Sunday, July 07, 2013

The final moments of Mohammed Morsi's one-year Presidency before he was ousted by his Egyptian military have been dramatically recounted by army, security and Muslim Brotherhood officials

    Sunday, July 07, 2013   No comments
Speaking anonymously to the Associated Press, allies of the President said they had foreseen the end of Morsi's leadership up to a week before the opposition planned its first major protests and painted a bleak picture of the Brotherhoods decline.

In recent months, the former President had reportedly been at loggerheads with a series of the country's most powerful institutions, including religious clerics, the police and intelligence agencies.

The effect was isolating, officials said. According to some, there was such pervasive distrust between the political leadership and the civil service that the latter began withholding information from Morsi.

The police also refused to protect Muslim Brotherhood offices when they came under attack in the latest wave of protests.

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Egyptian Lessons to Assad and His Opponents

    Sunday, July 07, 2013   No comments
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s first reaction to the protests that broke out in his country two and

Within a few months, as the opposition became militarized, Damascus could only see a conspiracy in the making, as the descent into violence opened up a big wound across the nation.

The regime’s initial response was either guided by security concerns or took the form of a series of political concessions that had no real impact on people’s lives. As a result, the opposition, which was still not completely in the grip of foreign forces, registered a surge in its popularity.
But rather than using this to its advantage at the negotiating table, the Syrian opposition believed al-Jazeera’s propaganda campaign that the regime’s days were numbered, so they chose to up the ante and escalate their armed insurgency against the regime to finish it off.

Today, Syrians find themselves before an opportunity to reassess their situation and possibly bring the bloody confrontations to a stop. They should use the developments in Egypt to reflect on the course of their actions and where they are taking their country. This would require a series of steps by both sides along the following lines.

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half years ago was to dismiss any relation between them and events in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.

Friday, July 05, 2013

When is a military coup not a military coup? When it happens in Egypt, apparently

    Friday, July 05, 2013   No comments
For the first time in the history of the world, a coup is not a coup. The army take over, depose and imprison the democratically elected president, suspend the constitution, arrest the usual suspects, close down television stations and mass their armour in the streets of the capital. But the word ‘coup’ does not – and cannot – cross the lips of the Blessed Barack Obama. Nor does the hopeless UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon dare to utter such an offensive word. It’s not as if Obama doesn’t know what’s going on. Snipers in Cairo killed 15 Egyptians this week from a rooftop of the very university in which Obama made his ‘reach-out’ speech to the Muslim world in 2009. Is this reticence because millions of Egyptians demanded just such a coup – they didn’t call it that, of course – and thus became the first massed people in the world to demand a coup prior to the actual coup taking place? Is it because Obama fears that to acknowledge it’s a coup would force the US to impose sanctions on the most important Arab nation at peace with Israel? Or because the men who staged the coup might forever lose their 1.5 billion subvention from the US – rather than suffer a mere delay -- if they were told they’d actually carried out a coup.

Thursday, July 04, 2013

Turkey calls for immediate release of Egyptian leaders

    Thursday, July 04, 2013   No comments
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet DavutoÄŸlu has criticized the military intervention in Egypt, saying Turkey does not accept the removal and detention of elected leaders from power through “illegitimate means,” adding that he hoped the military’s move would not overshadow the original Jan. 25, 2011 revolution.

“Whatever the reason is, it is unacceptable that a democratically elected government was overthrown by illegitimate means, even more, with a military coup. A national consensus politics is possible only with the participation and support of democratic institutions, actors, opposition and civil society,” DavutoÄŸlu told reporters in Istanbul. “Leaders who come to power with open and transparent elections reflecting the will of the people can only be removed by elections, that is, the will of the nation.”

Egypt’s army held the country’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi in detention, hours after abruptly forcing him out of office following days of deadly protests against his turbulent rule. Morsi’s defense minister, armed forces chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, announced Morsi’s overthrow on state television on Wednesday. Warrants have been issued for the arrest of a total of 300 Muslim Brotherhood officials.

