the post-Mubarak landscape, however, that the divisions between my uncle's actions and the Muslim Brotherhood's leadership immediately began to manifest themselves.
In the weeks after Mubarak's ouster, the Brotherhood campaigned hard for the 19 March referendum that set up parliamentary elections later that year. Initially, my uncle walked in step with the organization, putting forward the Brotherhood's line of reasoning in family arguments and advocating for a yes vote despite widespread opposition among the majority of revolutionary youth that he so admired. Yet, when it came time to cast his ballot, the cognitive dissonance must have been too much for him to bear and he voted no.
During the post-Mubarak period, he did not let up on his advocacy for victims of repression under the rule of the military council even though the Brotherhood kept largely silent in reverence to the ruling generals. My uncle hosted the first of many press conferences for the No to Military Trials group in March 2011, despite the campaign being vilified in the face of the military's widespread popularity at the time. He later spoke out in a video for the imprisoned blogger Maikel Nabil, who had been handed a three-year prison sentence by a military tribunal, a principled move given Nabil's avowed support for Israel.
As 2011 progressed, the Brotherhood continued to move further away from the revolutionary movement and more closely align itself with the Supreme Council of Armed Forces. A protest in Tahrir on 27 May billed as the "Second Day of Rage" marked the first major demonstration the Brotherhood officially boycotted. Instead, the group released a statement in support of the SCAF and called on people not to attend. My uncle nevertheless came to the square. He was surrounded by people yet again, though this time they were hounding him about the Brotherhood's stance and asking him to explain why the group was betraying the revolution. He would listen patiently and sometimes argue back, seemingly torn between his allegiance to the organization and their increasingly anti-revolutionary positions.
During the pivotal clashes between protesters and police on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in November that left 45 people dead, the Brotherhood expressly forbade its members from taking part and was accused of sacrificing the protesters for the sake of the parliamentary elections days later. Bed-ridden with a cold, my uncle did not come to the square though he vocally supported the elections and proudly voted for the Freedom and Justice Party list.
Yet, less than a month later, he joined with protesters in solidarity as they clashed with army soldiers in front of parliament on Qasr al-Aini Street. As rocks rained down from the building above and small fires raged on the street around him he stood calmly in his rumpled suit, flag in hand, and watched the battle unfold.
The Brotherhood had also begun to echo some of the accusations made by SCAF and the state media that the protesters were inciting people to topple the state and create anarchy. In the wake of the Qasr al-Aini clashes, a prominent Brotherhood member filed a lawsuit against three members of the Revolutionary Socialists, accusing them of such charges. The Brotherhood's eponymous party newspaper, Freedom and Justice, published a front-page article on the case. In response, my uncle used his daily column in the same newspaper to defend the Revolutionary Socialists and remind people that the group had protested the Mubarak regime for years and had stood by the Brotherhood when its members were being imprisoned.
Despite the numerous actions my uncle took that pointed to his independence of mind — free from the Brotherhood's 'listen and obey' credo — he would frequently spout Brotherhood party dogma during arguments and debates, a manifestation of the complex and convoluted relationship he maintained with the organization and his continued allegiance to it.
But his rhetoric has begun to shift in the last few weeks into open criticism.
"I don't approve of their political performance," he says. "There is no difference between the Freedom and Justice Party and other parties. They are acting like politicians, not like Islamists."
When the Brotherhood attempted to dominate the Constituent Assembly by shoving through a last-minute change to include 50 members of Parliament as well as stacking the remaining half with Islamists or other sympathetic members in a move that enraged groups across the political spectrum, including liberal parties, Al-Azhar and the Coptic Church, he was visibly distraught and penned an article denouncing the decision.
In response, a senior member of the Guidance Council called him at home to scold him, provoking a fierce argument. The next day, the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and its former head, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, took him out to lunch to make amends.
He was less vocal in his opposition to the Brotherhood's decision to nominate a presidential candidate. He stood against the group reversing its earlier pledge not to field a candidate but kept his criticism largely to himself as the Brotherhood was coming under fire from all quarters in the media.
"I am against the Brotherhood taking over everything," he says. "They want the Parliament, the Constituent Assembly and the presidency? What is this?"
Nevertheless, before Shater was disqualified from the race, my uncle was torn over who to vote for. He respected Shater and a part of him was inclined to support the Brotherhood's official nominee, but he had long supported the candidacy of Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, the former senior Brotherhood member who was expelled from the group after announcing his decision to run for the presidency last year.
My uncle first met Abouel Fotouh in 1977, after he famously confronted Sadat as student union president at Cairo University, in part to criticize Sadat's restrictions on the speeches of Sheikh Mohammed al-Ghazaly, my uncle's father-in-law. In 1985, the two traveled to Afghanistan together for a month where my uncle covered the mujahideen resistance against the Soviet occupation and Abouel Fotouh volunteered as a doctor.
My uncle sees himself and Abouel Fotouh as two parts of the same strand within the Brotherhood. "Abouel Fotouh is like me, a rebel," he says.
After Shater was expelled from the race and the Brotherhood threw its weight behind its backup candidate, the lesser-known Mohammed Morsy, my uncle's choice to vote for Abouel Fotouh was easy. While he has not publicly come out in support of Abouel Fotouh for president — the Brotherhood has explicitly forbade its members from doing so under penalty of expulsion — he has not made his inclinations a secret either.
On 20 April, the Brotherhood came out in full force for a protest in Tahrir alongside numerous other groups to "preserve the revolution," as it claimed. For the first time, my uncle did not join them.
The future relationship between my uncle and the Brotherhood is unclear. His association with them is anything but straightforward, a convoluted mix of religion and politics that is difficult to define. Yet like so many of the organization's rank and file, his connection with the group is being remolded in the unpredictable landscape of post-Mubarak Egypt.
