So Many Links, So Little Time

By John Ballard

This list speaks for itself. When there is so much to read I have a hard time putting together a coherent blogpost. By the time I get half done, what I began is already old news. Stuff didn't used to happen this fast.  Am I getting old?

?EU ministers tackle Libya conundrum
The word conundrum never had a better application than what to do about Libya.

EU foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels today (10 March) ahead of a special summit on Friday dedicated to the ongoing civil war in Libya and to the wider Southern Mediterranean region. Ministers will reportedly assess the risk that the conflict could degenerate and drag on for a long time.

BUT

Another meeting of foreign ministers will take place in G�lo castle near Budapest at the weekend.

The two sides Libya appear to be canceling one another out and it is important to keep tabs on which one is gaining more ground, the official explained. "We are working on the basis of events as they unfold," he admitted.

All the hand-wringing here in the US reflects the durable notion that the United States is still the world's policeman and our president is a wimp because he needs to grow a pair, fix the Libyan problem, and get on with business.  Meantime the administration continues to do everything possible to shape an international consensus. Gates said out loud last week...

Let�s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses. That�s the way you do a no-fly zone. And then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down. But that�s the way it starts.

?Understanding Libya's Michael Corleone
This interview in FP Magazine is more than interesting.  It's like a splash of icewater in the face.
Benjamin Barber is part of the Monitor Group, a PR outfit retained by Libya to clean up the image of both the country and Gaddafi. I have read a couple of pieces aimed at discrediting the Monitor Group since among their clients this project went "horribly wrong" as the intro admits. But a careful reading of this interview reveals more about the Gaddafi family, both favorable and unfavorable, than anyone wants to admit.

I could put together a lengthy post about this article alone but the reader will have to go study it without any precis from me. Briefly, I have to say it makes Saif, number two son, a bit more human and events of the last couple of weeks less irrational than they appear to have been. 

