Egypt’s Mursi Defends Power Grab

Insists Move 'Temporary' and Aimed to Protect Constitutional Committee

AntiWar
Jason Ditz

Faced with an ever-growing backlash over last week’s power grab, Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi struggled to defend his edict, insisting that the move was “temporary” and not intended to centralize power in his hands.

Rather, in a new statement Mursi insisted that the move was meant to limit the power of the judiciary, and was primarily aimed at avoiding the “politicization” of the court system while keeping them from ousting the committee penning the new constitution.

Yet the edict went well beyond protecting the committee, claiming unilateral power for the president to do anything he deems necessary and insisting the court can’t even theoretically review anything he does. To the extent it renders the court totally powerless it would seem to limit interest in its politicization.

Making the move temporary does seem to be a key part of the edict, and assuming it remains temporary it may placate some critics. The edict only sought to define presidential power until the new constitution is written, with the assumption that the constitution itself will define them afterwards.

“Temporary” measures in the Middle East have a tendency to last for decades, however, as with the “emergency law” in place in Egypt before the revolution, which granted Mursi’s predecessor Hosni Mubarak similar unchecked power. The longer it takes to get a constitution in place, the more Egyptians are likely to bristle at the power Mursi is now claiming for himself.

Clashes erupt on Egypt’s Tahrir Square, over 100 injured

Russia Today




Thousands of supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi battled for control of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the recent revolution. Over one hundred protesters are reported injured in the violence.

Supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi fought for control of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the recent revolution.

Protesters hurled rocks and bottles at each other, fists flew and gunshots were heard during the melee in downtown Cairo on Friday. The ongoing conflict is the first major street fight between liberals and Islamists since Morsi's election in June.

Bel Trew, a Cairo-based journalist, told RT about the chaotic scene unfolding on Tahrir, saying she had “personally witnessed rock throwing, several very heavy head injuries, Molotov [cocktail] throwing; we have heard gunshots, though I can’t confirm that myself as I wasn’t able to see.”

She also said there were small fires by a museum adjacent to the square caused by petrol bombs and fireworks. Trew believes the violence is unlikely to end soon, as “there has been no police presence whatsoever, even though in Morsi’s 100-day plan, he did say that he would up security in the country and reassure people that they wouldn’t see scenes like this.”

The Health Ministry said 110 people had sustained light to moderate injuries, state media reported.

Mounira Public Hospital chief Muhammad Shawky said earlier in the afternoon that his hospital had received at least ten injured protesters, the Egypt Independent reports. One man was hospitalized after receiving a serious eye injury, while nine others were treated for minor wounds and later released. Since then, the number reported injured has continued to increase without any signs of abating.

Eyewitnesses said many of the injured had been pelted with rocks.

Egyptian protesters hold a national flag as they walk past a
 burning bus during clashes in Cairo on October 12, 2012 

Some 2,000 people poured onto the square on Friday after tensions erupted between pro- and anti-Morsi forces when a court acquitted Mubarak-era officials accused of ordering camels to charge against protesters during last year’s uprising.

The February 2011 incident, known as the "Camel Battle," left nearly a dozen people dead. It was one of the bloodiest incidents in the 2011 revolution that toppled the Mubarak regime.

The so-called "Judgement Day” protest on the square had originally been organized by left-leaning activists hoping to draw attention to their disaffection with President Morsi and the Constituent Assembly. Islamists arrived to protest the contentious "Camel Battle" ruling, which saw 25 figures in the Mubarak regime set free.

While all sides to the conflict were united in their opposition to the acquittal, long simmering tensions between the rival parties quickly spilled over.

The coalition of liberals and secular-minded groups was particularly concerned with Islamist control of the body drafting the country's new constitution.

Fighting commenced after Muslim Brotherhood supporters tore down a podium belonging to a group chanting anti-Morsi slogans, AFP reported.

“Down, down with rule by the guide,” Morsi's detractors chanted in reference to Mohammed Badie, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi officially resigned from the Brotherhood upon assuming office, but his opponents believe that he maintains control over the president.

Egyptians inspect a burnt bus which was set on fire
during clashes on Tahrir square in Cairo on October 12, 2012

On Friday Morsi was in Egypt's second largest city, Alexandria, where he vowed that the former regime's figures would be held accountable in spite of Wednesday's ruling.

Morsi moved to dismiss the country's prosecutor general – a Mubarak appointee – following the controversial verdict. The prosecutor, Abdel-Maguid Mahmoud refused to resign and accept an offer to be Egypt's envoy to the Vatican.

Add caption

"As long as a majority of people who are setting up the new constitution are Islamists, they will naturally seek to create an Islamist state, and at this stage I don’t see how that could be avoided."

Egyptians help to evacuate a wounded man during clashes of opponents of the
 Muslim Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsi with government supporters in
Tahrir square in Cairo on October 12, 2012

Anti-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators tackle a Muslim Brotherhood member
and supporter of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi at Tahrir Square, the focal
 point of the Egyptian uprising, in Cairo October 12, 2012 

Pro and anti-Morsi forces clash in Cairo October 12, 2012 

Wealth of former Egyptian interior minister estimated at $3bn

Ahram

Official documents obtained by Al-Ahram daily indicate that imprisoned Habib El-Adly's fortunes are around $3 billion, including a 'fleet' of fancy cars and dozens of villas  

Egypt's former minister of interior Habib El-Adly reportedly owns 42 palaces and villas, 75 feddens and a 'fleet' of luxury cars, state-owned Al-Ahram daily newspaper reported on Saturday.

Al-Ahram has obtained official documents which will be handed to the country's illicit gains authority that include details about El-Adly's wealth, which is estimated at LE18 billion ($3 billion).

