Morsi is out. Within hours of the military’s deadline, the first democratically elected President of the new Egypt stepped down. There is jubilation in the streets, and the redo of Egypt’s revolution has renewed the hopes of millions that the world’s largest Arab country will turn towards a brighter future.
If only it were that easy.
To be fair, it’s understandable – and to be expected – that the Tamarod protestors are celebrating a major victory. A semi-bloodless overthrow of an aspiring theocrat is generally an exciting thing. That is true for today, but the days ahead in Egypt will be fraught with anxious uncertainty. Nobody has the answers for what is next- and most aren’t even thinking about it yet.
At the risk of sounding cynical, Egypt has been here before. That the current protests in Tahrir are larger and louder than the 2011 episode doesn’t change the eerie feeling of déjà vu that should slightly diminish hopeful expectations for the future.
Proponents of Egypt’s revolution 2.0 will undoubtedly point out that Morsi was a liar, a failure, and an authoritarian. All true, though that doesn’t change a few uncomfortable realities staring Egyptians in the face.
Despite the best intentions of Tamarod, the country may be ungovernable. The economy is still in free-fall. And if the Islamists go underground and resort to violence, the future could be much bleaker than anything under Mubarak or the Brotherhood.
While events on the ground are changing hour-to-hour, here is an overview of the good, bad, and ugly of the Egyptian coup, as it currently stands.
The Islamists aren’t going anywhere. They may step down today, they might even pretend to join an interim government, but many of them are furious at this revocation of their victory at the ballot box.
The Muslim Brotherhood—and the more extreme Salafist Al Nour party—can still count millions of supporters in their ranks. And many of those Islamic hardliners are looking at the coup in Cairo with revulsion and rage.
A brief look at the history of Islamist movements—and the Brotherhood in particular—shows an ability to endure crackdowns, and operate effectively from outside the political mainstream. In fact, organizing in the shadows may be the Islamists most finely honed skill. Clearly, they don’t have a clue when it comes to inclusive governance. Push them into darkness, however, and they thrive.
But the real game changer would be a return to violence for the Islamists.
Nobody knows what comes next if that happens. Drowned out by the cheers and the vuvuzela horns in Tahrir are voices of Islamists gathering in pockets around Cairo, screaming about injustice while they wave homemade weapons in the air.
Even if Tamarod supporters hugely outnumber Islamists, instability and insurgency don’t require a majority. They require dedication.
Nobody questions the Islamists when it comes to that qualification.
Curiously, a massive wave of anti-Obama sentiment in Egypt has been utterly ignored by vintage media, even though the protests may be the largest in all of human history.
Irish Times reports:
Army concern about the way President Mohamed Morsi was governing Egypt reached tipping point when the head of state attended a rally packed with hardline fellow Islamists calling for holy war in Syria, military sources have said.***Mr Morsi himself called for foreign intervention in Syria against Mr Assad,leading to a veiled rebuke from the army, which issued an apparently bland but sharp-edged statement the next day stressing that its only role was guarding Egypt’s borders.***“The armed forces were very alarmed by the Syrian conference at a time the state was going through a major political crisis,” said one officer, whose comments reflected remarks made privately by other army staff. He was speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to talk to the media.***For the army, the Syria rally had crossed “a national security red line” by encouraging Egyptians to fight abroad, risking creating a new generation of jihadists, said Yasser El-Shimy, analyst with the International Crisis Group.At the heart of the military’s concern is the history of militant Islam in Egypt, homeland of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri. The military source condemned recent remarks made by “retired terrorists” allied to Mr Morsi, who has deepened his ties with the once-armed group al-Gamaa al-Islamiya.
Obama had recently sent American troops to prop up Mursi, and the protesters were furious at the U.S. for backing Islamic radicals.
This step is only one symptom of the broad gulf developing between the Obama administration and Egypt’s post-coup administration headed by Defense Minister and coup leader Gen. El-Sisi
By means of the successful military putsch in Cairo, Saudi King Abdullah had his revenge for the toppling of his friend Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, for which he has never forgiven President Obama whom he held responsible.
