Posts Tagged ‘Egypt’

LinkSwarm for November 18, 2013

Monday, November 18th, 2013

Some links to start your week with, ObamaCare still looming as topic one:

  • Chao before Congress: ObamaCare is hunky dory! Chao in internal memo the day before: we are so farked!
  • Over four million Americans have their policies cancelled thanks to ObamaCare.
  • Less than 50,000 sign up for ObamaCare.
  • One of the Democratic Senators running as hard as she can away from ObamaCare is Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu. Too bad she already embraced 100% accountability for it.
  • Race-baiting provided a shield that allowed Obama to fail.
  • And remember that calling Obama’s critics racist was a deliberate strategy by MSM members wanting to boost and protect Obama.
  • Don’t expect Obama to bounce back.
  • So is Politico actually covering the dysfunction within the Obama cabinet, or are they trying to shield a favorite from the stink of failure engulfing same?
  • A look back at Communist genocide in Ukraine.
  • Fitch gives Chicago bonds three steps, yes they gave them a three step cut toward the floor.
  • Michael Totten: “The case for walking away from Egypt and dusting our hands off is sound.”
  • Antisemitism getting worse in Europe says notorious Zionist shill, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.
  • Islamists in Nigeria doing what they do best: murder children.
  • Sex crime investigator arrested for sex crime with a minor. That’s really cutting out the middleman…
  • How the holy hell can Amtrack lose one BILLION dollars on food service? You could feed Ethiopia on that!
  • Dwight has an EarthQuest update.
  • Julian Castro to force streetcars down the throats of San Antonians despite votes against them.
  • Another super-genus criminal. Just click the link and look at the pics.
  • Egypt: Dispatches From the Continuing Crackdown

    Tuesday, August 20th, 2013

    There’s a lot of Egyptian news going on, much of it of the classic Middle East Problem Solving variety. In particular, the Egyptian government seems to be doing most of the “solving,” so expect to see some 50-100 members of the Muslim Brotherhood develop acute lead poisoning every day for the foreseeable future.

    Beyond that, I can’t tell you. My knowledge of Egypt is basically that of a one-eyed, myopic man who can at least see shapes in strong sunlight. Here’s an Egypt news roundup in mini-LinkSwarm form.

  • The Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme leader is arrested. That’s going to be a big blow to them, and probably indicates the Egyptian military is fairly confident they’ll not only win the current test of wills with the Brothers, but win it decisively.
  • The Muslim Brotherhood isn’t dead yet, but they are severely weakened. “The army seems determined to decapitate the Middle East’s oldest and arguably most resilient Islamist movement, to prevent it from preparing a political comeback.”
  • Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss?
  • The Coptic Kristallnacht.
  • Hosni Mubarak has been found innocent and should soon be released. Don’t expect to see him return to power, as the military opposition to his turning the country into a dynastic fiefdom by anointing his son Gamal as his successor is the reason they let him get toppled in the first place.
  • Egypt’s burning, Obama’s golfing.
  • Is Obama secretly suspending aid to the Egyptian government? If so, he’s once again superbly crafted a policy to please no one and accomplish nothing.
  • Thomas Sowell on Obama’s (and America’s) illusions about democratizing the Middle East.
  • “The President and his team have been taken in by two very old American mistakes about the rest of the world. One is to confuse the end of history with the morning news. The other is to exaggerate America’s importance to the rest of the world. ”
  • Evidently the rest of the Arab world is pissed at Qatar (and Qatar-owned Al Jazeera) for backing the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • I’ve been seeing a lot of very dubious reports about Obama secretly giving the Muslim Brotherhood $8 billion. Look, as much as I think Obama is an incompetent failure whose Administration has played footsie with the Brotherhood, I don’t buy this for a minute. Setting aside the why, not even President Trillion can conjure $8 billion from thin air to hand out on his own.
  • 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.

    The Truth About Egypt

    Friday, August 16th, 2013

    Michael Totten has an interview with Egypt expert Eric Trager on the truth about Egypt. Include Western observers deluding themselves about the Muslim Brotherhood. “The Brotherhood prevents moderates from becoming members and prevents members from becoming moderates.”

