Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

[American Dream]

Egypt Media Roundup (June 2)

Jun 02 2014
by Jadaliyya Egypt Editors



23 July 2011, protester holding a poster drawn by
Brazilian political cartoonist Carlos Latuff.

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Egypt and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Egypt Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to egypt@jadaliyya.com by Sunday night of every week.]


http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/17 ... up-(june-2)

[stefano]

My bit on the journos' convictions, FWIW:

On Monday, June 23, seven journalists received heavy jail sentences in an Egyptian court. Most media attention has focussed on three journalists who worked for Al Jazeera: two of them (one Australian and one Canadian-Egyptian) were sentenced to seven years in jail for “aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation”, while the third, an Egyptian, was handed a 10-year sentence for the same crime and for possession of ammunition. The other four journalists in custody also received seven-year sentences, while another 11 journalists were sentenced in absentia to 10-year jail terms, which means that they will receive a new trial if they are aver apprehended (they have left Egypt and are unlikely to return, however). Two defendants, who are students, were acquitted. At least 16 other journalists are still in detention in Egypt. The judge in the case, Mohamed Nagy Shehata, has been visible recently for the harsh sentences he has handed to members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), including a death sentence that he gave last week to MB Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie. The verdicts will be appealed.

International reaction has been uniformly negative. Amnesty International said it was a “dark day for media freedom in Egypt”; Human Rights Watch called the trial a “miscarriage of justice.” Al Jazeera said the verdict “defies logic, sense, and any semblance of justice.” The Committee to Protect Journalists said “the politicised nature of the prosecution has sent a chill through the Cairo press corps.” Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague called the sentences “unacceptable.” United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the proceedings “clearly appear not to meet basic fair trial standards”, while the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said she was “shocked”. The White House called the sentences “a blow to democratic progress in Egypt”, and United States (US) Secretary of State John Kerry said the sentences were “chilling” and “draconian” – the verdict is particularly embarrassing for Mr Kerry as he had met with President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on the day before the sentencing, so the harsh sentence underlines the lack of influence that the US now has in Egypt. Mr Shoukry’s ministry, meanwhile, “strongly reject[ed] any comment from a foreign party that casts doubt on the independence of the Egyptian judiciary and the justice of its verdicts.”

From all available reports, the prosecution was shoddy and the case made against the journalists was unclear. Much of the evidence used in the trial was unrelated to the MB or even to Egypt, and while it is true that Al Jazeera has bent its reporting to reflect favourably on the MB (the channel belongs to the Qatari government, which strongly supports the MB), the trial did not show to the satisfaction of observers that the journalists themselves played any part in that process, and some of those convicted had never worked for Al Jazeera at all. The ‘possession of ammunition’ case against the one defendant rested on his possession of a spent cartridge case. While the Egyptian government makes much in these cases of the supposed independence of the judiciary, it is clear that the justice ministry gives cases involving the MB to ‘hanging judges’ like Mr Shehata, which ensures heavy sentences.

There are two relevant political aspects to the verdict: its effect on Egypt’s international relations, and its effect on media freedom in the country. Both effects are negative. The way in which the verdict was handed down on the day after Mr Kerry visited Egypt may well have been planned as a diplomatic slap in the face, a clear signal that Washington no longer calls the shots in Egypt. For now Egypt can count on the support of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), so there is a sense in which it does not need the US or the West, but it is unwise for a country so dependent on foreign aid and investment to limit its friendships abroad. The effect on media freedoms has been apparent for some time: a chilling effect on reporting from Egypt. The verdicts will further dissuade journalists operating in Egypt from risky reporting. For now risky reporting means writing about the MB in any terms other than those of the strongest condemnation, but we fear that more subjects will become dangerous to report on, and thus hard for observers and analysts to make sense of. Labour relations and public discontent over rising prices fall into this category.

[JackRiddler]

Yeah. Meanwhile. The real horror.

[American Dream]

http://roarmag.org/2014/06/comrades-fro ... otest-law/

Comrades from Cairo: everyone’s right to protest

By Comrades from Cairo On June 21, 2014




In Egypt, we are at a crucial juncture. We know that if we — or anyone — gives up their right to protest, we are giving up the right to shape our world.

The following statement was just released by Comrades from Cairo (image: the prominent Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah in jail earlier this year).


