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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Mubarak</title>
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		<title>Sisi Is Not Mubarak</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/sisi-is-not-mubarak/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=sisi-is-not-mubarak</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2014 05:40:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Abdel Fattah Sisi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sinai]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tunnels]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246635</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As far as Israel is concerned, the current Egyptian President is the much better man.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/al-sisi.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246677" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/al-sisi-450x280.jpg" alt="al sisi" width="256" height="159" /></a><em>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-one-Sisi-is-not-Mubarak-383483">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The Egyptian court’s decision last Saturday to acquit former president Hosni Mubarak, his sons and associates of all remaining charges against them caused most commentators to proclaim that current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi has turned back the clock. Under his leadership, they say, Egypt has restored Mubarak’s authoritarian regime under a new dictator.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">While this may be how things appear on the surface, the fact of the matter is that at least as far as Israel is concerned, nothing could be further from the truth.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">During his 30-year rule, Mubarak always assessed that threats against Israel were unrelated to threats against Egypt. Due to this view, despite continuous complaints from Jerusalem, Mubarak enabled jihadists to take root in Sinai. He allowed Egypt to be used as the major path for terrorist personnel and armaments to enter Gaza. He took only minor, sporadic action against the smuggling tunnels connecting Gaza to Sinai.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">By 2005, it became apparent that forces from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and al-Qaida were operating in the Sinai and cooperating with one another.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Despite warnings from Israel, Mubarak took no effective action to break up the emerging alliance and convergence of forces.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">It was due to Mubarak’s refusal to act that the Palestinians in Gaza were able to begin and massively expand their projectile war of mortars, rockets and missiles against Israel. From the first such attacks, carried out 14 years ago, the Palestinian projectile campaigns could never have happened without Egypt’s effective collaboration.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">On countless occasions, Palestinian terrorist commanders were able to escape to Sinai and avoid arrest by Israeli forces, only to return to Gaza from Sinai and continue their operations.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Mubarak believed that Israel was his safety valve.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">By facilitating jihadist operations against Israel from Egyptian territory, he assumed that he was securing Egypt from them. As he saw things, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran would be so satisfied with his cooperation in their jihad against the Jews that they would leave him alone.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">It was only in 2009, when Egypt announced the unraveling of a terrorist ring in Sinai comprised of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hamas and Hezbollah operatives planning attacks against Israel and Egypt, and seeking the overthrow of the regime, that Mubarak began signaling he may have misjudged the situation. But even then, his actions against those forces were sporadic and half-hearted.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas’s continued assaults against Israel in the years that followed, and the build-up of Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida forces in Sinai, were a clear sign that Mubarak was unwilling to contend with the unpleasant reality that the very forces attacking Israel were also seeking to overthrow his regime and destroy the Egyptian state.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In stark contrast, Sisi rose to power as those selfsame forces were poised to destroy the Egyptian state. The Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power owed in part to the support it received from Hamas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">During the January 2011 rebellions against Mubarak, Hamas operatives played a key role in storming Egyptian prisons in Sinai and freeing Muslim Brotherhood leaders – including Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi – from prison. In 2012 and 2013, Hamas forces reportedly served as shock troops to quell protests against the Muslim Brotherhood regime. Those protests arose in opposition to Morsi’s moves to seize dictatorial powers Mubarak never dreamed of exercising, and his constitutional machinations aimed at transforming Egypt into an Islamic state and hub of a future global caliphate.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Sisi and his generals overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood with Saudi and UAE support in order to prevent Egypt from dissolving into a Sunni jihadist axis in which Hamas, al-Qaida and other jihadist movements were key players, and Iran and Hezbollah were allied forces.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Due to the events that propelled him to power, Sisi has adopted a strategic posture far different from Mubarak’s. As Sisi sees things, Sunni jihadist forces and their Iranian-led Shi’ite allies are existential threats to the Egyptian state even when their primary target is Israel. Sisi accepts that Israel’s fight against them directly impacts Egypt.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">He recognized that when Israel is successful in defeating them, Egypt is more secure. When Israel is weak, the threat to Egypt rises.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Like Israel, Sisi acknowledges that the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is shared by Hamas, al-Qaida and all other significant Sunni jihadist groups renders all of these groups threats to Egypt. And because of this acknowledgment, Sisi has abandoned Mubarak’s policy of enabling their war against Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Not only has he abandoned Mubarak’s policy of enabling them, Sisi has acted in alliance with Israel in combating them. This is nowhere more evident than in his actions against Hamas in Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">After seizing power in July 2013, Sisi immediately ordered the Egyptian military to take action to secure the border between Gaza and Sinai. To this end, for the first time, Egypt took effective, continuous steps to block the smuggling of arms and people between the two areas. These steps had a profound impact on Hamas’s regime. Hamas went to war against Israel this past summer in a bid to force Egypt and Israel to open their borders with Gaza in support of the Hamas regime and its jihadist allies.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas was certain that footage of suffering in Gaza would force Egypt to oppose Israel, and so open its border with Gaza. It would also lead to US-led pressure on Israel that would make Israel succumb to Hamas’s demands.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Against all expectations, and previous precedents of Egyptian behavior under both Mubarak and Morsi, Sisi supported Israel against Hamas. Moreover, he brought both Saudi Arabia and the UAE into the unofficial alliance with Israel. The bloc he formed was powerful enough to surmount US pressure to end the war by bowing to Hamas’s demands and opening Gaza’s borders with Egypt and Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Since the cease-fire came into force three months ago, Sisi has continued to seal the border. As a consequence, he has denied Hamas the ability to rebuild Gaza’s terror infrastructure. In its reduced state, Hamas is less able to facilitate the operations of its jihadist brethren in Sinai that are primarily involved in waging an insurgency against the Egyptian state.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To be sure, the most significant strategic development in recent years is the US’s strategic realignment under President Barack Obama. Under Obama the US has switched sides, supporting Iran and its allies, satellites and assets, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, against America’s Sunni allies and Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But the alliance that emerged this summer between Israel and Egypt, with the participation of Saudi Arabia and the UAE , is also a highly significant strategic development. For the first time, a major regional power is basing its strategic posture on its understanding that the threats against itself and against Israel stem from the same sources and as a consequence, that the war against Israel is a war against it.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Israelis have argued this case for years to their Arab neighbors as well as to the Americans and other Western states. But for multiple reasons, no one has ever been willing to accept this basic, obvious reality.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As a consequence, everyone from the Americans to the Europeans to the Saudis long supported policies that empower jihadist forces against Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Sisi became the first major leader to break with this consensus, as a result of actions Hamas took before and since his rise to power. He has brought Saudi Arabia and the UAE along on his intellectual journey.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And this reassessment has had a profound impact on regional realities generally and on Israel’s strategic posture specifically.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">From Israel’s perspective, this is a watershed event.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The government must take every possible action, in economic and military spheres, to ensure that Sisi benefits from his actions.</span></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Secret Directive Supporting Global Islamism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/raymond-ibrahim/obamas-secret-directive-supporting-global-islamism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-secret-directive-supporting-global-islamism</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jul 2014 04:55:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Moderate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235571</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Buried in documents, the facts are all there.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/obama-is-a-terrorist-.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235576" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/obama-is-a-terrorist-.jpg" alt="obama-is-a-terrorist-" width="270" height="237" /></a>A <a href="http://gulfnews.com/news/region/libya/us-document-reveals-cooperation-between-washington-and-brotherhood-1.1349207"><span style="color: #0433ff;">recent Gulf News report</span></a> sheds some light on how and why the United States helped bring the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies to power, followed by all the subsequent chaos and atrocities in the Mideast region.</p>
<p>Large portions of the report follow with my commentary interspersed for added context:</p>
<blockquote><p>Dubai: For the past decade, two successive US administrations have maintained close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, to name just the most prominent cases.</p>
<p>The Obama administration conducted an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010 and 2011, beginning even before the events known as the “Arab Spring” erupted in Tunisia and in Egypt. The President personally issued Presidential Study Directive 11 (PSD-11) in 2010, ordering an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other “political Islamist” movements, including the ruling AKP in Turkey, ultimately concluding that <i>the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting “stability” in the Middle East and North Africa (that is, support for “stable regimes” even if they were authoritarian), to a policy of backing “moderate” Islamic political movements </i>(italics added for emphasis throughout).</p></blockquote>
<p>And we have certainly witnessed this shift.  Chaos and the Islamic ascendancy in the Middle East and North Africa never flourished as under the Obama administration—and precisely because the administration shifted from supporting stability under secular-minded autocrats.</p>
<p>The most significant example of this is how the Obama administration threw Hosni Mubarak—a U.S. ally for three decades—under the bus in order to support the Islamists, most specifically the Muslim Brotherhood.  And we saw how that ended—with another revolution, hailed as the largest revolution in human history, with the average Egyptian accusing Obama of being a terrorist supporter.</p>
<blockquote><p>To this day, PSD-11 remains classified, in part because it reveals <i>an embarrassingly naïve and uninformed view of trends in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>“Embarrassingly naïve and uninformed view” is synonymous with the “orthodox and mainstream view pushed forth by Mideast studies professors and academics,” especially those with political influence, such as the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies of Georgetown University, in Washington D.C.  Such programs, which I’m only too well acquainted with, begin with false—that is, “embarrassingly naïve and uninformed”—premises, namely: that the source of all the region’s woes are (formerly) U.S.-propped autocrats (reality is that dictators don’t create such societies but rather are the natural outcome of Islamic societies and are the ones most prone to keeping law and order—compare Iraq under Saddam and Iraq now, as a “democracy,” with “ISIS” proclaiming a caliphate).  Mideast academics have also long spearheaded the idea that there are “moderate” Islamists and “radical” Islamists, and that the U.S. should work with the former (in reality they are all radical—to be an Islamist is to be radical—the only difference is that the “moderate” Islamists don’t wear their radicalism on their sleeves, even as they work toward the same goals that the more open “radicals” work for, namely, a Sharia-enforcing caliphate).</p>
<blockquote><p>The revelations were made by Al Hewar centre in Washington, DC, which obtained the documents in question.</p></blockquote>
<p>This too is significant. As Daniel Greenfield writes: “Al-Hewar, which actually got hold of the documents, is linked to the <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6180"><span style="color: #0433ff;">International Institute of Islamic Thought</span></a>… which is a Muslim Brotherhood front group.  Figures in the Muslim Brotherhood had threatened to leak understandings with Obama Inc. This is the next best thing. It warns Obama that if he tries to forget about them, they can prove that the relationship was official policy.”</p>
<p>To be sure, after the ousting of the Brotherhood in Egypt, several Brotherhood members made, sometimes not so veiled, threats to the Obama administration if it turned its back on them, including top ranking Brotherhood member, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcD3DyrbkPw"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Khairat al-Shatter’s son</span></a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, thousands of pages of documentation of the US State Department’s dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood are in the process of being declassified and released to the public.</p></blockquote>
<p>If and when these thousands of pages are released, they should be combed through, as no doubt answers to many of the Obama administration’s hitherto inexplicable policies in the Middle East will be found—to wit:</p>
<blockquote><p>US State Department documents obtained under the FOIA <i>confirm that the Obama administration maintained frequent contact and ties with the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood</i>. At one point, in April 2012, US officials arranged for the public relations director of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Gaair, to come to Washington to speak at a conference on “Islamists in Power” hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.</p></blockquote>
