July 13, 2016

"Egypt’s National Security Agency (NSA) is abducting, torturing and forcibly disappearing people in an effort to intimidate opponents and wipe out peaceful dissent..."

"... said Amnesty International in a damning new report published today which highlights an unprecedented spike in enforced disappearances since early 2015."
Egypt: ‘Officially, you do not exist’: Disappeared and tortured in the name of counter-terrorism reveals a trend which has seen hundreds of students, political activists and protesters, including children as young as 14, vanish without trace at the hands of the state. On average three to four people per day are seized according to local NGOs, usually when heavily armed security forces led by NSA officers storm their homes. Many are held for months at a time and often kept blindfolded and handcuffed for the entire period.

55 comments:

Gusty Winds said...

Arab Spring

David Begley said...

They can file for a writ of habeas corpus. Sharia law.

Robert Cook said...

Considering the egregious actions of the police in Baton Rouge, we're not as far off from becoming like Egypt as we might think. Considering long-time standard police behavior in Chicago, perhaps we're virtually there, including the "disappearing" of individuals into a torture center. The only outrage yet to be reached is for the "disappeared" in Chicago to be murdered.

Clyde said...

This is what happens when people in foreign countries watch American films and TV shows and then mistakenly believe that they have the benefits of America's Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Sadly, they do not.

Bay Area Guy said...

Very sad and serious, but not surprising. The Islamic world - even the more secular and allegedly sane states like Egypt - play by a totally different set of rules. Life is cheap there.

damikesc said...

Hillary is looking at this as a solid idea. Think about it, who'd criticize her? The press? Her own party? No, just "partisans who hate everything she does"

Considering long-time standard police behavior in Chicago, perhaps we're virtually there, including the "disappearing" of individuals into a torture center. The only outrage yet to be reached is for the "disappeared" in Chicago to be murdered.

Chicago and NO have been run by Democrats for decades. Perhaps we need to outlaw Democrats?

traditionalguy said...

The Sunni v. Shia war is coming back to Egypt sponsored by Obama and his beloved Shia Iran. They both see the other Muslims as non-human heretics to be killed before they kill you. And religion is the only thing these Muslims have got in this life. It tells them to wait for any good to happen to them in the afterlife and to will to die killing others to speed things up.

Only the Coptics are Christians that, unlike both of the Muslin sects, see hope for goodness in this life if you get a good education and out think the bastards. Obama hates them.

peacelovewoodstock said...

This is not exactly breaking news, the Egyptians have been doing this kind of thing for decades.

Clyde said...

Speaking of rights, and since there's not a café post to put this up:

Transgender woman arrested for voyeurism at Target

Posted: July 12, 2016 8:59 p.m.

POST REGISTER

A transgender Idaho Falls woman was arrested Tuesday on one count of felony voyeurism for a report that she took pictures of another woman changing clothes in a dressing room at Target in Ammon.

Shauna Patricia Smith, 43, is in custody in the Bonneville County Jail under the name Sean Smith, according to the jail’s active inmate roster. A Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office news release said the suspect also is known as Sean P. Smith.

Sheriff’s deputies responded Monday to the store after a woman reported that someone was taking pictures of her while she was inside a dressing room trying on clothes, the release said. The victim noticed the subject reaching over the wall with a cellphone taking pictures. The victim confronted the suspect who then fled the store on foot, the release said.

Sheriff’s Office Spokesman Sgt. Bryan Lovell said he didn’t know whether the reported victim was wearing underwear when she was photographed.

...

Target made headlines in April when it released a public statement saying “supports the federal Equality Act, which provides protections to LGBT individuals, and opposes action that enables discrimination.”

Its statement went on to say “we welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.”

The announcement drew protests throughout the country and the American Family Association, a conservative Christian activist group, started a petition drive to get those who disagreed with the store’s policy to pledge to boycott the store.

The Association reported in May that it had delivered petitions with more than a million signatures in support of the boycott.


I thought we were told that the transgenders had no interest in potty-peeking, they just wanted to use the facilities, and that such incidents never happened? I guess they were wrong!

machine said...

I thought cheneyism (torture) was an acceptable policy in this basement? even encouraged, no?

Sebastian said...