The Saudi-Gulf intervention in Egypt’s change of government also ushers in a new stage of the Arab Revolt for the Middle East. For the first time, a group of traditionally pro-US conservative Arab governments has struck out on its own to fill the leadership vacuum left by the Obama administration’s unwillingness to pursue direct initiatives in the savage Syrian civil war or forcibly preempt Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb.
The Saudi-Gulf intervention in Egypt’s change of government also ushers in a new stage of the Arab Revolt for the Middle East. For the first time, a group of traditionally pro-US conservative Arab governments has struck out on its own to fill the leadership vacuum left by the Obama administration’s unwillingness to pursue direct initiatives in the savage Syrian civil war or forcibly preempt Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb.
The removal of Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt has far-reaching ramifications for Israel. In the immediate term, it gives Israel some security relief – especially, easing the dangers posed from Sinai to its southern regions. The radical Palestinian Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot which rules the Gaza Strip, has suffered the most damaging political and military setback in its history with the loss of its parent and patron in Cairo.
Approaching Tyranny = Approaching The Tribulation
[This is one of the few times I changed the actual title of an article]
A faithful Catholic, freely exercising his or her religion, cannot pay for or provide coverage for abortion-inducing drugs.
So now the Obama administration has issued a dictate to Catholics and those of other denominations who share the Catholic understanding of abortion: You may no longer freely exercise your religion. You must obey us — even in a matter that involves taking innocent lives.
On Tuesday, a broad coalition of religious Americans, many of whom differ with the Catholic view that artificial contraception is wrong, published an open letter to America.
Among the signatories were Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore; Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Presiding Bishop Gary E. Stevenson of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints; the Rev. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod; Rabbi Aryeh Spero, president of the Caucus for America; and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.
"Very simply," they wrote, "HHS is forcing Citizen A, against his or her moral convictions, to purchase a product for Citizen B." By doing so, they concluded, "HHS breaches the free exercise clause."
If this stands in America, religious freedom does not. And it is a reasonable assumption that those who today order Catholic charities to patronize abortion providers could tomorrow order Catholic bishops into jail.
[This article is lengthy but well worth reading. I have to wonder how much longer these kinds of articles will be "allowed"]
Pull back the curtains. Let us lean our heads out of the window. See the rustling. Catch the noise.
Quite a confusion and cacophony surround America’s Internet spying scandal. In this crisis, many Americans, whether thinking themselves conservative, moderate, or liberal, have become very distracted, turning away from the throbbing red heart of the matter.
Yes, some are superficially taken up with the worldwide “Where’s Snowden?” game, but that is not what I mean.
Without demonstrable evidence, others are accusing the young man of giving away critical secrets of state that he may not even know. But even that would not be the heart of the matter, were it true.
The heart of the matter is the burgeoning power of the state over our lives. The data being collected on us all is making former East German totalitarians of their Stasi envious. Last week I wrote: never before has the government of a nation spied and maintained intelligence upon its own population to any degree approaching this, without it being a totalitarian, terrorist regime. But I could have ended that with “to any degree approaching this.” period.
And the tragic distraction is that many notables seem absorbed with fulfilling the old adage, “Generals always prepare for the last war.” That is especially calamitous,when in the last war, one was fighting for an entity which was not the enemy but which now is. According to their tragic misconception, in order to maintain the strength of U.S. intelligence and armed services in the world, they verbally fight for preserving the surveillance state and so they attack those who warn the sovereign people of its insurrection against our sovereignty and freedom, via our own government. That is a travesty so great that if it were ever found to be knowingly intentional, it would be treasonous by default.
Our modern tyrants, the big-government progressives, have become much more sophisticated and insidious than the tyrants of old, their “totalitarianism with a human face” as effective as violence in destroying true freedom. Ordered liberty has indeed been reduced to mere license, as the ancients predicted. The first step in this process in our time has been secularization, the driving of religion from the public square and the reduction of it to a private lifestyle choice. In this way the moral order sanctioned by “nature’s God” and the “Supreme Judge of the world,” as the Declaration describes the divine order, that enforced limits on license and self-indulgence can be marginalized and bereft of its power to sanction destructive behavior, leaving the state as the only authority for regulating people’s lives.
