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JANUARY 29,  2011

EGYPT UPDATE – AT 6:34 P.M. ET:  There were large demonstrations in Egypt today.  Although there was some violence, clashes were far less frequent than yesterday.

The hated police were largely off the streets, replaced by Army units that were remarkably benign.  Army leaders appear to be divided in their loyalties.  They are not firing on the citizens.

There were many incidents of looting, and Egyptians, especially in Cairo, fear for their own property.   There were charges that at least some of the looting was carried out by provocateurs sent by the government to discredit the protesters, but the charges could not be confirmed.

In the West, commentators are increasingly worried about who might eventually benefit from these protests.  The most common term heard is "Muslim Brotherhood," the fundamentalist organization that provided the original inspiration for Al Qaeda.  The idea of Egypt, the most important Arab country, falling under Islamist control is an absolute nightmare. That would probably wreck the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, creating an entirely new, and dangerous, strategic environment.  And it would almost certainly lead to other Arab countries going in the same direction. 

Never depend on Arab countries to do anything right.  The populations of these nations have, for as long as we can remember, been fed a steady diet of fantasies and conspiracy theories by their media and local imams.  Their heads are not exactly clear.  The Arab world is the last group of dictatorships on Earth, it produces almost nothing, and there are reasons for both phenomena.

There were also demonstrations today by Egyptian-Americans in the United States.  Readers are advised to look at these demonstrations with two eyes.  Not all may be what it seems.  Be especially wary of demonstrators with pre-printed signs, as we must wonder who owns the printing presses.  I saw some "protesters" with placards saying they were part of "Answer international."  Answer is a pro-Communist coalition operating out of the United States, which the media regularly identifies as an "anti-war" group.  Yeah, right.  It's anti any war America has a chance of winning.

I knock the media, and for good reason, but coverage of the Egyptian situation has been reasonably solid in the outlets I've checked.  Even CNN, now free of the burden of Christiane Amanpour, has been remarkably straightforward.  We'll see if that continues.

The first thing we'll be looking for is to see if the protests go on.  They could fade away, leaving a weakened Mubarak still in power, and the public still angry.  If they continue, we could see serious convulsions throughout the Mideast.

January 29, 2011       Permalink

UNDER THE RADAR – AT 11:12 A.M. ET:  While we've been concentrating on other stories, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission has issued a blistering report on the Justice Department's handling of the Black Panther voter intimidation case.  From NRO:

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’s interim report on the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case is now available on the commission’s website...

...The bottom line? The evidence shows that a racial double standard prevails in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. It dismissed the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party because of hostility to the idea of enforcing the Voting Rights Act against black defendants. Moreover, the Justice Department broke the law by stonewalling the Civil Rights Commission’s investigation, defying lawfully issued subpoenas and a federal statute outlining its obligation to cooperate with Commission investigations, as well as claiming non-existent privileges to justify its refusal to release relevant (and probably embarrassing) documents and communications. As Commissioner and Corner contributor Peter Kirsanow stated in the report, the Justice Department engaged “in a degree of stonewalling and obstruction inexplicable for an agency professing clean hands.”

COMMENT:  Nice, huh?  We forget that, as much as President Obama wants to appear to be moving to the center, we are still stuck with the radical appointees who took office when his administration came to power.  Among the worst are some of the officials of the Justice Department. 

If this were a Republican administration, the painstream media would be up in arms about corruption at Justice.  But notice the silence, and the deep silence of those in the "civil liberties community."  Hypocrites.  Just hypocrites.

January 29, 2011      Permalink

WHERE OBAMA STANDS – AT 10:36 A.M. ET:  After a bump in the polls following his Tucson speech, Rasmussen is reporting that President Obama's poll numbers are starting to settle back again, although they're still higher than they have been in recent months.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 28% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -9 (see trends).

These results are based upon nightly telephone surveys and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. As a result, today’s results are the first based entirely upon interviews conducted after the speech. Just before the speech, the president’s Approval Index rating was -5.

And...

Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's performance. Just before the State-of-the-Union Address, the president’s overall approval rating reached a 15-month high at 52%.

Forty-nine percent (49%) now disapprove.

COMMENT:   The American people will be judging the president on his handling of the Mideast crisis, but eventually the economy will dominate voters' opinions.

Mr. Obama's current ratings are respectable, if not spectacular.  They are respectable enough to get him reelected, if these numbers hold, especially in the face of a Republican field with no discernible major vote getter.  But if the president's ratings return to the low 40's, the game is changed...assuming the GOP can come up with a candidate who can breathe and have a heartbeat at the same time.

January 29, 2011       Permalink

EGYPT TODAY – AT 10:04 A.M. ET:  Demonstrations continue in Egypt today.  At this hour, though, they are more peaceful than they were yesterday.  There has been some violence reported at the Interior Ministry in Cairo and in different parts of Alexandria.

The Egyptian Cabinet has resigned, but Hosni Mubarak, the object of the protesters, has not. 

A number of commentators are cautioning that regimes can ride out these protests, as the Iranian regime did in the face of similar opposition. 

The United States is giving some verbal support to the demonstrators, but it is guarded.  Washington is well aware that the next Egyptian government, even one installed through "popular" protests, can be worse than the one in power.

It is interesting that, after "experts" and Obaman officials tried, during the first 18 months or so of this administration, to sell us the line that discontent in the Mideast is based mostly on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, that dispute hasn't even been mentioned. 

Protests also continue in Jordan, but they are getting very little media coverage.

We are watching this and will report any actual developments of significance.  Be aware that the 24-hour news cycle means there'll be a lot of chatter on TV, much of it more padding than wisdom.  The situation in Egypt is unresolved.

January 29, 2011      Permalink

JANUARY 28,  2011

A WARNING FROM THE MIDEAST – AT 7:36 P.M. ET:  My well-informed friend, Banafshez Zand-Bonazzi, refers us to an excellent piece in today's New York Times, outlining the Islamic challenge we face in a Middle East now in daily turmoil:

TEHRAN — Hopeful that the protests sweeping Arab lands may create an opening for hard-line Islamic forces, conservatives in Iran are taking deep satisfaction in the events in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, where secular leaders have faced large-scale uprisings.

While the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confronted its own popular uprising two years ago — and successfully suppressed it — conservatives in Iran said they saw little similarity between those events and the Arab revolts, and instead likened the recent upheavals to Iran’s own 1979 Islamic revolution.

“In my opinion, the Islamic Republic of Iran should see these events without exception in a positive light,” said Mohammad-Javad Larijani, secretary general of the Iranian High Council for Human Rights and one of the most outspoken figures among Iran’s traditional conservatives.

He made it clear that he hoped the “anti-Islamic” government of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in Tunisia, would be replaced by a “people’s government,” meaning one in which conservative Islamic forces would gain the upper hand, as they did when Iranian people overthrew Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, establishing a quasi theocracy.

On the opposite side are the United States and France, he said, who are “doing everything they can to ride the wave and prevent the people from establishing the regime that they desire.”

France?  Isn't France generally one of the most pro-Muslim countries of Europe?  Shows what appeasement ultimately gets you.

In comments published Friday on the Web site of the semiofficial news agency ISNA, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, who favors a political system in which elections merely endorse “divinely chosen” clerical leaders, congratulated the people of Tunisia and Egypt, stating that they had acted “based on the principles” of Iran’s Islamic revolution.

COMMENT:  I've been monitoring the news networks today, which are giving heavy coverage to events in Egypt.  What is striking is the expert guests they've depended on:  very few professors in Mideast studies departments of American universities.  Hmm.  How much federal aid goes into those departments every year?  And they really have nothing to say about this convulsion in the Mideast?

And, thankfully, we've heard almost no claims that the "root cause" of the uprising lies in the "Israeli occupation."  Maybe there's a bit of maturity going on.

