"Foremost among them is the increasing pressure being brought to bear on critical journalists. In recent months at least half a dozen prominent editors, writers and cartoonists have been the targets of criminal investigations, many of them launched by a prosecutor appointed by Mr. Morsi following complaints from the president’s office. The charges range from reporting false news to blasphemy; a cartoonist for the independent Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper was accused of the latter after she published a cartoon depicting Adam and Eve.
" Washpost editorial
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Even the naifs and appeasers of Islamic authoritarianism in Egypt at the Post are forced to admit now that Mursi's Islamist government is seeking to shut down criticism of his government in the press and broadcast media. The neocons in the Post editorial board are still trying to make excuses for him but that becomes more difficult all the time.
Leopards do not change their spots. Mursi and his MB pals as well as their Salafist competition have the same goals as all political Islamists:
1 - Gain absolute power and retain it permanently.
2 - Create a sharia law state, a state in which non-Muslims are tolerated only as second class people and secularists are treated as apostates.
Mursi's government is moving steadily in that direction. He knows that so long as he does not overtly menace Israel and "makes nice" with naive diplomats, he is safe.
The Mursi definition of "democracy" appears to me to be very like the definition of free will taught to me by a variety of nuns and brothers. In that semantic world, free will was defined as the freedom to choose to do what the Catholic Church told you to do. In Mursi's world view the press is free to support his Islamist program. pl