"Right now the Brotherhood are not ruling. But a clash can happen when they become the rulers," my uncle says. "If they do something against general freedoms I will be the first to stand against them, I won't hesitate. If they want to kick me out, I will leave." He pauses to think. "But I don't think they will."
Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist based in Cairo. He is a correspondent for the TV/radio show Democracy Now! and a fellow at the Nation Institute.
by vanlose kid » Tue Aug 20, 2013 2:46 am
Egypt – a counter-revolutionary coup
General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, head of Armed Forces, announces the ovethrow of Egyptian President Morsi General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, head of Armed Forces, announces the ovethrow of Egyptian President Morsi
By Paul Roberts
Yesterday Egypt’s military, with the full backing of imperialism, carried out a coup d’état.
Former President Mohamed Morsi was deposed and taken into military custody along with his key officials, with arrest warrants issued for hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
All potentially anti-coup media outlets were closed down by the Army with many staff arrested. Even Al Jazeera was taken off the air, its offices raided and staff detained.
Today the military has sworn in its new ‘interim’ President, the long-established Mubarakist judge Adli al-Mansour.
The coup has annulled the results of a presidential election, two parliamentary elections and two constitutional referendums – all held since Mubarak was toppled in 2011.
This has all been welcomed by a chorus of the imperialist states, many of whom were party to the coup’s preparation, at the centre of which is the US, all determined to restore Mubarakist rule.
Left misassessments
Some on the left have misassessed the character of the situation, making wild claims that Morsi’s removal represents a second revolution or that the Army were forced to intervene to head off such a revolutionary advance. Such wishful thinking is pure and simply that, with no basis in reality.
A serious counter-revolutionary reverse has taken place and the Army is intent on driving through its gains. The situation for Egypt’s left has not just improved, but dramatically worsened.
It is not the size of the mass mobilisations that determines the character of the struggle that has been taking place but the alignment of social forces.
Both sets of mobilisations, these past few days and those in January and February 2011, were huge and brought millions on to the streets. But the fundamental character of the struggles they engaged in were diametrically opposed.
The 2011 revolutionary advance
Two years ago the mass movement was struggling to overthrow Mubarak’s military regime – a revolutionary act. This week’s mobilisations were directly allied to the Mubarakist forces – explicitly calling for the Army to retake power – a counter-revolution.
The opposing fundamental character to these two struggles is why the Egyptian state’s security apparatuses dealt with them so differently, brutally repressing the protests in 2011 but supporting them this week.
The 18 day long 2011 upsurge had to withstand immense state repression; curfews were imposed, protesters tear-gassed, shot, beaten and stoned – over 800 were killed and 6,000 injured. Despite such brutality the generals could not break the 2011 mobilisations. More than 90 police stations were destroyed and the demonstrations continued to grow, so the military sacrificed Mubarak to try to retain its hold.
Continued mobilisations in 2011 forced the generals to concede democratic elections, and subsequently its candidate for President was defeated despite the Mubarakist judiciary manipulating the elections.
This wave after wave of revolutionary mobilisation forced the hand of the Mubarakist state apparatus which conceded on elections and other democratic gains.
The 2013 counter-revolutionary reverse
This week’s four days of anti-Morsi protests have had the opposite character. Irrespective of the different views held by the wide range of political forces that mobilised this week, the dynamic of their struggle has been dominated by the most powerful component in their alliance – the Mubarakist military. Hence the character of the struggle has been to replace the Muslim Brotherhood government with a Mubarakist one.
So this week the security forces openly backed the protests, actively encouraged people to participate and the police even provided refreshments in Tahrir Square.
The military’s repression this week has all been focussed on Morsi’s supporters. Their rallies have been attacked and broken up by the army or their hired agents and Muslim Brotherhood offices have been destroyed by security service linked forces.
The coup’s preparation
Neither is it the case that the military seized power to head off a progressive advance of anti-Morsi masses.
The army, Mubarakist forces and their imperialist allies have carefully coordinated the political struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood, bringing together an alliance that included pro-western liberals, pro-military nationalists, pro-Saudi Islamists and confused left currents.
Alongside this it has coordinated with the main external actors – the US and its agencies the IMF and World Bank, Israel and Saudi Arabia – to cut off the external funding to the embattled regime, deepening an economic crisis already developing as a result of deteriorating world trade, declining cotton prices and exacerbated by the effects of unrest on the tourist trade.
Since June 2012, the US has led the international campaign to block the Egyptian government from securing financial assistance. The IMF has repeatedly delayed payment of its $4.8bn loan agreement, and demanded cuts in food and fuel subsidies before it is released. At the same time, Saudi Arabia, which propped up the Mubarak regime, cut off the petro-dollar support.
With the GDP growth rate falling from 7.1% in 2007 to 2.2% in the first quarter this year Egypt’s finances became so squeezed it could no longer maintain the levels of food and fuel purchases from abroad. Shortages of necessities have been on the increase.
Youth have been particularly badly hit by the deteriorating economy with unemployment of the under-30s currently running at 75 per cent.
At the same time, the Mubarakist state apparatus – which Morsi was blocked from acting against at the end of last year – increased social chaos by deliberately reducing the policing of crime, allowing robbery and murder rates to soar. This has increased insecurity particularly among middle layers in society that were already less favourable to the Muslim Brotherhood and encouraged a more militant opposition.
The strategy was to use the rising economic hardship and social insecurity as a battering ram against Morsi’s Presidency and create a level of civil unrest that gave the grounds for the army to intervene.