To Those At Whose Side We Struggle,

We write to you again at the bloody dawn of a new presidency: our fourth in as many years. General Abdel Fattah El Sisi, who oversaw the brutal overthrow of Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, now sits on Egypt’s Iron Throne. Mubarak’s resurgent police state is more ferocious than ever. The media, controlled by a handful of millionaires, is terrorizing the populace into sacrificing their most basic rights to the double-faced deity of Security and Stability. And the young revolutionaries who dared to challenge the status quo and who, for a moment in 2011, glimpsed the possibility of something new, are being rounded up and jailed one by one.

Having hijacked the popular protests of June 30, 2013 against the Muslim Brotherhood to ride back into power, the military establishment is now using every means at its disposal to silence all forms of dissent and annihilate the hard-won political space of the past three years. Violence and intimidation have always been the principal tools of the police force, but in Sisi’s Egypt the judiciary has been given a new leading role in the suppression of freedoms. Their tool is the Protest Law, which in its seven months of life has been used to round up, detain and sentence thousands of participants in peaceful protests — and to target specific and influential activists within them.

The most noted example today is Alaa Abd El Fattah. On November 26, 2013, around two hundred protesters gathered outside Egypt’s Parliamentary Upper House were attacked by police with water canons, batons, plainclothes thugs, and tear gas. Fifty people were arrested, and once the women, journalists and lawyers — who were all beaten — were released, twenty-four men were left in jail. The following night, the police violently arrested Alaa from his home. Now, Alaa and the twenty-four have been sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

In Alexandria, Mahienour el-Massry, one of the coastal city’s most tireless human rights lawyers, sits in prison on a two-year sentence for holding a protest outside a courthouse where the policemen who murdered Khaled Said were standing trial. Back in Cairo, the founders of the April 6th Youth Movement, one of the most organized young political groups in the country, are serving three year sentences in maximum security. And there are many, many more. Since July 3, 2013, over 36.000 have been arrested for political participation. More than eighty have died in custody.

So now we face the police’s bullets, the prosecution’s corruption and the courtroom’s cages. But there can only be one way forward. We will not hand our rights over to a tyrant and his security state. We will not let our comrades waste their youth in Mubarak’s prison cells. We will not be silenced.

And so on Saturday we march to the Presidential Palace. And around the world friends and comrades have stepped forward in solidarity. Protests have been announced for Athens, Berlin, Derry, London, Paris, New York and Stockholm, with more still to join. Though we know it will be a long time before we reach the dizzying heights of 2011 again, moments of unity and of international struggle are as important as ever. The right to protest is not just under attack in Egypt but is being repressed and criminalized across the globe. And from Gezi Park to Nabi Saleh to US campuses to Marikana, people are fighting for it.

It is impossible to engage on all fronts, on all injustices, simultaneously. And often tragedy is required for focus. In Egypt we are at a crucial juncture. The protest law must be brought down. The imprisoned must be freed. The government must know that it cannot act with impunity. Small actions multiplied, amplify. When the world watched Tahrir Square in February 2011, it swelled the pressure building on Mubarak. When the revolution squared up to the Army (SCAF) later that year, the Generals’ delegitimization was hastened by the international public’s aversion to them. The effects of solidarity are unquantifiable, unknowable. But we do know that if we, or anyone, gives up their right to protest we are giving up the right to shape our own world.

Comrades from Cairo


Website about the protest law: http://egyptprotests2014.tumblr.com

[AlicetheKurious]

International reaction has been uniformly negative. Amnesty International said it was a “dark day for media freedom in Egypt”; Human Rights Watch called the trial a “miscarriage of justice.” Al Jazeera said the verdict “defies logic, sense, and any semblance of justice.” The Committee to Protect Journalists said “the politicised nature of the prosecution has sent a chill through the Cairo press corps.” Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague called the sentences “unacceptable.” United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the proceedings “clearly appear not to meet basic fair trial standards”, while the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said she was “shocked”. The White House called the sentences “a blow to democratic progress in Egypt”, and United States (US) Secretary of State John Kerry said the sentences were “chilling” and “draconian”

– the verdict is particularly embarrassing for Mr Kerry as he had met with President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on the day before the sentencing, so the harsh sentence underlines the lack of influence that the US now has in Egypt. Mr Shoukry’s ministry, meanwhile, “strongly reject[ed] any comment from a foreign party that casts doubt on the independence of the Egyptian judiciary and the justice of its verdicts.”

