Checking out the screenshots of voters speaking their minds on their paper ballots, I really, really, really miss paper ballots!
Write-in’s are so limited on computer voting machines….
Egyptians had two choices somewhat close to the extremes of the politiy’s views.
We in the USA will have two peas in a Corporatist pod to choose from.
Which is worse? Discuss, compare and contrast. (Heh.)

Posted by: jawbone | Jun 17 2012 17:40 utc | 3

Yeah, and by the way, you wonder who is going to win this election in the US? It’s Obama, I guarantee it.

Posted by: Alexander | Jun 17 2012 17:52 utc | 5

And muslim brotherhood thought US and Saudi will give them power if they promised to play nice

Posted by: nikon | Jun 18 2012 0:26 utc | 7

Here’s a marvellous example of the sort of “journalism” that makes The Guardian irrelevant.
Who it was written by is unknown but Jason Burke lends his by-line to this classic farago of Mossad tips and CIA lies with a strong dose of Anglo-Indian nonsense mixed in with them:
“A multinational investigation into bomb plots targeting Israeli diplomats earlier this year has produced the clearest evidence yet that Iran was involved, illustrating the risks to the west if it fails to reach detente with Tehran over its nuclear weapons programme.
Talks on Iran’s nuclear aspirations resume in Moscow on Monday, and western intelligence officials have told the Guardian the price of failure could be high. With Israel refusing to rule out military action if diplomacy fails, intelligence officials fear the volley of attacks carried out by Iranian operatives show Tehran is capable of an asymmetric response. Though the officials admit that predictions are extremely difficult to make, their concerns are based on investigations into plots against Israeli diplomats in India, Thailand and Georgia in February which point to the involvement of Iran.
In India, local agencies told ministers a bomb attack which badly injured the wife of the Israeli military attaché in New Delhi in February was the work of an Iranian “security entity”. Their conclusions have not previously been made public and Indian officials have made significant efforts to avoid blaming Tehran, an ally and oil supplier.
The governments of Georgia and Thailand, which both uncovered bomb plots on the day of the Delhi attack, have also not officially blamed Iran….(it goes on. And The Guardian which is itching for another Iraq in Iran gives it top billing.

Posted by: bevin | Jun 18 2012 0:33 utc | 9

“Egypt’s ruling military has issued a declaration granting itself sweeping powers, as the country awaits results of presidential elections.”
“It has issued amendments to last year’s Constitutional Declaration that will limit the powers of the next president and boost the role of the armed forces.
It will also have a strong influence over the writing of Egypt’s new constitution.”
“Postpones new parliamentary elections until new constitution is approved”
Egypt’s military grants itself sweeping powers

Posted by: Rod | Jun 18 2012 8:24 utc | 11

A Muslim brotherhood win in Egypt will in no way cause the Egyptian Military any discomfort.
The Egyptian Military takes it’s orders from elsewhere.
A Muslim brotherhood win is good for the US and good for Israel
Israel is already gearing up for the attack on the Sinai, an attack they will win as the bought and paid for Egyptian army (with US taxpayers dollars) will fall.
http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.ca/2012/06/israel-to-attack-egypt-and-broader.html
Many will die, to be sure.
NATO can’t wait…

Posted by: Penny | Jun 18 2012 15:32 utc | 13

Someone from the Shafik campaign announced the result as 52% Morsi, 51.5% Shafiq
Not that it really matters: The head of council advising SCAF says ‘new president is a transitional one for few months only’
They make the rules up as they go.
Some thoughts by Egyptian revolutionary blogger and activist Sandmonkey: Chapter’s end!

I have resolved, many months ago, that this revolution is continuing with or without me, and that the clash with the state and the MB is inevitable and coming, and that it won’t stop anytime soon, mainly because the problems that sparked it are real, and no one has attempted to fix them, and they are getting worse by the minute. Whether we like it or not, whether we live to see it or not, this fight will continue. Many people keep saying that there is no turning back, without actually understanding what that means. Well, it means that there is no exit strategy for this mess, no quick fix solution, and no way out without serious compromises by all parties, which will not happen without political or real clashes, and won’t stop until equilibrium is reached. For better or worse, what we had before won’t happen again. This ship has sailed. Understand what that means, and make your choices accordingly, but know this: Fight or Flight, there is no going back. The next Chapter begins now.

