COMMENT: Catching up with that shining champion of human freedom and dignity Mohamed Morsi, we note a number of developments consistent with what we predicted during “The Muslim Brotherhood Spring,” as we termed it.
With the reign of the U.S.-backed autocrats in the Middle East having run its course, the elevation of the Muslim Brotherhood to a position of dominance in the Arab and Muslim world appears to have been the goal of the so-called “Arab Spring”–a massive gambit undertaken during the second administration of George W. Bush.
Incrementally realizing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi is behaving true to form. Recent developments include:
- Morsi responding to massive protests against the Islamist-crafted constitution by declaring emergencies in three cities–invoking precisely the types of tactics that infuriated the Egyptian people against Mubarak.
- A TV comedian compared to Jon Stewart of the “Daily Show” (on which he appeared) is under judicial investigation for insulting Morsi.
- An Egyptian rights group has noted the continued use of torture and violence by the Egyptian security forces, another of the aspects of Mubarak’s rule that outraged the Egyptian people.
- An Egyptian Imam issued a fatwa calling for the murder of Morsi’s secular opponents, this in the wake of the murder of a key secular opposition figure in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring first manifested.
- The disclosure of some virulently anti-Semitic comments made by Morsi on Egyptian television. Attempting damage control in a meeting with U.S. politicians, Morsi deflected responsibility onto the “Jewish controlled media” in the U.S.
- The disclosure that Egyptian Islamists were involved in both the Benghazi attack and the assault on the natural gas facility in Algeria.
EXCERPT: President Mohamed Morsi declared a state of emergency and a curfew in three major cities on Sunday, as escalating violence in the streets threatened his government and Egypt’s democracy.
By imposing a one-month state of emergency in Suez, Ismailia and here in Port Said, where the police have lost all control, Mr. Morsi’s declaration chose to use one of the most despised weapons of former President Hosni Mubarak’s autocracy. Under Mubarak-era laws left in effect by the country’s new Constitution, a state of emergency suspends the ordinary judicial process and most civil rights. It gives the president and the police extraordinary powers.
Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president and a leader of the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, took the step after four days of clashes in Cairo and in cities around the country between the police and protesters denouncing his government. . . .
EXCERPT: Prosecutors in Cairo opened a criminal investigation on Tuesday into allegations that a popular television comedian, Bassem Youssef, who has taken special aim at ultraconservative Islamists on his program, had insulted Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, during his satirical monologues.
The accusations against Mr. Youssef come amid growing fears among Egypt’s media professionals that the country’s newly ratified Constitution offers scant protections for freedom of expression.
Since Mr. Morsi was elected in June, the authorities have opened investigations into several media figures accused of insulting him or the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group he once led.
An Islamist lawyer who filed the complaint against Mr. Youssef, Ramadan al-Aqsuri, said a skit in which the comedian printed a picture of Mr. Morsi’s face on a red pillow amounted to a “sharp attack on the person of the president.” Separately, a Muslim Brotherhood lawyer filed a lawsuit asking the state to pull Mr. Youssef’s show off the air and to close down the channel that carries it, citing “sarcasm against the president.”
EXCERPT: An Egyptian rights group on Tuesday accused the country’s police of “acting like a gang,” torturing detainees and using violence to impose control. The report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights documented 16 cases of police violence in which 11 people were killed and 10 were tortured inside police stations. Three died under torture during the first four months after President Mohammed Morsi took office on June 30, it said. The police were among the most hated state institutions under Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed in a popular revolt in 2011. “Police still use excessive force, and torture is still systematic just as it was under the Mubarak regime,” the report said. It also accused the police of carrying out random shootings and collective punishment. . . .
EXCERPT: Anti-Islamists protested in several Egyptian cities on Friday, lobbing firebombs and blocking subway lines in Cairo, as demonstrations took on an anxious cast following recent death threats against Egypt’s top secular politicians.
