Sad news to be sure, but one can only hope that the Egypt­ian peo­ple will even­tu­al­ly wake up to these SOBs as well as the Mubaraks and the al-Assads out there.

Look at it this way, folks: The Tea Par­ty was a fas­cist-spon­sored move­ment that tried to pull sim­i­lar shenani­gans here in the States. Like the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, they too, are reli­gious far-right pro-fas­cist fanat­ics. They, too, man­aged to win sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence in an election(2010). But here’s the thing: Already, only a year after their elec­tion, there has been a sig­nif­i­cant back­lash against them, and many are wak­ing up, even some con­ser­v­a­tives!
Things may take a lit­tle longer in Egypt but if we Amer­i­cans can start to wake up, then there is hope.......

Well, at least these extrem­ists say they’re mod­er­ate:

...
Final results from the round, which cov­ered nine of Egyp­t’s 27 provinces, will be issued Thurs­day night. The Broth­er­hood appeared con­vinced it sur­passed already high expec­ta­tions. Saleh, for exam­ple, boast­ed the group won 50 per­cent. But the true extent of its win was not yet known. In rur­al provinces in par­tic­u­lar, the main par­ty of the ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive Islamist Salafis, who are more hard-line than the Broth­er­hood, appeared to do sur­pris­ing­ly well, cut­ting into the Broth­er­hood vote. In oth­er places, the main lib­er­al-sec­u­lar group­ing made a strong show­ing.

...

Saleh, who ran as a Broth­er­hood can­di­date in the Mediter­ranean coastal city of Alexan­dria and was heav­i­ly favored to win, said the rul­ing coun­cil must coor­di­nate with the par­lia­ment. “The pub­lic mood in Egypt now is against dic­ta­tor­ship,” he said.

He spoke of the Broth­er­hood as the major­i­ty force that must be allowed to shape the next stages. He boast­ed that the group won 50 per­cent of the vote and “this per­cent­age will be high­er in the future.”

Saleh said the Broth­er­hood would seek a broad gov­ern­ment includ­ing lib­er­al par­ties, not a strict­ly “Islamist” coali­tion with the Salafis.

“We seek diver­si­ty because we believe that we don’t live alone in Egypt. We will be the core of mod­er­a­tion in par­lia­ment,” he said. “If the extrem­ists want to go too far to the right, they will find them­selves alone in this cor­ner.”

...

And in oth­er news....

Giv­en the unfold­ing elec­tion results in Egypt, I have a good nom­i­nee for Egyp­t’s future finance min­is­ter(now let’s all enjoy a clas­sic 2008 Ahamdine­jad dec­la­ra­tion):

Mar­tyr­dom would solve Iran’s eco­nom­ic woes: Ahmadine­jad

(AFP) – Apr 24, 2008

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad has said the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic woes can be solved by the “cul­ture of mar­tyr­dom, the Mehr news agency report­ed.

“If we want to build the coun­try, main­tain our dig­ni­ty and solve eco­nom­ic prob­lems, we need the cul­ture of mar­tyr­dom,” Ahmadine­jad was quot­ed as say­ing in a speech on Wednes­day in the west­ern city of Hamedan.

He described mar­tyr­dom, dying or being killed for one’s reli­gious beliefs, as “a quick and short­cut way to reach the sum­mit of sal­va­tion.”

He did not say how becom­ing a mar­tyr would help the econ­o­my, which is strug­gling from high infla­tion.

The pres­i­dent was speak­ing a day after oust­ed econ­o­my min­is­ter Davoud Danesh Jaa­fari became the lat­est per­son to launch a with­er­ing attack on him for his uncon­ven­tion­al eco­nom­ic poli­cies.

Ahmadine­jad has been crit­i­cised for pump­ing exces­sive liq­uid­i­ty into the econ­o­my to fund infra­struc­ture projects, caus­ing huge mon­ey sup­ply growth and trig­ger­ing Iran’s cur­rent infla­tion of around 18 per­cent.