El-Adly and ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak are currently serving life sentences for failing to prevent the killing of protesters during last year's uprising.

Most of the former interior minister's properties are located in Sharm El-Sheikh, the North Coast, Mohandiseen and Zamalek, all in wealthy neighbourhoods.

El-Adly owns a villa in satellite 6 October City surrounded by a bulletproof glass façade, according to Al-Ahram.

It is reported that there are other undisclosed properties that have been registered under the names of his relatives.

In July 2011, El-Adly was sentenced to five years in prison for squandering public funds in the infamous number plates case. Earlier that same year the former interior minister was handed a 12-year sentence for corruption charges related to using his senior position to illegally gain profits.

The Summer of Muslim Discontent: It’s Not “The Amateur Film” Stupid

Global Research
Prof. James Petras

The so-called “Arab Spring:” is a distant and bitter memory to those who fought and struggled for a better world, not to speak of the thousands who lost, life and limb.  In its place, throughout the Muslim world, a new wave of reactionaries, corrupt and servile politicians have taken the reins of power buttressed by the same military, secret police and judicial power who sustained the previous rulers.[2]

*      *      *

Introduction

Death and destruction is rampant, poverty and misery has multiplied, law and order has broken down, retrograde  thugs have seized political power, where previously they were a marginal force.  Living standards have plunged, cities are devastated and commerce is paralyzed.  And presiding over this “Arab Winter” are the Western powers, the US and EU, – with the aid of the despotic Gulf absolutist monarchies, their Turkish ally and a motley army of mercenary Islamic terrorists and their would-be exile spokespeople.

The legacy of imperial intervention in the Muslim world during the first decade of the 21^st century, in terms of lives lost, in people displaced, in economies destroyed, in perpetual warfare, exceeds any previous decade, including 19^th and 20^th century colonial conquests.  Much of the latest Western mayhem and violence has been compressed in the period dubbed the “Arab Spring” between 2011 – 2012.  Moreover, the worst is to come.  The Western overseers have gained strategic positions of power in some countries( Egypt ), are engaged in prolonged ruinous wars in others ( Syria ) and are preparing for even bigger and more destructive military intervention in still others ( Iran ).

The “Winter of Muslim Discontent” covers an entire arc from Pakistan , Afghanistan in South Asia, through the Gulf region and the Middle East to North Africa .  In the throes of the worst economic crises to hit the West since the 1930’s, the Western imperialist regimes have squeezed their people, mobilized personnel, arms and money to engage in simultaneous wars in five regions and two continents – in pursuit of overthrowing political adversaries and installing clients, even if it results in the destruction of the economy and uprooting of millions.

Let us begin with Egypt , where the Arab Spring has become a case study in the making of the New Imperial Order in the Muslim world.  To attribute the mass violent rebellions across two continents and two dozen Muslim countries to a US made film which desecrates the Prophet Mohammed is the height of superficiality.  At most the film was the trigger that set off deeply rooted hostilities resulting from two decades of US led ravaging and destruction of the Muslim world and more particularly, rage flows from Washington ’s crude intervention against the promise of the Arab Spring.

Egypt:  The Making of a Client State

From day one, in February 2011, Washington sought in every way to prop up the Mubarak dictatorship as thousands of protestors fighting for freedom were killed, wounded or jailed in the major plazas and streets of Egypt .  When Mubarak was forced out of power, Washington sought to retain its influence by turning to his Generals, and backed the military junta which seized power.  As the military dictatorship became the target of huge pro-democracy demonstrations, Washington backed a political power sharing agreement between the dominant pro-Western neo-liberal sector of the Muslim Brotherhood and the military, excluding any but the most superficial democratic and socio-economic reforms demanded by the poor and the working and middle classes.

With the election of President Mohamed Morsi, Washington secured the most fervent advocate of savage “free market” capitalism and the second best (after Mubarak) advocate of retaining Egypt’s status as a US client state in the Middle East.  Morsi, following in the footsteps of Mubarak and in accordance with the Washington and Tel Aviv, closed the trade routes between Gaza and Sinai, traveled to the Non-Aligned Movement in Teheran to deliver the Saudi-Gulf message calling for support of the Western backed armed mercenaries ravaging Syria .  Later he announced plans to privatize publicly-owned enterprises, reduce the deficit via elimination of basic subsidies to the poor, de-regulate the economy to increase the flow of foreign capital and end labor strikes^[3].  As a reward for his servility and to ease the process of remaking Egypt as a pliable Western client state, Washington, Saudi Arabia, the IMF, Qatar and the EU have offered Morsi over $20 billion in loans, debt relief and grants^[4].  Morsi’s rule depends on playing the ‘spiritual card’ to retain the support of the impoverished Muslim masses, while pursuing a staunch neo-liberal economic strategy and neo-colonial foreign policy.

Given the recent revolutionary pro-democracy and nationalist fervor, Morsi looks for ways to deflect rising socio-economic discontent with his neo-liberal economic policies by adopting an apparently pious Muslim posture – condemning “the film” ridiculing the Prophet and tolerating assaults on the US Embassy in Cairo … which angered Clinton and Obama, who expect total subservience, especially
toward the symbols and substance of everything US^[5].

CIA killed Omar Suleiman and Saudi’s prince Nayef: Fareed Zakaria

PressTV

Egypt’s former vice president and spy chief, Omar Suleiman,
left and Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz,

A prominent US-based Journalist, Fareed Zakaria says the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is behind the death of former Egyptian vice president and the country's long-time spy chief Omar Suleiman, and Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud.

Speaking in a TV program called Al-Haghigheh in an Arabic satellite channel, Zakaria said that Omar Suleiman made a phone call to him few minutes prior to his death claiming that his life was in danger and the CIA had targeted him with a laser radiation.