The Department of Homeland Security is conducting a “top secret” drill codenamed ‘Operation Independence’ across the United States today, during which officers in riot gear as well as undercover agents will patrol transport hubs.
According to a report by KTTV, the exercise is a “full scale terrorism drill” taking place nationwide. In Los Angeles, the drill involves the LA County Sheriff’s Department, Homeland Security and TSA agents, as well as plain clothed officers who will be, “working undercover, looking like any other passenger, they scour faces, briefcases and backpacks, looking for anything out of the ordinary.”
Officials claim the drills are to make the public feel “safe” in light of claims that the alleged Boston Bombers had planned a July 4 terror attack in New York.
According to Nicole Nishida of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Americans will celebrate their “independence” from tyranny by submitting to random bag searches.
L.A. County’s Homeland Security Division chief Ted Sexton admitted that the DHS drill was not based on “any credible threat information.”
The sycophantic KTTV report even urged Americans to say “thank you” to uniformed agents who would be eyeballing them at at Union Station.
As we reported yesterday, many Americans frustrated with over the top security measures have given up on celebrating Independence Day altogether, noting that the stifling precautions have left them with little “freedom” to exercise.
Freedom is an intangible quality. Like health or light, we notice it most clearly in its absence. And so the only way to truly appreciate freedom is to be on the verge of losing it.
Our Fourth of July may be more troubled than it was a century ago, but those troubles have brought us closer to a day some 237 years ago that led to centuries of freedom. Political revolutions can happen once, but revolutions of liberty must take place again and again to secure the precious commodity that is so easily swallowed up by the power of government.
Earlier generations were lectured on the danger of taking freedom for granted. We don’t need those lectures because the country we now live in does not allow us the luxury of taking freedom for granted. We can see the dark tunnel up ahead as right after right vanishes into the maw of the regulatory state.
Our celebration of independence may be less carefree, but that is because we feel what is truly at stake. Independence. Liberty. Freedom. The freedom to think, to live our faith, to earn a living and to raise a family.
For us, the struggle for freedom is not some abstract thing. It is not something that people in other countries far away across the ocean do. It is our struggle. It is our freedom that we are fighting for.
We approach the Fourth of July in the same spirit as the men and women who were about to become the citizens of a new country did 237 years ago. Their struggle is our struggle and our struggle is their struggle. The Fourth of July commemorates that ongoing struggle and reminds us that the patriots of our nation have confronted domestic enemies who would snatch away our freedom and come away with victories of ideas before.
237 years later, the people of this nation are once again fighting to be free.
If you don't believe that we are living under tyranny, just read and digest the next two articles. These kids could be your children, or your neighbor's children and these stories are very real and very very ominous. As the saying goes - "read it and weep":
The Texas teenager indicted by a grand jury for making a terroristic threat about a school shooting —which he says was a Facebook joke—has been suffering and beaten behind bars, his father told NPR.
CNN adds that Justin Carter, 19, is “currently on suicide watch in Comal County Jail near San Antonio, Texas” where he’s been locked up since February. If convicted, NPR reports, the third-degree felony carries up to 10 years in prison in Texas.
“Without getting into the really nasty details, he’s had concussions, black eyes, moved four times from base for his own protection,” Carter’s father, Jack, tells NPR. “He’s been put in solitary confinement, nude, for days on end because he’s depressed. All of this is extremely traumatic to this kid. This is a horrible experience.” CNN reports his father saying that his son is “very scared and he’s very concerned that he’s not going to get out. He’s pretty much lost all hope.”
Carter’s family is trying to get the 19-year old’s $500,000 bail reduced because of what they say he’s going through. “I have been practicing law for 10 years, I’ve represented murderers, terrorists, rapists. Anything you can think of,” Carter’s attorney, Don Flanary, told NPR. “I have never seen a bond at $500,000.”