How­ev­er, crit­ics believe the real infla­tion rate exceeds 25 per­cent, and have accused Ahmadine­jad of mak­ing unsci­en­tif­ic deci­sions in eco­nom­ic mat­ters.

Ahmadine­jad rejects such crit­i­cism.

“When we insist­ed on cut­ting bank inter­est rates some object­ed and said this is not sci­en­tif­ic, but we tell them that if they are not men of jus­tice, they had bet­ter clear the way and leave,” he was quot­ed on Thurs­day by the Etemad Mel­li news­pa­per as say­ing.

Last year, Ahmadine­jad slashed inter­est rates of state and pri­vate banks to 12 per­cent, trig­ger­ing a sud­den demand for loans that econ­o­mists blame for adding fur­ther expan­sion­ary heat to an already infla­tion­ary econ­o­my.

The Cen­tral Bank of Iran, head­ed by Tah­masb Maza­heri, is argu­ing for an increase in inter­est rates.

In his remarks on Wednes­day, for­mer econ­o­my min­is­ter Jaa­fari said “dur­ing my time, there was no pos­i­tive atti­tude towards pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences or expe­ri­enced peo­ple and there was no plan for the future.

“Most of the sci­en­tif­ic eco­nom­ic con­cepts like the effect of liq­uid­i­ty on infla­tion were put in ques­tion,” he said.

...

So Ahmedine­jad first blew a finan­cial bub­ble on easy mon­ey and crony gov­ern­ment con­tracts, then engaged in “uncon­ven­tion­al” eco­nom­ic poli­cies while the bub­ble burst, call­ing for an econo-Jihad and slash­ing rates while the banks engaged in a free-mon­ey trades for use in spec­u­la­tive invest­ments? Actu­al­ly Egypt might need to find anoth­er finance min­is­ter because I think Mah­moud is just what the ECB ordered!

And scar­i­ly enough, his pro-infla­tion­ary poli­cies at the time might actu­al­ly be an improve­ment now...minus Mah­moud’s “kill your­self for your reli­gious beliefs” stim­u­lus pol­i­cy. That’s one pol­i­cy approach we don’t want to see return­ing to the euro­zone.

It’s not sur­pris­ing to hear about Islamist women refus­ing to remove their veils when vot­ing, but what exact­ly is the Shari­ah law that pro­hibits dip­ping your fin­gers in ink?:

ESD­P’s Zahran accus­es Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Salafists of vote rig­ging

Farid Zahran, a lead­ing mem­ber of the Egypt­ian Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, says Islamists are com­mit­ting a range of elec­toral vio­la­tions
Ahram Online, Mon­day 28 Nov 2011

In state­ments to Ahram Online, Farid Zahran, a lead­ing mem­ber of the Egypt­ian Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (ESDP) accused the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Salafists of com­mit­ting wide-scale vio­la­tions of the par­lia­men­tary vote, includ­ing bal­lot stuff­ing.

Zahran expressed his shock that the Broth­er­hood, which had suf­fered repres­sion and vote rig­ging in pre­vi­ous elec­tions, should now pur­sue the same tac­tics that were used against them by the Mubarak regime, to improve the elec­toral lot of their Free­dom and Jus­tice Par­ty (FJP).

Accord­ing to Zahran, ful­ly veiled women sup­port­ers of the FJP and the Salafist par­ties have been refus­ing to reveal their faces or to dip their fin­gers in phos­phor­ic ink, which allows to vote more than once. They have also been harass­ing non-veiled women.

Zahran also accused the MB of stuff­ing bal­lots in sev­er­al vot­ing sta­tions in Lux­or, Aswan and Fay­oum. In some of these con­stituen­cies they also barred Cop­tic cit­i­zens from enter­ing the polling sta­tions to cast their votes.

The most preva­lent vio­la­tion of polling rules by the Islamist par­ties, accord­ing to Zahran, is their con­tin­u­ing cam­paign­ing in front of polling sta­tions in open vio­la­tion of the ban on cam­paign­ing 48 hours before the vote.