Egypt gov is nasty. Most of their opponents are nasty. (Though they sweep up plenty of non-fundies.) Is there a way to non-nasty? Not clear.

MadisonMan said...

Perhaps Hillary can be asked about this at a Press Conference.

Big Mike said...

Egypt correctly views itself as being at war. Period.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

If you're a spoiled socialist left-wing brat on an American college campus - it's the USA that is oppressive.

Roughcoat said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David said...

Egypt is one army away from chaos. It needs international assistance to feed its people. Its youth, even educated youth, have limited opportunities. Its population is about 90 million people, 15th largest in the world. It also controls one of the most important trade routes in the world. It is a gigantic bomb waiting to explode and when it does, Syria will look like a playground scuffle in comparison. Thus we look away. For now.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

right on Cue - Cookie equates abductions in Egypt to the horrors of the American police. I've never heard of a single police officer participating in an abduction - w but in leftwing lala land, wish-facts are true.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

You can set your watch by spoiled intellectually dishonest leftist progs screaming "But America is just as bad."

David said...

Robert Cook said...
Considering the egregious actions of the police in Baton Rouge, we're not as far off from becoming like Egypt as we might think. Considering long-time standard police behavior in Chicago, perhaps we're virtually there, including the "disappearing" of individuals into a torture center. The only outrage yet to be reached is for the "disappeared" in Chicago to be murdered.


You really believe that? Probably do. Our policing is imperfect, but a comparison with Egypt? It's amazing what people will believe.

grackle said...

The Islamic world - even the more secular and allegedly sane states like Egypt - play by a totally different set of rules.

The record is clear. Any nation with a Muslim-majority population, whether it be Shia or Sunni, is a nation without freedom.

In the past our immigrants were people who wanted to assimilate, who wanted to become, in certain fundamental and freedom-loving respects, like an American, who came here for freedom and opportunity.

Muslims in general immigrate to the West for opportunity only; actual freedom makes them nervous and confused. They prefer that their lives and ultimately ours be as ordered and prescribed as it is where they came from.

The Sunni v. Shia war is coming back to Egypt sponsored by Obama and his beloved Shia Iran.

These internecine disputes are interesting and possibly informative as to the level of brutality of both sects toward the other but we shouldn’t allow “nuance” to obscure the fact that both sects are hostile to the West and freedom in general. Whichever sect may prevail in whatever region is always ebbing and flowing. The one constant is their hatred of us.

Curious George said...

"Robert Cook said...
Considering the egregious actions of the police in Baton Rouge, we're not as far off from becoming like Egypt as we might think. Considering long-time standard police behavior in Chicago, perhaps we're virtually there, including the "disappearing" of individuals into a torture center. The only outrage yet to be reached is for the "disappeared" in Chicago to be murdered."

Wow.

Anonymous said...

PS: This is what torture looks like, unlike what we did at GITMO...

Unknown said...

I am sure Robert Cook thinks that if he had to choose between being Gay in Iran or visit, say, Provo Utah, that he would choose Iran because Muslims are perfect, loving, peaceful people and a place like Provo, one of the most Christian and observing religious places in America (and home to one of the premier religious universities, BYU) is probably his idea of hell.

So I have a proposal: Let's spend a couple billion dollars--heck, 100 billion if necessary-- to send all of these anti-Christian, anti-American, pro Islam, Muslim loving liberals to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Send them to Palestine. And then prevent them from coming back. Bonus: think of all the jobs opening up by removing all of these idiots.

Let them live in their paradise. And we shall see what happens. Let's see if they praise Islam and damn Christianity so much then.

Likely will depend on if they get power; if so, then they won't care about the streets running red with blood.

--Vance

Robert Cook said...

Drill SGT: no matter how much you and others like you protest that we have not committed torture, we have indeed, at Gitmo, as well as other places, such as Abu Ghraib. You don't get to set the bar for how grotesque the physical abuse becomes before it reaches the threshold of torture. Most of the regimes around the world who commit torture do things similar to what we have done, and many of the torture techniques used in South American countries were taught to them by us at the School of the Americas in Georgia. Heck, many prisoners in American prisons are tortured.

Roughcoat said...

Well, I for one am shocked. Shocked, I say.

n.n said...

