Egypt: Another free and fair election to keep Al Sisi in power

By Dr. Ashraf Ramelah Bio and Archives December 10, 2023

Al Sisi’s first promise to the Egyptian people was his declaration to remain in military uniform and never run for president. He broke his promise then to only become what former President Trump affectionately called, “my favorite dictator". On October 2, President Al Sisi announced his intention to run for his third term. When he first came into office in 2014, he faced one four-year term with a two-term limit. According to the Egyptian constitution, he could hold office for a total of eight years. After Egypt’s nearly sixty-year history with just three Egyptian presidents and only one election (referendum), the 2014 term limits were hopeful in reducing longevity for any president holding office............To Read More.... 

My Take - This is Islam.  When the civilized world spent trillions of dollars and the blood of their young men in Middle East wars and won instituting a one man, one vote system, these nations ended up voting in dictators who made it one man, one vote, one time.  That's Islam, and we really need to be abjectly clear on this one incontrovertible fact.   The thinking and values of Western civilization is totally alien to Islam and the foundational social paradigms Islam creates.  

That's history, and that history is incontestable.  Get over it. 

Can Anyone Give An Example Of A Muslim Country Treating Members Of Another Religion Appropriately?

November 06, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

On and after October 7 the world has been treated to images of Hamas terrorists engaging in the most horrific acts against Israeli civilians, including even elderly people and babies. Surely all civilized people would react to these crimes with revulsion and outrage? To the contrary, the last several weeks have seen massive pro-Hamas demonstrations around the world, including on campuses of elite universities and in major cities like London, Paris, Washington, D.C., and New York.

Rationales that I have seen to justify Hamas’s conduct have included that Israel is supposedly an “apartheid state,” that Israel engages in “genocide,” and that the Israelis are “settler colonialists.” In each case the words used as accusations against Israel are completely detached from their usual meaning, or indeed from any meaning. Certainly, much that Israel has done over the years could be subject to fair criticism. But “apartheid”? “Genocide”? Ridiculous. “Settler colonialism”? I have no idea what that even means.

Here in the U.S. we have a well-established constitutional order of freedom of religion. People practice dozens of different religions, and members of one religion, and also the government, do not prevent or restrict the practice of other religions by other people. That was not an easy order to establish, but we have established it (at least for now), and it enables people who have come from all over the world and from many different religions to live among each other in peace.

The Muslim countries have no such principles. As far as I can determine, the record of Muslim countries with regard to treatment of members of other religions is universally abysmal, in every case far worse than anything Israel can possibly be accused of. Yet somehow in the torrent of criticism of Israel for “apartheid” or “genocide,” this subject never comes up.

So I thought it would be useful to put together a small round-up of treatment of members of minority religions in Muslim countries. I will focus on the countries of North Africa, and on their treatment of their Jewish populations, because that information is particularly relevant to the situation involving Israel today. The North African countries once had substantial and thriving Jewish communities, none of which exist any more. Nor was the abysmal treatment by the Muslims limited to Jews. Similar (if perhaps not quite as bad) treatment has befallen members of other religions like Christians or Baha’is by Muslims both in North Africa and also in places like Pakistan or Iran or Nigeria.

Libya

The website Jewish Virtual Library has a series of pages on the status of “Jews in Islamic Countries.” Here is their page for Libya, updated to 2023. For starters, the number of Jews in Libya is given as 38,000 in 1948. Today the number is 0. How did that come about?

A savage pogrom in Tripoli on November 5, 1945, killed more than 140 Jews and wounded hundreds more. Almost every synagogue was looted. On June 12, 1948, rioters murdered another 12 Jews and destroyed 280 Jewish homes. Thousands of Jews fled the country after Libya was granted independence and membership in the Arab League in 1951. . . . When Muammar Gaddafi came to power in 1969, all Jewish property was confiscated, and all debts to Jews were canceled.

It goes on from there. In short, the Jews were forced out down to the last person by absolutely despicable treatment.