<p>Indeed, despite the administration’s later insistence that it did not favor the Islamists over other parties, anecdotes implying otherwise were constantly on display.  In Egypt alone, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson, due to her close ties not just to President Morsi, but the Muslim Brotherhood in general, became <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/u-s-ambassador-to-egypt-muslim-brotherhoods-lackey/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">such a hated figure</span></a> in the months before last year’s anti-Brotherhood revolution.</p>
<blockquote><p>A State Department Cable classified “Confidential” report says the following: “Benghazi Meeting With Libyan Muslim Brotherhood: On April 2 [2012] Mission Benghazi met with a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood steering committee, who will speak at the April 5 Carnegie Endowment ‘Islamist in Power’ conference in Washington, D.C. He described the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to form a political party as both an opportunity and an obligation in post-revolution Libya after years of operating underground.</p></blockquote>
<p>These documents on the Obama administration’s connections with the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya are especially disturbing in the context of <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/behind-benghazi-muslim-brotherhood-and-obama-administration/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">earlier revelations</span></a> made in Arabic media, including that the Brotherhood’s Libyan wing was very much involved in the 9/11 Benghazi U.S. consulate attack.</p>
<blockquote><p>Another State Department paper marked “Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU)” contained talking points for Deputy Secretary of State William Burns’ scheduled July 14, 2012 meeting with Mohammad Sawan, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who was also head of the Brotherhood’s Justice and Construction Party. The document is heavily redacted, but <i>nevertheless provides clear indication of Washington’s sympathies for the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood as a major political force in the post-Gaddafi Libya.</i><b> </b>The talking points recommended that Secretary Burns tell Sawan that<b> </b>the US government entities “share your party’s concerns in ensuring that a comprehensive transitional justice process is undertaken <i>to address past violations so that they do not spark new discontent</i>.”</p></blockquote>
<p>“To address past violations so that they do not spark new discontent” is another way of stating another popular position among Mideast professors, namely that whenever Islamists engage in violence or terrorism, that is proof positive that they have a legitimate grievance, hence the US must “appease” lest it “spark new discontent” (perhaps the true backdrop of Benghazi).</p>
<blockquote><p>The Burns paper described the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood: “Prior to last year’s revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood <i>was banned for over three decades and its members were fiercely pursued by the Gaddafi regime</i>.</p></blockquote>
<p>In light of all the chaos the Islamists have been responsible for in Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, et al—is it now obvious why Arab autocrats like Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and currently Bashar Assad have always “banned” and “fiercely pursued” the Brotherhood and its affiliates?</p>
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		<title>The Left Side of History</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-left-side-of-history/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-left-side-of-history</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Nov 2013 04:20:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210932</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama’s history is all wrong.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/obama-benghazi.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210936" alt="obama-benghazi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/obama-benghazi-450x300.jpg" width="315" height="210" /></a>&#8220;As frustrating as HealthCare.gov may be sometimes,&#8221; Obama told ObamaCare navigators and volunteers. “We’re on the right side of history.”</p>
<p>It wasn’t the first time that Obama had invoked the right side of history to rally the troops. During the Arab Spring, as Mubarak resigned on his orders, he said, &#8220;History will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt, that we were on the right side of history.&#8221;</p>
<p>It’s hard to be on the right side of history at every juncture. But Obama believed that he had achieved the feat by backing Mubarak, then backing his overthrow and then backing the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Two years later, history recorded that Obama was on the wrong side of history with the fiction of the Arab Spring being swept away by the impersonal forces of history which despite  liberal claims to the contrary do not care who was claiming to be on their good side last week.</p>
<p>After lying to Americans and telling them that his intervention in Libya was about protecting Benghazi from a massacre that was never going to happen, he told the Democratic National Committee; “We&#8217;re on the right side of history now throughout the Middle East, because we believe in preventing innocents from getting slaughtered, and we believe in human rights for all people.”</p>
<p>The Libyan rebels began targeting Africans and Christians, then they attacked the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, and today the country is run by warring militias; including Al Qaeda groups which recruit fighters and obtain weapons for their campaigns in Mali and Syria.</p>
<p>In the summer of this year, Obama told Democratic members of Congress who were concerned that the ObamaCare rollout was going to be a mess, that there was no reason to worry. “We are on the right side of these issues and the right side of history in terms of providing health care to Americans.”</p>
<p>Now the right side of history is starting to look like the left side of history.</p>
<p>At least one of the Democrats, Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, decided that she had been on the wrong side of history and voted for the “You Can Keep Your Plan” Act.</p>
<p>The right side of history is where the left wants to be, but it’s a famously elusive place.</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton warned Russia and China that they had to stand on the right side of history against Assad. Since then Obama has moved closer to the Russian side of history than the Russians have to his side.</p>
<p>Afterward, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wrote an editorial titled “On the Right Side of History”; sardonically mentioning that his regime’s solution was the way to stay “as it has become fashionable to say, ‘on the right side of history.’”</p>
<p>After her resignation, Hillary Clinton took credit for the Arab Spring telling <i>The Economist</i>, “I do think we are on the right side of history” and insisted that “focusing on how to assist these new governments&#8230; that are heavily dominated by Islamist parties, is very much in America&#8217;s interests.”</p>
<p>Fast forward through a little history and the Tunisian Islamists she was discussing are on the ropes and on the wrong side of history.</p>
<p>In 2008, Bill Clinton told the Democratic National Convention, &#8220;The Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief. Sound familiar? It didn&#8217;t work in 1992 because we were on the right side of history. And it will not work in 2008 because Barack Obama is on the right side of history.&#8221;</p>
<p>Clinton was inexperienced. His failure to cope with Al Qaeda led to September 11 and his failure to force Saddam Hussein to comply with his agreements led to the Iraq War. Clinton left behind a mess for Bush to clean up. If he was on the right side of history, the world he left behind would have been a lot neater.</p>
<p>Now his wife is preparing to launch a presidential campaign by arguing that her husband was a liar, that Obama was inexperienced and that she can do better.</p>
<p>During the presidential debate, Mitt Romney challenged Obama, warning that “We&#8217;re four years closer to a nuclear Iran.”</p>
<p>Obama arrogantly retorted, “They can look at my track record, whether it&#8217;s Iran sanctions, whether it&#8217;s dealing with counterterrorism… and they can say that the president of the United States… has stood on the right side of history.”</p>
<p>On this side of history, Obama ‘s track record is that he trashed Iranian sanctions and attempted to give their nuclear program a blank check. Al Qaeda is romping around the world while he scrambles to appease the Taliban. If that’s his idea of the right side of history, then it also happens to be the side of history favored by Iran and Al Qaeda.</p>
<p>Obama wasn’t the first man of the left to believe that he was on the right side of history.</p>
<p>Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had told Western diplomats, &#8220;Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!&#8221;</p>
<p>Eight years later, he had been removed from power and was being written out of Soviet history by his own comrades. His only recourse was to smuggle his memoirs to the only place that would print his version of history… the United States.</p>
<p>Khrushchev had told Nixon that his grandchildren would live in a Communist America. Nixon had replied that the Soviet leader’s grandchildren would live in a capitalist Russia. Both men proved to be right and wrong at the same time. Christopher Cox Nixon lives in Bill de Blasio’s New York while Khrushchev’s son applied for permanent residency in the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>History is famously elastic and only progressives believe that it has a right side and a wrong side. There is no such thing as the right side of history; just as there is no such a thing as the right side of age. History, like age, is mortality. The only truly inevitable outcome of history is death.</p>
<p>History does not have sides; only outcomes.</p>
<p>Everything wrong with Obama’s attitude can be gleaned from his quote. “If you&#8217;re walking down the right path and you&#8217;re willing to keep walking, eventually you&#8217;ll make progress.”</p>
<p>It’s the sort of quote that sounds inspirational if you don’t think too much about the implications of a world leader who already claims to know what the right path is and believes in determinedly moving down it, without regard to consequences, because he is certain that if he persists, progress will come.</p>
<p>Obama believes that the left side of history is the right side of history and has a radical faith that whatever goes wrong will eventually be set right again by the inevitable progressive force of history.</p>
<p>He believes that ObamaCare will work because socialized medicine is on the right side of history and the free market is on the wrong side of history. It is this faith in a radical muse of history that will fix websites, soothe terrorists and calm the angry peasants that moves him from one disaster to another.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Jamie Glazov&#8217;s</strong> video interview with <strong></strong> <strong>Daniel Greenfield</strong> about Obama&#8217;s Destructive Agenda, his Muslim Brotherhood Romance, the Anthony Weiner-Huma Abedin saga, and much, much more:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/hpyoCFF-iL8" height="315" width="420" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Mubarak’s Prophecy on Brotherhood Comes True</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/mubaraks-prophecy-on-brotherhood-comes-true/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mubaraks-prophecy-on-brotherhood-comes-true</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Aug 2013 04:37:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nasser]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prophecy]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200979</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[True words about the games of terror. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Mubarak.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-201027" alt="Mubarak" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Mubarak-450x329.jpg" width="270" height="197" /></a><b><i>Originally published on </i></b><a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3935/mubarak-muslim-brotherhood"><b><i>Gatestone Institute.</i></b></a></p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=H8iHOULhH_4">video of Hosni Mubarak</a> when he was still Egypt&#8217;s president, the strategies of which he accuses the Muslim Brotherhood have come to pass.  What follows are Mubarak&#8217;s words from a conference in Egypt (date unknown; author&#8217;s translation):</p>
<blockquote><p>So they [Brotherhood and affiliates] took advantage of the economic situation by handing out money,  to one man 100 Egyptian pounds, or about $30 dollars, [saying,] “Here take this bag of glycerin and throw it here,” or do this or that—to create a state of instability in Egypt.  And these groups—don’t ever believe that they want democracy or anything like that.  They are exploiting democracy in order to eliminate democracy.  And if they ever do govern, it will be an ugly dictatorship. ….  Once a foreigner [likely a Westerner] told me, “Well, if that’s the case, why don’t you let them form parties?”  I told him, “they’d attack each other.”  He said, “So let them attack each other.”  I came to understand that by “attack each other” he thought I meant through dialogue.  For years we’ve been trying to dialogue with them, and still are.   If the dialogue is limited to words, fine.  But when the dialogue goes from words to bullets and bombs…  [Mubarak shakes his head, and then gives anecdotes of Egyptian police and security being killed by Brotherhood and affiliates, including how 104 policemen were killed in 1981, and how one officer was shot by them trying to save a boy’s life.] The point is, we don’t like bloodshed, neither our soldiers nor our officers.  But when I see that you’re firing at me, trying to kill me—well, I have to defend myself!  Then the international news agencies go to these [Islamist] groups for information, and they tell them, “they’re killing us, they’re killing us!”  Well, don’t you [news agencies] see them killing the police?!  I swear to you, not one of the police wants to kill them—not one of us.  Then they say, “So Mr. President, you gave orders to the police to open fire indiscriminately?”—I cannot give such an order, at all.  It contradicts the law.  I could at one point be judged [for it].</p></blockquote>
<p>Whatever one thinks of Hosni Mubarak—and his final assertion concerning himself is especially prophetic—he certainly understood the Brotherhood and their strategies well.  Consider especially the following three points he made about them and how they have all proven true:</p>
<ol>
<li>Mubarak: “And these groups—don’t ever believe that they want democracy or anything like that.  They are exploiting democracy in order to eliminate democracy.  And if they ever do govern, it will be an ugly dictatorship.”  Quite so.  While paying lip service to democracy, once the Brotherhood came into power under former president Muhammad Morsi, they became openly tyrannical: Morsi gave himself unprecedented powers for an Egyptian president, appointed Brotherhood members to all important governmental posts, “Brotherhoodizing” Egypt (as Egyptians called it), and quickly pushed through a Sharia-heavy constitution.  Under Morsi’s one year of rule, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/arab-spring-egypts-legal-persecution-of-christians/">many more Christians were attacked, arrested, and imprisoned for “blasphemy”</a> than under Mubarak’s thirty years.</li>
<li>Mubarak: “Then the international news agencies go to these groups [Brotherhood] for information, and they tell them, ‘they’re killing us, they’re killing us!’  Well, don’t you [news agencies] see them killing the police?!”  Now that the Brotherhood has been ousted and is <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/qaradawi-summons-foreign-jihadis-to-martyrdom-in-egypt/">promoting terrorism</a> in Egypt—<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/al-qaeda-flag-flies-high-above-christian-churches/">especially against its Christian minority</a>—trying to push the nation into an all-out civil war, they are, in fact, feeding the international media the old lie that they are innocent, peaceful victims in order to garner Western sympathy.</li>