Posted by: b | Jun 18 2012 16:57 utc | 15

Penny, I think Israeli placement of tanks in the demilitarized zone, in violation if camp David, is likely a warning to to the scaf that they had better get the rable back in line.
That said, they are a very expansionist power and would love to steal Sinai again.

Posted by: lysander | Jun 18 2012 18:28 utc | 17

Penny, I’m not saying you are wrong. That May be what will happen. But it almost seems coordinated with scaf’s dismissal of parliament and revising the constitution.
I’m not sure Mubarak and his ilk were acting solely for bribes. There was likely a threat involved as well. Scaf May feel they are acting to avoid an Israeli attack. It is the logic placed on the Palestinian authority: it’s their job to make sure Palestinians cause no harm to Israel.
I don’t discount an Israeli attack. But it if they did it now they would be dispensing with any pretense that Egypt started it.
They are usually keen to do that, but they have grown bolder in recent years.

Posted by: lysander | Jun 18 2012 19:09 utc | 19

I don’t remember hitting Post, and I was just going to edit, to say:
imminent declaration of state of civil war in Syria.

Posted by: jawbone | Jun 18 2012 20:34 utc | 21

Egypt MPs to convene in Tahrir Square if parliament’s doors remain shut:

Members of Egypt’s dissolved Islamist-led parliament on Monday threatened to convene in Cairo’s Tahrir Square if they were barred from entering the parliament building.
Members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and the Salafist Nour Party, along with several independent MPs, have vowed to hold a sit-in in the flashpoint square to express their rejection of the “counter-revolution,” which, they say, “has been exposed by recent moves by Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).”

Is anybody else reminded of the Tennis Court Oath [Serment du jeu de paume]?

Posted by: lysias | Jun 18 2012 22:51 utc | 23

re 15
Someone from the Shafik campaign announced the result as 52% Morsi, 51.5% Shafiq
Actually that was a mistake by a Western journalist; what the Shafiq campaign man said was that Shafiq was winning by between 51.5 and 52%.
Shows you still read the Guardian, b.

Posted by: alexno | Jun 19 2012 6:11 utc | 25

Alexno, I’m also still reading the Guardian. It has always been a good source about what Israel has been doing to the Paletinians and now about what is appearing as a failed revolution in Egypt. From last Sunday:
‘Down with the next Egyptian president’
Whoever is declared the next president of Egypt will not be the person most Egyptians want
Ahdaf Soueif
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 17 June 2012
The man who will be declared president of Egypt shortly will not be the president Egyptians want. We are a nation of 85 million. Fifty million of us have a vote. How many will have voted for this president?
… Unsurprisingly, when the time came for parliamentary elections, the electorate, feeling tricked and wrong-footed, reduced its participation to about 50%. And now, clearly, the disillusionment with the mechanics of democracy under Scaf continues. This will be Scaf’s proudest achievement: that it has disabused the country of any notion that the machinery of the existing state will deliver the system the majority long for.
The spectacle that we have in Egypt right now is everything that the people rejected in January last year. What Ahmad Shafiq and the generals bring is the Not Revolution.
… Right now, it seems that the coalition of the military, the power-brokers of the old regime and their foreign friends think they’ve won the battle for Egypt. They talk of the nonsense of the revolution being over – the interior ministry says that once the president is declared it will not tolerate protests, and stands ready to deal with them. But a tweet at 11.30pm last Thursday said: “Intermission for the elections, then we continue the revolution.”
The revolution will continue because neither the old regime nor the Islamist trend in its current form are going to deliver “bread, freedom, social justice”. Neither of them are going to validate the sacrifices made by the 1,200 young people murdered by the regime, the 8,000 maimed, the 16,000 court-martialled. As the weekend’s spectacle unfolds, thousand of young men are in military jails, many of them on hunger strike.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/17/down-with-next-egypt-president

Posted by: www | Jun 19 2012 7:31 utc | 27

much less that the imperialists micromanage every step
Indeed, I believe the 0.1%, Bilderberger elite has lost it’s grip, they can’t possibly manage to keep control of a world in chaos, and various springs, which even if they are part instigationg these revolts, they can’t ever hope to manage down to detail how they develop.

