Turns Out "Tamarod" Coup Was to Restore Dictatorship in Egypt

Things are getting real interesting in Egypt right now, and by interesting I mean going down the fucking tube. Let's set some summaries out before we dive into it, shall we?

• Morsi was not a good president. He wasn't helping the already pathetic economy, his policies were creating an even more divisive and polarized society, he wasn't doing much to protect women and minorities from harassment and attacks, and all he did was talk but no walk when it came to the Palestinians. (There are a few more things but these are the main ones).

But did he deserve to be overthrown? That's debatable. When a president is completely horrible in a democracy, the military doesn't overthrow him and put in an oligarchical authoritarian regime instead. The people are supposed to petition him to do/not do certain things, impeach him, or vote him and his party out in the next elections. Morsi, even though he wasn't a good president, was the first and only legitimately elected ruler in all of Egypt's history. His term was for 3 more years. How much good can you expect someone to do in only a year's time? Maybe Egyptians should've put more legal and legitimate pressure on him for a longer period of time and see how he would've done, instead of overthrowing him.

• No matter Morsi's politics, the military's killings of unarmed protesters right after the coup is state terrorism, and gives the Egyptians the right to use violence to defend themselves from said state terrorism. 

Contrary to what a lot of bigoted, racist Americans are saying, if you go back to the news reports to June 30th and the next couple of days, you will see that the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters were entirely peaceful in their protests against the coup. And what did they get for being peaceful? The military and pro-dictatorship thugs slaughtered them by the hundreds, detained some and killed them in police custody, (http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/08/2013818175824286257.html), raped hundreds of women, and attacked and burned dozens of MB offices.
 I don't care even if you hate the MB, you're perfectly allowed to have that opinion. But that doesn't mean you should support killing and torturing them just because you disagree with their politics. The thing is, not everyone who was protesting is a MB member. They might've just voted for Morsi, that doesn't mean they belong to the MB, anymore than voting for Obama once makes someone a Democrat. Other people who were protesting had nothing to do with the MB, they were just against the coup. Killing a non-combatant for political reasons is terrorism.
The very moment the military opened fire on protesters, the protesters now had the right to use violence to defend themselves. If you say no to that, that means you're saying the government can kill any citizen they want at any time, and the citizen has to sit there and do nothing and get killed. That's fascist bullshit. Everyone, regardless of political ideology, race, or religion, has the right to defend themselves against anyone who attacks them first.

The "interim" government is acting just like the Mubarak regime: persecuting Egyptians because of their political affiliation and kidnapping civilians out of their homes in nightly raids. Showing their love for a military dictatorship even more, now they're going to free Mubarak, the previous dictator in prison for all the hundreds of crimes he's done over the decades:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/middleeast/egypt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

This shows that that military dictatorship does not want to return to democracy in the least bit. Like Morsi or hate Morsi, you gotta admit that his election was fair and democratic. You can't claim you want democracy, saying "Oh yeah we can have elections, just these certain people can't run for office."

In conclusion, this has shown that peaceful protests will not work against the authoritarian regime, because they'll just shoot you. This has shown that participating in democratic elections against the authoritarian regime will not work because they'll just overthrow you if you win. Some Egyptians have realized this and have started doing the only thing that can get the corrupt authoritarian out of Egypt's political system:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/19/egypt-attack_n_3778106.html

The funeral for 25 police officers killed in an ambush in the Sinai Penisula

The Egyptian revolution of 2011 did not fully get rid of the authoritarian officials from the Egyptian government, it only got rid of Mubarak. This is the limitations of a peaceful revolution. It left the corrupt system intact. All it did was wait two years and then it seized upon anti-Morsi sentiment and took back the country. So how to solve this problem?

The Egyptian people must launch an armed revolution that will purge Egypt of the authoritarian regime. It's beyond saving; they must burn it to the ground and start again from scratch. It must be a legitimate armed struggle that is solely aimed at Egyptian police and military forces. Attacks on civilians, especially women and minorities, should not be tolerated and anyone who is found guilty of such attacks should be put to death. Once the government is defeated, an interim government should be set up. This interim government must have a counter-insurgency plan enacted, because surely there will be a pro-authoritarian insurgency, leftovers from the dictatorship. Elections can be held 8-10 months from victory date. For more details on how this revolution should be waged, see my July 31st entry on how the Palestinians should wage the 3rd Intifada.    
    