<li>Mubarak: “they took advantage of the economic situation by handing out money.”  Funded by rich Wahhabi states, the Islamist organizations bought their way into Egyptian society and power.  Prior to elections, they paid—that is, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/muslim-brotherhood-buying-votes-with-food/">bribed</a>—Egyptians to vote for them; and after their ousting, they’re paying people (along with <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/inside-egypts-terrorist-camps-torture-rape-mass-murder/">beating and forcing them</a>) to stay with them in Ra‘ba al-Adawiya, and provide them with numbers for practical and propagandistic purposes.</li>
</ol>
<p>Finally, consider Mubarak’s exchange with “a foreigner,” most likely an American or European, who instantly interpreted Mubarak’s “they’d attack each other” in Western political terms of “dialogue.”  This habit of projecting Western approaches onto Islamists—who ironically represent the antithesis of the West—is one of the chief problems causing the West to be blind to reality, which must ever and always be articulated through its own paradigm, one that insists that <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/understanding-islam-buddhist-common-sense-vs-western-nonsense/">violence is always a product of political oppression</a> and that Islamists are perpetually misunderstood victims.</p>
<p>In Egypt, however, one soon learns that, when “dialogue” doesn’t go the Islamists’ way, <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/from-the-arab-world/the-return-of-al-qaeda-and-jihad/">it’s back to terrorism</a>.  This requires a more realistic approach, or, in the words of Mubarak, a man who, like his predecessors, especially <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/muslim-brotherhood-impose-islam-step-by-step/">Gamal Abdel Nasser</a>, is intimately acquainted with the Brotherhood: “when I see that you’re firing at me, trying to kill me—well, I have to defend myself!”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>The Death of the U.S.-Egypt Alliance</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/the-death-of-the-u-s-egypt-alliance/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-death-of-the-u-s-egypt-alliance</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Aug 2013 04:41:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hagel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Revolution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=200141</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Obama destroyed relations with one of the Mideast's most strategically important countries.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Egypt-protesters-carry-an-010.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-200142" alt="Egypt protesters carry anti-Obama posters" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Egypt-protesters-carry-an-010.jpg" width="260" height="191" /></a>President Obama’s misguided attempt to bend Egyptian political affairs in the Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s favor is unravelling the carefully nurtured military and economic alliance between the United States and Egypt, which has served for decades to stabilize that vital part of the Middle East.</span></b></p>
<p>First, after throwing former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak under the bus, the Obama administration did everything it could to portray the Muslim Brotherhood as a worthy organization committed to democratic principles of governance. The United States was seen by many secular Egyptians, including those who spearheaded the original revolution that led to Mubarak’s overthrow, as helping to unfairly tip the scales in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidates.</p>
<p>A year later, millions of Egyptians filled the streets demanding an end to the Islamic theocracy that Mubarak’s elected Islamist successor, Mohamed Morsi, tried to impose on the country. U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson stirred up hostility against the United States when she said the protesters should stop wasting their time with street demonstrations and allow the Muslim Brotherhood-backed government to continue to govern. “Some say that street action will produce better results than elections,” she said. “To be honest, my government and I are deeply skeptical.”</p>
<p>After the Egyptian military heeded the wishes of the people and ended Morsi’s authoritarian rule, the Obama administration has continued to meddle by advocating for the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood while at the same time hedging its bets. It has so far avoided using the word “coup” to describe the military’s action, in order to forestall the automatic triggering of a statutory requirement to cut off non-humanitarian aid when a military coup overthrows a democratically elected government. Secretary of State John Kerry even went so far as to say earlier this month that Egypt’s army was “restoring democracy.” He added that “The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people. The military did not take over, to the best of our judgment — so far.”</p>
<p>Such mixed signals have ended up alienating both the Muslim Brotherhood and its opponents, but the Muslim Brotherhood need not worry. President Obama’s heart is with them.</p>
<p>In fact, Obama has reportedly agreed to meet with Muslim Brotherhood representatives at the White House. According to the <a href="http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/exclusive-obama-agrees-meeting-brotherhood-sources-say">Egypt Independent,</a> “Obama would reportedly meet with Brotherhood officials to ‘hear their opinion’ on developments in Egypt, in the presence of Turkish diplomats.”</p>
<p>On July 30<sup>th</sup>, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel set the stage when he phoned Egypt’s defense minister and leader of Mohamed Morsi’s removal from power, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and urged him to bring the Muslim Brotherhood back into the government. According to an <a href="http://www.debka.com/article/23166/">exclusive report in the DEBKA File</a>, al-Sisi told Hagel that “it was up to the Muslim Brotherhood to subscribe to his roadmap for the caretaker administration which is ruling the country until elections are held. He then floored the US defense secretary by announcing he was launching a lightning campaign for his own run for the presidency in an early election.”</p>
<p>General al-Sisi expressed his exasperation with the United States a few days later in <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-03/world/41021583_1_obama-administration-military-coup-muslim-brotherhood">an interview with the Washington Post</a>.  “You left the Egyptians. You turned your back on the Egyptians, and they won’t forget that,” said al-Sisi. “Now you want to continue turning your backs on Egyptians?”</p>
<p>General al-Sisi has a different vision for Egypt’s political future than does the Obama administration. He is trying to build a more unified Egypt based on a nationalist platform, not a religious one. Only after the large sit-ins of Morsi supporters are brought to an end, one way or the other, will the defense minister consider offering the Muslim Brotherhood an opportunity to engage in a limited amount of political activity on a relatively short leash. Understandably, al-Sisi does not trust the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly after Morsi looked the other way while he was president and allowed militants in the Sinai Peninsula to gather for attacks on Egyptian security personnel without any serious consequence. Having failed to successfully subvert the Egyptian political system from within after Morsi and his Islamist colleagues won their elections, because millions of Egyptians caught on to their deception and demanded their ouster, the <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/muslim-brotherhood-revives-its-jihadist-roots/">Muslim Brotherhood is now helping to coordinate the jihadist operations in Sinai</a> for the purpose of launching counterattacks.</p>
<p>The Obama administration would prefer that al-Sisi and the military he commands move to the sidelines and allow the Muslim Brotherhood to re-assume a central political role. The administration sees this as the best course to avoid another military dictatorship and a violent backlash that could deteriorate into a full-blown civil war, despite the Muslim Brotherhood’s own duplicitous track record.</p>
<p>Adding further insult to injury, the RINO Bobbsey twins, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, visited Cairo last week and delivered an ultimatum to Egypt’s interim government leaders. According to a <a href="http://www.nysun.com/foreign/americas-alliance-with-egypt-is-on-verge/88366/">report by Youssef Ibrahim appearing in The New York Sun</a> on August 8<sup>th</sup>, the message the senators delivered was either to release Morsi and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders from detention and to bring Muslim Brotherhood representatives into the new government, or face a cut-off of all U.S. military and financial aid to Egypt. The White House denies that the senators were acting directly on behalf of President Obama, but it is unlikely they would have been so blunt without the president’s blessing.</p>
<p>The response of Egypt’s current President Mansour and his prime minister, Hazem Biblawi, was swift and contemptuous of the two senators. They described Senators McCain and Graham as “delusional” and “liars.” Egypt’s chief newspaper, Al Ahram, said the senators engaged in “foolish statements that are unacceptable.”</p>
<p>The Egyptian cabinet sent out a tweet calling Senator McCain “a persona non grata” for insulting Egypt’s sovereignty.</p>
<p>There is only so much leverage that the Obama administration can get out of a threat to cut off aid to Egypt. If the threat is not acted upon, it will only make the United States look even weaker. If it is carried out, we will be pushing Egypt into the arms of Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Arab States of the Persian Gulf to fill the gap.</p>
<p>Moreover, in continuing to advocate for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Obama administration is legitimizing a jihadist organization that spawned al Qaeda and Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood may put on the sheep’s clothing of faux moderation for tactical reasons when it can fool its opposition by doing so, but its ultimate objective is the same as al Qaeda’s &#8211; an Islamic caliphate governed by sharia law.</p>
<p>The Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s Supreme Guide and overall leader, Mohamed Badie, made his jihadist group’s agenda clear in a sermon he delivered in December 2011, as the Muslim Brotherhood was building up its political power following the toppling of the Mubarak regime. He said that the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission would start with the creation of a sound government and end with the establishment of an Islamic caliphate according to the plan laid out by the organization’s Egyptian founder, Hassan al-Banna, in 1928.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4650.htm">sermon Mohamed Badie delivered a little over a year earlier in September 2010</a> (as transcribed by The Middle East Media Research Institute), he made clear the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology of Islamic supremacy and resistance against the infidels, principally Israel and the United States:</p>
<blockquote><p>According to the Islamic shari&#8217;a that Allah [has bequeathed] to mankind, the status of the Muslims, compared to that of the infidel nations that arrogantly [disdain] his shari&#8217;a, is measured in a kind of scale, in which, when one side is in a state of superiority, the other is in a state of inferiority&#8230;Resistance is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny… The U.S. is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise.</p></blockquote>
<p>This is the true face of the jihadist group that President Obama is shilling for. His wrong-headed policy of accommodating the Muslim Brotherhood will only serve to help Badie’s game plan come to pass and further de-stabilize the Middle East.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Morsi&#8217;s Deadline</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/morsis-deadline/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=morsis-deadline</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Jul 2013 04:59:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protest]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=195492</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Muslim Brotherhood strongman clings to power as his hopes of political survival crumble. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/477092-egypt-protests-morsi.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-195495" alt="477092-egypt-protests-morsi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/477092-egypt-protests-morsi-450x321.jpg" width="315" height="225" /></a>As civil unrest grows in Egypt, that country&#8217;s Islamofascist president is refusing to bow to military pressure to step down, setting the stage for further bloody conflict.</p>
<p>In an impassioned <a href="http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/02/19246354-egypts-morsi-says-he-wont-step-down-vows-to-protect-his-legitimacy">televised speech</a> late Tuesday, Mohammed Morsi vowed not to leave office. &#8220;I am prepared to sacrifice my blood for the sake of the security and stability of this homeland.&#8221;</p>
<p>On Monday the armed forces gave the embattled president and that country&#8217;s political parties 48 hours to devise a solution to Egypt&#8217;s political crisis. The army said it would offer a &#8220;road map&#8221; for peace if Morsi and his adversaries failed to observe &#8220;the will of the people.&#8221; The deadline is today.</p>
<p>Earlier on Tuesday Morsi&#8217;s office posted a statement on Twitter. &#8220;President Mohammed Morsi asserts his grasp on constitutional legitimacy and rejects any attempt to deviate from it, and calls on the armed forces to withdraw their warning and refuses to be dictated to internally or externally.&#8221;</p>
<p>But Morsi&#8217;s entreaties don&#8217;t seem to be working. His own cabinet has abandoned him. On its official Twitter account the cabinet condemned the speech. “The cabinet declares its rejection of Dr. Morsi’s speech and his pushing the country toward a civil war,” the statement read. “The cabinet announces [it is] taking the side of the people.”</p>
<p>Morsi&#8217;s refusal to resign puts him on a collision course with that nation&#8217;s armed forces, which were instrumental in removing his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.</p>
<p>His speech came shortly after the military reportedly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/world/middleeast/egypt-protests.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0">took over</a> the newspaper, Al Ahram, and used it to publicize plans to depose the president should he fail to agree to reforms. In an article titled, “removal or resignation,” the newspaper reported that the army would “abolish the controversial Constitution” and strike a committee to draft a new one. It would also make a military leader the nation&#8217;s interim prime minister.</p>
<p>The newspaper also reported that “to ensure the country’s security” the military and security services had already placed several of Morsi&#8217;s allies in the Muslim Brotherhood under house arrest. Orders have been issued to arrest “anybody who resists these decisions.”</p>
<p>Hours after the speech was broadcast, Egypt&#8217;s high command responded to Morsi, who calls Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.&#8221; &#8220;We swear to God that we will sacrifice even our blood for Egypt and its people, to defend them against any terrorist, radical or fool,&#8221; read the post on the official Facebook page of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), headed by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.</p>
<p>In the Tuesday evening address Morsi was responding to an ultimatum issued Monday by the military. As an estimated one million people <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/1-million-egyptians-demand-morsi-ouster-5-dead-muslim-brotherhood-hq-on-fire/">demonstrated</a> against him in Cairo and Alexandria on Sunday, protesters set the headquarters of Morsi&#8217;s Muslim Brotherhood on fire. Al-Sisi, who is also defense minister, said the demonstrations were an &#8220;unprecedented&#8221; expression of the popular will.</p>
