Arab Spring, Round 2

[Viking]

They'll keep it up until the people of Egypt realize the most important truth about a democratic government. It isn't there to do stuff for the people. It is the people acting in congress. If the egyptian citizen think that he can just stand by while he grants the latest in a long line of coup victims to be license to try and run the country it will always fail.

I don't think you can conclude the the opposition to the Brotherhood government didn't understand that.  The complaint against Morsi was that he wasn't acting in concert according to the rules of the game but was absuing his authority to destroy all competing checks on his power and prepare the way for authoritarian, illiberal rule.

I didn't comment on if "any" or "some" of the opposition knew that. I don't know if the present opposition knows this, I suspect they do. But I wasn't referring to them. I was referring to "the egyptian citizen" that thinks that government is a license granted to a ruling class to provide goods (stability, bread, circus and glory) in exchange for power (to enrich the ruling class). It is the normal mode of traditional muslim rule where a ruler has license to rule and should he lose (in the chinese vernacular) the mandate of heaven then the ruler should be overthrown.

The idea that the people are sovereign is NOT a human universal. It is in fact one of those W.E.I.R.D. exceptions that make the west the special place that it is.

[Viking]

True.
But Tamas said government, not democracy.

Tamas made his comment in response to Viking's post about Egyptians not understanding the purpose of *democratic* government.

As I said in my reply to JR, that is not what I said or meant.

[Savonarola]

From the Ottawa Citizen:

Mubarak understood his country better than Western know-it-alls

By John Bolton, Ottawa Citizen July 8, 2013 

Just two-and-a-half years ago, advocates of "the Arab Spring" argued it would bring democracy to the Middle East and end terrorism's attraction in the Muslim world. Large demonstrations, especially in Cairo's Tahrir Square, filled Western television screens, and our media reported excitedly that the Internet-age demonstrators used Facebook and Twitter. The fall of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, in power for three decades, embodied the widely accepted narrative that ousting authoritarian regimes was easy, costless and unambiguously positive.

But not all street demonstrators are Jeffersonian democrats, not all users of social media are Thoreau-style idealists, and not all post-authoritarian regimes are better than what they replace. Remember Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, where he defined "Conservative" as "a statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others."

The Arab Spring stemmed largely from political and economic factors embedded in the region, not from the actions of outside powers. Nonetheless, in 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama's month-long equivocation about Egypt's direction, followed at last by supporting Mubarak's ouster, undoubtedly had negative consequences in Egypt and throughout the region. Loyalty and upholding commitments are valuable commodities in international affairs, even if the regime involved doesn't meet our standards of democratic purity. But loyalty works both ways, and the impression Obama created was that America expected it from its allies, but wasn't prepared to extend it in return. We will pay for that perception as a fair-weather friend.

Obviously, Mubarak was no Jeffersonian democrat. The former commander of Egypt's air force, he became Anwar Sadat's vice president, and then president when the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Sadat for concluding the Camp David peace accord with Israel. Mubarak led a violent crackdown against the Brotherhood, watched it warily for 30 years, and warned the West that if his government fell, the Brotherhood would inevitably take power. Western cognoscenti scoffed at Mubarak's prediction, calling it just a convenient excuse for repressing the Brotherhood and other dissidents threatening the ultimate authority of the military, which controlled Egypt since King Farouk's 1952 overthrow.

Mubarak, it transpires, understood his country better than the Western know-it-alls. When Obama abandoned Mubarak, the military did too, having already lost confidence in him because his wife and son, Gamal, were scheming to install Gamal as his successor. Gamal utterly lacked his father's military credentials, and Pharaonic succession in the 21st century proved to be as unpopular with the generals as with Egypt's population generally.

The military had little desire to govern openly, so it did what "the Arab Spring" professed to want: move to "democracy" by holding elections. Having overthrown Mubarak, however, the street protesters had no coherent, operational roadmap. Only after the political process was launched did they and their Western allies begin to realize they were moving inexorably toward electoral victory for the Muslim Brotherhood and even more radical Islamicists. Indeed, in what foreign observers characterized as generally free and fair elections, the Islamicists won almost three-quarters of the seats in Egypt's two houses of parliament, and the Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi narrowly won the presidency over a Mubarak-era figure. It was surprising not that Morsi's win was narrow, but that a symbol of the supposedly hated Mubarak era did so well.


