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Old 01-28-2011, 11:45 AM
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Exclamation Egypt

The most frequently updated web page that I've found for this crisis...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blo...rnet-ban-egypt
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Old 01-30-2011, 02:01 PM
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Exclamation ElBaradei: Hit the road, Mubarak; Update: Muslim Brotherhood backs ElBaradei? Update:

ElBaradei: Hit the road, Mubarak; Update: Muslim Brotherhood backs ElBaradei? Update: What ElBaradei means to Iran

posted at 11:50 am on January 30, 2011 by Ed Morrissey



Samuel Johnson once remarked after seeing a dog walking on its hind legs that the wonder wasn’t in the fact that the dog did it so well as much as it was in the dog doing it at all. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviews the man who has become — at least to Westerners — the face of the opposition in Egypt as Hosni Mubarak struggles to retain power after almost 30 years of dictatorship. Mohammed ElBaradei, known mostly until now as the ineffective head of the UN effort to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, tells Zakaria that Mubarak must go:

video here
If he wants to save his skin — if he has an iota of patriotism — I advise him to leave the country.
ElBaradei calls Mubarak’s expulsion “non-negotiable for every Egyptian,” but he comes across as a rather bloodless, bland bureaucrat. If this is his negotiating persona, it’s pretty easy to see why the Iranians feared him so little. The only real passion ElBaradei exhibits is when he furrows his brow and talks disdainfully of the support Mubarak has received for decades from nations around the world in the name of “stability,” which again seems like a bit of hypocrisy when one recalls ElBaradei’s insistence on moderation in dealing with the despots running Iran.

Still, the wonder here is that ElBaradei is appearing publicly at all these days. Supposedly, Mubarak had ElBaradei under house arrest just a couple of days ago. Now he’s giving live interviews on CNN and calling for Mubarak’s ouster — and the army and police are nowhere to be seen.

Given ElBaradei’s influence with the opposition, keeping him under wraps would normally be one of the top priorities of Mubarak, especially given ElBaradei’s connections to the West through the UN. ElBaradei undermines Mubarak’s almost-certain strategy of attempting to drum up support from his soon-to-be former allies using an apres moi, le deluge argument. If ElBaradei remains at the head of the revolt, Western governments may feel that they can deal with ElBaradei a lot more reasonably than Mubarak at this point. Mubarak knows this, and so his inability to keep ElBaradei in seclusion signals that Mubarak may have already hit the end stage of his dictatorship.

The Western nations that think ElBaradei will be a leader they can trust had better hope that ElBaradei can deal with the Islamists in his own backyard better than the ones in Tehran. He seems more like a convenient beard for the Muslim Brotherhood at this point than a charismatic revolutionary leader for democracy and personal liberty.

Obama and the EU don’t have many choices here — in fact, they have none at all, really — but ElBaradei is a long shot at best to survive as leader of a free Egypt.

Update (AP): Sounds like the Muslim Brotherhood has decided on its cat’s paw.
The Muslim Brotherhood on Sunday threw its support behind Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei to hold proposed negotiations with the government in order to form a unity government.

Speaking to Al-Jazeera, Muslim Brotherhood official Essam el-Eryan said that “political groups support ElBaradei to negotiation with the regime.”
As I write this, to add a little gloss to his new image as Egyptian savior, Al Jazeera’s airing footage of ElBaradei at the main protest in Tahrir Square in Cairo. To give you a sense of the level of dishonesty this stooge is willing to stoop to for his new patron, here’s what he told ABC earlier today:
“This is total bogus that the Muslim Brotherhood are religiously conservative,” he said. “They are no way extremists. They are no way using violence. They are not a majority of the Egyptian people. They will not be more than maybe 20 percent of the Egyptian people.

“You have to include them like, you know, new evangelical, you know, groups in the U.S., like the orthodox Jews in Jerusalem,” ElBaradei said.

He said the Islamists were “not at all” behind the uprising.
Update (AP): Iran, naturally, is root root rootin’ for the Brotherhood to turn this into an Islamist triumph, notwithstanding their sectarian differences with the group. This quote sums up the stakes:
While Egypt’s chances of transitioning to representative democracy remain an open question, especially with events on the ground so fluid, even the prospect remains deeply unsettling to Iran. “The focus would no longer be on Arabs being inspired by Iranian fundamentalism, but Iranians being inspired by Arab democracy,” says Sajadpour.
No doubt Iran is already working on ways to get money and arms to the Brotherhood for the power struggle ahead, which will end up being Exhibit 8,943 that Shiite and Sunni fundies are perfectly capable of cooperating against a common enemy. (See also Hamas.)

