from a few days ago in Egypt-- enjoy

Salaam

Another assessment on whats happened in Egypt.

Fashioning a Coup

I understand the outrage of honest citizens who went out to protest against Mohamed Morsi on June 30 only to have their efforts branded a coup. When you’re in the middle of a crowd of boisterous humanity that stretches farther than the eye can see, nothing exists outside of that overwhelming reality. The feeling of mutual recognition and collective empowerment erases all context and constraints. As well it should. You don’t go to a protest to think carefully or make necessary distinctions. But when you exit the protest and survey the big picture, you do have to face inconvenient facts.

One such fact is that the protests were unscrupulously appropriated and packaged for ends I’m pretty sure many protesters find abhorrent. A genuine popular protest and a military coup aren’t mutually exclusive. The massive protests of June 30 came in conjunction with a much larger scheme that began very soon after Morsi took office. This long term project by entrenched state elites seeks more than simply ejecting the Muslim Brothers from power, although that’s a highly prized outcome.

The overarching goal is to systematically reverse each halting step toward subjecting the state to popular control. As Leon Trotsky wrote long ago, in the aftermath of an uprising state managers will gradually push away the masses from participation in the leadership of the country. Popular depoliticization is the grand strategy.

The amazing breakthrough that was the mass mobilization of January-February 2011 shook the grip of the ruling caste on the Egyptian state and toppled its chief, Hosni Mubarak. But, alas, it did not smash that grip. The web of top military & police officers and their foreign patrons, the managers of the civil bureaucracy, cultural & media elites, and crony businessmen firmly believe that ruling over Egypt is their birthright, and its state is their possession.

The frightful specter conjured up by January 25 of power-rotation at the top had to be exorcised once and for all, principally by habituating Egyptians into thinking that regular political competition over the state is tantamount to civil war.

It’s soothing to believe that a popular uprising ejected an incompetent Islamist president. It’s not comforting to point out that a popular uprising was on the cusp of doing so, until the generals stepped in, aborted a vital political process, arrested the president, and proclaimed their own “roadmap” for how things will be from now on.

The constant equating of democracy with disorder and the positioning of the military as the stabilizer and guarantor, this is the stuff of the resurgent Egyptian counter-revolution.

Four Vignettes

In thinking through the trauma of Morsi’s ouster by military coup, I want to focus on four vignettes from the last year that complicate the too-neat story of a heroic popular uprising against an unpopular president. These are the August 24 anti-Morsi demonstrations; the broadening of the anti-Ikhwan coalition in October; the theatrical foray by General El-Sisi into the political arena in December; and the military’s Machiavellian appropriation of the June 30 protests to activate their coup d’état on July 3.

Together, the four snapshots show not a plot spun by a mastermind but an alignment of disparate interests to oust a common enemy: the first outsider president elected from below, not handpicked from above. The fact that this man belongs to the historically excluded counter-elite of Muslim Brothers was an excellent bonus. This made it easy for the ruling caste to draw on a deep reservoir of societal antipathy to the Ikhwan, gleefully casting Morsi as the crazy-theocrat-dictator-in-cahoots-with-the-Americans-and-Qatar-who-will-steal-your-secularism-and-ban-your-whisky.

Had it been Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh or Hamdeen Sabahy or any other outsider president, executing the ouster would’ve been a lot harder but the objective would’ve been the same. Outsider presidents with no loyalty to the ruling bureaucracy will fail. Insider presidents can stay, provided that they protect the purity of the ruling caste and secure its privileges.

August: Revanchism on the Fringes

At the time, these manufactured protests against Mohamed Morsi and fronted by Tawfiq Okasha and former MP Mohamed Abu Hamed were laughed off as the ravings of unhinged lunatics working for the security services. In hindsight, the event was the deep state’s first revenge thrust against Morsi for activating his presidential powers and wading into the farthest reaches of the deep state, firing intelligence chief Mourad Mowafi and other officials, and a few days later retiring the senior SCAF generals and fatefully promoting Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to Defense Minister.

The protests launched the campaign to depict Morsi and the Ikhwan as a sinister cult bent on “infiltrating the state.” This of course is an upgraded version of the Mubarak-era canard of the Ikhwan “takeover” of any institution where they won seats in fair-and-square elections, especially in professional unions. “Brotherhoodization of the State” also made its first appearance in August, quickly migrating to the center of political discourse and becoming a main battle cry of the June 30 mobilization.

Simply run your eyes down these 15 demands of the August protests mouthed by Abu Hamed to see the origins of the claims hurled against Morsi and the Ikhwan even now after his removal.

The protests ultimately drew a small turnout and were quickly forgotten, but they planted the seed that Mohamed Morsi was unpopular and not to be trusted with steering the Egyptian state.

October: Mainstreaming anti-Ikhwanism

Conventional wisdom has it that Morsi antagonized everyone with his Nov. 21 decrees that revealed dictatorial intentions. In fact, the anti-Morsi mobilization decrying his “monopoly on power” and “Islamization of the state” started a full month earlier in October. A large protest on October 12 dubbed “Accountability Friday” was organized in Tahrir to decry presidential performance after the first 100 days and demand a different constituent assembly. Panicked Ikhwan leaders bussed in their supporters for a counter-demonstration in the square. The sight of pro- and anti-Morsi protesters clashing violently that has become so routine now made its first shocking appearance on that Friday. Islamists tore down the Tahrir stage of Morsi critics, and the FJP headquarters in Mahalla were stormed and torched.

Once political conflict took on this street depth, the anti-Morsi coalition grew from a risible revanchist fringe to virtually the entire secular political class and its constituents. Hamdeen Sabahy, Mohamed ElBaradie, and Amr Moussa, who were left in the lurch after the presidential elections now found their footing as figureheads of facile opposition, indulging in reflexive criticism of Morsi rather than the hard work of scrutinizing his policies.

Another crucial player joined the bandwagon of the president’s adversaries in October: lots of judges. Morsi’s first attempt to remove Prosecutor-General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud (a constant revolutionary demand) threatened deeply entrenched Mubarakist judges and catapulted Ahmed al-Zend to loudly lead this faction. And the Supreme Constitutional Court as an institution objected to its place in the draft constitution, reprising its never-ending conflict with the Islamists since Mubarak’s ouster.

Media covered the political conflict in alarmist tones, and was a conduit for deep state messages. A major daily “leaked” a supposedly top-secret intelligence document reporting widespread discontent at worsening economic conditions “that threatens national security.” The language of “endangering national security” is a recurrent trope in all of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s speeches this year, including his 48-hour ultimatum of July 1. The October report warned that “citizens are eager for political participation, but fear single-party dominance of the political process.” Read: the Ikhwan are taking over.

