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Perhaps this election will have a brush with “Who lost Egypt?” Mark Steyn has the story.
… The short 90-year history of independent Egypt is that it got worse. Mubarak’s Egypt was worse than King Farouk’s Egypt, and what follows from last week’s vote will be worse still. If you’re a Westernized urban woman, a Coptic Christian or an Israeli diplomat with the goons pounding the doors of your embassy, you already know that. The Kingdom of Egypt in the three decades before the 1952 coup was flawed and ramshackle and corrupt, but it was closer to a free-ish pluralist society than anything in the years since. In 1923, its Finance Minister was a man called Joseph Cattaui, a Member of Parliament, and a Jew. Couldn’t happen today. Mr. Cattaui’s grandson wrote to me recently from France, where the family now lives. In the unlikely event the forthcoming Muslim Brotherhood government wish to appoint a Jew as Finance Minister, there are very few left available. Indeed, Jews are so thin on the ground that those youthful idealists in Tahrir Square looking for Jews to club to a pulp have been forced to make do with sexually assaulting hapless gentiles like the CBS News reporter Lara Logan. It doesn’t fit the narrative, so even Miss Logan’s network colleagues preferred to look away. We have got used to the fact that Egypt is now a land without Jews. Soon it will be a land without Copts. We’ll get used to that, too.
Since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact two decades ago we have lived in a supposedly “unipolar” world. Yet somehow it doesn’t seem like that, does it? The term Facebook Revolution presumes that technology marches in the cause of modernity. But in Khartoum a few years ago a citywide panic that shaking hands with infidels caused your penis to vanish was spread by text messaging. In London, young Muslim men used their cell phones to share Islamist snuff videos of Westerners being beheaded in Iraq. In les banlieues of France, satellite TV and the Internet enable third-generation Muslims to lead ever more dis-assimilated, segregated lives, immersed in an electronic pan-Islamic culture, to a degree that would have been impossible for their grandparents. To assume that Western technology in and of itself advances the cause of Western views on liberty or women’s rights or gay rights is delusional. …
Writing in Hot Air, Tina Korbe posts on the Cooperman open letter to the president.
Dear Mr. President,
It is with a great sense of disappointment that I write this. Like many others, I hoped that your election would bring a salutary change of direction to the country, despite what more than a few feared was an overly aggressive social agenda. And I cannot credibly blame you for the economic mess that you inherited, even if the policy response on your watch has been profligate and largely ineffectual. (You did not, after all, invent TARP.) I understand that when surrounded by cries of “the end of the world as we know it is nigh”, even the strongest of minds may have a tendency to shoot first and aim later in a well-intended effort to stave off the predicted apocalypse.
But what I can justifiably hold you accountable for is you and your minions’ role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as “class warfare”. Whether this reflects your principled belief that the eternal divide between the haves and have-nots is at the root of all the evils that afflict our society or just a cynical, populist appeal to his base by a president struggling in the polls is of little importance. What does matter is that the divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them. It is a gulf that is at once counterproductive and freighted with dangerous historical precedents. …
Jennifer Rubin asks if Gingrich was a lobbyist.
Mitt Romney has finally begun to engage Newt Gingrich. Yesterday, he went after Gingrich, if not by name, by attacking him as a creature of Washington. The timing couldn’t have been better for Romney.
Today, the New York Times has a front-page piece documenting Gingrich’s activities, which by any reasonable person’s definition, constitute lobbying. This brings into focus the hypocrisy that is at the core of Gingrich’s personality. His view of himself (Churchillian, ”transformational,” “historian”) doesn’t match his own track record, which is a history of milking the Washington lobbyist-legislator connection for great personal wealth.
Federal law defines lobbying activity as “Lobbying contacts and any efforts in support of such contacts, including preparation or planning activities, research and other background work that is intended, at the time of its preparation, for use in contacts and coordination with the lobbying activities of others.” And a lobbying contact is “Any oral, written or electronic communication to a covered official that is made on behalf of a client with regard to” congressmen and senators, among others.
Even before the Times story, there was ample evidence suggesting that Gingrich was engaged in this sort of lobbying activities. …
Similar commentary from Contentions’ Jonathan Tobin.