First, nobody here cares. Really.

Second, the first thing that comes to mind when I read these operatic condemnations, is the total silence just over a year ago, when the then-ruling Brotherhood sent their armed thugs to surround and besiege Media City, where the studios of current affairs and news shows are located. Television journalists and program hosts were forced to stay for weeks within its walls, unable to leave or if they managed to get out, unable to enter. Guests' cars were smashed and guests trying to get in so they could appear on the shows were threatened and in some cases beaten. None of that was considered to be a "chilling" blah-blah-blah, nor was it viewed as defying "logic, sense, and any semblance of justice". When the brave journalist Husseini Abou-Deif was shot dead by the Brotherhood after publishing an investigative piece about the corruption of Morsi's brother-in-law, or when reporters were beaten up and their equipment stolen to destroy evidence of Brotherhood crimes, we didn't hear a peep from these hypocrites.

Neither was there any outcry from these Guardians of Freedom when the Brotherhood sent their thugs to surround and besiege Egypt's Constitutional Court, chanting, "Give us the signal and we'll send them out to you in bags!" referring to the judges of the Constitutional Court. When the heroic judge Mustafa Mokhtar published a letter exposing how judges were being threatened to pressure them to lie and convict innocent people, and when the Prosecutor's Office was found riddled with bugs and hidden cameras so that the Brotherhood could monitor everything that went on there, we didn't hear from them at all. Nor was the shooting and attempted assassination of Judge Ahmed Zind worthy of a mention from these flapping mouths.

Apparently, "freedom" is one of those words that means different things depending on whose interests in serves. For Egyptian judges, "freedom" means that NOBODY, not the Egyptian president or anybody else, still less Kerry or Ban Ki-Moon, can interfere with the judicial process, nor with verdicts. Egyptian judges have stood up to Mubarak, and to the SCAF, and to Morsi, and they've always won in the end, and Sisi is much too smart to go there. Even if we entertained the insane possibility that Kerry could have convinced Sisi to try to intervene with the judges, this would have only harmed Sisi and accomplished nothing.

Third, the "journalists" in question were not operating as journalists, but as enemy agents. They entered the country under false pretenses as tourists, and booked into the Marriott Hotel, where they secretly set up an operations center complete with highly sophisticated satellite transmission and other equipment not consistent with their later claim to be simply field reporters. They did not bring this equipment in with them, so it was provided by someone inside the country. Al-Jazeera already has offices downtown, near Tahrir Square. These "journalists" (who pretended to be tourists) never went there. As the police was closing in on the funding of terrorists, first Qatar used its embassy to disburse funds to saboteurs and vandals; when this avenue was shut down, these so-called "reporters" were tasked with the job of funneling money to the terrorists and of fabricating false reports of Egypt "on the brink of civil war", presumably to justify foreign intervention.

Fourth, as a free Egyptian citizen who enjoys access to all satellite channels without exception, including CNN and Al-Jazeera and other foreign channels that broadcast hostile propaganda and violent incitement against my country, and also including the very informative and interesting Al-Manar, I am truly, truly outraged that the US government censors what Americans can watch:

New Yorker Arrested for Providing Hezbollah TV Channel

25th June 2014

Javed Iqbal runs HDTV Corp., a Brooklyn-based company registered with the Federal Communications Commission that provides satellite television transmissions to cable operators, private companies, government organizations and individual customers.

According to an affidavit made public yesterday in U.S. District Court in New York, a paid FBI confidential informant told law enforcement officials in February that Iqbal's company was selling "satellite television service, including access to al-Manar broadcasts." The informant then had a recorded conversation during which Iqbal offered al-Manar broadcasts along with other Arab television stations.

The U.S. Treasury Department in March designated al-Manar a "global terrorist entity" and a media arm of the Hezbollah terrorist network. The designation froze al-Manar's assets in the United States and prohibited any transactions between Americans and al-Manar.

Iqbal's attorney, Mustapha Ndanusa, said yesterday that the accusations against his client are "completely ridiculous," according to the Associated Press. Ndanusa added that he is not aware of another instance in which someone was accused of violating U.S. laws by enabling access to a news outlet.

Donna Lieberman of the American Civil Liberties Union said she is "deeply troubled" that a television distributor is being prosecuted for the content of a broadcaster. Such a prosecution, she said, "raises serious First Amendment concerns." She said she thinks that the law under which Iqbal has been charged has a First Amendment exception for news communications.

