Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Imagine that. Actually, I’ve been lamenting every vindicating episode arising out of the following warning I gave in the germinating days of the Arab Spring: With all due respect to the protesters, the issue is not whether Mubarak will go, for he will. (The man is 82 and already looks half dead for Christ’s sake!)… Read more.
The chickens continue coming home to roost: An Egyptian court Monday sentenced to death 529 supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi on charges including one murder count, in a trial denounced by human rights groups as bereft of due process. The biggest mass death sentence handed down in Egypt’s modern history comes amid a sharp… Read more.
You’d be hard-pressed to find another commentator who warned, at the height of the Arab Spring nearly three years ago, that today Egyptians would be hailing as their savior a military dictator who makes Mubarak look positively Jeffersonian. Or one who warned that the world would be witnessing Mubarak’s imprisoned-kleptomaniac kids acquitted on corruption charges,… Read more.
Anyone who insists that it’s bad form to say, “I told you so,” has probably never had a real cause to say so. Accordingly, I hope you’ll forgive me for juxtaposing news reports on the bloody turmoil now spiraling out of control in Egypt with my commentaries dating back to the germinating days of the… Read more.
I find it curious that Obama is effectively calling on the Egyptian military to guarantee the protesters’ democratic aspirations. Ironically, he and other Western leaders seem to believe that the best way to transition from Mubarak’s dictatorship to democracy is by installing a de facto military dictatorship. (“Crisis in Egypt: the End Game,” The iPINIONS… Read more.
The irony cannot be lost on anyone that millions of Egyptians are planning to mark the one-year anniversary of their democratic revolution by calling on their democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, to resign. Here is how Mohamed ElBaradei – who heads the opposition National Salvation Front as well as the Al-Dustar Party – framed the… Read more.
Frankly, though absurd, it’s hardly surprising that an obscure Internet video by some crackpot depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a blasphemous light would incite ignorant Islamists (redundancy intended) to violent rage. Remember how mere cartoons of Muhammad incited fiery protests throughout the Muslim world a few years ago? These mindless Islamists are as embarrassing to… Read more.
Over the past few months, pro-democracy protesters were ruing the fact that those benefiting most from their blood, sweat and tears are members of the Muslim Brotherhood who, after winning control of parliament, seemed hell-bent on turning Egypt into an Islamic state … like Iran. Indeed, some protesters were so wistful that they began rallying… Read more.
The following excerpts from two of the many commentaries I’ve written on the Egyptian revolution should explain what is unfolding there now. The first is from Army Pledges No Force Against Protesters, The iPINIONS Journal, February 1, 2011: With all due respect to the protesters, the issue is not whether Mubarak will go, for he… Read more.
Bipartisanship finally erupted in Washington, DC last week when Democrats and Republicans alike began venting imperious indignation over the arrest of 19 American aid workers by Egyptian authorities for allegedly engaging in non-governmental organizing without government approval. In fact they are being scapegoated for the political unrest that is now a fact of daily life in… Read more.