December: The Military Speaks

Instead of containing the widening anti-Ikhwan coalition, Mohamed Morsi either underestimated or belittled the gathering opposition to his rule and chose to forge ahead. On November 21 he promulgated a decree that blocked the courts from dissolving the constituent assembly and the upper house of parliament. But rather than spend time persuading the public that he was confronting entrenched interests threatened by the set-up of new institutions, Morsi essentially dumped the decrees on us as you’d drop leaflets from an airplane on a bewildered civilian population. This left the arena wide open for his now diehard and empowered opponents to spin a narrative of a dangerous power grab by a dictatorial theocratic president.

The massive street demonstrations against Morsi in November & December crystallized the trends that surfaced in October and revealed a new element: serious friction in the police-president relationship. Police were ineffectual or absent when more FJP headquarters were attacked across the country. Morsi and Ikhwan powerbroker Khairat al-Shater suspected that police were making themselves scarce around the presidential palace to allow protesters to storm it. Feeling double crossed by Ahmed Gamaleddin, the Mubarakist Interior Minister that Morsi had appointed as a peace offering to the police fiefdom, Morsi and Shater panicked. In a disastrous decision, they sent their cadres to violently break up the protesters’ sit-in outside Ittehadeyya Palace on December 5.

At that moment, the deed was done. The security apparatus had the Ikhwan right where it wanted them: a sinister cabal that had hijacked the Egyptian state and sicced its ruthless private militia on anyone who dared protest.

In what has to be one of the more surreal scenes in the Egyptian revolutionary saga, leaders of the state’s coercive apparatus held a press conference in which General El-Sisi extended a formal invitation to all parties, including the president, to gather round the general’s magnanimous table for a healing national dialogue. Flanked by Gamaleddin, El-Sisi acted the sage monarch, calling his fractious flock to order.

The dialogue never took place because the presidency sputtered its objections, but the blunt message got through: the president was not in full control. Between December and June, El-Sisi struck out on his own, periodically issuing portentous warnings about the impending collapse of the state.

June: The Pageantry of a Coup

Another surreal scene was the military’s use of the June 30 protests to put on a grotesque display of military prowess. Fighter jets flew above Tahrir Square, not to intimidate the massed citizens into going home as in 2011 but to package their mobilization as an assent to military rule. The planes streaked colors of the Egyptian flag in the sky and drew giant high schoolish hearts (never underestimate the mawkishness of military PR). Helicopters dropped flags on the masses, lending a martial visual uniformity to an essentially diverse populace. Posters of General El-Sisi were held aloft. Police officers in their summer whites gleefully engaged in protest, some theatrically revealing Tamarrod T-shirts beneath their uniforms.

Aerial footage (only of the anti-Morsi crowds, of course) was sent to anti-Morsi television channels, which broadcast it to the tunes of triumphal cinematic music. Naturally, the protests of those icky other people didn’t exist. A military plane was put at the disposal of a film director who’s a fixture of the anti-Morsi cultural elite, presumably to make a movie about “Egypt’s second revolution,” as State TV swiftly christened the June 30 protests. The equally massive June 25 2012 protests against military rule are conveniently dropped from this emerging canonization.

The revolutionary invention of the Tahrir Square protest as an authentic political performance was recast as state-sanctioned spectacle.

The next act of the pageant was to control the message. Officials enlisted media personalities to banish the term “coup” and hound anyone who used it. A few hours before General El-Sisi’s declaration of the coup on July 3, Egyptian media luminaries were contacting foreign media outlets to insist that they not call his imminent announcement a coup. Military spokesmen and anti-Morsi activists repeatedly and defensively asserted that “15 million protesters” and “30 million protesters” had come out on June 30, not citing the source of their numbers. A former police chief called the numbers "unprecedented in Egyptian history." A giant message saying “It is not a coup” was reflected with green laser on the front of the Mugamma building in Tahrir on July 5.

It was quite the bizarre display of hysterical chauvinism. Government officials and establishment elites huffily insisted that the whole world acquiesce in their construction of reality. Foreign ministry officials rounded up ambassadors fromthe Americas to “explain” to them that it’s not a coup. Unnamed government officials were tasked with intensifying contact with US Congressmen in Washington for the same purpose. The Ministry of Defense in Cairo invited foreign journalists for more slideshows of the June 30 protests. And now youth activists are being sent on an official mission to London and Washington to “clarify for Western nations and the whole world that the June 30 revolution is an extension of the January 25, 2011 revolution.”

Rarely has a tenacious establishment been so keen to proclaim its own alleged overthrow. What that establishment wants, of course, is to turn the practice of the Egyptian revolution into a folkloric carnival of people filling Tahrir Square to wave flags and chant “Egypt! Egypt!”

Anti-Politics

With their July 3 coup, Egypt’s new military overlords and their staunch American backers are playing an age-old game, the game of turning the public against the ineluctable bickering, inefficiency, gridlock, and intense conflict that is part and parcel of a free political life, so that a disillusioned, fatigued people will pine for the stability and order that the military then swoops in to provide.

The acute but generative political conflict during Morsi’s blink-of-an-eye presidency was constantly amplified and then pathologized by the jealous custodians of the Egyptian state, with their repeated invocations of civil war and mass chaos to frighten people away from the vagaries of self-rule.

Like clockwork every few months, state agents facilitated the conditions for collective violence, dispatching provocateurs to demonstrations, removing police from the streets, standing back as communal violence broke out, resisting civilian oversight, and then ominously forecasting an impending breakdown of social order. The message is clear: left to your own devices, you will kill each other.

The ethos of collective self-confidence, cross-class cooperation, religious co-existence, and creative problem-solving on such magnificent display in the January 25 uprising spells the beginning of the end for the ruling military and civilian bureaucracy. So it had to be replaced with a manufactured mood of resignation and “realism,” the false realism that says: accept tutelage or face chaos.

As the recently self-designated “eminence grise” Mohamed ElBaradie summed it up, “Without Morsi’s removal from office, we would have been headed toward a fascist state, or there would have been a civil war.”

And that is the essence of the anti-political doctrine that worships order, fears political struggle, mistrusts popular striving, and kowtows to force majeure.

http://www.zcommunications.org/fashioning-a-coup-by-baheyya.html

Salaam

An update

Fall-off in Egyptian protests as army stays silent on total killed or arrested

There is no agreement on figures for victims of the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, but estimates of the detained range from 1,000 to 8,000

No one will say how many have died in Egypt. No one will reveal how many are in prison. There is no agreement on how many demonstrators turned out last Friday for the latest protest against last month's coup, in an atmosphere fraught with competing figures and misinformation.

A crackdown by the new military-backed government has decapitated the Muslim Brotherhood, the powerful Islamist organisation that ran this country for just over a year. As the police state is resurrected, authorities are walling off information on the number of deaths and detentions, and seeking to minimise what remains of the group's support.