Thou­sands of MB “youth vol­un­teers”, accus­es Zahran, who have entered polling sta­tions around the coun­try osten­si­bly to help illit­er­ate vot­ers cast their bal­lots are direct­ing these vot­ers to vote for the FJP.

The poor orga­ni­za­tion of the vot­ing process, the lack of suf­fi­cient bal­lot­ing papers, the late open­ing of vot­ing sta­tions, says Zahran, have all con­tributed to irreg­u­lar­i­ties that have already marred Egypt’s first post-Mubarak elec­tions.

Per­haps this explains, in part, the “sur­pris­ing” results for the Salafists? Well, at least they weren’t able to Diebold to the whole thing remote­ly. It could be worse.

Such a just Broth­er­hood:

Mus­lim Broth­er­hood bends rules and expects to win big in Egypt

By Char­lene Gubash

CAIRO – The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has already start­ed col­or­ing out­side the lines in order to win a major­i­ty in Egypt’s par­lia­men­tary elec­tions.
...

Based on our own obser­va­tions at polling sta­tions across Cairo and anec­do­tal evi­dence, they seem to have won sup­port at the polls by bend­ing the rules in their favor.

Free food and cheap meat
In Cairo’s Sai­da Zeinab neigh­bor­hood, at one of the busiest polling cen­ters in the city, we saw a par­ty mem­ber and two oth­er sup­port­ers of an inde­pen­dent can­di­date pass­ing out leaflets to vot­ers wait­ing in long lines to cast their bal­lots – in clear vio­la­tion of elec­tion laws. Sol­diers who were on site for crowd con­trol, did noth­ing to stop them. At the same spot, a tech-savvy FJP mem­ber sat on a bench, lap­top in hand, to con­duct exit polls. At oth­er polling sta­tions, they pro­vid­ed polling infor­ma­tion to baf­fled vot­ers.

In a more eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged part of Cairo known as “The Slaugh­ter­house,” Hanan Nasr, a moth­er of three, watched FJP mem­bers pass out free pack­ages of rice and oil to vot­ers on their way to the polling sta­tion – again in con­tra­ven­tion of cam­paign law. They also bused in par­ty mem­bers from sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hoods.

Vot­er con­fu­sion played into the hands of the FJP. Many vot­ers sim­ply did not know who the can­di­dates were because of the sheer num­ber of most­ly unknown can­di­dates (4,000), unknown par­ties (35 new ones since Pres­i­dent Hos­ni Mubarak fell from pow­er) and a com­pli­cat­ed vot­ing sys­tem requir­ing choic­es of farmer, labor and inde­pen­dent can­di­dates.

For those who did not under­stand the vot­ing sys­tem, the FJP had peo­ple on hand before the elec­tion to explain how to make their bal­lots count – for FJP can­di­dates.

Although Nasr vot­ed for a lib­er­al par­ty, her son, Ali, opt­ed for the only par­ty he was famil­iar with, the FJP. Some FJP mem­bers had been sign­ing up vot­ers in Nasr’s neigh­bor­hood in the run up to the elec­tion and dis­trib­uted free school sup­plies. And before the recent Eid al-Adha or Feast of the Sac­ri­fice hol­i­day, the one time of year when every­body in Egypt must have meat to cel­e­brate the hol­i­day, the FJP sold meat at half the mar­ket price to Cairo’s many dis­ad­van­taged.

Clear­ly, the FJP struck a chord with vot­ers. Most of those we spoke to said they were vot­ing FJP because they were well orga­nized, helped the poor, and would uphold reli­gious law.

“They look to God,” said taxi dri­ver Saad Abdul Aziz, who vot­ed FJP. “They must be just.”

Shift­ing promis­es
In the wake of the rev­o­lu­tion, the FJP ini­tial­ly promised to com­pete for only 30 per­cent of par­lia­men­tary seats, in order not to fright­en civ­il soci­ety and the inter­im mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment. They grad­u­al­ly upped that fig­ure to 100 per­cent.

