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Peter 1470 7259 Lod	HSIG-BREAKING: Court Dissolves Egyptian Parliament; Army Takes Over; Civil War? 6/15/2012 10:59:02 AM
	Hello Friends, Those that follow this thread know that I've written time and again that the only thing that can save Egypt from falling into the hands of the lunatic muslim brotherhood is their military. Lo and behold my prediction came to be and so far without major repercussions from the brotherhood. The Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court just invalidated the Parliamentary elections and dissolved Parliament in which 75% were islamists from the brotherhood and salafists. This is good news for not only Egypt but the world and hopefully in the new elections the islamists whose popularity has diminished greatly will not succeed in browbeating the electorate to vote for them through the intimidation tactics they used in the past elections. The military is now virtually in control and the same Supreme court ruled that Ahmad Shafiq the establishment candidate is eligible to run for the presidential elections. The MB controlled parliament passed a law making him ineligible. So, there is a new ball game going on in Egypt and one has to wonder what B Hussein a strong supporter of the muslim brotherhood will do now. He too was caught with his pants down and had no idea the military junta will virtually control over Egypt. I for one believe the Egyptian people and the whole middle east will be better off now but only the future will prove if I'm right or wrong. My prediction about the military junta taking over came to be and now let's see how the rest of the "game" plays itself out. Shalom, Peter BREAKING: Court Dissolves Egyptian Parliament; Army Takes Over; Civil War? By Barry Rubin June 15^th, 2012 http://www.gloria-center.org/2012/06/breaking-court-dissolves-egyptian-parliament-army-takes-over-civil-war/ *GLORIA Center Scholars* are available to the media for comment on Egypt. Please contact Gregg Roman by email (groman@gloria-center.org) or phone +972-54-678-5250* if you would like to arrange an interview.* The Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court has just invalidated the parliamentary election there. The parliament, 75 percent of whose members were Islamists, is being dissolved. The military junta has taken over total authority. The presidential election is still scheduled for a few dozen hours from now. In short, everything is confused and everything is a mess. All calculations are thrown to the wind. What this appears to be is a new military coup. What is the underlying theme? The armed forces concluded that an Islamist takeover was so dangerous for Egypt and for its own interests that it is better to risk civil war, a bloodbath, and tremendous unpopularity than to remain passive and turn over power. I believe this decision was made very reluctantly and not out of some lust for power by the generals. They have decided that they had no choice. Yes, it is under legal cover, but nobody is going to see it as a group of judges — appointed by former President Hosni Mubarak, remember — looking deep into the law books and coming up with a carefully reasoned decision based on precedent. In theory, this will be seen by every Islamist — whether Salafi or Muslim Brotherhood — and by most of the liberals — who feel closer to the Islamists than to the government — as if the 2011 revolution has just been reversed. In preparation, the army prepared a new regulation allowing itself arrest anyone. Prediction: massive violence. Still, there’s something strange going on. So far, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists have not reacted so strongly. Is it that they were caught unawares, or want to keep quiet because they think they’ll win the presidential election, or maybe there will be some kind of deal in which the Muslim Brotherhood backs down, most of the parliamentary members will be allowed to stay on, and the military will retain a lot of political power? Everything is up in the air? So far the Brotherhood doesn’t seem so upset by the decision. Why is that? With typical journalistic “neutrality,” CNN’s Ben Wedeman reported from Cairo: “Those who don’t want to see a return to the oppression of the past … are very unhappy with this ruling.” What about the people who don’t want a radical Islamist regime and a Sharia state to become the oppression of the future? Still, the fact that the court ruled that “establishment” candidate Ahmad Shafiq can run for president will further a perception that this is a conspiracy to return to the pre-revolutionary situation. I’m not saying that the armed forces told the justices to make such a ruling. But clearly by backing it up the generals are declaring their willingness to confront the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists rather than let them take power. Is there a precedent for this? You bet there is: Algeria. In 1991 the Islamic Salvation Front was on the verge of gaining victory. Before the second round of voting could be held, the army staged a coup to stop the election. The resulting war lasted more than a decade — in some respects, it’s still continuing today. Cost in lives? About 150,000 — 200,000 in a country whose population was about one-third that of contemporary Egypt. You do the math. That doesn’t mean Egypt will be the same, but this is something to be taken seriously. Consider: – The decision virtually wipes out the much-vaunted “Arab