The U.S. State Department has a country-by-country report on religious freedom. Here is their page for Libya, updated to 2021. A few excerpts:

[T]he circulation of non-Islamic religious materials, missionary activity, or speech considered “offensive to Muslims” is banned.  The criminal code effectively prohibits conversion from Islam, according to scholars and human rights advocates. . . . Human rights activists said freedom of conscience for converts to Christianity, atheists, and Muslims who deviated from Salafist interpretations of Islam was not respected.

Algeria

Population numbers from Jewish Virtual Library: 1948 - 140,000; 2020 - fewer than 200. Excerpt:

In 1955, there were 140,000 Jews in Algeria. After being granted independence in 1962, the Algerian government harassed the Jewish community and deprived Jews of their economic rights. As a result, almost 130,000 Algerian Jews immigrated to France. Since 1948, 25,681 Algerian Jews have immigrated to Israel.

And here are a few tidbits from the State Department’s religious freedom page on Algeria, updated to 2022. Ill treatment of minority religions extends not only to Jews and Christians, but also even to branches of Islam other than the dominant Sunni branch:

Christian leaders and congregants stated that non-Muslims faced social pressure for practicing a non-Muslim faith. Some individuals who engaged in religious practice other than Sunni Islam reported they had experienced threats and intolerance. Some local media outlets occasionally criticized Ahmadi Islam and Shia Islam as “sects” or “deviations” from Islam or as “foreign” and demonstrated a bias against these groups. . . . 

The law does not prohibit religious conversion, including from Islam, but proselytizing to Muslims by non-Muslims is a criminal offense. . . . The law criminalizes blasphemy. The penal code provides punishment of three to five years in prison and/or a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 dinars ($366-$733) for offending the Prophet Muhammad or other messengers of God or disparaging the dogma or precepts of Islam.

Egypt

It’s the same story of complete eviction during the 1950s and 60s of a once-thriving Jewish community. From the Jewish Virtual Library Egypt page, updated to 2020: number of Jews in 1948 - 75,000; 2020 - fewer than 10. Excerpt as to how that came about:

In 1956, the Egyptian government used the Sinai Campaign as a pretext for expelling almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and confiscating their property. Approximately 1,000 more Jews were sent to prisons and detention camps. On November 23, 1956, a proclamation signed by the Minister of Religious Affairs, and read aloud in mosques throughout Egypt, declared that “all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state,” and promised that they would be soon expelled. Thousands of Jews were ordered to leave the country. 

They were allowed to take only one suitcase and a small sum of cash and forced to sign declarations “donating” their property to the Egyptian government. Foreign observers reported that members of Jewish families were taken hostage, apparently to insure that those forced to leave did not speak out against the Egyptian government.

In more recent years Egypt has reached an accommodation with Israel, and the two countries have even exchanged ambassadors. However, the Jewish community has been completely eliminated, so there are no Jews left to persecute. As to treatment of other minority religions in Egypt, the State Department Egypt religious freedom page paints a relatively bright picture of at least the formal legal framework. But that may well not reflect conditions on the ground. Here is a summary from something called For the Martyrs (a site that collects information on persecution of Christians around the world). Excerpt:

[T]he Egyptian constitution . . . establishes Islam as the official state religion. . . . Christians are barred from holding jobs and prominent positions in Egyptian academia, which often require their faculty to study the Quran or adhere to tenants of Islam. . . . 

Within society, apostasy from Islam is not tolerated. . . . Human rights activist and Coptic Christian, Ramy Kamel has been in prison since 2019. Kamel has defended the rights of Coptic Christians in Egypt by documenting attacks on Christian churches by Islamic extremists. . . .