?News Summary from the US/International Press on the Libyan Crisis - by Morgan Strong
This lengthy summary of the news in Tripoli Post is the most comprehensive I have found in one place.Morgan Strong has access to a good aggregator.

~~~~~Moving to other news beyond Libya, here are more links.~~~~~

?The rise and fall of Egypt's notorious State Security
Last week's attack by protesters on the State Security buildings in Alexandria and elsewhere were the Egyptian analogue to storming of the Bastille.  The Interior Ministry was Mubarak's enforcement tool and State Security was the locus of its power. The question now looms: To what extent can Egypt (or any country) expect to swim among sharks in international waters without some measure of "state security" (lower case)?

For Emad Gad, political expert in Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, the apparatus has to �be restructured to handle terrorism only and stop spying on people.�

But he added that the apparatus in its current form has been completely delegitimized and should be replaced. �A new apparatus must be formed and it has to be subject to judiciary supervision,� he said.

Mahmoud al-Khodeiry, former vice president of Egypt�s court of Cassation, agreed with Gad.

�The apparatus is necessary and has to remain but it has to be restructured and limited in a way that doesn�t allow it to interfere in matters outside of its specialty. It must serve the country and not the regime,� he said.

?Atfeeh residents deny reports that Christians were attacked
I cannot read this account without thinking of parallels with the US political scene. We're not the only place where gun-toting racists abound.
This is an Egyptian newspaper account trying to be objective and doing everything possible to spin the story to cover an undercurrent of anti-Christian animus that is part of the majority Muslim fabric. Notice the event happened in a village but demonstrations in Cairo were the result. Tolerance of all faiths is the official policy but the ten deaths all happened to be Christian.

After a church was partially burned and demolished last Friday in the village of Sol in Atfeeh, Helwan, thousands of residents attended a conference on Wednesday to strengthen solidarity between the village�s Muslim and Christian communities.

Last Friday, the discovery of a relationship between a Christian man and a Muslim woman ignited fights between the two families that led to the death of two Muslims. Angry youth then headed towards Shahedain (Two Martyrs) Church and partially demolished it in revenge.

The incident triggered large Coptic demonstrations in Cairo throughout the week that led to clashes on Tuesday resulting in at least ten deaths and over 100 injuries. Some observers fear that Egypt�s infamous State Security may have instigated the recent wave of sectarian strife in order to distract protesters who are demanding that State Security be dismantled.

Toward the end of the piece this revealing snapshot tells more about the dynamic of what occurred  than any other details of the story.

Some of the village�s residents continue to surround the site of the demolished church and insist that they found evidence the church was used to prepare spells against the village�s Muslims to cause divorces and other misfortunes. They said they found lists with the names of all the Muslim residents in the church.

�We would rather die here than let the church get rebuilt,� declared one of the young men at the site.

The Protocols have taken root.  For young Muslims there is little distinction between Jews and Christians, so the Copts may as well have been Jews. This is a totally understandable impression considering American support of all things Israeli as well as the rise and spread of Christian Zionism.

I'm afraid the Arab Democrats have a really big challenge on their hands.

?The new Egypt: Leaving women behind
Speaking of challenges faced by Arab Democrats, this excellent piece from Al Jazeera addresses another problem they face,  that of gender equality.

Throughout the uprising, women were at the forefront of the street protests. However, they have largely kept quiet about their gender rights in a country where they have faced rampant discrimination and received little legal protection against widespread violence and sexual abuse.

They were careful not to display any intention of wanting to advance one group's rights over those of another. "We did not speak of our gender rights during these protests because it was not the right time. We spoke for the political and social rights of all Egyptians.

If we were to campaign for our rights as women in parallel with the revolution's national goal, that would have been called political opportunism," says Hala Kamal, an assistant professor at Cairo University and a member of the Women in Memory Forum.

But only days into the post-Mubarak era, many women's rights activists have begun to feel suspicious that the national umbrella they rallied under, whose slogan was democracy, equality and freedom for all Egyptians, may be leaving them out. Their disillusionment began when no women were selected by the military council to be among the 10-member constitutional committee responsible for making constitutional revisions. Another disheartening setback that raises questions about the future of women's rights in Egypt is the return of sexual harassment to the streets.

Returning from the front lines While the protests have been hailed for being harassment-free in a society infamous for widespread sexual harassment, Engy Gozlan, who works with HarassMap, an initiative that enables women to report sexual harassment via SMS, says sexual harassment incidents have returned to their pre-protests level. It is estimated that more than 80 per cent of Egyptian women have encountered sexual harassment.