This was the lesson learned from the failed coup attempt in June last year. When the generals made a coup attempt in 2012 before the Presidential election – dissolving Parliament and assuming its legislative powers – there was no mass mobilisation in their support, so they were forced to partially back down and accepted Morsi’s election.
This time the circumstances were better prepared, and the mass movement they helped create actually called on the army to intervene.
The Army did not act because they feared a revolution, as some have optimistically claimed. The Army and Mubarakist representatives of imperialist interests in the country have been actively fomenting the economic circumstances for the mass popular protests, and forging their political leadership. The mass movement was unleashed on 30th June precisely to create the excuse for a coup.
The advance preparation is the only explanation for the totally tight choreography of all the actions and statements of the country’s police, internal security and intelligence forces with the Army.
While the mass movement undoubtedly reflects the hardship being experienced by the poorest and most down-trodden of the Egyptian masses, it is not enough to analyse why the masses are discontented. In order to understand the political dynamics of the situation it is vital to understand the situation in all classes in society, including the role of imperialism itself.
Mubarakism – imperialism’s key regional ally
First of all, it should be crystal clear that whatever its careful media comments and official statements, the whole course of events has been closely coordinated with the US.
Egypt has been vital to the US’s regional interests since the 1979 peace treaty with Israel following the Camp David accords. Since then Egypt’s officer corps has been trained by the US, collaborates closely with the Pentagon and receives $1.3bn annual US military aid.
Since the revolt in 2011, the US had had only one goal – to restore a purely vassal Mubarakist regime. Its regional interests can only be fully met by a totally pliant Egyptian state. It requires Egypt to actively assist it to militarily dominate the region, to support Israel and act as a roadblock to the Palestinian struggle.
It was completely insufficient for the US that Morsi would not abrogate Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel. The assistance (even though it was limited) given to the Hamas government of Gaza, the increasing rapprochement with Iran and developing links with China made Morsi completely unacceptable to the US.
From the partial coup in June 2012, the refusal to cede control of any section of the Mubarakist state, the cutting off of sources of external economic aid, the creation of an ‘anti-Morsi’ political front dominated by the right, the retreat of the police from fighting crime, and the encouragement of the June 30th mobilisations, the Egyptian pro-imperialist bourgeoisie, the Army, the state and the imperialists have been in cahoots to create the circumstances for the ousting of Morsi.
The aim is the restoration of a reliable Mubarakist regime in Egypt. As direct Army rule would cause too much destabilising questioning of legitimacy, a democratic fig-leaf is needed. This is likely to take the course of the calling of Presidential elections from which the Brotherhood and other Islamist forces are excluded, by direct bans and repression of the independent media.
We can be quite confident that these elections, unlike last year’s, will be rigged to ensure the election of the candidate of choice, who will be a hardline Mubarakite – very possibly Shafiq – by a margin they are likely to have already decided upon.
Illusions that this process may lead to a non-Islamist liberal alternative will be rapidly disproved.
A counter-revolutionary coup
This week’s mobilisations illustrate the immense discontent that has built up. Even taking into account the destabilisation campaign, the Morsi government failed to take steps, for example on Palestine, that could galvanise the necessary support either abroad or at home.
Also the Muslim Brotherhood's alliance with imperialism's offensive against the Syrian government helped isolate Morsi's government from others in the region fighting imperialist intervention. In accepting the sectarian, Sunni versus Shia, agenda promoted by the US and Saudi Arabia it assisted the undermining of Arab unity, emboldening imperialism to simultaneously target Arab regimes on both sides of the sectarian divide.
Many will have joined this week's anti-Morsi protest in Egypt in the hope that removing him will get the economic problems sorted. But the Mubarakists no more have a solution for Egypt’s economic crisis than the Muslim Brotherhood. They will introduce draconian austerity measures and, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, will brutally repress those that fight such policies.
There should be no illusions as to what Mubarakism entails. It has already ruled Egypt for 30 years with a brutal iron fist – trade unions and strikes were outlawed, protest prevented, with political activists detained and tortured. As Wikileaks revealed, Egypt was the country where the US ‘rendered’ most prisoners for torture and interrogation, because it was the most brutal.
Yesterday’s military coup was a significant gain for imperialism’s offensive in the Middle East. The principal democratic gains, achieved by immense struggle in 2011, have mostly been overturned. The conditions for the class struggle in Egypt will be more difficult.
Progressive people across the world should continue to give that struggle their support.
http://www.socialistaction.net/Internat ... -coup.html
Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists support US-backed military coup
By Johannes Stern
16 July 2013
As the army tightens its grip on Egypt, the reactionary implications of the July 3 coup are becoming ever more apparent. Pseudo-left groups who backed the coup—Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists (RS) and their co-thinkers, the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the US and Britain’s Socialist Workers Party (SWP)—stand exposed as counterrevolutionary organizations.
They are responding by trying to cover up their complicity in the army’s moves to re-establish the political structures that existed before the overthrow of the Mubarak dictatorship, and by seeking to deny the obvious reality that a coup has taken place.
Early last week, the Egyptian military massacred at least 51 protesters in Cairo, wounding hundreds. Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) members have been arrested, including President Mohamed Mursi. The army junta, led by General Abdel-Fatah Khalil al-Sisi, is cobbling together a new government to enforce austerity policies demanded by international finance capital even more ruthlessly than Mubarak and Mursi before it.
The new government will largely consist of generals, ex-Mubarak regime officials, bankers and free market economists who aggressively advocate repression against their political opponents. They will impose the conditions demanded for a new loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The loan will lead to cuts to bread and fuel subsidies on which millions of impoverished workers and peasants depend.
During the coup, the RS functioned as a front group for the Egyptian military and its imperialist backers as part of the Tamarod (“Rebellion”) alliance. By backing the coup, Tamarod provided the military with the opening it needed to oust Mursi and create the conditions for a crackdown against the working class.