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Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Crisis in Egypt: Morsi at Precipice after Disastrous Year

    Tuesday, July 02, 2013   No comments
On Monday, the Egyptian Army issued President Mohammed Morsi an ultimatum: He has 48 hours to come up with a plan for the country or it will intervene with one of its own. The tens of thousands of anti-Morsi protesters who had been demonstrating since Sunday in Tahrir Square broke out into cheers when the ultimatum was announced.

Yet Morsi has shown no indication that he is prepared to back down. On Tuesday, despite widespread dissatisfaction with his rule and a crumbling cabinet, he released a statement of his own, saying that he will continue on the course he has charted. As if to underline Morsi's increasing isolation, his foreign minister, Mohamed Kamel Amr, threw in the towel on Tuesday morning. He is the sixth member of Morsi's government to quit over the escalating crisis.

Disillusionment with Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's first democratically elected president, is widespread following the past year of his rule. Results, after all, have been disastrous. Instead of freeing his country from an ongoing political and economic crisis, Morsi has deepened the suffering. Instead of bringing reconciliation to Egypt, he has sown discord. Mass protests have repeatedly shown how polarized the most populous country in the Arab world has become. Indeed, just on Sunday, several people lost their lives in violent anti-Morsi protests in the heart of Cairo.

"My country has never been as divided, frustrated and radicalized as it is today," says German-Egyptian author Hamed Abdel-Samad.

President Mohamed Morsi rejects Egypt army's ultimatum, as ministers resign

    Tuesday, July 02, 2013   No comments
President Mohamed Morsi rejected an army ultimatum to force a resolution to Egypt's political crisis, saying that he would keep to his path even as his foreign minister added to the resignations from his cabinet.
The Islamist leader described as potentially confusing the 48-hour deadline set by the head of the armed forces on Monday for him to agree on a common platform with liberal rivals who have drawn millions into the streets demanding Morsi's resignation.
Members of his Muslim Brotherhood have used the word "coup" to describe the military manoeuvre, which carries the threat of the generals imposing their own road map for the nation.
On Tuesday morning Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr became the latest and most profile member of Mr Morsi's cabinet to desert him over the turmoil. He joined four ministers - of environment, legal affairs, communication and legal affairs, who stepped down on Monday.

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Turkey: recent unrest is Foreign powers and the Jewish diaspora conspiracy

    Tuesday, July 02, 2013   No comments
Foreign powers and the Jewish diaspora have triggered the recent unrest in Turkey, Deputy Prime Minister BeÅŸir Atalay said Monday, adding that the international media had also played a key role in "the conspiracy".

Foreign powers and the Jewish diaspora have triggered and fomented the unrest in Turkey, Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay said Monday in the Central Anatolian province of Kırıkkale.

Atalay also said the international media had played a key role in "the conspiracy". “The ones trying to block the way of Great Turkey will not succeed,” he said.

“There are some circles that are jealous of Turkey’s growth,” Atalay said. "They are all uniting, on one side the Jewish diaspora. You saw the foreign media’s attitude during the Gezi Park incidents; they bought it and started broadcasting immediately, without doing an evaluation of the [case]."

The Gezi protests began on May 31, triggered by Istanbul's plans to remove Gezi Park, which lies next to the iconic Taksim Square, to build a replica of Ottoman artillery barracks and a mall.

A sit-in by peaceful protesters soon turned into mass protests across the country with nearly two million people taking part and 79 of Turkey's 81 cities seeing unrest, according to interior ministry estimates.

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Monday, July 01, 2013

Tunisia Tiring of Transition

    Monday, July 01, 2013   No comments
Tunisia
In the third year after the revolution that toppled former dictator Ben Ali, true democracy is still work in progress in Tunisia.

“Freedom is a decision but democracy is a transformational process,” Amine Ghali, programme director of the Kawakibi Democracy Transition Centre in Tunisia tells IPS. “So far our expectations about life after the revolution have not been met.