Syria

For one example from outside North Africa, consider Israel’s neighbor to the northeast, Syria. They also have a page at Jewish Virtual Library, updated to 2022. Here are the numbers: Jewish population in 1948 - 40,000; in 2022 - 4. In some respects the history of how that came about in Syria is even worse than the story of the North African countries, because Syria actually prohibited the Jews from leaving even as it treated them abominably:

In 1944, after Syria gained independence from France, the new government prohibited Jewish immigration to Palestine, and severely restricted the teaching of Hebrew in Jewish schools. Attacks against Jews escalated, and boycotts were called against their businesses. When partition was declared in 1947, Arab mobs in Aleppo devastated the 2,500-year-old Jewish community. Scores of Jews were killed and more than 200 homes, shops, and synagogues were destroyed. Thousands of Jews illegally fled Syria to go to Israel. Shortly after, the Syrian government intensified its persecution of the Jewish population. Freedom of movement was severely restricted. Jews who attempted to flee faced either the death penalty or imprisonment at hard labor. Jews were not allowed to work for the government or banks, could not acquire telephones or driver's licenses, and were barred from buying property. Jewish bank accounts were frozen. An airport road was paved over the Jewish cemetery in Damascus; Jewish schools were closed and handed over to Muslims.

Conclusion

So can anyone give a single example of a Muslim country treating members of minority religious communities in a manner that we would consider appropriate?

I can’t come up with one. Perhaps the most honorable example is Morocco. An ex-partner of mine — a Jew born in Morocco whose family left for France in the 1970s — has only good things to say about current King Mohammed VI and his predecessors, who have been very supportive and protective of the Jewish community. However, even support from the top does not prevent Jews and other religious minorities from being treated like second class citizens, in areas like ownership of property, ability to conduct business (enforcement of contracts), and right to intermarry. The Jewish community in Morocco has shrunk from about 265,000 in 1948 to only about 2,100 in 2019.

 

House Demolitions by Israel and by Egypt

But why such an obsessive interest in only Israel’s demolitions?

June 26, 2023 by Hugh Fitzgerald 4 Comments

When Israel demolishes Palestinian homes illegally built in east Jerusalem, and in Area C of the West Bank, Western reporters are out in force to report on those terrible Israelis who for no apparent reason are tearing down those homes as despairing innocent Palestinians look on, helpless to stop the destruction. No mention is made in their reports of why the Israelis have decided to demolish a particular property......... This is administrative demolition, and it also is carried out against buildings owned by Jews, where they have built without a permit, or violated building safety codes and regulations.  The second kind of demolition is dissuasive............ the IDF demolishes the family homes of terrorists.............

But [in Egypt] when far greater numbers of Arab homes are demolished – not the several dozen that Israel demolishes each year, but 20,000 Arab homes, virtually overnight – there is no coverage in the Western media.........Demolitions of thousands of Arab family homes aren’t reported on...............The same interest is not shown when the Egyptian government engages in the massive demolition of homes.............[Nor when the owners aren't properly compensated or compensated at all and] there is reason to believe that these demolitions are often done not for security reasons, but only to enrich the well-connected developers – some with close ties to government officials.........in Egypt............To Read More....

Egypt: 3 Muslims Acquitted of Allegedly Stripping, Beating 70-Year-Old Christian Grandmother

Michael W. Chapman February 10, 2023, Tags: 

Three Egyptian Muslim men charged with stripping and beating a Coptic Christian grandmother in the street because her Christian son courted a Muslim woman, were acquitted by a Cairo court on Jan. 9. Now, the woman, 76-year-old Soad Thabet, may face litigation to compensate the men who reportedly attacked her. Thabet was 70 years old when the attack occurred.........."I tried to hide and suppress what occurred, but I could only take the feelings of humiliation and oppression for four days, at which point I decided to return to the local police station and testify about what happened to me before those who had refused to hear me," said the woman. 

The case went to court and became so sensational that Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, met with Thabet and promised that she would receive justice. Since 2016, the cases has gone back and forth between several courts. The decision on Jan 9, 2023 was by the Court of Cassation, the highest appeals court in Egypt. It upheld a previous acquittal of the three accused men......... "All during these years, Thabet and her family received threats and had to relocate from their village, even as the three guilty Muslim men walked freely, heads held high," reported the Gatestone Institute...... "In fact, the witnesses who initially supported the victim were later 'convinced' to alter their testimony and claim in front of the court that, after all, they were not really sure who assaulted the old woman,"..........."rioting Muslims 'burned down a Christian school, paraded three nuns on the streets like 'prisoners of war,' and sexually abused two other female staff even as at least 58 attacks on Christians and their property were reported across Egypt over the last four days. At least two Christians have died in the attacks.'