Egypt is rapidly spinning out of control, I don't know who to support

I had avoided talking about Egypt's revolution/coup, (even which one of those two words to use is controversial), because one: I don't know which side I favor, and two: things are happening and changing so fast that by the time I publish something, the situation may be far different than when I wrote it. But there have been a lack of interesting other stories to write about, so it is with great hesitation that I wade into this unholy mess of a situation.
Situation in a sentence: Mohammed Morsi, the first democratically elected president in Egypt's history, has been taken out of power by the military, and an interim government has been put in his place.

Revolutionaries camped out in Tahrir Square. 

Now, there's so much propaganda, BS, false history, blah blah blah so much crap going around the internet and news agencies that this is far as we can go without getting into controversy. It is very hard to isolate what is fact and what is fiction. This is far as we can go that everyone agrees with. I'm going to explain each side's argument and each problem I have with both of them, and then let you decide which side you want to support, or to support neither of them.

Pro revolution/Anti-Morsi argument: Morsi was creating a more sharply divided Egyptian society between Islamist vs secular, Muslim vs Christian, conservative vs liberal, etc. He was not including people from all segments of Egyptian society in his government. He was only serving the Muslim Brotherhood and didn't care about anybody else. He was grabbing power for himself, so many Egyptians feared that he was going to turn into another dictator. He wasn't doing enough to help the country's huge economic woes.

Problem I have with that argument: First: The president of the country is not responsible for how people view other type of people in the country. He's not there to baby-sit people. If some Muslim and Christians in Egypt believe the bigoted shit they hear or read and go at it, it's not his problem. Second: the nature of politics is to put people in power who like you, have similar views of yours, and will do what you tell them to do. When Republicans get into power, guess what they do, they put Republicans in power so they can get Republican-y shit done. When Democrats get into power, they put a bunch of Democrats in power so they can get Democrat-y shit done. Third: Egypt's economy is severally fucked up. It has been for decades. A combination of an Authoritative centrally planned economy, requisites for international loans, and several wars have completely wrecked the economy, which has the potential to be a very strong one. There's no way Morsi, or anyone else for that matter, could've fixed all of the economic problems in one year. They simply need more time.

Anti-revolution/Pro Morsi argument: Morsi was democratically elected, so the appropriate way to go at him is through elections, not overthrowing him. Overthrowing him, even with his flaws, is an attack on Egyptian democracy. The revolutionaries have been attacking pro-Morsi supporters and Muslim Brotherhood buildings, so they are hooligans and do not deserve to have power because of their violent actions. In the revolutionary ranks are many former Mubarak era politicians, which show the true nature of this "revolution," that they only want democracy for themselves. They are the ones, not the Muslim Brotherhood, who wants another dictator.

Problem I have with that argument: I don't care how someone came to power, the people always have the right to take him/her out of power if they feel he/she is not doing their job correctly. That is a fundamental part of democracy is for the people to have power over their government. So it is not an attack on democracy. Benjamin Franklin said we need a revolution at least once every 50 years to keep the government in check. Non-Egyptians, including me, don't have the right to tell Egyptians who to elect or what style of government to have. That is their right and their right alone. Same thing: Egyptians don't have the right to tell Americans who to elect. So if 22 million+ Egyptians felt that their president needed to be taken out, then that is in their right to do so, and who are we to tell them otherwise?

Conclusion
I hope this has cleared up a little bit of a very murky situation. Like I said earlier, I don't support one side or the other at the moment. I see the good and bad points in both sides. I need more time and information before I cast my vote.
The test of whether this revolution was pro-democracy or pro-dictator will be if they stay true to their word, and have free and fair elections in 6-8 months. If they do that, then their revolution has my support. If they don't, and simply appoint a strongman to power, then I will condemn their revolution as a subversion of democracy.        

Jordanian Dictator Doesn’t Get the Memo: Jordanians Want Democracy, not Appeasement

          First of all, before we go into the story at all, let’s get one thing straight. “King” Abdullah of Jordan is a dictator. The Western media calls him a king, to somehow make him look better than and not as cruel as the word “dictator” sounds. They do this because Abdullah is an ally of the U.S., (a.k.a does whatever the U.S. tells him to do in exchange for political, economic and military support), and as per U.S. policy, our allies never do anything wrong, ever.

          Let’s not kid ourselves here. Abdullah has absolute power over Jordan. He can dissolve anyone in the government at any time for any reason. He is not elected; he inherited his title. He is not held accountable for anything he does; neither the parliament nor the constitution can check or balance his powers at all. He received $1.02 billion dollars from the U.S. in military aid in 2009, $843 million in 2010, and an estimated $682 million in 2011, (calculations are not completely done yet for 2011). 

