With a totalitarian party to vote for;
The liberals and secularists who formed the core of the Egyptian revolution are now scrambling to stave off political gains by the Muslim Brotherhood, a once-outlawed organization that is widely expected to become the dominant force when a new parliament is elected.
Shocker.
h/t EBD
BUT BUT BUT…..
ET
lookout – I disagree that the ‘arab spring’ uprisings are about the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power. The people in the ME are not going to exchange one dictatorial regime for another.
IF WISHES WERE HORSES THEN BEGGARS COULD RIDE.
The Muslim Brotherhood will allow one democratic election, provided they are SURE to win, and after they win they will impliment Sharia Law to ensure another election NEVER takes place. Anyone who thinks otherwise is drinking from the fountain of delusion and stupidity. The Muslim Brotherhood spawned Hamas, Hezballah and the Taliban, they are the worst of the Islamofacists’ worst.
I originally dismissed or downplayed concerns of this happening from Claire Berlinski and others. Looks like they were right all along. If Egypt slips into a totalitarian gov’t much like is in Iran, none of us should now be surprised. đ
Most folks who post here knew this was the inevatable out come.
In fact alot of us considered this a long time planned “revolution”. To many uprising in too many Countries, all stage managed the same way.
That took plotting. Besides Islamists freely admit they have been in an esculating war with the West since 1949. When the head of the Wahabists came back from America determined to destroy our “Miserable House”.
JMO
The whole ME could become redical Islamic states under Obama’s watch.
WW III
“Concern about the groupâs political ambitions was heightened this week when a prominent member of the Brotherhood signaled that he would run for president as an independent, a move that cast doubt on the Brotherhoodâs contention that it intended to sit out this yearâs presidential race.”
Cast doubt???? Just how much clearer does it have to be? Oh wait. A liberal rag reporting on another “party” wanting the libs entitlements. Libs, the MB,secularists.They are all cut from the same bottom feeding scum cloth, no matter which country they are from.
The west didn’t see this one coming but then again it wasn’t what they were looking for…
Like the HORSE thing btw.
a recent pol in Egypt showed that about 80% favoured shariah “law”, guess they will get it!!!
âItâs not a fair fight,â said Naguib Sawiris, the second-wealthiest man in the country and one of the founders of the Free Egyptians Party, which is promoting liberal and secular policies.”
There’s a Stephane Dion in every Country.
I don’t see how anyone could think this was a “cry for democracy” when it was obviously orchestrated,started in Algeria,spread to Yemen,Egypt,Syria,Sudan,Libya.
In politics and police work,coincidence don’t cut it.
It’s not as bad as it sounds vis a vis the desire in the middle east for islamic theocracies, it’s somewhat inevitable that the opposition to a secularish dictator creates a groundswell that is pretty muslim in flavour. You see the mirror image in Iran where their theocracy has done a lot of damage to the people’s respect for Islam.
Or, as the CBC will call it, a representative majority government.
At National Review by the estimable Andrew C. McCarthy:
âBorderline Treachery
Obama proposes leaving Israel indefensible.
â. . . By his new articulation, President Obama would deny Israel crucial negotiating leverage. If there is to be a peace settlement (which there cannot be until there are two parties that want peace), Israel must have the latitude to make territorial concessions in exchange for reliable concessions on security and other matters. It cannot be coerced into accepting an Obama-imposed fait accompli that leaves it fatally vulnerable to enemies whose ferocity is only encouraged by this bullying. . . .â
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/267796/borderline-treachery-andrew-c-mccarthy
Anyone who has been paying attention could have predicted this.
I must be smarter than the Obama administration because I saw this coming they apparently didn’t.
I have seen many dictators come and go – starting with Stalin, whose reign I remember a little (solid FEAR; the world seemed to give a sigh of relief when he died);
and Hosni Mubarak wasn’t much of a dictator. He was mainly interested in keeping the Moslem Brotherhood under control,
and attempting to prevent the Moslems from killing the Copts.
I have an acquaintance who is a Copt in Egypt. I haven’t heard from him since Easter 2010. I do hope he is OK.
