Friday, October 21, 2011

The Council Has Spoken!! This Week's Watchers Council Results


The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week, carved eternally in the akashic records of cyberspace.

Many of this week's Council entries focused on the OWS protests. This week's winner, Joshuapundit for Egypt Moves Towards The Abyss took at look at the current state of affairs in the place many of the OWS protesters look to as an inspiration for their current tactics, and how those developments look to be playing out for Egypt,the region and ultimately for America. Here's a slice:

The recent bloody clashes and unrest in Egypt is merely a foretaste of what could easily occur next month, when elections are supposed to be held.

The latest violence, between Egypt's Christian Copts and the army, involved a protest over a whole series of church burnings and killings at the hands of Muslims and ended with the army driving armored vehicles at top speed into the crowd and crushing people to death. It left 26 dead and over 200 wounded.

The Copts, who comprise about 10% of Egypt's 80 million population mostly supported the ouster of Mubarak. They're one of the earliest groups who are likely destined to be very disappointed at the way the 'Arab Spring' turns out in Egypt.

One of my notorious Little Birdies on the ground who ought to know tells me that if elections were held today, there's absolutely no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood would win a majority in both the Majilis Al-Sha’ab ( "People's Assembly") and the Majilis Al-Shura, the lower and upper houses in what passes for Egypt's parliament.They have proven far better organized than the group we'll refer to as the Twitter Liberals and are in position to dominate the next Egyptian government provided elections are held as scheduled.

Mubarak's National Democratic Party(NDP) controlled the last national assembly. While it no longer exists, its members are active among a few newly formed secular parties whose agenda is to band together to block the Muslim Brotherhood from establishing a religious state.

In response the Muslim Brotherhood upped the ante by giving the military leaders now ruling Egypt an ultimatum - that they expect former NDP members of Parliament to be banned from participating in the upcoming elections.

As in most Muslim countries, Egypt's Army is one of the few parts of society that actually functions. It's an entity unto itself that owns about one third of Egypt's economy, and supports a number of wealthy businessmen with Army connections. At present, the Egyptian Army rules Egypt through the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

The big question for the Army is whether to continue to assume its normal role in Egypt as guardian of the status quo or to stand aside and allow the ascension of an Islamist government, which would entail the loss of a number of its current privileges.

That's the choice the Egyptian Army is going to have to make fairly soon, and by all accounts there's a deep division within the military on which way to go.

Even worse, whatever choice they actually make is going to lead to more outbreaks of violence and instability, the last thing Egypt needs right now.


In our non-Council category, the winner was Dana Loesch's superb piece in Big Government, Journolist 2.0: Occupy Wall Street Emails Show MSM, Dylan Ratigan, Working With Protesters To Craft Message submitted by Bookworm Room. It examines in detail how Jornolist, the now not-so-clandestine organization of left wing journolists who supposedly report the news in a neutral fashion collaborate to promote talking points and a narrative in ways that suit their agenda and that of the Obama Administration.

The last time this surfaced, we saw how the Journolistas plotted to destroy then GOP Vice Presidential nominee Governor Sarah Palin while burying stories like the Reverend Wright revelations that reflected badly on candidate Barack Obama. This time,their working together to craft a narrative sympathetic to the OWS protesters.

Here are this week’s full results. Only New Zeal was unable to vote this week, but was not affected by the mandatory 2/3 vote penalty :

Council Winners



Non-Council Winners



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