Last Friday thousands took to the streetsacross the nation in thinning marches in support of the ousted president, Mohamed Morsi. The health ministry said six people were killed and more than a dozen injured when clashes erupted between protesters and civilian opponents in some areas, and marchers and police in others. Security forces directed teargas and sporadic gunfire at protesters in central Cairo.

But, in a sign of how state and private media have played down support for Morsi, Egyptian television networks mostly broadcast scenes of empty streets and quiet squares. The Muslim Brotherhood said one demonstrator was killed by police.

After weeks of protests against the coup, the government launched a full-fledged crackdown on 14 August, starting with raids on two pro-Morsi sit-ins that left hundreds of civilians dead. Security officials have arrested Muslim Brotherhood members every day since then, including the group's most prominent official still at liberty – Mohamed Beltagi – last Thursday. But the state has released only partial figures of arrests.

The health ministry stopped publishing a total casualty count from the crackdown on 17 August "because of the huge number of deaths", according to one ministry official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media. At that point, more than 900 people had been killed in four days, according to the official tally.

When Egyptians are arrested, they typically face a hearing before a prosecutor within 48 hours to learn whether they will be detained pending possible trial, said Diana Eltahawy, an Egypt researcher for Amnesty International. Normally lawyers are allowed access to prosecutors' offices.

But since the coup the hearings for alleged Morsi supporters "are taking place inside the places of detention – police stations and prisons", as well as in riot police camps, Eltahawy said – and the numbers simply aren't getting out. Eltahawy said the number of detained has probably surpassed 1,000.

Another activist, Ahmed Mehrif, who directs a Switzerland-based Arab rights group, put the number closer to 2,000. And a western diplomat, who spoke on the usual condition of anonymity, said it could range from 3,000 to 8,000, most of them "rank and file" members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or Morsi supporters unaffiliated with the Islamist group.

In cities and towns across Egypt, police have burst into private homes in a dramatic effort to lock up Brotherhood officials. The scenes are reminiscent of the reign of the former autocrat Hosni Mubarak, when the Muslim Brotherhood was a banned opposition group. But the current crackdown on Egypt's Islamists is even harsher than in that era. Rights activists and lawyers say the detainees are also picked up at protest marches, or grabbed by vigilantes operating in neighbourhood "popular committees" who hand them to security forces.

One plainclothes police officer explained last week: "If we see someone suspicious, we look at their paperwork." He spoke as he patted down a pedestrian in downtown Cairo, before rifling through the man's wallet. If the "paperwork is normal", the people are allowed to continue on their way, he said. If not, they are taken into custody. "We make a judgment based on how he looks," the officer said of the men he stops.

General Hani Abdel Latif, the interior ministry spokesman, said last week that his forces had arrested 213 Brotherhood leaders since 14 August. That total did not include lower-ranking members. The government has also, in recent days, brought charges against some of Egypt's most prominent liberal activists for speaking out against police brutality and military rule.

Egypt's cabinet is now the only body authorised to issue comprehensive death and injury tolls, health officials said. But it has yet to do so. Cabinet spokespersons did not respond to multiple queries for updated figures.

At the health ministry, an adviser to the minister grew agitated last week when pressed for the number of people killed since security forces raided the pro-Morsi protest camps. "I do not have any numbers at all," said Mohamed Fathallah, after also saying that he had provided the cabinet with the latest figures last Saturday. "Stop pushing," he said. In another corner of the ministry, an official quietly voiced his opposition to the government's behaviour. "You won't find any co-operation at the health ministry," he mumbled, after struggling to dig up numbers. "A failure of a government."

London-based Amnesty International published a tally last month based on mortuary reports that put the death toll since 14 August at nearly 1,100 nationwide. The Brotherhood had said more than 2,000 people were killed on 14 August alone.

"The Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of the deposed president tend to inflate numbers quite a lot," said Eltahawy. And on the government side, "there is clearly a desire, especially since the dispersal of the protests, to show that the casualty toll was not that high," she added. "So in terms of getting accurate information, it is extremely difficult."

But the state is more forthcoming about certain figures. In his darkened office at the interior ministry, Abdel Latif, the spokesman, sat before a stack of papers that contained up-to-the-minute data on police casualties in clashes or revenge attacks. "Since 14 August, there have been 106 martyrs and 915 injured," he said, before breaking the numbers down by "officers", "conscripts" and "recruits". Local media reported that a police officer and a civilian were shot dead early last Friday in an attack on a Cairo police position, the second in three days.

On walls and street signs across Cairo's Nasr City district, former home to the sit-ins, signs of the anti-coup fervour have been swiftly and methodically covered up. Swatches of red and beige paint cover the phrases "Morsi is my president" and "Down with military rule".

Pockets of hundreds of protesters moved through Cairo last Friday, chanting "revolution, revolution", and holding the four-fingered symbol of their former sit-in outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque. The pro-Morsi Anti-Coup Alliance has claimed that "tens of millions" of protesters have turned out across the nation, but there has been no evidence of such numbers.

Last Friday's crowds were small by the standards of Egypt's recent protests, and security forces had locked down the squares, thoroughfares and even mosques associated with unrest.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/03/egyptian-protests-muslim-brotherhood-military

Salaam

This is an excellent counter narrative to what happened in Egypt.

Salaam

Another update


Egypt: Frenchman dies in police custody amid rising tide of xenophobia

Jailed Canadian pair on hunger strike while Syrian refugees bear brunt of anger towards foreigners in wake of Morsi ousting




A French national has died in police custody in Cairo and two Canadians have begun a hunger strike to protest at their month-long detention amid a rising tide of xenophobia and nationalist fervour in Egypt.

Elsewhere, two Syrian refugees were killed by Egyptian coastguards while trying to flee the country by boat, while a Swiss national has been arrested on suspicion of espionage after being caught in possession of a toy plane.

Frenchman Eric Lang, 49, a teacher, was beaten to death by fellow inmates in a Cairo police station last Friday. A longterm Cairo resident, Lang had been held by the police since 6 September after failing to produce valid residency papers. Initial reports suggested Lang was arrested for flouting Cairo's curfew, which has been in place since the brutal killing of up to a thousand supporters of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi on 14 August sparked a wave of unrest across Egypt, but his family's lawyer said that he was arrested during the day.

News of Lang's murder came as two Canadians announced a hunger strike to protest against their continued incarceration without charge in an Egyptian prison. John Greyson, a renowned Canadian documentary film-maker, and his companion Tarek Loubani, a doctor, were arrested during the unrest in Cairo on 15 August after asking at a police station for directions, according to friends.

Shortly afterwards, they called a colleague in Canada. "They said: we're being arrested," Greyson's sister Cecilia said. "And then the line went dead."

The pair were on their way to Gaza, where Loubani planned to teach local doctors in a training programme that Greyson had wanted to document on camera. Instead, they have spent 33 days in jail without charge, much of it in a cramped cell containing 36 other inmates, Cecilia Greyson said.