In the years between his stepping down as Speaker of the House and running for the presidency, Newt Gingrich became a wealthy man. While no one I am aware of has alleged that he did anything illegal or even improper in amassing his fortune, as a feature in today’s New York Times makes clear, his attempt to portray his Center for Health Transformation as a think tank rather than a lobbying firm is somewhat disingenuous.
Gingrich was not registered as a lobbyist, and his work on behalf of the Center’s “members” — companies that paid up to $200,000 to belong to the group in exchange for access to Gingrich and for his help in promoting their efforts — did not conform to the legal definition of lobbying in that he did not specifically write bills or advocate on behalf of legislation that would benefit his clients. But as the article makes clear, much of what he did do appears to be indistinguishable from the sort of tasks lobbyists routinely perform. …
Streetwise Professor highlights the irony of Russians once again aligned with the American left.
… Hence, it is doing what comes naturally to Sovoks: propaganda. It is pulling out all the stops to discredit shale and fracking, not just in Europe, but elsewhere. The next time you hear anti-fracking flacking, it’s fair to ask who’s paying for it. No, not all the opposition is from Gazprom: some is from the well-intentioned, some from those who reflexively oppose any kind of energy production. But knowing the way Gazprom works, no doubt some Gazprom money is funding anti-fracking lobbying, politicking, and information campaigns
But the enviro angle is really just too much. Sorry, but lectures on environmentalism from the direct descendent of the Soviet Ministry of Gas (the USSR being history’s largest environmental catastrophe), and a company with a pretty poor environmental record to boot (witness the huge problems with leakage from Gazprom pipelines), are enough to challenge the strongest gag reflex.
But the fact that the company feels compelled to engage in such risible hypocrisy is actually encouraging news. The more Gazprom execs squeal about shale, the more you know that it is a threat to them.
So yet again: Gazprom gripes–music to my ears.
True to form, the federal government has slowed down fracking, this time in Ohio. Seth Mandel who is running for the Ohio Senate seat writes for WSJ.
On the same day two weeks ago, Ohioans saw the following diverging headlines:
In the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Republic Steel to add 450 jobs to Lorain as oil and gas exploration booms.” This story reported Republic Steel’s announcement of new jobs in one of Ohio’s hardest-hit counties, to manufacture products in support of the state’s growing oil and gas industry.
In the Marion Star: “Ohio national forest halts sale of drilling rights.” This story reported the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to suspend the auction of leases for oil and gas drilling on more than 3,000 acres of federal land in the most economically depressed region of Ohio.
You might be asking yourself: Why would Washington block drilling in Ohio at the same time that Ohio manufacturers are adding jobs to support the state’s growing oil and gas exploration? Thousands of middle-class families and out-of-work Ohioans are asking that same question. …
Tony Blankley reviews a new China book.
A just-released book, “Bowing to Beijing” by Brett M. Decker and William C. Triplett II, will change forever the way you think about China – even if, like me, you already have the deepest worries about the Chinese threat. As I opened the book, I was expecting to find many useful examples of Chinese military and industrial efforts to get the better of the United States and the West.
Indeed, there are 100 pages of examples of the most remorseless Chinese successes at stealing the military and industrial secrets of the West and converting them into a growing menace – soon to be a leviathan – bent on domination and defeat of America. The authors itemize the sheer unprecedented magnitude of this effort. But the opening chapters deal with human rights abuses, and my first thought as I started reading was that I wanted to get right to the military and industrial examples.
But the authors were right to lead with 50 pages itemizing in grisly detail Chinese human rights abuses – for the profound reason that after reading those first 50 pages, the reader will be impassioned to resist Chinese domination not only on behalf of American interests, but for the sake of humanity.
Many people think America is in decline and mentally acquiesce to the thought that the rise of China is inevitable. Those 50 pages will stiffen your resolve to be part of the struggle never to let such a malignancy spread to the rest of the world – let alone to America. One of the authors, Brett M. Decker, is a friend – and I have never been more proud of his (and his co-author’s) accomplishment of providing such a deep moral vision in this carefully factual book. …