Posts Tagged ‘Mohammed Morsi’

Egypt’s Deposed Islamist President Morsi Dead

Thursday, June 20th, 2019

I missed this news a few days ago: Mohamed Morsi, the leader who briefly and disastrously lead Egypt as its first (and hopefully last) Muslim Brotherhood President, died of a heart attack in a Egyptian court room at age 67. He’d been under a death sentence since 2015.

Following widespread protests that forced previous strongman President Hosni Mubarak out of office, Morsi came to power in arguably Egypt’s first free elections in 2012, then promptly began the process of trying to install a one-party Islamic state on Egypt at top speed, casting aside the rule of law and using widespread violence against political opponents and religious minorities like the Copts. He was deposed in a widely popular coup in 2013 following constant corruption, violence and unrest. This ushered in the presidency of former General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a mildly repressive strongman who marked a radical improvement over Morsi, who immediately set about the necessary task of crushing the Muslim Brotherhood like a bug.

Morsi’s mistake was in trying to Islamicize Egypt all at once rather than gradually taking over the country’s institutions, as his ally Recep Tayyip Erdogan did in Turkey. Having witnessed life under a radical Islamist regime, Egyptians are both sadder and wise and probably won’t try it again for at least another generation. Meanwhile, an actual functioning democracy in an Islamic nation in the Middle East is as elusive as ever.

Ironically, the deposed Mubarak was released from prison in 2017, and as far as I can tell (and despite briefly being declared “clinically dead” in 2012) is still alive at age 91…

LinkSwarm for March 31, 2017

Friday, March 31st, 2017

Welcome to April Fool’s Eve! Don’t believe anything you hear tomorrow. Especially if it’s from CNN…

  • Representative Moe Brooks of Alabama offers up a one sentence repeal of ObamaCare: “Effective as of Dec. 31, 2017, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted.” Get on it, GOP… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Why not give CruzCare a try?
  • Single-payer’s future is Venezuela’s present: “The communist model for healthcare will result in everyone having a right to healthcare and no one getting any of it. There will be black market health care for those who can afford it, a lovely parallel system for the politically well connected, and a crumbling system of overworked, over-regulated providers working to give some care to all the rest of us.”
  • Scott Adams: “With the failure of the Ryan healthcare bill, the illusion of Trump-is-Hitler has been fully replaced with Trump-is-incompetent meme.”
  • CrowdStrike, Patient Zero in the “Russia hacked the Democrats” vector, backtracks key claims.
  • “Filibustering Gorsuch might be a pointless exercise when it comes to keeping him off the court, but it would have the advantage of giving angry Democratic activists something they desperately want: an opportunity to lash out in fury at Republicans.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Democratic senators Joe Manchin (WV) and Heidi Heitkamp (ND) announced they will vote for Gorsuch.
  • Leftists are taking this fact with their usual grace and tact:

    Yeah, I have no idea who Mr. Checkmark Who Has Fewer Followers Than Me is either…

  • Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has seven facts for Democrats to consider before filibustering Gorsuch. “There has never been a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.”
  • Hosni Mubarek freed in Egypt. But I mainly want to talk about the Times piece of an example of sins of omission by the newspaper of record. “The first democratic election, in 2012, brought to power a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi. But he lasted only a year, making a series of political blunders that cost him the support of the military, crucial parts of the security apparatus and millions of Egyptians, who gathered in the streets in June 2013 to call for his removal.” Yes, one might call “engineering a murderous rampage and instituting a dictatorship in order to fully Islamicize Egyptian society” a “blunder”…
  • So how’s that boycott against North Carolina over the tranny bathroom law panning out? Not so hot. “Tourism has thrived: Hotel occupancy, room rates and demand for rooms set records in 2016, according to the year-end hotel lodging report issued last week by VisitNC, part of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.” (Hat tip: Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Twitter feed.)
  • “Former Obama Official Describes Last-Minute Rush to Spy on Trump Team, Conceal Intel Sources.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Someone in a small circle of Obama intelligence officials who knew the identity of that American No. 1 committed a felony by leaking Flynn’s name to media.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Chicago follows in Detroit’s footsteps.
  • Journalists who exposed Planned Parenthood’s baby parts selling scheme indicted on felony eavesdropping charges in California. By an amazing coincidence, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra received donations from Planned Parenthood. What are the odds?
  • There’s an actual Wikipedia article for a list of grenade attacks in Sweden, which have exploded (ha) since 2012. Many occurred in Malmo. Gee, what could possibly be driving all these grenade attacks?
  • Euroweenie to campaign for independence of the People’s Republic of Austin. Good luck with that. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.
  • Trump as The Mule from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Empire. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • President Trump reverses four Obama regulations. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • $15,000 of Soros money a month per team to fight Trump.
  • You know that “1973 Manhattan was a nightmare of smog” picture your liberal Facebook friends have been posting? Debunked.
  • Behind the scenes of 2016’s wipeout of Republicans in Harris County.
  • Texas Senate votes to end automatic union payroll deductions.
  • Attorney General Ken Paxton’s trial venue is being moved, which is a victory for the prosecution. Given the dismissal of the SEC charges the case is based on, I still think the long-term prognosis points to acquittal or dismissal.
  • Homeowner 3, Robbers 0.
  • Are your sexual fetishes social justice warrior approved, comrade? If not, then expect to be fired…
  • “Spiders could theoretically eat every human on earth in a year and still be hungry.” Obviously this cries out for a research grant and a pilot program…
  • Internet Security issue: “Typosquatting programming language package managers.”
  • Troll level: Godlike.
  • Five-year old suspended for imaginary gun.
  • An obituary for the author of The Anarchist’s Cookbook.
  • McSweeney’s on packing the liberal go-bag. (Hat tip: Gay Patriot’s Twitter feed.)
  • Don McLean’s “American Pie” added to the National recording registry. “I’m really delighted that the government has taken notice of me in this way, and not by tapping my phone or something.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Want. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Hakeem Olajuwon: Better than Jordan.
  • Speaking of shocking statistics: “Steven Seagal released seven films in 2016. Seven.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Oh no! Not the bees! They’re in my eyes!
  • What is It With the Clintons Hiring Employees With Ties to the Muslim Brotherhood?