Posted by: Alexander | Jun 19 2012 11:10 utc | 29

A regional war, or worse, could be touched off by escalating troop movements. But when they make their move, the Israelis are certainly counting on coordination with US. I’m afraid the aggression is unfolding as planned. The commitment to escalate is built in, no doubt, as far as the military planners of this fiasco are concerned.
I can’t help thinking of Barbara Tuchman’s history of 1914, “The Guns of August”.

Posted by: Copeland | Jun 19 2012 12:15 utc | 31

It is a mistake to consider these mind games as being anything other than mind games.
I’m reckoning that Morsi will be declared the winner. If that had happened without any apparent resistance from the military (whose budget is huge, much larger than the coupla billion amerika tosses into the pot), egyptians would know they had been tricked. many already do sure, but that is like saying a few dems understand the true extent of oblamblam’s sellout – most dems will still vote for that prick- similarly in Egypt if Morsi gets to be president after yet another seemingly failed attempt by the military to stymy the people’s will; that will seem to give Morsi the imprimateur of legitimacy. And it will certainly re-legitimse the ‘arab spring’ amongst the masses in those nations whose governments are planning yet another armed colonisation of an ME nation in the name of ‘freedom’.
The local cia agent of influence was on tv here this morning telling us that amerika was ‘talking sternly to scaf to get them to back down’.
As for the israelis, if they have stationed more than they are permitted to under camp david, this is just more schoolyard bullyboy tactics designed to force a confrontation with a newly elected Morsi. Morsi will be forced to ask them to withdraw which will then reinforce the zionist meme of the poor little jews being surrounded by nazi killers among their legions of deluded supporters.
I cannot see israel easily defeating Egypt if it came down to yer actual shooting n bombing war. Even if they won the idf would be in no state to threaten iran for quite a few years.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 19 2012 22:26 utc | 33

Lysander, that’s really the crux of it. If we think this through and Israel does invade the Sinai it wouldn’t matter who was in power, that would mean war with Egypt and if you are correct the weapons amerika has sold Egypt did fail, well that would destroy not only Israel’s alliances in the ME (overt and nudge, nudge wink wink ones) a failure of US arms and equipment would spell the end of the US’s standing in the region plus be the final nail into amerika’s economy.
I know amerikans are sold on the notion that these arms n munitions are all ‘given’ as some sort of aid package, but the reality is the tab is picked up by Saudi, Kuwait, and even Iraq supplying oil which amerika pays for by bartering armaments in lieu of cash.
The whole point of those countries buying alla that expensive shit which most never plan on using is to create an illusion of invincibility That means a massive fail of amerikan technology in Egypt would seriously threaten the stability of all the countries signed up for them. Not just in the ME either.
Even if the Saudi princes had previously been read into the scam, they wouldn’t have any choice but to ditch amerika as arms supplier. Then a newly resurgent Russia who is just getting into the swing of supplying those ME nations who aren’t in amerika’s back pocket with guns n aircraft would fly straight into Cairo and Riyadh with their order books open.
As you said yerself the whole delicately constructed sectarian conflict house of cards would fall by the wayside throughout the ME if the zionists tried to annex Sinai.
Sure israel’s leaders are swimming in hubris and it will be just such a stupidity that eventually brings the zionists undone, but amerika still has a few realists in positions of power who would pull the pin on an invasion if it looked set to happen.
It will take another decade or so of amerikan insolvency when they simply no longer have any cards to play anywhere, before israel will get away with attempting something this asinine.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 20 2012 7:39 utc | 35

Hey Lysander:
and it ties nicely in to what you are saying about Egyptian military equipment
Here it is
“Hamas sources said the Islamic military has acquired the Stinger man-portable air defense system. The sources said the Stingers were acquired from smugglers in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in 2008 and deployed in the 22-day war against Israel in January 2009.
“We were disappointed by them, and they were found to have been useless,” a Hamas source said.
The source said Hamas smuggled four Stinger systems in 2008. The source said the Hamas military deployed the Stingers against Israel Air Force AH-64 Apache attack helicopters during strike missions in the northern Gaza Strip.
“Our gunners couldn’t fire the weapon,” the source recalled. “A notice came up on the display saying ‘friendly aircraft.'”

