[DAWN] IT is a measure of Egypt's political instability that the completion of one year of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi ...successor to Hosni Mubarak as president-for-life of Egypt. That was after he removed Mohammad al-Morsi as president-for-life by popular demand in one of the April showers of the Arab Spring.... 's government coincided on Wednesday with one of the biggest attacks by Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... snuffies in the Sinai on the security forces, leading to over 100 deaths. The government declared that the area -- Sheikh Zuweid town -- was "100pc under control", but the force used by the security apparatus -- F-16 jets and Apache helicopters -- only highlighted the murderous Moslems' fighting prowess. Moreover, the government's '100pc' claim appeared dubious when the army declared it would continue the operation until the area had been cleared of "terrorist concentrations". Even though it was the Islamic State's Egyptian affiliate which had launched the attack, the government said among those killed were Moslem Brüderbund members, a claim the Brotherhood denied, saying those "murdered" had been doing relief work.
While Egypt had often witnessed terrorist attacks on foreign tourists and the Coptic minority, organised militancy is a new phenomenon and is obviously a reaction to the regime's unabashed persecution of the opposition, especially of the Moslem Brüderbund, whose government, headed by Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president, was removed by the military, followed by bogus trials and the sentencing to death of a number of Brotherhood leaders, including Mr Morsi. In silencing the media and crushing the opposition, Mr Sisi's aim seems to be to give Egypt 'political stability'. However, it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... the ferocious festivities in the Sinai and the murder of the chief prosecutor the other day underline the military-led regime's failure to give peace to the country. Obviously, Mr Sisi hasn't learnt any lessons from the fate of dictators like Hosni Mubarak ...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011... , Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Muammar Qadaffy ...The late megalomaniac dictator of Libya, admired everywhere for his garish costumes, funny hats, harem of cutie bodyguards, and incoherent ravings. As far as is known, he is the only person who's ever declared jihad on Switzerland... whose systems based on patronage and tyranny collapsed like a house of cards at the first whiff of the Arab spring. However, it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... the dictators mentioned above did give stability -- no matter how superficial -- for decades, but Mr Sisi appears to be having difficulty in consolidating his hold even in the very beginning.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
The truth is, that if there was wide spread violence, there might be a problem for al-Sisi. the violence is limited to remote areas, mostly. He has he state under control and is awaiting a more favorable American administration. Please keep killing MB members. Toss them off the roof when short of lead. I believe Chicago is worse than the Sanai.
[DAWN] BACK in the day when the revolutionary left was the most talked about political force in the world -- both inside and outside the corridors of power -- the most famous revolutionary of them all asserted that only 'professionals' could turn the established order on its head. It was Lenin that insisted on the need for a 'vanguard', a group of full-time political workers willing to sacrifice everything to make the revolution possible.
Today the idea of a vanguard of professional revolutionaries is generally considered passé. Yes holy warrior movements that have forsaken the political mainstream exist in many parts of the world, including in this country, but at the broader societal level the once romantic idea of revolution has been mostly criminalised in an environment when anything and everything can easily be reduced to 'terrorism'.
The exceptions -- mostly of the ridiculous variety -- actually confirm the rule. Take, for instance, Tahirul Qadri
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Posted by: Fred ||
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It's probably a mix of my age and the fact that not everyone in the media world has free access to social media -- that's "free" as in unmonitored -- but alongside Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections I also have emails and phone numbers written down in a notebook and stuffed into a folder of business cards that has grown fatter over the years.
It was here I looked for some names and contact details last week, and as I did so I realized how much the world has changed -- and not for the better.
I was trying to find the addresses of Egyptian journalists I used to be in touch with, along with a couple of Libyan journalists, a Tunisian writer and some Fatah-affiliated Palestinians based in Gaza.
One of the Egyptians barely escaped with his life after the fall of Hosni Mubarak and now lives in the US; the other -- the one who a few years ago told me: "The Sunni-Shi'a divide doesn't exist. It's being created by America to split the Muslim world" -- is also no longer reachable; my heart goes out to the Libyans, as their country disintegrates around them; ditto the Tunisian, who must now realize that the Jasmine Revolution was not as romantic as its named implied.
I was looking for them in the wake of a Black Friday followed by a bloody weekend and even worse week. On June 26 the world was shocked when a terrorist gunned down 39 beachgoers, many of them British tourists, at Tunisia's Sousse resort; the general public also did a double take when it learned that the attack on an American-owned gas company near Lyon in France included the decapitation of the terrorist's former boss, whose head was impaled on the factory fence.
It is a mark of Western arrogance that it paid less attention on the same day to the Sunni attack on a Shi'ite mosque in Kuwait during Friday Ramadan prayers. The Sunni- Shi'ite divide is not a figment of our imaginations; it is rocking the world as we know it. And giving the Shi'ite side of it easy access to nuclear arms as well as an economic boost is not going to solve the problem, whatever President Barack Obama and those negotiating with Iran on his behalf believe.
I searched, in vain, for the Cairo-based journalist, not only to get her updated take on the post-Arab Spring world but also for information on the wave of terror that has swept Egypt again, from the assassination of the attorney-general to the attacks by Islamic State that left some 70 Egyptian soldiers and policemen dead in Sinai on Wednesday.
Closer to home, terrorists claimed the life of 27-year-old Malachi Rosenfeld, who was gunned down in a car as he traveled home with three friends near Shvut Rahel, close to Shiloh in the Binyamin region, on Monday.
Israeli officials are wary of calling it a new intifada, but from President Reuven Rivlin down it is being acknowledged that there is a wave of attacks that is not the isolated efforts of "lone wolves." These deadly assaults seem to be well planned and they are being carried out against the backdrop of sickening incitement.
How is the world dealing with all this? Well, the United Nations Humans Rights Council, as usual, has been busy bashing Israel for "possible war crimes."
Well, UN represents the Will of Peoples of the World---and we all know how Peoples of the World feel about the Jews and their unfair advantages.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