It's easy to criticize the Obama administration on this, and we're always willing to do that, but the Obamans, like the Bush and Clinton people before them, are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.  We want to advance democracy, but we understand that a free election in a part of the world wallowing in the tenth century might bring the fundamentalists to power. 

You may be certain that the Iranians are active behind the scenes, trying to influence the direction of the protests. 

Oh, one really discordant note:  On the very day that the most important Arab country is in flames, the new United States ambassador to Syria presented his credentials in Damascus, rewarding Syria with a new American presence, even though Syria hasn't done a thing to deserve it.  If the Syrian people ever revolt, as the Egyptians are revolting, they'll remember this day.  The Obamans can be faulted for this misstep, an extension of Barack Obama's "outreach" policy, which has been a dismal failure.

January 28, 2011        Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 11:27 A.M. ET:  From a superb piece on the life of Ronald Reagan, by Michael Barone, which I highly commend to you:

"I wasn't a great communicator," said the man who talked his way into college, into radio, into the movies, into politics and into the presidency, "but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full blown from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation -- from our experience, our wisdom and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries." The president who voted for more winning presidential candidates than any other president seems to have always regarded himself as a child of destiny, and it turns out he was. But the destiny, he insisted, was not his own but that of the people of the United States of America.

Well said.

January 28, 2011       Permalink

ON THIS DAY – AT 10:14 A.M. ET:  This is the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, which brought home powerfully to Americans that space flight, even decades after we went to the Moon, was still hazardous:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – For many, no single word evokes as much pain.

Challenger.

A quarter-century later, images of the exploding space shuttle still signify all that can go wrong with technology and the sharpest minds. The accident on Jan. 28, 1986 — a scant 73 seconds into flight, nine miles above the Atlantic for all to see — remains NASA's most visible failure.

It was the world's first high-tech catastrophe to unfold on live TV. Adding to the anguish was the young audience: School children everywhere tuned in that morning to watch the launch of the first schoolteacher and ordinary citizen bound for space, Christa McAuliffe.

She never made it.

McAuliffe and six others on board perished as the cameras rolled, victims of stiff O-ring seals and feeble bureaucratic decisions.

It was, as one grief and trauma expert recalls, "the beginning of the age when the whole world knew what happened as it happened."

"That was kind of our pilot study for all the rest to come, I think. It was so ghastly," said Sally Karioth, a professor in Florida State University's school of nursing.

The crew compartment shot out of the fireball, intact, and continued upward another three miles before plummeting. The free fall lasted more than two minutes. There was no parachute to slow the descent, no escape system whatsoever; NASA had skipped all that in shuttle development. Space travel was considered so ordinary, in fact, that the Challenger seven wore little more than blue coveralls and skimpy motorcycle-type helmets for takeoff.

COMMENT:  The disaster, however, led to one of the finest investigatory commissions we've ever assembled.  The star of the investigation was the eminent physicist and Nobel laureate, Richard Feynman, who taught NASA much about basic science and how it should be approached. 

A quote from Feynman:  "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

We might remember that today as we are confronted with all kinds of claims about new energy technologies, and matching claims about climate change.  Nature cannot be fooled.

January 28, 2011       Permalink

SPREADING TO JORDAN – AT 9:35 A.M. ET:  The Tunisian government has been overthrown, Egypt is in flames today, there is unrest in Yemen, Lebanon has essentially come under the control of Hezbollah, and it appears Jordan is joining the list.  From AP:

AMMAN, Jordan — Thousands of Jordanian opposition supporters took to the streets Friday in the country's capital demanding the prime minister step down and venting their anger at rising prices, inflation and unemployment.

It was the third consecutive Friday of protests following Muslim prayers in Jordan, inspired by the unrest in Tunisia and rallies in Egypt demanding the downfall of the country's longtime president.

About 3,500 opposition activists from Jordan's main Islamist opposition group, trade unions and leftist organizations gathered in Amman's downtown, waving colorful banners reading: "Send the corrupt guys to court."

The crowd denounced Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Rifai's unpopular policies. Many shouted: "Rifai go away, prices are on fire and so are the Jordanians."