In another case, in Pakistan, a pregnant Christian woman was stripped, beaten, and forced to march naked in her village. Two Muslim allegedly committed the crime. 

As reported by Christian Today,  Elishba Bibi, 28, "suffered a miscarriage after she was stripped naked and beaten following an argument with her Muslim superiors. This occurred in Sheikhupura, the same district that Asia Bibi, the woman sentenced to death for blasphemy for allegedly insulting the prophet Mohammed, comes from.".............To Read More......

Everything is About the "Basics"

By Rich Kozlovich

I've stated in the past when trying to understand geopolitics you need to understand three things.  Geographics, demographics and economics.   I need to add one more thing.  You need to pay attention to "the basics". 

When you think of the Middle East and the issues those nations what comes to mind as their most significant problem?  Terrorism, Islamic sectarian conflict, oil, Israel, America, or is it something more basic?   

Geopolitical Futures is a pay to read subscription site, and I think is well worth it. Great writers who stick to "the basics", because the "basics" are what churn events in the world's history, and Hilal Khashan, who I think is brilliant, and an absolute expert on the Middle East,is one of their writers, and he has the answer to that question.  It's Water!

While I'm linking his article, "Water Scarcity in the Arab World, It’s a problem with no solution in sight", you can't see the entire piece without subscribing, so I will cover some highlights.  

Western Asia and North Africa are among the most water scarce areas of the world, with a projected 2050 population of 670 million people.  Both Ethiopia with it's Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Israel's diversion of Jordan River tributaries and Turkey's "siphoning" water from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers represent problems for Middle East nations, and unless it really starts raining, a lot, there's no answer in sight.  

These nations make up about ten percent of the world's land mass, but one percent of the world's water surface runoff and about two percent of the total rainfall, and have no doubt, that impacts their economic potentials, and worse, growing sufficient food for their people.  They're already having to import food, and I want to emphasis the word, "having" to import food.  All of which is becoming more and more costly due to all the economic problems caused by this false pandemic folly. 

Egypt is expecting to see their population to grow to over 175 million by 2050 and gets almost all of it's water from the Nile.  That's a problem since the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be reducing Egypt's share by 20 billion....that's billion....cubic meters.  This has been a bone of contention for some time, throughout the region, so what's the solution? Will Egypt declare war? Egypt invaded Ethiopia twice in the last quarter of the 19th century and were mauled by the Ethiopians, so does it seem likely they'll do it again?  Those were different times, different capabilities, different social and governmental structures, and what happens when things become truly desperate? Desperation obviates caution.

Groundwater is being pumped extensively throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but that's not an easily renewable source.  Oil rich nations can desalinate sea water for their needs, and have done so, but that's not a solution for non-oil producing nations, they can't afford it.  

The problem of incompetent water management doesn't help either, but In the Western Sahara they're having a three year drought, how can that be fixed?  Population control? Or, population control via immigration!  

I think this will become a major impetus for mass migration out of the Middle East and into Europe, and possibly Eastern Asian nations.  The difference is Eastern Asian nations are not going to be readily agreeable to that.  They have their own population issues, and unlike Western nations, aren't going to buy into the diversity is our strength clabber.  That leaves Europe, North America, and potentially South American nations, but South America nations are not going to play this suicidal immigration diversity is our strength horsepucky either.  

At some point Western nations will either end this immigration insanity, or cease to exist.  Then what happens to the people of the Middle East?  That's not our problem, nor is it our responsibility.  Over population is problem, and its their problem!  A problem they export to the nations they migrate to disrupting the stability of those nations. They created this problem with their foundational Islamic societal social paradigms of lots of wives and lots of children, so let them fix it, or not. 