Obama and Clinton's social justice-inspired humanitarian disaster continues to pay dividends to their peaceful ends. Well, this is what happens when you back a purportedly democratic takeover of a peaceful nation. Libya, Syria, Ukraine, etc. being other examples.

Make abortion, not life.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

You don't get to set the bar for how grotesque the physical abuse becomes before it reaches the threshold of torture

You also don't get to set the bar at how low something is and it becomes torture. Being forced to watch a marathon of reruns of the Brady Bunch, for example, can be torturous. Listing to a dripping faucet can drive some people around the bend. Nuns slapping you on the palm with a ruler. And so on.

Facetious examples of course, BUT examples of where the bar can be set and who gets to decide. Not you. Not me either.

n.n said...

Clyde:

The Psychos classify homosexual and crossover orientations in the transgender spectrum disorder as "stable". Apparently, that is sufficient cause to normalize/promote these aberrations. The question is why don't they and the Democrat Party not normalize/promote other "stable" orientations. The State-established Pro-Choice (i.e. selective) Church lets them get away with literal abortion.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

Both Gaddafi and Stevens were tortured, sodomized, and aborted.

The abortion industry and Planned Parenthood are notorious for torturing, dismembering, aborting, harvesting/recycling wholly innocent human lives by the millions annually, legally, and with moral rationalization by the State-established Pro-Choice Church and its liberal judges.

Wince said...

See the pyramids along the Nile
Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle
Just remember darlin' all the while
You belong to me

Etienne said...

I used to fly out of a little airstrip in the Egypt desert northeast of Luxor. We were given green and yellow plastic trash barrels for our chow hall. The yellow barrels were for food scraps only.

Twice a day Egyptian conscripts would come to collect the yellow barrels.

When I asked the Egyptian officer what they were doing with the food scraps, I was expecting him to say they fed it to the animals.

Yep, they did, only the animals were the conscripts.

I found the country to be entirely distasteful. When we went to tour the Pyramids just before we left, I spent very little time there. It was too depressing with all the filthy beggar kids.

When I got back to Germany I turned in my uniforms for new ones, as I couldn't get the stench of that country out of my clothes.

Those savages will spend billions on American military hardware, and only hundreds on public infrastructure.

It's a conundrum in which side to root for: the terrorists or the military junta.

mockturtle said...

The record is clear. Any nation with a Muslim-majority population, whether it be Shia or Sunni, is a nation without freedom.

Islam and Western Civilization are, and have always been, fundamentally incompatible.

Bob Boyd said...

Once you become an Egyptian NSA officer you'll never go back to Pokemon GO.

narciso said...

the Mukharabat, were trained by fmr Gestapo and SS, like Gleim and Brunner, and the next generation had training at the Frunze, (Soviet) academy, it's not surprising more subtle us efforts didn't take,

Big Mike said...

Drill SGT: no matter how much you and others like you protest that we have not committed torture, we have indeed, at Gitmo, as well as other places, such as Abu Ghraib. Drill SGT: no matter how much you and others like you protest that we have not committed torture, we have indeed, at Gitmo, as well as other places, such as Abu Ghraib.

@Cookie, get this through your rock thick skull. WE DON'T F**K**G CARE!!!. If you think you can find a better country to live in then by all means go! Go be an oozing pustule on the face of some other body politic. In the name of God, go! Find your Utopia. I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The fat angry Islamic men in Gitmo are being treated just fine.

Bruce Hayden said...

The depressing thing is that they did try "freedom" a bit, when Obama and Crooked Hillary helped the Muslim Brotherhood oust Muberrek. The ended up being even more violent and bloody, in their zeal to take the country back to the 7th Century.

It has been bad for quite awhile now - my parents visited Egypt, then Israel some two decades ago, and were shocked by the difference between the two countries. The dirt, stench, and squalor was overwhelming in Egypt, and they couldn't wait to get away from it. Israel, on the other hand, was as clean first world country in comparison. No doubt Gaza has reverted since the Israelis gave it back.

Michael K said...

Cookie is on a roll again. (Did I spell that correctly ARM?)

"we're not as far off from becoming like Egypt as we might think. "

No, if Hillary gets in, we will be a lot closer.