“We went through a major transformation immediately after the revolution which led to the elections in October 2011. However, since then there has been a lack of delivery of democratic processes including transitional justice, the independence of the judiciary, improvement of the economy, and the fight against corruption. We need milestones with dates. We cannot stay in transition indefinitely.”

The democratic struggle is set against the backdrop of Tunisia’s economic problems. “We are facing inflation, devaluation of the dinar and a drop in consumer purchasing power,” says Ghali. “People cannot eat the constitution, drink elections or buy freedom of the press. They need food for their children, education and affordable transportation.”

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China claims that "Xinjiang terrorists finding training, support in Syria, Turkey"

    Monday, July 01, 2013   No comments
From a foreign student studying in Istanbul to a soldier receiving training in Syria's Aleppo, to a terrorist plotting attacks in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, 23-year-old Memeti Aili said he felt like his dream was turned into a nightmare.

Memeti Aili was recently caught by the police when returning to Xinjiang to complete his mission to "carry out violent attack and improve fighting skills" assigned by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). ETIM is a terrorist group that aims to create an Islamist state in Xinjiang, which works alongside the East Turkistan Education and Solidarity Association (ETESA), an Istanbul-based exile group.

"After hearing their lectures, all I could think about was jihad and I totally abandoned my studies and my family," he told the police. "But thinking back, it was like a nightmare."

An anti-terrorism official told the Global Times in an exclusive interview that about 100 people like Memeti Aili had travelled to Syria to join the fighting alongside Syrian rebels since last year.

"Their purpose is to overcome their fears, improve their fighting skills and gain experience in carrying out terror attacks," according to the official who declined to be named.

Xinjiang, in China's far west, borders central Asia and is home to 10 million Uyghurs. It was rocked by two terror attacks that killed 35 people last week, just days ahead of the fourth anniversary of the July 5 riot in the capital Urumqi that left 197 people dead.

Yu Zhengsheng, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, led a work team to Urumqi after President Xi Jinping on Friday arranged measures to safeguard social stability.

"We will step up efforts to crack down on terrorist groups and extremist organizations while tracking down those wanted for these crimes," Yu was quoted by the Xinhua News Agency.

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Foreign media portrayals of the conflict in Syria are dangerously inaccurate

    Monday, July 01, 2013   No comments
Every time I come to Syria I am struck by how different the situation is on the ground from the way it is pictured in the outside world. The foreign media reporting of the Syrian conflict is surely as inaccurate and misleading as anything we have seen since the start of the First World War. I can't think of any other war or crisis I have covered in which propagandistic, biased or second-hand sources have been so readily accepted by journalists as providers of objective facts.
A result of these distortions is that politicians and casual newspaper or television viewers alike have never had a clear idea over the last two years of what is happening inside Syria. Worse, long-term plans are based on these misconceptions. A report on Syria published last week by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says that "once confident of swift victory, the opposition's foreign allies shifted to a paradigm dangerously divorced from reality".

Slogans replace policies: the rebels are pictured as white hats and the government supporters as black hats; given more weapons, the opposition can supposedly win a decisive victory; put under enough military pressure, President Bashar al-Assad will agree to negotiations for which a pre-condition is capitulation by his side in the conflict. One of the many drawbacks of the demonising rhetoric indulged in by the incoming US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and William Hague, is that it rules out serious negotiations and compromise with the powers-that-be in Damascus. And since Assad controls most of Syria, Rice and Hague have devised a recipe for endless war while pretending humanitarian concern for the Syrian people.

It is difficult to prove the truth or falsehood of any generalisation about Syria. But, going by my experience this month travelling in central Syria between Damascus, Homs and the Mediterranean coast, it is possible to show how far media reports differ markedly what is really happening. Only by understanding and dealing with the actual balance of forces on the ground can any progress be made towards a cessation of violence.

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