Egypt On The Brink

Egypt On Edge As Protests Persist, Opposition Deadline Nears

 Egypt was on edge Tuesday following a “last-chance” ultimatum the military issued to Mohammed Morsi, giving the president and the opposition 48 hours to resolve the crisis in the country or have the army step in with its own plan.

Protesters seeking the ouster of the Islamist president remained camped out at Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the 2011 uprising, gearing up for a third day of anti-Morsi rallies.

The group organizing the protests, Tamarod, Arabic for “Rebel,” has given Morsi until Tuesday afternoon to step down, threatening it would escalate the demonstrations if not.

Across town, Morsi’s Islamist backers have hunkered down at their own rally site, vowing to resist what they depict as a threat of a coup against a legitimately elected president.

The military’s ultimatum, read Monday on state TV, put enormous pressure on Morsi to step down and sent giant crowds opposing the president in Cairo and other cities into delirious celebrations of singing, dancing and fireworks.

But it also raised worries on both sides that the army could take over outright as it did after the 2011 ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak and raised the risk of a backlash from Morsi’s Islamist backers, including his powerful Muslim Brotherhood and hard-liners, some of whom once belonged to armed militant groups.

The military underlined it will “not be a party in politics or rule.” But it said it has a responsibility to find a solution because Egypt’s national security is facing a “grave danger,” according to the statement.

It did not detail the road map, but it heavily praised the massive protests that began Sunday demanding that Morsi step down and that early elections be called — suggesting that call had to be satisfied. It said the protests were “glorious,” adding that the participants expressed their opinion “in peaceful and civilized manner.” It urged “the people’s demands to be met.”

U.S. Administration Scrambles To Save Morsi After Muslim Brotherhood Rejects Egyptian Army Ultimatum

US President Barack Obama and Chief of US General Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey intervened in the Egyptian crisis early Tuesday, July 2, in an attempt to save the besieged President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood. Obama called the Egyptian president and Gen. Dempsey phoned Chief of staff Gen. Sedki Sobhi, hoping to defuse the three-way crisis between the regime, the army and the protest movement before it gets out of hand.

The crash of Morsi’s presidency would seriously undermine the objectives of the Arab Revolt  pursued by the Obama administration as the arch-stone of his Middle East policy.

The administration had earlier sought unsuccessfully to persuade the heads of the Egyptian army not to issue its 48-hour ultimatum to Egypt’s rulers “heed the will of the people” by Wednesday afternoon - or else the army would intervene. The Americans proposed instead to leave Morsi in place after stripping him of presidential authority and installing a transitional government to prepare the country for new elections to the presidency and parliament.

Middle East sources report that the army chiefs led by Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi rejected the American proposal.
Obama promised to back steps taken by President Morsi to show he is “responsive to the opposition’s concerns,” while Gen. Dempsey asked Egyptian generals to moderate their stand against the Muslim Brotherhood. The underlying message was that if they failed to do so, Washington might reconsider its $1.3 billion annual military assistance package which is the main source of income for the armed forces.

Heartened by the US president’s vote of support, Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamic allies, rejected the army’s ultimatum for resolving the country’s deadly crisis, saying it would sow confusion and ran contrary to the Egyptian constitution.

Morsi insisted he would stick to his own plans for national reconciliation.

His regime is meanwhile crumbling:  Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr resigned early Tuesday, the sixth minister to quit the government in the last 24 hours. He follows the president’s military adviser Gen. Sami Anan, former chief of staff under President Hosni Mubarak. Senior judges and high police officers were seen taking part in the anti-government protest rallies of the last week.

Morsi and the Brotherhood now face two ultimatums: If by Tuesday afternoon, he has not agreed to step down and call an early election, the organizers of the protest movement, which has brought millions to the streets of Egyptian cities, will launch a relentless and anarchic campaign of civil disobedience. The defense minister says the army will intervene if the government fails “to heed the will of the people” by Wednesday afternoon.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its radical allies are now considering whether to fully mobilize their adherents for “processions” and counter-demonstrations. This would take Egypt to the brink of a violent and prolonged escalation with incalculable consequences. 

For Egypt's Military, There's No Turning Back

Just hours after publishing an unequivocal statement that put it firmly on the opposition’s side, Egypt’s military, late Monday night, issued a second announcement in which its leaders attempted to regain a more neutral position.

“Military coups are not part of our ideology,” the later message said. “The published statement was meant to push the sides towards an agreement… We have no plan of taking power into our own hands.”

The military’s late attempt to paint itself as an impartial broker between the secular and Islamist camps failed to sound convincing, however, especially when juxtaposed with the photo that may become the icon for the next revolution, of air force helicopters hovering over Tahrir Square with Egyptian flags dangling from them.

The sight of the helicopters, with the setting sun in the background, enthused the crowds on the ground who could only glean one thing from the display: the military had thrown down the gauntlet.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more dire threat to a democratically elected president. The military, in its initial statement, decided to grant President Mohammed Morsi (and the rest of the political system) a 48-hour ultimatum to reach understandings with the opposition, “as a last chance to shoulder the burden of the historic moment.”