In office for a year, Morsi's supporters rewrote Egypt's constitution to try to lock the Brotherhood into power permanently, while ignoring a sinking economy that went into free fall. This combination of economic ruin and the blind pursuit of an Islamicist state brought demonstrators back into Egypt's streets, even though many of them might well support an Islamicist agenda once the economy improved and more competent leadership emerged. It was disagreement over priorities, not love of democracy, which inspired many Tahrir Square demonstrators this summer.

So, Egypt's military overthrew a second government in two years (this one popularly elected), and launched a process to schedule elections (again) and rewrite the constitution (again). This time, we are told (again), it will work out.

Plainly, however, democracy is more than just holding elections and counting votes. As John Stuart Mill wrote in Representative Government, a people have to be "willing to receive" such government, they have to "be willing and able to do what is necessary for its preservation," and "they should be willing and able to fulfil the duties and discharge the functions which it imposes on them." Egypt and most other Arab Spring countries have simply not yet achieved these conditions. This is no criticism of a region or a people. Europe did not exactly cover itself with democratic glory in much of the 20th century, and today in Russia we see a country sliding out of a brief season of democracy back into authoritarianism.

The lesson for America is to give priority to its national interests, not abstract democratic theory. Most importantly, Egypt's adherence to Camp David is the foundation of U.S. Middle East policy and Israel's security, and Mubarak never wavered in his commitment to the treaty. In the 2012 Egyptian elections, by contrast, Mohammed Morsi was not alone in questioning Camp David's legitimacy. Even secular politicians attacked its central element, "land for peace," implying that withdrawal could ultimately be an option.

Moreover, keeping the Suez Canal open is critical to the world economy. An unstable Egypt inevitably raises international fears that terrorists or saboteurs will obstruct the canal, with potentially devastating consequences. Global oil-price increases last week underlined this fundamental geopolitical reality.

We should insist on Egypt meeting its international commitments, and worry less about second-guessing what could be a lengthy transition to representative government. That does not mean abandoning America's commitment to its own ideals, or ceasing to insist that any Egyptian government respect individual rights, such as those of religious minorities such as Coptic Christians. But it also means remembering our own fundamental priorities in the Middle East, and having a more realistic understanding both of Egypt's basic circumstances and our ability to influence Egypt's domestic politics than we have displayed since the Arab Spring began.


John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. From August 2005 to December 2006, he served as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. From 2001 to 2005, he was under secretary of state for arms control and international security.

I'm surprised that George W. Bush would appoint a representative to the United Nation with such a pragmatic point of view.

[derspiess]

Not to mention a magnificent 'stache.

[Savonarola]

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood rejects timetable

The Muslim Brotherhood says the transition plan proposed by the interim president would take the country "back to zero".



The Muslim Brotherhood party has rejected the transition timetable set out by the military-backed interim president.

Essam el-Erian, a senior Brotherhood figure and deputy head of its Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, rejected the transition timetable on Tuesday, saying it takes the country "back to zero".

"The cowards are not sleeping, but Egypt will not surrender. The people created their constitution with their votes," el-Eiran wrote on his Facebook page, referring to the constitution that Islamists pushed to finalisation and then was passed in a national referendum during former President Mohamed Morsi's year in office.


Egypt's interim administration published a timetable for a transition to a new democratic government hours after the army shot dead scores of people outside the elite Republican Guards' headquarters in Cairo.

Interim president Adly Mansour on Tuesday morning released details of a timetable for parliamentary elections by 2014, after which a date will be announced for a presidential ballot.

The country will have five months to amend the current draft constitution, suspended following Morsi's removal last week, ratify it in a referendum, and then hold parliamentary elections, according to the text of the 33-article decree published online.

The process will take no more than 210 days, according to the decree, meaning elections will be by February at the latest.

Al Jazeera's Nicole Johnston, reporting from Cairo, said that some liberal opposition parties have said that instead of the constitution being amended a new one should be made.