Egypt’s government added officers to security details guarding secular-leaning opposition leaders on Thursday, according to their press officers. The move came after a well-known hard-line religious leader—Mahmoud Shabaan, a scholar at Egypt’s eminent Al Azhar University and one of several firebrand preachers on conservative Egyptian television stations—issued a religious ruling last week that called for the deaths of Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa, among others leaders of Egypt’s National Salvation Front, the main secular opposition alliance.
Mr. Shabaan’s fatwa attracted little notice when issued, but it gained attention after the murder earlier this week of Chokri Belaid, a secularist political leader in Tunisia. His slaying sparked continued protests Friday in the capital, Tunis. . . .
EXCERPT: The United States said Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi should repudiate remarks he made in 2010 calling on Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington condemns the comments made by President Morsi at a time when he led the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. In one of the 2010 videos, Morsi said Egyptian children must feed on that hatred as a form of worshipping God.
“The language that we’ve seen is deeply offensive. We completely reject these statements as we do any language that espouses religious hatred,” said Nuland.
In a separate 2010 interview, Morsi described Zionists as “bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians; these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.” . . .
“Morsi: The Jews Distorted My Anti-Semitic Comments” by Simon Plosker; Backspin; 1/24/2013.
EXCERPT: . . . At first, the Egyptian president defended himself by saying he did not harbor negative feelings about Judaism or Jewish people.
He then launched a diatribe about Israeli policies against the Palestinians, Senator Chris Coons (D‑DE) told Foreign Policy. “He was attempting to explain himself … then he said, ‘Well, I think we all know that the media in the United States has made a big deal of this and we know the media of the United States is controlled by certain forces and they don’t view me favorably,’” Coons told the magazine’s The Cable blog.
Asked if Morsi specifically named the Jews as the forces that control the American media, Coons replied that all the senators believed the implication was obvious. “He did not say [the Jews], but I watched as the other senators physically recoiled, as did I,” Coons said. “I thought it was impossible to draw any other conclusion.” . . .
“Some Algeria Attackers Are Placed at Benghazi” by Adam Nossiter; The New York Times; 1/23/2013.
EXCERPT: Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay bloody siege to an Algerian gas complex last week also took part in the deadly attack on the United States Mission in Libya in September, a senior Algerian official said Tuesday.
The Egyptians involved in both attacks were killed by Algerian forces during the four-day ordeal that ended in the deaths of at least 38 hostages and 29 kidnappers, the official said. But three of the militants were captured alive, and one of them described the Egyptians’ role in both assaults under interrogation by the Algerian security services, the official said. . . .
Well Dave, as we expected, unfortunately, Morsi’s practically an Islamist modern-day Mussolini.
Somebody had better warn Newt that if he was planning on running for president of his moon colony, he’s going to have some competition:
Godspeed Mr. Morsi. Godspeed.
You have to wonder if these protests we’re seeing in Turkey aren’t the start of something much bigger. Muslim Brotherhood mismanagement can only go on for so long in a country before we should start expecting to see Arab Spring-style ambitions. It’s one of problems with being a theocratic movement: you might have fervent followers, but you also naturally unify the opposition because theocrats are scary. And you generally mismanage things because theocratic are stupid. Being scary and stupid makes you an easy target, even if you’re the biggest scary stupid group on the scene. Muslim Brotherhood policies are, metaphorically speaking, socioeconomic time-bomb factories. It’s a scary and stupid way to run a society and it’s one of the long-term issues the Muslim Brotherhood has yet to address.
@Pterrafractyl–
Indeed! I’ll have a post on Erdogan’s “neo-Ottoman” manifestations shortly.
Note that the park that his government is razing is to be replaced, in part, by a replica of an Ottoman Empire era military barracks! (That park is the immediate point of ignition for the protests.)
As noted in FTR #‘s 737, 738, 739, the AKP is a direct offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood/al-Taqwa complex.
Interesting to note in this context is the massive infiltration of the Turkish police establishment by the Fetullah Gulen cult–sort of an Islamist manifestation of the “Specialized Knowledge and Abilities” dynamic.
