Meanwhile in Egypt . . .

Field Marshall Abdel al-Sisi: Things are just working out for him!

by Ken

Since just at this second the right-wing mental defectives who specialize in hysterically bellicose mentally defective foreign-policy crackpottery aren't getting much traction from the "Who lost Egypt?" motif (not while the "Who lost Syria?" and "Who wussed out on Iran?" and "Who's losing Ukraine?" motives make for eye-catchinger loony tunes), Egypt has sort off dropped over the side of the flat earth.

So things must be going pretty well there, right? Yeah, right.

Ian Welsh wrote about Egypt the other day, and was unable to suppress the suspicion that the present-day mess was engineered by the ruling military as a springboard to cementing the military coup that put them in power by putting in an electoral fix. Working backwards from the ongoing ruthless destruction of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was "legitimately the most popular party in Egypt," after having undermined the Morsi government in all sorts of ways to create the kind of chaos that could justify a coup.

Left standing to oppose Marshall al-Sisi in his drive to become the country's "democratically elected president": nobody I know of. Probably we'd be hearing more about it if there were a convenient way to make it all Obama's fault.

As Egypt Continues its hard slide to Despotism
2014 APRIL 10

by Ian Welsh

Here are the numbers:

Since Mr Morsi’s overthrow his Muslim Brotherhood group has been the target of a fierce crackdown by the military-backed authorities. More than a thousand Brotherhood members have been killed and more than 16,000 people, many of them Islamists, have been arrested.

Then, of course, there was the death sentence for 529 protestors for the death of one policeman.

Al-sisi, the General who overthrow Morsi in a coup is now “running for President.”  He has also kept the Gaza crossing closed more often than not.

Meanwhile, the resistance has, actually, gone out of its way to attack targets like police stations, which are, frankly, legitimate targets.

The Muslim Brotherhood, and anyone else, in my view, has an entirely legitimate right, in this case, to violent revolution.  A democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup.  The Brotherhood claims not to be behind the violence, but whoever is, is not in the wrong, unless you believe that political violence is never justified.  (In which case, Americans, please start paying your taxes to the Crown.)

More to the point, the Brotherhood was legitimately the most popular party in Egypt. They did win the election fairly, after having their preferred candidates disqualified by judges appointed by the old government. They did run the clinics, distribute food and so on in much of the country.  The outlawing of the Brotherhood and seizure of all their property was a huge blow for ordinary people, even as it enriched the government.  Note that, as in Iran, the Egyptian military is a huge economic power in Egypt, owning many businesses.

The entire situation stinks to high heaven, suggesting that the original demonstrations were allowed to succeed by the military so that they might later undertake a coup.  The deep state also, clearly, deliberately sabotaged Morsi at every step, in particular power supplies suddenly became unreliable right after he was elected.  Contrary to the army’s propaganda, that’s not something Morsi could have caused, and that it was so is indicated by the fact that right after the coup, the power suddenly became much more reliable again.

The original demonstrations succeeded when the army decided they wouldn’t support the government, remember.  Let this be a reminder to you that if you do not have control, physical or ideological, over those who have the ability to inflict violence in your society, you do not actually rule: you are only in charge as long as they want you to be.

Meanwhile, with the largest and most popular party in the country outlawed and 16,000 of its supporters in jail (imagine 16,000 Democrats or Republicans in jail for protesting), I’m sure al-Sisi will cruise to victory and become “President”.

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