Zakaria added that Suleiman revealed to him in the same telephone conversation that the Saudi crown prince was also assassinated with a similar laser radiation by the US spy agency.

Several days before Egypt’s former dictator, Hosni Mubarak ouster, Suleiman was appointed vice president in January 2011 when the revolution gained momentum. He was directly involved in the killing of protesters.

Suleiman later left Egypt and went to Abu Dhabi with his relatives. He died in the US where he was undergoing medical tests at the age of 76.

The 79-year-old Nayef, who was also the long-serving interior minister of Saudi Arabia, traveled for medical reasons to a few countries including Algeria and the United States this year before he was announced dead on June 16.

Nayef was announced the new heir to the Saudi throne after the death of his full brother, former Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, at a New York hospital on October 22, 2011.

Governments Exist to Further the Interests of "Favored Groups" "We the People" are Never the Favored Group

Global Research

Jon Kozy

"Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system."—Herbert Hoover’s treasury secretary Andrew Mellon

Governments have never existed to solve problems domestic or international. Governments and their institutions exist merely to further and secure the interests of favored groups, but We the People are never the favored group.

Paul Krugman recently wrote that the fact is that the Fed, like the European Central Bank, like the U.S. Congress, like the government of Germany, has decided that avoiding economic disaster is somebody else’s responsibility.

None of this should be happening. As in 1931, Western nations have the resources they need to avoid catastrophe, and indeed to restore prosperity — and we have the added advantage of knowing much more than our great-grandparents did about how depressions happen and how to end them. But knowledge and resources do no good if those who possess them refuse to use them.

And that’s what seems to be happening. The fundamentals of the world economy aren’t, in themselves, all that scary; it’s the almost universal abdication of responsibility that fills me, and many other economists, with a growing sense of dread.

Krugman and most other Americans are fond of blaming social problems on the personal failings of individuals rather than on the systemic failings of institutions. It is people borrowing more than they can afford rather than banks lending too loosely or consumers saving too little rather than businesses paying too little to enable consumers to save that causes all of the problems. But borrowing and lending and saving and income are not independent variables. People are persons with personal failures but banks are institutions with systemic failures, and the systemic failures can entice people to engage in activities that may look like personal failures but are not. Krugman and many others assume that governments and their institutions exist to solve the problems peoples face. When the problems persist, these people again assume that it is because those in government just aren't doing their jobs. But there is very little historical evidence to support this view.

The government of Louis XVI made scanty attempts to solve the problems of the French people which ultimately led to the French Revolution. The various governments in the United States in the early 1800 made few attempts to resolve the problems raised by slavery in American society and the Supreme Court made any resolution of them impossible which led to the Civil War. Emperor Franz Joseph of Austro-Hungary made no effort to resolve the ethnic problems his empire faced in the Balkans which ultimately led to the First World War. Great Britain and France made no attempts to ameliorate the problems Germany faced as a result of the conditions imposed on it by the Treaty of Versailles which then resulted in the Second World War. No government has made much of an attempt to resolve the problems created in the Levant by the creation of Israel, and instability, slaughter, and war have prevailed ever since. Now a third world war, an atomic conflagration, may be in the offing.

Domestic and international conflicts are being exacerbated world-wide by similar failures at problem resolution. The Western nations and Israel are not making any serious attempts to resolve their problems with Iran. The only possibility of resolving the problems in Western minds is for Iran to merely conform to what the Western world wants. Western European nations are treating the debt crisis similarly. There is only one resolution: the Southern European states must merely do what the Northern ones say regardless of how it affects the peoples of Southern Europe. And the American Congress is paralyzed by each party's insistence that its way is the only way.

So what is really going on? What are Krugman and others missing? The answer is as plain as sunlight on a cloudless day.

Governments have never existed to solve problems domestic or international. Governments and their institutions exist merely to further and secure the interests of favored groups. For instance, each nation's foreign policy always consists of "protecting our interests" somewhere or other. Whose interests are "our interests"? Why the favored group's, of course. And who are the favored groups? Well, it all depends.

The favored group of European governments is international investors, not the common people of a single European nation. The Greeks can be damned so long as the investors get repaid even though the common people of Greece did not borrow one euro from international investors, the Greek government, which has no income it doesn't take from ordinary Greeks, did, and the investors were not only willing but anxious to lend. The favored group of the Mubarak government in Egypt was the Egyptian military that even after the overthrow of Mubarak is still trying to secure its interests. The favored group in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen is a royal family. In Iraq and Iran, a religious sect is favored. Every one of these governments except, perhaps, Iceland has shown a willingness to kill those common people who are never the favored group.

The United States of America is an extreme case. The Democrats in Congress have their favored groups; so do the Republicans. But the common people is not the favored group of either party, although the politicians pay homage to it. America is comprised of a mass of groups, some favored, some not. Even though the nation's founders warned the Colonists about the danger of factions, every issue in America attracts a faction, and sometime or other, government favors one or more of them. Americans have pro and an anti-immigration factions. Within these, there are pro and anti-Asian factions, pro and anti-Latino factions and within these, Central and South American and Cuban factions. There are pro and anti-gun control factions, abortion factions, contraception factions, labor factions, business factions, healthcare factions, free and regulated market factions, free trade and protectionist factions, global warming and anti-global warming factions, more and less taxation factions, big and small government factions, federal and states' rights factions, imperialist and anti-imperialist factions, religious and anti-religious factions. Factions here; factions there; disagreement everywhere! Where Americans once believed united we stand, divided we fall, today they believe division secures our group's special interests. And the moneyed groups have made this work by using raw power and bribery.