<p>In recent days protesters have <a href="http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2013/07/egypt-demonstrators-denounce-us-muslim.html">carried signs</a> condemning President Obama for supporting Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. In May the Obama administration quietly approved $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to Morsi&#8217;s government, rewarding it for its increasingly vicious assaults on foreign workers, religious minorities, and civil society. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry authorized the aid despite finding in a May 9 memo that “we are not satisfied with the extent of Egypt’s progress and are pressing for a more inclusive democratic process and the strengthening of key democratic institutions.”</p>
<p>Daniel Pipes <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2013/07/should-egypt-morsi-stay-or-go#continued">believes</a> it&#8217;s time for the U.S. government to &#8220;stop coddling Morsi and to get behind the millions of protestors. But will the geniuses in the White House, the State Department, and [the] Embassy [in] Cairo hear?&#8221;</p>
<p>It should be noted that not all the Egyptians are demonstrating against the ongoing Islamization of their country. <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/07/egypt-islamic-supremacist-protestors-hate-morsi-for-not-going-to-war-with-israel.html">Some are</a> Islamists upset that Morsi is moving too slowly in turning Egypt into Iran. They say he isn&#8217;t hardline enough and complain he hasn&#8217;t repudiated the Camp David Accords. As Robert Spencer notes, &#8220;After all, that was why they got rid of [former President Hosni] Mubarak.&#8221;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, details of the army&#8217;s so-called road map have begun to surface.</p>
<p>Citing unidentified &#8220;military sources,&#8221; <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/02/us-egypt-protests-roadmap-idUSBRE9610QN20130702">Reuters</a> partly echoed Al Ahram, reporting that the armed forces are planning &#8220;to install an interim council, composed mainly of civilians from different political groups and experienced technocrats, to run the country until an amended constitution [is] drafted within months.&#8221;</p>
<p>Following the installation of the interim council, there would be a new presidential election. Parliamentary elections would be &#8220;delayed until strict conditions for selecting candidates were in force,&#8221; the sources said. The new president of the constitutional court, Adli Mansour, is being considered as a transitional head of state.</p>
<p>&#8220;The armed forces planned to open talks with the main opposition National Salvation Front and other political, religious and youth organizations once a deadline set for Morsi to reach a power-sharing agreement expires on Wednesday. The sources would not say how the military intended to deal with Morsi if he refused to go quietly.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not clear what the National Salvation Front has in store for Egypt. It named former U.N. nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei as its spokesman in negotiations with the armed forces. ElBaradei, who is frequently rumored to be an Egyptian presidential candidate, previously served on the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization. Among the leftists and useful idiots on the current board are radical philanthropist George Soros, retired General Wesley Clark, and Islamist sympathizer <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/obamas-benghazi-investigator-an-iran-sympathizer/">Thomas Pickering</a>.</p>
<p>Even if Morsi is forced out, it&#8217;s not obvious what kind of leader would replace him. Despite the historic protests of recent days, Egyptians on the whole remain largely supportive of Islamization and the imposition of Shariah law in Egypt.</p>
<p>But if a new president is selected by people with ties to George Soros, there is ample reason for concern.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Egypt Erupts</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/egypt-erupts/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=egypt-erupts</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Jul 2013 04:20:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tahrir Square]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=195023</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Anti-Morsi masses take to the streets. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/morsiprotestsap.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-195025" alt="morsiprotestsap" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/morsiprotestsap-450x312.jpg" width="270" height="187" /></a>Sunday marked Mohamed Morsi’s first anniversary as president of Egypt. By evening it was clear—if there had been any doubt left—that he had little to celebrate.</span></b></p>
<p>Already on Saturday, amid mounting violence, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood had had to whisk him away to safety amid reports that protesters planned to march on his presidential palace. At least eight people, including a young American man, had already been killed in demonstrations. Offices of the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, had been set on fire in the cities of Alexandria and Dakahlia.</p>
<p>The opponents of the Islamist regime claimed to have gathered 22 million signatures on a petition to oust Morsi—almost double the 13 million who had voted for him a year earlier. These opponents are an unlikely coalition of (relative) liberals, supporters of the previous regime of Hosni Mubarak, and even more extreme Islamists of a Salafist bent. All are united—for now—only by an iron determination to topple Morsi and his regime.</p>
<p>That regime, in the eyes of the protest movement, is responsible for Egypt’s ongoing economic deterioration that includes mounting inflation, wide-scale unemployment, a steep drop in tourism, shortages of basic commodities, plummeting foreign investment, and dwindling cash reserves. Accompanying the acute economic crisis is a breakdown in social order with the police rendered impotent, rampant crime in the streets, and minorities like Christians and Shiites suffering severe persecution.</p>
<p>The protesters also charge the regime with subverting Egypt’s political institutions. The parliament was disbanded a year ago, and early in June the Senate was declared unlawful. The Brotherhood, say its opponents, has imposed its own Islamist constitution on the country, stacked government with its supporters, and generally betrayed its supposedly democratic mandate while miserably mismanaging the country.</p>
<p>The crisis intensified on Sunday. During the day one person was killed and close to thirty injured when Morsi supporters and opponents clashed in the city of Bani Suef, south of Cairo. Troops and armored vehicles were deployed in Cairo and army helicopters flew above the city. Fears of violence were reportedly prompting many people to try and flee the country, with 60,000 leaving it via Cairo International Airport since Friday.</p>
<p>The key question was whether, as the heat of the day subsided toward evening, the protesters indeed had enough support to bring vast numbers of people into the streets. By early evening it was clear that the answer was affirmative as hundreds of thousands materialized in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and in cities throughout the country. The Tahrir Square protesters used the same chant—“The people want the fall of the regime!”—that was heard there two and a half years ago in the anti-Mubarak revolt. A much smaller group of Islamist supporters of Morsi, reportedly around 10,000, gathered around a mosque near the presidential palace.</p>
<p>By late Sunday evening there were reports of about 175 people injured in protests throughout the country. The Brotherhood said its Cairo headquarters had been attacked by protesters firing shotguns and throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks. The initial impression, then, is that the protest has real backing and energy and the regime would be wrong to count on it fizzling out.</p>
<p>A key issue is the role of the army. Earlier in the week the chief of staff, Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, had warned that the army would intervene if things got out of control. Having been removed from power a year ago by Morsi, after having ruled the country for the year and a half since Mubarak’s fall, the military establishment is considered resentful toward the regime but cognizant of the fact that Washington, as <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4809">Israeli commentator Boaz Bismuth puts it</a>, “supports the elected president, even if it is Morsi. The military, however, can force Morsi to make concessions.”</p>
<p>The coming days will tell to what extent the regime is in trouble; but Sunday’s events can hardly leave it sanguine. It would be encouraging to think most Egyptians now realize the mistake of hastily deposing the lesser evil, Mubarak, and in effect clearing the path for the considerably greater evil of Morsi and his Islamists. Confronted, though, by yet another Middle Eastern spectacle of roiling violence, with Salafists constituting one faction of the rebels, even relative optimism has to be cautious.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Why the United States Should Stay Out of Egypt</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/why-the-united-states-should-stay-out-of-egypt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-the-united-states-should-stay-out-of-egypt</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Mar 2013 04:48:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mohamed el baradei]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=179540</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s time to let the Egyptians choose their own destiny.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/why-the-united-states-should-stay-out-of-egypt/egypt-5/" rel="attachment wp-att-179569"><img class=" wp-image-179569 alignleft" title="egypt" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/egypt-450x300.jpg" alt="" width="315" height="210" /></a>Much like Festivus, American diplomacy to the Middle East usually begins with an airing of grievances. These are not the American grievances over decades of terrorism and acts of violent hatred. These are the grievances that are supposedly infuriating the Arab Street. The list begins with Israel, continues on to the “Arab Dictators” supported by America and concludes with warnings to respect Mohammed by not making any cartoons or movies about him.</p>
<p>During his first term, Obama kept his distance from Israel, locked up a Christian who made a movie about Mohammed and withdrew his support from the dictators. The street should have been happy, but now it&#8217;s angrier than ever. And much of that anger is directed at America.</p>
<p>Mohamed El Baradei, once the administration&#8217;s choice to take over Egypt, has refused to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry. Joining him in this boycott is Egypt&#8217;s liberal opposition.</p>
<p>When Mubarak was in power, the &#8220;Arab Street&#8221; of Islamists and Egyptian leftists was angry at America for supporting him. Now the &#8220;Arab Street&#8221; of Egyptian leftists and Mubarak supporters is angry at America for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Washington’s foreign policy error was to assume that the political grievances of the Arab Street could be appeased with democracy. They can&#8217;t be. The various factions are not truly interested in open elections. What they want is for America to elevate their faction and only their faction to power. When that doesn&#8217;t happen, they denounce the government as an American puppet and warn of the great and terrible anger of the Arab Street if America doesn&#8217;t make them its puppet instead.</p>
<p>There is no actual solution to the Arab Street that will please all sides and keep their hatred of America down to a dull roar. Whichever side the United States of America backs will leave the others full of fury. If the United States doesn&#8217;t back a side but maintains good relations with the government, it will still be accused of backing that government.</p>
<p>The only way to disprove that accusation is for the winning side to demonstrate its hostility to the United States. Accordingly even governments that are friendly to the United States must demonstrate their unfriendliness as a defense against accusations that they are puppets of the infidels. And as a result, no matter whom the United States supports, all the factions, including those we support, will continue to engage in ritual displays of hostility against us.</p>
<p>Demagogues can lead the street from bread riots to toppling governments, but cannot fix the underlying problems, let alone change the bigotry of people who blame all their problems on foreigners, rather than on themselves. Each faction promises that the anger will subsidize and stability will return when it comes to power, but the anger will never go away because it&#8217;s too convenient to blame America for everything. As long as America is around, no one in the Muslim world ever has to take responsibility for anything.</p>
<p>The United States has supported different factions in the Muslim world for the sake of stability. The latest of these is the Muslim Brotherhood. With terrorism from the religion whose name none dare speak running rampant across the world, the Muslim Brotherhood was supposed to pacify the violence by showing that Islamists could come to power without flying planes into buildings.</p>
<p>While Washington was culpable in supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian opposition was far more culpable for forming an alliance with the Brotherhood to overthrow Mubarak. The same Egyptian leftists who are warring with the Brotherhood now were assuring us two years ago that the Brotherhood would never come to power. They gave American policymakers and diplomats those same assurances and now they are condemning them for taking them at their word.</p>
<p>El Baradei was entirely willing to ride the Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s numbers to the presidency. Instead the Muslim Brotherhood rode him and then rode over him. Now El Baradei, who applied eagerly for the job of being America&#8217;s puppet, is denouncing America for supporting a puppet government. America is, if anything, more the puppet of the Muslim Brotherhood than the other way around, but accusations of evil puppetry are as common a theme in the politics of the Middle East as giant puppet displays are at leftist protests in America.</p>
<p>Every faction in the game understands that America&#8217;s goal is to achieve regional stability while ending the anger and hatred directed at it. Stating a vulnerable goal in the region is a piece of tactical clumsiness that leads the opposition to promote instability and spread anger toward America because they know that is what it fears. And so the very act of defining a &#8220;love and peace&#8221; goal not only makes attaining it completely and utterly impossible, but actually leads to the very opposite result.</p>
<p>The United States withdrew its support from Mubarak because it did not want to support a leader whom the proverbial Arab Street hated, but now it is stuck supporting another leader whom the Street hates. After all that effort and the sacrifice of national interests, the United States finds itself right back where it started even while its strategic interests have taken a beating.</p>
<p>Washington should never have withdrawn its support from Mubarak and now that the tactic of appeasing the Arab Street has proven futile, it should stop supporting the Muslim Brotherhood out of some misplaced commitment to Muslim democracy, a mythical creature that no one in the Muslim world actually believes in, and the even more misplaced notion that the Muslim Brotherhood can restore stability to the region.</p>
<p>As the past year has shown us, the Muslim Brotherhood is not capable of bringing stability to Egypt, let alone the region. It is a violent sectarian organization incapable of running the country without resorting to violence. Refusing to support the Muslim Brotherhood should not however lead to any further fallacies about freedom and democracy. These two attributes are not about to arrive in Egypt in any enduring form.</p>
<p>A chaotic Egypt will likely drift into one kind of tyranny or another. The United States should stay out of the process, providing no support to any of the factions, until a stable non-Islamist government that is willing to cooperate with the United States on security issues arises. That should be the only American criteria with respect to who rules or misrules Egypt.</p>
