[DAWN] ABDUL Fattah Sisi has 'won', Egypt is back to the era of Hosni Mubarak ...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011... and the Arab Spring has turned into a khamsin. Fraudulent from the word go, the Egyptian presidential election has produced results manipulated by the men in khaki, with the former army chief getting an obscene 93pc of the votes. For record's sake, there was an opposition candidate, and the turnout was abysmally low, with observers doubting the government's 46pc claim. In July 2013, Mr Sisi overthrew the Moslem Brüderbund government led by Mr Mohammed Morsi ...the former president of Egypt. A proponent of the One Man, One Vote, One Time principle, Morsi won election after the deposal of Hosni Mubarak and jumped to the conclusion it was his turn to be dictator... , Egypt's first elected president, who had appointed Mr Sisi defence minister. In March, the former army chief resigned his army post to contest a bogus election whose outcome was designed to put Egypt's powerful army once again in the driving seat. A parliamentary election was to be held this summer, but the post-Morsi interim government changed the schedule and ordered the presidential election first. With Mr Sisi firmly in the saddle, manipulating the parliamentary election will obviously be an easy task.
With this electoral fraud, Mr Sisi has maintained Egypt's sad tradition of having a military man as president, Mr Morsi being the only exception. How Egypt will fare under Mr Sisi is not too difficult to predict: he was, after all, the man behind the brutal crackdown on Brotherhood camps in August last year, killing nearly 500 people. The new constitution, getting a 98pc 'yes' vote in an equally bogus referendum earlier this year, gives more power to the army and police and provides for military trials of civilians working for defence-owned businesses. It is difficult to say whether or when there will be another Tahrir-like stir that overthrew the Mubarak dispensation. But for the present, the US-led West and the Moslem world have acquiesced in the overthrow of a democratic regime. Last July's coup was criticised by the West in muted terms, but American aid to Egypt continues -- in stark contrast to America's democratic and human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... record elsewhere.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/01/2014 00:00 ||
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#2
the US-led West and the Moslem world have acquiesced in the overthrow of a democratic regime.
And by 'democratic regime', we mean an Islamist theocracy. I'm no John Kerry, but it seems to me that Sisi is a better outcome for Egypt than the MusBro. Now about the economy...
[The Telegraph] The US leader President Barack Obama tried again this week to hit the reset button on his reputation as America's guardian of national security.
While the issue plagues his poll ratings and his many speeches crowd out other more fruitful areas for a Democratic president, there he was again on Wednesday at West Point, outlining his foreign policy strategy.
The reception for the speech was dire.
The Washington Post declared that he had "marshaled a virtual corps of straw men," in making an argument for an "Obama doctrine" that was at odds with every US president since the Second World War. The smartest guy in the room, right?
Aside from the very serious real-world consequences No sh*t
, Obama's foreign policy failure also has serious political consequences. One would hope.
But while Obama was racking up symbolic victories amongst pirates and terrorists, the geopolitical situation was deteriorating, and authoritarian regimes were watching. The most egregious misstep was Obama's drawing -- and then ignoring -- a red line on chemical weapons in Syria. At worst, it invited provocation.
At best it made him look impotent. When one considers that Secretary of State John Kerry had just compared the Bashar al-Assad's regime to Nazi Germany and its use of chemicals to the Holocaust. In that context it was hard to interpret this struggle as anything less than a moral crusade that could not be brushed aside.
When the president did just that the media hardly noticed.
It was a similar tale when the American consulate in Benghazi was stormed, leaving four, including the ambassador Chris Stevens dead. However the media largely bought the line it was a spontaneous attack brought on by a controversial YouTube video - certainly not a pre-planned terror attack (after all, Al-Qaeda was on the run).
During that same election season, Obama mocked Mitt Romney's declaration that Russia was a geopolitical foe, suggesting that Romney was somehow stuck in the 1980s.
But when Russia invaded Ukraine this spring -- occupying, and ultimately annexing Crimea -- it seemed that Obama's attempts to reorder the American electorate, making foreign policy and national security "Democratic issues" again, had finally hit an iceberg.
