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Egypt elections: The coronation of the emperor

There was no contest in Egypt’s presidential elections, and not only because only one candidate stood against Sisi. He offers the security many Egyptians now crave. Voting in  there are reports of empty polling stations despite government employees allegedly being threatened with a wage cut if they do not vote
By ROBERT FISK
Napoleon will be crowned. And after the revolution – after its terrors and deaths and instability and its Islamist Directory – who would begrudge the Emperor his coronation? Why, even the election posters for Field Marshal (retired) Abdel Fattah al-Sisi call him “President of Egypt”, and the only thing you notice, looking into his profoundly chubby, cheerful – might one say dull? – face is that he is in a suit and tie and, in one picture, reclining in a fine old armchair. This is no Emperor without clothes.
And now here’s the shock for me. If I were an Egyptian, I’d have voted for Mr Sisi yesterday. Not that he’s inspiring. Anyone who tells his people that democracy may be 10 – or 20! – years away, is not going to go down in the history books as the Great Liberator. Daniel O’Connell he is not.
But Mr Sisi has three things on his side: he is offering to free Egyptians from the past three years of pseudo-democracy under Mohamed Morsi; he has most of the Croesus-Gulf states – minus Qatar, of course – on his side to rescue Egypt from bankruptcy. And the Americans – rabbit on though they will about Egyptian human rights – will keep their mouths shut and their treasury open to the Egyptian army providing Mr Sisi guarantees the safety of Israel.
And of course, Mr Sisi has offered what all folk want in hard times, especially Westerners and Israelis supposedly confronting the danger of Islamist terror in the Middle East: stability, stability, stability. Come to think of it – and speak not thus of our favourite Field Marshal – that’s what dictators always offer.
But it’s easy for a foreign reporter to be patronising in Cairo these days, a Western liberal tut-tutting away at the re-infantilisation of a nation, a people who have fought and died for their dignity at the hands of Mubarak’s thugs and have then relapsed into a second political childhood, demanding the return of a dictator, another Nasser, another Sadat, another Mubarak – for he, too, remember, was a very senior member of the armed forces, the commander of the Egyptian air force, no less. Who cares now for the 1,500 Muslim Brotherhood civilians who died under the guns of the security forces last year? They featured in no one’s election campaign. But they were Egyptians, citizens of their country every bit as much as Mr Sisi.
Supporters of presidential candidate Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi in Cairo (AP) Supporters of presidential candidate Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi in Cairo (AP)
The reality, however, is that Mr Sisi is undoubtedly the man most Egyptians want. Who are we to deny his election if it produced the man Egyptians voted for? And that, as an Egyptian friend asked me on Tuesday, is democracy, isn’t it? Well yes, I tried to explain, but with the Muslim Brotherhood banned as “terrorists” and their supporters – surely several million are still left – with no one to vote for, what does this election mean? Surely the bland Nasserist Hamdeen Sabahi with 40 years of political huckstering (and poetry!) behind him – and he’s been the only opposing candidate to the Field Marshal – never believed that he represented the beating heart of Egypt?
The problem for Mr Sisi – and he has many more to come, not least the economic collapse of his country – is what kind of mandate he can really claim to have. A tour of polling stations in central Cairo yesterday did not suggest that the masses were turning out in the numbers he wanted. I found one off July 26 Street without a soul on the premises save for policemen and soldiers. Ala’a, a friend of mine for 10 years, went to vote in a Giza schoolhouse on Monday evening – and was the only voter there. Heba Sharf, branch manager of a Cairo bookshop spent just one minute at her Heliopolis polling station on Monday because there were only two other voters present. A Sabahi voter, I must add, told me there were at least 300 people at his polling station yesterday morning. I wonder.
Unsurprisingly, there were reports of government employees threatened with the loss of $100 from their pay packets if they did not prove they had voted. Journalists loyal to Mr Sisi – which, alas, means almost every television presenter and mainstream scribe in Cairo – were tweeting the news that Mr Sisi might withdraw from the polls if insufficient Egyptians exercised their democratic rights. Too many people, in short, have seen too few people voting.
So what does it mean if Mr Sisi can claim 82 per cent of the vote – my favourite at the moment, for he has to do better than the 81.5 per cent that the old wheelchair President of Algeria claimed a few weeks ago – if the turnout, for example, was only 20 per cent? Certainly, it has got to be far smaller than the figures for the 2012 elections when liberty was as fresh as the flaming “tree of life” acacias now blooming across Cairo.
Journalists outside Egypt have caustically suggested that Mr Sisi is neither Nasser nor Sadat, but “Mubarak in all his splendour” – this from Wael Qandil in the inevitably Qatari-backed Al-Arabi al-Jadid. Al-Musri al-Youm, published in Cairo, recalled, of course, the happiness of Egyptians when Mr Sisi announced that there were “no more Muslim Brothers”. There would be no more “religious officials”, the great man said. “The only man in charge of what goes on in the country … is the head of state. I am presenting myself before the people, and I am telling them: I am the man in charge of values, of principles, morals and religion.”
Sisi supporters asking people to vote after a lower than expected turnout threatened to undermine his credibility (Reuters) Sisi supporters asking people to vote after a lower than expected turnout threatened to undermine his credibility (Reuters)
Is this really the stuff of Egyptian dreams? Heba Sharf, the bookshop manager, talked of the growing disappointment of Egyptians after Mubarak’s overthrow and the failure of the 2011 revolution to produce mature leaders – indeed, any leaders at all. This, of course, is to Mr Sisi’s advantage. If the revolution was hijacked by Islamists – a popular narrative in the Western press – then the Field Marshal was the only man standing, untramelled by scandal (let us here forget the Egyptian army’s vast ownership of real estate, factories, etc) or impropriety. All we must forget is that leaders of that self-same 2011 revolution – no Islamists they – have themselves now been banged up in jail.
Where the catch comes in all this is that neither Mr Sisi nor Sabahi – who spent a couple of weeks in jail under Mubarak – have explained their campaign policies. Both promised detailed plans for the future economy but Mr Sisi’s spokesman announced, incredibly, that if the Field Marshal published his proposals, he would be forced to waste too much time replying to questions from the electorate.
No one, however, questions Mr Sisi’s irritation with the United States nor his new-found relationship with the Russians. Vladimir Putin is the taleb to Egyptians – the fox – an animal much admired when cunning rather than courage is a necessary commodity for survival.
The backcloth to all this history-making is that Egypt, with its 94 million people – a population now growing by one million a year – has little influence in the Arab world, let alone outside, and is propped up only by Saudi cash and US grants. But if Egyptians were freed from fear by their revolution in 2011 – and again in 2012, if Morsi’s overthrow is to be regarded as a counter-revolution rather than a military coup – then they will return to the streets again if they are sufficiently humiliated or abused. One of Mr Sisi’s posters yesterday lauded the Field Marshal’s presidency as “the way to regain the Egyptian state”. This was pretty much Napoleon’s tune after 1789 and its subsequent bloodbath. But Napoleon, as we all know, met his Waterloo.
The Indeoendent

