World View: Egypt's 'Terrorist Group' Designation of Muslim Brotherhood May be Illegal

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Calls for Erdogan to resign due to Turkey’s corruption scandal
• Egypt’s ‘terrorist group’ designation of Muslim Brotherhood may be illegal
• North Korea’s Kim Jong-un was ‘very drunk’ when ordering purges

Calls for Erdogan to resign due to Turkey’s corruption scandal

Erdogan at press conference on Wednesday (Hurriyet)

Turkey was shaken on Wednesday morning when three ministers in thecabinet of prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan all resigned, and oneof them called for Erdogan’s resignation. In the case of eachminister, his son has been the target of a wide-ranging corruptioninvestigation that resulted in the arrest of 52 people, includingbureaucrats and well-known businessmen. The corruption investigationinvolves billions of dollars, including illegal money launderingthrough Iran, and bribes and kickbacks for construction projects.

I made a mistake when I first reported this story last week. At that time, I wrote that 29senior police officials in the Istanbul and Ankara police departmenthad been forced to step down because they were involved in thecorruption. That wasn’t true. The reason that they were forced tostep down is because they were leading the investigation against thecorrupt government officials in Erdogan’s administration, and Erdoganarranged for the police officers to be fired.

Late on Wednesday, Erdogan replaced ten ministers in his cabinet, inan effort to save his job and his government. He has denounced theinvestigation as a plot by foreign and domestic forces to underminehim. Zaman (Ankara) and AP

Egypt’s ‘terrorist group’ designation of Muslim Brotherhood may be illegal

On Wednesday, the Sinai-based terrorist group Ansar Jerusalem hasclaimed credit for Tuesday’s car bombing in a city north of Cairo,killing 11 people and injuring scores. ( “24-Dec-13 World View — Sinai based Ansar Jerusalem kills 11 in car bomb attack in Egypt”)

The Muslim Brotherhood condemned the car bombing, but most of Egypt’spublic perceive the Brotherhood to be responsible. There waswidespread rioting against the Brotherhood late on Tuesday, and onWednesday, the military government declared the Brotherhood to be aarrest Brotherhood members and seize Brotherhood property.

However, human rights activists are saying that the declaration isunfounded and illegal According to human rights lawyer Malek Adly:

“It is a problem. This is an administrative decisionand not a legislative one, as only the interim president has alegislative right to issue decisions and law, not the cabinet.

I highly doubt that those who took the decision thought about itslegal background thoroughly. It would have been better to waitfor the court to issue a verdict to consider the MuslimBrotherhood as a terrorist organization.

There is a hysteria in the street because of the failure ofsecurity to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood and I personallybelieve that there are some parties in the government marketing tothe idea that if we declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terroristgroup all our problems in Egypt would be solved, which isuntrue.

Muslim Brotherhood activists say that they’ll continue with theiranti-government protests, despite the terrorist designation. Al-Ahram (Cairo) and Al-Jazeera

North Korea’s Kim Jong-un was ‘very drunk’ when ordering purges

North Korea’s child dictator, Kim Jong-un, was “very drunk” when heorder the execution of his uncle’s two aides, according to reports.These were aides to Kim’s 67 year old uncle, Jang Song-thaek, and theywere executed two weeks before Jang himself was very publicly draggedout of a Workers’ Party meeting in a televised humiliation. “11-Dec-13 World View — Purge of Kim Jong-un’s uncle signals N. Korean ‘reign of terror'” Jang wasthen executed a few days later, as part of a larger stringof purges and executions.

According to the reports, the drunken child dictator ordered theexecutions because Jang and his aides were refusing to give control oflucrative trade deals with China over to the military. These tradedeals, for resources like clams, crabs and coal, make huge profits forNorth Korea. The Diplomat and Joongang Daily

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