<p>The Arab Street is not America&#8217;s problem. It is the problem of those who wish to rule it. If the Egyptian people truly wish democracy, then they will fight for it and obtain it without our support. If they do not, that is also their business.</p>
<p>America&#8217;s interests in Egypt do not involve a crusade for democracy, but keeping heavy firepower, a large population and nuclear technology out of the hands of our enemies.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Egypt Erupts as Muslim Brotherhood Seizes Power</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/egypt-erupts-as-morsi-seizes-powers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=egypt-erupts-as-morsi-seizes-powers</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Nov 2012 04:58:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=166597</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Will Obama continue to back Morsi? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/egypt-erupts-as-morsi-seizes-powers/egypt-protest-reuters-670/" rel="attachment wp-att-166619"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-166619" title="egypt-protest-reuters-670" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/egypt-protest-reuters-670.jpg" alt="" width="267" height="206" /></a>Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi can at least get a prize for brazenness. Just last Wednesday he was being praised by the Obama administration for his “practical” role in working out a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. “This was somebody focused on solving problems,” a “senior administration official” admiringly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/world/middleeast/egypt-leader-and-obama-forge-link-in-gaza-deal.html?pagewanted=all">told</a> the <em>New York Times</em>.</p>
<p>The very next day, Thursday, Morsi engaged in a different kind of “problem solving”—taking steps to steamroll the opposition and move a big step closer to totalitarian rule for himself and his Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>A decree issued by Morsi on that day shields his decisions from judicial review and effectively puts him beyond the law. It gives the same kind of protection to the lower house of parliament—which is dominated by Islamists who are writing Egypt’s new constitution and had been facing legal challenges; and similarly insulates the Islamist-controlled upper house of parliament.</p>
<p>Morsi also ordered retrials of officials from the previous Mubarak regime who were charged with violence in putting down the 2011 Tahrir Square-centered rebellion—including the 84-year-old Mubarak himself, even though he was already sentenced to life in prison.</p>
<p>Since Egyptians learned of the decree on Friday morning, the country has erupted in a way not seen since the 2011 revolt itself.</p>
<p>On Friday violent protests rocked Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, and Suez. By Saturday Egypt’s judicial establishment was in an uproar. Reuters <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/24/us-egypt-president-idUSBRE8AM0DO20121124">reported</a> that “the Judges’ Club, a body representing judges across Egypt, called for a strike during a meeting interrupted with chants demanding the ‘downfall of the regime’ – the rallying cry in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year….”</p>
<p>Opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei called Morsi a “dictator impos[ing] the most oppressive, abhorrent measures” and said he was “waiting to see, I hope soon, a very strong statement of condemnation by the U.S., by Europe and by everybody who really cares about human dignity.”</p>
<p>State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland did come through with a statement. Far from condemning Morsi so soon after Washington had elevated him to statesman, it called for “a constitution that includes checks and balances, and respects fundamental freedoms, individual rights, and the rule of law consistent with Egypt’s international commitments”—in other words, replete with the very delusions that had led the administration to view the Muslim Brotherhood as a democratic force in the first place.</p>
<p>Things were no quieter on Sunday. Egypt’s stock market plunged by almost 10 percent—the worst since the heyday of the anti-Mubarak uprising in February last year. AP <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/11/25/opponents-egypt-islamic-president-clash-with-backers-over-new-powers/">reported</a> that</p>
<blockquote><p>hundreds of protesters clashed with police in…Tahrir Square, marking the third day of violence sparked by…Morsi’s decision to grant himself extensive new powers&#8230;. Riot police used tear gas as protesters hurled rocks toward them in the center of the square….</p></blockquote>
<p>With both opposition groups and the Muslim Brotherhood calling for massive rallies on Tuesday, a situation that could spin out of control, a clearly alarmed Morsi <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/egyptian-presidency-mursi-decrees-temporary-wants-dialogue-154041841.html">backtracked</a> somewhat, issuing a statement that last week’s decree was of a “temporary nature” and “not meant to concentrate powers,” claiming a commitment to an “inclusive democratic dialogue.”</p>
<p>The next few days will tell whether, despite Morsi’s effort to calm the storm, Egypt is on the brink of a revolt somewhat analogous to the abortive 2009 revolt against the Islamist regime in Tehran. At that time President Barack Obama committed one of the gravest failures of his first term by not backing the antiregime forces. Considering how politically invested Washington is in Morsi and the Brotherhood, there is not much ground for optimism—should a comparable situation take shape—this time around either.</p>
<p>Still, whatever the degree of Western support or lack of support, those still hoping for a Middle East not entirely swept away by radicalism can only be encouraged by the powerful anti-Morsi, anti-Brotherhood winds now blowing in Egypt.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Coming Sharia State of Egypt</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/theodore-shoebat/the-coming-sharia-state-of-egypt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-coming-sharia-state-of-egypt</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Nov 2012 04:40:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Theodore Shoebat]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Christians persecuted]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=166717</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The darkness that ensues once Islamism seizes a nation. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/theodore-shoebat/the-coming-sharia-state-of-egypt/morsi-4/" rel="attachment wp-att-166723"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-166723" title="morsi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/morsi2-450x280.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="168" /></a>Egypt <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/23/egypt-president-mohamed-morsi-ruthless">has now a modern pharaoh</a>, named Muhammad Morsi, and with him as the sole ruler, the country will ultimately become an official Sharia state. Sharia is already enforced <a href="http://youtu.be/DM_e9KURiWQ">to some degree, </a> but now that the Muslim Brotherhood is expanding its power, it will implement the edicts of its constitution, the Koran, to is fullest capacity.</p>
<p>This is was foreshadowed months ago when <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/video-report-confirms-egyptian-crucifixions/">counter-revolutionaries were crucified in front of the presidential palace</a>, since these type of executions are demanded in the Koran where it states that:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The punishment of anyone who fight against Allah and His apostle and do mischief in the land is to be killed or crucified or to have their hands and feet from opposite ends or be banished from the land.” (Quran: The table spread)</p></blockquote>
<p>That Egypt will become a Sharia state is most clearly shown in Egyptian politics itself. In September of this year, Egypt’s justice Hossam Ghariani, President of the Supreme Judicial Council, <a href="http://tedshoebat.com/2012/09/22/president-of-the-supreme-judicial-council-in-egypt-demands-implementation-of-sharia/">said in a video</a> that the Egyptian people were demanding Sharia, and that to enforce it would be the correct choice:</p>
<blockquote><p>The country did not have a desire to enforce Islamic Sharia, ok you want Islamic Sharia then elect the ones who will enforce it. Do the Egyptian people want the law man to enforce Islamic Sharia? Yes, the majority of the Egyptian people want to enforce Islamic Sharia. There were conferences that were held to put into the law [Shariah] edicts. The previous government was foreign to us, it did not want to enforce Sharia. Why? Do the enforcers of Sharia want to rob the country? This is not correct. Let us then fix the Egyptian Constitution without worry. We trust the Egyptian people to do the right thing, Allah willing.</p></blockquote>
<p>Dr. Mohamed Yousry Salameh, the Executive Member of the Al-Dostur, founded by Mohamed ElBaradei, the father of the Egyptian Revolution, <a href="http://tedshoebat.com/2012/09/21/mohamed-elbaradeis-party-demands-sharia-in-egypt/">stated</a> that the party needed to push the Muslim Brotherhood to begin an implementation of Sharia in Egypt:</p>
<blockquote><p>So who is now stopping us from enforcing Sharia, including all its edicts as you all want? Answer: its the president, and his party [the Muslim Brotherhood]. It is he, after all who is in power… so what do they have to stop this [Sharia]? Answer: nothing. …They are some who say that the society is not ready for this [Sharia], but this is a statement if I said it, or so and so said it, they will peel his skin alive, while if others [the Muslim Brotherhood] say it is alright.</p></blockquote>
<p>The statement implies that the only thing keeping Egypt from being a Sharia state was the Muslim Brotherhood itself. Now that Morsi has taken the position of dictator, it is now quite clear that the full enforcement of Sharia is on its way soon. The Christians will be massacred by orders from the state itself, and it will be happily done not only by government officers and soldiers, but by the Egyptian people themselves. Egypt will not be ruled under full dictatorship, but also by mob rule.</p>
<p>Tyranny is founded in the masses, and it is the great majority of the Egyptian people who want Sharia, and therefore it will be them who will take part greatly in killing Christians or any moderate Egyptians.</p>
<p>The people are to blame for this coming tyranny in Egypt; they wanted the ousting of Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist to rule, and Sharia to become the rule of the land. The current protest being done by Morsi’s rivals are irrelevant at this point, since there is nothing that can be done once Islamism seizes a nation. Most of the people wanted Sharia, and now they are going to taste it.</p>
<p><strong>Theodore Shoebat is the author of the book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Tyranny-When-Nations-Natural/dp/0982567901">For God or For Tyranny.</a></strong></p>
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		<title>The Muslim Brothers Take Over Egypt</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/the-muslim-brothers-are-taking-over-egypt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-muslim-brothers-are-taking-over-egypt</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 20 Aug 2012 04:55:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[takeover]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=140909</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And silence from the Obama administration. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/morsi2_2257836b.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-140943" title="morsi2_2257836b" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/morsi2_2257836b.gif" alt="" width="375" height="240" /></a>We don’t hear much anymore the breathless celebrations of Egyptian democracy that followed our abandonment of the creepy but reliable Hosni Mubarak. The “Facebook kids” who enchanted our media with their tech-savvy cool have been forgotten. It’s hard to find anymore the optimism of Senator Joseph Lieberman, who in <em>Foreign Affairs</em> called the Arab Spring a struggle for “democracy, dignity, economic opportunity, and involvement in the modern world.” Events in Egypt every day reveal that shortsighted enthusiasm to be singularly lacking in prudence, and almost delusional in its naïve understanding of genuine democracy. But our government continues to pretend that the Muslim Brothers running the show are democrats whose interests can align with ours.</p>
<p>As each day passes, the Muslim Brothers are consolidating their power and shaping a government that looks less and less like a liberal democracy. President Mohammed Morsi has removed a major check on his power, Defense Minister Mohammed Hussein Tantawi. He was the leader of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which had been running Egypt since Mubarak was ousted last February, and which countered the influence of the Islamists. Also sacked were his fellow council members, the acting chiefs of Egypt’s military branches. Morsi then annulled SCAF’s constitutional declarations that had kept Morsi from exercising legislative power. As <em>The Christian Science Monitor</em> reported, the Muslim Brothers’ Morsi “now theoretically holds all the formal political power in the Arab world&#8217;s largest country. He can legislate, nominate members of the constitutional drafting committee, set foreign policy, and apparently shuffle the senior ranks of the military at will.”</p>
<p>Around the same time, Morsi went after newspapers that weren’t following the Muslim Brothers’ line. Editions of Al-Dustour, one of the few newspapers not run by the government, were removed from newsstands for “fueling sedition” and “harming the president through phrases and wording punishable by law,” according to Egypt’s official news agency. This follows the shutting down of a television network, el-Faraeen, and the Muslim Brothers-dominated parliament’s move to replace the editors of the state-run newspapers.</p>
<p>Finally, just a few days ago Morsi targeted the Egyptian judiciary, seeking to limit the courts’ power and remove anti-Islamist judges. The president of the Lawyers’ Syndicate, Sameh Ashour, pointed out the obvious intent behind Morsi’s actions: “These are monopolistic plans. The Brotherhood wants to control all aspects of the state.” The next step will be the drafting of a new constitution that will further emasculate the Supreme Constitutional Court, which has been an obstacle to the Muslim Brothers since Mubarak’s fall.</p>
<p>Of course, no one familiar with the Muslim Brothers’ aim to institute shari’a law in Egypt and, in the words of Muslim Brothers founder Hassan al Banna, to see “the Islamic banner . . . wave supreme over the human race,” will be surprised. Yet for the Obama administration, the mechanics of democratic elections trump the noxious ideology manipulating the machinery. Hence Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s message to Morsi is that the United States is eager to “support the democratically elected government and to help make it a success in delivering results for the people of Egypt.” Clinton shows no awareness that the “results” the Muslim Brothers and their millions of supporters want to deliver are unlikely to be those compatible with liberal democracy and human rights. Similarly myopic is the invitation to the White House issued to a member of Gama’a al-Islamiyya, a notorious Egyptian terrorist outfit. State Department flack Victoria Nuland explained the visit by saying, “We have an interest in engaging a broad cross-section of Egyptians who are seeking to peacefully shape Egypt’s future.” Like her boss, Nuland seems oblivious to the sort of “future” the Muslim Brothers and other jihadists have in mind. She too should listen to al Banna, who wrote, “It is the nature of Islam to dominate not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations, and extend its power to the entire planet.”</p>
