Dreams Into Lightning 2

Morning Report: 2012-05-23

Mona Eltahawy takes on MSNBC. Jihad Watch cites Eltahawy's response to the "islamophobia" canard on the Melissa Harris-Perry show:

In response, Eltahawy was right on point: "It’s not me that makes Muslims look bad. It’s those atrocities that make Muslims look bad." I have made this point hundreds of times -- but the Islamic supremacists' "Islamophobia" fog machine is intent on obscuring it, with eager help from the Leftist mainstream media. ...

Follow the link for a transcript. And don't miss her article in Foreign Policy.

Kyrgyzstan signs transport agreement with NATO. Interfax reports: '"A signing ceremony of the agreement between the government of Kyrgyzstan and NATO on the ground transit (by trucks and railroad) of cargo for the International Security Assistance Force through the Kyrgyz territory took place within the framework of the NATO summit in Chicago on May 22," the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry's press service told Interfax. ...'

Foreign Policy on Egyptian candidates. Kate Brooks at Foreign Policy:

Egypt has produced some good headlines over the few millennia of its existence: There's its rise as the center of Arab and Islamic culture, the building of the pyramids, and even, reportedly, a spat between a pharaoh and a hard-luck local tribe that produced some nasty plagues. But there's one story that has always eluded it: the drama of a competitive presidential election. On May 23, that all ends. ...

Go to the link for the rest, and a slide show.

Morning Report: 2012-05-03

ISAF captures Uzbek al-Qaeda-linked leader. Long War Journal: 'Coalition and Afghan special operations forces captured a leader of the al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan during a raid today in northern Afghanistan. The IMU leader, who was involved with assassinations and suicide operations, is the second commander from the group to have been targeted in the district in the past three days. ...'

Profile of would-be bridge bomber Joshua Stafford. This Ain't Hell has the details on this winner. At age 23, his only interest is "smoking weed".

Egypt's frontronner Amr Moussa no friend of Israel. Al-Monitor: 'Cancellation of the gas agreement between Israel and Egypt is only a harbinger of things to come. If Amr Moussa will indeed be elected Egypt’s president, the experts anticipate additional escalation. Moussa, considered the leading candidate in the presidential race of our southern neighbor, earned his popularity in large due to his hard-line attitude toward Israel. It is no accident that Egypt’s hit parade includes the song “I hate Israel and love Amr Moussa” ...'

Almost funny ...

... but not quite.

Kat on Egypt and Democracy

Kat at The Middle Ground is posting again, and that's good news for everybody. Here's her post on Egypt's Night of 1000 parties. I won't try to excerpt it here, but go give it a read.

The Arab Street Explodes

(Always wanted to use that post title.)

Here's the latest:

Barry Rubin clears up a couple of points. 'Any mass movement in Egypt will be taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.' Go to the post, where Barry elaborates - a little - on that all-important one sentence.

Neocon Express: All hell breaking loose. 'Risk that the largest country in the Arab world will fall to Islamists. The ramifications are BEYOND DISTURBING... Thirty-years of Israeli-Egyptian peace at stake, the Suez Canal, flow of oil, general stability ...'. Follow the link to coverage on Al-Jazeera.

CNN: Mohammed ElBaradei.

The Cairo-born former head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei on Thursday returned to the country, despite death threats, to be with "his people."

"There was an edict against me a couple of weeks ago basically saying that my life should be dispensable because I am defying the rulers," ElBaradei told CNN on Tuesday.

Sandmonkey: mobinil shut down. Follow Sandmonkey on Twitter. Also note his post from yesterday that 'today's protest is NOT about Muslim Brotherhood & shouldn't be portrayed as such.'

CNN: MB leader arrested. 'Egyptian authorities arrested a prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader in Friday pre-dawn hours, detaining the party's main speaker, Issam al-Aryan, according to his son-in-law.'

Wired: How Egypt shut down its internet.

