Egyptian Military to Morsi: You have 48 hours to reach a deal

[old_tony]

Hard to believe it took more than nine months for news of that anti-Muslim YouTube video to get from Libya to Egypt.

 

[Boom_70]

Hard to believe it took more than nine months for news of that anti-Muslim YouTube video to get from Libya to Egypt.

Wait till their hear about The Danish Newspaper running a comic that makes fun of
Big Mo.

 

[YankeeFan]

Egyptian military speaking live now (MSNBC carrying).

They are confirming that a "coup" is underway.

 

[Flying Headbutt]

Whatever the **** happens there, it's not our business. Let them sort their own **** out.

 

[wicked]

You should watch Al Jazeera English's stream just to see the split screen between pro-Morsi and anti-Morsi groups. Fascinating.

 

[YankeeFan]

The military crushing the Muslim Brotherhood will be great to watch. My guess is the MB will barely fight back at all, exposing themselves as bullies, and cowards.

Egypt’s military moved forcefully to seize power from President Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday, deploying tanks and troops in Cairo and other cities, restricting his travel and convening an emergency meeting of top civilian and religious leaders to devise an interim government and lay the groundwork for new elections.

Ahramonline, the government’s official English-language Web site, said the military had informed Mr. Morsi that he was no longer head of state. There was no word on Mr. Morsi’s whereabouts.

The military’s actions came as enormous crowds of the president’s supporters and opponents filled the streets of the capital and soldiers were deployed in significant numbers to keep the spiraling political crisis from going out of complete control.

State radio said that the emergency meeting, which included Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent Egyptian statesman who has emerged as a leading critic of Mr. Morsi, along with top Muslim and Christian leaders, had adjourned after several hours and a “road map” for a post-Morsi government would be announced later.

The developments followed the lapse of a 48-hour deadline imposed by the military generals on the increasingly isolated president to meet the demands of millions of Egyptians disaffected with the one-year-old governance of Mr. Morsi, the first democratically elected leader of Egypt.

By 6:30 p.m. military forces began moving around Cairo. Tanks and troops headed for the presidential palace — although it was unclear whether Mr. Morsi was inside — while other soldiers ringed the nearby square where tens of thousands of the president’s supporters were rallying.

Many of the Islamists had armed themselves with makeshift clubs, shields made of potcovers or metal scraps and plastic hard hats, and there were small scuffles with the better-armed soldiers. Some soldiers fired their weapons in the air. But the military forces held back.

Soldiers also were seen erecting barbed-wire fences and barriers around a barracks were President Morsi may have been working, Reuters reported, quoting witnesses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/world/middleeast/egypt.html?hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all

 

[YankeeFan]

Pretty awesome fireworks display going on. Looks better than what we'll see in Chicago tomorrow.

Pretty wild to see it erupt spontaneously.

I mean, holy ****, that's a lot of fireworks.

 

[Boom_70]

You should watch Al Jazeera English's stream just to see the split screen between pro-Morsi and anti-Morsi groups. Fascinating.

Too bad that Howard Cosell is not around to announce it.

 

[Armchair_QB]

The real issue is how to spell Morsi. Or is is Morsy or Mursi?

K-h-a-d-a-f-i.

Or Q-a-a-d-a-f-y.

One of those.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

The real issue is how to spell Morsi. Or is is Morsy or Mursi?

Either way, heaven knows he's miserable now.

I'm glad I read through this ****show just to get to this post. Nice work.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

The real issue is how to spell Morsi. Or is is Morsy or Mursi?

K-h-a-d-a-f-i.

Or Q-a-a-d-a-f-y.

One of those.

O-S-A-M-A

U-S-A-M-A

 

[Stoney]

We're supposed to be on the side of the people, and stand for freedom. Instead, we've expressed "skepticism". Why?

So wholesale immediate support of a group overthrowing a democratically elected govt by military force, and whose first actions have been to suspend the Constitution and and new "Code of Ethics" for journalists, is "standing for freedom"? That's a funny definition of freedom you have, YF.