But the nation? Oh, well, its seams are all coming apart. The nation doesn't matter to factions; only the interests of the favored group does. And that is why American society does not work. It is a nation whose people do not live together; they merely live side by side, where neighbors who have lived side by side for years break into violent conflict over the most trivial of things: a barking dog, a crowing rooster, a loud party, a minor inconvenience as, for instance, a parked car, children playing in someone's yard, a tree-limb extending over a property line, a sign or even an American flag on a pole, the color of a house, the height of a lawn and the kind of plants in it—just some of the recent neighborly conflicts I have observed.

America is a nation comprised of people who revel in conflict. Even the legal system is adversarial. Our cities, or at least parts of them, are war zones. More people are killed daily in America than in Afghanistan. Since Americans can't get along with each other why would anyone expect them to get along with the rest of the world? What makes anyone believe Americans care if Sunni and Shi'as get along?

US, Israel seek to derail Egypt’s revolution: Iranian cmdr.

PressTV

Deputy Chairman of Iran’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri

A senior Iranian military commander has hit out at the United States and Israel for their attempts to derail Egypt’s revolution and hinder the democratic movement in the North African state.

The US and the Zionist regime (Israel) took countless measures to sway Egypt’s revolution as it is the biggest and the most important Arab country, said Deputy Chairman of Iran’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri on Monday.

The US and the Israeli regime cannot tolerate any progress in the Egyptian movement toward freedom and independence, he added.

The Iranian commander also said that “from the onset of the Islamic awakening in Egypt, it could be anticipated that the US would develop different scenarios against the movement.”

On Sunday, the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) in Egypt announced Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi as the winner of the country’s presidential runoff.

Meanwhile, Iran's Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a statement, congratulated the Egyptian nation on the election of Morsi as the country’s new president.

Following the revolution of the Islamic Republic of Iran 33 years ago, once again, the world is witnessing the overthrow of another US-backed regime in Egypt, the statement read, expressing certainty that a new wave of movements that seek Islamic governments has initiated.

Morsi won the presidency by beating ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak’s last premier Ahmed Shafiq during the country’s run-off presidential election on June 16 and 17. He garnered nearly 52 percent of the vote.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians gathered in Cairo and across the country to celebrate the victory of Morsi, chanting slogans such as “God is greatest” and “down with the military rule.” 

Violence in Syria can destabilize Mideast region: Analyst

Editor's Note:  U.S. propagandist Lawrence J. Corb from Center for American Progress gets handed his ass.   Corb claims the U.S. has left Iraq.

A recent report from the mainstream daily newspaper New York Times has gone into detail as to how the CIA is facilitating arms and other assistance to armed groups in Syria and that it is doing it on Turkish soil near the borders with Syria.

Damascus has always been very vocal that Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia were assisting, funding and arming armed groups operating on the Syrian soil.

With the Kofi Annan's peace plan in limbo and the United Nations Observer mission currently suspended, it seems that the challenge to solve the Syria unrest has become as complicated as ever.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Lawrence J. Korb, from the Center for American Progress in Washington, to further talk over the issue.

The video also offers the opinions of two additional guests: Sukant Chandan, a political commentator in London, and Kevin Barrett who is an author and Islamist studies’ expert from Madison. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: It is not just the issue of the armed groups in Syria, but there have been a ton of reports indicating that Al-Qaeda is active and is being funded by the US, or its proxies. Why is the US arming Al-Qaeda?

Korb: Wait a second! You have got the story all wrong. What the New York Times article said today and again we are not quite sure not everything that is written in the newspapers come to be true but what they were saying is that the US people are there to make sure arms are not the ones they are supplying; we are not supplying any.

Do not fall into the hands of al-Qaeda. That is their mission. And this idea that somehow the United States wants regime change in all these areas is nonsensical, this all started what happened in Tunisia; that it moved to Egypt.

In fact, we were criticized for staying with Mubarak too long and even the Israelis are not happy with what is going to happen in Egypt given the fact that they had very good relations with Mubarak. President Obama has been criticized by his political opposition for not doing more.

In fact, Senator McCain who ran against him for president last time basically is urging the United States to start an air campaign. President Obama was criticized for not doing enough in Libya for basically to use the term leading from behind.

So this idea that the United States wants regime change, the United States basically wants the people of Syria to make a decision in a non-violent way. The way it was done for example in Tunisia and the way it was done in Egypt and the UN was the one who basically, with Russia and China, that wanted to get in there to stop the violence.

The rebels agreed to lay down their arms; Assad said he would but then he did not. You know, one of the most significant things happened today, was not the New York Times story, was the fact that a Syrian pilot flying a Mig-21 went to Jordan to seek asylum and we know many of the members of the Syrian military particularly enlisted people are now defecting and I think the real question is can we stop this before there is any more slaughter.

Press TV: Time and again Turkey has been indicated in the arming and facilitating of the armed groups in Syria. What is Turkey's agenda in Syria?

Korb: Again, your guest in London [Sukant Chandan] was talking about the United States ally of Rwanda. President Clinton was criticized for not doing anything to stop the slaughter in Rwanda.

We are talking about Somalia; that is not an American operation; that is the Ugandans, the Kenyans, and people from Burundi. So this idea that somehow the United States is trying to use its allies to control these countries is simply not true.

And it is interesting that your other American guest [Kevin Barrett] was talking about after 9/11. After 9/11, Iran condemned the attacks of 9/11; Iran supported the United States going into Afghanistan.