While the world has seen net filtering and disruption in places like Burma and Iran following social and political unrests, Egypt’s decision to shutter the new is different, according to Craig Labovitz, the chief scientist at Arbor Networks, a computer security firm that has nearly unequaled real data on international internet traffic.

“What’s different with Egypt is the scale,” Labovitz told Wired.com. “By that I mean that Egypt has fairly significant internet infrastructure with a diversity of paths — satellite, microwave and fiber links — a number of large providers and hundreds of smaller providers. It is one of the more significant internet infrastructures in the Middle East and certainly within Africa. Egypt has a very well-developed economy with a significant reliance on the internet, this is very different from Burma.”

Go to the link for the rest.

Michael Totten has a round-up. Via Totten, Lee Smith:

... More to the point, it is an unfortunate fact of modern Egyptian history that its people are often susceptible to ideological politics. For instance, Nasser led the country to disaster and yet compared to Sadat the peacemaker or Mubarak the stolid pharaoh who has kept the country stable, if static, it is Nasser who owns the affections of the Egyptian masses. That is to say, we don’t know exactly what the protestors want. There are those who hate the regime because it jails and tortures bloggers and those who hate it because it won’t make war on Israel. No doubt some of the young are just fed up they have never known another Egyptian ruler in their lifetimes. Some of the youth are democrats and others are decidedly not.

It is not always a good thing when people go to the streets; indeed the history of revolutionary action shows that people go to the streets to shed blood more often than they do to demand democratic reforms. ...

Aaron Mannes at CTB on Egypt.

For the vast majority of Egyptians, the United States is inextricably linked to the hated regime. Nothing the White House or Foggy Bottom does can change that in a few days, weeks or months. Also, the ability of the U.S. to influence events is limited. It does appear that Secretary of State Clinton’s call for the Egyptian government to not respond with violence did send a message to Egypt’s generals that the U.S. would not support a violent crackdown. (A not dissimilar message was sent to Iran’s generals as the Shah’s regime was falling.)

Second, it has been observed many times that the protests are secular and the Muslim Brotherhood is not the driver. This is probably true. But there are no institutional mechanisms for a power transfer. If the regime falls, there is no opposition in the wings to take power. ...

John Bolton at Fox. 'I don't think we have evidence yet that these demonstrations are necessarily about democracy. You know the old saying, "one person, one vote, one time." The Muslim Brotherhood doesn't care about democracy, if they get into power you're not going to have free and fair elections either. ...' Bolton, never one to mince words, calls the State Department's statements "mush". Full article at the link.

Azarmehr: the differences.

Watching the pictures from Tunisia and Egypt, it looks the crowd sizes in Iran were much larger. None of the protests in Egypt or Tunisia came any where near the three million crowd who came to the streets in Tehran, six days after the fraudulent elections in June last year. The repression by the regime in Iran was many times more brutal and savage than that in Tunisia or Egypt however. People in Egypt and Tunisia were not attacked in their homes and pulled from their roof tops for simply chanting Allah Akbar at night. The injured protesters in Tunisia and Egypt were not attacked in hospitals and dragged from their hospital beds. Protesters were not arrested and bused into detention centres like Kahrizak and raped in Tunisia and Egypt like they were in Iran. ...

When Iranian protesters used social networking tools like Facebook and twitter and citizen journalists uploaded their mobile phone pictures and videos, the Iranian protesters were quickly labeled by rich Western Left-wing intellectuals as "affluent North Tehran kids" who did not represent the country.

Lots more at the link.

Obama Cairo Speech

Rich Lowry:

'... the fundamental question about Obama’s address is whether it worked as public diplomacy. On balance, will it make the intellectual and political isolation of Islamic extremists more or less likely? Because the speech makes it more likely, it must be judged a success.'

Ha'Aretz:

The Israeli government praised U.S. President Barack Obama's speech to the Muslim world Thursday, saying it shared his hopes for Middle East peace, but stressed that Israel's security interests remained paramount.

"We share President Obama's hope that the American effort heralds the opening of a new era that will bring an end to the conflict and to general Arab recognition of Israel as the nation of the Jewish people that lives in security and peace in the Middle East," an official statement said after Obama's address in Cairo.