The pair's situation has become a cause célèbre overseas, and Alec Baldwin, Arundhati Roy, Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron and Michael Ondaatje are among 135,000 to have signed a petition calling for their release.

While the precise circumstances surrounding their and Lang's arrests are unknown, their treatment follows a spike in xenophobia and nationalism in Egypt that was provoked by the overthrow of Morsi in early July.

Suspicion of foreigners is by no means unprecedented in Egypt, but it has heightened this summer as Egypt's new government and its backers across state and private media began to demonise Morsi and his allies as anti-Egyptian terrorists backed by an unlikely range of foreigners, from Hamas to Barack Obama.

Prosecutors accuse Morsi of colluding with Hamas during Egypt's 2011 uprising, in charges that paint Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood as foreign interlopers who act without Egypt's national interests at heart. In a similar vein, Egypt's flagship state newspaper, al-Ahram, has run front-page stories claiming that Morsi's Brotherhood were plotting with the US to divide up Egypt. One private newspaper even claimed that Obama was himself a member of the Brotherhood.

Some television chatshow hosts have fanned the flames on a nightly basis, vilifying western governments and journalists for failing to give wholesale approval to the army's removal of Morsi, which had widespread public approval within Egypt's borders.

"America and Britain have a plan to pay the Muslim Brotherhood so that the country will be divided – one piece to Palestine, another to Libya and another to the Christians, so that we'll have a war for 50 years," Salah Zeyada, a governor of a province in central Egypt, said last week, expressing a commonly held sentiment.

A British resident in Cairo for nearly three decades, Cathy Costain said she had never personally experienced xenophobia since arriving in 1986, now or in the past. But she said that anger towards foreigners from some television hosts is now "way beyond anything I've seen before", and added that the treatment of Lang, Greyson and Loubani was unusual.

"The teacher who's died, and the journalists who are in prison – it used to be that the authorities would try to make the problem go away as quickly as possible," said Costain, a charity worker. "But it seems like they are trying to make an example of them – which is quite scary."

There are also concerns about the effect such events will have on foreign investment and tourism, which has already fallen drastically since the 2011 uprising.

Angus Blair, an economic and political analyst at Cairo's Signet Institute, said that while Egypt remained an attractive investment opportunity for overseas businesses, such security incidents would prove off-putting to investors.

"It's one extra piece of information that makes Egypt less likely to be seen as a good investment – part of the drip-drip-drip of bad news," said Blair.

Syrian refugees have borne the brunt of the xenophobia. Tawfik Okasha, a reactionary television chatshow host, has called on Egyptians to arrest any Syrians they find in the street – mostly because Syrians have become unfairly associated with the now widely hated Brotherhood during the dying days of Morsi's presidency.

Warmly received before Morsi's ousting, some Syrians report an increase in xenophobic street harassment, others greater job insecurity. One man claimed his children were not allowed to register at a state-run school because of their Syrian nationality. Another was taken to a police station by a taxi driver after getting in his cab to go home. Many are now fleeing their second country in as many years.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/18/egypt-frenchman-dies-syria-morsi

Salaam

Another comment piece

Mourning Chile’s coup, ignoring Egypt’s

The fortieth anniversary of the slaying of Allende has exposed some double standards among human-rights groups.

Forty years ago today, on 11 September 1973, the newly re-elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was holed up at La Moneda Palace in Santiago. As the AK-47 in his hand indicated, he knew what lay ahead. Senior military figures, with Major General Javier Palacios to the fore, were coming to kill him.

At about four o’clock that afternoon, the 64-year-old Allende was busy fighting back, by all accounts, shooting Palacios in the hand; but the officers were soon to overwhelm him. Once they had killed Allende, they riddled his body with bullets and beat his face in with a rifle butt.

The Chilean coup d’etat, backed by the Commie-fearing US, which clearly didn’t want a socialist nation near its doorstep, had been brewing for some time. Originally, a military takeover had been planned in 1969 in the event of Allende, the leader of the socialist Popular Unity party, being elected to power in 1970. That Allende did win the election that September, and the generals did not respond, was due, in the main, to the balance of social forces. Simply put, the Chilean middle classes and bourgeoisie, who might have been expected to support a coup, were benefiting at the expense of foreign capital. And this, as it happened, was a result of the newly elected government’s decision effectively to repatriate and nationalise lucrative industries, especially copper. In such circumstances, a coup would have proved deeply unpopular.

But by the next election, in September 1973, the terrain had shifted. A long-term US-led blockade – payback for Chile’s expropriation of foreign capital – and internal agitation from the Christian Democrats and the right-wing National Party, had led Chile near enough to the brink of a civil war. Allende’s victory in the presidential elections on 4 September 1973, something which he was almost surprised by, pulled the trigger. The generals executed their long-standing plot. And a democratically elected leader was deposed.

Forty years on, there has been no shortage of melancholy commentaries to mark this dreadful anniversary. And no wonder. The reign of General Augusto Pinochet, Allende’s successor, represented the bloody, brutal continuation and consolidation of the coup. This involved purging Chilean society of Allende supporters, a practice that has left many in Chile with no idea of what happened to friends and family. On the eve of the fortieth anniversary, Amnesty International released a statement to remind people of this: ‘Thousands of torture survivors and relatives of those disappeared during General Augusto Pinochet’s brutal regime are still being denied truth, justice and reparation.’

For many in left-ish, liberal circles, the anniversary has also provided an opportunity to attack America. After all, America’s involvement in the Chilean coup is now largely accepted as fact: the CIA backed the generals financially, strategically and militarily. For the legion of critics of the US, the date of the coup is just too serendipitous too ignore. This coup, ‘the other 9/11’, indeed the first 9/11, exposes just how nefarious America’s own foreign policy has often been, they say. ‘Forty years on, we should not forget the bloody birth pangs of neoliberalism that serve to underline capitalism’s violent streak’, writes one radical. Another says: ‘As we approach 40 years since the devastating events in Chile, and a dozen since the horrific attacks of 2001, we must remember that to truly honour the memory of all those who lost their lives in the fight for democracy, we must uphold the principles of freedom and equality that democracy represents.’

Yet here’s the big fat fly in the righteous ointment - the principles of democracy are not only demeaned by Western leaders; they are demeaned by those in liberal circles, too. Because while it’s all very well drawing out an arbitrary, date-based analogy between the Chilean coup and 9/11 to expose the American state’s selective attitude to atrocity, a more pertinent parallel is to be drawn between the Chilean coup and one of rather more recent vintage: the Egyptian coup d’etat on 3 July of this year. And on this, too many who have been quick to recall the anti-democratic iniquity of the Chilean coup have remained ambivalent at best.

