Mubarak and his supporters
Thanks to WaPo for this honest bit of reporting. The reports of the first week of protests suggested that Mubarak was a hated dictator that the vast majority of Egyptians wanted to go. This article puts the lie to that. T. Belman
In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak still has support, from rich and poor
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 3, 2011; 12:00 AM
CAIRO – For eight days, pro-democracy demonstrators roared their belief that Egypt’s 80 million people were ready to oust President Hosni Mubarak and start anew with elections.
But the melee that unfolded Wednesday in the capital when Mubarak supporters stormed the opposition-occupied Tahrir Square suggests that there are many in Egypt who are deeply invested in the current system – and will fight to preserve it.
While protesters call Mubarak’s three-decade reign a disaster, a cross-section of Egyptians has much to lose when Mubarak leaves office.
Businessmen with rich...
An Article That Can (and Should) Change Western Understanding of the Middle East
By Barry Rubin
Rarely has a mass media article shaken me up as this one does. It is a rare, intense, view of what the Middle East is really like nowadays, though it is about Pakistan, on the eastern end of the region, in Pakistan. I wrote this before the events in Egypt but it certainly applies there as well.
This is to take nothing away from the brave demonstrators in Egypt, and especially the moderates and truly pro-democracy people among them. In fact, the odds they face and the relatively low numbers of people who want such an outcome makes them all the braver and more admirable.
But let’s remember that both the lawyers’ and doctors’ associations in Egypt are dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The title of the article is, “A governor’s assassination has delivered Pakistan to the extremists,” by Pamela Constable in the Washington Post.
The background is the assassination of a government official because he suggested easing the...
The People of Egypt Were Abandoned By the U.N. For 30 Years
There is one main reason why the Obama administration misjudged Egypt entirely – they cannot get their facts straight. For the last two years they have been busy defending the U.N. as an effective vehicle for promoting U.S. interests, in the name of engagement.
But for the three decades of Hosni Mubarak’s reign, the U.N. has dedicated its human rights apparatus to demonizing the state of Israel and ignoring the human rights victims in Egypt and across the Arab world. As dissatisfaction and unrest have grown in the region over his presidency, the Obama administration failed to recognize the U.N.’s gross negligence or to take responsibility for ensuring an alternative vehicle to promote democracy. Instead, it legitimized the U.N.’s top human rights body, the Human Rights Council (HRC), by joining it.
Notwithstanding the meltdown in Egypt, Esther Brimmer, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs picked...
Sen McCain and most Neocons have lost it
[What are they smoking?]
McCain says the time for Mubarak to leave has come
WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain says the United States has to do “a better job of encouraging democracy” in the Middle East in light of the public uprising in Egypt.
The Arizona Republican tells CBS’s “The Early Show” that U.S. officials have correctly called for an orderly transition away from President Hosni Mubarak. McCain said the situation in Egypt is “fraught with danger” and said he worries about “the influence of extremist organizations.”
The Republican, who met with Obama at the White House Wednesday, said nevertheless that Washington must push for free elections, even if they result in lifting Islamist elements. McCain said that American officials also have to be concerned about “the threat of a repeat of the election in Gaza,” where Hamas, considered a terrorist organization, emerged with newfound powers.
Interviewed on...
Egypt: The American Debate Has Gone Stark, Raving Crazy
By Barry Rubin
“The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today…” –Cole Porter, “Anything Goes”
“Since bad men find the rule of kings no less burdensome than that of tyrants, the recognition of the right of private citizens to kill tyrants involves rather more chance of losing a king than of being relieved of a tyrant.” –William Archibald Dunning on Thomas Aquinas
“Sixty years of an unjust ruler are better than one night without a sultan.” –Arab saying
As I pointed out recently the mass media in America generally presents only one side of the debate nowadays. Then, it publishes nonsense which survives because it is protected from the withering critique it deserves. And even people who should know better are just losing it.
Consider one example (Roger Cohen has gone beyond ridicule so let’s focus on someone who should know better). I regret criticizing Robert Kagan of the Brookings...