    Tuesday, July 26th, 2016

    I can certainly understand the Clinton clan’s self-centered greed and avarice. What I struggle to understand is why they keep repeatedly hiring employees with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

    Take, for example, former Clinton Foundation employee Gehad El-Haddad, who was just sentenced to life in prison in Egypt for his work as the mouthpiece for Mohamed Morsi’s short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government.

    Then there are the well documented familial links between perpetual #1 Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and the Muslim Brotherhood:

    Sheikh Qaradawi is a promoter of jihadist terror. His fatwas endorse terrorist attacks against American personnel in Iraq as well as suicide bombing — by both men and women — against Israel. He is a leading supporter of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. He also runs an umbrella organization called the Union for Good (sometimes referred to as the “Union of Good”), which is formally designated a terrorist organization under American law. The Union for Good was behind the “Peace Flotilla” that attempted to break our ally Israel’s blockade of the terrorist organization Hamas (the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch) in 2010.

    That’s rather interesting — at least to me, though apparently not to Speaker Boehner — because Huma Abedin’s mother, Saleha, who is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s female division (the “Muslim Sisterhood”), is a major figure in not one but two Union for Good components. The first is the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief (IICDR). It is banned in Israel for supporting Hamas under the auspices of the Union for Good. Then there’s the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC) — an organization that Dr. Saleha Abedin has long headed. Dr. Abedin’s IICWC describes itself as part of the IICDR. And wouldn’t you know it, the IICWC charter was written by none other than . . . Sheikh Qaradawi, in conjunction with several self-proclaimed members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

    The recently declassified 28 pages of the 9/11 report has more to say about it. “The ‘Abedin family business’ is an academic group called the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs that is based in the London offices of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and its parent organization, the Muslim World League.”

    About the World Arab Muslim Youth Association:

    According to the FBI. Abdullah Bin Ladin [Osama bin Laden’s half-brother] has a number of connections to terrorist organizations. He is the President and Director of the World Arab Muslim Youth Association (WAMY) and the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Science in America. Both organizations are local branches of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

    According to the FBI, there is reason to believe that WAMY is “closely associated with the funding and financing of international terrorist activities and in the past has provided logistical support to individuals wishing to to fight in the Afghan War.” In 1998, the CIA published a paper characterizing WAMY as a NGO that provides funding. logistical support and training with possible connections to the Arab Afghans network, Hamas, Algerian extremists and Philippine militants.

    Who else calls attention to the World Arab Muslim Youth Association’s ties to terrorism? Would you believe Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?

    Saudi Arabia has enacted important reforms to criminalize terrorist financing and restrict the overseas flow of funds from Saudi-based charities. However, these restrictions fail to include multilateral organizations such as the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), Muslim World League (MWL) and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY.) Intelligence suggests that these groups continue to send money overseas and, at times, fund extremism overseas.

    Despite all this, Saudi pressure has helped keep the International Islamic Relief Organization and World Arab Muslim Youth Association off the official list of groups with terrorist ties.

    And as long as we’re discussing Hillary’s ties to terrorism, we should probably mention “numerous ties between Hillary Clinton and members of the shadowy network surrounding Fethullah Gulen, the controversial Muslim cleric who has been called ‘the Turkish Khomeini,’ and whom the Erdogan regime is accusing of instigating the coup that nearly toppled it.” (Just because I don’t think Gulen had any significant role in the coup doesn’t mean he’s not an Islamist scumbag.)

