NY Times 'We Are All Egyptians!' Really? 82% of 'We' Want to Stone Women?

The weak kidneys of America's Media cause it to micturate down our legs and proclaim a rainstorm.

Nicholas D(Cousin Weak Kidneys)Kristof's idiotic and gushy proclamation that We are the World; We Are Egyptians! is another such trouser moistening announcement of the Heavens about to Open.

The lion-hearted Egyptians I met on Tahrir Square are risking their lives to stand up for democracy and liberty, and they deserve our strongest support — and, frankly, they should inspire us as well. A quick lesson in colloquial Egyptian Arabic: Innaharda, ehna kullina Misryeen! Today, we are all Egyptians!

Now, hold there, Hoss! I'm agin stoning women, but 82% of your "We" thinks that is just dandy. Shake hands with an Alsatian! Bump booty with Botswannan! Have a hoe-down with a Hapsburg! Love a Laplander!

Gee, let's all sing the Marseilles like in Casablanca and confound the Wehrmacht, Nicky! What do mean WE?

The most recent Pew Polling of Egyptian Opinion states: -

Well, take a gander!

ON ISLAM IN POLITICS

-- Is it good that Islam plays a large role in politics? 95 percent said "yes" and 2 percent "bad."

-- Is Islam's influence in politics positive or negative? 85 percent said "positive," 2 percent said "negative."

-- How much of a role does Islam play in Egyptian politics now? 48 percent said "large" and 49 percent said "small."

-- Is there a struggle between groups that want to modernize Egypt and Islamic fundamentalists? 31 percent said "yes." Of them, 27 percent described themselves as modernizers and 59 percent called themselves fundamentalists.

ON ISLAMIST EXTREMISM

-- Are suicide bombings justified? 46 percent said "never," 34 percent "rarely," 12 percent "sometimes" and 8 percent "often." (NOTE: Support for suicide bombing has dropped since 2006, when 28 percent said they were justified sometimes or often.)

-- Are you concerned about Islamist extremism in the world? 70 percent said they were "very concerned" or "concerned."

-- Are you concerned about Islamist extremism in Egypt? 61 percent said they were "very concerned" or "concerned."

ON FOREIGN ISLAMIST MOVEMENTS

-- What do you think of Hamas? 49 percent were favorable.

-- What do you think of Hezbollah? 30 percent were favorable.
-- What do you think of al Qaeda? 20 percent were favorable.

-- Do you have confidence in Osama bin Laden? 19 percent said "some" or "a lot," 73 percent said "not much" or "none." (NOTE: Confidence in bin Laden has fallen from 27 percent in 2006).

ON TRADITIONAL MUSLIM PRACTICES

-- Should men and women be segregated in the workplace? 54 percent said "yes" and 44 percent "no."

-- Should adulterers be stoned? 82 percent said "yes."

-- Should apostates from Islam face the death penalty? 84 percent said "yes."

-- Should thieves be flogged or have their hands cut off? 77 percent said "yes."

ON DEMOCRACY

-- Is democracy preferable to any other kind of government? 59 percent said "yes."

-- Can a non-democratic system be preferable in certain circumstances? 22 percent said "yes."

-- Is it irrelevant to you what kind of government you have? 16 percent said "yes."

(Compiled by Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor)

Irish Independent writer Kevin Myers mocks the wee-wee spilling goofs of the European Press.

One of the striking features of the pro-Mubarak demonstrators was that none seemed to speak English, which suggested a certain closeness to the grassroots of ordinary Egyptians. One elderly man (apparently) said in Arabic that Mubarak was a strong man, and Egypt needed a strong man, and he didn't want to see Egypt going the same way as Iraq, with beheadings. Quite so. We all know that Mubarak ruled with the torture chamber and the secret police, which everyone deplores. But is there an Arabic Denmark upon which Egyptian social democrats can model a new political regime for their country, a Copenhagen on the Nile?

Because our European media are so deeply-anti-Israel, their instinct has been to show its Arab neighbours in a favourable light -- which partly explains the non-stop images of the anti-Mubarak intelligentsia, with auburn highlights and beautiful English. They no more speak for Egypt than the citizens of Ballsbridge speak for Kerry South. The recent Pew survey of Egypt tells another story, without tonsorial highlights or Anglophone urbanity. Some 54pc of Egyptians can justify suicide bombings in some form or other, with 20pc supporting al Qa'ida. Additionally, 54pc believe in segregation of the sexes in the workplace; 82pc think adulterers should be stoned to death; 84pc think apostates from Islam should be killed; and 77pc think thieves should have their hands cut off. Doesn't sound much like Denmark.

Egypt has received billions of dollars in aid in the last 30 years, and much of which has gone into buying Park Lane apartments in London for the kleptocratic crooks who run the country. Meanwhile, Egypt's population is growing at an unsustainable 2pc a year, making it about the same size as Germany's -- but not for long. Germany has eight births per thousand; Egypt has 25 births. And to give you a sense of the appaling economic prospects ahead for Egypt, German GDP (remember, with the same population) is about 1,700 times greater than Egypt's.

The government-in-waiting in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood -- "the Ikhwan" -- is supposedly not in favour of terrorism, well, for the moment anyway. But then was not Sinn Fein a supposedly pacifist movement? Nationalistic pacifisms tend be conditional on the complete absence of an opponent, which is not very passive at all. Either way, the Muslim Brotherhood is certainly not non-violent in its utter opposition to Israel.

The gushers have ruined America's britches as well as lied like Egyptian rugs.