Islamofacism is spreading to the two nations the left hail as the perfect model of Islamic Democracy:
Link: http://www.jihadwatch.org/
Snippet: KUALA LUMPUR, May 22 â Several Islamic leaders have questioned the loyalty of non-Muslims in the country, declaring today the communityâs rights must be re-evaluated if Malaysia is to call itself an Islamic state.
canuclehead
Why should we care about the damage theocratic government done to Iranian’s respect for Islam?
I think we should care about the fact that they still have theocratic government who is trying to get A Bomb and who is helping terrorist organizations elsewhere.
Iran has been ruled by theocratic government for the last 40 years. I won’t be surprised if it will be ruled by mullahs for the next 40 years.
Now, imagine that the Arab countries from Tunisia to Egypt will start to be ruled by theocratic governments or by majority Islamic governments. And that these democratically chosen governments will do damage to people’s respect for Islam. Would I care for this damage to the image of Islam? NO. I would care for the damage to my country’s economy and the danger such governments will present to my country.
****
by the way, theocratic government in Iran did less damage to Islam as a religion, it did damage to political Islam, to the good image of mullahs.
Nope – I totally disagree. Most of you are focused on words. Not the hard material reality on the ground.
The ME peoples are not going to exchange one two-class statist government for another two-class statist mode. Why not? Because they cannot economically exist in such a limited means of wealth production.
And both a dictatorial or tribal system..and a theocracy are identical in structure. It’s a socialist, statist economy with no individual private enterprise; i.e., no middle class. But – what you are ignoring is that the economies of the ME can’t sustain their populations without transforming into a three-class system that enables a private middle class economy.
The reason for it ‘all happening at the same time across the ME’ isn’t some ‘hidden agenda’ conspiracy. The ME has been two-class for thousands of years. It has managed to support its populations by various means (horticulture, village trade etc) and it has maintained a no-growth stability.
But – the WWs changed all that. The explosion of population within the industrialism brought by the West, and the massive wealth via oil and other industrial projects has enabled the dictators/tribal leaders to maintain control over this population long past its viability. But that’s over. The economic mode can’t support this massive population.
And it’s happening all over in the ME because..It’s a SIMILAR economic mode! Two-class statism, operating one major means of wealth production: oil, Suez tolls, tourism. And this mode can’t sustain the population growth in all the ME countries over the past 4 decades!
So-as I said, it’s a rocky road. Of course the old guard, whether the tribal dictators or the theocracy will want to maintain power! After all, in our own nation, it took a while for the Liberals to give up their sense of being the ‘natural governing party’ (or have they given it up?).
The peoples of the ME cannot exist within a statist economy; the wealth produced in such a system can’t support the population. That’s reality.
The reality facts to consider are: the size of the population and the means of wealth production and..the political mode that links the two. The old system can’t sustain this new population size. So, individualism, private enterprise small businesses must form the new means of wealth production. And this means – democracy, because it empowers this new middle class.
The ideology of any society always changes: Last. First, the material reality of problems emerges: population size, water situation, arable land situation. Then, the economic mode adapts to these material realities. Then..the political mode adapts. Finally…only last..the ideological set of beliefs is transformed.
It isn’t easy; it took the West 400 years to acknowledge its basic material reality problems..and change its economic mode (to market capitalism)..and change it political mode (to democracy)..and finally, change its ideology to empower individuals, empiricism, objective science and etc.
It will also happen in the ME. No choice. The material reality trumps words, words and words.
ET, you are right. The material reality is that the muslim brotherhood is gaining power and influence across North Africa and the Middle East. That fact trumps all the words about 2-class societies versus 3-class societies.
Translation: “We shouldn’t have democracy because the wrong party might win.”
Kate’s been the Queen of Crazy for so long that she sees absolutely nothing wrong with this line of thinking.
“the ME can’t sustain their populations without transforming into a three-class system that enables a private middle class economy.”
That hasn’t stopped Noth Korea or Cuba .. and in China it’s still Communist whereby some are allowed to indulge in world capitalism to bring in needed money, but I don’t see much of middle class free society forming there where the people can control their rulers.
In the ME they may need a middle class business level, but small business requires ‘trust’ to function … the inhabitants of the ME do not appear to value trust, nor do they value integrity. They will not be able to function in their society without a system of honor where it would be shameful to be dishonest.
I just don’t see it happening. I think they may well sink into a quagmire of revolution, poverty, misery and self annihilation. They are almost at that point now.
