Arab Spring, Round 2

[mongers]

People will be saying this about the USA in 100 years time, but it'll be true.   

So you think it IS a constructive idea to restore the leadership of the original caliphate?

I guess I do not get your problem here.  Yeah we have nutters in the US who do this...yeah so?  I did not claim otherwise.

Hold on to your hat here folks.

Woosh ......................................................................

[KRonn]

Yo, Egypt!  Get some democratic institutions.

Yeah, just because they have elections doesn't mean they're democratic. Like with Iran, Hussein in Iraq, Hamas, and others of that type. Elections aren't the only defining factor of democracy. If the institutions aren't there or if those elected don't abide by the democratic institutions, don't believe in them or will not implement them, then it doesn't matter how many elections there are -  it's still some sort of autocratic government.

[Valmy]

Hold on to your hat here folks.

Woosh ......................................................................

Yes I didn't get it and admitted it.  Congrats for being opaque and unclear?

[Savonarola]

Tunisia suspends constitution body

Assembly speaker announces body's suspension amid hundreds of protesters attend a mass rally called by the opposition.

Tunisia's embattled Constituent Assembly has been suspended indefinitely, ahead of planned mass protests calling for the body to be dissolved, its speaker said.

The move came on Tuesday as hundreds of demonstrators started to gather outside the assembly building for a mass rally called by the opposition aimed at pressuring the government to step down.

The head of the Constituent Assembly and Secretary General of the centre-left party Ettakatol Mustafa Ben Jaffar announced to the nation on Tuesday that the constituent assembly or parliament would be suspended.

"I assume my responsibility as president of the ANC [assembly] and suspend its work until the start of a dialogue, in the service of Tunisia," he said on state television.

He was referring to a crisis sparked by the assassination of an opposition figure that has already prompted many opposition members to boycott the assembly's sessions.

The assembly was only weeks away from finishing a draft constitution and electoral law that would move the country closer to new elections.

The country's secular opposition is trying to oust the Islamist Ennahda-led government and dissolve the transitional Assembly.

Protests have been held daily since the killing of leftist politician and assembly member Mohamed Brahmi on July 25, nearly six months after another leftist figure was gunned down.

More than 70 members of the assembly withdrew two weeks ago in protest at the two killings and organised a sit-in outside the assembly headquarters.

The Constituent Assembly met on Tuesday morning despite the absence of protesting lawmakers.

Tunisians are facing the worst political crisis since the toppling of autocratic ruler Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, in a revolt that sparked uprisings across the Arab world.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it doesn't sound like this would move them closer to elections.

[jimmy olsen]

Algeria 2.0, just great

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/08/19935461-analysis-egypt-has-all-the-ingredients-for-an-insurgency?lite

Egypt has all the ingredients for an insurgency

Amr Abdallah Dalsh / Reuters

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans during a protest at Rabaa Adawiya Square, where they are camping, in Nasr City, east of Cairo, on Aug. 7.

By Richard Engel, Correspondent, NBC News

News analysis

CAIRO -- A troubling thing happened at the Cairo airport early one morning this week.

Two Egyptian men arrived on a predawn flight from Istanbul. As they were walking through the arrival hall, airport officials say, one of the men threw something in a wastepaper basket before reaching customs control. The action seemed suspicious.

Their passports indicated the men had started their journey in Chechnya, a center of Islamic unrest in the Caucasus. Customs officials inspected their luggage and discovered they were carrying military uniforms, a black "al Qaeda flag," and computer memory cards containing what seemed to be radical Islamist propaganda. Fishing through the trash, officials also found what they described as counterfeit passports.

The men were taken into custody. Egyptian officials said they believe the men were Islamic extremists traveling to Egypt to wage jihad.

It's a very bad sign of what may be coming – a time of jihad and death on the Nile.

Middle East analysts and U.S. intelligence officers have told me they worry an insurgency may break out in Egypt. At a minimum, such an uprising could cause sporadic violence against the government, the Egyptian military and foreign visitors. Far worse, it could cause serious instability in this 5,000-year-old civilization.

After the military ousted the Muslim Brotherhood's elected President Mohammed Morsi earlier this summer, Egypt has joined Syria as the cause du jour for Islamic crusaders. Al Qaeda's chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, who U.S. officials say ordered his Yemeni captain to carry out a big terrorist attack somewhere in the vast West, has released an audio message urging Islamists to take their struggle to Egypt. Zawahiri, himself an Egyptian, has accused Washington of orchestrating the coup, saying it was paid for with money from Persian Gulf states and carried out with the complicity of Egyptian Christians.

At daily Muslim Brotherhood rallies in Cairo and Alexandria, protesters threaten jihad against the mostly-secular Egyptian military.

The Egyptian military has said it will no longer tolerate the demonstrations, and may move to clear them out by force. The move could be what tips the kettle of Egypt's brewing insurgency.