If the demands are not realized in that time, the military said it would be obliged to “announce a road-map for the future and the steps for overseeing its implementation, with participation of all patriotic and sincere parties and movements … excluding no one.”

However, the millions who swarmed Tahrir Square and those who amassed opposite Ittihadiya palace will not accept anything less than Morsi’s resignation, especially in the face of such a clear threat from the military.

In the meantime, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are digging their heels in and don’t show any willingness to compromise. They may still meet with opposition representatives in the day and a half before the ultimatum expires, but the gaps between the sides seem too deep to overcome. Still, in this era of Egyptian revolutions, a last-minute compromise is not an impossibility.

Also see:

Jihad In America: The Grand Deception

Emerson's documentary exposes the stealth war that the Muslim Brotherhood has been conducting behind the scenes in America as its influence has infected academia, Hollywood, journalism, law enforcement, and the highest echelons of government.

With the MB's migration across the globe, its presence in the U.S. should be no surprise. What is surprising is the film's exposure of the extent to which the MB has infiltrated so many influential aspects of our society. Through the establishment of a complicated network of front groups seemingly legitimate on their face, the group has gained respectability without accountability and successfully camouflaged its true agenda of destroying Western civilization from within.

A disturbing lesson from the film is that the U.S. government -- from the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and State to the F.B.I. -- has full knowledge of the MB's intricate network and agenda. In the face of that knowledge, the officials whom we have entrusted with national security and protection of our freedoms and values have either willfully turned a blind eye or been utterly complicit in furthering the nefarious goals of radical Islam.

For instance, the viewer learns of a declassified FBI document that states, "...the IKHWAN (Muslim Brotherhood) in the United States has as its ultimate goal political control of all non-Islamic Governments in the world." And yet, instead of isolating the MB, the government has engaged them and shut down decades-long FBI investigations into their activities. Dr. Mamoun Fandy, a MB expert featured in the film observed, "The West is tremendously naïve about the danger of these various Islamic organizations."

And while the millions of illegal immigrants are here in order to pursue the American dream, the film illustrates that members of the network of MB institutions are pursuing quite a different dream. Zudhi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, summarizes:

Their dream is the creation of an Islamic state. Their utopia is having the law be Sharia. So their strategy in America, I believe, is to use America's freedoms and liberties in order to achieve that dream.

Are Islam And Islamists Taking Over Britain?

June 29 was Armed Forces Day in Britain.

Lee Rigby was a British soldier who was attacked, murdered, butchered and beheaded in broad daylight on a busy street near his barracks in London last month. He was attacked, murdered, butchered and beheaded by Islamists acting in the name of Islam.

Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are great heroes of our time. Both are tireless, passionate defenders of human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom in general and fierce critics of Islam and Islamists because Islam and Islamists destroy human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom in general wherever they are found and do it in cruel, hideous ways. Spencer and Geller do not advocate violence and never have and do not speak out against Muslims as such. They speak out against Islam and Islamists and spend their time exposing both in the hope of preserving human rights and freedom and turning back the Islamic tide.

Islamists hate them both and demonize them both because they cannot stand exposure, cannot stand the light that Spencer and Geller shine on them.

Spencer and Geller were scheduled to lay a wreath for Rigby at a memorial service on Armed Forces Day but were banned from entering Britain by the British government because their presence was deemed "not conducive to the public good." Neither was going to speak at the service...all they were going to do was lay a wreath. They were banned because Islamists threatened violence and civil unrest if they were allowed in and the government capitulated to their demand to refuse them admission as a result.

This from a government and a country that is infested and overrun with Islamists that are destroying the fabric of the nation and rapidly turning Britain into an Islamic land governed by Sharia, Islamic law.

There is no doubt whatsoever that Islam is a large and growing presence in Britain, that British values, institutions, freedom, democracy and the British way of life are under attack and seriously threatened by Islam and Islamists, that Shariah has already usurped British law in many places, that the British people have paid and are paying an enormous price for allowing this Islamic presence in their midst, that violence and the threat of violence will become more and more prevalent, that Islamists will make more and more demands that are contrary to the nature of the country and that they will prevail in the end and destroy Britain as a free, democratic, Western country unless the situation is reversed. Keeping Spencer and Geller out doesn't help matters at all. It makes them worse, much worse because it encourages Islamists and tells them that violence or the threat of violence will get them their way.

Keeping Spencer and Geller out was more than an affront to Lee Rigby, the British Armed Forces, British freedom, democracy, history and everything the country is supposed to stand for...it was a major victory for Islamists who are working very hard to turn Britain into an Islamic country governed by Islamic law and succeeding in large measure.

The British government should be absolutely ashamed of itself and the British people should be very angry, afraid, upset and worried., as should all of us in the West.

Think I'm exaggerating? Think free speech, free speech, freedom, democracy and human rights are alive and well in Britain? Think again. Try writing something like this or saying something like this in Britain and see what happens.

Islam and Islamists are taking over Britain alright. They've already taken over much of it and are well on the way to taking over the rest.

Pity that.