“Egypt’s Real Problem: Decades of Authoritarian Socialist Rule”
By Richard J Little, AMERICAN THINkER
Nasser’s immediate successor Anwar Sadat further built upon this state-controlled socialist political and economic system by forming the National Democratic Party which is the current Egyptian ruling party. The National Democratic Party has been a member in good standing in the Socialist International right up until this present week (January 31st in fact when, to save political face, it became politically necessary to expel them).
The Socialist International may want to hide this fact, but the plain truth is that Mubarak and his political predecessors had the unlimited power and pursued for many decades exactly the same type of top-down, expert-devised, and centralized government-run collectivist development and investment programs of the type that are now proposed by progressives in this country and socialists around world. And the results, or lack thereof, of 50 plus years of authoritarian socialist policy in Egypt were the same...
Community Security (lack of) Trust in the UK
Cross posted on Israellycool and Israpundit by Brian of London.
Today the UK’s Community Security Trust (CST) has released it’s annual report charting Jew hatred in the UK (I prefer the term Jew hatred to “antisemitism” which is a euphemistic term at best).
The CST is a private charity in the UK that is largely paid for by charitable donations made almost exclusively by the Jewish community to provide private protection for Jews when they gather at Synagogues, Jewish schools and all manner of Jewish social events. The CST have dedicated young staff who stand outside in all weather watching and waiting. The Jewish community, in very large part, does not rely on the public purse to pay for this. They dip into their own pockets or volunteer their own time to do this job.
The full report is available here: CST Antisemitic Incidents Report 2010. Overall the news is that attacks on Jews are down but that is only because (acording to the geniuses at the CST)...
Game over: The chance for democracy in Egypt is lost
By Robert Springborg, FOREIGN POLICY
While much of American media has termed the events unfolding in Egypt today as “clashes between pro-government and opposition groups,” this is not in fact what’s happening on the street. The so-called “pro-government” forces are actually Mubarak’s cleverly orchestrated goon squads dressed up as pro-Mubarak demonstrators to attack the protesters in Midan Tahrir, with the Army appearing to be a neutral force. The opposition, largely cognizant of the dirty game being played against it, nevertheless has had little choice but to call for protection against the regime’s thugs by the regime itself, i.e., the military. And so Mubarak begins to show us just how clever and experienced he truly is. The game is, thus, more or less over.
The threat to the military’s control of the Egyptian political system is passing. Millions of demonstrators in the...
Illusions and Delusions About the Turmoil in Egypt
What is Wrong with Rabbis Michael Lerner and Arthur Waskow?
By Phyllis Chesler, NewsRealBlog
Why do so many Jews insist on their divine right to refuse to learn from history? How can a 1930s Stalinist ideology or even a 1960s liberal-socialist-feminist ideology exert such a death-grip over otherwise educated people?
My old friends, Rabbis Michael Lerner and Arthur Waskow have both written and posted pieces today in order to praise the protesters in the streets of Cairo. Both imagine they are pro-democracy advocates, perhaps like those in Tehran. Both rabbis are very much in a Passover state of mind.
Rabbi Lerner views the Cairo protesters as similar to the ancient Hebrew slaves of old who rebelled against Pharaoh. The fact that the Hebrews wanted to leave Egypt, not overthrow Pharaoh and stay on under some new Pharaoh does not seem to register with Rabbi Michael, nor does he note that technically, the Jews did not overthrow Pharaoh at all, God alone did that when Pharaoh pursued the...
Jimmy Carter is sued for lying about Israel
By Ted Belman
I met Nitsana Darsha-Leitner in Toronto almost 10 years ago. She was just out of law school and had come to talk about her pioneering lawsuits on behalf of victims of terror.
She just sent me a press release, which is below, announcing her latest lawsuit in which she is suing Jimmy Carter et al for violating NY commerce law by publishing lies. She has fashioned the suit as a class action on behalf of all those who bought the book and were thus harmed. This is no small matter.
I wonder how many other organizations and people can be sued for the same thing.
Wikipedia has this to say about her great impact and success.
Since 2003 Darshan-Leitner and a team of lawyers have worked with hundreds of terror victims in lawsuits [3] and legal actions against Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Iran, Syria,[4] Islamic Jihad and numerous financial institutions.[4] The cases are litigated in the Israeli, American, Canadian and European courts.
Darshan-Leitner has been...
Jerusalem, Israel
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