What am I missing?
Muslim Brotherhood,
Sharia law,
and a dip in the toilet from the lack of capitalism.
When food supplies run out Mohammad will send manna from heaven.
ET
Youve been drinking to much Zum Zum.
Zumzum Water – A Miracle
Research by Tariq Hussain, Riyadh
By Moin Uddin Ahmed
http://www.themuslimwoman.com/chooseyourpath/zumzum.htm
Alex – could it be that the Queen of Crazy, as you so graciously term her, is saying that in situations where a totalitarian party is guaranteed to win then democracy – or an election, not quite the identical same thing – might at least not be cause for unbridled celebration?
gordinkneehill – no, don’t mess up my terminology. Material reality refers to hard quantitative data: population size, arable land, water supplies, economic wealth production. It does not refer to qualitative data: ideology or political organization.
And the material reality is always, always, the basic infrastructure that must be acknowledged..and adapted to by a society.
Abe Froman – What you are ignoring with your examples of N Korea and Cuba are basic material facts. Their populations are not increasing but decreasing; their birth rates are below replacement.
Plus, the N.Korean people are unable to economically support and feed their population and are sustained by aid from other countries; it can’t last. And you are ignoring the fact that Cuba is also sustained by external aid – key benefits from eg Venezuala..and..they are starting to ease up on private enterprise.
With regard to China, their economy has been transforming over the past decades; there is a focus now, heavily, on a robust small and medium private businesses. So, capitalism and a market economy are basic to the Chinse economy. Democracy will follow.
What you are missing is the exponential population growth of the ME nations. Cuba and N. Korea have less than 1% growth; Canada has almost 1% but the ME nations have double and triple that growth. The statist economic method doesn’t produce enough wealth to sustain this size of a population.
And if you think that other nations are going to step in…and support those massive populations, and allow those ME nations to retain their old non-functional economic modes…well..what can I say.
âThat hasn’t stopped North Korea or Cuba .. and in China it’s still Communistâ
Sure it has Abe. Have you ever flown over Korea at night? If not, there are plenty of pictures on the net showing brilliant lights in the South and no lights in the North.
Fidel Castro said the state-run model âdoesn’t even work for usâ in offhand remark to US journalist Jeffrey GoldbergâŚ. Sept 2010.
As to China, as my tax accountant from Hong Kong reminds me every April as I write the check: â you have to support the redistribution âsystemâ, Ottawa is more communist than Chinaâ
As to the general bigoted cynicism here about Arabs being genetically incapable of free enterprise and democracy⌠that is rubbish.
Political Islam is on the ropes. The Bush Doctrine s working, even Obama can see that now (or those that write his teleprompter). The surge in Iraq worked, itâs not Denmark yet but it has a constitutional democracy of sorts and the Arab Spring is saying âwhy canât we have some of that too?â And Obama who once called General Petraeus âBetrayUsâ has made him head of the CIA ⌠with a bead on the next bin Ladens that might surface within the Muslim Brotherhood whose loud death rattle is mistaken for influence in the ME shakeup.
“Alex – could it be that the Queen of Crazy, as you so graciously term her, is saying that in situations where a totalitarian party is guaranteed to win then democracy – or an election, not quite the identical same thing – might at least not be cause for unbridled celebration?”
It might be that the Queen of Crazy needs to clarify her position, instead of posting pithy one-liners and depending on her peons to make up excuses. Either way, a fledgling democracy is always a cause for celebration; it’s failure, should it come, will give you plenty of chance to mourn. I’m just appalled by the paranoid chicken-little mindset which Kate has displayed since day one.
A genuine democracy is always a cause for celebration. Remembering the many countries that had the word “democratic” in their name doesn’t bring genuine democrocies to mind.
Be careful what you wish for…
“_______ is the soul of ___”
Should we start a pool, on the subject “First To Be Vaporized”_ My personal favorite is Iran, followed by Syria. I guess those are pretty obvious… I am sure the fingers are twitching on the “hot” button in Isreal. We “live in interesting times” people.
The problem with the whole “the economic model can’t support this population increase” theory is that history doesn’t support it. The rise of the middle class in feudal Europe was a direct result of massive population decrease due to the Black Plague. The labour of an individual serf or freeman was suddenly worth a lot more due to reduced supply.