Will they?  They can't, because they won't.  That leaves asking Allah, the "most gracious and most merciful" to make it rain.  A lot. 

President Biden Takes To The World Stage

November 20, 2022 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

Right after the election, President Biden departed Washington on November 10 for a big round of international meetings. First, he went to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, where he spoke on November 11 at the UN “climate” conference known as COP-27. Then it was off to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for meetings on the 12th and 13th with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). And finally, to Bali, Indonesia, for a meeting with Xi Jinping of China on the 14th, followed by a big confab of the G20 on the 15th. Biden arrived back in Washington on the 16th.

In any sane world, the American President would use such a round of meetings to advance American interests, and also to extol, as a model for the world, the freedom-based economic system (often mis-named “capitalism”) that has made the U.S. the world’s wealthiest and most successful country. Indeed, when ex-President Trump traveled the world for meetings like these, some version of those were generally his main themes.

But now, we have a President who is a man of the Left, and it’s the opposite. You can’t help noticing that Biden — like the leftists who set his agenda and write his words — is ashamed of the country he leads and of its economic success. Thus he uses these occasions mainly to apologize and to try to buy forgiveness and atonement for his country’s supposed sins.

First, consider the COP-27 conference in Egypt. Some 35,000 people flew in to attend because, after all, UN bureaucrats and international diplomats are way too important to be subject to any imperative to reduce carbon emissions that may apply to the little people. Most of the attendees at the conference came from the so-called developing world. The representatives from those places, who are not dopes, are completely on to how easy and profitable it can be to shame a lefty fool like Biden, and they were primed to test just how much this sucker could be duped out of.

Somehow, in the short year since the last such conference — COP-26 in Glasgow, Scotland in 2021 — the focus of the mostly-annual UN get-together had shifted dramatically. Last year, all the talk was “Net Zero” — how we are going to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in the economy. Twelve months later, Europe now is facing an energy crisis. Its consumer energy bills are soaring, wind an solar are completely not up to the task of taking up the slack, and its emissions are rising with increased use of coal. Sorry, nobody’s carbon emissions are going down much any time soon. It’s time to memory-hole “Net Zero,” at least for the moment, and move to a new theme of convenience. This year’s theme was “loss and damage” funding.

What’s that about? To give some context, think way back to COP-15, that took place in Copenhagen in 2009. At that conference the rich countries made some vague commitment to provide $100 billion or so per year to developing countries for “climate action.” From the website of the OECD:

At the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of the UNFCCC in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries committed to a collective goal of mobilising USD 100 billion per year by 2020 for climate action in developing countries, in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation. The goal was formalised at COP16 in Cancun, and at COP21 in Paris, it was reiterated and extended to 2025.

That piddling $100 billion per year was supposedly for “mitigation actions” and “transparency in implementation.” In other words, maybe building a fleet of useless wind turbines. But now this year these developing countries have latched on to a much more lucrative idea in this “loss and damage” thing. Now, we are no longer talking just money to build wind turbines, with the reigning kleptocrats getting the opportunity to skim 10% or 20% here and there. No, now we are talking about much bigger money, and all of it going straight to the pockets of the kleptocrats. In the run-up to the conference the UN put out a big Report laying the new number on the table: $2 trillion per year. Euronews.green had a summary on October 11, with the headline “Loss and Damage: Developing countries need $2 trillion a year to cope with climate crisis.” Excerpt:

Developing and emerging countries will need $2 trillion (€1.98 trillion) per year by 2030 to cope with climate breakdown, a new report warns. The money - which covers all of the world’s developing economies except China - would fund a shift to renewable energy and help countries cope with extreme weather. The figure comes from ‘Finance for Climate Action’, a UN-backed report released on Tuesday. . . . Its authors call for ‘immediate action.’