She added that Cairo has been quiet, with a few rallies and protests at Nasr City but not in large numbers. Our correspondent said that more pro-Morsi protesters are expected to turn out later.

Military issues warning


The Egyptian military on Tuesday issued a statement defending the legitimacy of the interim government,.

Defense Minister Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi warned against anyone who would put "the homeland at the people in jeopardy" and any attempt to disrupt the country's "difficult and complex" transition.

The Brotherhood called for nationwide protests to take place a day after a deadly shooting at the site of a sit-in by its supporters in Cairo left at least 51 dead and hundreds injured.


The Freedom and Justice Party on Monday demanded "an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks".

The military blamed "terrorists" on Monday, while witnesses, including Brotherhood supporters at the scene, said security forces fired only warning shots and tear gas, and that "thugs" in civilian clothes carried out the shootings.

Egypt's prosecutor general onTuesday began investigating 650 people suspected of involvement Monday's violence, although it is not clear who, exactly, is under investigation.


The US called on the Egyptian army to exercise "maximum restraint", while also condemning "explicit" Brotherhood calls to violence.

The Muslim Brotherhood has asked the "international community to stop the "massacres" in the aftermath of last week's ousting of Morsi by the military.

Meanwhile, one of the leading critics of Morsi's government, the United Arab Emirates, has pledged $3bn in loans and grants to Egypt's new government. The Gulf state alleges that Islamist groups backed by the Muslim Brotherhood  have sought to topple its Western-backed ruling system.

Saudi Arabia also approved a $5bn aid package to Egypt, which is to include $2bn in central bank deposits, $2bn in in energy products and $1bn in cash.

On Monday, Egypt closed down the Cairo headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, saying weapons were found inside it.

The latest violence further raised political tensions, even as the country's interim leadership struggled to find a consensus on who should be the prime minister.

The Salafist Nour Party announced it was suspending its participation from talks over new government in protest against Monday's fatal shootings.

With both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists refusing to participate it sounds like the transition will be Egypt's greatest government since Mubarak.   

[Sheilbh]

OK Raz, what is the true objective of democracy?

You're talking about many things though. Tamas mentioned 'democratic government'. There's two things there and, I think, you're both right.

Government is definitely there to provide things - it has always been so. The first role of government is to provide order and security, both internally and externally. Then as societies become richer and more advanced that remit expands, it's not just about providing a secure state in which people can live and trade but providing the infrastructure that enables them to do so: roads, clean water, markets, standardised weights and measures, currency.

Democratic government is a way of mediating different visions of society and what government should do. It's a system that allows different view to participate and even predominate without challenging the legitimacy of the system as a whole. It allows for accountable government and safe transfers of power.

For what it's worth I think the MB failed far more at the government bit than the democratic bit.

So far the Salafists have vetoed two PMs and then threatened to walk out after the shooting of pro-Morsi protesters. It looks like they've walked back on that and are participating again. They've even agreed to a PM candidate who has said he wants to appoint the MB to his cabinet. How and who, given that most of the leadership are in custody (ironically for plotting to overthrow the government), isn't clear.

I'm still unsure about this all, my instinct is that when your opponent's making an error you shouldn't interrupt them and Morsi's term was proving a disaster for the MB - had they refused to abdicate at election time it wouldn't have been difficult to muster up the protests or army. However the army has clearly learned a lot from the SCAF debacle. They really seem to be reaching out to all the political forces in Egypt, which they didn't do at all when they were last in charge (they liked dealing with Mubarakists and the MB). They've also announced a public review and investigation into the shooting of pro-Morsi demonstrators which is a mile from the way the SCAF behaved.

On the other hand some things still niggle about military rule. The press conference yesterday (on the shootings) couldn't get started until the al-Jazeera and CNN reporters were removed due to hostile chants from the press corps. No-one asked any questions about the army's version of events and, after the statement by the army press officer, the journalists gave him a standing ovation.

A great deal is determined by how the new leader deals with this.  Its a bit of a crap shoot.  A new democracy might get someone like a Mandela or a Washington who set the bar high for future leaders.  Or not.