The double standards are striking. Like the coup in Chile, in Egypt an elected president, Mohammed Morsi, was deposed by the military (he wasn’t shot to death like Allende, but he is being detained in a ‘secret location’ awaiting trial on trumped-up charges). Like the coup in Chile, the military is now purging the upper echelons of Egyptian society of Morsi supporters, with many of his ministers now under house arrest. Also like the coup in Chile, the army has killed many hundreds of Morsi supporters in an effort to quell opposition.

And yet, from the left-ish and liberal media and campaign groups… not very much. Amnesty International, which has made great play of the fortieth anniversary of the Chilean coup, has proven itself reluctant to condemn outright the Egyptian coup and has even spent some time demonising the protesters against it as armed and dangerous. From others, at best there has been criticism of the excess of the Egyptian military, but very little on the usurpation of a democratically elected ruler.

Indeed, it is revealing that in all the worthy commemorations on the anniversary of the Chilean coup, few if any have drawn attention to the current situation in Egypt, absurdly described by US secretary of state John Kerry as an attempt to ‘restore democracy’. Genuine supporters of freedom and democracy ought to recall with anger what happened in Chile four decades ago. But we also need to recognise that those ideals are being debased in the present, too. Some coups are definitely not better than others. Remember Chile, yes, but let’s talk about Egypt as well.

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/chile_and_egypt/14018

Salaam

Another update


Egypt: dozens of protesters killed as rival factions tear Cairo apart

Opposing rallies to commemorate Egypt's participation in 1973 Yom Kippur war flare into day of violence across the country


At least 51 people died in clashes across Egypt as the country's two largest political factions gathered in rival commemorations of Egypt's participation in the 1973 war with Israel, a day of deep significance for many Egyptians.

Both opponents and supporters of the country's ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, rallied in their thousands – ostensibly to mark the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war which is viewed in Cairo as an Egyptian victory, despite ending in a stalemate that favoured Israel.

But rather than emphasising Egypt's unity, the different messages conveyed by each faction's demonstrations underscored divides. Morsi's supporters, whose marches filled highways in west Cairo, used the day to protest against his ousting, while his opponents took to Tahrir Square to praise General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's role in his overthrow. Deadly violence flared when tens of thousands of Morsi supporters tried to reach Tahrir Square. Soldiers, police and armed vigilantes blocked their path and started firing.

Arriving in west Cairo's Dokki suburb around 3pm, the marchers were met first by teargas, then rubber bullets and then live rounds, according to one witness who was at the front of the march.

"It was three groups of armed people – police, army, and residents – attacking helpless protesters, who didn't even do much to fight back," said Mosa'ab Elshamy, a photographer known for his pictures at Cairo clashes. "Today's march was made up largely of families, lots of women, lots of children. Sometimes marches take things into their own hands, start trouble, break something. But today's march was really remarkably peaceful until the police just shot at them without any kind of trigger."

Some reports suggested that a number of marchers carried firearms, but Elshamy said the protesters, who included hardcore football fans unaffiliated with Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, simply held their ground for three hours – throwing stones and burning tires – before retreating.

He added: "As a couple of people were running away, they were gunned down, and they left quite a trail of blood."

Opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood argued the Islamists and others had sought a violent response in order to garner sympathy internationally, or to gain concessions during negotiations.

"They are trying to make trouble everywhere so that at some point, the deal will be: fine, stop the trouble, what do you want?" Alaa al-Aswany, one of Egypt's best-known authors and a fierce critic of the Brotherhood, argued in the buildup to the celebrations.

As the day wore on, Cairo became a tale of two Tahrirs – Tahrir Square in the east, where army helicopters flew over pro-military bands, and Tahrir Street in the west, where police and secular locals fired bullets and teargas on the pro-Morsi marches.

The juxtaposition highlighted Egypt's ideological divisions. "Today feels like a second victory," said Mohamed Abdel Aziz, a cleaner wearing a picture of Sisi around his neck. "We feel like we have won our country back from a gang that doesn't belong to Egypt."

Across town, protesters carrying yellow placards – in memory of those who died at several summer massacres of Morsi supporters – had a different idea about what the day meant. "Today is about saying no to the military coup, and bringing back liberty," said Saber Nafi, a pro-Morsi journalist.

What had been a festive afternoon quickly soured, with gangs of vigilantes and plain-clothed policemen in some streets attacking people suspected of being a foreigner, a journalist or a Muslim Brother.

Two liberal politicians – including Khaled Dawoud, a one-time spokesman for Egypt's main secular coalition – were attacked by Brotherhood supporters this weekend. Dawoud was spotted while driving through central Cairo, hauled from his car, and stabbed in his hand and twice in his chest. He is now recovering in hospital.

Clashes were reported in several other neighbourhoods in Cairo and across Egypt, though much of the country remained calm. Some Egyptians expressed frustration at their fellow citizens' overbearing nationalism, and at being pulled between what they feel to be two sides of the same authoritarian coin: the army and the Brotherhood.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/06/egypt-cairo-morsi-yom-kippur

Salaam

More analysis. Quite long but well worth reading

The Return of Mubarak’s Children

The children of Mubarak have returned.

It would be foolish to believe that Mubarak spent 30 years of ruling without permeating every facet of Egyptian bureaucracy, media and economy with like minded people. Of course, the people are not devotees to the cult of Mubarak, but they are old guard Secular Nationalists from the post-colonial era of the 1950s in the Muslim world. These are known in Egypt as the ‘felool’.

They have made their nation their idol, and view religion and politics to be separate things, albeit with a few cultural values left to placate the Muslim masses. Mubarak was from that era, and was a product of it.

But after being forced to retire their former frontman Mubarak, due to popular protests, and grudgingly accepting elections that, despite their best efforts, saw the victory of Mohammed al Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the Secular Nationalists have risen again.

But how did they return? Simple, they never left. The Army, the Interior ministry, the Judiciary and the media were all under safe ‘lock and key’ by thousands of Secular Nationalists.

Therefore, the aftermath of the election victory by Morsi was easily controlled by them. They limited his power and ensured that the main ministries (energy, oil, justice and the interior) were so hard to govern, the services were brought to a virtual standstill. This was of course, part of a simple (and not surprising) plan to make the Egyptian people regret their choice.

Energy deliveries went missing, mysterious armed gangs attacked supplies, felool managers neglected their work, workers were encouraged to go on strikes, or do work at a slow pace - and consequently the people experienced massive supply disruption.

Throughout 2012 to 2013, the media and ‘underground’ (but curiously very well funded and public) ‘rebellion’ groups incited near constant, and in many cases violent, anti-Morsi demonstrations. These had the effect of causing near constant disruption to the Egyptian economy and daily life. The Police were strangely nowhere to be seen for most of the time.