The only right response for a U.S. President was to stay as far away from this shake-down as possible. But of course Biden went. The New York Times had a big article on November 12, headline “Biden Casts America as Climate Leader and Promises a ‘Low-Carbon Future.’” They first report that every likely target but Biden was able to figure out the game and stay home:

Mr. Biden was the only leader of a major polluting country to appear at the climate talks in Egypt. Mr. Xi, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India did not attend. The absence of the other leaders made Mr. Biden even more of a target for developing nations that were aggrieved.

Biden chose to make his speech about a so-called “low carbon future.” Everybody who knows anything about this subject knows that that’s a joke, except to the extent that the U.S. or other advanced countries decide to voluntarily impoverish their populations. The entire developing world, led by China and India, is building coal-fired power plants as fast as they can. But meanwhile, with Biden sticking his chin out so it could get punched, why not take advantage of the opportunity?

Some of the assembled negotiators and environmental activists criticized Mr. Biden ahead of his speech. Protesters briefly interrupted it. “Joe Biden comes to COP27 and makes new promises, but his old promises have not even been fulfilled,” said Mohamed Adow, the founder of Power Shift Africa, an environmental group, after Mr. Biden gave his remarks. “He is like a salesman selling goods with endless small print.”

In private, they surely laughed until they split a gut. And how did it all play out? Biden left the COP-27 conference right after his speech on November 11, but the conference continued until today, November 20, with the U.S. and Europe undoubtedly “represented” by committed members of the climate cult. Of course they fell all over themselves to buy atonement with other people’s money. On the “loss and damage” issue, here is the Times’s article from November 19, headline “In a First, Rich Countries Agree to Pay for Climate Damages in Poor Nations.” Excerpt:

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries concluded two weeks of talks early Sunday in which their main achievement was agreeing to establish a fund that would help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the pollution spewed by wealthy nations that is dangerously heating the planet. The decision regarding payments for climate damage marked a breakthrough on one of the most contentious issues at United Nations climate negotiations.

The details of who pays what when remain to be worked out. All I know is, as soon as anyone actually puts up any part of the annual $2 trillion, the number will immediately go up by another order of magnitude. Hey, it’s all from the infinite pile of free money, so what does it matter?

Of other stops on Biden’s international swing, perhaps the most noteworthy was the meeting with Xi Jinping in Bali on the 14th. Steven Mosher has a summary in today’s New York Post, headline “Biden kowtows to Xi Jinping and lets China get away with murder.”

As Mosher points out, a meeting between Biden and Xi was an opportunity to get on the table any number of a long list of issues important to advancing America’s interests. Mosher mentions Covid, fentanyl, the Uyghurs, Tibet, persecution of Christians, Hong Kong, Taiwan and others. Biden somehow omitted to mention any of them, except a few in passing:

It’s almost like Joe Biden was sitting in the Confucius Institute classroom at Stanford University, where certain topics are forbidden.

So what did Biden bring up? Mosher:

What we got instead was a blast from the past, as Biden reverted to his 2016 talking points. Biden came before Xi as a supplicant, once again begging China to rein in its tributary state, North Korea, and urging it to cooperate with us on the issue of climate change.

On how the “climate” game will play out, Mosher has it exactly right:

As far as the “climate crisis” is concerned, the world’s largest polluter needs little encouragement to play the game. A projected 1 degree rise in the Earth’s temperature over the next century does not keep Xi up at night.  Rather, he’s dreaming about de-industrializing America by encouraging us to shut down energy production and pay for the sin of ever using fossil fuels by shoveling money at the rest of the world. Of course, while America self-destructs, China will continue to bring a coal-fired power plant online every two weeks or so.

The best thing that Biden could do for his country on the world stage would be to stay home and say nothing. Firing the entire State Department also wouldn’t hurt.

 

COP27 — the Camel’s nose of Loss and Damage enters the talks

By David Wojick |October 28th, 2022|Climate|132 Comments @ CFACT

Egypt is camel country so it is appropriate that the long awaited camel’s nose of the great green loss and damage dream should finally appear. We are talking about potentially untold trillions of dollars flowing from developed to developing countries. A breathtaking prospect.

