So, how is that idea that the Muslim Brotherhood is just a marginal fringe group with no chance of getting any power working out?
It's probably more accurate to say they're related to Ba'athism than Nasser's 'pan-Arab' approach but the trouble with ALL those things is that they're more closely related to nationalism and socialism or 'national socialism' than anything that would be meaningful in the rest of the world. Any time you stick the words 'nationalism' and 'socialism' together you end up with, essentially, a form of fascism-lite, (or extreme populism at the very least), because socialism is, by it's very nature, internationalist.
He probably means that the Brotherhood will be one of the parties that will form the government as part of some coalition.
Yeah, I thought I was being pretty straight forward. There was a lot of talk by the Egyptian twitter revolutionaries about how the MB would have no part in future government(s).
Always helpful to post a link, or be replying to a post with more info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_parliamentary_election,_2011 http://213.158.162.45/~egyptian/ind...le=Baradei sceptical about Egyptian elections
So in Egypt the dictator Mubarak is back but now call himself Morsi and works under the Islamic Brotherhood. The Egyptian people are not buying it and are back on the streets.
To get around the courts (mostly appointed by the old dictator and have done a lot to undermine Morsi), Morsi decided to give himself a lot of dictator powers, he can write his own laws and they are not subject to judicial review, so he pretty much just became Mubarak 2.
Seems Mursi turned out to be a greedy little pig, with lust for absolute power. After all that trouble/suffering the Egyptian people had to endure whilst fighting against Mubarak. Hopefully there will be a military coup, if Mursi continues down this path. Piece of s.hit
Hard to imagine the military is going to allow anyone outside of the military to take over as dictator...
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/26/world/meast/egypt-protests/index.html?hpt=hp_inthenews Very bad Now this is a good idea, if he would just make this decree give back the other powers I think the people would be ok with it, he would win since the biggest section of the 100 member are Islamist like him.
Did he? I thought he'd brought it back after the previous lot disbanded it... but haven't been keeping up with that stuff, tbh.
http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-court-sentences-8-death-over-prophet-film-142630945.html A kinder, gentler Eqypt has emerged.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/28/world/meast/egypt-protests/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 My hats off to these people. They fought hard to get rid of a dictator, had free elections, elected a guy that most of us in the West were wary of due to his Muslim Brotherhood Affiliation, and now that he is trying to overstep his bounds, the people are back out in the Square fighting to keep what they earned in a hard fought victory. Damn Glad to see the Egyptian People coming out to fight for what they want from their Govt. I salute them and give them full support. It is refreshing to see they are so willing to keep what they earned and are not ready to give it up.
That sort of nonsense is quite typical of countries in that area... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_301_(Turkish_Penal_Code)#High-profile_cases Article 301 is a controversial article of the Turkish Penal Code making it illegal to insult Turkey, the Turkish ethnicity, or Turkish government institutions. The reaction in the west is predicated on whether the regime involved is viewed as a friend or an enemy Let's be honest, it's not like Egypt was THAT much of a 'kinder, gentler' place anyway. Of course, when we wanted to outsource our water-boarding and other torture methods to them, who gives a shit?!
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/26/world/meast/egypt-protests/index.html?hpt=hp_t3 In a country without a constitution, Morsy already has the powers of both a president and a legislature after the elected parliament was dissolved. Looks like I made an incorrect assumption based on that one article. After further research it seems that it was the military (not Morsi) that dissolved the parliament. Morsi was going to reconvene it but the courts upheld the decision to desolve. http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/22/world/meast/egypt-parliament-ruling/index.html
No worries Yeah, I thought that's what had happened. As far as I can tell there's a HUGE power struggle going on between Morsi's lot and the old Mubarak clan who are, let's face it, still very much in the driving seat in some areas. My reading is that he's using the influence he's gained with the Americans recently in helping sort out the Israel/Gaza conflict to push back against the generals. Whether he'll 'push back' and go too far remains to be seen. Just read this which makes some interesting observations... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20475284 Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi's decision to take sweeping new powers is a huge political gamble that has divided Egypt. The move was announced the day after the Gaza ceasefire, which the Egyptian leader helped to mediate. Buoyed by international praise for that effort, President Mursi tried to consolidate his power at home. But he may have been guilty of a degree of over-confidence, or political naivety. The president said he was acting to protect the revolution. Specifically, he wanted to prevent the courts from disbanding, for a second time, the assembly that is writing the Egyptian constitution. There were reports that the courts might be about to do this. That could seriously derail the transition to democracy, further delaying new parliamentary elections, which could deter Egypt's political leaders from taking tough decisions while they wait for the vote. Something that's important to remember is that, presumably, the Egyptians are working from the OLD constitution and that the people writing the new one must be left alone to sort it out. It goes on to say... Most of the judges were appointed during former President Hosni Mubarak's time in office. They were not direct political appointments, but many Egyptians suspect they are still loyal to the old regime. The same applies to the prosecutor-general, whom the president sacked. His replacement moved quickly to re-open criminal investigations into the former president, his family, and former regime officials. A series of trials for corruption, and for the killings of protesters during the revolution, have so far had only mixed results, raising questions about the loyalty of the prosecutor, though Hosni Mubarak himself is serving a long prison term. I think, under the circumstances, he can be forgiven for trying to 'level the playing field' in terms of how the constitution is written and those influencing the events surrounding it. Will he go too far? Let's be honest, who the hell knows?!
I have to admit that I haven't followed all the minutia with regard to Morsi's actions in Egypt itself to judge whether he is trying to make sure the Mubarak era stooges still lurking around the Egyptian judiciary and in other offices don't manage to derail the Egyptian revolution, or whether he is trying to amass powers for himself so he can turn into another Mubarak? But in either case, there is clearly still a long ways before Egypt can stand up and be a genuinely independent country that is ruled by its own people as opposed to foreign dictates. Some of the problem for Egypt is merely the fact that they are relatively poor country reliant on foreign aid and revenues from tourism (itself dependent on the good graces of their patrons). This all makes Egypt unable to truly resist the encroachments and interferences of those whose investments and aid are critical to Egypt's economy remaining afloat, including the US and Saudi Arabia. In this mix, the script that Morsi has been handed is to form and follow an alliance of sorts with Turkey, which the US has been working feverishly to promote the past few years as the alternative model for the Arabs to follow lest they become too enamored by the so-called axis of resistance led by Iran. Of course, most of these Arab states used to be ruled by the Turks during the days of the Ottoman empire, something that they should recall before embracing the Turks too enthusiastically. But the script as written right now will see the Middle East return to the days when it was split between the Ottoman empire in Turkey and the Safavid empire of Iran, divided along sectarian sunni-shia lines. All those wars fought to no end, except leaving both powers weakened in the face of western encroachment, you would think the people region would recognize that this "divide and rule" scenario is not devised to serve them. I regret, however, that many of them are all too willing to jump into this trap again.