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Posted on 11/30/2011 by Juan

(Scroll down for today’s entry)

I’d like to start by thanking those readers who supported Informed Comment last year in our annual fundraiser. Your contributions made several important trips possible.

I spent much of the months of June through August in Spain, Tunisia, and Egypt. Tunisia and Egypt were research trips, Spain was a jumping off point because of conferences there. Ironically, Spain is having its own popular youth protests, which I saw in Barcelona, Toledo and Madrid before going on to the Middle East.

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Hizbullah Leader Condemns Syrian Opposition

Posted on 12/07/2011 by Juan

The Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hizbullah party-militia, Sayyid Hasan Nasrullah, made an appearance in largely Shiite South Beirut on Tuesday for the first time since 2008, according to al-Hayat writing in Arabic. Via a giant television screen, he addressed a large crowd of tens of thousands, most of whom could not get very close to the stage from which he spoke. The occasion is Ashura or the 10th day of the Muslim month of Muharram, which marks the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in 680 AD.

Nasrullah attacked Burhan Ghalioun, the head of the rebel Syrian National Council, which is aiming to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the Baath Party.

Nasrullah pointed to Ghalioun’s Dec. 2 interview with al-Arabiya and Agence France Presse, in which the dissident Syrian leader pledged to cut ties with Iran, Hizbullah and the Palestinian Muslim fundamentalist group, Hamas, were the Syrian National Council to come to power.

The Lebanese Shiite leader accused Ghalioun of saying these things in order to gain support from the United States and Israel.

Nasrullah pledged that Hizbullah would remain an armed militia ready to repel Israeli aggression.

(Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the south of the country for 18 years before withdrawing in the face of sustained Hizbullah guerrilla actions; Israel attacked the country again in 2006, saying it was in response to a Hizbullah provocation).

The appearance of Nasrullah was, according to MP Amine Wehbe, a desperate attempt to galvanize his party’s supporters at a time when both his foreign patrons, Iran and Baathist Syria, are facing difficulties because of the Upheavals of 2011.

If the Baathist regime in Syria fell, Hizbullah would lose not only a patron but also its supply route whereby its stock of rockets is replenished.

On the other hand, Ghalioun’s pledges to cut off Hizbullah and Hamas mean nothing at this stage. If the Syrian revolutionaries win, a Sunni fundamentalist government might well come to power at the ballot box, and they would likely be big fans of Hamas in Gaza, at the least.

Nasrullah’s strident stance in favor of the brutal Baath government risks alienating the party’s Arab supporters throughout the Arab world.

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Kepler 22b and Climate Change: Instead of Obsessing over Earth-Like Planets, lets Try to Keep this one Earthlike

Posted on 12/06/2011 by Juan

Dear earthlings:

It doesn’t do you any good to get all excited about finding earth-like planets like Kepler 22-B where the average temperature is 72 degrees F (22 C.), if you are going to turn your own planet into a sweltering tropical swamp.

Kepler 22b system

The Durban climate conference about the fate of our own planet has been a miserable failure. Even China’s surprise announcement of willingness to talk about binding emissions limits is less than meets the eye. We are on track for a rise in average temperatures of some 5 degrees Celsius, something the earth hasn’t experienced since the Eocene 50 million years ago (when there was no surface ice and the world was tropical to the poles, and a third more of the land mass was under water).

It is all very well to wax poetic over earth-like planets out there, but let’s try to keep this one earthlike.

NASA Ames news conference on Kepler 22b:

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Pakistan and the US: Quarrel or Divorce?

Posted on 12/06/2011 by Juan

The Pakistani government is forcing the United States to depart the Shamsi Air Base in Baluchistan within two weeks, as one of three steps taken to protest the killing of 24 Pakistani troops by US war planes on 26 November.

The incident was probably an example of friendly fire, though what exactly happened and why is murky. It added to a sense of crisis in US-Pakistani relations, for which 2011 has been a troubled year.

In the past year, a CIA contractor has shot down people in broad daylight, the US embarrassed Pakistan by not warning Islamabad of the assault on Usamah Bin Laden, and former chairmand of thejoint chiefs of staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, more or less accused Pakistan of complicity with the Haqqani Network in an attack on a US embassy in Kabul. In short, Pakistani self-respect has been dragged through the mud by Washington.

You can only imagine how Americans would feel if Pakistani agents were wandering American cities and occasionally offing people; and if Pakistani convoys were plying the country with military supplies for Pakistani bases in Canada, and Pakistani drones were zeroing in on mountaineer insurgents in the hills of Kentucky.

Some in the Pakistani press saw the attack as deliberate, and Jang speculated that the US was punishing Pakistan for its alleged support of the Haqqani group, which the US considers a terrorist organization.

But in the short to medium term, Pakistan and the US will repair their relationship, because what drives that tie is a set of common interests.

1. The US is the number one destination for Pakistani exports. Pakistan supplies the US with roughly 3% of the textiles imported to this country, but also brings in other Pakistani manufactures.