One problem was that Morsi has never really been a leader of the MB. He was an apparatchik who was a back-up candidate in case (as happened) the main MB candidate was not allowed to run. So there was always a challenge for Morsi over doing anything too striking and really a question of how in charge he was.

It'd be like if South Africa got Mbeki because of a court ruling prohibiting Mandela from running based on the old laws.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

more than a few people warned that the "Arab Spring" would be an Islamist Winter.

[Grallon]

Islam is incompatible with democracy - news at 11.




G.

[Siege]

Grallon, why are you so intolerant and culturally insensitive?

[Savonarola]

Another victory for America 

Exclusive: US bankrolled anti-Morsi activists

Documents reveal US money trail to Egyptian groups that pressed for president's removal.

Emad Mekay Last Modified: 10 Jul 2013 13:29 

Berkeley, United States - President Barack Obama recently stated the United States was not taking sides as Egypt's crisis came to a head with the military overthrow of the democratically elected president.

But a review of dozens of US federal government documents shows Washington has quietly funded senior Egyptian opposition figures who called for toppling of the country's now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi.

Documents obtained by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley show the US channeled funding through a State Department programme to promote democracy in the Middle East region. This programme vigorously supported activists and politicians who have fomented unrest in Egypt, after autocratic president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising in February 2011.

The State Department's programme, dubbed by US officials as a "democracy assistance" initiative, is part of a wider Obama administration effort to try to stop the retreat of pro-Washington secularists, and to win back influence in Arab Spring countries that saw the rise of Islamists, who largely oppose US interests in the Middle East.

Activists bankrolled by the programme include an exiled Egyptian police officer who plotted the violent overthrow of the Morsi government, an anti-Islamist politician who advocated closing mosques and dragging preachers out by force, as well as a coterie of opposition politicians who pushed for the ouster of the country's first democratically elected leader, government documents show.


Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, interviews, and public records reveal Washington's "democracy assistance" may have violated Egyptian law, which prohibits foreign political funding.

It may also have broken US government regulations that ban the use of taxpayers' money to fund foreign politicians, or finance subversive activities that target democratically elected governments.

'Bureau for Democracy'

Washington's democracy assistance programme for the Middle East is filtered through a pyramid of agencies within the State Department. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is channeled through the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), USAID, as well as the Washington-based, quasi-governmental organisation the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

In turn, those groups re-route money to other organisations such as the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House, among others. Federal documents show these groups have sent funds to certain organisations in Egypt, mostly run by senior members of anti-Morsi political parties who double as NGO activists.

The Middle East Partnership Initiative - launched by the George W Bush administration in 2002 in a bid to influence politics in the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks - has spent close to $900m on democracy projects across the region, a federal grants database shows.

USAID manages about $1.4bn annually in the Middle East, with nearly $390m designated for democracy promotion, according to the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

The US government doesn't issue figures on democracy spending per country, but Stephen McInerney, POMED's executive director, estimated that Washington spent some $65m in 2011 and $25m in 2012. He said he expects a similar amount paid out this year.

A main conduit for channeling the State Department's democracy funds to Egypt has been the National Endowment for Democracy. Federal documents show NED, which in 2011 was authorised an annual budget of $118m by Congress, funneled at least $120,000 over several years to an exiled Egyptian police officer who has for years incited violence in his native country.

This appears to be in direct contradiction to its Congressional mandate, which clearly states NED is to engage only in "peaceful" political change overseas.

Exiled policeman

Colonel Omar Afifi Soliman - who served in Egypt's elite investigative police unit, notorious for human rights abuses - began receiving NED funds in 2008 for at least four years.

During that time he and his followers targeted Mubarak's government, and Soliman later followed the same tactics against the military rulers who briefly replaced him. Most recently Soliman set his sights on Morsi's government.

Soliman, who has refugee status in the US, was sentenced in absentia last year for five years imprisonment by a Cairo court for his role in inciting violence in 2011 against the embassies of Israel and Saudi Arabia, two US allies.

He also used social media to encourage violent attacks against Egyptian officials, according to court documents and a review of his social media posts.

US Internal Revenue Service documents reveal thatNED paid tens of thousands of dollars to Soliman through an organisation he created called Hukuk Al-Nas (People's Rights), based in Falls Church, Virginia. Federal forms show he is the only employee.