In recent days, detailed accounts in the bourgeois media have showed how, in the absence of a revolutionary leadership in the working class, old Mubarak regime elements were able to use Tamarod to derail the mass movement and help them carry out the coup.
On July 10, the New York Times ran an article reporting that remnants of the Mubarak regime were heavily involved in “preparing for the coup.” The Times writes: “Working behind the scenes, members of the old establishment, some of them close to Mr. Mubarak and the country's top generals, also helped finance and organize those determined to topple the Islamist leadership, including Naguib Sawiris, a billionaire and an outspoken foe of the Brotherhood; Tahani el-Gebali, a former judge on the Supreme Constitutional Court who is close to the ruling generals; and Shawki al-Sayed, a legal adviser to Ahmed Shafiq, Mr. Mubarak’s last prime minister, who lost the presidential race to Mr. Mursi.”
The article explains how these elements sought to rely on Tamarod to realize their aims. “Mr. Sawiris, one of Egypt's richest men and a titan of the old establishment, said…that he had supported an upstart group called ‘tamarrod’” and “donated use of the nationwide offices and infrastructure of the political party he built, the Free Egyptians.” The article contiued, “He provided publicity through a popular television network he founded [Orascom Television] and his major interest in Egypt’s largest private newspaper,” Al Masry Al Youm.
Tamarod was never anything besides a platform for the bourgeois opposition and a brainchild of more secular sections of the ruling elite opposed to the MB on various political and economic issues, including questions of lifestyle. From the beginning, Tamarod aimed to rely on the military to oust Mursi and hand back power to former Mubarak allies.
According to the Times, the former judge Gebali said in a telephone interview that “she and other legal experts helped tamarrod create its strategy to appeal directly to the military to oust Mr. Morsi and pass the interim presidency to the chief of the constitutional court.”
Moreover, a July 15 account in the Times, titled “Egyptian Liberals Embrace the Military, Brooking No Dissent,” acknowledges that this backing for the military coup is bound up with a rightward swing in the affluent milieu of Egyptian liberal and “left” forces. It notes that “the vast majority of liberals, leftists and intellectuals in Egypt have joined in the jubilation at the defeat of Muslim Brotherhood, slamming any dissenters.” They support the army, claiming it is needed to protect the homeland against retaliatory terrorist attacks by the MB.
Summing up this rightward shift, Rabab el-Mahdi, a scholar at the American University in Cairo, declared: “We are moving from the bearded, chauvinistic right to the clean-shaven, chauvinistic right.” Another political scientist, Amr Hamzawy, described the celebration of the military takeover after the mass shooting as “fascism under the false pretense of democracy and liberalism.”
These accounts shed light on the reactionary character of the RS’ efforts to cover for the coup. These include the recent interview with RS spokesman Hossam El Hamalawy published on July 12 on the Jadaliyya web site. Hamalawy begins by downplaying the fact that there was a coup in Egypt. He cynically declares that he is “not really interested in getting into this semantics game about whether it is a coup or not. Because it seems this has become the obsession of most of the spectators and the commentators at the moment, as well as the revolutionaries.”
He adds, “So when you say that this is a military coup (or period), and you just stop there, you give the wrong impression that the military had woken up one day and decided to take over. So that is why I am really cautious when it comes to using these terms, and I actually do not want to indulge a lot into the description.”
Hamalawy’s attitude reflects the indifference and hostility of the RS’ middle class elements to the democratic and social aspirations of the working class. Dismissing the question of whether a reactionary coup has even occurred, he is effectively indicating that he considers the difference between revolution and counterrevolution as merely a trivial question of words.
In fact, Hamalawy and the RS are conscious of the counterrevolutionary character of their allies. In the interview, Hamalawy states that “the camp that was anti-Morsi basically contained this mish-mash of groups. Those who lined up against Morsi included the opposition parties from the National Salvation Front [(NSF)], and that would include Hamdeen Sabahi’s al-Tayyar al-Sha‘bi, El Baradei’s al-Dustur Party, as well as remnants of the Mubarak regime represented by Amr Mousa and others. Even among the anti-Morsi camp, there was definitely a presence also by the fuloul [i.e., members of the old Mubarak regime] represented by the supporters of [General] Ahmad Shafiq, the supporters of the deceased General Omar Suleiman, and by elements from the Egyptian upper class that are definitely against Muslim Brotherhood (but they are for the return of the old regime, or the Mubarak regime as it was).”
Hamalawy seeks to conceal the counterrevolutionary character of the RS’ collaboration with Tamarod by dishonestly claiming that these forces were not “the ones calling the shots.” He continues, “It would be a great mistake to say that it was the counterrevolutionaries who were at the top of or spearheading the movement.”
This is simply an absurd lie. As a military dictatorship rapidly takes shape in Egypt, it is obvious that the Tamarod movement was a political instrument of counterrevolutionary forces that mounted a coup aiming to restore the old Mubarak regime. In fact, Hamalawy’s own account shows that the RS cooperated closely with the forces that he acknowledges were “counterrevolutionaries.”
He says, “In so many governorates and provinces it was different political and revolutionary groups that took up the task of collecting the signatures from the people on the streets. It was not just some online operation. Some were done in coordination with the centralized committee of Tamarod, and other initiatives were done totally independent from it. So it would be difficult to put your finger on what exactly Tamarod is thinking. I mean, which Tamarod? Do you mean the Tamarod of the three cofounders and their official Facebook page? Or do you mean the local activists on the ground? So to say that the activists from the beginning had the intention of handing the country over to the military is also false.”
Hamalawy’s attempt to introduce a certain distinction between the political program of Tamarod’s leadership and that of its “local activists on the ground” is a fraud.