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		<title>The Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s Palace Coup</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/the-muslim-brotherhoods-palace-coup/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-muslim-brotherhoods-palace-coup</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:31:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=140360</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obstacles in the way of the Islamist takeover of Egypt are dwindling. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ap_morsi_egypt_rally_nt_120629_wg.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-140381" title="ap_morsi_egypt_rally_nt_120629_wg" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ap_morsi_egypt_rally_nt_120629_wg.gif" alt="" width="375" height="241" /></a>In less than a week, the Muslim Brotherhood has made great strides towards consolidating its power in Egypt. Last Wednesday, newly elected president Mohammed Morsi <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/world/middleeast/egypt-sinai-attacks.html?pagewanted=all">fired</a> his intelligence chief and other top security officials, using the killing of 16 soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula as his rationale. On Sunday Morsi took his purge one step further, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444772404577585153733756494.html">dismissing</a> the entire military leadership in a move that shocked the nation. Whether the military ultimately accepts that decision remains to be seen. The dramatic political implications from the move, however, are not in question.</p>
<p>Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi, Military Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Sami Anan, along with three <a href="http://www.debka.com/article/22268/Muslim-Brotherhood-anti-army-coup-in-Cairo-Tanks-move-up-to-Israel-border">generals</a>, Air Force Chief Rezza Abd al-Megid, Navy Commander Mahab Muhamed Mamish and Air Defense Chief Abd Al-Aziz Muhamed Seif were all sacked by Morsi. Tantawi and Anan will be retained as advisors, said Yasser Ali, Mr. Morsi&#8217;s spokesman. The <em>Wall Street Journal </em>speculated that the arrangement suggests both men were consulted in advance and willingly ceded power. Morsi awarded both men &#8220;Order of the Nile&#8221; medals, Egypt&#8217;s highest state honor. Morsi also appointed Mahmoud Mekki as his vice president. Mekki is a former judge who earned notoriety for challenging the power of the Hosni Mubarak regime.</p>
<p>Morsi also <a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/08/13/SCAF-mum-after-military-leaders-are-fired/UPI-61201344841200/">nullified</a> a constitutional declaration issued by the military junta that severely limited his presidential authority, replacing it with one that gives him sweeping executive and legislative powers. The <em>Journal</em> contends that this new arrangement gives him more power than Hosni Mubarak enjoyed, while the <em>New York Times</em> speculates that such power could give Morsi a decisive role in the drafting of Egypt&#8217;s as yet unfinished new constitution.</p>
<p>If this move remains unchallenged, Morsi becomes the supreme commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, president of the National Defense Council, and Egypt&#8217;s president.</p>
<p>The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) was slow to officially weigh in on the apparent coup, but Egypt&#8217;s official news agency <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-military-shows-no-sign-opposing-president-130523605.html">quoted</a> an unnamed military official late Sunday as saying there has been no &#8220;negative reaction&#8221; from within the military. Tantawi and Anan&#8217;s successors, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, an ex-head of military intelligence, and Lt. Gen. Sidki Sayed Ahmed, respectively, were sworn in during a brief and somber ceremony broadcast live on state TV Sunday. Little is known about either man, but Lt. Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi angered activists last year when he reportedly admitted to Amnesty International that Egypt&#8217;s military was using &#8220;virginity tests&#8221; to supposedly protect military personnel from rape accusations.</p>
<p>Sunday was also the first time the Egyptian public was made aware of what was going on. In his speech at the event, Morsi contended the move was not made to &#8220;embarrass&#8221; the military or its leadership, but to act in the &#8220;best interests of the nation.&#8221; &#8220;Today, this nation returns&#8211;this people return&#8211;with its blessed revolution,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Support me strongly, so we can move to a better future.&#8221;</p>
<p>Egypt expert Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at New York&#8217;s Century Foundation described the event as a &#8220;civilian-led putsch. It&#8217;s extralegal,&#8221; he told the <em>Journal.</em> &#8220;It requires for the Supreme Constitutional Court to cease to be a binding force. I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s any other way around it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Perhaps they already are. Morsi&#8217;s new declaration of powers effectively guts the ruling made by that body declaring that the military&#8217;s constitutional declaration limiting the powers of the presidency was legal. That ruling stemmed from the fact that some of the judges on the court share the military&#8217;s distrust of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had remained suppressed for decades under Mubarak.</p>
<p>Senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s Freedom and Justice Party were apparently preparing for a backlash. They used Twitter and Facebook to rally public support for the move, and by Sunday night, hundreds of supporters had gathered in Cairo&#8217;s Tahrir Square with banners to declare their allegiance to the president.</p>
<p>As the appointments were being made, the Egyptians moved American-made M-60 tanks up to the Israeli border, which is an ostensible violation of the 1979 treaty between the two nations. It is not clear whether Israel was caught off guard by the move, or gave permission for it to occur. Yet <em>Debka</em> is reporting that as recently as last week, Morsi said that treaty clauses &#8220;not deemed beneficial to Egyptian interests&#8221; would have to be eliminated. <em>Debka</em> is also speculating that the terrorist attacks in the Sinai last week were being exploited by the Brotherhood to remove military men such as Tantawi and Anan &#8212; because they were seen as the last major impediments to the Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s complete takeover of Egypt.</p>
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		<title>Mubarak Near Death as Crisis Deepens in Egypt</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rick-moran/mubarak-near-death-as-crisis-deepens-in-egypt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mubarak-near-death-as-crisis-deepens-in-egypt</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Jun 2012 04:55:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rick Moran]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[shafiq]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=135403</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As former president fades, wishful hopes for democracy in the country are also clinging to life. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/b17e17464fdaab6bc51974a1350e.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-135406" title="b17e17464fdaab6bc51974a1350e" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/b17e17464fdaab6bc51974a1350e.gif" alt="" width="375" height="248" /></a>Ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak <a href="http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2012/06/19/egypts-mubarak-on-life-support-as-protests-swell/">slipped into a coma</a> on Tuesday and was moved from his prison hospital to a military facility where he was placed on life support. The former president&#8217;s condition was announced as <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-06-19/egypt-mubarak/55690688/1">&#8220;very critical&#8221;</a> after suffering a stroke and at one point, the official news agency MENA declared him <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/world/middleeast/mubarak-is-on-life-support-egypt-security-officials-say.html?pagewanted=all">&#8220;clinically dead.&#8221; </a>But a spokesman for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) denied that report, saying that the 84-year-old Mubarak <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/egypts-mubarak-life-support-amid-crisis-010152152.html;_ylt=AodwtYMhhcozhMCB_OxwnI2s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNhYjdkdGYzBG1pdAMEcGtnAzgyYzRjOWU0LTczMzYtMzc4Yy05NmQ4LTgwMGM1OThhNjlmYgRwb3MDMQRzZWMDbG5fQVBfZ2FsBHZlcgNkZGYxNGVkMC1iYTczLTExZTEtYjNmZi02ZjI3OTlkOWQxODk-;_ylv=3">suffered cardiac arrest </a>and was resuscitated by paramedics at the prison hospital. Mubarak&#8217;s health crisis comes two days after Egyptians went to the polls to elect his successor. Official word will come on Thursday but both candidates &#8212; Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak&#8217;s former prime minister &#8212; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle-east-live/2012/jun/18/egypt-election-muslim-brotherhood-claims-victory-live?newsfeed=true">declared victory</a> on Tuesday. The dual claims guarantee that no matter who is judged the winner, the loser will charge fraud and throw the country even deeper into a political crisis.</p>
<p>Widespread distrust of the military&#8217;s claims about Mubarak&#8217;s health was evident in <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/45641/Egypt/Politics-/Tahrir-protesters-react-to-reports-of-Mubarak-clin.aspx">Tahrir Square</a> where tens of thousands of Islamists demonstrated against the recent power grab by the military. Most <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/45641/Egypt/Politics-/Tahrir-protesters-react-to-reports-of-Mubarak-clin.aspx">protestors believe</a> that Mubarak&#8217;s condition is not as serious as the military has said, and that the generals just wanted to move their former boss out of the prison hospital to the far more luxurious surroundings of a military clinic. The demonstrators were <a href="http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2012/06/19/egypts-mubarak-on-life-support-as-protests-swell/">sent into the streets</a> by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is angry at the verdict by the Supreme Court that dissolved parliament and subsequent actions by the generals who have issued a constitutional decree that eviscerates the power of the president and leaves the military in charge of the legislative and executive functions of government.</p>
<p>There was <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-06-19/egypt-mubarak/55690688/1">massive confusion </a>throughout the day about Mubarak&#8217;s true condition. After a news agency originally declared him clinically dead, the military council scotched that report, saying that the former president was on life support and in very critical condition. Upon the announcement that Mubarak was clinically dead, spontaneous <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/45641/Egypt/Politics-/Tahrir-protesters-react-to-reports-of-Mubarak-clin.aspx">expressions of joy </a>erupted throughout Cairo with fireworks going off and protestors in Tahrir Square dancing and singing. But the news that the hated Mubarak was still alive <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/45641/Egypt/Politics-/Tahrir-protesters-react-to-reports-of-Mubarak-clin.aspx">dampened their enthusiasm</a> and the protestor&#8217;s paranoia of the military resurfaced:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The military just wanted to make big news that would eclipse the Tahrir protests about the ruling military council, the elections and the amended constitutional,&#8221; Mohammed Tarek, 27, an interior designer said, &#8220;It worked; the media suddenly started talking about Mubarak, and people started to leave the square.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>But one woman welcomed the news of Mubarak&#8217;s demise &#8212; even if it was premature. &#8220;After 30 years of a brutal regime, the people wanted to say yes, they won for just a day, of course they are rejoicing&#8221; <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/45641/Egypt/Politics-/Tahrir-protesters-react-to-reports-of-Mubarak-clin.aspx">said a house wife</a> from Sharabaya.</p>
<p>Mubarak had been in failing health for weeks and heard the verdict in his trial for facilitating the death of protestors from a hospital bed. Following his conviction and after being given a life sentence, he was transferred to a prison hospital where it was reported his condition deteriorated. As the news about Mubarak&#8217;s health became grimmer, the former dictator&#8217;s struggles were lost in the events of the last week, and the growing confrontation between the country&#8217;s two power blocs &#8212; SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
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		<title>Mubarak Verdict Roils Egyptian Election</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/rick-moran/mubarak-verdict-roils-egyptian-election/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mubarak-verdict-roils-egyptian-election</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Jun 2012 04:40:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rick Moran]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=133866</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Islamists, secularists rush to exploit the angry crowd. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/mubarak-465.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-133873" title="mubarak-465" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/mubarak-465.gif" alt="" width="375" height="249" /></a>When Egyptian Judge Ahmed Refaat <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/list-of-sentences-handed-down-in-hosni-mubarak-trial-in-egypt/2012/06/02/gJQApEbz8U_story.html">gave a life sentence </a>on Saturday to former dictator Hosni Mubarak for being an accessory in the deaths of more than 800 protestors during the &#8220;Egyptian Spring,&#8221; the <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/43621/Egypt/Politics-/Rage-as-Egypts-Mubarak-is-spared-the-gallows.aspx">initial reaction</a> among many in the crowded courtroom was joyful. Many expected Mubarak to be found innocent, or receive a more lenient sentence. But outrage exploded across Egypt when Refaat <a href="http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-1-112361-Security-chiefs-freed-as-prosecutor-appeals-Mubarak-verdict">acquitted</a> the six security chiefs of the same crimes as their boss and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/list-of-sentences-handed-down-in-hosni-mubarak-trial-in-egypt/2012/06/02/gJQApEbz8U_story.html">dismissed </a>corruption charges against Mubarak and his two sons. Chaos in the courtroom spilled outside where <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/43621/Egypt/Politics-/Rage-as-Egypts-Mubarak-is-spared-the-gallows.aspx">police battled </a>enraged demonstrators with stun grenades and truncheons. The verdict has possibly redefined the upcoming Egyptian presidential election &#8212; people may fear a return of Mubarak-style rule more than they fear the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other hand, Mubarak regime holdover and Brotherhood opponent Ahmed Shafiq is demonstrating that he may be able to leverage events in his favor, as the presidential race becomes muddier than ever.</p>
<p>The protests only grew in size when the demonstrators <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18311960">moved on </a>to iconic Tahrir Square in Cairo where the largest and most determined protests against Mubarak&#8217;s 30-year-reign helped topple the dictator. Tens of thousands of Egyptians rallied and <a href="http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/43621/Egypt/Politics-/Rage-as-Egypts-Mubarak-is-spared-the-gallows.aspx">chanted</a> &#8220;Illegal! Illegal!&#8221; and &#8220;Either we get justice for our martyrs or we die like them!&#8221;</p>
<p>It is unknown how the verdict <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303830204577444483637631156.html">will affect</a> the presidential runoff election later this month that pits former Mubarak prime minister Ahmed Shafiq against the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi. Both candidates were out on the hustings on Sunday trying to exploit the crisis for their own political gain. Both candidates <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303830204577444483637631156.html">have good cases </a>to make to different constituencies so the chances of one of them receiving a decisive advantage as a result of the turmoil are lessened considerably.</p>
<p>Mubarak&#8217;s conviction &#8212; along with the conviction on the same charges of his interior minister Habib al-Adli &#8212; could very well be overturned on appeal according to <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/06/03/mubarak-egypt-protests.html">several experts</a> on Egyptian law. &#8220;It&#8217;s a completely politicized verdict that is meant to calm the masses,&#8221; said Maha Youssef, a legal expert from the Nadim Center in Cairo. He added, &#8220;The essence of a ruling by a criminal court judge is not in the papers of the case but in his own personal conviction as someone who lives among the people and know what goes on in his society.&#8221;</p>