Even with Iraq which I happen to think was a mistaken war, was an unnecessary war but the fact of the matter is when the Iraqis told us to leave, we left. So this idea that somehow we are trying to control this is not true. Now that we have a military industrial complex, yeas, but you know, they are focused on these days, not focused on the Middle East; they focused on the “threat from China” to justify keeping the military budget up and in fact you probably have seen the whole question about the pivot to Asia rather than focusing on the Middle East.

The interesting thing is al-Qaeda got upset at the United States. One of their concerns was that we were supporting regimes like Mubarak. Well, now that we are not, what is the narrative? So I think that somehow in other word mixing up an awful lot of things.

As I said, President Obama is getting beaten up by his political opponents for not doing anything in Syria. He was beaten up by his political opponents for not doing more in Libya. So this idea that the United States is trying to dominate or control ... and even the Israelis would prefer Mubarak being in power. They are concerned about what is going to happen with this election if we ever find out what the situation is.

To get your other question, the Turks were brokering peace talks between the Assad government and the Israelis. And so the idea that somehow on the other hand the Israelis are concerned about a civil war now and I think that is what the Turks are concerned about that this war in Syria will spread because if the Russians keep sending new or used helicopters there, the fighting will go on and that it will spread into their border.

That is what the Turks are concerned about. They do not want to see these things spread.

Press TV: How can ending the unrest in Syria be a Syria lead initiative if there are so many factors, so many external factors, being tossed in the mix?

Korb: Again, if you go back when they started and the Syrian people started demonstrating and asking for reforms, the Assad regime, rather than negotiating with them, started killing them. Well before this, anybody on the opposition side was using violence, the government was cracking down.

It is incredible; I am listening to the history here. People forget Assad’s father. Assad’s father killed 40 thousand people in order to put himself into power. What would the “imperialist” that you are calling on the British, the French and the United States, no, we did not do that.

And everybody had hoped, given the fact that he was educated in the West; that he might be a little bit more reasonable, but he has been every bit as bad as his father and the international community is under tremendous pressure.

You go back to Libya; it was the Arab League that pushed us to get involved not the British and the French. There were playings from the Arab League; [got us for] flying missions over there. The United States only did something like 25 percent of what happened there.

So the idea that somehow this is the United States ... believe me, the United States would like to focus on its problems at home rather than having to deal with these issues and I am sure President Obama will just assume that the violence stop there so he could focus on what is happening here.

So I think people are sort of mixing up history. It is like the Iranians helped at the Bonn Conference; it was Iran, your country, that persuaded the Northern Alliance to support Karzai. This was not an American initiative, so somehow [neither] the idea that the United States was trying to control all the things. We want to leave Afghanistan and trying to leave and in fact we have turned over a more and more of dimensions to the Afghans. 

Dispatches From Cairo: Ms. Clinton, Kindly Butt Out

TruthDig
Lauren Unger-Geoffroy

A protester in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in May displays
a shoe sole covered with pictures of Egyptian and Israeli
and other foreign officials or former officials, including
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

CAIRO—Since Tuesday, Egypt has suffered a hot spell that produced a record number of heatstroke victims, including me and two friends. But the weather has not stopped supporters of the two presidential election “winners” from holding victory celebrations. Nor has it stopped Egyptians from wondering whether the ousted President Hosni Mubarak is clinically dead, fully dead, alive and conscious, or alive but unconscious, and whether he had a heart attack or a stroke or had fallen in a bathtub. The volleys of bullshit have been heavy as journalists rush back and forth in pursuit of the stories.

Lots of jokes have hit the social networks. A couple of examples:

—“Egypt has two living presidents, no parliament, one dictator, one invalid constitution, and one president both dead and alive.”

—“All Egyptians are happy today. Those who are for [presidential candidate Mohamed] Morsi are happy because he has won. Those who are for [presidential candidate Ahmed] Shafiq are happy because he won. Those who hated Mubarak are happy because he is dead. Those who loved Mubarak are happy because he is alive.”

Music blared and cars victory-honked Friday night as huge numbers flocked again to Tahrir Square to demonstrate against the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and to celebrate hints that the SCAF might agree to allow the presidency to go to the opposition candidate, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi.

Good, Alhamdulillah, if that happens, for such a decision by the SCAF would probably avoid a military massacre of thousands stemming from massive public protests. The people will not accept Shafiq as president, nor will they believe any vote count that has him as winner of last weekend’s election.

A pro-Morsi chant heard in Tahrir Square since last Tuesday night: “If [the SCAF] want to be Syria, we’ll give them Libya!” The ominous meaning is that civil war will sweep Egypt if the SCAF’s candidate is awarded the presidency in the face of a challenged vote and that the regime will be swept away.

Khairat el-Shater, the leading strategist of the Muslim Brotherhood, warned before the final round of the presidential election: “Egypt can make its transition to a new order the easy way, or the hard way.” Despite the regime-run national media’s relentless psychological warfare against the Muslim Brotherhood, it is now nearly impossible for the military to take the presidency.

In a statement issued Friday, the SCAF warned against failure to implement court decisions and confirmed the constitutional declaration that it issued earlier in a bid to restrict presidential power. Key words in the new statement were “legitimacy,” “law,” “legal” and “constitutional.” Well played, very well played.

I took in all this information through a haze of dizziness caused by 105-degree heat. I tried not to faint, which was difficult after I read about U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seeming to assert a right to insinuate the United States into the Egyptian election and its outcome. The military must transfer power to the true winner of the election, Clinton said Wednesday. “We think that it is imperative that the military fulfill its promise to the Egyptian people to turn power over to the legitimate winner,” she said in Washington, D.C. She went on to call the developments in Egypt “clearly troubling.”

“The military has to assume an appropriate role which is not to interfere with, dominate or try to subvert the constitutional authority,” Clinton said. It was a warning.