    Also this:

    But once the army made the decision to step in, as reluctant as it may have been, it’s modus operandi unquestionably changed. It entered into a direct conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood, perhaps even an existential one. The military believes it not only has to remove Morsi, it has to decapitate the entire organization. Otherwise, the Brotherhood will re-emerge and perhaps kill the generals who removed it from power.

    Still more:

    MJT: How much support do you think the Muslim Brotherhood actually lost since it won the election?

    Eric Trager: It has lost substantial public support. Think back to the early presidential elections in 2012. Morsi only won five million votes, which was 25 percent of the votes cast. That’s not a high number. It’s substantially lower than what the Brotherhood had won just a few months earlier in the parliamentary elections. So already by May 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood’s support shrunk back to its base which is only around five million people.

    The Brotherhood’s power is not derived from mass public support and it never has been. It is derived from its exceptional organization capabilities on one hand, and the fact that the rest of Egypt is deeply divided and highly disorganized on the other. That’s still the case. I think if Egypt had free and fair elections today, the Brotherhood would still do well and might even win because nobody else is prepared to run in an election.

    Read the whole thing.

    LinkSwarm for August 16, 2013

    Friday, August 16th, 2013

    A Friday LinkSwarm on Friday. Will wonders never cease?

  • Ted Cruz hails from the Republican wing of the Republican Party.
  • Speaking of Cruz: “Cruz acquired his citizenship, at birth, through his mother. He is a natural born US citizen and eligible to be President of the United States. Let us never have to speak of this again.”
  • Victor Davis Hanson does an Obama scandalrama roundup.
  • A few Democrats appear to be defying the idea that Hillary is unbeatable, just like she was in 2008.
  • 163 Ohio poll workers dismissed for that voting fraud that doesn’t exist.
  • Teen complains that Facebook just isn’t like it was when they were 7.
  • Why is Dennis Franz shooting Martin Luther King?
  • Muslim Brotherhood calls on followers to tourch Coptic churches.
  • The Jewish community isn’t wild about Alice Walker’s new book. Uh, guys? Given that Walker believes in David Icke’s shapeshifting lizard people, I’d say rational political discourse isn’t in her wheelhouse.
  • Jesse Jackson Jr. sentenced.
  • Generation parasite.
  • NPR Ombudsmen rips them a new one, but NPR itself stands by the lies: “At NPR, commitment to leftist ideology trumps any fealty to the facts.”
  • Dead Goblin Report, Texas Edition: “A couple of Texas criminals had the tables turned on them when a Texas man — taken as a hostage along with his wife and forced to rob a bank — decided he’d had enough and pulled a gun out of his glove box and shot them, killing one.”
  • Terry McAuliffe: Parasitic tick on the body politic.
  • Ashton Kutcher actually making sense. “Opportunity looks an awful lot like hard work.” Also: No job is beneath you.
  • Dear dumbass: Don’t put out a call on Twitter for people to sell you drugs.
  • Washington Post headline writers evidently have no idea what the word “surreal” means.
  • Speaking of the Post, evidently their biggest problem is that they still have one token conservative on staff.
  • Egypt’s Death Toll: 500 and Rising

    Thursday, August 15th, 2013

    And the violence continues apace in Egypt. Egypt’s government cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood, the brotherhood looting government buildings and attacking the Christian Coptic minority. And assaulting the occasional journalist taking their picture.

    Looking for insight as to what Obama should do? Sorry, all out of insight today. The best thing to do is stay the hell out of the way, make the usual meaningless appeals for calm as a sop to the “international community,” and let things run their course. Which seems to be pretty much what Obama is doing, either through calculation, incompetence, or indifference.

    This, in fact, is the way politics is conducted in the Middle East: Two factions kill each other until one is weakened enough to stop fighting. It’s in our interest to see as many of the Bad Guys (Muslim Brotherhood) killed by the Not Nearly As Bad Guys (Egyptian military) as possible.

    Sorry I couldn’t be more cheerful. Here’s a cute dog video compilation to make up for it.

    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…