Flanary got a new hearing scheduled for July 16, said CNN, in light of the alleged abuse and to get the bond lowered so Carter can go home to await trial.
It all started after Carter was arguing with someone on Facebook about the online video game “League of Legends” when that person reportedly called him insane.
The boy with the guitar is Josh Pillault of Oxford, Mississippi. Josh is 19 years old. For the last nine months he has been in prison for roughly the same “crime” as Justin Carter has been accused of committing in Texas.While playing an online game called “Runescape” last year, Josh responded to another player who repeatedly told him to kill himself by saying that he would kill himself and then shoot up his local school. A few days later, the Pillault household was attacked by a SWAT team composed of agents from the FBI and ATF. “They surrounded our house and climbed up the side,” Josh’s mother, Stacey, told me on the phone this afternoon. “They had M16s. They dragged us out into the front yard.” They found neither weapons — “I don’t have weapons in my home,” Stacey says — nor any reason that Josh would have to hurt anybody. Nevertheless, they took Josh into custody.
There, Stacey says, authorities asked Josh “if he wanted an attorney.” Josh, unfamiliar with legal procedure, asked if he needed one. “Not if you want to get out faster,” was the reply. So Josh spoke to them without a lawyer. He was charged with making threats in interstate and foreign commerce, and with threatening property damage and was denied bail, with no bond. Arguing that he was unlikely to be acquitted at trial, Josh’s attorney encouraged him to plead guilty to one count of making threats in interstate and foreign commerce and to deny the remaining charges. In five days, he’ll have been inside for nine months.
And this:
With the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court last week in U.S. v. Windsor, the subject of marriage has been much in the news. By a vote of 5 to 4, the high court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined "marriage" as the legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife and limited the word "spouse" to apply only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife.
The majority's opinion is short on constitutional exegesis (not unexpected since the Constitution does not speak to the issue of same-sex marriage), but long on invective. Kennedy, the court's Moralizer-in-Chief, impugns the motives of the lawmakers who passed DOMA and accuses them of being motivated by malice and hate.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissenting opinion, sums up the accusations hurled by Kennedy and company: The lawmakers' purpose was "to disparage and injure" same-sex couples and the motive of DOMA was to "demean," to impose "inequality," to impose a "stigma," to deny people "equal dignity," to brand gay people as "unworthy," and to "humiliate[e] their children.
That's a lot of rhetorical venom spewed by a largely unaccountable, non-elected branch of government towards the elected representatives of the American people.
But when black-robed supremacists find themselves short of constitutional authority, it is perhaps understandable that they would resort to painting their opponents with the brush of bigotry, and as Justice Scalia points out, brand them as "hostis humanis generis, enemies of the human race."
Sadly, those of us who oppose the killing of innocent children in the womb and support traditional marriage have become accustomed to such tactics.
One can only assume that the court's majority would ascribe similar motives to Jesus of Nazareth, whose position on marriage appears not unlike that set forth in DOMA. Responding to a question from the Pharisees about the permissibility of divorce, Jesus reminded them of the Creator's intention that marriage was to be an enduring institution between a man and a woman:
"…[A]t the beginning of Creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate." (Mark 10:6-9 NIV. Internal quotes omitted)
Jesus' definition of marriage did not appear to contemplate a union of same-sex partners. So what would Justice Kennedy and his colleagues have to say about the motives of the savior of the world?
Would they brand him a "hater," this God who loved sinners so much that he became a man and laid down his life for them? Would they characterize him as malicious and bigoted? His words, after all, have informed the views of millions in the Western world who adhere to a view different from that of Justice Kennedy on this subject.
Please, Justice Kennedy – you who have lectured the country and the Congress on the superiority of your moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage in contrast to the hateful view of those who oppose it – how would you judge the motives of the Supreme Judge of the Universe, the one who invented the institution of marriage and laid out its parameters? The American people anxiously await your decision.
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