The obvious wrongdoings of the SCAF notwithstanding, the U.S. must not tell Egypt how it should conduct its affairs. Whatever became of the notion of national sovereignty?

Egypt Postpones Declaration of Winner in Election Run-Off

VOAnews

Hatem Bagato

The Secretary General of Egypt’s Presidential Elections Committee has ruled out declaring the results of the presidential run-off Thursday, as originally planned.

Chancellor Hatem Bagato said parties of both presidential candidates have logged complaints about the conduct of the vote, which he said need to be resolved.

Said Sadek, professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo, said the country could be plunged into deeper crisis if the electoral body declares the winner of the vote as originally scheduled.

”I think there is political calculation about the timing and also there are so many contestations about what happened [during the vote],”said Sadek.

”If they do announce it [Saturday or Sunday], we will have to see the reaction in the streets and what the political forces will do, and which scenario they are pushing for.”

Both presidential candidates, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and the establishment-backed Ahmed Shafiq, have both claimed victory in Sunday’s presidential run-off vote.

This comes as another million-man march is scheduled to begin Thursday in the Tahrir square in the capital, Cairo.  Organizers say the demonstration is aimed at registering their displeasure with the military council’s continued grip on power.

Egypt braces for confrontation with military and Israel calls up reserves

Pyramidion
Dr. Ashraf Ezzat

As June 30, the predetermined date for Egypt’s supreme council of armed forces(SCAF) to hand over power to an elected civilian government, is drawing nearer, all the major players in post-Mubarak transitional period are ready to throw in their last card … including Israel.
Some of the key players, like the Muslim Brotherhood, have even threatened to resort to violence if things don’t come their way.

The political scene in Egypt nowadays is pretty tense and rather precarious; SCAF is reluctant to cede power; Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is desperately trying to grab the seat of presidency especially that the parliament it controlled 75% of its seats has been legally disbanded by the supreme constitutional court.  And forces from the old regime, supporting the presidential candidate, Mr. Ahmed Shafik are eyeing to catch what they consider the last train to the presidential palace.

Meanwhile the true revolutionaries and most of the secular political groups – leftists and liberals- are left behind, unorganized and unaccounted for. You can’t even find them anymore in Tahrir square.  I know what’s on your mind, but don’t get fooled by the thousands packing Tahrir you see in the reports of the Mainstream media; they are but hordes of MB followers who are instructed, and sometimes paid for, to pose for the media cameras as revolutionaries, whereas they only sing and dance for the MB presidential candidate, Mohamed Morsi.

Last Sunday, June 17, the polls of the run-off presidential elections closed after two days of voting, that has been closely monitored by local and international human rights groups.

And guess what, yes, that’s right …, the first post Mubarak presidential elections have been fair and square.  And the initial tallies indicate that the race between Mohamed Morsi, the MB candidate and Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak’s last prime minister has been so close that the next president will probably win by 51% of the total votes.

The whole vote, which lasted for two successive days, in more than 12000 major polling stations all over Egypt was as democratic and transparent as that of the late French presidential elections.
But what does that mean? It says one thing as clear as the sky of Egypt; the revolution managed to put an end to decades of rigged elections. Egyptians won’t be silent or apathetic ever again, especially when it comes to choosing the upcoming president.

Handing over power from SCAF to SCAF

That said, SCAF, having no control over the result of the presidential vote, has surprised everybody just hours before the polls were closed with a preemptive act; a new constitutional annex.

In the declaration, SCAF has transferred, or usurped to be exact, some of the top powers reserved for the president to the ruling military junta.

Egypt's Military Is Making A Huge Last-Minute Power Grab

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta
and Egyptian Major General Rouini
on October 4, 2011

Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has issued a new constitutional declaration giving it veto powers over the drafting of a new constitution and removing the president as commander-in-chief, reports Evan Hill of Al-Jazeera.

The decree came as the Muslim Brotherhood claimed victory for their presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi. Final results are not expected until Thursday.

Under the declaration the head of the SCAF, former Mubarak-era defense minister Hussein Tantawi, assumes the powers of the commander-in-chief as the military takes on total power to oversee its own affairs, meaning that the president will have no control over the military’s budget or leadership and will not be authorized to declare war without the consent of the ruling generals.

The document also directs that final judgment of the draft of the country's new constitution be referred to Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court — a court stacked with with judges appointed by former president Gen. Hosni Mubarak — which nullified the Islamist-led parliament on Thursday on the grounds that it was appointed unconstitutionally.

The military rulers will name a group of Egyptians to draft a new constitution (which would be subject to a public referendum within three months) and after it's approved a new parliamentary election would be held to replace the Islamist-dominated lower house.

Also last week the justice ministry issued an order granting the military power to arrest civilians, which the military has been been doing unofficially since the uprising, until the new constitution is in place.

Hill reports that the president will still choose his vice presidents and cabinet, propose the state budget, propose laws and issue pardons.

Egypt terminates gas deal with Israel

Al Jazeera

Top official insists decision was not political as Israel says it overshadows the peace agreement between the two.

The head of the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company has said it has terminated its contract to ship gas to Israel because of violations of contractual obligations, a decision Israel said overshadows the peace agreement between the two countries.

Mohamed Shoeb, the gas company's top official, said Sunday's decision was not political. This has nothing to do with anything outside of the commercial relations,'' Shoeb said.

He said Israel has not paid for its gas in four months. Yigal Palmor, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, denied the claim of not paying.

The 2005 Egypt-Israel gas deal has come under strident criticism from leaders of the popular uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, the longtime Egyptian president, last year.

Critics charge that Israel got bargain prices, and Mubarak cronies skimmed millions of dollars off the proceeds.