The Interior ministry (who controls the police), vacillated between being completely negligent, and on the odd occassion, brutal (though not as much as they could under Mubarak or SCAF). This had the effect drastically reducing security on the streets, causing a public perception of lawlessness, while at the same time allowing the occasional news story of police brutality to be seized upon to put Morsi in a bad light. The propaganda against him became so ridiculous, that if it were true, it would make Morsi the first man in history to create a police state, with no police!

The public Police presence was nothing like their presence before Morsi; they allowed MB offices to be burnt, and even the presidential palace to be attacked. It got so bad, the MB had to create their own civilian protection force just to protect their offices. Of course, the Felool/Liberal media were just waiting to use this as an example of Morsi becoming ‘tyrannical’ and attempting to ‘dominate egypt’ with his own ‘militia’.

The only people Morsi could trust were the MB members (and some allies), and so the only way for him to make any improvement against the constant disruption to services by the Mubarak old guard, was to appoint MB members and allies to positions of power within the Egyptian civil service. Again, this was seized upon by the Mubarak old guard and the Liberals as more ‘proof’ that Morsi was trying to take more power for himself. Of course, they could criticise him for the rapidly declining services if he did nothing.

The Judiciary consistantly challenged the MB and Islamic candidates, by disqualifying the top two, the MB election candidate Khairat al-Shater (a successful businessman, and relatively charismatic leader), and Hazem Abu Ismael, a strong Salafi and anti-american, but curiously they were happy to let through the uncharismatic, and politically inexperienced back-up MB candidate, Morsi, who they knew wouldn’t be as effective. The evidence for this can be seen when we consider that Shater was disqualified for falling foul of a law requiring an absence of being in jail 6 years prior to the election, but Morsi wasn’t – despite being sprung from jail in 2011, and hadn’t even finished his sentence!.

The Judiciary then ordered the dissolution of the fairly-elected (and MB/Nour Party majority) People’s Assembly, and continued to oppose Morsi at every turn. The Mubarak-era judiciary even (to no surprise) acquited their fellow felool in the police accused of attacking protestors in the 2011 ‘revolution’, but Morsi got the blame by the victims families and the media for not prosecuting the accused. Again, to get any work done, he had to take enough powers for himself to do so – which of course, meant getting depicted as an aspiring dictator by the Felool/Liberal media for his troubles. His later attempts to fire 3000 members of the Judiciary were also quashed by Felool/Liberal media incited ‘outrage’. There was no winning for Morsi here.

Of course, while the media attacks on Morsi were permitted, the judiciary didn’t tolerate any criticism of itself, and demanded the prosecution of some journalists and politicians for ‘insulting the judiciary’.

Despite the many compromises Morsi did with the Army, USA, the Secularists and the Christians, any hint of laws sympathetic to Islam was outright rejected and resisted. It was as if the MB and Salafi majority were only allowed to contribute laws which the small Secular minority approves of. When the Secularists didn’t get their way (which was 100% of their way), they walked out of the drafting of the constitution (yes, all 11 of them – out of 100 ELECTED members). Secularists claim that people may say that having a constitution based upon Islam would not represent the 10% Christian minority. But curiously, none of the Secularists in France argue that the French constitution does not have any representation for the 10% Muslim minority there!

Western Democracies do not allow their people to choose the ideology of the state, or even make major changes to the constitution – once Secular Liberalism gets into power, the people are only allowed to choose the leader. That, in of itself is not a problem, but Liberals demonstrate their hypocrisy when they accuse ‘Islamists’ for merely desiring the same. At least the ‘Islamists’ (i.e. the modern term for what was called a normal Muslim for the last 1,400 years) gave the people a choice by asking them to elect a committee to write the constitution – which is more than can be said for the current Secularist government of Egypt.

The Egyptian people elected the Egyptian People’s Assembly, which was meant to be their representation in a democracy. But Secularists and Liberals don’t believe in real democracy, and only call for democracy when it suits their interests (i.e. Nationalism and/or Liberalism). And when Democracy fails to give them the result they want, they are perfectly happy to scrap it, use violence and repress others – as the Egyptian coup now incontrovertibly demonstrates - again.

Of course, with regards to Egypt, there was no way Morsi or the MB could win – and this was of course, the point. Just like what the USA had done to popular Communist president Allende of Chile, Hamas of Gaza, and Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran (who like Morsi, mistakenly believed the U.S. was a quiet supporter to his cause, all the way up until the day the CIA executed the coup!). It is a well known policy of Western Liberal regimes to bring a country that dares to elect leaders it disapproves of, economically and politically to its knees, then overthrow them – Hamas of course is still a work in progress.

The MB spokesman Gehad mentioned some of these problems that were faced by the MB in Egyptian politics here.

The Liberals (or the second-wave post-colonial Secularists, as I call them), only represent a very small minority in Egypt, reacted fanatically against even the slightest possibility of a return of Islam to holistic implementation. They came to the natural conclusion that they were ideologically closer to the Mubarak-era Secular Nationalist felool, then they were to Muslims who desire a regime that represents the requirements of their belief. And they acted accordingly, joining forces and media resources, to attack Morsi and the MB whenever possible, accusing him of being ‘fascist’ and desiring a totalitarian state like Iran – which is ironic coming from Egyptian secularists and liberals, considering Iran has a better democratic system than Egypt ever had!.

F(el)ooling the Egyptian People

Of course, the Army were still visible in the public eye until winter 2012, having managed to hold full control over their economic holdings in Egypt (estimated by some to be 40% of the Egyptian economy), and they retained control over all foreign policy matters, and the ARMY reformed SCAF into the National Defence Council (NDC), of which being in a deliberate military majority membership, Morsi was not the controller of.

They then used their resources to execute a simple plan. The head Tantawi had grown unpopular and outlived his usefulness, so they arranged with Morsi to retire him, and put in place a man that the army had groomed for the position, General Abdel-Fateh Sisi, known for his infamous implementation of ‘virginity tests’ on female protestors during SCAF rule. General Sisi had from day one tried to get Morsi’s trust, by claiming he was a ‘pious Muslim’, whose wife ‘wears a face veil’. Morsi was easily fooled and lured into a false sense of security, but whether he was fooled or not would make no different to the SCAF plan. Tantawi would be retired, and the Army would issue a statement that it was receding from politics – yet absolutely nothing would change, except that the Egyptian people (and Morsi) would naively believe that full power now resided in Morsi’s hands.

The fact that the Army always had full control over Egypt was clear when Morsi attempted to opening up diplomatic relations with Iran with the possibility of forging a mutual alliance, and when he promised to help the Muslims of gaza by opening up the Rafah border, but was clearly prevented from achieving anything except goodwill gestures. No sooner had he met with Hamas leaders in summer 2012 to discuss easing the Israeli embargo, then a mysterious attack on Egyptian soldiers occurred in the Sinai, leading the Army to shut down tunnels to Gaza, and the Rafah crossing completely, and launch the heaviest ground assaults against ‘militants in the sinai’ than even under Mubarak. In 2013, when Morsi tried again to open the border crossing, the Egyptian judiciary issued a court order for Morsi to enforce the Egyptian (Mubarak-era) agreement with Israel, and shut down ALL tunnels to Gaza. If Morsi tried to reject the judiciary’s decision, yes you guessed it, he would be accused of believing himself ‘above the law of the land’, by the Secular and Liberal media.