Spring” and all the claims that a basic transition was being made in Arab societies. On al-Jazeera, for example, the reporters were visibly in a state of shock. – This event poses a huge problem for the Obama administration — and I’ll bet it caught them by surprise. Does the U.S. government condemn the military and put sanctions on it, demanding that the Muslim Brotherhood be put into power? There is no easy solution. But we are likely to have the strange situation of an American president fighting to put into power an anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic political force that is opposed to all U.S. interests, because — after all — they did win the election. Once again, Arab leaders have rebelled against Obama’s–and I don’t say this lightly–pro-Islamist policy. In a first reaction a State Department spokesperson said: “We want to see the Egyptian people have what they fought for, which is a free, fair, democratic, transparent system of government – governance that represents the will of the people, a parliament so elected, a president so elected.” That’s predictable and “nice” but it isn’t a policy, much less a strategy, and avoids all of the real issues involved. For example, is the administration going to rush aid to an Egyptian military junta now? – What if Shafiq wins the presidency? Will the armed forces line up behind him, and put us back in 1952 when the military created a dictatorship and suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood? In other words, the entire “Arab Spring” would have been a temporary detour, and things will return to the path they would have taken if there had been no revolution and an ailing Mubarak was simply replaced in 2011 by the establishment’s choice for president. – And what if the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate wins the presidency? Is the military really going to let him rule in any meaningful sense? No. But perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood leaders remember what the army did to their predecessors back in the 1950s and 1960s. Might they back down? “I don’t consider this a military coup,” said Brotherhood presidential candidate Muhammad al-Mursi. “I love the military forces.” He claims that the court decision only knocked out one-third of the members of parliament. This doesn’t seem to be the implication of it but perhaps the Brotherhood and the army could reach a deal. [Pure speculation here but I wonder if the military’s actions were influenced by secret estimates that a Brotherhood president was about to be elected, too. And how will this event affect a presidential election? On one hand, there might be a reaction against the army leading to a victory for the Brotherhood. On the other hand, though, people might want to be on the winning side and put restored order over the promise of more freedom (albeit, “freedom” within an Islamist regime, which might not look so ideal to a good proportion of Egyptians). –If there’s no parliament then there’s nobody to write a Constitution. So parliamentary elections and the writing of a new Constitution are put off by–at the barest minimum–six months and probably for much longer. To make a tax-deductible donation through PayPal or credit card, click the Donate button on this page. When processing your donation through PayPal please indicate in the "Special Instructions for Seller Box" for GLORIA Center. To donate via check, make it out to "American Friends of IDC," with "for GLORIA Center" in the memo line. Mail to: American Friends of IDC, 116 East 16th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10003. If you would like to make a tax deductible donation from the United Kingdom or Germany please email us for more information here. * Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Israel:An Introduction (Yale University Press); The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go to http://www.gloria-center.org. You can read and subscribe to his blog at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.
	Peter Fogel Babylon 7
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Peter 1470 7259 Lod	RE: HSIG-BREAKING: Court Dissolves Egyptian Parliament; Army Takes Over; Civil War? 6/15/2012 11:03:54 AM
	Hi All, Sorry about parts of the previous post being so spread out but the d*amn editor is up to its tricks again. I tried "fixing" it but to no avail. After you scroll down the article is intact and in good format. Shalom, Peter
	Peter Fogel Babylon 7
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Peter 1470 7259 Lod	RE: HSIG-BREAKING: Court Dissolves Egyptian Parliament; Army Takes Over; Civil War? 6/15/2012 11:48:39 AM
	Hello Friends. Here's an excellent satiric parody on the B Hussein security leaks. It's about time that people realize the depravity of this administration. Anything is "kosher" for the fraud and great pretender B Hussein to get reelected. Decide for your selves if the brilliant Latmah team hit the nail on the head yet again. Shalom, Peter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_c-1Wl_Gag&feature=player_embedded
	Peter Fogel Babylon 7
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Peter 1470 7259 Lod	RE: HSIG- 'Israel’s fear of Iran is thoroughly justified' 6/17/2012 1:23:28 PM