Like­wise, a promise not to field pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates was soon bro­ken. The FJP had joined a much larg­er polit­i­cal bloc of sec­u­lar and reli­gious par­ties run­ning for pres­i­dent, but the alliance fell apart when the FJP tried to dom­i­nate par­ty lists.

...

I real­ly hope Shari­ah law does­n’t man­date rig­ging elec­tions to ensure Islamists win because that won’t bode well for Egypt.

@Pterrafractyl: It’s like there build­ing them to be eas­i­ly “man-in-the-mid­dle” attacked, set­ting them up as such.

“John­ston said the machine is “incred­i­bly easy to tam­per with” because all the cru­cial elec­tron­ic com­po­nents are acces­si­ble and can be eas­i­ly mod­i­fied. The Accu­vote TS’ enclo­sure isn’t tam­per resis­tant so hjack­ers can work on the machine with­out leav­ing vis­i­ble signs, he added.”

I’m lis­ten­ing cur­rent­ly to AFA broad­casts Aryan Nations: Could such net­works be deployed, on mass, to exe­cute these “man in the mid­dle” attacks?

@grumpusrex: Yeah, remote­ly hack­able machines are pret­ty much the dream sce­nario because it’s so easy to hide your tracks and the cul­prits include any­one with an inter­net con­nec­tion. It also rais­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of two or more inde­pen­dent groups (from wher­ev­er in the world) hack­ing and counter-hack­ing the same vote. Cit­i­zens Unit­ed was­n’t the only recent trend that raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of for­eign influ­ence over US elec­tions.

@Grumpus: You know, I’ve been want­i­ng to ask a ques­tion like that for a long time now, and why the Aryan Nations and all the oth­er fringe-right Estab­lish­ment lack­eys haven’t tried some­thing already(or if they have but just haven’t suc­ceed­ed yet).

Ouch! It’s got to hurt when you stuff the bal­lots and still come up short. It sounds like they even stuffed the Chechen bal­lots. Yeah, I’m sure the Chechens just love Putin.

@Pterrafractyl: I ough­ta show this to the guys at ‘Demo­c­ra­t­ic Under­ground’. =)

Sur­pris­ing­ly, Ger­many has begun to show signs of ner­vos­i­ty toward the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and is seek­ing to find ways to weak­en its influ­ence. The argu­ment is that oth­er­wise, the Mid­dle East will become increas­ing­ly anti-west­ern, and I agree. It is cer­tain­ly inter­est­ing to watch such a rever­sal of sit­u­a­tion. Here is an arti­cle by For­eign Pol­i­cy and one of its source in Ger­man:

http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/57981?PHPSESSID=3t1t73u6rupsbk751u1dkfda52

https://zeitschrift-ip.dgap.org/de/ip-die-zeitschrift/archiv/jahrgang-2011/november-dezember/unverw%C3%BCstliche-muslimbruderschaft

@Claude: Sad­ly, I sus­pect a big fac­tor influ­enc­ing the Ger­man elites’ atti­tude towards the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Mid­dle East­ern sta­bil­i­ty in gen­er­al will have a lot to do with their poten­tial to prof­it from surg­ing ener­gy costs via the grow­ing ties between Ger­many’s ener­gy giants and Gazprom. And that applies to the rest of the EU. The evo­lu­tion of the shar­ing of ownership/profits of the grow­ing EU/Gazprom ener­gy dis­tri­b­u­tion infra­struc­ture will be a sto­ry to watch going for­ward:

...
The com­pa­ny is mak­ing the most of its priv­i­leged sta­tus. The Russ­ian monop­o­list, which is believed to con­trol one sixth of the world’s nat­ur­al gas reserves, has already carved out a 40 per­cent chunk of the Ger­man gas mar­ket. Now with Enva­com, it appears hun­gry for even more.

The Wies­baden-based com­pa­ny, to be renamed Gazprom Mar­ket­ing and Trad­ing Retail Ger­ma­nia, already sells elec­tric­i­ty to 500,000 cus­tomers but has no expe­ri­ence in retail gas oper­a­tions.