Interesting, also, in that Fetullah Gulen appears to be aided by the GOP/Underground Reich element of CIA.
Graham E. Fuller–advocate of the “Turn to the Brotherhood” and apparently part of the Tsarnaev brothers control structure–has run interference for the cult.
PLEASE do not fail to note the post highlighting the Robert E. Kaplan article.
When I have more time and energy–I’m steadily recovering from a serious health episode but am still not 100%–I may do a post about what I feel lies behind the “Turn to the Brotherhood.”
It is truly enormous. I believe that Islam is being promoted as a primary vehicle for implementing fascism and reactionary values throughout the Third World and Earth Island, as well as the U.S. and elsewhere.
When you see Grover Norquist and Karl Rove creating The Islamic Free Market Institute in combination with the Al-Taqwa milieu, that milieu being busted in the 3/20/2002 Operation Green Quest raids for funding al-Qaeda, Talat Othman interceding on behalf of the individuals and institutions targeted by the raids, all of these interests being given a free pass by the DOJ, and the news media–including the blogosphere–ignoring this, you KNOW something BIG is happening.
(I don’t take the caterwauling by the news media over the DOJ’s searching the phone records of the “Dissociated Press” seriously, past a point. Holder is a prick, but the media are handmaidens of tyranny and–literally–accessories after the fact in many of the crimes I’ve presented over the decades. An assault on the “Freedom of the Press?! Give me a break. You can’t assault what doesn’t exist.)
The Boston bombing is but one small outgrowth of the neo-Ottoman/“turn to the Brotherhood” dynamic.
The “turn to the Brotherhood” is HUGE and the neo-Ottoman ambitions of Erdogan and company have very, very powerful institutional support.
As The Earth Island Boogie gains momentum, it will turn to a lethal game of musical chairs, with those who espouse democracy and egalitarianism being left out, to their great discomfort and ultimate demise.
Viva Attaturk!
Best,
Dave
@Dave:
If Erdogan’s response this weekend is any indication of what to expect the situation in Turkey bound to become much bigger. On Saturday, he said “If you gather a hundred thousand people, I will gather a million”, in response to the mass protests. That was a rather defiant tone on Erdogan’s part considering that Turkey’s Interior Minister reported that more than 1700 people have been arrested in protests in 67 cities. And on Sunday he appeared to be denouncing the “dictator” label while marginalizing the opposition (and twitter). That’s sounds like a rallying to call for a Muslim Brotherhood counter-presence in the street protests and who knows how big that kind of confrontation could get in terms of the overall societal response. Erdogan looks emboldened and Turkey’s youth look pissed so even if the Muslim Brotherhood wins the security fight they might lose the future public opinion during a time like this. The basic hopelessness of the Muslim Brotherhood’s worldview is going to be really problematic with the massive Muslim youth populace across the globe. It’s a demoralizing reality to have a nut job like Erdogan ruling you and it’s only going to become a torturous reality as the realities of climate change and general global economic turmoil continue to accelerate. Turkey isn’t just another canary in the coal mine. It’s one of the oldest Muslim Brotherhood experiments around. And even decent economic growth in this instance isn’t enough to offset their other awful policies.
http://arabnews.com/news/457444
Arab Spring: Mirror, mirror on the wall
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Abdulateef Al-Muhlim
Tuesday 9 July 2013
Last Update 9 July 2013 1:48 am
In the past, whenever an American secretary of state arrived in any Middle Eastern country, it would be primetime news. He would meet the highest political figures and his/her visit would be given the maximum news coverage with everyone hoping for an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
John Kerry, the current US secretary of state, came and went and no one knew about his many visits. He wanted to restart the negotiation process, but the Arabs are busy with their never-ending Arab Spring and the Israeli military and political figures are in no rush because they are watching Arabs kill each other. Whenever they have extra time, they watch an Arab TV show called, the “Arab Idol.”