    According to the Caller, the Gulen camp has been one of Hillary’s numerous sources of cash, in exchange for which she gave access to the President: “a Gulen follower named Gokhan Ozkok asked Clinton deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin for help in connecting one of his allies to President Obama….Ozkok served as national finance co-chair of the pro-Clinton Ready PAC. He gave $10,000 to the committee in 2014 and $2,700 to Clinton’s campaign last year. He is also listed on the Turkish Cultural Center’s website as a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, one of the non-profit arms of the Clinton Foundation. He’s given between $25,000 and $50,000 to the Clinton charity.”

    Ah, money for access. Now the Clinton ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are starting to make more sense. Maybe they helped the Clinton Foundation bring in money from the likes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi, Nasser Al-Rashid, etc. Indeed, counting speaking fees and money for “walking away” from an investment partnership with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum of Dubai, the Clintons have collectively pocketed $100 million from Persian Gulf rulers.

    There’s are other angles to the story I haven’t had time to track down yet. Like why did Hillary Clinton’s new VP pick Tim Kaine appoint the President of the Muslim Brotherhood-tied Muslim American Society, Esam Omeish, to Virginia’s state’s Immigration Commission?

    But I’ll have to leave those for another time.

    Egypt Behind Sisi As Long As He’s Pounding The Ikhwan

    Saturday, July 25th, 2015

    “The past two years have been the most violent and repressive in Egypt’s contemporary history.” True, but by and large the Egyptians themselves don’t seem to mind. Why?

    Yet despite this bleak security outlook, Egypt is more politically stable than it’s been in years. Unlike the divided regimes that collapsed in the face of mass protests in January 2011 and June 2013, the Sisi regime is internally unified. And the various state institutions and civil groups that constitute the regime will likely remain tightly aligned for one basic reason: they view the Muslim Brotherhood as a significant threat to their respective interests and thus see the regime’s crackdown on the organization as essential to their own survival.

    Lucky for Egypt (and the world) that Morsi and his Muslim Brothers were such idiots. They could have gotten a lot further Islamicising Egypt had they followed Erdogan’s incrementalist model…

    Morsi Sentenced To Death in Egypt

    Sunday, May 17th, 2015

    Muslim Brotherhood leader and deposed President of Egypt Mohammed Morsi has been sentenced to death, along with more than 100 other people.

    Most of the time, sentencing a popularly elected President ousted from power by the military would be a bad thing. This is not one of those times. Morsi tried to undermine Egypt’s democratic constitutional strictures (however weak and imperfect they were) in the name of turning the country into a radical Islamist state, following the classic African strongman blueprint of “One Man, One Vote, Once.” He lost an existential power struggle with the military and, in the long-standing traditions of the Arab world, he’ll be paying for losing with his life.

    Both Egypt, and the world, will be better for his death, and the ruthless suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood.

    Mark Steyn on Egypt

    Monday, August 19th, 2013

    Mark Steyn is always good, but this piece on Egypt is so succinctly pithy that it’s hard to stop quoting from it.

    General Sisi has made a calculation that he has a small window of opportunity to inflict damage on the Muslim Brotherhood that will set them back decades and that it is in Egypt’s vital interest to do so. Grasping that, the Brothers are pushing back hard.

    And this:

    All these parties are pursuing their strategic interest. Does the United States have such a thing anymore? Not so’s you’d notice. As a result, the factions in Egypt are united only in their contempt for Washington. Obama is despised by Sisi and the generals for being fundamentally unserious; by the Brotherhood for stringing along with the coup; by the Copts for standing by as the Brothers take it out on them; and by the small number of genuine democrats in Egypt for his witless promotion of Morsi’s thugs as the dawning of democracy. Any “national-unity government” of the kind the usual deluded twits are urging on Egypt would be united only in its unanimous loathing of Obama, his secretaries of state, and his inept ambassador.

    One more:

    “[Under Obama] America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.”

    Read the whole thing.

    Egypt Blowing Up Again

    Wednesday, August 14th, 2013

    NRO has running updates. Civilian death toll at 245, security forces death toll at 43.

    Here’s your generic Middle East conflict video montage:

    (Note: I originally had a completely different generic Middle East conflict video montage there, but AFP evidently doesn’t like embedding videos.)

    It was always wishful thinking that the Muslim Brotherhood was going to relinquish its grip on power without a fight. The only question now is how many dead, and how many of its top leadership the Egyptian military is going to kill.

    Egypt should count itself lucky that Mohammed Morsi was so stupidly impatient. If he had only followed Erdogan’s lead, he could have slowly but steadily consolidated his rule while pushing the military out of the picture. Now he’s toast, and we can only hope his fellow Islamists get pushed out of power-sharing entirely.