Mark Dubowitz of the Coalition Against Terrorist Media (CATM), which is composed of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and secular organizations, said yesterday he is "saddened" that a U.S. resident was allegedly facilitating the transmission of al-Manar "but pleased that the U.S. is taking the necessary steps to ensure al-Manar's incitement to violence is stopped."

Al-Manar, he said, was placed on the terrorist list because it was used to incite violence, recruit people to a terrorist organization and raise funds for terrorist activities, including the provision of bank accounts where money should be sent.

On July 11, according to the affidavit, the FBI confidential informant arranged to have the satellite system installed in a New York City apartment that the bureau had wired for sound and video. Iqbal's technician installed the system, but the al-Manar channel came in scrambled.

The informant called twice in the ensuing week and during the second call Iqbal said he wanted to "check out the CI [confidential informant] to make sure the CI was not a spy," according to court documents.

In mid-August, the al-Manar channel at the apartment still was not fixed. When the informant called again on Aug. 17, Iqbal told him the Israeli bombing had disrupted al-Manar's transmissions. Iqbal also acknowledged that he was aware broadcasting of al-Manar was illegal in the United States, although he understood the government would make it legal again soon, according to the affidavit. Link

Outrageous. Someone should tell Ban Ki-Moon and Human Rights Watch...

[AlicetheKurious]

[AlicetheKurious]

[AlicetheKurious]

This morning, woke up to reports that four improvised explosive devices had exploded in various metro stations around Cairo. They had been placed in garbage bins. Six people were injured.

Yesterday, 25-year old Ahmed Hussein, an army officer, and his fiancee, Reem Magdy, 24 years old, had gone out to shop for her wedding dress. They stopped to fill their car at a gas station near his home. While they were pulling out of the station, gunmen riddled their car with machine-gun fire. When the terrorists found the couple still alive, they finished them off by slashing their throats.



We have a lot of good things going on now in Egypt. We're pulling together to get our country back on its feet, and we have a lot of hope and determination to succeed. But there are some who want to plunge us back into the nightmare. They will not.

[American Dream]

http://www.leninology.co.uk/2014/06/sis ... -levy.html

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2014

Sisi's blood levy

posted by Richard Seymour

"When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, / And when he cried the little children died in the streets." - W H Auden.

In the justified outrage at the Egyptian courts' suppression of journalism, with the sentencing of several Al Jazeera reporters on supposed 'terrorism' offences, it should not be forgotten that this is one well-publicised instance of a general crackdown by the dictatorship.

The slow wheels of the regime's judicial massacre of Muslim Brothers supporters grind on. Having murdered hundreds in the streets as part of the army's coup d'etat, the police rounded up hundreds more Muslim Brothers, including the current leader of the Ikhwan. They were charged with a range of offences including, predictably enough, terrorism. The courts, understanding their role well enough, convicted them in their hundreds, in single rulings, and mandated the death penalty. On Saturday, the courts upheld 183 of the convictions from April. These men are all to be hanged.

'Massacre' doesn't even seem an adequate adjective, even when qualified by the term 'premeditated'. This is a human sacrifice: a condign blood tribute to the new order and, they hope, a terminal punctuation mark ending three years of upheaval.

Let no one deny that General Al-Sisi has a degree of popular support in doing this. He has 96% of the popular vote. Grant that this is on the basis of a turnout of less than half the electorate, despite all manner of inducements and threats - a public holiday declared on the second day of voting, public transport fares cancelled, and a fine of 500 Egyptian pounds applied to anyone who didn't turn out. Also, allow for the fact that the only other permitted candidate hardly differed from Sisi on essentials. The bloc supporting Sisi is huge.

The army did not merely exploit real discontent with Morsi (whose authoritarianism and betrayals of his base should not be whitewashed), divisions in the revolutionary camp, and the open preference of some 'secular' forces for the military over the Islamists. It came to power with the passive support of a large popular, conservative bloc including sections of the rural poor and downwardly mobile middle classes. The huge crowds in Tahrir Square on the occasion of Sisi's pomp-bedraggled inauguration are a tedious reminder that there are such things as reactionary masses.

With that backing, the regime has gone to war against all opposition, secular and Islamist, leftist and liberal. They're putting a stop to all this nonsense once and for all.