2. Not only is the US Pakistan’s number one trading partner, but the US alliance has been highly useful to Pakistan in opening to it the European market. The US was instrumental in convincing the European Union to offer Pakistan a unilateral trade concession, and in lobbying the World Trade Organization to permit it. Pakistan’s access to the German market, to which it sent $1.216 billion in exports this year, is thus in part a function of Islamabad’s alliance with Washington.

3. Pakistan is isolated and needs friends. Pakistani elites are improving relations with India, but they maintain a rivalry with New Delhi. They do not trust the Tajik (Persian-speaking) elites in neighboring Afghanistan, who they see as allied with India. They have indifferent relations with Iran. They have close relations with China, but China cannot fulfill the economic and political role for Pakistan that the United States does.

4. Pakistan has some of the same enemies as the United States. Both are threatened by the neo-Taliban, including the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan or Pakistan Taliban Movement. They have a difference of opinion over the fundamentalist Haqqani Network, which the US views as a terrorist organization but which the Pakistani military sees as an authentic Afghan group that is allied with Pakistani interests.

The steps Pakistan took to protest the deaths of its troops are symbolic. Closing the Shamsi Base to the US does not seriously impede American ability to dominate the air or to get up covert action missions. It is an annoyance but not a blockage.

Pakistan refused to attend the summit on Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany on Monday, as part of its protest against the US action. Euronews has video:

The Western donors, including Turkey, pledged to continue aid to Afghanistan after 2014. But there is no danger that Pakistan won’t be central to Afghanistan after 2014 when most NATO forces will have departed.

Pakistan and the United States have imperfectly overlapping goals and policies in the region. For this reason, they are continually falling into crisis with one another. But the overlaps are so extensive that they are typically brought back together over time.

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Theocratic Dominance of the New Egypt may be Exaggerated

Posted on 12/05/2011 by Juan

The official results of the November 28 vote in Egypt have now been announced. Observers are jumping to a lot of conclusions. It seems clear that Muslim religious parties have done better than expected, but the exact proportions are still unclear.

Egyptians head to the polls again today to settle run-off contests for seats held by independents, which are quite numerous, so that we still don’t really know which individuals won.

A third of seats on the parliament will be held by independents not running on a party ticket.

The party returns being reported are for a third of the provinces, and affect two thirds of the seats. That is, only about 22% of the over-all seats in the lower house were allocated by party in this, first round. The third of districts that just voted are not necessarily representative of the country, so that the other two rounds may not look exactly like the first.

In this round, nearly 37 percent of party-based seats went to leftist and liberal parties and to one liberal-Muslim party. About 36 percent went to the Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood. Neither of these results is a big surprise.

The source of astonishment is that the al-Nur Party of the Salafi movement received 24 percent. Salafis favor Saudi-style Islam, and want to ban liquor, impose morality, and maybe even forbid women from driving. The Salafis (like US evangelicals in the 1950s) had been political quietists, and have only recently organized for parliamentary politics. It is a shock to most Egypt-watchers, no matter how intimate they were with the country and its politics, that the Salafis did that well. But remember that al-Nur won 24% of the party-based seats (i.e. 2/3s of the total), so they could be projected to gain only about 16 percent of the full parliament, assuming that they do as well in the second two rounds (which cannot be assumed).

It is not clear that individuals with Salafi leanings will do well in the vote for the independent seats, where, in fact, it has been argued that holdovers from the Mubarak regime might have an unfair advantage because of their name recognition. Apparently about half of the run-off elections for the 52 still-contested independent seats in this round will pit pro-Muslim Brotherhood independents against pro-Salafi ones.

So putting the Muslim Brotherhood at 36 percent together with the Salafis at 24 percent and coming up with 60 percent as the proportion of the parliament held by Muslim fundamentalists could turn out to be an error. If they do as well in the second two rounds, they will have 60 percent of the 2/3s of seats contested by parties, which is actually 40 percent of the whole. It is too soon to know whether candidates sympathetic to the religious parties will do as well (i.e. 60%) when they run as independents. (I don’t deny that they could do so, I only say it is too soon to tell). Nor is it likely that the two will actually join forces.

The other wild card is that not everyone who stood for the Muslim Brotherhood party is a religious hardliner. At least this is what Amr el-Shobaki of the al-Ahram Center argues. He says we have to wait until the third round of voting is over and see who the new incumbents are before we can really know the new balance of power.

The left-liberal parties should not be discounted. The Egyptian Bloc (made up of two leftist parties and a Coptic liberal party) came in second in the blue collar district of Helwan. In Luxor in Upper Egypt, which is heavily dependent on tourism, the Egyptian Bloc got 40 percent of the vote. It is true that the New Left youth groups that were so central to actually making the revolution last February are not represented among the victors. But they do not conceive of themselves as parties, don’t want to be parties, and some told me that they had no idea how to canvass. It was predictable that they would do poorly in the elections. They will likely continue to have a voice, however, as activist groups, even if they are not legislators.

