"Egypt's high court is indefinitely suspending all its sessions, after supporters of President Mohamed Morsy surrounded the building and blocked judges from entering. Calling Sunday a "dismal, black day" in the history of the country's judiciary, the court said in a statement that its judges will not return to work until they can do their jobs "without any psychological or physical pressures." "The judges of the Supreme Constitutional Court have no choice but to declare to the great Egyptian people that they are unable to perform their sacred mission in light of the current charged situation," the statement said, according to the state-run MENA news agency " CNN
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Mursi is a skilled player. He is much more skilled that his opponents in Egypt and his foolish backers in official Washington.
Prediction: His constitution will be approved handily in the 15 December, 2012 referendum. Anyone who speaks Arabic and who has wandered through Egypt from the Cairo slums to the Nile Delta knows that the majority of Egyptians are already Islamists. pl
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/02/world/meast/egypt-protests/?hpt=hp_t3
Surely its only good manners to offer your own hospitality first?!
Posted by: Charles I | 04 December 2012 at 11:36 AM
Even moves to merely secure them will be reported ominously.
Posted by: Charles I | 04 December 2012 at 11:37 AM
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me over and over , you've got it down now man.
Posted by: Charles I | 04 December 2012 at 11:38 AM
"remember the Maine ! "
Posted by: Alba Etie | 04 December 2012 at 03:12 PM
The British Neocons are working hard on the Syria war.
Note this March piece by Michael Weiss, for example:
http://henryjacksonsociety.org/2012/03/13/the-case-against-non-intervention-in-syria/
The interesting thing about this think tank is its close working relationship with BOTH Labour and Conservatives in Parliament (scroll down to Political Council):
http://henryjacksonsociety.org/people/council-members/
It is curious indeed that anyone in the British Parliament would find something in Scoop Jackson...(?) A Brit eccentricity of some sort one imagines.
Posted by: Clifford Kiracofe | 04 December 2012 at 03:16 PM
Yes, Powell and all the rest of them to include "Slam Dunk" Tenet. George did better on Senate Staff I think.
The fundamental problem was that the policy of intervention and regime change was wrong. No administration could have done it right as the premise was fatally flawed.
Now Obama is at it in Syria...
Posted by: Clifford Kiracofe | 04 December 2012 at 03:20 PM
Col Lang
Once again the hobgoblin of WMD is used to justify military intervention in the ME .( "What could possibly go wrong ? ') I guess the warm fuzzy video from the Saban Institute regarding Secretary of State Clinton tells us that the neocons are also in charge of the "Syrian Desk " too.
Repeating old behaviors expecting different results ..
Posted by: Alba Etie | 04 December 2012 at 03:21 PM
"The inmates of colleges are just as credulous as the inmates of the slums."
Great link.
Posted by: Kieran | 04 December 2012 at 08:15 PM
I find it difficult to be worried or outraged by Egypt's proposed constitution. If the median Muslim voter in Egypt objects to it, the referendum will be the first opportunity to reject it. Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood seem to have a large, organic political base in Egypt, if not a physically sustainable center of power. If a liberal plurality objects, they will continue to press their intensity with demonstrations and civil disobedience. Mursi's marginalization of the legacy of the Mubarak era in the judiciary must have eroded his base among the military and secular elements. In a small, inside-out way, it is encouraging that Mursi sacrificed continuity with the previous regime, and the power base he might have consolidated, apparently in favor of a "fresh start" from a smaller base. So the military is still a wild-card if a new regime and a new basic law do not adequately represent so-called average Egyptians and major discontent.
As for Syria, it would be bad news if a crack-up happens in the short term, and worse if a crack-up is perceived as a Western or Zionist piece of work. Still, I suspect a shake-up of borders is inevitable at some point, closer to ethnic and tribal lines.
If chemical and biological weapons are not all as severe and unthinkable as they sound as emotional terms, then the use of weapons that spoil the land or cause enduring genetic damage ought to be a "red line". It would be an almost comically predictable, crude, modulated echo of the holocaust if the Syrian regime used such weapons. I thought it was an off-chance that Assad already would be an eye doctor again in maybe Morocco or Bolivia. These megalomaniacs seem to keep for themselves enough of a shred of human reflection that at bottom they will surrender themselves before they would destroy the soul of the people they wish to incarnate. But I wouldn't count on that. It is too tragically ridiculous to ponder a murder-suicide on a mass scale. Do enough weapons with that capacity even exist inside Syria?
Posted by: Mark Kolmar | 04 December 2012 at 10:36 PM
An interesting analysis of Morsi's foreign policy:
http://www.swp-berlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/comments/2012C35_gmm_rll.pdf
Posted by: Clifford Kiracofe | 05 December 2012 at 06:37 AM
Precisely, the method of the "Big Lie" works. Hearst was at it long before Goebbels or Northcliffe.
This is particularly true in an era where Congress is nothing more than a rubber stamp for imperial foreign policy. Three quarters of Congress approved use of force against Iraq under Bush43. The only "cakewalk" was with Congress and the US newsmedia, however.
Now we are heading into a possible war against Syria and thence Iran. Congress will vote even more strongly in favor of these no doubt. These constitute proxy wars in the larger strategic game Washington and NATO believe they are playing: the game against Russia and China in the new Cold War.
One can view Obama's crackdown on "internal threats" lurking in the US government is aimed at suppressing dissent ahead of the coming wars. Woody Wilson in his day tightly managed government censorship and propaganda.
On the "Committee on Public Information/Creel Committee" see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Public_Information
Woody set the mechanism in place and it still in effect rolls on...just look around.
Posted by: Clifford Kiracofe | 05 December 2012 at 07:22 AM
"Hey I know lets disband the entire Irak army - "
S. Paul Bremer ( what could posssibly go wrong ?)
Posted by: Alba Etie | 05 December 2012 at 09:10 AM
Yes.
The British propaganda campaign directed at the US during WWI was quite sophisticated as to be expected from London and the Crown.
Particular targets in opinion making circles were: journalists, politicians, educators, and ministers. Not unfamliar targets today of Zionist propaganda for example.
The "Bryce Report" as a propaganda tool for the Brits by reporting false war horror stories etc. was calculated to push US opinion toward supporting more openly the war against Germany. Lord Bryce's name was attached to it to give it respectability, and he permitted it...
Same techniques today..."reports" about Iranian nukes, "reports" about Syrian WMD, "reports" about Iraqi WMD/yellowcake,aluminum tubes, etc.
It works so why change the method.
There is resistance in academe to Zionist propaganda amongst Middle East specialists in particular. The "Middle East Studies Association" is large and not
Zionist, for example. But the Zionists have developed mechanisms to intimidate such professors. Various pressure groups target campuses and so on.
On the other hand, all manner of "strategic studies" type programs are proliferating on campus with the assistance of heavy donations from pro-Zionist American Jews...there was one at Yale and so on...
Posted by: Clifford Kiracofe | 05 December 2012 at 09:48 AM