In May, it was revealed that as many as 40 military veterans may have died waiting for care from the Department of Veterans Affairs -- and that the Phoenix VA had created fake wait lists to hide the delays. An audit report revealed that as many as 1,700 were never even scheduled a doctor's appointment or put on a wait list. The firing of Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki was inevitable.
Over the Memorial Day holiday, Obama scheduled a surprise visit to Afghanistan (where he will eventually fulfill his 2008 campaign promise of ending the war.) It should have been a positive story, but a pall was cast when it was revealed that the White House had accidentally outed the CIA chief living in Afghanistan. And thus, an otherwise positive trip turned into a mockery.
Ultimately, Obama's problem is that he lacks a coherent foreign policy. He is overly fond of theorising, but the hard worldly realities defy his attempts to resolve the messy issues on his desk.
And his foreign policy doctrine is unprecedented in modern America, somewhat arbitrary, ill-conceived, and utterly lacking in moral clarity. More and more, it appears he has reverse engineered a foreign policy, based primarily on doing the opposite of George W. Bush did, as opposed to overtly crafting a wise and coherent foreign policy strategy going forward.
Unfortunately for him, he now faces very serious challenges having to do with his fundamentally having no plan and a never-ending cascade of embarrassments and scandals.
#1
"fundamentally having no plan" I disagree. His plan was & is to ignore foreign policy to the greatest possible extent, while ramming through his agenda and creating a permanent Democratic supermajority.
#4
ION WAFF, CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > US WILL LEAD THE WORLD FOR NEXT 100 YEARS | [WaPo] OBAMA SAYS US WILL LEAD THE WORLD FOR NEXT 100 YEARS, CHINA DISAGREES.
IMO more likely a UK-Style "slow decline", espec iff the US unilater rolls itself back across the world towards CONUS-NORAM, + finds itself giving up sovereign territories, Overseas + CONUS-based, to Geopol Wannabes.
E.g. the Globies may have no qualms about PCOrrectly-Deniably surendering GUAM-WESTPAC to China, + behind China to NUCLEAR ISLAM?, as per US-China mutually "Sharing Asia-Pacific/Pacific", as long as the US still has Hawaii - unfortunately for the Globies, as per CHINA MILBLOGS CHINA WANTS HAWAII AS WELL FOR ITSELF.
Once again, to paraph Krauthammer,"SAY IT WID ME, AMERIKA, OOOOOOOOOPPPPPSSSSSSIES".
* Also from CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > [AFP] US SWAY IN ASIA IMPERILED AS CHINA CHALLENGES ALIANCES.
#5
Apparently fancy speeches can't dupe everyone forever. Who would have thought. Personally I think his foreign policy was 'not Bush' with the deluded feeling that the US was the problem and such an approach would make the world better and the US beloved.
[DAILYINTERLAKE] One of the many signs of the imminent collapse of the United States is that we can't even agree on the meaning of treason any more.
As a former resident of Stony Point, N.Y., where Gen. Benedict Arnold sold his country down the river (the Hudson River) during the Revolutionary War, I have been a student of betrayal for many years. Arnold was so vilified that his very name became synonymous with treason, and every resident of Stony Point knew the story of how Arnold had met with a British officer named Major Andre and passed military secrets to him in order to aid the crown's war efforts against the colonists.
But that was then. Back in the old days when I was growing up before the Vietnam War, Americans were for the most part united in our love of history -- and our love of country. We understood that turning secrets over to the enemy made you an enemy, too.
Ah, youth! How innocent I was. Indeed, how innocent WE were!
Because now we have a country that doesn't heap calumny upon the head of a traitor, but rather looks to lionize him, reward him and turn him into a culture hero.
I am speaking, of course, of Edward Snowden -- a criminal who makes Benedict Arnold look like a rank amateur when it comes to treason. Snowden is the former National Security Agency contractor who released thousands, perhaps millions, of pages of classified documents to media outlets. Most, but not all, of these documents concerned secret surveillance programs run by various U.S. intelligence agencies.
