Video - Egyptian Judge Waleed Sharabi: "The Presidency Must Be Protected Even If It Means Shedding Blood."

Egyptian Judge Waleed Sharabi: "The Presidency Must Be Protected Even If It Means Shedding Blood." Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian judge Waleed Sharabi, which aired on Mehwar TV via the Internet on December 5, 2012.

Waleed Sharabi: If I were the president, I would have to protect the institution of the presidency with all my power – not in order to protect my position, but in order to defend the state, which protects us all.
Interviewer: Using all available means?

Waleed Sharabi: Yes, using all available means, regardless of the cost.

Interviewer: Even if it means beating up demonstrators?

Waleed Sharabi: Even if it means shedding blood. We must defend the dignity of the state.

Interviewer: Your honor, I am not with you on that, because I believe that the blood of the Egyptians is more precious than the institution of the presidency.

Source: Memri.

Egypt F-16 fighter jets fly low over Cairo amid calls for protest......Obama plays Golf.

Egypt F-16 fighter jets fly low over Cairo amid calls for protest.......Obama plays Golf.(AA).Egyptian F-16 fighter jets made low passes over the center of Cairo on Sunday in a rare maneuver by the air force over the capital amid high political tension, AFP news agency reported.
At the end of October, jets made similar passes as part of a surprise military exercise.
On Saturday, the army released a statement on political unrest that has killed seven people in the capital, urging supporters and opponents of Islamist President Mohammed Mursi to open talks to stop Egypt descending “into a dark tunnel with disastrous results”.
“That is something we will not allow,” it said.
The Egyptian opposition considered Sunday whether to maintain mass protests against Mursi after the Islamist leader announced a key concession in the political crisis dividing the country.
A Mursi aide said the president had agreed “from this moment” to give up expanded powers he assumed last month that gave him immunity from judicial oversight.
However, in a meeting with other political figures on Saturday, Mursi said he would still press ahead with a Dec. 15 referendum on a controversial new constitution drafted by a panel dominated by his Islamist allies.
Calls for protests started late on Saturday from opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, shortly after the president’s decision to annul a controversial decree.
“We call on Egyptian youth to hold peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins in all of Egypt’s squares until our demands are met,” the National Salvation Front said, in a statement read to media by one of its leaders, Mohamed Abu al-Ghar.
“The will of the people is turning toward a general strike,” Abu al-Ghar added.
The Front’s statement called on Mursi to disband organized militias, to investigate clashes between rival camps that left seven dead and hundreds injured in Cairo on Wednesday and to denounce violence between protester camps.
It reiterated its two core demands that Mursi annul a Nov. 22 decree putting himself beyond judicial review and that he cancel a Dec. 15 referendum on the new constitution.
The Front said it “maintains its offer for serious and objective dialogue” conditioned on those demands.
The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, said it will organize human chains on Sunday to back up the dialogue’s results in front of its main headquarters in Mokattam, Cairo, according to Al Arabiya.
The protest calls follow Mursi’s decision on Saturday to annul a constitutional declaration he issued last month expanding his powers and that puts his decisions beyond judicial review.
However, the effects of that declaration would stand and a referendum on a draft constitution would still go ahead as planned on Dec.15, said Islamist politician Selim al-Awa.
“The constitutional decree is annulled from this moment,” al-Awa said, as he relayed the substance of a meeting between Mursi and political leaders.
The president was legally bound under the constitution to maintain that date and had no choice, al-Awa explained.Hmmmm....Anyone still believing that Obama cares about the Copts or the Egyptian moderates?Read the full story here.

An unusually warm Washington fall has allowed Obama to golf right up to his Hawaii vacation scheduled for later this month, when he will play constantly.

And we’re keeping score. Since Election Day:

Obama Golf Outings: 4

Meetings with Boehner about the Fiscal Cliff: 1

It’s Obama’s 108th time golfing as president and his 16th time of 2012.HT: WhiteHouseDossier.

Muslim Brotherhood “Machinations”, Or Vox Populi?

Muslim Brotherhood “Machinations”, Or Vox Populi?(AT). Andrew G. Bostom.Vote Compass is an interactive electoral literacy application, originally founded by Clifton van der Linden at the University of Toronto and subsequently applied internationally by political scientists, including within Egypt.

Dutch Political Scientist André Krouwel, working with an academic team of Egyptian political scientists at Vote Compass Egypt, was interviewed for a story published today (12/8/12) in the Vancouver Sun (hat tip Diana West) about data on Egyptian attitudes toward the draft constitution. Despite Egypt’s ongoing political crisis, including violent clashes precipitated by President Morsi’s assertion of executive powers to break the 6-month deadlock which had stalled Egypt’s constitutional draft and referendum process, Krouwel (ostensibly speaking for his Vote Compass Egypt team) acknowledges,

About 70 per cent of the population will vote in favor of the constitution.

This overwhelming support for the draft constitution was registered despite the fact that as my colleague Andrew McCarthy reaffirms today (12/8/12), the charter effectively, “denies freedom of conscience,” and “denies freedom of expression.”

Dating back to within a few days of their publication in April, 2007, I have repeatedly highlighted data from Egypt indicating that 74% of Egyptians favored “strict” application of the Sharia in general. 

As recently as December 2010, Pew polling data revealed that 84% of Egyptian Muslims rejected freedom of conscience in the most ugly terms claiming apostates should be killed (i.e., that percentage would likely be well over 90% if less draconian punishments, such as imprisonment and beating till recantation were queried), 82% favor stoning adulterers to death, and 77% approved of mutilating punishments for theft. 

Moreover, just last week when seven expatriate Copts and Terry Jones were condemned to death for “blasphemy” not a single high profile Egyptian “liberal” or “non-Islamist,” or “authentic moderate reformer” — whatever moniker one wishes to use for such individuals — has forcefully and unequivocally condemned this heinous verdict in the Egyptian public square.

None of this bedrock, totalitarian, liberty-crushing mass Islamic mindset can be blamed on the behind the scenes “machinations of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)”; it is merely a reflection of Islamic beliefs and mores the MB openly shares with the mass of Egyptians, and has shared since the undercurrent of public longings in the 1920s first lead to the MB’s flowering.

Islamologist James Heyworth-Dunne’s observations, published shortly after his death in 1949, made clear that “…should the ikhwan [Brotherhood] acquire power,” it would impose the orthodox Islamic, Sharia-based restrictions advocated by founder Hasan al-Banna (i.e., such as the compulsory veiling of women; closing “un-Islamic” newspapers and periodicals, and making impossible the purchase of English and French novels; closing bars, restaurants, and cabarets, while forbidding the sale or consumption of alcohol and scourging anyone found consuming alcoholic beverages). However, Heyworth-Dunne added that these restrictions merely represented a “…return to their Islamic customs which, in fact prevailed only 25 years ago.” Thus Heyworth-Dunne (writing prior to 1950) confirms that before 1925 (or earlier, i.e., “25 years ago”) — antedating by at least three years the advent of the MB — their “version” of Sharia and its mores represented in fact a recent, previously longstanding status quo.Hmmmm.........Welcome to A.D. 630?Read the full story here.