Egypt - Welcome Back Carter Redux: Are the President's Viziers Helping Tack The Bad Guys?

As Tunisia was exploding with texts and Tweets, Tunisian cab driver picked up the lady I love in Chicago's Gold Coast. The cabbie remarked, "This is Historic! I came to America because I could not make a living in Tunis and now with technology thousands of my people are making a change."

Thousands of people have Tweeted the call for change across the Middle East. Egypt, long an American ally is broiling. Yeman, where Islamist terrorists launched the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and established training camps for Al Quaeda, is bursting with protest. Among the thousands of people - not the first wave of protestors - the enemies of man lurk to pounce on power.

Power is what this is all about: political power for the Marxist Islamists. Once the wave of protests begin the cobweb creatures of control scurry out and toss bombs and bricks and bullets. The subsequent crackdowns ensure that the Whole World Watches.

This is Tehran 1979 all over again. President Obama is of the very same intellectual mind-set as Jimmy Carter -empty platitudes eclipse policy and statesmanship.

Thus it is all about The First Person in Chief, "When I was in Cairo, shortly after I was elected President, I said that all governments must maintain power through consent, not coercion," Obama added. "That is the single standard by which the people of Egypt will achieve the future they deserve." Always.

Last evening, President Obama all but tossed Hosni Mubarak to the Muslim Brotherhood - a clique of anti-Western fanatics that has assassinated with impunity and carefully managed a public relations enterprise that British Petroleum could have used in the recent Gulf Oil Spill. Since 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has employed Fascism in its pre-WWII anti-British Campaigns and morphed Soviet Communism under Gamal Naser to wrest the Suez Canal in 1956 and melded Islam with International Marxism and Terrorism from the constant warfare with Israel and the West into this terrible and bloody Millennium.

In 1979, I watched the over throw of the Shah of Iran via the old timey Network News (CBS,NBC,ABC) and saw President Carter, for whom I worked to become President, dither and mouse the wave of events that brought a Theocratic Despotism and all of the slaughter of the democratic demonstrators who actually toppled the Shah - a louse of the first order. Dr. Carter's Advisers were Ramsey Clark types* - American Navel Gazers who wallow in collective guilt and flagellate scorn on every aspect of the American and Western way of life. These are the tweedy mopes who actually find poignancy in the deconstructive and divisive yowlings of Noam Chomsky and dimmer bulbs like Bill Ayers ( who has made frequent visits to Cairo on behalf of Hamas with his odious life partner Bernardine Dohrn - imagine that) and Ward Churchill. Policy in Education trumped scholarship and esoteric Marxist rhetoric ended discourse in the last thirty years.

Trendy DeConstructionists and semiotic totalitarians* ( homage to Gary Saul Morson NU Tolstoy scholar and Slavic languages expert)replaced serious humanists and the canon became as watered down as Miller Beer.

However, the dangerous coffee-table scribes are academics with genuine talents like Edward Said. I studied Said in graduate school at Loyola of Chicago in the 1980's under Dr. Alan Frantzen. Frantzen was respectfully dismissive of literary text critiques that deconstruct meaning in a book in order to control dialog among people. Northwestern University Tolstoy expert, Gary Saul Morson, calls such clever and fashionable charlatans 'semiotic totalitarians.'

Semiotic Totalitarians emgage in preemptive censorship. They reduce language to signifiers ( Bill Clinton's "That depends upon what 'IS' is.") Thus langauge means anything and nothing. Most recently, President Obama's address on Egypt last night - “We urge the Egyptian authorities not to prevent peaceful protests nor block communications, including on social media sites. . . ."continue to stand up for the rights of the Egyptian people and work with their government in pursuit of a future that is more just, more free and more hopeful."

No matter what Mubarak does, says, or even thinks this White House, which harkened back to President Obama's Muslim lecture in Cairo a couple of years ago will favor "the rights of the Egyptian people and work with their government in pursuit of a future that is more just, more free and more hopeful." The Muslim Brotherhood and the viziers around President Obama ( Hamas friendly, anti-American Exceptionist, and semiotic totalitarian thick) will see to that, I am afraid.

If President Obama is President Carter ( even Vice President Biden refused to call Mubarak a dictator) we may witness the fall of Mubarak, a deconstructed Egypt and solid base of power for some very bad people - the Muslim Brotherhood.


Only last week, a prominent voice of Obama thought, Jim Wall - leftist secularist religion writer ( how's that for deconstruction) called upon the Obama Administration to get more Islmaist and anti Israel.

Obama and Khalidi were close enough so that when Khalidi was being honored before he left Chicago for New York, State Senator Barack Obama was the main speaker at Khalidi’s going away dinner.

That dinner later emerged as a campaign issue during Obama’s primary struggle with Hillary Clinton, when Obama’s relationships at the University of Chicago were first used to paint him as a political radical. Khalidi was linked in that “radical attack” on Obama with Professor Bill Ayers, a former Weatherman, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s outspoken United Church of Christ Chicago pastor.

When Obama became president of the United States. he unfortunately did not turn to his colleague Rashid Khalidi for counsel on the Middle East. Instead, he continued the practice of his two presidential predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and surrounded himself not with viziers, but with courtiers.

Nizámu’l Mulk gives a definition in that same Medieval Sourcebook on the subject, On the Courtiers and Familars of Kings which includes this 11th century definition of a courtier:

*to·tal·i·tar·i·an, adj.
of or relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state
sem·i·o·tics, n.
the study of signs and symbols, how meaning is constructed and understood