It is no surprise now that the Egyptian media is vilifying Hamas currently, using a series of ridiculous stories, conveniently provided by the Egyptian military. My personal favourite was how they explained the fuel shortages in Egypt under Morsi, by claiming he allegedly was supplying petrol to Gaza – despite the fact that petrol shortages in Gaza were worse than they ever had been after the Army had shut the tunnels! Of course, this false propaganda stories are designed to make the common Egyptian people accept the harsher policy of the current Egyptian regime against the people of Gaza. Surely, the U.S.A has got its money worth from the $1.5 billion it spends on the Egyptian army, a fact conveniently forgotten by the Egyptian people. Naturally Israel is overjoyed at the turn of events, because Mubarak never dared to appear too harsh on the Gazans, for fear of the Egyptian sentiment – but Morsi has proved the perfect scapegoat for the Egyptian military turn up the pressure on Hamas, and deliver even better value for money on the U.S. salary it receives. No wonder the U.S. does not want to call the coup, a coup!

All this the military could do, while at the same time blaming a powerless Morsi for it, since he is the one in the spotlight.

The trap was set for Morsi and the MB, and now all that needed to happen was the coup itself.

The political analyst, Yazid Sayigh impressively seemed to predict a coup as far back as December 2012, article here.

A Coup by Any Other Name

And so the coup did happen, and to demonstrate Egypt’s ‘liberation’ from the ‘tyranny’ of Morsi, they immediately shutdown all sympathetic TV stations to the MB, claiming they were ‘inciting violence’ (what? including Al Jazeera?!).

All the while, the Liberal and Felool controlled TV stations were allowed to broadcast, with them calling for ‘cleansing the streets’ of the Islamists.

Almost ‘magically’, the fuel shortage problem was resolved overnight, and the police (who had been mostly absent during Morsi’s rule) all reappeared – many were even seen dancing with the anti-morsi protesters in full uniform!

Despite leaders of the MB (that could be arrested) being rounded up by the military and police, and despite the Mubarak-era demands by the secularists and Secular Liberals to ban all political parties based upon religion from taking part in future elections (yes, Liberals – Liberalism is only tolerant of itself), General ‘Virginity Test’ Sisi has made the hilariously strange public ‘call’ to invite the MB to be part of an ‘inclusive’ new political process. Of course, what he means is to telling the counter-coup protestors to stop their demonstrations and acquiesce to the new regime – while of course appearing as a ‘reasonable man’ to the wider public.

Before the coup, Mubarak himself called for Morsi to step down. But after the coup happened, support came from strange, yet telling places. Saudi Arabia and UAE supported it, Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu supported it, the USA were silent over it (but have made veiled comments of support), the EU was relatively permissive of the Egyptian military, and Bashar ul Assad (along with his fellow Secularists in Egypt and worldwide) expressed joy over it, claiming this was a defeat of ‘political Islam’, despite the fact that Morsi’s government didn’t implement a single Islamic law (Assad strangely forgets that Iran, who backs Syria, are also political ‘Islamists’ according to the West).

But the MB refused to go down without protest, and immediately began peaceful demonstrations and protests to demand the return of Morsi, and the rule of law, and due process. However, they have been met with violent crackdowns, shootings, and masked assailants and Bashar/Ghaddafi-esque massacres of civilians on the streets. Shockingly, this brutal treatment of the MB dissidents is occurring with both the Liberals and the Secularists cheerfully waving it on as ‘necessary in the national/Liberal interest’, or claiming that the Army and Police acted in ‘self-defence’. Of course, what goes forgotten by most of the media and Egyptian public, is that the Army and Police have been using this level of violence before Morsi came to power, under the SCAF interim rule. And with public support, they are now free to do what they wanted to do for a long time, effectively wipe out the Islamists under the guise of fighting ‘terrorism’. At the moment, only few Egyptians that were against Morsi have woken up to the fact that the regime has returned to being more predisposed to use violence, arbitrary arrest, and summary sentences now, than under Morsi – yet the Liberals and felool ironically accuse Morsi and the MB of being the ‘fascists’.

Now the MB are deposed, ‘quelle surprise’, they are pushing for Mubarak to be relieved of his sentence due to compassion for his health (aww, poor thing…).

The children of Mubarak have indeed returned back in the open to control Egypt again under their Secularist regime, and now the Egyptians will suffer the oh so familiar taste of its rancid fruit.

But before we mistakenly believe that the Egyptian people have all turned Secularist, this is not the case. Muslim Egyptians love Islam, and want Islamic law, but they do not know what it looks like. No one has done a concerted campaign to educate the masses on the political solutions that Islam offers. Nor have they explained how the enlightened system of Caliphate actually works, and how it brings about open intellectual inquiry, justice, progress and unity. The Egyptian people have only ever been taught that Islam is Tawheed (monotheism) and ibadaah (ritual spiritual worships). It is the failure of Muslim dawah carriers (proselytisers) to undo this lingering legacy from the colonial-era’s secularisation of the Muslim mind, that causes this obstacle for the return of the comprehensive way of life that is Islam. Consequently, the ignorance of the Egyptians is such, that even the most pious Egyptians may be amongst the crowd of pro-General Sisi supporters, believing in all innocence, that the MB are a non-Islamic party!

This is not to mention the media campaign against the MB, which has generated a terrible fanaticism of hatred against them. Most people outside Egypt wouldn’t understand this, since they are reading the news reports with a general emotional detachment that comes with being not being involved with the situation - outside observers see more of the facts than many Egyptians who are emotionally compromised, or personally involved. But this doesn’t mean that the people outside Egypt do not understand what is happening, or are unable to make a clear judgement – just look at the U.S. State Department, and the UK’s Foreign Office who’ve been doing this successfully for decades.

The Egyptian people have seen a general degradation of their living standards since well before Mubarak, and saw it fall sharply during the SCAF rule, and even more sharply during Morsi’s rule. They’ve been continuously fed stories by the Liberal and Secularist media (who Morsi DIDN’T suppress under his rule) undermining him and depicting him as a fascist, all the while preparing the Egyptian public for the return of fascism. For what else is fascism but the ideology of the Nation? Fascists are nothing but Secular Nationalists, who make the nation the source of morality under the euphemism, the ‘National Interest’, which serves as the ultimate criteria of the halal (right) and haram (wrong).