In fact, the RS wrote countless documents praising Tamarod as a “way to complete the revolution.” Its members campaigned for Tamarod in the streets. At the same time, the RS kept close ties to the Tamarod leadership, issuing joint statements supporting its program.
On May 28, the RS cheered Tamarod leaders Mahmoud Badr and Mohamed Abdel-Aziz at their headquarters in Giza. Badr and Abdel-Aziz later flanked General al-Sisi as al-Sisi announced his “road map” for the coup on July 3. It included all of Tamarod’s key demands, such as the dissolution of the Islamist-dominated upper house of parliament; the appointment of the chief of the judiciary as president; and the appointment of a free market technocratic government.
Immediately after the military takeover, the RS hailed the coup as a “second revolution” and sought to mobilize protesters to “protect their revolution” against the MB. In a statement on July 6, the RS asked the junta to take “immediate steps to achieve social justice… and write a civil, democratic constitution which entrenches the values of freedom and social justice.”
The RS’ fraudulent attempt to portray a US-backed military coup against the MB as a “second revolution” for social justice and democracy is all the more grotesque in that, only one year ago, the RS supported the MB as a revolutionary force against the military.
In the first presidential elections after the revolutionary ouster of Mubarak, the RS supported the MB candidate, Mursi, against General Ahmed Shafiq, the preferred candidate of the military and the remnants of the Mubarak-regime. In a statement titled “Down with Shafiq... Down with the new Mubarak,” the RS claimed that a Mursi vote was a means to defend “democratic and social gains” of the revolution against the “counterrevolutionary candidate” Shafiq.
When Mursi became president, the RS and their international allies praised Mursi and the MB to the skies. At the ISO’s Socialism 2012 conference, RS leader Sameh Naguib declared that “the victory of Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, is a great achievement in pushing back the counterrevolution and pushing back this coup d’état... Whenever there is the threat of counterrevolution, the Islamists will run toward the masses, will mobilize in the hundreds of thousands against the military regime.”
The RS’ support for Mursi and the MB was in line with their long-standing orientation to Islamist politics. When the Islamists were in opposition under Mubarak, the RS advanced the slogan “Sometimes with the Islamists, never with the State.” Were the RS to state their position honestly, their slogan would be “Sometimes with the Islamists, always with the state and US imperialism.”
While the RS never give any explanation for their extraordinary political shifts, there is one striking consistency in their political line: the RS’ twists and turns always mirror the shifts in American foreign policy.
Since the beginning of the protests against Mubarak in January 2011, the RS always supported the section of the Egyptian bourgeoisie backed by the US to suppress the working class. Initially, the RS joined with ElBaradei and other bourgeois factions in calling not for the downfall of the US-backed regime, but asking Mubarak to allow “democracy, civil liberties and free and fair elections,” in a joint statement issued on January 21.
After the protests developed into a mass revolutionary movement of the working class that toppled Mubarak, the RS spread illusions in the US-backed military that had taken power. They claimed that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces junta “aims to reform the political and economic system, allowing it to become more democratic and less oppressive.”
When renewed mass protests erupted against the junta, the RS opposed a “second revolution,” and—in line with the policies of the US state department, which established open relations with the Islamists—shifted to support Mursi and the MB.
The political oscillations of the RS in line with the policies of the US State Department are rooted in the class interests the RS represents. It speaks for corrupt sections of the Egyptian middle class, closely tied to the bourgeois state and to imperialism.
Its membership is largely drawn from among Western-oriented students, academics and journalists working for Western-backed Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), think-tanks and media outlets. Its most prominent members—such as Hamalawy, Naguib and Gigi Ibrahim—studied or teach at the American University in Cairo.
Others, such as Ahmed Ali and Haitham Mohammadein, work for NGOs like the Budgetary and Human Rights Observatory and the Nadim Center for the Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence. These NGOs cooperate with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organization directly funded by the US government.
In a report last week titled “US bankrolled anti-Mursi activists,” Al Jazeera revealed the close financial ties between this petty-bourgeois NGO milieu and US imperialism. Citing documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, it established that the Obama administration “quietly funded senior Egyptian opposition figures who called for toppling of the country’s now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi.”
The list of US organizations funding “anti-Mursi activists” includes the NED; the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI); the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL); and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
The Egyptian Revolution is only two-and-a-half years old, but the RS are already exposed as servants of the Egyptian bourgeoisie and of world imperialism. At every stage of the Egyptian revolution, they have allied themselves with reactionary forces seeking to suppress the working class in order to improve the conditions for international finance capital in Egypt.
Socialist-minded workers and youth in Egypt and internationally must draw the necessary conclusions from the record of pseudo-left groups like the RS. A revolutionary struggle for democratic rights and social equality requires the independent mobilization of the working class on a socialist program against such reactionary forces.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07 ... g-j16.html
by vanlose kid » Tue Aug 20, 2013 2:51 am
Egyptian military junta moves to free Mubarak
By Alex Lantier
20 August 2013
After a week of massacres that have left thousands of unarmed protesters killed or wounded, the Egyptian military junta is moving to free the hated former dictator, Hosni Mubarak, who has sat in prison since a revolutionary uprising of the working class forced his ouster in February 2011.
When a judge cleared Mubarak on corruption charges yesterday, Mubarak’s lawyer Farid el-Deeb told the press: “All we have left is a simple administrative procedure that should take no more than 48 hours. He should be freed by the end of the week.”
El-Deeb confidently predicted that Mubarak would be cleared of another outstanding corruption charge. He would then be free to leave prison on bail, while appealing his conviction on charges of failing to stop the army’s massacres of protesters during the 2011 uprising. The junta, which includes many feloul—ex-Mubarak regime elements—and whose massacres have claimed approximately 1,000 dead and 6,000 wounded, according to official estimates, will be desperate to acquit Mubarak on those charges as well.