This week Sen. John McCain told NBC News he worries Egypt could follow the path of Algeria. In the 1990s, Islamists in Algeria won elections like the Brotherhood did in Egypt. The Algerian military refused to allow the Islamists to take power. A war erupted, killing between 100,000 to 200,000 people, depending on which estimates are to be believed.

Egyptians should hope McCain is wrong, but there are undeniable parallels. An Algeria redux in Egypt is the worst possibility, the nightmare of a total breakdown of order, death on the Nile every night.

Intelligence officials and analysts say that horror show is possible, but expect a somewhat less dire, but still violent and persistent armed insurgency that could last years.

Insurgencies are easy to make and hard to stop. Only a few ingredients need to combine to create an insurgency; like oxygen and fire, they're very common and mix all too often. The recipe is simply: a legitimate grievance against a state, a state that refuses to compromise, a quorum of angry people, and access to weapons.

Egypt appears to have them all.

Morsi was legitimately elected in 2012. His government's performance was, by almost any standard, disastrous and didn't respect the rights of other political groups. He is accused of colluding with Hamas, and of allowing the Sinai Peninsula, where the Bible says Moses handed down laws to his people, to become a lawless safe haven for wild-eyed jihadis and gun runners.

Morsi was, of course, overthrown in what the United States doesn't want to call a coup. He may have deserved it. Many Egyptians certainly think so. But does the Muslim Brotherhood have a cause to rally around? Yes. The first ingredient is there.

Is the military willing to compromise? It and the government it backs say they want to talk and find a solution. The government has reached out to religious leaders hoping to use them as intermediaries. But the military isn't willing to step down. Is the state refusing compromise? Yes, but only from the Brotherhood's perspective.

Insurgencies also need insurgents.  Does the Brotherhood have the numbers? The group claims that the majority of Egyptians support them, since they won the election by a majority. The Brotherhood's opponents say the group only won the election because other parties weren't organized and say the Brotherhood alienated many Egyptians during its year in power. But even the Brotherhood's toughest critics say the group has a base of support that numbers at least in the millions.

For an insurgency, you don't need millions. Al Qaeda in Yemen, which now has powerful nations shutting its embassies around the globe, only has a core of about 1,000 members.  Does Egypt have the numbers for an insurgency? Yes, it does, and then some.   

The last ingredient is weapons.

There was an insurgency under President Hosni Mubarak in the 1990s. Egyptian police and soldiers fought weekly battles with Islamists in the sugarcane fields and thick reeds along the Nile in rural southern villages like Minya, Sohag, Enna and Assiout.  Whenever I traveled to Assiout in the 1990s, I had to inform the Egyptian government of my movements ahead of time. On one trip, I was given a full military escort, including two tracked armored personnel carriers with machine guns. In 1997, Islamic extremists killed nine German tourists in front of the painfully rich Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square. Two gunmen boarded the bus, started shooting tourists and set the vehicle on fire with Molotov cocktails. I lived down the street at the time and climbed on the smoking bus to see the bodies, still seated, melted to the nylon and plastic foam seats. Two months later, Islamic militants butchered 58 foreign tourists with assault rifles in front of the temple of the Pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut in Luxor, better known to the ancients as Thebes.

There weren't many weapons in Egypt in the 1990s. Police controls on guns were very strict back them. That is no longer the case in Egypt today. When Libya collapsed after NATO airpower guided Mad Max rebels into Tripoli, Muammar Gadhafi's weapons were smuggled out like rats off a sinking ship. The weapons went to Mali, Niger, Syria, Egypt and everywhere. Do Egyptians have access to enough arms for an insurgency? Oh, yes.

So what can be done? The easy answer would be to tell the military and the Brotherhood to work out a deal, to compromise and play nice together. But that seems unlikely. The military and the Brotherhood both want power and both feel they deserve to have it; both sides also have passionate supporters encouraging them to hold their ground.

Analysts may be right to worry that death on the Nile may be coming.

[Sheilbh]

Maybe, I think it looks more like a reboot of the old regime.

In the past week there's been international mediation between the coup regime and the Brotherhood who are peacefully sitting in at various places in Egypt. Both sides say they've failed.

What worries me more is the tone from the regime. Nasser's granddaughter's issued a statement calling on Sissi to 'seize his destiny', while an alleged picture of Sissi as a boy saluting Nasser is doing the rounds. Meanwhile the state media have alleged that the Muslim Brotherhood are hiding chemical weapons in their Rabaa sit in. Articles in the state media have also referred to El Baradei as 'the enemy' and 'a danger to the state and the nation'. He's currently the vice-President.

The new regime have also announced how they'll re-write Egypt's constitution:

Each of the groups listed will select its own members, while the president will select public figures.