There are countries like India and other former British colonies where the imposition of a middle class sociopolitical system has allowed the population to continue expanding, but I know of no historical society where population increase has inevitably lead to middle class free market capitalism.
I guess the pool question should not be who, so much as “When”!
daniel ream – I strongly reject your argument that the Black Plague led to the emergence of a middle class.
Which ‘Black Plague’ by the way? By the time of the 14th century, the movement towards a middle class was well on its way. By the time of the 17th century epidemic, the middle class was well-established.
The rise in population in Europe was cyclic; it would rise, due to the fact that the European biome is the richest on this earth..but would reach a critical threshold beyond the carrying capacity of its basic plough agriculturalism..and disease and poor nutrition would lower the population. So..they would continue with the old economic mode.
But the repeated cycles were a symptom of a key problem; the economic mode could not sustain a growth population. And there was no way to stop the population from growing. That was the key problem: they could not stop population growth. And they could not sustain it using the old economic mode.
That’s why the economic mode changed to move off the fiefdom and into market towns. And why the political mode changed to empower these new wealth producers. It took 400 years to change, for the nobles and church fought back against this loss of power to ‘the ordinary people’.
I’d suggest you take a look at Braudel’s history of the Mediterranean and the rise of commerce.
“_______ is the soul of ___”
Poo.
There is of course the elitist “intellectual” view of the ME realities, and then the realities.
Anyone grounded in rationality and not emotion saw this coming.
As previously stated:
“Democracy = two wolves and a sheep deciding on what is for dinner”.
It should never have been the place of the west to concern ourselves with what form of government the ME/NA takes on. It is their business, and our only concern should be for ourselves. If that means segregating ourselves from ME politics, trade and especially immigration so be it.
The difference lays in truly understanding culture and believing we understand culture – 99.9% of westerners do not understand Arabic culture, myself included. Yet many like myself know enough, and have enough survival instinct to call hands off when we see it.
Liberals always lose in revolutions and counter-revolutions, extremists win, moderates lose.
Alex: ‘Free’ elections are an element of democracy, not democracy itself. Unless Egypt embraces a western style judiciary (sharia is not compatible with ‘democracy’), a free and unfettered press and free markets, it is simply a people choosing their masters.
“‘Free’ elections are an element of democracy, not democracy itself.”
No, they’re pretty much the whole thing. Assuming, of course, that by ‘free’ we mean ‘not rigged’.
“Unless Egypt embraces a western style judiciary (sharia is not compatible with ‘democracy’), a free and unfettered press and free markets, it is simply a people choosing their masters.”
So back when the US had institutionalized slavery and punished people based on biblical law, it wasn’t a democracy?
Hell, you could argue that even TODAY there are no nations with a truly free market, most have limitations on the press (think HRTs and UK ‘libel’ laws), and many western nations still maintain laws that are based solely on christian doctrine. So are there no ‘true democracies’ in the world?
Yeah, the middle-eastern version of all those faults is generally far worse, but you don’t get to lay out shortcomings of which our own societies are guilty and then claim that they somehow exclude Egypt from the list of ‘real democracies’. You either need to define your criteria a lot more rigidly, or accept the fact that even a “tyranny of the majority” is still a democracy. It might be a type of democracy which seems repellent to us, but it’s still democracy, and it’s a stage which all of our nations went through on the way to become the liberal nation-states which we have today.
No Guff = No Guff.
Well said.
“…many western nations still maintain laws that are based solely on christian doctrine.”
Name one (she typed, already regretting…)
“Name one (she typed, already regretting…)”
Well, at least you’re willing to admit your ignorance, and the trepidation which you feel at the prospect of being educated. As such, I shall gladly oblige. Here’s one for Canada:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_law#Canada
Here’s some for the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_law
And then there are, of course, the various blasphemy laws in nations like Ireland and Australia, which tend not to be enforced but remain on the books nonetheless. We could also get into the criminalization of abortion within the US, or the various anti-evolution bills being passed in some states. Or the blocking of legitimate research utilizing discarded embryos. I could give more examples and links, but comments with too many links tend to get blocked by the spam filter.