Now, you may be uncomfortable with the fact that the federal government is performing surveillance on everyone from foreign dignitaries to your Auntie Grizelda, but that doesn't change the fact that this was CLASSIFIED information, the release of which could do (and probably has done) immeasurable harm to our national security. It doesn't change the fact that these programs were duly authorized by the American president and Congress. It doesn't change the fact that Snowden has been accused of espionage by the United States government. It doesn't change the fact that as a result of his independent decisions and actions, Islamic turbans can sleep easier, knowing just how to avoid detection by programs that previously might have brought them to justice.
Yet despite all that, Snowden is held up in many circles as a hero. If those circles were all in Moscow or Mideastern capitals, it would not be surprising -- since they have all benefited from his perfidy. But he is also a hero to many American journalists who think that any secret is a shame, and even to many conservatives who fear the federal government's power more than they do the enemies of our civilization.
Call me old-fashioned, but I will never swoon over a self-declared whistleblower who puts American lives at risk because he doesn't personally approve of policies put in place to make us safer in an ever more dangerous world. Nor do I care that Snowden leaked the secrets to the media, as if that having them publicly available made them less dangerous.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/01/2014 11:10 ||
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#1
" It doesn't change the fact that these programs were duly authorized by the American president and Congress." Oh, really?
#3
The Death of the Constitution (as well). Just because Congress authorizes and the President signs it, doesn't make it constitutional either. Everyone now just nuances it rather than go through the Article V process (cause they know they don't have the votes to make it happen any other way).
Hero because he exposed unconstitutional domestic surveillance of US citizens by a government agency that is supposed to only be involved in foreign intel per its charter. For that he deserves praise.
Traitor because he didn't limit it to that. He turned over a ton of classified data and revealed sources and methods, and just as bad, recently it's been revealed that he also turned over plans, intentions, locations and capabilities of our armed forces as well as covert activities. For that he deserves to hang.
[DAWN] RAMPANT lawlessness has fuelled the demand for private security across Pakistain, as the police have been unable to provide protection to the people. It is indeed alarming that in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , the number of private security guards is double that of coppers. According to a report in this paper, while there are just under 27,000 coppers in the megacity, the number of private security personnel is nearly 55,000. Take away the number of police personnel assigned to the security detail of individuals and investigation purposes, and the number of officers on the street plummets even further. As per the report, there is one policeman for over 1,500 citizens in Karachi. Of course, given the rise in crime and lawlessness individuals and institutions are investing in private security, signalling a lack of trust in the police. In some cases, the police themselves have urged citizens to hire private security. But while there is at least some sort of government oversight of private security firms, there is absolutely no watch over the private guards some tribal chiefs, feudals and other individuals maintain for their personal 'security'. It is a common sight in Karachi to see small militias of personal guards in civilian dress, guns ready, piled in the back of a 4x4 to protect their masters, or milling about menacingly outside residences. In fact, the culture of private security and armed guards has also caught on in Lahore and Islamabad. But the question is: do these private guards and armies reduce insecurity, or do they add to it?
In this regard, the Rangers in Karachi recently announced they would be launching a 'crackdown' against guards travelling in 'double-cabin vehicles'. We believe such a short-term move will be of little significance. Two things are needed to address the situation: firstly, the state cannot outsource the security of citizens. It is the police's job to safeguard the lives and property of people. Unless more personnel are inducted into the force and trained properly, the dependence on private security will continue. Secondly, there needs to be a stricter check on the growth of personal militias. Gun-toting men roaming around on city streets should have no place in civilised society.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/01/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
According to Dr. Simon Hakim, director of Temple University's Center for Competitive Government, there are three times more private security guards as there are federal, state and local law-enforcement agents in the US today.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[The Telegraph] The US leader President Barack Obama tried again this week to hit the reset button on his reputation as America's guardian of national security.