	Hello Friends, One of the most important historians of the 20th century Robert Conquest was interviewed by the Israeli newspaper Yisrael Hayom. During the interview he justifies Israel's fears of a nuclear Iran and other interesting topics about Israel. Mr. Conquest has written 32 books and received prestigious awards. He predicted the failure of the world to recognize world threats. He's a one of a kind cos in the world of Universities and other institutions of "learning" he's a conservative an almost unknown breed of intellectual. He's well known for his books on the USSR and his true analysis as opposed to the communist so called intellectual apologists. This is a very interesting article and well worth reading. Shalom, Peter 'Israel’s fear of Iran is thoroughly justified' Robert Conquest, one of the most important historians of the 20th century, this week in a special interview for Israel Hayom • At the age of 95, with a resume of 32 books and prestigious awards as the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Jefferson Lecture, historian Robert Conquest witnesses the realization of his prediction of the failure to recognize world threats. Dror Eydar The same week our president received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, I met with American historian, writer and poet Robert Conquest. He was there before Peres. In 2005, he received this medal for his groundbreaking research on Soviet history, which he began in the 1950s. This was at a time when most of the West, with its numerous intellectuals, was under the Stalinist spell, blinding them from seeing the atrocities taking place in the utopia called the Soviet Union. Earlier still, in 1993, he received the Jefferson Lecture award, the highest honor bestowed every year upon a single person in the U.S. for his accomplishments in the humanities. Conquest is currently in Israel to receive the prestigious Dan David award (whose namesake passed away this year), together with Tel Aviv University. Forty years after its publication, Conquest’s groundbreaking book, “The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties” remains one of the most influential studies on Soviet history. It was translated into over 20 languages, but not into Hebrew. And perhaps this is our whole story in a nutshell: There was not a single publishing house in Israel that would publish the many works of one of the brightest conservative intellectuals of the twentieth century (barring one, to which we will return later), in face of the deluge of Neo-Marxist literature that overtook most of the syllabi in Social Sciences and Humanities In Israel. Conquest would have also most likely had difficulties securing a teaching position in any of the institutes for higher education in Israel. The only book from his literary yield to be published in Hebrew was "Reflections on a Ravaged Century" (published by Dvir Press, with the excellent translation by Yaniv Farkash), subtitled in Hebrew as “The Twentieth Century: The Story of Ideologies that got out of control”. Do yourself a favor, buy this book and study it. At times it seems that Conquest wrote it about the reality in Israel. This July, Robert Conquest turns 95. This man, born before the Balfour Declaration, was educated at top educational institutions, including at Oxford. During the Second World War he served in the British Infantry. When the war ended, he joined the Foreign Office and swiftly made his way to the Information Research Department (IRD), set up to counter Soviet propaganda by means of data collecting from “reliable sources” on the crimes of Communism. Conquest left in the mid-1950s and devoted his time to academic and literary writing, which yielded 32 books up to the present time. The Golan – vital to Israel One of the decisive points emphasized by Conquest was the failure to recognize threats in time, due to thinking that you can understand others by using the same criteria you apply to yourself. The problem is exacerbated when democracies are faced with totalitarian or almost totalitarian regimes. In his book he writes: “The true criticism of Neville Chamberlain is that he could not really imagine a man like Hitler or a party like the Nazis. ‘He's a good fellow and 'twill all be well’…is a parochial and limited attitude when it comes to foreign politics.” Conquest recounts that those who raised the alarm about Hitler in the 1930s were accused in the media and the academia of being immoderate and unreasonable; “The concept of a quite different set of motivations, based on a different political psychology, was absent.” In my interview with him, held the day after he received the award, I ask him if this means, in fact, that people presuppose that there is a basis for negotiations with every rival or foe. “That is indeed the danger of political thinking, and not only that,” Conquest responded. “They think they also have the same history, even the same ideas.” Conquest was referring to his writings about the essential difference between different political psychologies and different political and cultural traditions. "We are much more dependent on our cultures than we think. Each country is populated not only by its citizens but also by ghosts from the past, phantasms from imaginary futures, or saints from lands outside time,” he said. Can one apply these insights to Israel’s negotiations with the Palestinians? “Many problems are sometimes created by agreements," he said, nodding. "Some are redundant. Like in the case of the Golan Heights – anyone who has been there understands that it had to be taken. Sometimes you must take something from the other side.” At this point, Conquest’s wife joined the conversation and remarked that her