After he was awarded a 2008 human rights fellowship at NED and moved to the US, Soliman received a second $50,000 NED grant in 2009 for Hukuk Al-Nas. In 2010, he received $60,000 and another $10,000 in 2011. 

In an interview with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, Soliman reluctantly admitted he received US government funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, but complained it wasn't enough. "It is like $2000 or $2,500 a month," he said. "Do you think this is too much? Obama wants to give us peanuts. We will not accept that."

NED has removed public access to its Egyptian grant recipients in 2011 and 2012 from its website. NED officials didn't respond to repeated interview requests.

'Pro bono advice'

NED's website says Soliman spreads only nonviolent literature, and his group was set up to provide "immediate, pro bono legal advice through a telephone hotline, instant messaging, and other social networking tools".

However, in Egyptian media interviews, social media posts and YouTube videos, Soliman encouraged the violent overthrow of Egypt's government, then led by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party.

"Incapacitate them by smashing their knee bones first," he instructed followers on Facebook in late June, as Morsi's opponents prepared massive street rallies against the government. Egypt's US-funded and trainedmilitary later used those demonstrations to justify its coup on July 3.

"Make a road bump with a broken palm tree to stop the buses going into Cairo, and drench the road around it with gas and diesel. When the bus slows down for the bump, set it all ablaze so it will burn down with all the passengers inside ... God bless," Soliman's post read.

In late May he instructed, "Behead those who control power, water and gas utilities."

Soliman removed several older social media posts after authorities in Egypt took notice of his subversive instructions, court documents show.

More recent Facebook instructions to his 83,000 followers range from guidelines on spraying roads with a mix of auto oil and gas - "20 liters of oil to 4 liters of gas"- to how to thwart cars giving chase.

On a YouTube video, Soliman took credit for a failed attempt in December to storm the Egyptian presidential palace with handguns and Molotov cocktails to oust Morsi.

"We know he gets support from some groups in the US, but we do not know he is getting support from the US government. This would be news to us," said an Egyptian embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Funding other Morsi opponents

Other beneficiaries of US government funding are also opponents of the now-deposed president, some who had called for Morsi's removal by force.

The Salvation Front main opposition bloc, of which some members received US funding, has backed street protest campaigns that turned violent against the elected government, in contradiction of many of the State Department's own guidelines.

A longtime grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy and other US democracy groups is a 34-year old Egyptian woman, Esraa Abdel-Fatah, who sprang to notoriety during the country's pitched battle over the new constitution in December 2012.

She exhorted activists to lay siege to mosques and drag from pulpits all Muslim preachers and religious figures who supported the country's the proposed constitution, just before it went to a public referendum.

The act of besieging mosques has continued ever since, and several people have died in clashes defending them.

Federal records show Abdel-Fatah's NGO, the Egyptian Democratic Academy, received support from NED, MEPI and NDI, among other State Department-funded groups "assisting democracy". Records show NED gave her organisation a one-year $75,000 grant in 2011.

We were told by the Americans that if we see big street protests that sustain themselves for a week, they will reconsider all current US policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood regime.

Saaddin Ibrahim,  Egyptian-American politician opposed to Morsi

Abdel-Fatah is politically active, crisscrossing Egypt to rally support for her Al-Dostor Party, which is led by former UN nuclear chief Mohamed El-Baradei, the most prominent figure in the Salvation Front. She lent full support to the military takeover, and urged the West not call it a "coup".

"June 30 will be the last day of Morsi's term," she told the press a few weeks before the coup took place.

US taxpayer money has also been sent to groups set up by some of Egypt's richest people, raising questions about waste in the democracy programme.

Michael Meunier is a frequent guest on TV channels that opposed Morsi. Head of the Al-Haya Party, Meunier - a dual US-Egyptian citizen - has quietly collected US funding through his NGO, Hand In Hand for Egypt Association.

Meunier's organisation was founded by some of the most vehement opposition figures, including Egypt's richest man and well-known Coptic Christian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, Tarek Heggy, an oil industry executive, Salah Diab, Halliburton's partner in Egypt, and Usama Ghazali Harb, a politician with roots in the Mubarak regime and a frequent US embassy contact.

