Comments on reads 8/22

David P. Goldman: The Muslim Brotherhood Builds a Totalitarian State in Egypt

With nearly half its population dependent on subsidies for necessities, an effective unemployment rate of 40%, and a 45% effective illiteracy rate, Egypt is one of the least-prepared nations of the world for parliamentary democracy. The state rationing system now in preparation will make the local Muslim Brotherhood office the arbiter of whether families eat or starve. There is no more powerful form of social control. It is not necessarily the case that the Morsi government will follow the guidelines of the Brotherhood's sage Sayyid Qutb, whose tract Social Justice in Islam argues for an Islamist-tinged sort of socialism, but the logic of circumstances are pushing them towards this kind of model.

The irony here is that the Muslim Brotherhood may construct a totalitarian state with the help of the International Monetary Fund, including American money. Al-Ahram reports,

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde will visit Egypt on 22 August, according to an IMF statement on Wednesday. Lagarde's visit will focus on the $3.2 billion loan that Egypt has been asking for since March 2011. No deal has been reached and Egypt's funding problems have steadily worsened during subsequent 18 months of political turmoil. Reuters reported on Wednesday that Egypt would discuss the possibility of a bigger-than-expected $4.8 billion loan from the Washington-based body.

How much financial aid Egypt will receive remains unclear. What is crystal clear is that the Muslim Brotherhood is using economic misery to entrench its power.

FP: Predictable.

 

Andrew C. McCarthy: Egypt’s Military and the Arab Spring

On Friday, the New York Times reported on yet another key Islamist military appointment in the Brotherhood’s new Egypt: General Sedky Sobhi, who was just named army chief of staff.  

Sobhi, it turns out, is the author of an academic paper that sharply rebukes American foreign policy as both insufficiently deferential to sharia (Islamic law) and too one-sided in favor of Israel. He’s on record calling for “the permanent withdrawal of United States military forces from the Middle East and the Gulf.”

…

As we’ve illustrated here time and time again, it is delusional to assume the Egyptian military is pro-American and thus a reliable bulwark against the advance of Islamic supremacism. Cairo’s armed forces reflect the broader society, whose able-bodied men are required to serve — and, as even the Times now concedes, the Egyptian mainstream is Islamist. Plus, the Egyptian army has always had Islamists (including violent jihadists) in its ranks. Its historical tendency, moreover, has not been to lead; it has been to follow the shifting political programs of whatever dictator happened to be running the show.

Nonetheless, you’ve spent nearly two years being told not to worry: Bet the farm on these generals we’ve been training and funding. Yet, now we see that not only is our government well aware of the Egyptian army’s Islamist streak (or shall we say swath?); Egyptian officers, who often study in the U.S., actually submit sharia-driven “get out of Dar al-Islam” term papers to their American military professors. And I’m betting Sobhi got an “A.”

FP: Predictable.

 

Efraim Karsh: The war against the Jews (MUST READ!)

The sustained anti-Israel de-legitimization campaign is a corollary of the millenarian obsession with the Jews in the Christian and the Muslim worlds. Since Israel is the world's only Jewish state, and since Zionism is the Jewish people's national liberation movement, anti-Zionism—as opposed to criticism of specific Israeli policies or actions—means denial of the Jewish right to national self-determination. Such a discriminatory denial of this basic right to only one nation (and one of the few that can trace their corporate identity and territorial attachment to antiquity) while allowing it to all other groups and communities, however new and tenuous their claim to nationhood, is pure and unadulterated anti-Jewish racism, or anti-Semitism as it is commonly known.

FP: Predictable.

 

AND I’VE PREDICTED ALL OF THIS!!

 

Matt Taibbi: Goldman Non-Prosecution: AG Eric Holder Has No Balls (MUST READ!)

FP: The moral bankruptcy of the corporate welfare state.