'Bad faith'

The sale of gas to Israel, which signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, has always been controversial in the Arab world's most populous country. It was the largest trade deal between the two former foes.

Egyptian militants have blown up the gas pipeline to Israel 14 times since the uprising.

On Sunday, Israel Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said the unilateral Egyptian announcement was of "great concern'' politically and economically.

The Egyptian Transition Is Not Going To Plan

Business Insider
Dan Murphy

Pity the reporters, political activists, and academics trying to keep up with Egypt's transition "plan." Every day, it seems, new moves by the ruling military, the courts, and the quasi-independent electoral commission turn expectations on their head.

It's human to want a see a pattern in all this, find a guiding hand behind all the maneuvering (a Machiavellian or a benevolent one, depending on your inclinations). Analysis is supposed to tease out the broader pattern, identify a narrative that helps make sense of events. But in the daily flow of statements, revelations, and warnings, I can't find anything but an unguided mess.

Writing at Foreign Policy, political scientist Nathan Brown calls "the phrase 'Egyptian transition process'... tragicomically oxymoronic in light of the dizzying series of developments over the past month."

The latest news is the disqualification of 10 Egyptian presidential aspirants a little more than six weeks from the scheduled May 23 vote. Most were no-hopers, but three are heavyweights.

Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, a fiery, and to many frightening, salafy leader (he called Osama bin Laden a "martyr" after the Al Qaeda leader was killed in Pakistan) was tossed from the race because his deceased mother was a US citizen (it's Egypt's own birther controversy; Abu Ismail denies the claim).

Authorities Bar 3 Leading Candidates in Egypt Race

New York Times
David D. Kirkpatrick

From left: Khairat el-Shater, the leading strategist of the Muslim Brotherhood;
Omar Suleiman, Hosni Mubarak’s former vice president and intelligence chief;
and Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist.

The Egyptian election authorities eliminated three of the country’s leading presidential candidates in one broad stroke on Saturday night in an unexpected decision that once again threw into disarray the contest to shape the future of Egypt after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

The High Election Commission struck down 10 candidates in all, including the three who have generated the most passion in this polarized nation: Khairat el-Shater, the leading strategist of the Muslim Brotherhood; Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist; and Omar Suleiman, Mr. Mubarak’s former vice president and intelligence chief.

A little more than a month before the vote begins, the ruling raised new doubts about the credibility of the election, which is supposed to inaugurate a new democracy after decades of authoritarian rule. It capped a year of opaque decisions behind closed doors, shifting ground rules and timetables, conspiracy theories about who holds true power, turbulence in the streets and growing political polarization during the military-led transition after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

And it comes at a time when the stakes of the presidential race have risen higher than ever: the Islamist majority in Parliament has clashed with the liberal minority over the writing of a constitution and with the military over the control of the government. Some warned it could set off new street protests.

At the same time, the commission, composed of five senior judges appointed by Mr. Mubarak, appeared to prove its independence, shutting down the candidate most linked to the Mubarak government and defying an angry mob of Islamists outside its door. It disqualified each of the candidates on narrow, technical grounds.

Row over Egypt's new constitution reflects wider tensions

CNN

(CNN) -- Egypt's administrative court has suspended the country's 100-member constitutional assembly, tasked with drafting a new national constitution. But what does that say about the country's progress toward political reform?

More than a year since President Hosni Mubarak was forced to stand down, the outcome of Egypt's "revolution" remains unclear.

The suspension of the constitutional assembly is significant, says Khaled Elgindy, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, because the document it draws up is supposed to be the "fundamental institution of the new Egypt" -- and this throws up questions over its legitimacy.

The row also highlights growing tensions between secular and Islamist groups and the ruling military council, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has not yet handed power to a civilian government.

It had been hoped the new constitution would be ready before presidential elections due in late May, with a run-off vote in June.

Read more about the disbanding of the constitutional group

But that time frame now seems unlikely, analysts say, opening up the prospect that a new president is elected without a clear constitutional framework by which to govern, or checks on his powers.

That said, whether the assembly as it stood could have produced a consensus draft that would have convincingly won the nation's backing in a referendum is a moot point.

The move by the administrative court in Cairo followed weeks of street protests and objections from many political and civic society groups.

They argued the assembly was dominated by the Islamists -- the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the Salafist Nour party, who hold a majority in parliament -- and that as a result it would not draft a constitution that was representative of the country's diverse society, and that Islamic rules would have too much sway.

Several liberal and secular members of the assembly had already withdrawn because of the criticism, as well as the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church and Al-Azhar Institution, one of the most influential Islamic entities.

IMF Banksters worst fear: Egyptians launch campaign to repudiate Mubarak's debt's

Islamist
Samer Attallah

Mubarak contracted the debt so Mubarak should pay. Let the international banksters like IMF and WB who lent the money to Mubarak go collect it from him. Third world debt repudiation is the criminal banksters worst nightmare. Argentina did it successfully in the 90 and now there are Egypt, Pakistan Philippians even India is a possible candidate for debt repudiation

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts
8 November 2011 by Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debt

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts has the honour to announce the formation of a joint Egyptian-Tunisian committee for the Dropping of Debts in coordination with the campaign in Tunisia. The Campaign to Drop Tunisia’s Debt aims at auditing and dropping the debts of the dictator Bin Ali and was launched in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution. This coordination between two popular Arab movements is a practical translation of the achievements of the Arab Spring.

The joint committee shall work on the exchange of experience in the reviewing and auditing of debts; coordinating the two campaigns’ activities and organising relations globally. Such cooperation aims to cause the dropping of all odious, illegitimate external debts; which were amassed with foreign governments and international financial institutions by the corrupt regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Zine Al-Abidine Bin Ali.