Meunier has denied receiving US assistance, but government documents show USAID in 2011 granted his Cairo-based organisation $873,355. Since 2009, it has taken in $1.3 million from the US agency.

Meunier helped rally the country's five million Christian Orthodox Coptic minority, who oppose Morsi's Islamist agenda, to take to the streets against the president on June 30.

Reform and Development Party member Mohammed Essmat al-Sadat received US financial support through his Sadat Association for Social Development, a grantee of The Middle East Partnership Initiative.

The federal grants records and database show in 2011 Sadat collected $84,445 from MEPI "to work with youth in the post-revolutionary Egypt".

Sadat was a member of the coordination committee, the main organising body for the June 30 anti-Morsi protest. Since 2008, he has collected $265,176 in US funding. Sadat announced he will be running for office again in upcoming parliamentary elections.

After soldiers and police killed more than 50 Morsi supporters on Monday, Sadat defended the use of force and blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, saying it used women and children as shields.

Some US-backed politicians have said Washington tacitly encouraged them to incite protests.

"We were told by the Americans that if we see big street protests that sustain themselves for a week, they will reconsider all current US policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood regime," said Saaddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American politician opposed Morsi.

Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldoun Center in Cairo receives US funding, one of the largest recipients of democracy promotion money in fact.

His comments followed statements by other Egyptian opposition politicians claiming they had been prodded by US officials to whip up public sentiment against Morsi before Washington could publicly weigh in.

Democracy programme defence

The practice of funding politicians and anti-government activists through NGOs was vehemently defended by the State Department and by a group of Washington-based Middle East experts close to the programme.

"The line between politics and activism is very blurred in this country," said David Linfield, spokesman for the US Embassy in Cairo.

Others said the United States cannot be held responsible for activities by groups it doesn't control.

"It's a very hot and dynamic political scene," said Michelle Dunne, an expert at the Atlantic Council think-tank. Her husband, Michael Dunne, was given a five-year jail sentence in absentia by a Cairo court for his role in political funding in Egypt.

"Just because you give someone some money, you cannot take away their freedom or the position they want to take," said Dunne.

Elliot Abrams, a former official in the administration of George W. Bush and a member of the Working Group on Egypt that includes Dunne, denied in an email message that the US has paid politicians in Egypt, or elsewhere in the Middle East.

"The US does not provide funding for parties or 'local politicians' in Egypt or anywhere else," said Abrams. "That is prohibited by law and the law is scrupulously obeyed by all US agencies, under careful Congressional oversight."

But a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, said American support for foreign political activists was in line with American principles.

"The US government provides support to civil society, democracy and human rights activists around the world, in line with our long-held values, such as respecting the fundamental human rights of free speech, peaceful assembly, and human dignity," the official wrote in an email. "US outreach in Egypt is consistent with these principles."

A Cairo court convicted 43 local and foreign NGO workers last month on charges of illegally using foreign funds to stir unrest in Egypt. The US and UN expressed concern over the move.

Out of line

Some Middle East observers suggested the US' democracy push in Egypt may be more about buying influence than spreading human rights and good governance.

"Funding of politicians is a problem," said Robert Springborg, who evaluated democracy programmes for the State Department in Egypt, and is now a professor at the National Security Department of the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California.

"If you run a programme for electoral observation, or for developing media capacity for political parties, I am not against that. But providing lots of money to politicians - I think that raises lots of questions," Springborg said.

Some Egyptians, meanwhile, said the US was out of line by sending cash through its democracy programme in the Middle East to organisations run by political operators.

"Instead of being sincere about backing democracy and reaching out to the Egyptian people, the US has chosen an unethical path," said Esam Neizamy, an independent researcher into foreign funding in Egypt, and a member of the country's Revolutionary Trustees, a group set up to protect the 2011 revolution.

"The Americans think they can outsmart lots of people in the Middle East. They are being very hostile against the Egyptian people who have nothing but goodwill for them - so far," Neizamy said.

So will Morsi become the new Salvador Allende?