Update (AP): Just to put a cherry on top of this sundae, check out the screencap comparison at Big Peace between the Brotherhood’s English and Arabic websites. They’re practicing the same sort of deception by backing ElBaradei.

Update (AP): Needless to say, Egypt isn’t the only place where Islamists are looking to capitalize on recent unrest. Tunisia’s most famous fundie arrived home today after years spent abroad — and a crowd of thousands turned out at the airport to cheer him on.

Update (AP): One more point on ElBaradei. Even if he ends up as a compromise choice for leader, without any sort of formal Islamist takeover, having him at the top is guaranteed to weaken the west’s alliance with Sunni Arab regimes against Iran. Back when he was head of the IAEA and ostensibly charged with inspecting Iran’s nuclear sites, he was perfectly candid in saying that he didn’t consider that to be his main task. His main task, he felt, was preventing a western attack on Iran, a bias which made his reporting on their nuke program fatally suspect. If he was willing to do that in the name of “peace,” what else would he be willing to do if/when things finally come to a head between Iran, the U.S., and Israel? And if he, as ruler of Egypt, sides with Iran in that standoff, where does that leave other western-allied but weak Sunni regimes like Jordan and Saudi Arabia?

Update (Ed): Here’s a reminder of where ElBaradei’s sympathies lie in the Iranian nuclear crisis. Covering up Iran’s weaponization efforts, and doing it so ineptly that France and Germany publicly protested ElBaradei’s omissions, hardly stokes confidence in either ElBaradei’s inclination or ability to stand up to the Muslim Brotherhood, if it comes down to that — and if he’s not totally in bed with the Ikhwan as many suspect, it certainly will come down to that. For that matter, it doesn’t provide much confidence in ElBaradei’s executive abilities at all, even without the complications of radical Islamists.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/01/3...-road-mubarak/
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Old 01-30-2011, 03:24 PM
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Muslim Brotherhood Deception: They Say Different Things in English and Arabic

Posted by Christine Brim Jan 30th 2011 at 8:02 am in Featured Story, Islam, Islamic extremism, Middle East | Comments (78)

Over the next few days, here are 2 websites to compare – the Muslim Brotherhood’s English language and Arabic websites. First, the Muslim Brotherhood website in English – complete with the word “freedom” and a cute little girl, and no Islamic green in sight – here at http://www.ikhwanweb.com/:



AND NOW – the Arabic website at

http://www.ikhwanonline.com/Default.asp (or here in google translation):


Wait – let’s look a little more closely. From the top right of each website, in English on the left; In Arabic on the right:


One message for the English speakers; another message for the Arabic speakers. In English, the MB is all about “Freedom” (and it’s no more threatening than little Aisha there in her white hijab); In Arabic, it’s the MB logo of crossed swords .

There’s a word under those crossed swords, here from a larger graphic of the same MB logo:


The word with those crossed swords is not “Freedom” – it is in modern standard Arabic:

وأعدوا
or وَأَعِدُّواْ

with the vowels from Quranic Arabic.

In Arabic, this is “And prepared” or “Prepare” or “Make Preparation” or “Make Ready” or “And Make Ready” and it refers to an important verse in Surah 8 in the Quran (alternative translation here):

“(8:60) Make ready for an encounter against them all the forces and well-readied horses you can muster that you may overawe the enemies of Allah and your own enemies and others besides them of whom you are unaware but of whom Allah is aware. Whatever you may spend in the cause of Allah shall be fully repaid to you, and you shall not be wronged.”

There you have it: the velvet glove with the word “Freedom”; the steel fist with the words “Make Ready” with its well-known Quranic reference.

Actually, not steel fist – steel swords, crossed. The Muslim Brotherhood.
It is not “freedom” that they intend to bring to Egypt – or to anywhere else.


But just wait for the CIA, the State Department, the Administration, the mainstream media, and so many others to tell you the Muslim Brotherhood is all about little Aisha and freedom, and if you question them, you’re an Islamophobe (Shariah definition of “Islamophobe”: Blasphemer or Insulter of Islam, punishable by death in an Islamic state).

On the other hand, they’re not the only ones who can Make Ready. Go download the free online copy of the Team B 2 Report, “Shariah – the Threat to America,” or purchase it . Kindle edition coming soon.

http://bigpeace.com/cbrim/2011/01/30...ic/#more-75400
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Old 01-30-2011, 05:53 PM
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<H5>UH-OH: EVEN LEBANON IS EVACUATING ITS CITIZENS FROM EGYPT!