The members will include three from Al-Azhar, including one young person; three from the Coptic Orthodox Church; four youth figures, ages not exceeding 40, including a member of the 'Rebel' (Tamarod) Campaign, at least one representative from youth activists of the 25 January and a professional.

The four main political currents will be represented – Islamist and liberal parties will each choose two representatives; leftist and nationalist parties will each choose one representative.

The culture sector will choose its representatives. One will be nominated by the Egyptian Writers' Union, another by the Federation of Artistic Trade Unions, one by the Fine and Applied Arts Sector and one by the Supreme Council of Culture.

Labour will be represented by two members, nominated by different workers unions and associations. Professional syndicates will get four representatives – one selected by the Doctors Syndicate, one by the Engineers Syndicate, one by the Lawyers Syndicate and one by the Journalists Syndicate.

Peasants will get two representatives, nominated by peasant unions and associations.

Other interest associations will also get to choose representatives; the Federation of Chambers of Tourism, the Federation of Chamber of Industry and the Federation of Chambers of Trade will each nominate one person. Egypt's Student Union will nominate one representative, and so will the General Union for Non-Governmental Organisations.

National councils – state run bodies – will also select candidates. The National Council for Women, the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood and the National Council for Human Rights, the Supreme Council of Universities, and the National Council for Challenging Disability will each nominate one person.

The armed forces and the police will each select one representative.

The cabinet will nominate 10 public figures reflecting Egypt's diversity, including representatives from Delta, Upper Egypt, Sinai, Marsa Matrouh, and Egypt's Nubian minority. 

[Savonarola]

Uh-oh:

Deadly air strike reported in Sinai

At least five suspected armed fighters killed in what some sources claimed to be an Israeli drone strike.

An air strike in Egypt's northern Sinai peninsula has killed five suspected armed fighters, news agencies have reported quoting Egyptian sources and witnesses.

It said the source of the strike was not clear, with some sources claiming it to be an Israeli drone strike while others credited the Egyptian military.

Residents heard a large explosion on Friday in the region near the border with Israel.

Egypt's army said two explosions were heard at about 4:15 pm (1415 GMT) in the Al-Ojra area, 3km from the border with Israel.

"The armed forces are combing the area of the explosions to find out the cause," army spokesman Colonel Ahmed Aly said in a statement. Witnesses said Egyptian military helicopters hovered above the site after
the blasts.

Egypt's military and security forces are engaged in long battle against armed fighters in the largely lawless peninsula. On Thursday, Israel briefly closed an airport near the border after Egyptian officials warned of possible rocket attacks.

[Savonarola]

Analysts may be right to worry that death on the Nile may be coming.

Their little grey cells are concerned.   

[Savonarola]

Top story this morning from around the world:

Al Jazeera:  Security crackdown kills scores in Egypt
BBC:  Bloodshed as Cairo camps cleared
Le Monde:  Egypte : plus d'une centaine de morts au Caire après la dispersion des pro-Morsi
CNN:  Friend: Hannah Anderson discusses kidnapping on social media

[Admiral Yi]

 

[Grey Fox]

Just Arabs shooting eachother, something that happens every day.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Top story this morning from around the world:

Al Jazeera:  Security crackdown kills scores in Egypt
BBC:  Bloodshed as Cairo camps cleared
Le Monde:  Egypte : plus d'une centaine de morts au Caire après la dispersion des pro-Morsi
CNN:  Friend: Hannah Anderson discusses kidnapping on social media

and none of those mentioning that the morsibarians were burning churches at the time.
Don't know what Hannan Anderson was burning  though

[The Minsky Moment]

Uh-oh:

Deadly air strike reported in Sinai

At least five suspected armed fighters killed in what some sources claimed to be an Israeli drone strike.

An air strike in Egypt's northern Sinai peninsula has killed five suspected armed fighters, news agencies have reported quoting Egyptian sources and witnesses.

It said the source of the strike was not clear, with some sources claiming it to be an Israeli drone strike while others credited the Egyptian military.

Residents heard a large explosion on Friday in the region near the border with Israel.

Egypt's army said two explosions were heard at about 4:15 pm (1415 GMT) in the Al-Ojra area, 3km from the border with Israel.

"The armed forces are combing the area of the explosions to find out the cause," army spokesman Colonel Ahmed Aly said in a statement. Witnesses said Egyptian military helicopters hovered above the site after
the blasts.

Egypt's military and security forces are engaged in long battle against armed fighters in the largely lawless peninsula. On Thursday, Israel briefly closed an airport near the border after Egyptian officials warned of possible rocket attacks.

The Sinai has a very long history that people who misbehave are subject to smiting by bolts from the sky.

[Ed Anger]

Holy Shit.

[Admiral Yi]

CNN is saying 300 Brothers and 43 cops killed.

The night Chicago died,
da da da da da da da da.