For those who missed it here is my quick summary of UN-speak “loss and damage” from my introductory article:

“Loss and damage is the 9,000 pound gorilla. It means America and the rest of the developed countries will compensate the developing countries for all the bad things climate change does to them. Loss refers to things that cannot be fixed, like death or a destroyed crop, while damage is stuff that can be rebuilt, like a flattened town.

Since all bad weather is now attributed to climate change we would be paying for all of it. I am not making this up. Coverage includes short term events like hurricanes or floods, plus slow stuff like droughts. Non-weather events like pestilence, pandemics and wildfires are probably also included.”

To set the stage here is a recent Bloomberg headline: “US Supports Climate Reparations Talks at UN Summit in Egypt“.

Bloomberg is very green so this is wildly overstated in several important ways, but it gets the gist. First of all, “US” in this case means the Biden Administration, not Congress and certainly not America. Second we are talking about compensation not reparations, at least for now. Reparations would be for past damage, presumably going back to the beginning of the supposed human caused warming and the industrial revolution. Paying for progress.

Moreover, loss and damage has been COP talk for some time now. COP19 in 2013 established the grandly named “Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts“, known simply as the WIM. (But much more than a whim.) Its job was to talk about loss and damage, which talking has happened a lot in the subsequent nine years, with no serious action.

What is new now and very dangerous is the topic of the talk. It is what UN-speak calls a “Facility”. A Facility is a mechanism where developed countries put money in and developing countries take it out. This is called “Finance”.

There are already Facilities for Mitigation (especially reducing emissions) and Adaptation (to climate change). What is now proposed and apparently to be actually negotiated about is a Loss and Damage Facility. If this happens the issue on the table would be whether or not to create such a Facility? The Biden people have agreed to at least talk about it and that is new.

The camel’s nose aspect is that creating this Facility officially certifies that America and the other developed countries are in fact responsible for harmful climate change impacts in developing countries. The developed countries have never unanimously admitted this responsibility and COP decisions must be unanimous.

Even if no money is committed at this time the camel is entering the tent. And as the metaphor suggests, the camel is much bigger then the tent and will destroy it. I have seen estimates of loss and damage over time that exceed the combined GDP of the developed countries. In principle it could bankrupt us.

More realistically, establishing a Loss and Damage Facility immediately raises monster questions like these:

A. What did each developing countries suffer last year from climate change?

B. What is the cost, including lives lost?

C. How much of that are the developed countries going to pay?

Note that there is already a full blown (supposed) science called “attribution” that claims to be able to answer the first question.

So it is not just another whimsical green dream of riches that is on the table at COP27. The ability to officially ask these preposterous questions is up for decision. Such a decision in favor of Loss and Damage could also lead to a great deal of litigation against the developed countries.

Will the developed country teams jointly admit to causing the world’s bad weather? Unimaginable liability looms.

Stay tuned to CFACT.

Author

• David Wojick

  David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see http://www.stemed.info/engineer_tackles_confusion.html For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/ Available for confidential research and consulting.

 

The Horror: No Justice For Coptic Grandmother Assaulted In Egypt

“Stripping an old woman in the street is not a crime because she is a woman and a Christian.”  

Fri Jan 8, 2021 Hugh Fitzgerald  1

A Coptic grandmother in the village of Al-Karm, in the Minya governorate, in Upper Egypt, was stripped naked, and her house burned down, by three Muslims, in 2016. It was certainly an atrocity. And the perpetrators are known; they denied nothing; they were proud of what they had done, teaching the odious Copts a lesson. She and her lawyers have been fighting for justice ever since. But for Copts in Egypt, there is no justice. The Egyptian state, in the form of its judiciary, ultimately acquitted the three Muslims, even though their guilt was never in doubt. The preliminary Jihad Watch report on this appalling case is here, and here is a news report on the fallout from the case: “Coptic Christians in Egypt say they can’t get justice,” Media Line, December 24, 2020:...............