</H5>
YOU KNOW THINGS HAVE GOT TO BE REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD IN EGYPT WHEN ARABS FROM LEBANON THINK THEY'D BE SAFER IN LEBANON THAN EGYPT!

http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/20...ating-its.html
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Old 02-10-2011, 01:17 PM
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Bombshell: Mubarak not stepping down

posted at 4:05 pm on February 10, 2011 by Allahpundit


He’s still speaking as I write this and the translation is rough, but it surrrre sounds like he’s planning to serve out his term until September.


A money line: No outsiders can give him orders

The country’s Information Minister denied earlier (see the 8:03 p.m. update) that he had agreed to step down, but everyone assumed that that was a formality while arrangements were being made for him to leave.


He did say that he’s passed some of his duties to Suleiman and vowed that the much-loathed emergency law will be lifted — but even there, he didn’t give any firm commitments.

After all the media hype of the past several hours, I assume the crowds in Tahrir Square are about to go berserk. And once that happens, given Suleiman’s threats yesterday about a crackdown, the tanks are going to roll. Stand by for updates; all hell’s about to break loose.

Update: Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey says people in the street are “going crazy.” Here we go.

http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/1...stepping-down/
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Old 02-17-2011, 11:46 AM
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We No Longer Need To Ask "What Did Obama Know About Egypt And When Did He Know It"


I have posted before about how "[t]he administration's complete obsession with Obamacare" manifested itself in a "neglect and disregard" of the troubles brewing in the Middle East.

Now we have confirmation that there were explicit warnings to the Obama administration about the likelihood of trouble in Egypt, as reported by The Wall Street Journal:
Early last year, a group of U.S.-based human-rights activists, neoconservative policy makers and Mideast experts told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that what passed for calm in Egypt was an illusion.

"If the opportunity to reform is missed, prospects for stability and prosperity in Egypt will be in doubt," read their April 2010 letter.
The correspondence was part of a string of warnings passed to the Obama administration arguing that Egypt, heading toward crisis, required a vigorous U.S. response. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's 82-year-old dictator, was moving to rig a string of elections, they said. Egypt's young population was growing more agitated.

The bipartisan body that wrote to Mrs. Clinton, the Egypt Working Group, argued that the administration wasn't fully appraising the warning signs in Egypt. Its members came together in early 2010, concerned that the Arab world's biggest country was headed for transition but that the U.S. and others weren't preparing for a post-Mubarak era.
Carl at Israel Matzav expands on this information, What did Obama know and when did he know it?:
But in an email I received today, Professor Barry Rubin discloses that the warnings about Egypt go back two years - to the beginning of the Obama administration. And that they came from inside sources and not just from the Egypt Group.
[F]or more than two years a high-ranking Egyptian official has been warning about this (though he predicted more of an elite revolt against Mubarak than a popular one). We expected generally that Mubarak would die or be disabled, pass the presidency on to his son, and then the elite would revolt and throw out the Mubaraks. The popular revolt gave them an opportunity to do this earlier (and also because Mubarak literally lived too long.)

That is the hidden story here. I don't know if Ferguson knows about this but what he said was not far off the mark.
Carl attributes Obama's failure to act on the warnings to tunnel vision as to the creation of a Palestinian state, while I attribute it to an obsession with domestic priorities, and primarily Obamacare.

Regardless, one thing is becoming clear: The Obama administration dropped the ball on Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East despite having received detailed warnings about trouble to come.

When it comes to Egypt, we already know what Obama knew and when he knew it.

http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...did-obama.html
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Old 02-20-2011, 02:31 PM
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Exclamation Top Muslim Brotherhood Leader: Islamists Have Been Directing Protests in Egypt

Top Muslim Brotherhood Leader: Islamists Have Been Directing Protests in Egypt

Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, February 20, 2011, 10:32 AM



Well, this is reassuring.Top Muslim Brotherhood leader in Egypt Kamal Helbawi told the Iranian News Agency this weekend that Islamists were directing the protests in Egypt.


(IRNA)

The Islamic Republic News Agency reported:
Top Muslim Brotherhood leader in Egypt Kamal Helbawi underlined the Islamic nature of revolution in his country and said the young generation of Muslim Brotherhood had a very good role in taking people to the streets and protecting them in Tahrir Square.

Helbawi, who is in Tehran to attend the International Conference on Islamic Unity, in an exclusive interview with IRNA on Saturday said Egyptians’ demands come from their interest in Islam.

‘People of Egypt are seeking human dignity, social justice, and their human rights none of which has any contradiction with Islamic principles,’ said Helbawi.

