Wednesday
Oct212009
Links for 10.21.09
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Issandr El Amrani | Activism Egypt Iran Iraq Israel/Palestine Media Military Obama US cairo copts espionage france history hrw hussein israellobby mepp nyt police saddam shenouda
Issandr El Amrani | Activism Egypt Iran Iraq Israel/Palestine Media Military Obama US cairo copts espionage france history hrw hussein israellobby mepp nyt police saddam shenouda
✪ 'Just World News' with Helena Cobban: Nozette: Pollard, 2.0? | On the latest Israeli spy scandal in the US.
✪ "friday-lunch-club": Netanyahu refuses Kouchner's request to see Gaza's destruction ... | Gaza? What Gaza?
✪ To Earn HIs Nobel Prize, Obama Will Need a "Plan B" | Stephen M. Walt | "If I were President Obama (now there's a scary thought!), I'd ask some smart people on my foreign policy team to start thinking hard about "Plan B." What's Plan B? It's the strategy that he's going to need when it becomes clear that his initial foreign policy initiatives didn't work."
✪ ذاكرة مصر المعاصرة - الصحافة | Alexandria Library's online collection of historical Egyptian newspapers, including the first issue of al-Ahram (which was founded, it must be reluctantly noted, by Lebanese.)
✪ News Analysis - Painful Mideast Truth - Force Trumps Diplomacy - NYTimes.com | Painful Media Truth: For NYT, bias always trumps journalism. Look at the language used in this piece: Palestinian violence is "very bloody" and Israel carries out "military action." Israel's plans to attack Iran are considered as legitimate. And there is a mixing of terrorism and the attacks on Israel's "legitimacy" -- i.e. the legitimacy of its landgrabs, occupations and militarism. Pure hasbara.
✪ Israel, US start major joint air defence drill - Yahoo! News |
✪ Matthew Yglesias » Bernstein on Human Rights Watch | A good retort to the latest silly attack on HRW (by one of its former chairman) "or having the temerity to hold Israel to the same standards of international humanitarian law to which it holds every other country." But this just points to the problem of bias in the higher echelons of HRW - among former and current staffers.
✪ Almasry Alyoum | No Fly Zone | Nice story looking at the recent airport detentions of various kinds of activists.
✪ Almasry Alyoum | Pope Shenouda: "I Support Gamal Mubarak" | What a nasty little man, and what disservice he does to his flock. I hope Copts flee the Orthodox Church en masse over this.
✪ Arab states consider joint counter-terror police unit | "Arabpol." Oh Lord Have Mercy.
✪ Egyptcarpoolers | A carpooling connecting website for Cairo.
✪ Saddam Interview | Transcripts of interviews with Saddam Hussein during his captivity in 2004.
✪ "friday-lunch-club": Netanyahu refuses Kouchner's request to see Gaza's destruction ... | Gaza? What Gaza?
✪ To Earn HIs Nobel Prize, Obama Will Need a "Plan B" | Stephen M. Walt | "If I were President Obama (now there's a scary thought!), I'd ask some smart people on my foreign policy team to start thinking hard about "Plan B." What's Plan B? It's the strategy that he's going to need when it becomes clear that his initial foreign policy initiatives didn't work."
✪ ذاكرة مصر المعاصرة - الصحافة | Alexandria Library's online collection of historical Egyptian newspapers, including the first issue of al-Ahram (which was founded, it must be reluctantly noted, by Lebanese.)
✪ News Analysis - Painful Mideast Truth - Force Trumps Diplomacy - NYTimes.com | Painful Media Truth: For NYT, bias always trumps journalism. Look at the language used in this piece: Palestinian violence is "very bloody" and Israel carries out "military action." Israel's plans to attack Iran are considered as legitimate. And there is a mixing of terrorism and the attacks on Israel's "legitimacy" -- i.e. the legitimacy of its landgrabs, occupations and militarism. Pure hasbara.
✪ Israel, US start major joint air defence drill - Yahoo! News |
The exercise will test the Arrow (Hetz) system, the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence), the ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defence System, as well as Patriot and Hawk anti-aircraft systems, media said. It will simulate the firing of long-range missiles from Israel's foes Iran, Syria and Lebanon, and towards the end it will include a "live" missile interception, reports said.
✪ Matthew Yglesias » Bernstein on Human Rights Watch | A good retort to the latest silly attack on HRW (by one of its former chairman) "or having the temerity to hold Israel to the same standards of international humanitarian law to which it holds every other country." But this just points to the problem of bias in the higher echelons of HRW - among former and current staffers.
✪ Almasry Alyoum | No Fly Zone | Nice story looking at the recent airport detentions of various kinds of activists.
✪ Almasry Alyoum | Pope Shenouda: "I Support Gamal Mubarak" | What a nasty little man, and what disservice he does to his flock. I hope Copts flee the Orthodox Church en masse over this.
✪ Arab states consider joint counter-terror police unit | "Arabpol." Oh Lord Have Mercy.
✪ Egyptcarpoolers | A carpooling connecting website for Cairo.
✪ Saddam Interview | Transcripts of interviews with Saddam Hussein during his captivity in 2004.
Reader Comments (5)
How is Baba Shenouda doing a disservice to his flock? It's not like everyone doesn't already know that leaders of minority communities in countries with potentially hostile majorities more or less kowtow to the ruling party. (I'm not talking factionalized countries like Lebanon here.) If he wants any hope of renovating any church in the next few years, of course he supports Gamal.
a) he didn't have to actually go out and repeatedly endorse Gamal, he could have stayed out of politics as he so often claims to want to do.
b) Shenouda wants to renovate the church?!?
c) Shenouda is thinking about the next few years?!?
a) True, but silence has a meaning too. It's not like the whole country doesn't know that the implicit question facing every community/political/religious (the differences between the categories sometimes seem just semantics) leader is "Gamal, yes or no." A strategy of playing coy and aloof from politics could risk just annoying and alienating every side, which isn't necessarily good for the church which is, unfortunately but necessarily, a political entity insofar as it seeks to defend or at least support the worldly interests and well-being of its flock. The Pope's strategy may not turn out to have been ideal, but he's already a political figure, so silence wouldn't be removing himself from politics but just saying something different.
b) I'm referring to the fact that I believe the church needs permits for any renovations/expansions/etc of religious facilities. Not that the NDP seems to be so willing to give those, but it's arguably foolish to bite the hand that you want to feed to.
c) And yes, of course? I would hope? Or at least he has consultants who do it for him. Papal powerpoint presentations and the like.
I still think he is betraying Copts and Egyptians generally by - before Gamal Mubarak even officially declares his candidacy - pre-emptively approving tawreeth, i.e. Egypt turning into a hereditary dictatorship.
Regarding c) I was referring to the prospects of Baba Shenouda not being around in the next few years.
What gives you the right to refer to the Coptic leader as a "nasty little man" regardless of what you think of his individual decision. Who are the hell are you but a no name journalist. Is that what online blogging has come to these days, anyone can use personal and insulting language to insult a respected figure in society?