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  • Our addiction to the internet is as harmful as any drug

    Something is rotten in the state of technology. I only realised the extent of this when I wrote last year about an Irish government minister who had committed suicide just before Christmas 2012, partly because – according to his brother at the graveside – he had received so many abusive messages on the internet. The response from those claiming to be “readers” of this newspaper was 1) to suggest that the brother was lying; 2) that the minister deserved to die because of his policies (which included cuts in care homes); and 3) to condemn the dead minister for not being thoughtful enough to postpone his suicide until after Christmas.

    Was it always like this? Did these hateful anonymous messages arrive when “Letters to the Editor” was the only way to express feelings – in print, of course – about other human beings? “Name and address supplied” was the last straw in anonymity that any editor permitted. But now anonymity must be protected, cosseted, guarded, because privacy, even privacy to abuse, is more important than responsibility. “Online comment” – and the “comment” bit definitely deserves a “sic” – takes precedence over criminal threats.


    As I travel around the world to lecture on the Middle East, I am finding that an increasing number of journals are suspending or restricting online comment. Among the latest to do so was the National Catholic Register, whose editor, Dennis Coday, decided that the malicious, abusive and vile comments received – far from remarks on the substance of an article – were “pure vandalism”. Coday suggested it was everyone’s responsibility to make the internet a civil place by making contributors identifiable, just as they were in the days when editors (and lawyers) decided whose letters may or may not be published.


    The Irish columnist Breda O’Brien wrote in February that, while she had to adhere to strict guidelines in her work as a print journalist, it was “bizarre” that “people can comment on my articles with impunity and say anything they like about me or about others. The sheer level of nastiness is difficult to describe”. O’Brien wrote of the “dark” experience of those who – online – wish her to “be badly beaten, or die from painful diseases, or that my children be taken away from me… One person has repeatedly expressed the wish that I be burned to death”. Much of this material is intended to “take down” individuals. “The savagery of online commentary,” O’Brien wrote, “is beginning to bleed into everyday discussions.”