But, the Freedom and Justice Party is unlikely to ally with the Salafis, who would, therefore, be marginalized. The FJP is afraid of being tarred with the Salafi brush, such that middle class Egyptians might abandon the Brotherhood Party. The Freedom and Justice Party initially was going to contest elections in coalition with the liberal New Wafd Party, but in the end they ran on separate tickets. If the FJP/ New Wafd partnership is revived, and perhaps the Egyptian Bloc is added to it, the Brotherhood Party could end up forming the new government but with strong liberal and leftist partners. This outcome would be best for the country. It is only one possibility among others, admittedly, but it is a strong possibility.

So, the takeaways are this: The Salafis are unexpectedly strong, at 24 percent of the party-based seats and 16 percent of total parliamentary seats so far. The Muslim religious parties will be very important in the new parliament and may end up with a majority if they find independents to vote with them. But early indications are that the Brotherhood and the Salafis do not get along. If the Brotherhood forms a governing coalition with liberal and leftist parties, the result would be a green-red (moderate religious plus left-liberal) alliance.

My experience with Egyptian activists this past summer in Tahrir Square is that they are reluctant to say or do polarizing things, and that leftists seek common ground with the Muslim Brotherhood in hopes of outmaneuvering the military. They would not bad-mouth one another. The exception was the Salafis, who were therefore treated by the others like skunks at the party.

On the other hand, the good news is that these elections are from all accounts the freest and fairest in Egypt’s history. If they do produce a fundamentalist-dominated parliament, then at least it will have been the will of the people. Americans are quick to forget how democracy has worked in their own country historically. For instance, religious people here mobilized to forbid alcohol during Prohibition, even passing a constitutional amendment to that effect. It would not be strange if Egyptians behaved similarly. One limiting factor is that if the country becomes too oppressive, it will hurt the key tourist industry.

It is still the plan that the secular-leaning Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will appoint 80% of the constituent assembly that will draft the new constitution, and that it has offered secular guidelines for the organic law. It will be interesting to see if the left-liberal forces keep agitating so vigorously for the military to step down immediately, now that the alternative is likely a Muslim fundamentalist constitution. Ironically, the Brotherhood, which was more favorable to the military this past summer than the leftists, is already talking about sending the military back to the barracks.

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Top Things that Should have Disqualified Cain before Now

Posted on 12/04/2011 by Juan

The most alarming thing about Herman Cain’s “suspension” of his presidential campaign is what it took to drag him off the stage. It wasn’t his cruelty, sexism, arrogance or rank ignorance about the world. But it should have been.

Herman Cain advocated electrifying a border fence to fry Mexicans sneaking across the border.

Cain predicted that the suggestion would be considered “insensitive.” He said that what is insensitive is that Mexicans come to the US and kill “our citizens.” Illegal immigration is a crime, but it is not a capital crime for which one would be executed, except perhaps in North Korea or other paranoid, totalitarian states. Murder rates have fallen in the United States, including in border states such as Arizona, in recent years, and decades of research has shown that immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than citizens. Cain’s lack of respect for human life and his stereotyping of Latinos as especially violent murderers mean that Cain should have been out right there.

Cain alleged that China is “trying” to develop a “nuclear capability.” China’s first nuclear test took place in 1964. The country is estimated to have over 100 nuclear armed ballistic missiles, some 20 of which have a range such as to be able to hit the United States.

The Onion as usual gets this right.

Cain should have been out right there.

Cain insists that women who are raped must bear the rapist’s child if they become pregnant.

Some 25,000 women are made pregnant by rapists every year in the United States. While women who wish to bear the child should be respected, no one should force a woman at the point of a policeman’s gun to be the baby mama of her rapist.

Cain should have been out right there.

Cain’s stupid campaign ad with the creepy smile attempted to insinuate to America’s youth that it is “cool” and “rebellious” to smoke. It is one thing to fall victim to a nicotine addiction that one finds tough to kick; it is another to purvey images of smoking as positive. Smoking in the United States causes nearly half a million deaths a year, and nearly 50,000 deaths are caused by second-hand smoke. Those who have had the heartbreak of seeing relatives and loved ones die of lung cancer are not amused.

Cain should have been out right there.

And, as others have observed, it is weird that credible allegations of sexual harassment of subordinates hurt him but did not knock Cain out of the race, whereas charges of a consensual affair did. What, it is only all right if he is coercive about it?

He should have been out right there.

Cain first didn’t seem to know what Libya was and then expressed worry about the Pashtun Taliban taking over this North African Arab and Berber state.

He should have been out right there.

In fact, had Cain said that illegal immigrants have to be treated in accordance with the rule of law, that women should have the right to choose their own biological destiny, that smoking and second-hand smoke kill way too many Americans annually, and that China is more trading partner of the United States than threat, Cain might well have been disqualified by some of those stances among Republican voters.

Which, taken all together, tells you what is wrong with today’s Republican Party.

They should be out right there.

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