Founding Statement

The Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debts was conceived as part of the January 25th Revolution, and affirms the right of the Egyptian people to assert collective control over all matters related to their life and the future of coming generations. This is a popular movement that aims to facilitate Egypt’s economic independence from the many forms of exploitation, subordination and resource misappropriation that were imposed upon the people of Egypt during the past decades by the regime of the ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak and his collaborators abroad.

Egyptian police accused of killing protesters get light sentences

PressTV

A Cairo court has given suspended one-year sentences to 11 policemen accused of killing protesters during last year’s uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

The policemen were accused of killing 22 protesters and injuring 44 others outside a police station in Cairo's Hadaeq al-Qobba neighborhood in one of the deadliest days of the protests on January 28, 2011.

The policemen were guilty of using live ammunition in violation of orders, the court ruling said, adding that “the right of self-defense here is legitimate, but the defendants exceeded that right.”

The ruling, carried by the official news agency MENA, said the people outside the police station were genuine protesters, but they were later infiltrated by a “misled minority” that attacked the police.

The sentence means the policemen will not face prison time.

Families of the dead protesters gathered outside the court and chanted "Death to the murderers!"

Since the ouster of Mubarak last February and coming to power of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, dozens more people have been killed.

Protesters have regularly taken to the streets to denounce the ruling military, accusing it of stifling dissent, stalling on reforms and of human rights violations.

Egypt sentences two Israelis, Ukranian for arms smuggling

alakhbar

Egypt's 'Raymond Davis': Ilan Grapel (a U.S. and Israeli citizen)
had his freedom from an Egyptian prison purchased by the
the release of 25 Egyptiian prisoners from Israeli jails.

Two Israelis and a Ukrainian were sentenced to life in prison by an Egyptian court on Monday on charges of smuggling a machinegun and ammunition across the Israeli border into Egypt, a court source said.

The Ukrainian and one of the Israelis are in Egyptian custody, while the other defendant was tried in absentia.

Security along Egypt's border with Israel, long a conduit for the smuggling of guns and people, was relaxed after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak following a popular uprising in February 2011, as police presence thinned out across Egypt.

The region has been hit by a number of gas pipeline explosions and cross-border attacks.
According to the court that issued the conviction, the Ukrainian, manager of a tourism company in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, had ordered the weapon from one of the Israeli defendants, the source said.

The other Israeli, who lived in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, brought the weapon into Egypt at the border at Taba in a cross-shaped wooden crate.

The machinegun and ammunition were discovered when the crate was placed on an explosives detection machine. The weapon was the sort used by police in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, investigators said.

The captured Israeli has denied knowing the contents of the crate, while the Ukrainian said he had ordered the weapon for personal protection, the court said.

In June, Egypt arrested an American-Israeli on suspicion he was trying to recruit agents and monitor events in the uprising that toppled Mubarak, an ally of Israel and the United States.

He was released in October in a prisoner swap that included the release of 25 Egyptians held in Israel.
Egyptian officials say limits on troop numbers in Sinai under a 1979 peace treaty with Israel make it harder to secure the mountainous region.

Regime Change in the Russian Federation? Why Washington Wants ‘Finito’ with Vladimir Putin

Global Research
F. William Engdahl

Washington clearly wants ‘finito’ with Russia’s Putin as in basta! or as they said in Egypt last spring, Kefaya--enough!.  Hillary Clinton and friends have apparently decided Russia’s prospective next president, Vladimir Putin, is a major obstacle to their plans. Few however understand why. Russia today, in tandem with China and to a significant degree Iran, form the spine, however shaky, of the only effective global axis of resistance to a world dominated by one sole superpower.

On December 8 several days after election results for Russia’s parliamentary elections were announced, showing a sharp drop in popularity for Prime Minister Putin’s United Russia party, Putin accused the United States and specifically Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fuelling the Russian opposition protesters and their election protests. Putin stated, “The (US) Secretary of State was quick to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust even before she received materials from the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the OSCE international election monitors-w.e.) observers.”[1] 

Putin went on to claim that Clinton’s premature comments were the necessary signal to the waiting opposition groups that the US Government would back their protests. Clinton’s comments, the seasoned Russian intelligence pro stated, became a “signal for our activists who began active work with the US Department of State.” [2]

Major western media chose either to downplay the Putin statement or to focus almost entirely on the claims of an emerging Russian opposition movement. A little research shows that, if anything, Putin was downplaying the degree of brazen US Government interference into the political processes of  his country. In this case the country is not Tunisia or Yemen or even Egypt. It is the world’s second nuclear superpower, even if it might still be an economic lesser power. Hillary is playing with thermonuclear fire.
Democracy or something else?

No mistake, Putin is not a world champion practitioner of what most consider democracy. His announcement some months back that he and current President Medvedev had agreed to switch jobs after Russia’s March 4 Presidential vote struck even many Russians as crass power politics and backroom deal-making. That being said, what Washington is doing to interfere with that regime change is more than brazen and interventionist. The same Obama Administration which just signed into law measures effectively ripping to shreds the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution for American citizens[3] is posing as world supreme judge of others’ adherence to what they define as democracy.

Let’s examine closely Putin’s charge of US interference in the election process. If we look, we find openly stated in their August 2011 Annual Report that a Washington-based NGO with the innocuous name, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is all over the place inside Russia. 

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is financing an International Press Center in Moscow where some 80 international NGOs can hold press briefings on whatever they choose. They fund numerous “youth advocacy” and leadership workshops to “help youth engage in political activism.” In fact, officially they spent more than $2,783,000 in 2010 on dozens of such programs across Russia. Spending for 2011 won’t be published until later in 2012. [4]