Egypt: who didn't see this coming?

[Occhidiangela]

Standard moves after a revolution. Gotta make things right ... well, for somebody.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/...morsi?lite

"The Arab Spring"
Is it Thermidor yet?

Opposition protesters clashed with police in several Egyptian cities Friday after new Islamist President Mohammed Morsi awarded himself sweeping new powers.

Police fired tear gas in an attempt to disperse tens of thousands of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square ...

"The people want to bring down the regime," shouted protesters, echoing a chant used in the anti-Mubarak uprising. "Get out, Morsi," they chanted.

State TV also said Morsi opponents set fire to Muslim Brotherhood offices in the Suez Canal cities of Suez, Port Said and Ismailia.

Clashes also erupted between police and opposition protesters in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the southern city of Assiut and in Giza, the sister city of the capital. In Alexandria, Morsi opponents hurled stones at Brotherhood supporters outside a mosque and stormed a nearby office of the group.

However, Muslim Brotherhood backers gathered in front of the presidential palace in northern Cairo to support Morsi -- illustrating a widening gulf over Egypt’s future.

Buoyed by accolades from around the world for mediating a truce between Hamas and Israel, Morsi on Thursday ordered that an Islamist-dominated assembly writing the new constitution could not be dissolved by legal challenges.

Other changes give Morsi power to take security measures to protect his position, which rights groups say are like new emergency laws.

Protesters have burned a CSF (police truck) tear gas very heavy

Morsi belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood until he ran for the presidency and still depends on the group for political support.
On Friday, Morsi confirmed that he will move forward on his plans because he insisted they were for the good of the country.

Of course they are good for the country ....
SSDD

Mind you, this might be the media making a mountain out of a molehill. That's been done before. Also, the malcontents may have been "encouraged" by various factions who didn't do so well in the recent election ...

More to follow, to be sure.

EDIT 24 Nobember, AP article by Maggie Michael and Aya Batrawy:

Quote:

Mohammed Morsi:

I don't like, want, or need to resort to exceptional measures, but I will if I see that my people, nation, and the revolution of Egypt are in danger.

Good morning, Egypt, meet your new boss, who looks an awful lot like your old boss. Pete Townsend wept.

Morsi has encapsulated a king's sense of ownership and entitlement, arrogance (my people)" and a Leninist's (single mindedness of purpose ~"Protect The Revolution at all Costs!"~ as though he were reading from a Hollywood script. He professes to be in the process of rooting out "the weevils eating away at the nation of Egypt."

Can a purge or some ethnic cleansing be that far behind? My betting money says this one will end in tears.

Anyone care to make a few bets on this one?

EDIT 25 Nov:
Explicit language is interesting:

"Morsi created a new "protection of the revolution" judicial body to swiftly carry out the prosecutions in retrials of Mubarak and top aides."
(From article by Hamza Hendawi, AP)
The question: is this merely a 'special prosecutor' that you or I would recoginze, or is this an extra judicial court?

El Baradei, also appealing to "the revolution" objects to centralization of power, and has promised to joining other opposition leaders to reverse this trend.
So, who is Kerenski here?

http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=6793

His angle is that President Obama was taken, yet again.

Won't be the first American president who was sand bagged in the Mid East.