Of course, the religious far-right is always the first to proudly proclaim that our laws are “based on the ten commandments”, so it’s rather hypocritical of you to now pretend to be unaware of the religious implications of some of our laws. Still, I can’t honestly say I expect you to be consistent.
@ET – reject it all you like, but you’ll be bucking the considered opinion of, well, pretty much every medieval European scholar ever.
You’re undermining your own thesis the more you try to defend it – if Europe could go through population cycle after cycle, what’s to prevent the Middle East from doing the exact same thing? There’s a fairly well-supported theory that the riots in the ME started due to famines caused by artificial food shortages and now it’s looking like the revolutions have been hijacked by Islamists. Stalin let his people starve; who’s to say the Muslim Brotherhood strongmen who end up running the ME won’t do the same thing, thus relieving the population pressure and preventing the outbreak of “inevitable” free market capitalism in the region?
And Braudel? The king of longue duree? We’re not talking about whether the ME will embrace free markets and middle class entrepreneurialism in four hundred years, we’re talking about whether they’re going to be Iran in the next four hundred days.
Alex, her criteria was “based solely on christian doctrine”. True those that you mentioned originated from christian doctrine, but they are maintained because lawmakers/people have an aversion to those actions. Lots of people dislike the idea of sodomy, but not for any religious reasons. Likewise only a small minority want blue laws for religious reasons. The fundementalist claim that our legal codes were based on the 10m commandments and other biblical laws is basically true, but we maintain those laws because they’re pretty much a universal code for civilization. Those laws based soley on religion such as sabbath day blue laws are gone or going.
Alex, there’s nothing about booze (or sodomy, IIRC) in the Ten Commandments. Are you seriously comparing Sharia law to the fact that sodomy is (theoretically) illegal for under-18s in Canada?
I know there are references to slavery in the Bible. Considering the times and places in which it was written it would be a little odd if there weren’t. Abolitionism in the Western world was an Evangelical Christian movement. (Malcolm X once said that there was one White man in history whom he might have considered allowing into the Nation of Islam, and that was the Protestant fanatic John Brown.) Slavery never flourished in America because of Christianity, rather the opposite.
Objections to abortion are by no means some kind of religious fetish. Christopher bleedin’ Hitchens has major problems with legalized abortion. I’m agnostic and I consider the practice, if not quite murder, certainly depraved. And “anti-evolution bills”, by which I assume you mean the occasional regional high-school science curriculum which insists on teaching creationism, have more to do with the Establishment Clause and carving rights out against the Federal Government.
Meanwhile the Saudi religious police drive schoolgirls back into burning buildings rather than allow them to escape an inferno with their lives dressed in less than the full tent.
Daft you are, just daft.
To spell it out just a little bit more, Islamic Sharia is totalitarian. Islamic Law is dictated by Allah and therefore inalterable. The only modifications possible can come from re-interpretations by religious scholars. No serious religious organization – like, oh, say, the Muslim Brotherhood – could ever countenance a set-up with anything resembling a Commonwealth or American style Parliament/Congress, institutions which exist, after all, to pass laws. Even if there were tonnes of Bible-bashing laws in the States they would still have been arrived at and be repealable by democratic means at the County, State and Federal levels.
And Dirtman is right; male homosexuality was, once upon a time, considered immoral even by people who may not have been religious at all (Thomas Jefferson, say). Are you going to paint yourself into the corner of claiming that all morality must be reigious? Because I suspect that’s not where you wanted to end up.
“‘Free’ elections are an element of democracy, not democracy itself.”
No, they’re pretty much the whole thing.
Democracy is about having interests – and not just regional interests, but for example class interests (think property qualifications, those were the days) – represented in the legislative process. Elections are (sometimes) a means to ensure that representatives are selected in a fairish way. An important componant of democracy since ancient Athens but hardly the be all and end all.
Knight 99 – no, we can’t isolate ourselves; modern nations are globally networked – economically and informationally.
Alex – no, free elections are not the only criterion of democracy; you have to have a constitution for that government..with all its rules of time, space, rights, duties etc. And no, not all nations must go through a ‘tyranny of the majority’ phase.
And I think everyone has answered your comments about religion and morality. You don’t have to be religious to have morals.
Daniel Ream: really – what medieval European scholar am I opposed to?