    She is right. I have written before of the foul, racist abuse I receive – passed on in hard copy by friends who say they sometimes fear for my safety – and of the ambivalent, slovenly way in which those who are involved in “chat rooms” and “platforms” run away from their own responsibility by claiming that they’ve no money for a “mediator” (by which they mean editor) or that “the internet is here to stay, whether you like it or not”. Journalists around the world have noticed this phenomenon, whether it be the “preening nastiness of online comment” in Brazilian media about the need for street vigilantes, or the outright ethnic hatred that you can find on the websites of quite respectable publications, often remarks which should result in prosecution for racial hatred.


    Some of the material I read about Muslims – sent to me on paper by internet users who are even more shocked than I have become – are the product of psychopaths, demanding the rape of Muslim women. Equally venomous, and just as dangerous, is the anti-Semitic filth aimed at journalists, politicians, historians and activists who are Jewish. One European Jewish government minister wrote of how “racist and prejudiced online commentary … all too frequently results on occasions when I am personally in the public eye”. I should add that both those claiming to loathe Israel and those claiming to support it are also on the front line of dishing out abuse.


    Perhaps my own fury and frustration with this state of affairs makes my response all the more direct. But the dirt, racism, foul abuse, the lies and innuendo and slanders and bullying on the web, in blogs and text messages and chat rooms, has become a sickness. “Trolls”, we call these psychologically disturbed people, and even that is indicative of our craven addiction to technology. So awed are we – so “taken over” by the new science of communication – that we have to liken these poison-pen writers and abusers to creatures of Scandinavian mythology rather than to the fantasists and racial bullies whom they really are.


    It leaches, this language, into the shock-jock radio shows and to right-wing cable news channels, and it deadens the soul; not in the religious sense, but in the way in which the internet itself – the experience of “social media” – has indeed become an addiction as fearsome as drugs or cigarettes. We must be “computer literate” rather than “literate”; some of the hard copy e-mails I receive are not only ungrammatical – the spelling is also appalling – but virtually incomprehensible. Who were the first addicts? The young who gulped down these new “freedoms” – or their peers who told them that this was the way forward?


    I’m still stunned by a moment several years ago when I was asked by a student, after giving a lecture at a US university, if I “could name any good websites on the Middle East”. I replied with four words: what’s wrong with books? The students cheered. Their academic tutors in the front row glowered at me reproachfully.


    The internet catastrophe – perhaps I should say tragedy – grows tentacles. We have become, as one psychologist has said, “seduced by distraction”. We no longer reflect. We react. We don’t read books – always supposing we buy them – we “surf” them. Take Spritz. According to its own pap advertising, it’s a “Boston-based start-up focused on text-streaming technology”, whose founders are “serial entrepreneurs with extensive experience in developing and commercialising innovative technologies”. And you’ll not be surprised to learn that the crackpots running Spritz, after inviting fans to read up to 600 words a minute, claim that you’ll soon be able to read Tolstoy’s War And Peace in less than 10 hours.


     Is that not part of the problem? When you delete thought, impoverish literature and worship technology – not as a wonderful scientific achievement but as a god – then there are no rules. You can drink Tolstoy, smoke books, and breathe in hatred. Something rotten? What does rotten mean? 