<p>A <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303830204577444394106951000.html?mod=googlenews_wsj"><em>Wall Street Journal </em></a>editorial offered similar thoughts:</p>
<blockquote><p>From its start last summer, the prosecution of Egypt&#8217;s deposed strongman Hosni Mubarak was a hasty, politicized circus. So it&#8217;s no surprise that the trial&#8217;s conclusion on Saturday has brought no closure or sense of justice.</p></blockquote>
<p>The editorial also pointed out &#8220;[t]he &#8216;accessory&#8217; charge is weak and could be overthrown easily on appeal.&#8221; Mr. Mubarak&#8217;s lawyers have <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303830204577444483637631156.html">already indicated </a>they will seek a retrial. The verdict will <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlX1DR0WOXOAHakOJt6QpFKgNnZw?docId=4bbdbaa8b37a474fb06b8a8ca5f47a36">also be appealed </a>by the prosecutor because he feels the judge went too easy on the defendants.</p>
<p>But it is not so much the Mubarak verdict that has enraged democracy activists and others. It is the acquittal of the six security chiefs, as well as the dropping of charges against Mubarak&#8217;s sons, Gamal and Alaa, that have placed the former dictator&#8217;s verdict in the context of a society where <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-darkness-starts-to-fall-on-the-egyptian-spring-7814720.html">nothing much has changed</a> despite Mubarak&#8217;s ouster. The protestors in Tahrir Square were <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18311960">calling for</a> an end to military rule &#8212; just as they have for more than 15 months. The suspicion among the young activists who manned the barricades during the worst of the attempted suppression of the revolt is that the military will find a way to acquit the dictator on appeal and rig the election so that Shafiq emerges victorious. A huge demonstration is planned for Tuesday, and the Muslim Brotherhood is expected to participate, flexing its political muscle in the street where its candidate Mr. Morsi <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303830204577444483637631156.html">seeks to capture</a> the spirit and enthusiasm that was evident on Saturday and Sunday in protests across the country.</p>
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		<title>More Evidence of Egyptian Police Stripping Women?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/more-evidence-of-egyptian-police-stripping-women/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=more-evidence-of-egyptian-police-stripping-women</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Mar 2012 04:40:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beating]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Women]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=127271</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The beating and humiliation of the “Blue-Bra Woman” may be the tip of the iceberg.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/7tiya.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-127281" title="7tiya" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/7tiya.gif" alt="" width="375" height="254" /></a>We all remember the international uproar that erupted when, during a clash between police and protesters in Egypt, the former beat and partially stripped to her bra a female protester (subsequently known as the &#8220;Blue Bra Woman&#8221;).</p>
<p>An older video which purports to show an Egyptian officer ordering a woman to take off all her clothes, is even worse, sparking debate anew. For the stripping is not a product of haste, blind-rage, or chaos—as apologists for the Blue Bra Woman incident argue—but deliberate, methodical, and sadistic.</p>
<p>According to a new report appearing yesterday on <a href="http://www.elbashayer.com/news-184508.html">El Bashayer</a>, Mohsin Bahsani, president of an Egyptian organization called Legal Assistance for Human Rights, has brought this video to the spotlight, saying he is preparing to submit a formal complaint to the Attorney General, asking for legal action to be taken, including identifying the perpetrators.</p>
<p>The video was earlier aired on the popular Egyptian program &#8220;90 Minutes&#8221; (click <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnBpevB6fvI&amp;feature=player_embedded#!">here</a>; clip appears from around minute 1:45 to minute 4). It appears to be taped inside an apartment, where a man, dressed like an officer, threatens and slaps a woman around, bullying her to take off all her clothes. He constantly commands her to &#8220;strip&#8221; and orders the others in the room to keep the door closed.</p>
<p>First he gives her a hard, swift slap across the face when she refuses to take off her top; then she takes it off but he orders her to take her bra off as well. After protesting, she complies, but then covers her face for shame, all while sopping; he yells at her not to cover her face and gives her another hard slap. Then he resumes ordering her to continue stripping, i.e., take her pants—and presumably underwear, based on precedent—off. The video then cuts off.</p>
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		<title>Obama’s Assault on America’s Prestige</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/obama%e2%80%99s-assault-on-america%e2%80%99s-prestige/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama%25e2%2580%2599s-assault-on-america%25e2%2580%2599s-prestige</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:19:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vietnam]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What Obama’s “new way forward” has meant for American strength and credibility abroad. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/obama_salutes.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-122203" title="obama_salutes" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/obama_salutes.jpg" alt="" width="392" height="261" /></a></p>
<p>In 1868, a British army led by Sir Robert Napier sailed from India to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to rescue several English and European hostages from the mentally unstable, sadistic King Theodore. Theodore had become enraged a few years earlier because his letter to Queen Victoria asking for military assistance had been ignored, and so he retaliated by taking the hostages. Napier’s expedition required the building of a port, railroad, and road in order for his army of 13,000 soldiers to march to Theodore’s stronghold Magdala, 400 brutal miles from the coast. After the three-month march, the British met Theodore’s army at Magadala and routed it. The hostages were released, and Theodore committed suicide. Then Napier led his army back to the coast and sailed away, surprising many who believed that rescuing the hostages was a pretext for colonial expansion.</p>
<p>The Abyssinian expedition illustrates the British awareness that an empire must defend not just its material interests, but also its prestige. Insults and injuries to its citizens cannot be tolerated, for rivals and enemies will interpret such forbearance as a weakness to be exploited. The expedition was an expensive, massive undertaking, but one necessary in order to warn the Empire’s potential enemies that England would pay any price to defend its honor and interests. Power is not just about material resources, but also the perceptions of others that power will be used, a perception that works as a force multiplier. As Vergil says in the <em>Aeneid</em>, “They have power because they seem to have power.”</p>
<p>History is filled with examples of how costly it is for a nation to allow its prestige to be damaged, thus weakening its power and inviting aggression. By 1938, Hitler had no respect for the English or the French despite their combined military might, given their failure to respond to Germany’s serial violations of the Versailles settlement over the previous two decades. Thus Hitler’s brilliant manipulation of diplomacy in the Czechoslovakia crisis, when England and France, as Churchill would write later, “presented a front of two over-ripe melons crushed together.” Hitler agreed: a year later, he would respond to England and France’s guarantee of Poland’s security by sneering, “I saw them at Munich. They are little worms.”</p>
<p>Likewise the U.S. paid the price for its loss of prestige following the abandonment of South Vietnam in 1975. As Jimmy Carter publicly announced a “crisis of confidence,” fretted over America’s “recent mistakes” and “recognized limits,” and cut spending on the military, an emboldened Soviet Union went on a geopolitical rampage throughout the Third World. Equally ominous was the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the seizure of the embassy hostages, a grievous affront to our prestige met with toothless sanctions, U.N. resolutions, secret negotiations, and the whole repertoire of excuses to substitute talk for action. A byproduct of this blow to U.S. prestige was the creation of an oil-rich jihadist regime in the heart of the Middle East, one that immediately started creating and supporting terrorist groups that for 30 years have murdered Americans. A series of jihadist attacks followed Iran’s victory over the superpower America, from the 1983 Beirut bombing of the Marine barracks, to the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, none of which were met with a punitive response that would have made clear the overwhelming price to be paid for assaulting America’s interests and citizens. So it was no surprise that Osama bin Laden, convinced that America was a “weak horse” with “foundations of straw,” on September 11, 2001 sent his jihadists to attack the very centers of American power and prestige in Washington D.C. and New York.</p>
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		<title>Jimmy Carter All Over Again</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/robert-spencer/jimmy-carter-all-over-again/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=jimmy-carter-all-over-again</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:34:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shah]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=121694</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As Carter helped usher in Khomeini in Iran, Obama is facilitating an Islamist takeover of Egypt.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/jimmy-carter.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-121705" title="jimmy-carter" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/jimmy-carter.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>The Egyptian Government has released the names of nineteen American citizens that it intends to prosecute for their role in fomenting anti-government protests – a charge they deny. Protests from the American Government have so far been futile, met with sneers of contempt.</p>
<p>The echoes are unmistakable. On November 4, 1979, Iranian thugs stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. Jimmy Carter’s government wrung its hands in futility for the next fourteen months, until finally the Islamic Republic released the hostages on January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan took office as President of the United States.</p>
<p>The bitter irony in all that was that Carter had betrayed the Shah of Iran, a longtime U.S. ally, and thereby paved the way for the ascent to power of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian mullahcracy that has ruled Iran ever since. Rather than feel gratitude toward Carter, however, Khomeini viewed his abandonment of the Shah as a sign of weakness, and pressed forward with his jihad against the Great Satan.</p>
<p>Iran has maintained a hostile posture toward the United States ever since then, including gleeful predictions of our nation’s imminent demise. Just days ago, Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/iran-warns-world-of-coming-great-event/">declared to an enthusiastic Tehran crowd</a> that “in light of the realization of the divine promise by almighty God, the Zionists and the Great Satan (America) will soon be defeated….Allah’s promises will be delivered and Islam will be victorious.”</p>
<p>As the Iranian regime inches ever closer toward constructing nuclear weapons, as even Hillary Clinton has acknowledged it is trying to do, these words become more than just empty braggadocio and saber-rattling. The U.S. and Israel have one man to thank for the advent of a genocide-minded regime that considers them both the most implacable of enemies, is not deterred by the prospect of millions of its own people dead, and is racing toward completion of a nuclear weapon.</p>
<p>That man, of course, is Jimmy Carter. And from the looks of recent events, he is back in the White House.</p>
<p>In June 2009, when Barack Obama made his notorious appeal to the Muslim world from Cairo, he specifically stipulated that leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood be allowed to attend – despite the fact that at that time the Brotherhood was still an outlawed group. Last March, as the “Arab Spring” uprisings toppled the sclerotic and brutal regime of Hosni Mubarak, Obama hailed “the peaceful transition to democracy in both Tunisia and in Egypt.” As the regime fell, Obama exulted: “We’ve borne witness to the beginning of new chapter in the history of a great country and a longtime partner of the United States.”</p>
<p>At the same time, Obama signaled his willingness to open talks with the Muslim Brotherhood, and gave every indication that he would not oppose the establishment of an Islamic state in Egypt.</p>
<p>Now, as Egypt rushes headlong toward becoming a Sharia state and adopts a posture of increasing hostility toward the United States, Obama is scrambling to hold at bay the forces he is largely responsible for unleashing.</p>
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		<title>Islam’s Slave-Soldiers Return to Egypt</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/islam%e2%80%99s-slave-soldiers-return-to-egypt/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=islam%25e2%2580%2599s-slave-soldiers-return-to-egypt</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:30:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mamluks]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[slave soldiers]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[After Mubarak come the Mamluks.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/mamlukse1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-117959" title="mamlukse1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/mamlukse1.jpg" alt="" width="364" height="265" /></a></p>
<p><strong>This article is reprinted from <a href="http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2718/egypt-brutal-military">Stonegate Institute.</a></strong><em></em></p>
<p>The myths of a &#8220;patriotic&#8221; or &#8220;altruistic&#8221; Egyptian military carefully protecting the &#8220;rights&#8221; of its citizenry—the narrative of the mainstream media of the January 25 Revolution—are long gone.</p>
<p>Back in January, it was natural to conclude that the Egyptian military was the &#8220;savior&#8221; of the people, and that their &#8220;<a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/8478/inside-egypt">anti-democratic</a>&#8221; president, Hosni Mubarak, embodied all of Egypt&#8217;s ills: such views are intrinsic to the Western worldview. Today, however, far from allowing protesters to <a href="http://www.nationnews.com/articles/view/chaos-continues-in-cairo/">stand atop its tanks</a> in triumph, the military has taken to <a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2011/10/31/shocking-video-of-egyptian-armored-vehicle-mowing-down-christian-civilians/">mowing them down with tanks</a> at <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10616/egypt-massacre-christians">Maspero</a>, and <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10498/the-egyptian-military-crimes-against-humanity">other barbarities</a>—culminating in the recent massacre of civilians in Tahrir [ironically, "Liberation"] Square.</p>
<p>The military&#8217;s behavior is hardly inexplicable; Egypt&#8217;s own history offers countless precedents demonstrating context and continuity. Consider the Mamluks, the non-Muslims who were abducted and enslaved in youth, indoctrinated in Islam, and trained to become jihadists par excellence. While the Ottoman Janissaries, who terrorized Europe for centuries, are the most notorious of <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/448/military-slaves-a-uniquely-muslim-phenomenon">Islam&#8217;s slave soldiers</a>, Egypt&#8217;s Mamluks—the word <em>mamluk</em> simply means &#8220;owned&#8221;—actually assumed power, establishing a slave dynasty in Egypt from 1258-1517.</p>