And the ME can’t go through cyclic population phases as did Europe because the wealth production means are entirely different. Europe exists in the richest biome on earth; its population could readily regenerate itself. The ME has only one resource: oil – which it must sell to support itself. This is unsustainable and non-regenerative. Therefore, it has to move out of a two-class and into an economic mode that sets up a different means of wealth production.
You refer to 400 days – one year! What Harry Potter instant transformation fiction are you suggesting? No society operates like a fictional tale. Braudel and the Annales school’s la longue duree has far more validity to historical analysis than any focus on a brief event.
I used to tell my students that it takes three generations to transform a deep structure of a society; you have to dismantle the old, insert the new, and then, adapt to and build on that new. Do you think that people are robots that can be reprogrammed by some Master Controller in a night of hard work on their robot minds?
Dirtman writes, âThe fundementalist claim that our legal codes were based on the 10 commandments and other biblical laws is basically true, but we maintain those laws [by freely elected representatives, not coerced to maintain them: more of that later] because they’re pretty much a universal code for civilization.â Well said.
C.S. Lewis studied the moral codes of many ancient societies and found that their codes for living were basically the same. The Ten Commandments, which include admonitions to honour God, neighbour (âas oneselfâ: the basis of the Golden Rule) and parents, and to not covet, steal, murder, commit adultery, or bear false witness are the basis on which people can live with one another in a civilized manner.
As far as I can see, itâs not the Ten Commandmentsâwhich are not Christian doctrine, but part of the basis for itâthat are the problem with our laws these days: itâs the fact that this ancient moral code has been hijacked by secularism and relativism, the basis of political correctnessâa religion in its own rightâon which many of our worst (IMO) recent laws are based.
Look where thatâs got us: laws that disrespect the inherent dignity of human life (abortion, embryo experimentation, the push for euthanasia); laws that diminish marriage and promote the sexual license of adults at the expense of the security and well being of our children, who end up living with and often being abused by non-related adults (generous taxpayer funded entitlements for single motherhood, common law made equal to marriage, easy divorce, homosexual marriage); laws that bestow ludicrous ârightsâ, e.g., the Supreme Court of Canada’s âRegina v Singhâ, whereby any person whose foot touches Canadian soil is granted Charter rights: no wonder weâre paying $23 billion/year for immigrants! And the list goes on.
Letâs look at the Charter: unlike the Ten Commandments, which emphasize the concept of RESPONSIBILITY, the Charter (the brainchild of our Marxist PM Trudeau) emphasizes the concept of RIGHTSâand which group one belongs to. We all know that this document spawned our Human Rights (sic) Commissions (HRC), with their medieval Star Chamber kangaroo courts.
As Western societies have turned our backs on the biblical concept of responsibility, in order to embrace bogus rights (by HRC fiat, a male transsexual is allowed to use the âWomenâsâ washroom and counsel female rape victims) and radical âfreedom of choiceâ, have our societies become more thoughtful and caring? Look around: how about Lakeysha Beard on her cell phone for 16 hours in the âquietâ Amtrak car? Worse than Ms Beardâs arrogant, selfish behaviour is the fact that the Amtrak authorities did not take responsibility to enforce their own rulesâas is happening everywhereâto protect the rights of the other people involved. Think Caledonia and all kinds of other instancesâit happens in schools all the timeâwhere the rules are bent or ignored for fear of violating this or that dubious right of individuals, especially those who belong to favoured groups. So, the miscreant is protected while the victims are, well, allowed to be victimized.
Considering the degradation of our laws, which, under secular relativism, are based on the idea of rights and radical freedom of choice, and are also arbitrarily applied all the timeâhey, thatâs relativism for youâgive me laws based on the Judeo-Christian understanding of responsibility and respect any day!
Letâs remember that the devaluing of the rule of law has happened via democratically elected governments. As far as Iâm concerned, the further the general population moves from respecting and being grounded in the virtues of the Ten Commandments, the more deluded and frivolous their behaviour becomes, and the more willing they are to be duped by and vote for law makers like Obama. (Even here, the majority of Canadians voted left in our recent election. And it also remains to be seen just how conservative the Harper government is . . .)
Here’s another very good article on the same subject.
lookout – nice comments. And I’m atheist. But the ten commandments isn’t about religion but about morality. You don’t need religion to be moral.