The mass murder carried out by the junta and its rehabilitation of the hated dictator Mubarak show that its July 3 coup, backed by liberal and pseudo-left forces of the Tamarod (“Rebel”) coalition, was a counterrevolutionary conspiracy against the people. It was aimed at pre-empting rising working class protests against the now-deposed Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, and restoring the conditions existing before the Egyptian revolution.
For two years, the feloul and their middle class allies have gritted their teeth, straining to hide their class hatred for mass protests by workers demanding jobs, democratic rights, and an end to poverty. They bided their time, hoping to restore political conditions that would allow them to safely enjoy their share of the profits from corrupt business empires assembled under Mubarak. Now that the junta has re-imposed the state of emergency, restored the political police, and sent tanks into the streets to massacre protesters, they are trying to seize their chance.
Yesterday, military strongman General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi threatened new crackdowns against further opposition: “We will not stand by silently, watching the destruction of the country and the people or the torching of the nation and terrorizing the citizens.”
In fact, it is the junta and its allies that are seeking to terrorize the Egyptian people and forestall an eruption of mass political struggles against its reactionary policies. Not only have they re-imposed the dictatorial forms of rule that existed under Mubarak, but they are slashing critical food and fuel subsidies upon which tens of millions of Egyptian workers depend.
The junta announced yesterday the murder of 36 more protesters, who had been captured at Cairo’s al-Fath mosque near Ramses Square, while they were in police custody. It is also carrying out mass arrests of protesters, including 1,004 demonstrators after Friday’s protests.
The Interior Ministry also announced the banning of “popular security committees” yesterday, demanding instead that Egyptians respect the 7pm-6am curfew imposed by the junta. In part, this reflected increasing complaints about vigilante groups of thugs that Tamarod has called upon to attack pro-Mursi protesters. However, it also reflected the junta’s deep fear of opposition in the working class, which formed popular committees to defend themselves against police thugs during the 2011 uprisings.
Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which also fears that further protests could encourage a political explosion in the working class, called off all but three of its nine scheduled protests. It diverted those protests away from scheduled routes, in order to prevent further clashes with the army.
By backing the counterrevolutionary Tamarod organizations, pseudo-left charlatans like the Revolutionary Socialists (RS) have shown that they stand on the other side of the barricades from the working class. The next revolutionary offensive by the working class can only develop in opposition to these reactionary forces, which the junta aims to fully integrate into the state, and their imperialist backers.
Manpower Minister Kamal Abu Eita is finalizing a draft law on “trade union freedoms” to give “independent” trade unions set up by organizations such as the RS access to positions and state funding. (See: “How Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists helped pave the way for military repression”) Abu Eita is also working closely with the Persian Gulf’s reactionary oil sheikdoms. He has secured a $2 million donation from Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, the ruler of the Sharjah, for “development programs for the Egyptian working class” to help the labor ministry and the union bureaucracy operate factories closed down during the revolution.
The goal of this operation is to give the union bureaucracy and the pseudo-left parties lucrative positions as exploiters of labor, with a direct financial interest in suppressing working class struggles in the most strategic sectors of the economy. Abu Eita commented, “We intend to benefit from the experience of Latin America in re-operating closed factories.”
The imperialist powers are also funding the counterrevolution. While many US and European officials have expressed their discomfort with visibly backing the junta as it massacres protesters, fearing this would provoke popular opposition at home, they continue to support it. The Obama administration has not cut off its $1.3 billion in yearly US aid to the Egyptian army and is still effectively funding the junta’s crackdowns.
The White House is signaling to the junta that if it can quickly crush the protests, it will meet no opposition from Washington. One Obama administration official cynically told the New York Times, “While the violence is intolerable, we may be able to eventually accept these decisions if the violence ends, and quickly.”
The Egyptian army is a critical tool of US imperialist intervention in the Middle East. It grants US warships immediate rights to passage through the Suez Canal and US warplanes overflight rights on their way to bomb targets in the Middle East. This considerably shortens deployment times for US forces. This reportedly played a major role in facilitating the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when Turkey’s refusal to allow US forces in Turkey to attack Iraq forced the US Navy to redeploy aircraft carriers south through the Suez Canal.
In a further indication that Washington’s relations with the junta remain strong, the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman escorted by two guided-missile destroyers and two cruisers passed through the Suez Canal yesterday without incident.
Speaking of the Egyptian military, General James Mattis told the New York Times: “We need them for the Suez Canal, we need them for the peace treaty against Israel, we need them for overflight [rights], we need them for the continued fight against violent extremists who are as much of a threat to Egypt’s transition to democracy as they are to American interests.”
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/08 ... p-a20.html
by bluenoseclaret » Tue Aug 20, 2013 6:10 am
Convincing evidence suggests that Egypt’s President Mohammad Morsi was ousted from power in a military coup in part because the Egyptian army feared he was plotting to order them to invade Syria in support of the embattled death squad insurgency against the Assad government there.
The combination of Morsi’s aggressive designs against Syria, together with some trial balloons from presidential circles about a possible conflict with Ethiopia, plus the massive anti-Morsi demonstrations organized by the National Salvation Front and the Tamarod movement, convinced military leaders that the incompetent and erratic Morsi, who had destroyed his own popularity by selling out to the demands of the International Monetary Fund last November, represented an intolerable risk for Egypt.
According to the Washington Post, the dissatisfaction of the Egyptian military with Morsi “peaked in June, when Morsi stood by twice as officials around him called for Egyptian aggression against Ethiopia and Syria, threatening to suck Egypt into conflicts that it could ill afford, former military officials said.”