[Savonarola]

Kick them when they're down:

Egypt orders arrest of Brotherhood leader
Last Modified: 10 Jul 2013 15:06 

Muslim Brotherhood officials are accused of inciting Monday's violence outside the Republican Guard club [Reuters]


Egypt's prosecutor's office has ordered the arrest of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie on charges of inciting violence outside the Republican Guard headquarters where 51 people were killed, state news agency MENA has reported.

Other senior Brotherhood officials were also ordered on Wednesday to be detained, including Badie's deputy Mahmoud Ezzat and party leaders Essam El-Erian and Mohamed el-Beltagy.

One day earlier, Egypt's prosecutor general began investigating 650 people suspected of involvement in Monday's violence, although it did not say who, exactly, was under investigation.

Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh, reporting from Cairo, said nine others are included in the arrest warrant.

The Muslim Brotherhood has called for an "uprising" to restore Morsi after Monday's shootings.

Thousands of Brotherhood followers have been maintaining a vigil near a mosque in northeast Cairo demanding the reinstatement of President Mohamed Morsi, deposed last week in a coup.

Rageh said that the leaders who have arrest warrants against them are currently present at the vigil at Rabaa Adaweya mosque in northeast Cairo and that it will be difficult for the police to enter the large crowd of pro-Morsi supporters.

Cabinet offer rejected

The Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday also rejected an offer to join Egypt's transitional cabinet, as new interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi announced he would start work on forming an interim government once he meets liberal leaders.

Beblawi told the Reuters news agency on that he accepted that it would be difficult to win the unanimous support of Egyptians for his new government.

"Of course we respect the public opinion and we try to comply with the expectation of the people, but there is always a time of choice, there is more than one alternative, you cannot satisfy all of the people," he said.

Meanwhile, Egypt's main liberal coalition, the National Salvation Front, withdrew its earlier statement rejecting the transition plan for interim rule and issued a statement containing milder criticism, Reuters said.

Beblawi, a liberal economist and a former finance minister, was named the new prime minister on Tuesday.

Liberal opposition chief and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei was also named vice president and head of foreign relations.

The appointments were followed by an announcement that ministerial posts in the new government would be offered to members of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, and to the Al-Nour Party.

Our corespondent, Rawya Rageh, said that some of the opposition groups like Tamarrod said that they were not consulted, and that the plans for the interim government was a rushed political process done secretly.

Also on Wednesday, the country's new prosecutor general, Hisham Barakat, was sworn in by Mansour.

Political 'manoeuvring'

The administration decisions come almost a week after the military overthrew Morsi and chose chief justice Adly Mansour to head the Arab world's most populous country.

ElBaradei was initially tipped to lead the cabinet but his nomination was rejected by the Nour party. The head of the party added that it was still studying ElBaradei's appointment as vice president.

Beblawi now faces the daunting task of trying to reunite a deeply divided country and rescue its battered economy.

Shortly after the Islamist parties made their statements, Egypt's army chief went on state media to say that the military will not accept political "manoeuvring".

Defence Minister Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said that "the future of the nation is too important and sacred for maneuvers or hindrance, whatever the justifications".

The blueprint unveiled by Mansour is intended to replace the controversial Islamist-drafted constitution which he suspended following last week's coup.

A committee will be set up to make final improvements to the draft before it is put to a referendum.

Parliamentary elections will then follow within three months and Mansour will announce a date for a presidential election once the new parliament has convened.

[Siege]

Did anybody read all that?

[Savonarola]

Did anybody read all that?

I did   

[Tamas]

Well I certainly welcome to be proven right about the actual chances of the Arab Spring leading to an enlightened democracy where neither enlightment nor democracy has any tradition, but this is becoming quite ugly.

However, I think at the end of the day, the US was right to put chips on the military. There is no chance for an ideal scenario here, and based on what I have read on the country, the real meltdown is probably yet to come. Better a hardline military dictatorship than chaos ending in an islamist government in that huge-ass, dirt poor country. Better for the rest of the world, not necessarily for the Egyptians, to make that clear.

[Tamas]

Also, frustration within the Brotherhood must be extreme right now.

For decades they endured persecution, now they were back in the light but as it seems, only briefly, as a new crackdown is going on.