Democracy can be so messy… and sometimes even unpedictable. Why bother if you can get away with it? Last night we looked at how Republicans in our country are trying to replace democracy with plutocracy. Egypt has gone even further. When democracy didn't suit the military chiefs, they simply staged a coup, arrested the president, slaughtered his supporters and staged a phony election with a very predictable outcome-- 98.1% of voters backed the new fascist constitution the military presented. With a gratuitous slap at President Morsi-- Laura King and Amro Hassan referring to him as "autocratic" in the L.A. Times-- the paper whitewashes the fascist takeover entirely.
Setting the stage for a potential presidential run by the country's military chief, Egyptian election authorities declared Saturday that more than 90% of voters had approved a new constitution, according to final official results.Results of the referendum held Tuesday and Wednesday were depicted by the military-backed interim government as a resounding public repudiation of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that Egyptian authorities have spent the last six months trying to crush.Some election observers, however, expressed strong concern about the climate of political intimidation surrounding the vote. The interim government has taken a series of steps meant to muffle dissent, whether by the Brotherhood or by secular opponents of the military-supported administration.
No mention of the pro-fascist newspaper editor who threatened that Americans could be slaughtered in the streets.
In an extreme example of the growing xenophobic rhetoric by media outlets who back the country's army chief, General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, Mostafa Bakry made the threat on a major TV talkshow, also warning the US president, Barack Obama, and his "puppets" that "we will enter their houses, and we will kill them one by one."Bakry speculated that the US government planned to assassinate Sisi, who ousted Egypt's first democratically elected leader, Mohamed Morsi, last July after mass protests against his one-year rule."There is a plot to kill General Sisi, and the security services know it well," said Bakry – a pro-regime journalist known for his provocative behaviour. He then suggested that a similar US-backed plot had led to the assassination of Pakistani politician, Benazir Bhutto.Such a scenario would lead the Egyptian people to rise up in a "revolution to kill the Americans in the streets," he said.Egypt's foreign ministry later forwarded the following clarification from Bakry himself: "These comments were made regarding terrorism and the terrorist group that is waging a war against Egypt. I am opposed to any violence, including any violence against US citizens, and I would like to make it clear that we have no enmity with or hostility towards the American people at all."The intention of my comments was to highlight Egyptian independence, and our adamant refusal to allow any outside party, be that the US or any other party, to interfere in internal Egyptian affairs."Bakry's remarks came as the US is reportedly poised to unfreeze millions of dollars in aid to Egypt after the successful completion of a referendum on a new constitution, and follow praise of Egypt's post-Morsi transition by US the secretary of state, John Kerry.Egypt's pro-regime media have increasingly portrayed any dissent-- of either a secular or Islamist bent-- against the current regime as an unpatriotic act.Egypt's flagship state newspaper, al-Ahram, has several times in recent months used its front page to air claims that the US government has joined forces with Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood to divide up Egypt into smaller countries, and to spread chaos within its borders.