What is it for? Well, undoubtedly the traditional state bureaucracies and security apparatuses ranged behind Al-Sisi's dictatorship have their own agenda, which is not simply identical to that of the US government. Nonetheless, if we are to parse Tony Blair's claim that Egypt's ruling elite is 'open' and enlightened, shall we say that it has something to do with the pronounced anti-Palestinian politics of the Sisi camp, and the reassurances that his regime has offered to business elites and regional Gulf powers that he will implement the neoliberal shock therapy that Morsi was unable to? Of course, Blair is as mad as Rasputin, but he often usefully says things that are impolitic from the point of view of his grubby ruling class sodality.

According to Amnesty International, 1,247 Morsi supporters have been given the death sentence since January this year. Thus far, 247 death sentences have been upheld.

[AlicetheKurious]

With that backing, the regime has gone to war against all opposition, secular and Islamist, leftist and liberal.

"The regime" doesn't give a shit about the so-called "opposition", such as it is. No time; got important things to do, like get the economy on its feet, feed the poor, build them decent homes, repair and expand the country's infrastructure, defend the borders from foreign-trained and funded and armed terrorists, get the rich to pay their share of the national budget, rebuild the public education system from the ground up, fix the country's badly deteriorated public health system, clean up the streets, deal with major crises in international relations, and do all this with the active backing and support of the people, without whom none of it is possible. And it must be done in record time, because people's lives are at stake, as well as a nation's survival in very challenging circumstances.

The army did not merely exploit real discontent with Morsi (whose authoritarianism and betrayals of his base should not be whitewashed), divisions in the revolutionary camp, and the open preference of some 'secular' forces for the military over the Islamists. It came to power with the passive support of a large popular, conservative bloc including sections of the rural poor and downwardly mobile middle classes. The huge crowds in Tahrir Square on the occasion of Sisi's pomp-bedraggled inauguration are a tedious reminder that there are such things as reactionary masses.

I think that paragraph is a good example of why this sort of pretentious, pompous, self-stroking "Leftist" so often finds himself marginalized and irrelevant, reduced to throwing hissy fits in publications few bother to read. These are huge egos shackled by their own incompetence and inability to see beyond their own delusions of grandeur. They pose as champions of "the people", but they don't care about anybody but themselves. In fact, they don't even see anybody but themselves. If they controlled "the masses" with a magic wand, if the masses were truly passive and obedient to them, instead of active and articulate and perfectly capable of expressing themselves loudly and clearly, then the masses would be wonderful, genuinely revolutionary and progressive. When "the masses" prove to have an actual identity and will of their own, and reject these losers for the simple reason that they have repeatedly proven to be incompetent and have nothing valuable to contribute to the actual improvement of people's lives, then the masses are dismissed as "reactionary", and barraged with insults. Those Leftists who happen to agree with the people are attacked as well. In fact, anyone who stands with the people and the nation against these pathetic, self-stroking, ego-driven losers is wrong and they, only they, are right. Just because.

What is it for? Well, undoubtedly the traditional state bureaucracies and security apparatuses ranged behind Al-Sisi's dictatorship have their own agenda, which is not simply identical to that of the US government. Nonetheless, if we are to parse Tony Blair's claim that Egypt's ruling elite is 'open' and enlightened, shall we say that it has something to do with the pronounced anti-Palestinian politics of the Sisi camp, and the reassurances that his regime has offered to business elites and regional Gulf powers that he will implement the neoliberal shock therapy that Morsi was unable to? Of course, Blair is as mad as Rasputin, but he often usefully says things that are impolitic from the point of view of his grubby ruling class sodality.

Egyptians have never been and will never be "anti-Palestinian", still less the Egyptian armed forces, whose central doctrine, despite the US' best efforts, remains that Israel is Egypt's number one enemy. How revealing that this self-styled Leftist appears to identify the Palestinian people and land with Hamas, a reactionary, extreme right-wing fascist subsidiary of the secret International Muslim Brotherhood which has no legitimate claim to represent the Palestinian people and refuses to allow the Palestinians to hold elections to decide who does represent them.