Morsi’s call for Holy War against Assad came just three days after US Secretary of State John Kerry, at a meeting of the Principals’ Committee of the US Government, tried to ram through an immediate bombing campaign against Damascus, but had to settle for the option of arming the Syrian terrorist opposition, leading many observers to conclude that the Egyptian president was acting as part of a US anti-Syrian strategy.
June 15: Morsi Breaks Diplomatic Relations with Damascus
The beginning of the end for Egypt’s first elected president came in mid-June, when he attended a militant Islamist conference “in support of the Syrian uprising” at a 20,000-seat indoor stadium in Cairo. As the packed hall chanted and applauded deliriously, Morsi announced: “We have decided to close down the Syrian Embassy in Cairo. The Egyptian envoy in Damascus will also be withdrawn. The people of Egypt and its army will not leave Syrians until their rights are granted and the new elected leadership is chosen.”
By thus breaking off diplomatic relations with another Arab state, Morsi was joining the dubious company of the NATO-backed puppet regimes in Libya and Tunisia, the only Arabs so far to have called home their envoys from Damascus. And for Cairo, such a move has far greater significance, given that Egypt and Syria were politically united between 1958 and 1961 in a single nation as the United Arab Republic, one of the fruits of President Nasser’s Pan-Arab Socialism.
Using the now familiar Moslem Brotherhood doubletalk, Morsi urged NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Syria - a measure which would entail a bombing campaign of many weeks, with inevitable heavy losses for the Syrian population. But Morsi them shifted his ground to condemn foreign interference in the Syrian conflict, declaiming that “Hezbollah must leave Syria; there is no place for Hezbollah in Syria.” Morsi was accompanied to the anti-Syria rally by his top political affairs and foreign policy advisers, one of them a leading Salafist.
In a crescendo of doubletalk, Morsi intoned: “The Egyptian people have stood by the Lebanese people and Hezbollah against the [Israeli] attack in 2006, and today we stand against Hezbollah for Syria.” According to the Jerusalem Post, he also asserted that Syria was the target of “a campaign of extermination and planned ethnic cleansing fed by regional and international states,” which the Israelis claimed was a veiled reference to Hezbollah and Iran.
Responding to the Cairo anti-Syrian rally, a Syrian government official told the news agency SANA that Morsi had joined the “conspiracy of incitement led by the United States and Israel against Syria by announcing the cutting of ties yesterday…. Syria is confident that this decision does not represent the will of the Egyptian people.” This official branded Morsi’s severing of diplomatic relations as “irresponsible… the Syrian Arab Republic condemns this irresponsible position.”
Sunni Extremists Declare Jihad against Syria, Morsi Silent
The Cairo crowd had been warmed up for Morsi by extremist Sunni preachers like Mohammed Hassan and Mohammed Abdel-Maqsoud (leader of the Islamic Legitimate Body of Rights and Reformation), who both ranted about the “necessity of declaring Jihad in Syria, in which Syrians and any capable Moslems shall take part.” There were also calls to Morsi to keep Shiites out of Egypt, on the basis that they are “unclean.” About 1% of Egypt’s population are Shiites, and about 10% are Coptic Christians.
According to the Irish Times, “at the June 15th rally, Sunni Muslim clerics used the word ‘infidels’ to denounce both the Shias fighting to protect Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the non-Islamists that oppose Mr. Morsi at home. Mr. Morsi himself called for foreign intervention in Syria against Mr. Assad…”
On June 13, Morsi had attended a gathering of sectarians from across the Middle East labeling itself “The Position of the Nation’s Scholars on the Developments in Syria.” Here he had rubbed elbows with the fiery preacher Qaradawi, who regularly incites violence against Syria before an audience of some 60 million viewers worldwide on his program entitled “Shariah and Life,” broadcast on the Al Jazeera Arabic service from Qatar. One June 13 there was already much talk of jihad against Syria, which was obliquely endorsed by Morsi’s Presidential Coordinator for Foreign Affairs Khaled al-Qazzaz, who noted that the Egyptian government would not undertake any measures against Egyptian citizens who go to fight in Syria, since the right to travel is always open. It was practically a call for volunteers.
Egyptian Generals Warn Morsi: Army’s Task Is Defending Borders
Egyptian military leaders were deeply concerned about the inevitable radicalization of Islamist militants who might return from waging war against the Assad government in Syria. But they were most immediately alarmed by the idea that Morsi might try to deploy the considerable forces of the Egyptian army against Syria. They quickly distanced themselves from the reckless plan for aggression which the president had been toying with at the June 15 mass rally. As the Irish Times reported, Morsi’s bellicose bluster lead to “a veiled rebuke from the army, which issued an apparently bland but sharp-edged statement the next day stressing that its only role was guarding Egypt’s borders.”
According to one anonymous military source reflecting the views of the Army staff quoted by the Irish Times, “the armed forces were very alarmed by the Syrian conferences at a time the state was going through a major political crisis.” Yasser El-Shimy, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, stressed that from the point of view of the Army, Morsi’s performance at the Syria rally had crossed “a national security red line” by prodding Egyptians to fight abroad, thus threatening to create a new generation of violent jihadists.
Morsi’s anti-Syrian turn was also a deeply unpopular among the top bureaucrats of the Egyptian government, many of whom had advised him not to go down this path, reported Al Ahram Online on June 16. According to this paper, some powerful bureaucrats saw the potential damage as “irreversible,” and viewed the breaking of diplomatic relations as “a decision made by the President against the advice of top bureaucratic aides….” This account also stressed that, by praising the mediation efforts of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but by pointedly excluding Iran, Morsi was jettisoning the four power contact group he himself had proposed for a Syrian settlement at the nonaligned conference in Tehran last August. “This would simply mean that Egypt has decided that its relations with Tehran would have to be sacrificed in favor of winning the support of Washington, and maybe even Riyadh,” said one source quoted by Al Ahram.