         

          Guess what he does with all that military aid we give him every year? If you follow my blog at all, you will know the answer to this question, and you will know that this answer fucking infuriates me more than anything else related to U.S. policy. He uses that money to pay and arm his police thugs, who violently beat up peaceful protesters, kidnap political opposition members, (often torturing them), rape women, and assassinate anyone who he deems is a “security threat,” (a.k.a. anyone who disagrees with him). 

          He uses that money to buy weapons and military vehicles from many developed countries, to completely dissuade anyone from taking up arms against the dictatorship. The military oppresses the Jordanian people, taking away their most basic human rights, leaving them at the mercy of the government. They can’t vote for their leader; Abdullah has that title for life, and then when he dies, the title just goes to his heir. They have no say in how they are governed. Sure, they “vote” for the parliament, but the parliament is completely subservient to Abdullah. They have no power, save what he feels like giving to them at a moment where it is convenient for him.

          Now that we have that established, let’s go to the main part of this post. There have been recent protests in Amman demanding political reform and that the dictator has less power.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/05/world/jordan-protest/index.html

 

           Abdullah is trying to appease them, dissolving parliament and calling for new elections. But the protesters are not satisfied with that, because that does absolutely nothing. Abdullah doesn’t want to face the fact that Jordanians want him OUT, and to bring in fair and free elections to elect their own leaders. Some of them want a liberal democracy based on Western governments, others want a constitutional monarchy, and still some others want a Sharia-based government. Whatever type of government they choose in free and fair elections will be a democracy because that is the type of government the people rightly and legitimately chose. It doesn’t have to be a liberal, Western-styled democracy to be a democracy.  

          The Western media has been largely mute on the Jordanian protests since the start of the Arab Spring. That is because reporting on the protests would make our U.S. ally look bad, so they ignore it, as the Western media is not allowed to make our “allies” look bad. They also point to the fact that there have not been as many protests in Jordan as say, Egypt or Yemen. Their conclusion is that most Jordanians are content with the government since they are not coming out in large numbers.

          But that’s not the case. The reason why there have not been as many protests is because the Jordanian security forces have a stranglehold on anyone who opposes them. They kidnap and torture protest organizers before they even get onto the streets. They snuff out any opposition before it can get anything going. They buy off people who would oppose them. They brutally crack down on the small amount of protests that have popped up, to scare other people to not oppose the government. The government has been quite effective in keeping a tight lid on dissatisfaction, because they know that if they let things grow too much, they’re going to end up like Tunisia or Egypt, or maybe even Libya or Syria, if the opposition decides to take up arms against them.

          Other bigoted, xenophobic Americans are saying that these protests are only a radical Islamic ploy to overthrow the Jordanian government and start an extremist jihadi government in its place. That statement is delegitimizing the rightful and logical complaints that the Jordanian people have with their government. It’s saying that if you are a Jordanian and you oppose the government, you are not standing for freedom or democracy. You are not demanding your basic human rights. Your claims are not legitimate. Instead, you are a radical Islamic terrorist who just wants to kill Americans.

          These Americans do not believe that Muslims are human enough to deserve human rights; therefore, they do not deserve to choose their own leader and government, so they’re perfectly fine with giving millions of dollars to Abdullah so he can rule Jordan with an iron fist. Then they act all surprised when Jordanians show hostility to them: “What? Why do you hate us so much? All we did was finance a dictator that has been oppressing and torturing you guys for decades, so what? No big deal, stop protesting for democracy and freedom, and start doing everything we say!”

          We, as principled Americans, should not just stand by and let this happen. We must support our Jordanian brothers and sisters who just want the same basic human rights that we enjoy every day. We must help make their voices heard, as they have many powerful governments and medias working against them. We must counter the bigoted statements that our fellow countrymen say about them. We must demand an end to U.S. military aid to Jordan, because that “aid” is being used in actions that are in direct violations of our principles, morals and beliefs.

          The Jordanian government is not our “ally.” They do not care about us. All they care about is getting as much as our money as they can so they can further cement their despotic rule over their own people. They are opposed to democracy and freedom, which makes them our enemies. We have no right to tell the Jordanian people what they can or cannot do. All we can do is support them in their endeavors that agree with our principles, morals and beliefs. And what they’re working towards is the exact same thing that our founding fathers worked towards: democracy, freedom, liberty and justice for all.