Robert Cook said...

"No, if Hillary gets in, we will be a lot closer."

It doesn't matter who gets in. We're going to get a lot closer.

Robert Cook said...

"In the name of God, go! Find your Utopia. I'm sure it's out there somewhere."

No,there's no Utopia and never will be. All that can be hoped for is a society that is run by and answerable to its citizens and allows for self-corrections when the people feel the country is going wrong. No society can be prevented from sinking into tyranny if a complacent or ignorant or powerless citizenry has their power of self-government usurped by others. In a society that guarantees in its Constitution that there will be due process of law for all, and a prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, any citizen who says "We don't fucking care!" about violations of these guarantees surrenders his due process rights, and grants your approval to the usurpers of the people's power to be as lawless as they like.

If you think criticism of our government's abuses amounts to "hatred" of American or is "anti-American," or is a call to "Utopia," you have no understanding of how any self-governing society must work.If you don't care about torture committed by our government against people inside and outside our borders, then you don't believe in our Constitution. Your complacency (or active support for anti-American behavior by America), and that by others, is destroying our protections against government tyranny.

Michael K said...

"If you think criticism of our government's abuses amounts to "hatred" of American or is "anti-American," or is a call to "Utopia," you have no understanding of how any self-governing society must work."

Cookie, so far I agree but your solutions are going to lead to tyranny.

Static Ping said...

The Egyptian oppression is unfortunate, but it may be the lesser evil at this point. The Arab Spring freed them from the military dictatorship but they were replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood which were much worse. On the 1 to 10 scale of good government, Egypt has the choice between a 3 and a 1. That's not going to be fixed in the short-term. Given past experience, the long-term is not looking good either.

Static Ping said...

For another example, I think that if the Shah of Iran had remained in power, Iran would be better off today.

mikee said...

So we are to weep for the jailed members of the Muslim Brotherhood whose goal is 7th Century Sharia in Egypt, keeping of course the modern military to export jihad elsewhere (they're looking at you, Israel!). Meh.

One must recall that the Muslim Brotherhood's method of political organization included the murder of anyone opposing them in any way.

Would one be happier if every accused member of the MB was hauled before a military court for a nice long 5 minute public trial, properly convicted, sentenced, THEN removed from life in Egypt?

Robert Cook said...

"Cookie, so far I agree but your solutions are going to lead to tyranny."

And what do you imagine my solutions to be?

Michael K said...

Socialism. Sort of Venezuela at first.

Anonymous said...

I'm curious, what did Amnesty International have to say about Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge?

For those not getting their news from lying leftists ideologues (please pardon the redundancy there), how does the current gov't compare to the Muslim Brotherhood gov't?

IMAO: supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, or any similar group, is a far worse human rights violation than killing all MB supporters. Because we already know there's no human rights allowed under a Muslim Brotherhood gov't.

My problem w/ people like Mubarak was not that they were "oppressive", but that they arranged their oppression so that the only possible opposition with something like the Muslim Brotherhood, as they aggressively stamped out any opposition that might actually be worth living under, and targeted the Islamic extremists much less. If the current government has reversed that, then more power to them!

Nichevo said...

And what do you imagine my solutions to be?
7/13/16, 12:30 PM

Why solve anything, Cook? Then what would you whine about?

Nichevo said...

You assuredly have no solutions, but if you think you do, whip 'em out! No generalized platitudes, please, we're full up.

OT: you doing anything for Restaurant Week, or is that too bourgeois?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"The only outrage yet to be reached is for the "disappeared" in Chicago to be murdered."

Oh, such a small step, that one.

Robert Cook said...

"Oh, such a small step, that one."

Much smaller than your snark indicates you believe. In fact, for all we know, they have murdered people. I don't suggest they have, but I would absolutely not be surprised if it were revealed they had.

Robert Cook said...

"Why solve anything, Cook? Then what would you whine about?"

Nothing...which would be wonderful!

Achilles said...

We have disappeared American citizens before. Remember that video that caused Benghazi?

Cooke is right. But as usual it is the people that want more government that do these things.

Achilles said...

Right now Egypt is mostly dissapearing the Muslim brotherhood. Disgusting tactics used on disgusting people.