Egypt’s Generals Fear “Devastating Sunni-Shiite War”
These developments were considered extremely ominous by top Egyptian civil servants. As Al Ahram wrote, “Egypt, according to concerned quarters in Egyptian bureaucracy, is now being driven to take part in a ‘devastating Sunni-Shiite war’ that could wreck the entire region. The concern is not just about Syria, but about the entire Arab Mashraq, including Lebanon and Iraq particularly. Al Ahram pointed to a possible additional venal motive for Morsi and his controllers in the Muslim Brotherhood: “Egypt has been trying to break the ice with Saudi Arabia for a few weeks now in the hope of soliciting desperately needed financial aid. Saudi Arabia has been adopting a strictly sectarian approach towards developments in Syria since the beginning of the uprising there, and all the more so since the entrance of Hezbollah into the war in Syria on the side of the Assad regime.”
In a country like present-day Egypt, a coup d’état should not be undertaken lightly. But one consideration which might justify such coup is the urgent need to prevent an erratic and incompetent ruler like Morsi from embroiling the country in a ruinous foreign war. To be able to respond to Morsi’s war talk in such a timely and decisive way, the Egyptian army must contain officers of exceptional intelligence and determination, gifted with that quality which Machiavelli called virtu and von Clausewitz called Entschloßenheit. (Since the firing of General Douglas MacArthur in 1951, this quality has been largely extinct from the US officer corps.) We may thus be justified in hoping that the great tradition of President Nasser is alive among Egyptian military and government leaders.
Leftists See Morsi as Cat’s Paw For US Against Syria
The leftist April 6 Movement (aka Democratic Front) suggested that Morsi was acting as a tool of the US campaign against Syria, saying in a statement that “The decision to open the doors of jihad is coming from Washington sponsored by … Salafist Sheikhs.” The anti-Morsi umbrella organization Tamarod added that “Morsi’s speech reveals that the Syria file has been handed over from Qatar to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and that Morsi is answering America’s instructions.”
The fateful rally attended by Morsi was backed by the Asala Party, a Salafist group, by a number of prominent Salafist preachers, by the Islamic Legitimate Body of Right and Reformation, and by the Guidance Bureau of the Muslim Brotherhood, meaning Morsi’s own controllers. Another sponsor was the Gama Islamiya movement.
As Morsi encountered more and more hostility from centrists and leftists, he attempted during the last phase to gain backing from Salafist and other doctrinaire and holier-than-thou forces to his right. This included the appointment of the “retired terrorist” al Khayat of Gama Islamiya as the governor of Luxor province, the site of the Valley of the Kings, the Temple of Karnak, and one of the greatest international tourist destinations. In 1997, a terrorist action had resulted in the deaths of almost seventy foreign tourists, who were killed deliberately as part of a campaign designed to discourage foreign infidels from coming into Egypt. Khayat was a member of the political arm of Gama Islamiya, and his appointment was hardly designed to encourage tourism.
Post-Qusayr Climate of Imperialist Desperation
Since the fall of the Syrian rebel stronghold of Qusayr on June 5, aggressive circles including Cameron and Hague of the British Tory regime, the Vichy socialists Hollande and Fabius, the Israelis, the US neocon faction, and Secretary Kerry have been pressing for immediate military action against Syria to save the international terrorist forces from as far away as Chechnya and Afghanistan who now face looming defeat. These efforts have included an attempted cold coup or palace coup by Kerry in the June 12 meeting of the White House Principals’ Committee, when his demand to start bombing Syria was blocked by a combination of military figures and Obama loyalists, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey. For the aggressors, the essential problem is the refusal thus far by Obama to launch a large-scale bombing campaign with several hundred aircraft, followed in all likelihood of by an invasion requiring several armored and infantry divisions - resources which the United States simply cannot afford.
The aggressive forces have attempted to accuse the Syrian government of using chemical weapons. They have also supported the limited hangout around purported NSA leaker Edward Snowden, whose short-term effect has been to weaken Obama’s support from his own liberal base, as well as to undercut his ties to NATO Europe, making the White House more susceptible to Anglo-French pressure for war. Attempts have been made to goad Turkey into an attack on Syria, but the embattled Erdogan regime is now determined not to get out in front on this project.
With the failure of the anti-Syrian Egyptian gambit, London, Paris, Tel Aviv, the neocons, and Foggy Bottom must now be on the verge of total hysteria. These are the circumstances in which recourse to a new Gulf of Tonkin incident or a new false flag terror attack to be blamed on Syria, Hezbollah, and their allies becomes a clear and present danger.
Morsi Cronies Discuss Striking Ethiopia
Egyptian military is not anxious to undertake armed interventions abroad. One exception was Egypt’s participation in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. But since then, Egypt has declined US requests to send troops to fight in Afghanistan in 2001, and any Iraqi been 2003.
In the spring of this year, tensions rose between Egypt and Ethiopia when the government in Addis Ababa announced its intention to build a dam on the Blue Nile, prompting concerns by some in Egypt about future water supplies downstream. On June 2, with Morsi in attendance, Islamist politicians recklessly discussed how to sabotage the dam by funding Ethiopian rebel groups, followed by an attack by the Egyptian air force. Unknown to the participants, this incendiary discussion was broadcast on live television. Many were long to see that Morsi did not repudiate these proposals for naked aggression, but instead later commented that “all options are open.”
by AlicetheKurious » Tue Aug 20, 2013 10:15 am
by seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 20, 2013 11:05 am
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