husband often states in interviews that anyone who was in the Infantry – as he was - would see that the Golan was vital for Israel and could not be given up. And what about Iran? Is the treatment of Iran by the West flawed due to this misunderstanding? “The Iranian culture is not the same as the people who are in charge. Namely, Iran has a solid cultural background. However, at present it is not governed by a normal type of government but by a fanatically ideological and particularly stupid one. We don't know all the people at the top of the Iranian leadership. It is rumored that there are some moderates.” Is Israel’s fear of Iran justified? "It is thoroughly justified. Israel is not the 'bad guy' in this story. In any case, Israel is not going to attempt to attack the world –it is not a new empire.” When I asked whether he was making a reference to statements made by Gunter Grass on Israel, he responded sharply: “Gunter Grass sounds absolutely frightful, ghastly, and stupid, as well. Mixed up. His heart isn't working. His mind isn't either.” In your books you speak of democracy in the abstract. What is democracy in your opinion? “Democracy is very useful as a particular operation, as a tool. The term does not indicate how it handles things. It doesn't necessarily carry the culture. When democracy was introduced in the West, in ancient Greece, the rule of the citizens wasn't one hundred percent what you call democracy today. And if you look at the development of democracy in the English tradition, you see that it did not come about through formalism nor as result of a revolution. The Western, democratic or pluralistic culture is not flawless. It is continuously in a process of adaptation and debate, as well as hesitation and confusion.” CNN has some really stupid people The conversation on democracy as an abstract term and as a modus operandi leads to the turmoil in the surrounding Arab states, which started out as the “Arab Spring”. What do you think of the chances for change in the Arab countries? I asked. He responded that as a historian, the question I asked “doesn't really work. You cannot ask what happens tomorrow.” When I persisted and asked how he sees the unfolding events, eighteen months after they erupted, he replied: “I am not an expert on the culture of Arab countries but I know two things: They differ in their attitudes and opinions.” Mentioning the Iraqi coup d'etats 70 years ago, he added, “The Iraqis were far worse than the Egyptians today.” “If we look at what happened in the last thirty years in Mubarak's Egypt, and we look at what happened in communist Russia, it is not the same but we can see some similarities. The Arab Spring was different from the Soviet Spring, since the Soviets are not as deeply cultured in one sense as the Arabs are. The general culture of Russia, the Soviet ideology, is collapsing and is 90% gone.” According to Conquest, whoever rules these countries does not consult the masses. And apparently there are fanatics in all countries, with the idea that they must take over and perpetuate themselves. They seem to take over each other like in the medieval crusades. “They seem to be very good at taking power, but it is not clear what they will do with it," he said. I reminded him of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, standing in Tahrir Square and hailing the revolution in Egypt, which he declared had nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. Conquest smiled and I then compared this to the writings of another New York Times journalist, Walter Duranty. In the 1930s, Duranty's reports supported the falsehoods of the Soviet culture, which denied the reality of famine and political cleansing. Duranty even won the Pulitzer Prize for "Objective, in-depth news reporting, clean of prejudice, sober of judgment and of unusual clarity." Conquest wrote that due to these supposedly-reliable reports, the American public did not receive an accurate report, only the conclusion that any report on famine must be an exaggeration or malicious propaganda. Conquest nodded in recollection of the support Duranty received when he came back from New York. I asked whether he thought that the Duranty phenomenon has followers or supporters in world media today. “CNN has some really stupid people,” he answered in a hushed tone. In his writings, Conquest mentioned other Western correspondents and citizens who delivered accurate reports on the situation (as opposed to Duranty and his ilk). And so the world was faced with two narratives on the famine (and Stalinist massacres). Why then should the vast majority of the intellectual elite believe the false report? It is irrational to readily accept a report on which so much conflicting evidence exists, and which evades investigation of its central issues. I told Conquest that his description fit not only the 1930s but was also applicable to Israel of the 1990s, in regard to the Israeli public's manner of accepting the Oslo Agreement, the concealment of the true intentions of Yasser Arafat and his comrades, and the silencing of the voices objecting to the agreement. Mirror Image of McCarthyism Conquest was often critical of academic circles, and reproached their blind support for communism to the point of concealment of its crimes. It is possible that "academics may in the long run have been more influential even than people like Walter Duranty in peddling falsehoods. If only for their particular claim for special knowledge and to the