    LinkSwarm for July 12, 2013

    Friday, July 12th, 2013

    Last night was the night when we, as Americans, set aside our political differences and came together to watch Sharknado. But time hurries on! Time for another Friday LinkSwarm:

  • 50+ years of Democratic rule turn Detroit into a failed city.
  • David Stockman says the recovery is bunk.
  • Ted Cruz would make a formidable Presidential candidate.
  • Thomas Sowell: The Left refuse to grapple with the issue of Evil. “Disarmament means making decent, law-abiding people more vulnerable to evil people.”
  • ObamaCare mandate delayed. “It has become a trope among defenders of the law that its flaws are the fault of Republicans because they don’t want to fix them. They must have seen their own peculiar version of Schoolhouse Rock!: The first step in making a law is jamming a massive bill down the opposition’s throat. The second is whining that the opposition won’t fix problems inherent in the bill jammed down their throats.”
  • The FEC is another IRS scandal waiting to happen.
  • Speaking of the IRS, they’ve been told to audit Americans, but to give out fraudulent refunds to illegal aliens.
  • A week after he’s deposed, the Obama Administration suddenly realizes that Morsi is an undemocratic asshat.
  • Vladamir Putin’s thugs put on a showtrial for a guy three years in the grave.
  • Big Jolly notes that Texans overwhelmingly support Attorney General Greg Abbott on Voter ID.
  • Salt is no longer bad for you. Now, when do we get an apology from Nurse Bloomberg?
  • LinkSwarm for July 8, 2013

    Monday, July 8th, 2013

    Funny how three day weekends where you have to work Friday always leave you with more stuff you need to do rather than less. So here’s the Friday LinkSwarm on Monday.

  • “Barack Hussein Obama: You Killed the Arab Spring.” And other anti-Obama signs from Egyptian protesters.
  • Why is Obama more concerned with Morsi being deposed than he ever was with Mori’s totalitarian destruction of Egypt’s democratic institutions?
  • Ted Cruz says that Obama is making the same mistake in Egypt he made in Iran.
  • “In government, Morsi and his allies had an impossible task: to make Egypt work. Now they have an easier one: watch it fail.”
  • Speaking of which, at least 50 people were killed in clashes between Egypt’s military and the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Islamic terror group Boko Haram burns 30 people alive, most children in an attack on a boarding school in Nigeria.
  • Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other country.
  • Germany’s finance minister: “We should not accept Turkey as a full member … Turkey is not part of Europe.”
  • Thomas Sowell: “The political left’s welfare state makes poverty more comfortable, while penalizing attempts to rise out of poverty. Unless we believe that some people are predestined to be poor, the left’s agenda is a disservice to them, as well as to society.”
  • “All the net growth in employment among the working-age (ages 16–65) over the last decade went to immigrants (legal and illegal). Since 2000 the total number of immigrants employed is up by 5.3 million, while native-born employment is down 1.3 million.”
  • Modern liberalism, among other things, is a psychological state, in which very-well-off Americans find ways through their income and privilege to be exempt from the ramifications of their own ideologies, while adopting causes and pets that exempt them from guilt over their own status and limitless opportunities. Judging by their concrete actions, they are indifferent to the poor whom they romanticize at a safe distance.”
  • Conservatives take aim at Lamar Alexander.
  • The bill Wendy Davis killed would have required abortion clinics to meet the same safety standards as clinics that perform LASIK.
  • Disgraced former NY governor to run for New York City comptroller…against his former madam. Gee, the Eliot Spitzers and Anthony Weiners of the world must really miss all the fawning and graft.
  • UT ranks 26th on the list of top 100 universities in the world. Don’t know how accurate that ranking is, but it must rankle Yalies to rank a mere 10th…and behind Harvard!
  • How does a Western cost $250 million to make, even after Johnny Depp has taken a pay cut? Unless half the budget went to cocaine?
  • What’s the difference between MSNBC and paint drying? A: Some people watch paint dry.
  • Morsi Deposed, Millions Cheer

    Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013

    The inevitable has happened. The Egyptian military has deposed corrupt, dictatorial Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi, suspended his Islamist-tainted constitution, and promised new elections. Adly Mansour, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, is Egypt’s new president.

    There are coups and there are coups. Morsi was trying to pull the classic “one man, one vote, once” maneuver of turning Egypt into a one party Islamic state under his dictatorship. So intent was he on this goal that ignored trivial Presidential duties like reviving the economy and protecting the lives, liberty and property of Egyptians, with Copts and political opponents killed in the streets. This is a coup that increases, rather than decreases, the chance for Egypt to experience real democracy, still slight though it may be.

    Hopefully the army will follow up on it’s promise of fair elections. The Green Laser Revolution continues apace…