Fascists tend to focus on a particular enemy in their society that should be ‘cleansed’ from their midst. Does not the alarming Secularist and Liberal discourses on what should be done to ‘Islamists’ not fit that description? Morsi, far from calling people to attack Christians during his rule, actually called for their defence. Under Morsi’s tenure, a Muslim cleric was arrested and prosecuted for burning a Bible and insulting the Christian community (something that never happened under Mubarak’s rule!). Yet, the MB are vilified.

Of course, Morsi didn’t have control over some of the pro-MB, or pro-salafi youth which engaged in violent clashes with other groups, but then again neither did anyone else control their youth. In fact, it is probably because of the MB not being fascist, that they were unable to discipline and control some of their supporters amongst the youth.

However, the fact remains, that instead of the 2012 ‘revolution’ being the liberation of Egypt from a course heading towards fascism, the Egyptians have instead been ‘liberated’ from liberation itself.

Morsi made mistakes, made compromises with Secularists and the Army in pursuit of a gradualist approach attempting to replicate the successful AKP of Turkey, but he turned out to be a weak leader in a heavily controlled Mubarak-era government. But despite this he, like Allende and Mosadeq, wanted true independence for his county, a ethical and moral foreign policy, and an end to the kind of tyranny that sees arbitrary arrests, torture, civilians killed and fear return to the streets.

Cui Bono? (Who Benefits?)

To truly see who has won and benefited from – and may of been behind – the coup, let us look at the facts of the coup’s results, and ‘score’ who wins and who loses:

Gazan palestinians crippled now more than ever, during the Mubarak era ,
Egyptian Army now more dependant on U.S.A for international legitimacy,
Possible Egyptian alliance with U.S. arch-enemy Iran, successfully torpedoed,
and the further delaying of a feared Islamic revival and united Muslim world.

USA: Win
Israel: Win

Possible alliance successfully torpedoed between Saudi Arabia’s arch-enemy, Iran, and its Mubarak-era ally, Egypt,
U.S. diplomatic pressure appeased,
and a genuine call for Islamic aspirations in the middle east against autocratic rule, suppressed.

Saudi Arabia: Win

The small minority Liberals are finally getting a chance – by undemocratic means – to have power despite, their low support from a relatively religious Egyptian public,
Islamic inspired gradualist movements demoralised and have been prevented from rising in a key Muslim country in the middle east, and more importantly, the suppression of Islam from politics.

Egyptian Secular Liberals: WIn

Arch-enemies Muslim Brotherhood deposed,
Return to the open for Mubarak-era cronies ,
Increased power for Army,
Continuing U.S. pay for the loyalty of the Egyptian Army ,
and a ‘get out of jail free’ card for Mubarak.

Egyptian Secular Nationalists: Win
Mubarak: Win
Egyptian Army (also Secular Nationalists): Win Win

Iran loses an opportunity to find an ally in the region that could have co-operated with it to resist American Interests in the region.

Iran: Lose

Gazan palestinians crippled now more than during the Mubarak era, Hamas, the arch-enemy of Israel (and the USA), now without any allies.

Gazan Palestinians: Lose

Hamas: lose

Secularist minorities in Muslim world now inspired to public disobedience as a successful methology to impose their will, when democracy fails to delivery what they want (i.e. their way).

Peaceful Muslim groups in the Middle East: Lose

Return of (open) Police state to Egypt
Return of unfettered U.S.A influence and control upon Egyyt’s foriegn policy
Return of suppression of political dissent upon Egyptian citizens
No change in economic system in Egypt

Egyptian People: Lose Lose

The question we have to ask ourselves is, does this score-card look good to you? Is this the score-card we would accept for a truly independent and liberated Egypt?

I didn’t think so either.

Painful Lessons

The Muslim Brotherhood is not completely devoid of blame in this turn of events. Their gradualist methodology for re-establishing Islam after colonialism has ended up with the public perception against them at an all time low, and pushed back the cause for the return of a holistic Islam, by decades – unless some new (peaceful) stratagem can be enacted.

By entering into the Secular Democratic process, Morsi was always destined to fail. In fact, even if the MB presidential candidate was a combination of Malcom X, Nelson Mandela, Haroun al Rashid and Salahudeen Ayubi would it have not made a difference; the felool administration and army would have made it impossible to succeed regardless.

What the MB should have done, is to have started a public and open campaign for the re-establishment of the Islamic state in Egypt, as soon as Mubarak was deposed (or preferably a long time before!). This could have been achieved by a public education initiative through their outlets, followed through by calls for a national debate on the nature of the country and an awareness campaign on the superior political solutions that Islam offers. The MB should also have drawn up a clear and detailed plan of what new institutions they needed to create to implement Islamic laws, policy and progressive solutions to modern problems (like the interest based finance system that has led to the levels of poverty we see in Egypt). If they were clear, open and resolute on this method, demanding power for Islam, not for pragmatic politics, the people would have seen their clear and open stance, and would have realised the need for it.

It could be argued that if they held this stance, they wouldn’t have been able to be elected, and would have lost the opportunity for power. But how is that different to now? In fact, it is now many times more worse for them. Had a Secularist obtained power after Mubarak, and failed, people would turn more and more to a clear alternative. Now the people believe they have tried the Islamic alternative (again, despite not a single new Islamic law being implemented) and believe it has failed. The general masses in the Muslim world do not fully realise just how imprisoned they are still under the old guard of Egypt. So if they see their lives become worse under a leader, they will blame him, without realising that his is just a puppet, figurehead, and frontman, pushed into the spotlight from behind which, the real power brokers rule quietly behind the scenes.

The Khilafah (Caliphate) still remains the only untried alternative in the 21st century, and when the Secular nations collapse, either as a result of the natural problems inherent in secularism (e.g. economic, social etc), or due to the work of successful Islamic groups rising to power in Muslim countries, we the Ummah have to be ready to set ourselves on the true course for real liberation – the re-establishment of Islam.

As for the current situation in Egypt, and the claim that the coup saved Egypt from fascism, consider this: Hitler was a Secular Nationalist, an ex-military officer who made the State the ultimate idol for Germans, and justified everything he did as being ‘necessary in the national interest’, he never won an election on a slim margin, or was known to make compromises, or be a weak leader, or quietly tolerate minorities. Does his example really fit Morsi? Or does it fit the Secular Nationalist military leader emerging now, who under calls to ‘cleanse the streets’, is killing civilians belonging to dissident groups? The end of democracy in germany, came about not due to grudging election victories by a controversial group, but to rousing applause, celebrations and the popular belief in hope of a better future, under a new ‘saviour’.

The children of Mubarak have indeed come home, and someone, somewhere in Torah prison outside Cairo, is looking at the news and smiling…

http://abdullahalandalusi.com/2013/0...raks-children/

Let us all make du'as to bring justice to Egypt. May Allah (swt) help restore peace for the righteous and purge the anti-Muslim filth from the land. Ameen.

Who appointed El-Sisi as Minister of Defense?