Tough nego­ti­at­ing part­ner

Gazprom says fur­ther acqui­si­tions in Ger­many are under con­sid­er­a­tion. It has already estab­lished sim­i­lar retail oper­a­tions in Britain, Ire­land, France and the Nether­lands.

Yet, despite its grow­ing pres­ence in Ger­many and expand­ing retail oper­a­tions in Europe, the Russ­ian com­pa­ny has encoun­tered a tough nego­ti­at­ing part­ner in the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, which seeks to unbun­dle the gas pipeline infra­struc­ture.

If Brus­sels gets its way, it would see Gazprom’s exten­sive pipeline infra­struc­ture open up to com­pe­ti­tion. So far, Rus­sia has said “nyet” to that idea.

With Gazprom quick­ly achiev­ing EU mar­ket dom­i­nance, a con­flict in the Mid­dle East dou­bles as a hel­lu­va bonan­za for EU ener­gy oli­garchs as long as they get to share in Gazprom’s spoils. It’s a loom­ing cri­sis that could also do won­ders for Putin’s desired “Eurasian Union”.

War: It’s not per­son­al, it’s busi­ness.

@Steven L.: Adding to the whole sit­u­a­tion is the alle­ga­tion that hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars of for­eign funds were influ­enc­ing the Russ­ian elec­tion and spark­ing the protests. Con­sid­er­ing Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and remote vot­ing machine hack­ing, we real­ly have to won­der how long it will be before the US makes the same alle­ga­tion towards a for­eign pow­er in future elec­tions.

Then again, a reverse alle­ga­tion would require the US estab­lish­ment to take seri­ous­ly the pos­si­bil­i­ty of machine hack­ing or giant for­eign-influ­ence loop­holes in our elec­tions so I’m not hold­ing my breath for a reverse alle­ga­tion. Some top­ics are too taboo for me and you.

@Claude: IMHO, at the end of the day, it’ll all depend on who takes pow­er in Ger­many. If the peo­ple who’ll help Under­ground Reich get in there then the MB will have just one more ally....but if an anti-elite par­ty, or par­ties, is elect­ed, then there may be a good chance that the MB may find itself with anoth­er ene­my......

“There may even have been a time when a sin­cere Arab denun­ci­a­tion of the role of the grand mufti of Jerusalem in the Holo­caust might have soft­ened a heart or two. But that time is well in the past”
Christo­pher Hitchins ‑2010

@Alkaline: Chris Hitchens.......rest his dear soul. =(

Maza­heri is men­tioned in the third com­ment on this page.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-iran-bank-head-busted-with-70-million-check/

Ex-Iran bank head bust­ed with $70 mil­lion check

Tah­masb Maza­heri, who was gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of Iran from 2007–2008, sus­pect­ed of mon­ey laun­der­ing by Ger­man author­i­ties

Feb­ru­ary 3, 2013

BERLIN (AP) — The Ger­man news­pa­per Bild am Son­ntag reports that a man caught last month try­ing to enter Ger­many with a check worth about $70 mil­lion was Iran’s for­mer cen­tral bank chief.

The week­ly reports that cus­toms offi­cials at Dues­sel­dorf air­port found the check in Tah­masb Mazaheri’s lug­gage Jan. 21 upon his arrival from Turkey.

Ger­man cus­toms had issued a state­ment Fri­day say­ing a check for 300 mil­lion Venezue­lan Boli­vars issued by the Bank of Venezuela was found on an unnamed 59-year-old man.

Nei­ther cus­toms offi­cials nor Iran’s embassy could be reached for com­ment late Sat­ur­day.

Maza­heri was the gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of Iran from 2007–2008.

Bild am Son­ntag report­ed in its Sun­day edi­tion that Ger­man police and cus­toms are inves­ti­gat­ing pos­si­ble mon­ey laun­der­ing.

Copy­right 2013 The Asso­ci­at­ed Press.