American Dream, I know you only copy-and-paste, but could you copy-and-paste an example or two of these supposed "reassurances...to business elites and regional Gulf powers that he will implement the neoliberal shock therapy"? Because so far, all we've seen from the "regime" are better and cheaper goods and services for the poor, and CC has made no secret of the fact that the rich will have to pay. He even began with himself, by first, cutting his salary in half, from the maximum of LE 42,000 per month (US$ 6,000) to LE 21,000 ($3,000), and by donating 50% of everything he owns, including his family inheritance, to the public budget. The Egyptian prime minister did the same, and a number of prominent business people were thus shamed into donating millions to the national budget. Army officers, who normally receive gifts at the start of Ramadan have been asked to give them up and distribute them to the poor, instead (which they've done with great pleasure). For the first time in Egypt's history, the government is taxing capital gains from the stock investors, and that's just the beginning of a total reorientation of Egypt's tax system, which CC has begun, but which will be carried out once a parliament is elected. CC has made it very clear that the government's priority is to improve the lives of the poor, not through band-aid solutions but through a systemic re-haul of the economy, and that the money to pay for it will have to come from those who can afford to tighten their belts -- namely the rich. One would think a self-styled Leftist would be delighted with this, instead of throwing around labels like "neoliberal", but go figure.

According to Amnesty International, 1,247 Morsi supporters have been given the death sentence since January this year. Thus far, 247 death sentences have been upheld.

Let me know when someone is actually executed, will you? We've now had had a total of two executions in the past 4 years. One was more than 3 years ago, and we had another one recently, of a man who broke into the apartment of two young women and brutally murdered them -- he was convicted and sentenced more than 6 years ago. It took that long for his defense to exhaust all the appeals. Yes, Egyptian law allows capital punishment for certain extreme crimes, such as premeditated murder, rape, and high treason. And we like it that way. But defendants get a fair trial and the right to a proper defense, which is more than the victims of murderers and rapists give their victims.

[Sounder]

I think that paragraph is a good example of why this sort of pretentious, pompous, self-stroking "Leftist" so often finds himself marginalized and irrelevant, reduced to throwing hissy fits in publications few bother to read. These are huge egos shackled by their own incompetence and inability to see beyond their own delusions of grandeur. They pose as champions of "the people", but they don't care about anybody but themselves. In fact, they don't even see anybody but themselves. If they controlled "the masses" with a magic wand, if the masses were truly passive and obedient to them, instead of active and articulate and perfectly capable of expressing themselves loudly and clearly, then the masses would be wonderful, genuinely revolutionary and progressive. When "the masses" prove to have an actual identity and will of their own, and reject these losers for the simple reason that they have repeatedly proven to be incompetent and have nothing valuable to contribute to the actual improvement of people's lives, then the masses are dismissed as "reactionary", and barraged with insults. Those Leftists who happen to agree with the people are attacked as well. In fact, anyone who stands with the people and the nation against these pathetic, self-stroking, ego-driven losers is wrong and they, only they, are right. Just because.

Nice

I often wonder why there is not more push back at AD's constant stream of propaganda. Perhaps others are quiet because they are more mature than I and maybe they even enjoy using AD as a contrary indicator. Or possibly people are quiet because they don't understand or they maybe even agree with the intent of the propaganda.

The 'left' has allowed itself to become identified with globalism. The regular folk, called the proletariat by some, are smart enough to know that this would not be a good deal for them.

So we have manipulated into being xenophobic 'righties', and manipulated into being (effective) globalist 'lefties', resulting in armies of foot soldiers being led by their misguided emotional commitments.

But the 'rabble' that AD's holds not so secretly in contempt, knows better. Globalists are responsible for Europe’s recent electoral move to the right. Imperialism thrives on having enemies, the more the better. Hence it’s support for KSA, ISIS, Boko Harem, MB and the like. Sadly effective vehicles for conditioning poor people into becoming tools to be used against the interests of poor people. This is the reactionary element within the masses, made so with generous support of elite elements, not those of us regular folk that are tired of the manipulation. Like these folk.

[Sounder]

Dupe

[AlicetheKurious]

All this nasty, snide, toxic media coverage of Egypt and our very popular new president serves only to widen the gulf of perception between its Western consumers on the one hand, and Egyptians (and other Arabs) on the other. Its purpose is not to inform, but to insulate the two sides from each other. What we have now is the farthest thing on earth from a dictatorship, and all the references to "blood" and "crackdown" and "judicial massacre", and all the rest of the oozing venom is nothing more than an expression of impotent fury at the one that got away, and even worse, is threatening to unravel the whole, meticulously plotted conspiracy.