    http://www.independent.co.uk

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    Know how to nod off


    Set your (body) clock
    The human body comes with its own internal alarm clock; all you have to do is know how to set it. The most important sleep hygiene measure is to maintain a regular waking and sleeping pattern. Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day sets the body’s internal clock to expect sleep at a certain time night after night. Try to stick as closely as possible to your routine on weekends as well to avoid a Monday morning sleep hangover. Waking up at the same time each day is the best way to set your clock; even if you did not sleep well the night before, the slight sleep deprivation will help you sleep better the following night.
    Keep out the clutter
    It may help to limit your bedroom activities to sleep. Keeping the computer, TV and work-related material out of the room will strengthen the mental association between your bedroom and sleep.
    Create a sleep-inducing environment
    A quiet, dark and cool environment can help promote sound sleep. If light in the early morning bothers you, use heavy curtains, blackout shades or an eye mask to block light — a powerful cue that tells the brain that it’s time to wake up. Any distracting sounds that might make it difficult to fall asleep or cause awakening during the night should be eliminated. Keep the temperature comfortably cool/warm and the room well ventilated. And make sure your mattress and pillows are comfortable.
    Develop sleep rituals
    It is important to give your body cues that it is time to slow down and sleep.
    Indulge in some relaxing activities an hour or so before bed. Light reading before bed is a good way to prepare yourself for sleep; taking a bath (the rise, then fall in body temperature promotes drowsiness), practicing relaxation exercises or having a cup of caffeine-free tea (chamomile is ideal) are some ideas. Engaging in the same ritual each evening prior to going to bed can actually train the body that it is time to fall asleep.
    Avoid stressful, stimulating activities, for example doing work or exercise or discussing emotional issues, etc right before bed. Physically and psychologically stressful activities can cause the body to secrete the stress hormone cortisol, which is associated with increasing alertness.
    Don’t go to bed unless sleepy
    Just lying in bed and trying to sleep for hours and hours simply creates a more stressful situation making it more difficult to fall asleep. If you’re not asleep after 20 minutes, get out of bed, go to another room, engage in some activity that might help you relax, like reading or listening to music until you are tired enough to sleep.
    Nap early or not at all
    Many people have a habit of taking a nap during the day. However, if you find it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep through the night think again — your afternoon nap may be one of the culprits. This is because late-day naps decrease sleep drive. If you must nap, it’s better to keep it short and early. If you didn’t sleep well the night before, a nap during the day may seem a good idea but it can actually make the situation worse by continuing to disrupt a routine sleep-wake cycle.
    Avoid caffeine, nicotine and other chemicals that interfere with sleep
    Caffeine and nicotine are stimulants that interfere with your ability to fall asleep. Coffee, tea, cola, cocoa, chocolate and some prescription and non-prescription drugs contain caffeine — a stimulant that can keep you awake. So avoid caffeine for four to six hours before bedtime.
    Similarly, refrain from using tobacco products too close to bedtime.

    Can’t go to sleep and spend half the night tossing and turning in bed? Thinking of getting a prescription for sleeping pills? Then read on to discover the secrets of sleep hygiene and enjoy a good night’s sleep; wake up refreshed, ready to take the next day head on


    Take care what you eat
    If your stomach is too empty, that can interfere with sleep. However, if you eat a heavy meal before bedtime, that can interfere as well. Finish dinner several hours before bedtime and avoid foods that cause indigestion. If you feel hungry at night, snack on food that won’t disturb your sleep, perhaps dairy foods and carbohydrates. But remember, chocolate has caffeine.
    Balance fluid intake
    Drink enough fluid at night to keep from waking up thirsty — but not so much and so close to bedtime that you will be awakened by the need for a trip to the bathroom.
    Exercise early
    Regular exercise is recommended to help you sleep well, but the timing of the workout is important. Exercise stimulates the body by secreting the stress hormone cortisol, which
    helps activate the alerting mechanism in the brain. So, try to finish exercising at least three hours before bed or work out earlier in the day. However, a relaxing exercise, like yoga, can be done before bed to help initiate a restful night’s sleep.
    Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 25th, 2014
    http://www.dawn.com/news/1107990/know-how-to-nod-off


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    Judaism & Zionism

    “Judaism is a religion of spirituality to serve God thousands of years old. Zionism is only around a hundred years old. it is the transformation of religion to nationalism , to materialism created by non-religious Jews who hated the religion. The reason they used the name Israel and the Star of David hijacking, stealing the identity of Judaism from the Jewish people in order to get legitimacy for their existence. That people should say oh it’s God given to them, and they should put fear and intimidate people from speaking up against their actions because they will call them antiemetic. It couldn’t be anything further from the truth. As I said the best friends of the Jewish people is Turkey, the best friends of the Jewish people is all the Muslim countries who have helped the Jews all the time when they ran away from their problems in other lands so how could you say this? It’s something totally different. It’s a political, selfish, flawed movement called Zionism that has no legitimacy to exist. It’s against the Torah.

    May I just say one thing. .. it’s against the Torah in its essence!