Fears that the condition of Egyptian women could return to 'normal' after the uprising appear legitimate. After all, there have been several cases in history of uprisings that prove that "women can be used in a revolution and then told 'thank you, you can go back home,'" Wassef says. Thus while the widespread participation of Egyptian women in the uprising can be considered "one more step towards women's empowerment, it should not hold expectations," says Marina Ottaway, the director of Carnegie Endowment's Middle East programme.

Reflecting on the Algerian national liberation struggle in the 1960s, Ottaway says: "Francis Fanon, [one of the most influential writers on the Algerian struggle at the time], has argued that the war of independence has changed the relations between men and women and enhanced the participation of women in the public sphere." "But as soon as the war ended and the revolutionary fervour was over, the old gender roles were reinstated.

Old customs proved to be very entrenched and hard to change." Moreover, Joost Hiltermann, who wrote extensively about Palestinian women's movements during the first Intifada which begun in the late 1980s, observed in 1991 that "despite women's activism, their social and political position in society has essentially remained the same". Hiltermann, who is now the International Crisis Group's deputy programme director, says: "It is usually the case that during a national crisis, women play a very active political and social role because everyone is on the barricade. But, when the crisis is over, women return to their original roles."

From this perspective, Amal Abdel Hadi of the New Women Association in Egypt says that the recent marginalisation of Egyptian women following the uprising is an embodiment of a patriarchal society that is difficult to change. "This is the default. This is what people were born into and this is how they work. No one wants to make an effort. No one believes in the cause of gender equality."

?How Israel�s Peacemaking Endangers Itself And Region�s Stability
Daniel Greenfield is a columnist born in Israel and currently living in New York City. He is a contributing editor at Family Security Matters and writes a daily blog column on Islamic Terrorism, Israeli and American politics and Europe's own clash of civilizations which can be found at Sultanknish.blogspot.com.
For a macho account of Israel's position on all matters, turn to this articulate pro-Israel commentator. His blogroll is a Who's Who of pro-Israel sites and his commentary is scalpel sharp.

At a meeting with Jewish leaders, Barack Hussein Obama told them to �search your souls� over whether Israel really wants to make peace. But all those leaders need to search is Israeli cemeteries filled with the graves of thousands of victims of the peace process. Perhaps there they can search the souls of the thousands of men, women and children, blown up in restaurants, gunned down in schools and on roads, tortured to death in the No-Go Zones of the Palestinian Authority. They are, in the memorably gruesome words of Rabin, �Sacrifices for Peace�, human sacrifices served up on the burning altar of diplomacy in an endless holocaust of appeasement. Every inch of territory that Israel has given up into the hands of terrorists, has been used as the front line of terrorism. If Israelis are less eager to be served up as human sacrifices to the Muslim Moloch, that should call for soul searching not by them, but by the Western governments who have blindly supported Muslim terrorists leaders Arafat and Abbas, and their murderous campaign against Israeli civilians.

[...]   For two decades Israel has stood at the execution block, trying to negotiate peace by piece. �How about a finger, sir. Or my left big toe, I don�t use it much anyway. My right foot then, it�s far out there and populated by settlers, and my chest will be more defensible without it. Not good enough? Alright then, both my feet and half the fingers on my left hand. But that�s here I draw the line!� But the line is always drawn at the neck. Sooner or later it always gets down to the head of the matter.

You get the idea.
Still wonder why the Israel-Palestine conflict is so hard to resolve?

?Rattling The Cage: More tips for information warriors
I cannot let this list end without something to balance the preceding link. 
Check out this piece of satire from Jerusalem Post systematically poking away at all the usual talking points of those who would advance the unbending position of those on the intractable right.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if this isn't an echo of American politics I don't know what is. When comedians are better at telling the truth than Serious People, what more can we do but laugh at the absurdity of a situation?

Clearly, Israel�s need for advocates who will spread its message has never been greater. So here are some more killer arguments to help you to help Israel win the information war. Yalla! (That�s Hebrew for �Victory!�)

1. �Every Israeli wants peace.� This will just bliss your audience out, this will fill them with warm feelings for Israel. My, my, my, every Israeli wants peace. Every single one, including the Hebron settlers, including the Kachniks, including the ones who burn mosques and shoot Palestinians � every Israeli wants peace. Who can deny it? Do you know any Israeli who wants to get killed in a war? No, which means every Israeli wants peace. OK, it�s not saying much, it�s basically saying every Israeli wants to stay alive, you could just as easily say every Iranian wants peace, every Congolese wants peace � which is why you don�t want to dwell on any one point too long. Hit �em hard and fast, then move on.


2. �We don�t want to rule over a foreign people.� Of course we don�t. This has all been a misunderstanding. If the Palestinians had just let us take over the West Bank and Gaza, we wouldn�t have had to rule over them! But they forced us into it. Here you want to show how Israel is doing everything humanly possible for peace, but the Palestinians, alas, simply will not listen to reason.