Victor Davis Hanson:

'President Obama made an earnest effort — as is his way in matters of discord — to split the difference with the Islamic world. His speech essentially amounted to: “We did that, you did this, tit-for-tat, now we’re even, and can’t we all just get along?” He should be congratulated for expressing a desire for peace and for gently reminding the Muslim world of the way to reform, even if he did so while inflating Western sins.

But the problem with such moral equivalence is that it equates things that are, well, not equal — and therefore ends up not being moral at all.'

Jonah Goldberg:

'This was precisely the moment to let Obama be Obama. For instance: Yes, he is a hypocrite for downplaying his Muslim connections when running for office and then touting them once in office. But such hypocrisy is a small price to pay. If Nixon was a statesman for laying aside his anti-Communism to engage China, then surely Obama can brag about his Muslim father. Obama has a cult of personality in the Muslim street. If he can exploit it for America’s and the world’s benefit, he should.'

Bruce at GayPatriot:

I wish I could say that I picked up on this myself, but I must give full credit to New Zealand blogger Darren who writes at The Fairfacts Media Show and the No Minister blog and who emailed me earlier today.

Why did President Obama completely ignore the persecution and pogroms of gays where Islamic law is the rule of the land? It is happening in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and even Egypt. (The list goes on and on actually….)

Gays living under strict Islamic law (whether in a nation or a region) are subject to death. Women(as a group) actually have better lives in the Muslim faith than do gays and lesbians. Although gay men seem to be particular targets of the horrific state/mosque-sanctioned atrocities.

Debka:

US president Barack Obama stressed the need for mutual respect and tolerance among the world's faiths, denigrated al Qaeda and extremism, said the US "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," will respect all elected peaceful governments provided they respect their peoples, and called for universal human and women's rights to be upheld. His much awaited speech to more than a billion Muslims which quoted extensively from the Koran, but also the Bible and the Talmud, won cheers from the selected 3,000 strong audience in Cairo University's Great Hall Thursday, June 4.
Along with a declaration that US bonds with Israel are unbreakable, President Obama demanded that Israel and the Palestinians uphold their obligations to the roadmap. "America will align its policies with those who seek peace – Israelis, Palestinians or Arabs," he declared and promised to personally pursue the goal of peace and security for breaking the Israel-Palestinian stalemate. Palestinians must be allowed to live a normal life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he said, but they must abandon violence.
Rockets on sleeping children or bombs killing old people on a bus are intolerable, but the US does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements and Israel must recognize the Palestinian right to the dignity of a state of their own but so must the Arab world recognize Israel.

Full transcript of President Obama's speech in Cairo.

Brownworth: The feminist revolution is just beginning.

Victoria Brownworth has a stand-out column in the April 2008 print edition of Curve. The article is not available online, so I'll just post a couple of brief excerpts here.

I am a feminist. Not apologetically, under my breath. I believe that the single most important civil rights movement of the 20th century was feminism. But then, I live in the United States, where women have a great deal of freedom. I never cease to be grateful for the fact that I was born here. Being born female in the majority of the world is a very, very bad thing. That is, if you get born at all. Sex-selection abortion, for example, is rampant throughout Asia and the Asian continent.

Brownworth goes on to recount her niece's description of her time in Cairo:

She is a formidable young woman, remarkably fearless, and wears the privilege that comes with being born female in the United States; she will not be made second-class.

But according to her firsthand reports, there was never a day in Cairo or its outskirts when she was not the victim of demeaning and damaging sexual predation. She was angered and repulsed by the constant assaults - verbal and physical - but in no way cowed by them. As she noted, a tone of surprising bitterness in her voice, "At least I always knew I was coming home."

In a very different, quiet voice, she added, "But as I traveled outside Cairo, it was so hard knowing that all around me were women who were victims of FGM [female genital mutilation]."