********

More details:

http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/columns/article/iranvenezuela-ties-winwin-game-for-reformists-and-conservatives_13490

In a 2012 report from The Amer­i­can For­eign Pol­i­cy Coun­cil (*NOTE: A RIGHT-WING THINK TANK), Nor­man Bai­ley wrote:

”Since 2005, with Venezuela’s assis­tance, Iran has cre­at­ed an exten­sive region­al net­work of eco­nom­ic, diplo­mat­ic, indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial activ­i­ties, with sig­nif­i­cant effect. The sum total of Iran’s declared invest­ments in the region now stands at some $20 bil­lion.”

Kayson is one of the biggest pri­vate com­pa­nies work­ing in Venezuela, but it came under scruti­ny by oppo­si­tion­al media when it was clear that it had ties with the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment.

The com­pa­ny is owned by reformist tech­nocrats, yet work close­ly with the cur­rent con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment in Iran. When it comes to mon­ey-mak­ing machines, there seems to be no war between the polit­i­cal fac­tions.

Last year, left­ist oppo­si­tion­al media accused reformist politi­cians to have shares or own­er­ship in Kayson and because of these ben­e­fits their rel­a­tives can eas­i­ly go back and fourth to Iran with­out dif­fi­cul­ty.

One of those end­ing up in the spot­light was Far­rokh Negah­dar, ex-leader of Fada­ian Khal­gh Organ­i­sa­tion (Major­i­ty), who is now a main reformist fig­ure abroad. He was accused to reap huge eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits and of being a con­formist. Negah­dar recent­ly denied the accu­sa­tion and said he is not the own­er of the com­pa­ny but stat­ed that one of his close rel­a­tives inside Iran owns it.

Last month, anoth­er scan­dal for the com­pa­ny emerged when Tah­maseb Maza­heri, Khatami’s eco­nom­ic min­is­ter and Iran’s for­mer cen­tral bank chief, was inter­ro­gat­ed at Dus­sel­dorf air­port by Ger­man police for not indi­cat­ing that he car­ried a 300 mil­lion Boli­var cheque (equiv­a­lent of near­ly $70 mil­lion). Kayson denied assump­tions that any sus­pi­cious activ­i­ties were behind the episode, say­ing Maza­heri mere­ly trans­port­ed the check as a favor to the com­pa­ny.

The inci­dent brought more curios­i­ty to the Kayson Com­pa­ny and its pos­si­ble ties to the cur­rent Iran­ian gov­ern­ment. At the same time reformists abroad, who have always warned the alter­na­tive move­ment to not go too far in its rhetoric and actions against the estab­lish­ment, seems to believe the regime is capa­ble of reform.

They write let­ters to Khamenei and put for­ward demands to the head of the judi­cia­ry to show they believe in the legit­i­ma­cy of the Islam­ic Repub­lic.

Such polit­i­cal games, nego­ti­a­tions and lob­by­ing make seg­ments of the tra­di­tion­al Iran­ian oppo­si­tion angry and ulti­mate­ly dis­sat­is­fied with any­thing less then the over­throw of the regime and the estab­lish­ment of a laïque demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic.

********

Some notes on the above items:

Some think­ing points here:

Maza­heri was eco­nom­ic min­is­ter of REFORMIST (ANTI-Ahmedine­jad) Iran pres­i­dent Mohammed Khata­mi.

Kayson (Cor­po­ra­tion) appears to be aligned with both Reformist and right-wing forces accord­ing to the arti­cle. In fact, if Kayson were a West­ern cor­po­ra­tion, it would appear to be a CIA front for all its asso­ci­a­tions.

Iran is Shia Islam and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is Sun­ni.

Venezue­la’s Hugo Chavez, for all his low-IQ, knee-jerk alliances, (and Nico­las Maduro, his suc­ces­sor) exist­ed in oppo­si­tion to Under­ground Reich forces that dom­i­nate Venezue­lan soci­ety, includ­ing the Venezue­lan petro­le­um-intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty nexus that inter­sects with its U.S. coun­ter­part.

The final ques­tion is the rel­e­vance of Maza­her­i’s des­ti­na­tion, Ger­many.