<p>Known for their fierce prowess—testified to by the fact that it was they who first defeated the otherwise unstoppable Mongol hordes at Ayn Jalut—Egypt&#8217;s Mamluk rulers were naturally oppressive, to both Muslims (which is <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10414/when-muslims-are-more-radical-than-islamists">legitimate</a> under Islamic law) and non-Muslims (which is expected).</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Egypt-Short-History-World-Oxford/dp/1851682406">James Jankwoski</a> put it:</p>
<blockquote><p>Ultimately, Mamluk rule rested on force. The chronicles of the period are replete with examples of Mamluk violence against the indigenous population of Egypt&#8230; From horseback, they simply terrorized those lesser breeds who crossed their paths. The sudden and arbitrary use of force by the government and its dominant military elite; frequent resort to cruelty to make a point; ingenious methods of torture employed both for exemplary purpose and to extract wealth from others: all these measures were routine in the Mamluk era.</p></blockquote>
<p>One immediately discerns parallels between Mamluk Egypt and today&#8217;s military-run Egypt, from the fact that the Mamluks ousted their former Ayyubid master and installed their leader as ruler—just as the Egyptian military ousted Mubarak and installed their leader, Mohamed Tantawi, as ruler—to the fact that Egyptian citizens are again being terrorized and killed regularly, whether at Maspero or Tahrir Square.</p>
<p>But while the Mamluks were not indigenous, Egypt&#8217;s military today is made up natives; and while the Mamluks were slaves, today&#8217;s soldiers are free. These differences make the brutality of today&#8217;s military that much more objectionable.</p>
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		<title>After the Arab Spring</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/jamie-glazov/after-the-arab-spring/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=after-the-arab-spring</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:20:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inside Egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John R. Bradley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tunisia]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[How Islamists hijacked the Middle East revolts.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/the-after.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-114577" title="the after" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/the-after.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="615" /></a></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is John R. Bradley, the author of the new book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/After-Arab-Spring-Islamists-Hijacked/dp/0230338194/ref%3Dtmm_hrd_title_0" target="_blank"><em>After the Arab Spring: How Islamists Hijacked the Middle East Revolts</em></a>. He has been reporting from the Middle East for more than a decade. Fluent in Arabic and a frequent contributor to <em>The Daily Mail</em>, <em>The Jewish Chronicle</em> and <em>The Spectator</em>, his previous books include <em>Saudi Arabia Exposed</em> (2005) and <em>Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution</em> (2008), which uniquely and accurately predicted the Cairo uprising.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>John R. Bradley, welcome to Frontpage Interview<strong>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Bradley:</strong> Thanks, Jamie. It&#8217;s nice to be back. The last time we chatted was back in 2008, when yours was one of the only media outlets that took my prediction of an imminent Egyptian uprising seriously.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> Thanks John, so let’s begin with your prediction of the Egyptian revolution.</p>
<p><strong>Bradley: </strong>To be honest, it didn&#8217;t seem so much a prediction to me back in 2008, more like a statement of fact. I think I had a pulse on the reality because, firstly, I don&#8217;t have a TV, and I haven&#8217;t had one for more than two decades. So I&#8217;m not exposed to the dominant media narratives about the Middle East, which from what I can tell from watching the occasional clip on YouTube remain for the most part as shallow and pointless as they ever were. And in more than a decade of living and reporting in the region I&#8217;ve never met another Western foreign correspondent or Western diplomat.</p>
<p>Instead, in Egypt especially, I lived for years among ordinary locals in poor neighborhoods, speaking to them in Arabic and sharing their daily routines and life stories. A decade later, it was perfectly obvious to me when I published<strong> </strong><em>Inside Egypt</em> that a revolution was going to happen very soon in that country. The Mubarak regime had consumed itself, and the impoverished and tormented masses had lost all hope that meaningful reforms would ever be introduced. What surprised me was not so much that the revolution happened pretty much as I predicted, but that until it did all the so-called “experts” on the region poured scorn on my idea that it was about to happen&#8211;the very same &#8220;experts&#8221; incidentally who again mocked me as an alarmist when I published articles at the beginning of the year warning that the Islamists would hijack the Arab Spring.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Expand for us on the Arab Spring and the blind enthusiasm we saw in the early days that “democracy” in the Arab Middle East would somehow drain corruption, extremism, poverty and authoritarianism from the region.</p>
<p><strong>Bradley: </strong>There was some cause for hope at the beginning, because there were indeed liberals among all those protestors from the outset, and the Islamists in early stages shunned the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. These liberals are mostly young people who want greater freedoms and a secular state. And they do still look to the West as a model for their future. For them, freedom and pluralism are enormously attractive ideas, and their hopes and dreams are easily understandable and translatable in the West.</p>
<p>But it was misplaced hope, and now that they have failed to materialize these dreams look implausible in the Middle East to the point of madness. Collectively, the liberals are an ever-dwindling minority in the Arab world. We should remember that even during the revolutions the biggest demonstration in Tunisia drew just 50,000 to the streets, this in a country of 10 million. Some estimates put the largest gathering in Tahrir Square of Egyptians, of whom there are some 84 million, as low as 300,000.</p>
<p>These figures show that while the progressives had enough support to topple the dictators, mainly because they were able to bring the economy to a standstill, they didn&#8217;t have the massive popular support needed to fill the chaotic aftermath. In contrast, the Islamists can and do draw much vaster crowds. And the Islamists possess the ruthless political skills, and the simplistic campaign slogans, needed to gain power. They speak a language the masses instantly understand and relate to, especially in a country like Egypt where a large percentage of the population is illiterate.</p>
<p>In both Tunisia and Egypt, moreover, the young, tech-savvy revolutionaries had foolishly declared their revolts leaderless, having learned nothing from history about how revolutionary movements lacking a vanguard are crushed by more entrenched and better-organized forces in the aftermath of massive social and political upheaval. Most self-destructively, they had learned nothing especially of the 1979 Iranian revolution, likewise in its early stages drawing people from all walks of life but then hijacked by the Islamist mob. Essentially, Egypt is an action replay of the Iranian revolution, as I warned very clearly in <em>Inside Egypt</em> it would be.</p>
<p>More to the point: in the contemporary Arab world, the liberals have even less of a constituency than that which existed in 1970s Iran. The vast bulk of the protestors knew nothing of secular political ideology, Islamism being the only one on offer for popular consumption for decades. Polls have consistently shown that demonstrators were brought into the streets, not by a burning desire for free and fair elections, but by the awful economic circumstances in which they lived. For that they blamed their corrupt regimes, Israel, and, yes, the West, too, as they had long been accustomed to doing.</p>
<p>The final nail in the coffin of the liberal Arab Spring myth was the excesses and abuses of secular regimes like those of Saddam Hussein, Zine El-Abedine Ben Ali, Ali Abullah Saleh, and Hosni Mubarak. They only succeeded in giving secularism itself a bad name and, by extension, giving credence to the Islamist argument that godlessness was the cause of all their country’s problems. For decades, these regimes failed to nurture the imagination of young people with anything but dim-witted propaganda. The result was that fundamentalist Islam grew from the obsession of a few thousand straggly-bearded crackpots a few decades ago into the sole respectable political alternative many, perhaps most, Arabs are now capable of imagining.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Share with us how Islamists exploit the chaos and fill the vacuum.</p>
<p><strong>Bradley:</strong> The Islamists work on two levels. There are the so-called “moderate” groups, who claim to gullible Western journalists that they embrace democratic principles and secularism and freedom of expression. They claim that they do not want to impose strict Sharia law. This is the song sung by mainstream Islamists in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt, where they have triumphed in recent elections. But they work in tandem with more radical Salafi groups, sometimes officially and sometimes implicitly, who get their huge funds from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and who busy themselves by terrorizing the population into submitting to hardline Islamist dogma. The “moderate” front groups, in other words, don&#8217;t need to introduce Sharia to achieve their goal of an Islamist theocracy.</p>
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		<title>Gaddafi Dead — So What?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/raymond-ibrahim/gaddafi-dead-%e2%80%94-so-what/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=gaddafi-dead-%25e2%2580%2594-so-what</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Oct 2011 16:49:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gaddafi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mubarak]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What a myopic view the Western media and its array of “experts” have concerning the so-called “Arab Spring” — a myopia that naturally metastasizes among the general public. Consider the Libyan crisis. As usual, the focus is entirely on the individual, on the tangible — the now dead Gaddafi — whom all the blame can [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>What a myopic view the Western media and its array of “experts” have concerning the so-called “Arab Spring” — a myopia that naturally metastasizes among the general public.</p>
<p>Consider the Libyan crisis. As usual, the focus is entirely on the individual, on the tangible — the now dead Gaddafi — whom all the blame can be heaped upon, while the existentialist elephant in the room, the real mover and shaker, the spirit of the age behind all these uprisings, is never acknowledged.</p>
<p>So another Arab dictator has been eliminated, and the talking heads are abuzz: some, whose knowledge of the world and reality is chronically limited to their own experience, naively cry “democracy!” (even as those who butchered Gaddafi were crying “Allahu Akbar!”); others cautiously include the usual boilerplate caveats in their analyses, which otherwise remain parochial.</p>
<p>Either way, as many interpret events in Libya, they project their own values and notions of right and wrong, good and bad — most notably by portraying the Arab uprisings as <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/21/opinion/coleman-libya-future-odds/index.html?hpt=hp_t2">positive signs</a> of <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/8790/is-an-egyptian-democracy-a-good-thing">democracy</a> — thereby demonstrating, yet again, their inability to comprehend Islam’s distinct civilization, let alone the <a href="../2011/10/20/the-closing-of-the-muslim-mind-2/"><em>Closing of the Muslim Mind</em></a>.</p>
<p>I am reminded of an especially pertinent observation by philosopher <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140442278/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&amp;pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&amp;pf_rd_t=201&amp;pf_rd_i=B000JMKZV8&amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_r=1DFTHN697B290E44RGX8">Arthur Schopenhauer</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The discovery of truth is prevented most effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, nor directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but <em>by preconceived opinion, by prejudice</em> [in this case, by the Western conviction that all people want a secular, liberal democracy], which as a pseudo <em>a priori</em> stands in the path of truth and is then like a contrary wind driving a ship away from land, so that sail and rudder [reality and those who present it] labor in vain.</p></blockquote>
<p>Indeed, 19<sup>th</sup> century Germans, such as Hegel, understood that world events, far from being inextricably tied to individual leaders, were products of the <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Zeitgeist"><em>Zeitgeist</em></a>, defined as: “The spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation … the spirit, attitude, or general outlook of a specific time or period … the general atmosphere of a place or situation and the effect that it has on people.”</p>
<p>Consider Libya’s neighbor, Egypt, as described in the 2009 book <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/8478/inside-egypt"><em>Inside Egypt</em></a>. The author’s otherwise prescient argument was that revolution was in the air; however, he too took the narrow view, ignoring the “spirit of the time.” My review of the book, written before the Egyptian revolution, is especially applicable today:</p>
<blockquote><p>Unfortunately, there is a myopic tendency to view nearly every problem in Egypt as a byproduct of Husni Mubarak, Egypt’s president since 1981, and in [the author] Bradley’s view, the “most corrupt offender of them all.” Even things one might have supposed were products of time or chance — from the condition of Egypt’s Bedouin, who have led the same desperate lifestyle for centuries, to the radicalization of Muslims, a worldwide phenomenon—are somehow traced back to Mubarak. … Indeed, this is the book’s chief problem. Bradley is convinced that, given a chance, through the elimination of Mubarak, Egyptians would create a liberal, egalitarian, and gender-neutral society. … And while he is convinced that Egypt is a byproduct of Mubarak, one is left wondering instead whether Mubarak is a byproduct of Egypt.</p></blockquote>
<p>In fact, since the Mubarak scapegoat has been ousted, and after Western media and politicians gushed and hailed “democracy,” Egypt has seen the worst <a href="../2011/10/10/destroying-churches-in-egypt-one-at-a-time/">Islamist inspired violence</a> — especially from the <a href="../2011/10/11/the-egyptian-military%E2%80%99s-crimes-against-humanity/">state itself </a>— against its non-Muslim minorities.</p>
<p>The lesson? To understand grand scale events, stop focusing on individuals — whether ousted Arab dictators (Tunisia’s ben Ali, Egypt’s Mubarak, now Libya’s Gaddafi) or slain jihadist leaders (Osama bin Laden and the various no-names the administration boasts of killing) — and start focusing on the <em>forces</em>, the “spirit of the time,” in this case, Islam, which creates bin Ladens no less than the tyrannical autocrats who suppress them.</p>
<p>Nor is this approach limited to comprehending the significance of the “Arab Spring.” To the many who think that America’s problems begin and end with Obama, consider the logic of the following quote, attributed to a Czech newspaper:</p>
<blockquote><p>The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.</p></blockquote>
<p>In short, individual leaders do not cause societies to become what they are; rather, these leaders are symptoms — reflections — of their respective societies.</p>
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