Brownworth, herself a rape survivior, then recalls an exchange with a woman in Libya; the two women had discussed the case of the Saudi rape victim who was sentenced to 90 lashes. (I posted on it here.) The woman's sentence was increased after she challenged the ruling; she was finally pardoned after international protest.

My friend in Libya was appalled by my "insensitivity and disrespect" for Islamic law. I told her I would be equally outraged had this occurred in a Christian theocracy - except there haven't been any for centuries.

She then told me that if the woman hadn't gotten into a car with a strange man, she wouldn't have been raped. So although the penalty seemed harsh from my "Western perspective", it was for the woman's own protection.

I am no longer friends with this woman. ...

It's worth your time to read the whole piece, and pass it on to a friend. It's in Curve 18 #4; you can purchase back issues at the link.

On a side note, Curve doesn't ignore lesbian conservatives. Go here and scroll down for a McCain endorsement:

I’m a rare out lesbian this campaign year because in the face of two Democratic candidates who are dividing almost the entire LGBT vote, I’m voting for the other guy: John McCain. Before you call me a traitorous wretch and lob verbal attacks about internalized homophobia, let me explain. I’ve been a Republican since Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office, though I briefly fell off the wagon to support Clinton No. 1, which I regretted almost instantly.

To hear former President Bill Clinton tell it today, he and Hillary are the most gay-positive politicos out there. However, Clinton himself signed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”—which has ousted thousands of queer service members since it was enacted in 1993—as well as the Defense of Marriage Act.

John McCain supported it too, but he remained one of the few Republicans to rally against a federal anti-gay marriage amendment, calling it “antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.” Like a true Republican, he’s repeatedly said that states should have the right to define their own policies. ...

Go to the link for the rest. When you're done, check out Tammy Bruce:

I’m a pro-choice lesbian feminist. I’m also an independent conservative and have grown increasingly frustrated with all the candidates for president. I have never voted for a candidate because of the letter after the name, and I still have not made a decision about whom I will vote for in November. For the first time in a presidential race I am not only not excited about a candidate, I am extremely concerned about all their agendas.

How I identify may sound like a contradiction, but it’s really not. I want government to be small and unobtrusive. Whenever government gets big, that means it’s interfering in our lives, and that’s never been a good thing for gays, whose freedom and independence rely in large part on the majority leaving us alone. A main problem is how conservatism is viewed—which is that it has been attached to religious politics for too long. ...

Well worth a read. Longtime readers of Dreams Into Lightning will recall that a piece in Curve prompted my 2004 post on women and power.

Zero Dimensional

“No, I mean they would kill me.”

There are problems, and then there are problems.

Egyptian sodomy cop gets 3 years!

Sandmonkey breaks the good news:

The Impossible took place today. Justice was served! The Police Officer who sodmoized Emad El Kebeer by sticking a broomstick up his ass and videotaped him on his cellphone and was put on trial for it just got a sentence today: 3 years in an egyptian prison. This, as far as I remember, is a first. A Police Offiver held accountable. Who knew that was possible?

Kifaya!

Barry Rubin:

There are two bad ideas at the core of misunderstanding the Middle East. First, when people try to graft Western history onto the region to think the advance of progress unstoppable; second, accepting radical Arab nationalist and Islamist doctrine that everything wrong is the fault of the West and Israel. Put them together and what do you get: The progress expected doesn't happen due to bad Western policy and Israel's existence.

Which brings us to Kifaya. During 2004-2006 the Kifaya movement was not just Egypt's main moderate opposition force but the most important organized liberal group in the Arabic-speaking world. It began in December 2004 when participants in a small demonstration chanted they had had "enough" (kifaya) of President Husni Mubarak's quarter-century-long rule as head of a half-century-long regime.

Thus began the Egyptian Movement for Change, best known as the Kifaya group. Those involved expected imminent, dramatic change. George Isaac, the movement's coordinator, reflected what one reporter called this "delirious optimism." "The door of change is open," Isaac proclaimed "and no one can close it again. Never."

But it slammed shut pretty fast. ...

For the story of the decline and fall of Kifaya, read the whole article at the link.