Another 2,500 people also took to the streets in six other cities across the country after the noon prayers. Those protests also called for Rifai's ouster.

King Abdullah II has promised some reforms, particularly on a controversial election law. But many believe it's unlikely he will bow to demands for popular election of the prime minister and Cabinet officials, traditionally appointed by the king.

COMMENT:  Again, we caution that we don't know how a popular uprising will play out.  Greater democracy, or greater influence for the Mideast nutjobs who are always waiting to take power?

We've never had this many anti-government riots at one time in the Mideast.  Yes, there is potential for good.  But the word "good" and "Mideast" are not normally found together.  We don't draw much encouragement from this:

As they broke into a procession, the demonstrators chanted, "In the name of God, the government must change" and the Muslim holy book "Koran is our constitution, jihad is our path."

Chills, my friends.

January 28, 2011      Permalink

THE IMPORTANCE OF HOME SAFETY – AT 8:33 A.M. ET:  Didn't this person's mother teach her anything?   Reader Brian M. Carey alerts us to a close call in Moscow.  From London's Telegraph:

The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow's Domodedovo airport on Monday, intended to detonate a suicide belt on a busy square near Red Square on New Year's Eve in an attack that could have killed hundreds.

Security sources believe a spam message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her but nobody else.
She was at her Moscow safe house at the time getting ready with two accomplices, both of whom survived and were seen fleeing the scene.

Islamist terrorists in Russia often use cheap unused mobile phones as detonators. The bomber's handler, who is usually watching their charge, sends the bomber a text message in order to set off his or her explosive belt at the moment when it is thought they can inflict maximum casualties.

The phones are usually kept switched off until the very last minute but in this case, Russian security sources believe, the terrorists were careless.

COMMENT:  Their carelessness, fortunately, saved many lives.  The terrorists weren't so careless in their Domodedovo airport attack, where they hit their target, with devastating results. 

We can't depend, in the United States, on the enemy's incompetence.  It doesn't last forever.

January 28, 2011      Permalink

EGYPT ON THE BRINK – AT 7:55 A.M. ET:  But the brink of what?  That is the question.  From AP:

CAIRO -- Thousands of Egyptian anti-government protesters clashed Friday with police in Cairo, who fired rubber bullets into the crowds and used tear gas and water cannons to disperse them. It was a major escalation in what was already the biggest challenge to President Hosni Mubarak's 30 year-rule.

Police also used water cannons against Egypt's pro-democracy leader Mohamed ElBaradei and his supporters as they joined the latest wave of protests after noon prayers. Police also used batons to beat some of ElBaradei's supporters, who surrounded him to protect him.

A soaking wet ElBaradei was trapped inside a mosque nearly an hour after him and his supporters were water cannoned. Hundreds of riot police laid siege to the mosque, firing tear gas in the streets surrounding it so no one could leave. The tear gas canisters set several cars ablaze outside the mosque. Several people fainted and suffered burns.

Large groups of protesters, in the thousands, were gathered at at least six venues in Cairo, a city of about 18 million people. They are demanding Mubarak's ouster.

There were smaller protests in Assiut south of Cairo and al-Arish in the Sinai peninsula. Regional television stations were reporting clashes between thousands of demonstrators and police in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and Minya south of Cairo.

COMMENT:  There is absolutely no guarantee that this will end well.  The history of the Arab world gives us little comfort.  Too often, "popular" uprisings lead to "democratic" elections in which the worst, most backward elements win, elements who rule less intelligently than the thugs they replace.

Consider Gaza, which democratically elected Hamas, an extremist Palestinian movement that has brought nothing good and driven peace further away.

So we sit tight, waiting for the next step.  The images of riots in Cairo are being flashed all over the Arab world, which seethes with discontent.  The example is being set.  There is already unease and some violence in Yemen. 

We cheer democracy, but let us do it while being aware that there was discontent as well in Germany in the late 1920s.  We know where that led.  History does not repeat itself, but the psychology of history does. 

January 28, 2011     Permalink