Ofir Gendelman, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister and Avichay Adraee, Israeli Defense Forces spokesman, said it is part of their job to watch “Arab Idol.” I thought their job is to keep an eye on the threat that Arab Spring countries pose to Israel. However, why would the Syrians have killed hundreds and thousands of their own people and displaced more than four million? The Israelis couldn’t pull something like this off, but the Arab Spring did it for them.
According to news media, the Arab Spring caught the world by surprise on Dec. 18, 2010. I will, however, add that the Arab Spring didn’t come out of the blue. It is an accumulation of years of political corruption, human rights violations, sectarianism, poor education systems and unemployment. To sum it all up, the Arabs were not fighting the enemy, they were sleeping with it. This is why it is impossible to analyze and forecast the outcome of the Arab Spring. The Arab world never looks at mirrors. We don’t like to say mirror, mirror on the wall because mirrors don’t lie and we don’t want to know the truth. We can’t handle it.
During the Arab Spring, I read a lot of analyses about the root of the Arab Spring — it is decades of hiding from reality, chasing a mirage of enemies, conspiracies and blaming the outside world. We never blamed our systems for the many failures to develop the Arab mind. We talk about Sykes-Picot, imperialism and Zionism, but we never look at the mirrors on the wall. Some people, however, did.
On June 15, 2013 a Saudi columnist who I have never met wrote an article in the Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq titled “Israel, the everlasting Arab treasure.” The columnist, Abdusalam Alwael, is a very highly educated Saudi who gained a bachelor’s degree from a Saudi university, his master’s degree from a university in California and his doctorate degree from a university in Virginia. He basically said that Israel was a bounty for Arab dictators who use the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to rule their countries and make a lot of money by just issuing hollow threats to Israel. Israel is a moneymaking machine for Arab dictators and many Palestinian corrupt officials. In other words, the Arab dictators have forgotten to develop their countries and innocent people have paid for it with their own lives. This is the reality of the Arab Spring.
Everyone knows the truth, but we won’t admit it. During the Arab Spring, we saw our real faces in the mirrors. It showed that the Arabs were never united and are now divided beyond anybody’s imagination. We hate each other more than we hate the outside enemy. This is why no one in the Arab world showed any sympathy to the Syrians when Israeli planes attacked Syrian targets a few weeks ago. As a matter of fact, even hardcore anti-Israelis wished the Israeli planes had continued eastward and attacked the Syrian Presidential Palace and killed an Arab leader named Bashar Assad. In other words, many in the Arab world sided with Israel against an Arab country. After the attack, we saw many Syrians approach the Israeli-fortified checkpoints in the Golan Heights, not to attack Israeli soldiers, but to seek refuge and get medical attention. I am not talking about simple medical care. I am talking about major surgeries like the four-year-old Syrian girl who got a heart transplant at Wolfson Hospital in Holon, Israel.
This is the real Arab Spring. Syrians are hurting Syrians and the Israelis are the ones who treat the Syrian wounds. Yes, the Arab Spring is a joke and I mean a very bad joke. The Arab Spring is not about seeking democracy, it is about Arabs killing Arabs. And this is why Israeli soldiers are busy on the Golan Heights. They are not busy with loading ammunition; they are busy picking cherries and other fruits. What is more, they are also busy giving guided tours to show the world Syrian planes targeting civilians, Scud missiles destroying villages and tanks attacking schools and mosques. What goes inside Syria is more horrific.
Syrian men humiliate Syrian women in front of their relatives, rape and kill them. It is not only the killing that is ugly. We saw a Syrian kill another Syrian and then open his chest with a knife and take a bite of his heart. It can’t get any uglier.
Now, mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the ugliest of them all? Well, they are all ugly. It has turned out that the Arab Spring is not about a search for democracy, social justice and better standards of living. The Arab Spring is all about hate and sectarian violence. The world didn’t hear anything about rebuilding the countries or eradicating poverty. The talk is all about fighting among the same people from the same country.
Just look at the land of one of the oldest civilizations, Egypt. A country that failed to bring one, just one iconic figure like Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King — individuals who talk about peace and harmony and are respected the world over. Not someone who enjoys destroying his own country and killing his own people.