The climate is tense throughout Egyptian towns and cities. President Muhammad Mursi’s surprise edicts sheltering his executive decisions from oversight and challenge have rocked the nation, pitting neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend. Continue reading
When Egypt’s first democratically-elected president assumed office, he pledged to uphold the revolution’s democratic principles and swore he would be a president for all Egyptians. Continue reading
There’s no fool like an old fool, or so they say. Director of the CIA Gen. David Petraeus had it all. This was the four-star general who devised the troop surge in Iraq and counter-insurgency tactics in Afghanistan. He oversaw multinational forces in Iraq and commanded US forces in Afghanistan. He headed the US Central Command. He was nationally and globally respected for his strategically astute military mind. Like Colin Powell and Gen. Wesley Clark his is almost a household name outside the US. Continue reading
‘Neck and neck,’ ‘too close to call’ said the pollsters. I did not realise just how wrong they were when I decided, admittedly in somewhat of a cowardly fashion, not to glue myself to the box for the first time in decades, as election results were being called. A Romney White House was simply too dreadful to contemplate. Continue reading
Clearly, the Palestinian president hasn’t studied the political life of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who mistakenly believed appeasing a devil like Adolf Hitler could avert World War II. Continue reading
As each year passes Palestinian hopes are being dampened, nay strangled. Whatever peace process there was has long been dead and buried due to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s obstinacy and President Obama’s unwillingness to force his hand on Jewish settlement creep. Continue reading
It’s no secret that Israel discriminates against its unwanted Arab-Israeli population. Indeed, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman once proposed stripping Arab-Israelis of their citizenship unless they swore allegiance to the Jewish state and, as we learned from the Palestinian papers leaked by Al Jazeera, Israel’s former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, was all for annexing Arab-Israeli villages to a future Palestinian state. Continue reading
A report published in Saturday’s New York Times reveals that the US and Iran “have agreed in principle for the first time on one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program” as “a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran. The Obama administration has since denied that such agreement has been concluded while admitting that the White House was open to talks and has “said from the outset that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally.” Indeed, prior to his election, President Obama was keen to open a dialogue with the Iranians, but despite receiving a personal letter from the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which he neglected to answer, such talks failed to materialize. Continue reading
The assassination of 47-year-old Brig. Gen. Wissam Al Hassan in Beirut’s largely Christian Ashrafieh district was not only a crime against the head of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) and others killed or injured by the bomb blast, no-one in the country can escape its repercussions. Angry protestors have sealed off areas while large swathes of the capital are deserted as people stay indoors to avoid entanglement in a potential violent backlash amid sounds of gunfire and the acrid smoke of burning tyres. Continue reading
If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier . . . as long as I’m the dictator,” said President Muhammad Mursi. Actually, that’s not true, he didn’t. That’s a quote from George W. Bush followed by his trademark “Hehehe.” But what’s the betting Egypt’s first democratically elected leader is privately thinking just that? Continue reading
Israel is convinced the sophisticated unmanned surveillance vehicle that encroached upon Israel’s airspace from the Mediterranean was deployed by either Hezbollah or an Islamic Jihad cell in Gaza at the behest of Iran to gather aerial intelligence on Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona. If so, the incident not only signifies a serious escalation of tensions, the fact that it succeeded in continuing its journey for 30 minutes before it was shot down near Hebron exposes the fallibility of Israel’s air defenses. Moreover, it serves to indicate that Tehran is adopting a more belligerent posture in response to constant Israeli threats. Continue reading
Soon to complete 100 days in office, Egypt’s President Muhammad Mursi is still engaged in sifting allies from fair-weather friends, rivals and potential foes, while the powers that be in the US and Israel hover nervously over his shoulder. Continue reading
Israel’s Prime Minister is beginning to remind me of an unhinged vagrant, who, during my youth, used to amble up and down London’s Oxford Street, wearing a sandwich board scrawled with the words: “The end of the world is nigh.” Continue reading
Despite his smooth, sophisticated outer persona, Benjamin Netanyahu is similar to Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Qaddafi and Ali Abdullah Salah, all military men, whose downfall stemmed from their inability to drop their paternalistic authoritarian attitudes toward increasingly informed populations. They failed to adapt their world views to fit altered circumstances and were willfully blind to the writing on the wall. Continue reading
The world has had a glimpse into the inner workings of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s mind—thanks to his off-the-cuff, off-message views and a video secretly recorded during a $50,000 (Dh183,900) per head fund-raiser. By most people’s standards, the man who would be America’s commander-in-chief is far from being fit for the purpose. Yet, astonishingly, according to a new Associated Press-GFK poll, Obama and Romney are running almost neck-and-neck with just one percent of voters giving the incumbent the edge. Continue reading