disinterested pursuit of truth. Moreover – politicians, the media and the public took them seriously." Conquest reminded us that in the 1930s, when Soviet rule was at its worst, the "major validation of the enormous set of falsifications with which this was concealed came for the first time from Western academics from the highest standing." Sarcastically he remarked that "political science does not sufficiently take into account those other categories of reasons for political error: vanity, credulity, sophistry, and all their combinations." Conquest also spoke of the harm caused by McCarthyism in the mid-twentieth century as those who exposed the Soviet cells of influence within Western academia were denounced and subjected to slander and professional persecution. Conquest termed this phenomenon "mirror-image McCartyism". After bringing dozens of examples of academic claims pertaining to the Soviet Union that were easily refutable, he ironically proposed obligating students to study a course on the naivete of the intellectual elites, even in theological seminaries. I asked about Eric Hobsbawm, who was obsessed with taking apart the idea of nationalism. In passing, I mentioned our own Shlomo Sand, who wrote a best selling book on the invention of the Jewish people, and a more recent book on the invention of the Land of Israel. Unsurprisingly, Hobsbawm and Sand are both communists. I asked Conquest what they both have against the idea of nationalism. “Hobsbawm was not a good scholar, but a narrow-minded person who subordinated himself to an ideology. There is a televised interview of Hobsbawm on the BBC from 1994, during which he was asked to justify his long membership in the Communist Party. The interviewer, Michael Ignatieff, then asked: 'In 1934, millions of people are dying in the Soviet experiment. If you had known that, would it have made a difference to you at that time? To your commitment? To being a Communist?' Hobsbawm deliberated a while and eventually answered: 'Probably not…Because the chance of a new world being born in great suffering would still have been worth backing. …It turns out that the Soviet Union was not the beginning of the world revolution. Had it been, I'm not sure.'" "Ignatieff then said: 'What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?' Hobsbawm immediately said: 'Yes.'" And yet, despite these harsh remarks, his ideas are even more dominant than your own in certain Western universities. “I don’t take it seriously. Indeed, quite a few students are more conservative than their professors."
	Peter Fogel Babylon 7
	+0

Peter 1470 7259 Lod	RE: HSIG- Settlements Trump Syria and Iran as Top Mideast Issue, Says EU' 6/19/2012 12:39:38 PM
	Hello Friends, When settlements and building homes are considered to be the most "urgent problem" in the Middle East then you know that the world is in serious trouble. Peoples warped minds along with their virulent antisemitism and anti-Israel mindset is just part of the problem cos while they claim that Israel is the problem they are in fact putting the massacre of Syrians by Bashar Assad, the lunatic Iranian regime with their nuclear agenda and the muslim brotherhood takeover of Egypt in a minor and second place position. Building homes for Israelis in our homeland is considered the problem. Not the PA refusing to sit down and talk peace, nope settlements are the BIG issue. Is this a lunatic world or not? Shalom, Peter Settlements Trump Syria and Iran as Top Mideast Issue, Says EU What is the most “urgent” problem in the Middle East? Not Iran and not Syria, according to the European Union. It is the “settlements.” By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu First Publish: 6/13/2012, 4:57 PM Ashton: 'Settlements' top Mideast issue Israel news photo: Flash 90 The expansion of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria is the most “urgent” problem in the Mideast, according to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. She said in a debate on the Middle East at the European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg this week that ending the Palestinian Authority-Israeli disagreement regarding sovereignty over Judea and Samaria remains a “key priority and fundamental to EU interest.” Iran’s nuclear weapons program, which Tehran denies exists, and Syria’ documented massacre of men, women and children opposing the Assad regime, took the back seat to the regions' problems that must be settled immediately. Ashton has been an active opponent of Israeli sovereignty over any parts of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria that were restored to the country in the Six-Day War in 1967. She did condemn recent missile attacks on Israel from Gaza, but she otherwise hammered on what she called “illegal settlement expansion.” As for the future of Jerusalem, she stated that the capital "must be shared between the two nations as part of any two state agreement.” After establishing the “settlements” as the issue of priority, she described the “sickening” violence of Syrian regime. Ashton defended Kofi Annan’s six-point plan to end the violence in Syria despite Syrian President Bashar Assad’s refusal to honor several ceasefire agreements and despite the failure of United Nations observers to travel freely throughout the country to survey damage and Syrian army offensives. She argued that the diplomatic approach “remains the best option.”
	Peter Fogel Babylon 7
	+0

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