It is hardly unreasonable for our govt to express "skepticism" about these people before immediately jumping on the bandwagon. We don't know who they really are yet, and the manner in which they have seized power is as non-democratic and non "freedomy" as it gets.

 

[KJIM]

The real issue is how to spell Morsi. Or is is Morsy or Mursi?

K-h-a-d-a-f-i.

Or Q-a-a-d-a-f-y.

One of those.

O-S-A-M-A

U-S-A-M-A

You know the Arabic alphabet doesn't translate into English letters exactly, right? There are several sounds for which we don't have letters, and a couple of their letters translate to multiple English ones.

Sort of like the Russian letter that's between "y" and "i" in English. We don't have that letter, so it can be "Dmitry" or "Dmitri."

There's no definite English spelling because there are several letters that could replace the Arabic ones.

Morsi is probably spelled mim-rah-seen (or maybe saud, there are two "s" letters/sounds)-alif (or maybe just the tarmibuta).

Vowels aren't normally written but expressed with pronunciation marks (IIRC, they're called harraquets). If the "o" does use a vowel, it's probably the "wohw" letter.

In Morocco, the words for "bird" and "public bath" were spelled in English exactly the same ("hammam"), but the "h" was pronounced differently.

Essentially, when you're translating Arabic to English, there's no set spelling because their letters can be represented with different English ones. Others, like the "3ign" are hard to represent because there's just NO similar sounds in English. It's kind of like "aighn" but not really, so in Peace Corps, we just used the "3" to represent that letter when texting and stuff.

 

[YankeeFan]

Meanwhile, the Obama administration keeps it's focus on Israel.

In Damascus, the Syrian government’s forces are digging in against rebels in a bloody civil war that is swiftly approaching the grim milestone of 100,000 dead. In Cairo, an angry tide of protesters again threatens an Egyptian president.

At the same time, in tranquil Tel Aviv, Secretary of State John Kerry wrapped up a busy round of shuttle diplomacy, laboring to revive a three-decade-old attempt at peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. He insisted on Sunday that he had made “real progress.”

The new secretary of state’s exertions — reminiscent of predecessors like Henry A. Kissinger and James A. Baker III — have been met with the usual mix of hope and skepticism. But with so much of the Middle East still convulsing from the effects of the Arab Spring, Mr. Kerry’s efforts raise questions about the Obama administration’s priorities at a time of renewed regional unrest.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, once a stark symbol and source of grievance in the Arab world, is now almost a sideshow in a Middle East consumed by sectarian strife, economic misery and, in Egypt, a democratically elected leader fighting for legitimacy with many of his people.

“The moment for this kind of diplomacy has passed,” said Robert Blecher, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program of the International Crisis Group. “He’s working with actors who have acted in this movie before, and the script is built around the same elements. But the theater is new; the region is a completely different place today.”

Administration officials no longer argue, as they did early in President Obama’s first term, that ending the Israeli occupation and creating a Palestinian state is the key to improving the standing of the United States in the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now just one headache among a multitude.

And yet Mr. Kerry, backed by Mr. Obama, still believes that tackling the problem is worth the effort: five visits to the region in the last three months. The most recent trip involved nearly 20 hours of talks, stretching almost until dawn, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.

http://nyti.ms/1b4jo4i

When are they going to realize that the problem in the Middle East is not Israel. And, how naïve does John Kerry sound?

 

[Armchair_QB]

http://www.nypost.com

 

[YankeeFan]

 

[Mark2010]

Oh, yeah, just another Middle Eastern nation for the US to invade. I hope the US stays out, as far as troops are concerned.

 

[3_Octave_Fart]

This story is going to prove a flashpoint for democratic theory.
Participating in a democracy involves sharing power.
Morsi and the Brotherhood forgot the rules.

 

[Mark2010]

Too bad America didn't do that with George W. Bush.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Too bad America didn't do that with George W. Bush.

And too bad Bush forgot that more people voted for the other guy in the first election.