3. �We support a Palestinian state, but not one that will threaten Israel�s security.� What could be more reasonable than that? If a Palestinian state has an army, that will threaten Israel�s security. If it can forge military alliances, that will threaten Israel�s security. If it controls its own borders, terrorists will be able to come in and threaten Israel�s security. If it controls its own airspace, Israeli spy planes won�t be able to fly over, which will threaten Israel�s security. We simply can�t allow it. The Palestinians can have their state, but no army and no military alliances, and Israel controls their borders and their airspace. Two states for two peoples, like the US and Vermont. And if anybody asks you if it�s fair for a militarized, sovereign Israel to be able to threaten the Palestinians� security but not vice versa, explain that Israel doesn�t threaten the Palestinians� security because Israel is trustworthy and harmless. A Palestinian state, you point out, would threaten Israel because Palestinians are liars and murderers, and then you conclude by saying that the day Palestinian leaders show the courage to prepare their people to accept this reality, Israel will know it has a partner.


4. �DEFENSIBLE BORDERS/Auschwitz borders.� What more legitimate demand can any nation make than for defensible borders? For Israel, defensible borders means not those pre-Six Day War borders when we didn�t have the West Bank, not those �Auschwitz borders� as that dove of doves, Abba Eban, called them a long time ago. True, those were the borders from which Israel fought the Six Day War, so they seem to have been pretty damn defensible, but there are army guys who say they aren�t, and army guys know best, so go with �Auschwitz borders.� True, Abba Eban kicked himself over those words the rest of his life, but he�s not around anymore to carp and meddle, so don�t worry.


5. �A Jew has the right to live anywhere in Jerusalem.� How much of an anti-Semite to you have to be to say otherwise? I�m sure Obama would agree that a Jew has the right to live anywhere in Washington DC (publicly he�d agree, privately who knows what President Hussein thinks?) so how can he say a Jew doesn�t have the right to live anywhere in Jerusalem? The idea! Alright, an Arab can�t live anywhere he wants in Jerusalem, but people have to understand � this is a Jewish state. Here the Jews are the majority, and the majority says all of Jerusalem is for the Jews and only the Arab part is for the Arabs � if they behave. That�s not democracy? That�s more democracy than they�ve got in Saudi Arabia, or Malaysia, or wherever Obama was born.


6. �Sudetenland/Czechoslovakia.� Bibi just used this one, Sharon once used it � it freaks people out completely. You tell them that everybody�s pressuring Israel to give up the West Bank for peace just like they pressured Czechoslovakia in 1938 to give up the Sudetenland for peace, and just let it sink in. Let your audience fill in the blanks. If Sudetenland equals the West Bank, and Czechoslovakia equals Israel, Nazi Germany equals�the Palestinians! Your audience is seeing Nazis when they think of Palestinians, and all you�ve mentioned is Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia! Just make sure not to go straight into the pitch about how Israel wants to make peace with the Palestinians, because it�s not going to be very convincing � Israel wants to make peace with Nazis? So put at least 10 or 15 minutes of shpiel between the Sudetenland thing and the peace thing.


7. �Glorifying terrorism.� This is a real shlagger � the Palestinian Authority names city squares, community centers and whatnot after suicide bombers, after this Dalal Mugrabi who killed 37 Israelis in the Coastal Road Massacre, after Amin al-Hindi who plotted the Munich Olympics massacre, and others like them. The Palestinian Authority, the �moderates,� the darlings of America and Europe. Such hypocrisy! But maybe some anti-Semite is going to bring up all the bridges, neighborhoods, schools, etc. in Israel named after Menachem Begin, and he�s going to say Begin ordered the bombing of the King David Hotel, and British officers clubs, and train stations and Arab markets, and that hundreds of people, mainly civilians, were killed, and wasn�t that terrorism, so doesn�t Israel glorify terrorism, too, with the Menahem Begin this and the Menachem Begin that? So here�s what you do � deny it! Say it�s all �a biased, distorted view of history,� it�s �the radical Palestinian narrative.� Damn the facts, just start shouting about �moral equivalence.� In no time, the little anarchist will have been pushed out the door, and there you are, standing up for Israel against these vicious attacks. Your listeners will be ready to walk through fire for you, blind.


8. �We reject extremism from both sides, Left or Right.� This makes you sound balanced, evenhanded, and it gives people the idea that there�s just as much danger from the Israeli Left as there is from the Right. They�ll figure that philosophy students in North Tel Aviv pose no less a threat to human life and decency as armed settlers in Yitzhar. They�ll think Yossi Sarid casts as long a shadow over Israeli democracy as Avigdor Lieberman. In the end, your audience will be confused into neutrality, into silence, into nodding their heads for the status quo, which just happens to be owned by the Right.

You see how it�s done? You start off presenting yourself as �apolitical,� and end up winning support for good old, hardline, anti-Arab Israeli nationalism. Remember: You are fighting the information war for Israel�s survival, and in an information war, as in any other war, the first casualty is truth.