Mere “rumors” of a liaison between a Coptic man a Muslim woman led to a Muslim mob invading a Coptic neighborhood, determined to find the man and, there can be little doubt, kill him. But as he was not at home, as a kind of consolation prize the maddened mob seized his 70-year-old Coptic grandmother, Suad Thabet, pulled her outside to the front of her house, where they stripped her naked. After all, why not? She was a Copt, and the grandmother of the man they sought; she deserved no better. She should be thankful they didn’t beat or kill her.............

Some of the Muslim mob, apparently not satisfied with having humiliated Suad Thabet in a particularly awful way, and having burned down her house, destroying what little she had — and burned down the houses of four other Copts, as well, just for fun — returned to see what further harm they might inflict on her. Fortunately, she was by that point in hiding. .........To Read More...

 

 

Egypt: Christians Ordered to Sell Home and Go into Exile

As “punishment” for a confirmed accident. 

Wed Aug 26, 2020 Raymond Ibrahim

An Egyptian government-appointed village mayor has just ruled that a Christian family must sell its home and leave their village, in what is being described as a strange and unprecedented incident for that village.

This happened during a traditional “reconciliation session.”  In Egypt, local authorities and involved parties of a dispute often meet outside of courtrooms in an effort to resolve matters and restore peace before getting the law involved.

The case revolves around a Christian youth who accidentally hit and killed a Muslim girl with his motorcycle in the narrow streets of the village of Hawarat al-Maqta.  Despite the fact that such accidents are immensely common in the chaotic and near lawless roads of Egypt; despite the fact that even the girl’s father acknowledged that it was an accident and is not accusing the Christian youth; and despite the fact that these sessions are informal and meant to find the most equitable solution before the courts get involved—Mayor Hanni Snofar of Fayum governorate, who was invited to the session, ordered not just the expulsion of the youth, but his entire family, who must sell their home as soon as possible and essentially go in “exile.”

According to the August 15 report (in translation):.............To Read More....

 

Egypt Buries the Brotherhood

December 19, 2013 by Daniel Greenfield

It’s not unusual for the United States and a Muslim country to be on the opposite sides of the War on Terror. It is unusual for a Muslim country to take a stand against terrorism while the United States backs the right of a terrorist group to burn churches, torture opposition members and maintain control of a country with its own nuclear program. But that’s the strange situation in what Egypt’s public prosecutor has declared “the biggest case of conspiracy in the country’s history.” ……These aren’t merely criminal charges. They are accusations of treason.  There are two narratives of the Arab Spring. In one of them, the people rose up against the tyrants. In the other an international conspiracy of Western and Muslim countries collaborated with the Muslim Brotherhood to take over Arab countries…..Read More »

Welcome to Islam - Egypt, 2012: The Year In Fatwas

January 31, 2013 By Raymond Ibrahim Comments (2)

In previous decades in Egypt, the fatwas, or legal decrees issued by learned Muslims and based on Sharia law, revolved around questions like proper prayer, when and where women should wear the hijab, and if smoking was forbidden or permissible.

That was then.

The fatwas issued in the year 2012—the year when Islamists, spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood, assumed formal power—are, as one would expect, markedly different, that is, much less restrained.  The popular Egyptian Arabic website El-Watan News recently compiled a list of 2012’s most “notable” (a euphemism) fatwas.  I translate a summary of their findings below, augmented with additional observations: ...To Read More....  

The Coming Sharia State of Egypt

By Theodore Shoebat 16 Comments November 26, 2012

Egypt has now a modern pharaoh, named Muhammad Morsi, and with him as the sole ruler, the country will ultimately become an official Sharia state. Sharia is already enforced to some degree, but now that the Muslim Brotherhood is expanding its power, it will implement the edicts of its constitution, the Koran, to is fullest capacity.  This is was foreshadowed months ago when counter-revolutionaries were crucified in front of the presidential palace, since these type of executions are demanded in the Koran where it states that:  To Read More…..