Posted by: Penny | Jun 20 2012 12:50 utc | 37

Great info guys, with US software in much of the military hardware, they would be useful only as long as the US wants it to. A point to consider when the gov in my country are getting some JSF airplanes.

Posted by: Alexander | Jun 20 2012 13:21 utc | 39

Penny, Gadaffi’s stock of shoulder-fired missiles that disappeared after NATO’s victory has supposedly made its way to Hamas and Hezbollah. Those heat-seeking missiles are Russian made.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/looters-steal-gadhafis-weapons-including-surface-air-missiles/story?id=14475569

Posted by: www | Jun 20 2012 16:02 utc | 41

btw www:
your linked article does nothing to bolster your assertion.
NO Hezbollah or Hamas mentioned anywhere. Though it does reinforce what I had said..
‘Defeated in battle, Moammar Gadhafi’s army left behind armories brimming with weapons, and the rebels have helped themselves.”
And we know the rebels, many of them, made there way to Syria
And we know a ship was stopped in Lebanon brimming with arms from Libya.

Posted by: Penny | Jun 20 2012 16:14 utc | 43

Those JSF planes are lumpy pieces of shit that can only be kept in the air with some intensive cycle-intensive software, and I suspect the Pentagon can anytime send an encrypted packet to the planes computer and make it go down anytime they want. I wouldn’t trust that piece of shit with my luggage.

Posted by: Alexander | Jun 20 2012 16:40 utc | 45

>>> Norway are buying somewhere around 40 – 50 American Joint Strike Fighters>>>
As I said, your country has no enemies and the few F16s it has are more than adequate for American ordered pounding missions on defenseless countries; the over 600 bombs it dropped over Libya must have killed a few civilians and the F35, had it been around, wouldn’t have killed them in any nicer way. NATO is still around to help with those defense contracts. If you think Norway’s got s problem with the JSF purchase, you should read about the scandal it created in Canada. At a current unit price of about $300 million, it’s a piece of garbage:
From a couple of months back
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/26/the_jet_that_ate_the_pentagon?page=0,0
From a couple of days back
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/18/flight_blindness

Posted by: www | Jun 21 2012 5:25 utc | 47

>>> Nasser had them pegged back in the 60’s >>>
Lysander #38, it went way back to 1919 when they offered to give Palestine away but the deal fell through because it went against British plans for the area.
http://www.mideastweb.org/feisweiz.htm

Posted by: www | Jun 21 2012 6:12 utc | 49

@ Penny I can’t really discern if our disgreement is substantive or merely semantic. But I stand by what I said. It suits the egyptian military leaders to buy subsidised arms from amerika at the moment for a range of reasons, that is why they do it.
The moment it no longer suits those military leaders they will stop doing it. amerika blatantly siding with israel in a war caused by israel invading egyptian territory would cause the egyptian ‘generals’ to decide that the ‘deal’ wasn’t worth it.
Sure the seppos probably have a few members of egyptian general staff who are 100% bought and paid for, but they don’t own em all and those who continued to kiss a hand which publicly assisted in deaths of egyptian airmen fighting for their country, would have to resign or be ‘sadated’.
This isn’t new or restricted to egyptian generals – since roman times or hell, even since the days of the egyptian empire, dominant empires have over-estimated the cupidity of foreign soldiers who they believe they have ‘bought’. amerika made this mistake in Vietnam and Iraq when they imagined their puppet generals would do as they were told, and they pushed those soldiers into situations where the soldiers couldn’t avoid confronting the reality of their treason.
In both those cases that ignorant & greedy amerikan self-delusion caused amerika to lose, and lose big.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 23 2012 1:59 utc | 51