Stressing that the west is trying to downplay the revolution of people in Egypt, Helbawi said, ‘Organizing several million-strong rallies shows that some leaders, many of whom are Islamists, have been directing people.’

Responding to a question about Camp David Accords, the former spokesman of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said, ‘People of Egypt cannot accept an agreement which is based on injustice and has ignored the rights of Palestinians.’

‘We cannot respect such agreements and won’t approve of them,’ he said.

Helbawi expressed hope that the military council, ruling Egypt after Mubark, will heed legitimate demands of Egyptians and respond positively to them.

http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.co...ests-in-egypt/

How many people understand that they are doing this all over?

Joy
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Old 03-19-2011, 08:42 AM
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Egypt to Vote Tomorrow on Constitutional Amendments



Lee Smith

March 18, 2011 2:45 PM




Cairo
Demonstrators have been in Tahrir Square all day to rally voters for tomorrow’s referendum to ratify six amended articles of the country’s constitution. The content of the particular amendments—including term limits on the presidency and qualifications for the executive office—is less significant than the political impact of the vote. This first of three scheduled elections (parliamentary and presidential to follow) to take place between now and September may be the most important of all. A "yes" vote ratifying the articles may mean that Egypt’s revolution is over—or that it was a Muslim Brotherhood-driven campaign from the outset.

Both the Islamists—the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups like the relatively moderate Wasat party and a newly formed party of younger Islamist activists named Nahda (or renaissance)—and the military are pushing for the yes vote. Some analysts have speculated that the Islamists are fearful that unless these amendments are passed, Article 2 of the constitution, which designates Islamic Sharia as the primary source of legislation, might come under scrutiny. It’s true that liberals, secularists and Christians all dislike Article 2, but as other analysts have noted, a referendum on Article 2 would lead to a conflict no one looks forward to, perhaps even civil war.

“This is not about specific articles,” says Amr Bargisi, a senior partner in the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth. “It is about the opposing political forces pushing for the two options.” Bargisi explains that while the Brotherhood and the military want the yes vote, everyone else from the protests movement is on the other side, pushing for no. “This is the true essence of polarization,” Bargisi continues. “It’s about how much of a role you want for traditional forces. The no voters are seeking a totally new Egypt, and want a protracted transitional period. If on the other hand we follow traditional procedures, we go back to where we were.”

A yes vote serves the Muslim Brotherhood, says Bargisi, “because it is the only experienced political faction outside the former president’s National Democratic Party. The Brotherhood is better at negotiating, and cutting deals than the other players.”

The rest of the revolution’s players are barely organized. The liberals in particular are in disarray. “They’ve been excluded for decades and were manipulated by the regime,” Hala Mustafa, editor of the political journal Democracy, tells me. “They’re fragmented, and then there’s personal competition,” she explains. For instance, head of the Ghad party Ayman Nour and leader of the Democratic Front Osama Harb, have ignored chances to pool their resources and are instead vying for supporters. “The liberals want more time to organize,” Mustafa says.

A no vote means that they’ll get that chance since the constitution will be referred to a different procedure—one that no one seems to understand since it is still undecided and will finally fall to the military to make the call—and will push back parliamentary elections. A yes vote will be followed by the parliamentary elections due to take place in September. The Muslim Brotherhood will come to the fore, winning perhaps the entire 30 percent of seats they promised to limit their bid to and, perhaps more importantly, the favor of a military that since it is extremely uncomfortable about ruling the country directly is very eager to get back to business as usual.

A yes vote means that Egyptians also want to return to business as usual, and so the vote tomorrow is a referendum on the revolution. “Yes means there will be little legitimacy for the demonstrations any more,” says Bargisi. “The notion that people demonstrating were out there for democracy and representing all Egyptians will fail. The revolutionaries will be seen to be a minority, and that from the beginning there weren’t all that many people who supported their demands.”

Conversely, since the Islamists are campaigning for yes, an overwhelming response that way could indicate that it is the Muslim Brotherhood aspect of the revolution that Egyptians support. In any case, a yes vote will constitute a reactionary gesture, one signaling a moment that predates the Mubarak regime, which gave no quarter to the Muslim Brotherhood. “It’s a scenario close to the 1952 Free Officers Revolution,” says Bargisi. “You had the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, which the military disposed of easily, and you wound up with Nasser.”

Turnout is expected to be high for a vote that may decide whether Egypt follows the path of democracy laid out by its young revolutionaries in Tahrir Square, or instead slouches toward a 21st-century pan-Arabist, pan-Islamist populism.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/...ts_554784.html
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