It never ceases to amaze just how willing the American public is to be duped by their politicians and media that never stop grovelling before a tiny Middle Eastern country with a population of less than eight million—often in detriment to their own national interests. On issues unconnected with Israel, the American people are generally fair-minded. So it is difficult not to conclude that the masses are victims of state indoctrination when the majority has no clue that Israel is an illegal occupier of Palestinian land. Continue reading
Is there such a creature as a good war criminal? You don’t have to have an IQ over 160 to figure that one out. Of course not. Ethically that question shouldn’t even be asked. People whose actions make a mockery of international laws and conventions should be held to account whatever their nationality or lofty chair they happen to occupy. Continue reading
The days when Israel feels free to throw its weight around with seeming impunity are fast running out. First and foremost is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fraught relationship with the Obama administration, which is working behind the scenes to dissuade Tel Aviv from launching attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites. Continue reading
Gorgeous George, the British MP for Bradford West, has done it again. He said it like he thinks it is, and almost has emerged as the most vilified man in Great Britain, under vicious attack from newspapers, women’s groups and the Twitter crowd. His ‘crime’ was to suggest that the accusations against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, wanted for questioning by a Swedish prosecutor, may be politically-motivated—and even, if true, wouldn’t amount to ‘rape’ in his eyes. Continue reading
The Julian Assange saga has turned farcical. During his balcony scene on Sunday I half expected the WikiLeaks whistle-blower wanted by Sweden to give his legions of fans, celebrities, media and Harrods shoppers a rendition of ‘Don’t cry for me Ecuador.’ The build-up was a nail-biter, especially as someone who exited the embassy revealed Assange planned to give himself up. Continue reading
Over the last few weeks, Egypt’s new President Muhammad Mursi, drawn from the Muslim Brotherhood, has shown beyond a shadow of doubt that he’s no lame duck, even though he took office as a leader without a job description in light of the country’s yet-to-be drawn constitution. Continue reading
At sunset on Sunday, masked RPG-wielding gunmen traveling in two armored vehicles, thought to have been seized from a military checkpoint close to Rafah, attacked and killed 16 Egyptian guards close to the border between Gaza and Israel, wounding seven. Egyptian state television described the attackers as militants and “Jihadists.” Continue reading
Speaking on Israel’s Channel 10 News, Britain’s Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, surprised viewers with an uncharacteristically forthright warning: “Israel is now seen as the Goliath and it’s the Palestinians who are seen as the David.” Continue reading
US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney may be big with the Salt Lake City crowd but he’s clearly out of his depth away from his rah-rah followers. Tall, tanned and suited with the kind of finesse only money can buy, he certainly looks the part. But as my father always used to say, “don’t judge a man by the cut of his cloth.” Continue reading
Never mind Save the Whales. Quit your Occupy movements. it’s time to band together to preserve the pyramids at Giza which, if you believe Stanford University’s Pulitzer prize-winning professor Joel Brinkley, writing in the San Franciso Chronicle, are in danger of being demolished by Islamists as dastardly symbols of paganism. Continue reading
Egyptian elites, secularists and moderates, concerned about the agenda of the country’s new president, drawn from the upper echelons of the Muslim Brotherhood, are coalescing. Continue reading
The doubters—labelled conspiracy theorists due to their belief that the former Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, was murdered—may soon be vindicated. I was among their ranks. I thought it odd that doctors were seemingly unable to diagnose his complaint and what was even more odd was the initial silence of the French military hospital—where he breathed his last in 2004—regarding the cause of his demise, later attributed to a massive heart attack in a rambling medical report. Continue reading
When it comes to judging Egypt’s recently sworn-in new leader Muhammad Mursi, we should avoid attaching labels or succumbing to knee-jerk perceptions. The Muslim Brotherhood, from which the new president is drawn, is not a religious or political monolith and it already appears that President Mursi has a few surprises up his sleeve. Continue reading
The build-up to Sunday’s announcement as to the winner of the presidential elections was a televised cliffhanger that kept me glued to the screen. Like a substantial proportion of the Egyptian electorate, I had been tentatively rooting for Ahmed Shafiq as the most experienced candidate who had vowed to maintain law and order although the thought of a man considered a remnant of the ousted regime taking charge hardly filled me with enthusiasm. Continue reading
Celebratory gunshots could be heard all across Egypt on Sunday afternoon, following a long-drawn announcement confirming that Mohammad Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, had narrowly beaten his rival Ahmad Shafiq. Continue reading
Egyptians have been wandering around in a maze since early 2011, searching for the way out; only to find themselves back where they began the day president Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down. They have no constitution, no parliament and when it comes to choosing a president, the majority feels fobbed off with Hobson’s choice: Either the Muslim Brotherhood’s uninspiring chairman Mohammad Mursi or Ahmad Shafiq, known to have an authoritarian outlook, who many believe is tainted by his association with the old regime. Those two seemed to pop out of nowhere. Opinion polls were wrong. Commentators were wrong. In present-day Egypt, the more you know, the less you know. Continue reading
RSS
Will Mursi must save Egypt from disaster?
Posted on December 5, 2012 by Linda S. Heard
Egyptians are worried and anxious. Throughout their country’s history its people have never been so irreconcilably divided; ironic perhaps when during the January 25 revolution Islamists, liberals and Copts stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the squares chanting “one hand.” Continue reading →