    The concept for Jews to have a state is expressly forbidden in the Torah, in the Jewish teaching since the destruction of the temple two thousand years ago. We were told by the almighty in a prophecy of King Solomon that we are forbidden to have our own entity, our own state, our own kingdom even in an uninhabited land and this was held by all Jews around the world for thousands of years and it makes it worse. It compounds the sin. The crime in having the state because this state of Israel that these nationalists made it in Palestine made it in a land that was inhabited by the majority of Muslim people by Palestinian people. So to steal their land, to kill, to oppress, to banish them from their home, it flies in the face and contradicts everything from the Torah that says;

    thou shall not kill,
    thou shall not steal,
    that one has to emulate God, be compassionate so they use our identity to rebel against God, to desecrate Gods name and create a rift between Jews and Muslims and to make a river, an endless river of blood for Muslims, for the Palestinian people, and death for the Jewish people also”.

    Rabbi Weiss

    Rabbi Weiss - Zionists have hijacked the Jewish religion
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La9MdlLRJ4g

    A Sheep No More
    The Truth about Disinformation
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    Kings of Democracy - The mass effect

    Under the rules of kingship, the masses were regarded as subjects whose chief duty was to be loyal to their ruler; they were not allowed to challenge his authority. The rulers derived their authority from divine power, which could not be criticised or challenged. The masses, as subjects, were required to be submissive and faithful to their ruler. To his subjects, the king was like a father whose responsibility was to protect them and take care of their needs. A genre of literature known as `Mirrors for Princes` provides guidelines to the rulers on the principles of ruling by maintaining justice.
    This role of the masses changed completely during the French Revolution when they stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789 and made an attempt to defy royal authority. The mob further asserted its power when it marched from Paris to Versailles, the royal residence, and brought the royal family to Paris where it remained under the watchful eyes of the people. The masses also stormed the national assembly and watched the proceedings of the assembly from the balcony.

    The members were careful not to speak against the will of the peoplc and adopted a policy to suit their interests.

    When France was invaded by other European powers to restore the monarchy, the masses joined the army to defend the revolution. This time they fought not for the king but for the country a great change in history. They marched to the war f`ront singing the marseillaise, the revolutionary song, to defend their nation against the invading enemies.
    In 1792, when Maximilien de Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety assumed power and changed the whole political and social structure, Rousseau`s philosophy, in which he pleaded for the sovereignty of the people, was implemented. This ended the royal authority and shifted power to the people. These revolutionary changes turned the entire structure of the French society upside down.
    During the reign of terror, which began in 1793, a large number of enemies of the revolution were executed. It is said that the Guillotine was introduced at this stage in order to punish all classes of people in the same manner. Before that, in case of capital punishment the nobles were beheaded, while commoners were hanged and women were strangled. Now, with the introduction of the Guillotine, people belonging to all classes were executed on the basis of`equality.

    Another important step taken by the revolutionary government was to de-Christianise the French society. The church of Notre Dame was stripped of`all religious symbols and declared the church of supreme reason. A new calendar was introduced replacing the Christian one. However, these radical changes were checked when Robespierre was arrested and executed in 1795.

    Although the radical phase of the French revolution ended, it provided an opportunity to Napoleon to establish his dictatorship. However, the role of the newly-empowered masses which had been radicalised during the revolution could not be changed. They played an important role in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The masses had learned to fight against the army; they had become expert in barricading the streets and put up resistance against the movement of the armed forces. When France was defeated by Germany in 1870, the people captured the city and the commune of Paris controlled its affairs; however, the army used brutal force; the ensuing mass slaughter wiped out any resistance against the government.

    Since the French revolution, the masses have continued to play an important role in changing the political system. In Asia and Africa they struggled against colonialism and fought for freedom. In recent history, there are a number of examples when the masses came out on the streets against dictators and supported those political parties who were struggling for democracy.

    The contribution of the masses is undeniable in establishing a democratic system based on fundamental rights and justice. Although they have been harassed, tortured and killed by law enforcing agencies, their spirit of resistance could not be crushed.

    In Eastern Europe, the masses have suceceded in bringing about peaceful revolutions in their countries, while in the Middle East they protested to change the military-dominated governments. However, the outcome was not the establishment of democracy but the setting up of dietatorial government as in the case of Egypt.

    In Pakistan, although the masses often protest against the government and demand for basic needs such as gas, electricity, employment and security. But since they are not organised, their protest is crushed by the police and they are sent back to their homes. They are not successful because they are not united in their efforts and have no support from the elite leadership of political parties. In this case, it is a waste of` their energy which would weaken their inspiration and hope to transform the society. The dream of achieving true sovereignty of the people is still a far away one in our country. 
             
    by Mubarak Ali, Dawn.com


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