Egyptians finally got a great constitution, and elected themselves a great president, and within a few weeks, will have a freely-elected parliament too. We have a truly free, independent and diverse media, despite all the lies from foreign media that is itself very far from honest or free, and the evidence is in the fact that Arabs across the region are turning away from Western and from even their own country's media, and following ours. Personally, I've been open to those who criticize our new government, but only when they respect the most basic rules of logic and evidence. I can't help wondering why there's so much fabrication and dishonesty and suppression of relevant contradictory information unless its purveyors feel they have no choice, because the truth doesn't suit their purposes.

As I've explained before, our president does not have the power to coerce, and he doesn't want it. He supported the new constitution which radically reduced the president's powers and radically increased the people's power to hold him and other officials accountable. He is, however, very, very powerful, but his power depends upon the people's trust and support. That's what makes him a leader, in every sense of the word. He is a leader by example, and expects nobody to do anything that he himself is unwilling to do. When he asked us to save electricity and to use energy-saving lamps for Egypt's sake, we did, enthusiastically, after the government did. Our own family has voluntarily cut its electricity consumption by 40-50%, and all my friends did the same.

He asked people to save gasoline and use bicycles if possible. Less than a week after his inauguration (which was gorgeous, impressive, and yet avoided waste), at 7:00 am on the first day of his first week-end in office, he organized a 30 km bike marathon, which was attended by his Cabinet, and led by students from the military and police academy, and anybody else who cared to join. Bikes and helmets were lent to whoever wanted to participate.



Suddenly riding bikes was cool, and bicycle shops have been doing a brisk business since.

When a woman was brutally raped and stabbed, he visited her in the hospital bearing a bouquet of roses, apologized to her and begged her forgiveness on behalf of all Egyptian men and promised her that he would do everything humanly possible to prevent it happening to anybody else. He also committed himself to ensuring that every soldier, every policeman and every man worthy of the name would be held responsible for the safety of all women in Egypt. Egypt's laws against sexual harassment of all kinds, up to assault and rape, are being strictly enforced as never before. On the day of the marathon, CC made a great speech, in which he promised, "Soon, if a man looks at a woman the wrong way, we will get him." We believe him, because he's proven to be a man of his word.

Since taking office, and even before, he has been tireless, working for us. As I mentioned earlier, he has given up half his income and half of everything he owns, for us.

All this, and so much more, explains his extreme popularity not only in Egypt, but across the Arab nation. It also explains why the Western media, with its malice and dishonesty is only exposing its own ugly agenda, and why it's become so very irrelevant. And impotent. Because those who believe its lies are not those who count: the Egyptian people, who are living a very different reality from the one being peddled to those who don't know any better. Or don't want to know.

[AlicetheKurious]

The 'left' has allowed itself to become identified with globalism. The regular folk, called the proletariat by some, are smart enough to know that this would not be a good deal for them.

So we have manipulated into being xenophobic 'righties', and manipulated into being (effective) globalist 'lefties', resulting in armies of foot soldiers being led by their misguided emotional commitments.

This is very true with regard to Egypt as well. Here, there are two types of "left": there is the indigenous left, with a real track record of working for and with the peasants and laborers, leaders who have emerged from within their own ranks. The grassroots left in Egypt is very intertwined with Arab nationalism and Nasserism, which the West loathes. And then there is the "left" of the so-called Revolutionary Socialists and their ilk, who are mostly American-educated and whose activism is almost entirely within the virtual world of Facebook and Twitter, or in certain well-known coffee-shops where they hang out in closed cliques. They are true globalists, with only the most tenuous and even hostile (and opportunistic) ties to their own country or the people on whose behalf they claim to speak. Most of the latter are not employed, or work for dubious foreign-funded organizations (which can all be traced back to Soros or another tentacle of Western intelligence agencies). None lack for funds. Their effectiveness or impact or even recognition on the ground is nil.

Needless to say, when the Western media provides a space for the "leftist" point of view, it is those from the latter group they seek out.

[Sounder]

And then there is the "left" of the so-called Revolutionary Socialists and their ilk, who are mostly American-educated and whose activism is almost entirely within the virtual world of Facebook and Twitter, or in certain well-known coffee-shops where they hang out in closed cliques.

or over at libcom with their 10,000 indoctrination articles. And only a thousand of which have been posted at RI, oh goody, only nine thousand more to go.