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Who ever could have seen this coming?

Sensing the revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak is slipping from their grasp, activists and opposition groups are pressuring the ruling military council to postpone Egypt’s elections in September amid fears that Islamists and members of the former regime will gain too much power.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Czechs have run out of patience with the Obama administration:

The Czech Republic is withdrawing from U.S. missile defense plans out of frustration at its diminished role, the Czech defense minister told The Associated Press Wednesday. . .

“I’m not surprised by the decision,” said Jan Vidim, a lawmaker in the lower house of the Czech Parliament. “The United States has been and will be our crucial strategic partner but the current administration doesn’t take the Czech Republic seriously.”

Vidim’s remarks reflected concern by many in Central and Eastern Europe that the U.S. interest in resetting ties with Moscow could come at their expense.

(Via Hot Air.)

Turkey’s election results are bad, but they could have been worse. At least the Islamists didn’t get the supermajority that would have allowed them to rewrite the constitution unilaterally. With their numbers they will still be able to rewrite the constitution, but it will have to face a referendum, so they can’t rewrite it as transparently as they would like.

The Economist (subscription required) reports:

MOST Argentines reacted with a shrug when their government began doctoring its consumer-price index in 2007. Cooking the books cost holders of the country’s inflation-linked bonds at least $2.3 billion last year. But anyone else who needed to know the true inflation rate simply turned to a clutch of private economists who drew on their own price surveys, data from provincial governments and other official statistics. They reckon that inflation is now running at about 25%. That is far above the 10% reported by INDEC, the government statistics agency . . .

Guillermo Moreno, the thuggish commerce secretary, is moving to stamp out the unofficial, but widely trusted, price indices. To do so he has dusted off a decree, penalising misleading advertising, approved by a military dictatorship in 1983. In February he sent letters to 12 economists and consultants ordering them to reveal their methodology, on the grounds that erroneous figures could mislead consumers.

Some of Mr Moreno’s targets refused; the rest were analysed by INDEC, which predictably found their methods flawed. Seven of them were then ordered to pay the maximum fine of $123,000 (all have appealed).

As expected:

In the wake of bloody Muslim attacks on Egyptian Christians, the New York Times informs us:

“By lifting the heavy hand of the Mubarak police state, the revolution unleashed long-suppressed sectarian animosities that have burst out with increasing ferocity….”

No kidding! Did you think a single Egyptian Christian didn’t know this in February? Why didn’t the media report or the U.S. government understand that this was absolutely inevitable and predictable? But the only mentions of Christians were to claim that they were really enthusiastic about the revolution.

Claire Berlinski reports that it looks like major election fraud is in the offing in Turkey.

The Economist recently printed this letter (subscription required) from the Chinese Embassy in London. It’s really quite astonishing:

SIR – Your criticisms of China in the Ai Weiwei case were unwarranted, show a disrespect for our judicial sovereignty and are an attempt to interfere with our internal affairs (“China’s crackdown”, April 16th). Mr Ai, an artist, has made his comments before, through Twitter and interviews given to Western journalists, and he has travelled abroad to hold exhibitions. These activities were not restricted. Mr Ai is now under investigation for suspected economic crimes. The case is not a human-rights matter nor is it about freedom of speech, but rather it is a question of whether the rule of law should be upheld.

China is ruled by law, not by man; it is not a case of rule by a few. Over the past 30 years of reform China has achieved a great deal, not just in becoming the second-largest economy and improving the living standards of its people, but also in terms of much greater freedoms. Some people in the West assert that China only wants economic reform and not political reform. This is not true either in theory or in practice. . .

The letter goes on in this vein for three more paragraphs, and alludes to China’s respect for the rule of law two more times. It’s quite an amazing feat of chutzpah, since it is not even remotely true.

Case in point: Just a few weeks earlier the Economist ran a story (subscription required) on the death sentence handed down by a Chinese court to Wu Jing, a prominent entrepreneur. The most troubling thing about the case is that no one knows exactly what Wu did:

The case struck a nerve across the country, and not just because of the severity of the sentence and the fame of the accused. What she was convicted of was raising and pooling money outside the official system, which is common among Chinese entrepreneurs. There has been much speculation about why she was singled out. Perhaps it was that her promises to investors of annual returns of up to 80% seemed just too good, to the authorities, to be genuine. It is also possible that she lent on the money she received at even higher rates, and the borrowers, unable to pay, used their political connections to have her arrested.

China’s entrepreneurs are left with plenty to worry about. Many have to rely on a form of financing that now seems to be interpreted by the courts as a grave crime. The distinction between being a successful tycoon and being an enemy of the people has been blurred, a step back to the days when China was communist in more than just name.

This is not what the rule of law looks like.

Judith Levy:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy says the Fatah-Hamas pact is “good news” and reassures us that peace “is at hand.”

And here I was all worried.

Krauthammer’s latest must be read in its entirety. Just to get you started:

Every Arab-Israeli negotiation contains a fundamental asymmetry: Israel gives up land, which is tangible; the Arabs make promises, which are ephemeral. The long-standing American solution has been to nonetheless urge Israel to take risks for peace while America balances things by giving assurances of U.S. support for Israel’s security and diplomatic needs.

Unfortunately, President Obama is now repudiating all those past assurances.

AP reports:

The U.N. nuclear agency is investigating fears from its experts that their cell phones and lap tops have been hacked into by Iranian officials looking for confidential information.

Diplomats tell The Associated press that the hardware apparently was tampered with while left unattended during inspection tours in the Islamic Republic.

This is telling. The IAEA left their stuff unattended while visiting Iran. Unless you’re an idiot (which, I admit, is possible), you only do that if you trust your host.

Frank J is dissatisfied with the quality of our enemies:

America has been in a slump for a long time. We just can’t get our act together and be the shining city on the hill we used to be, and I think a big part of that is terrorists. Not terrorism; terrorists — in that they are our big enemy right now. The fact is, to achieve great heights, America needs a great villain to overcome, and as long as our big enemy is a bunch of primitive thugs servicing themselves in barren compounds, we’re going to be stuck in a rut.

Read the whole thing for a smile.

But seriously, although I enjoy mocking our enemies, I don’t agree with Frank’s thesis. Terrorists do pose an existential threat to our way of life. It’s true that the terrorists and their state sponsors are much weaker than any enemy we’ve faced before, but unlike the Soviets, we have no way to deter them. When they start using nuclear weapons against us (and we’re running out of time to prevent it), they cannot destroy our country, but they can destroy the open society that we hold dear.

In January, the Guardian and Al Jazeera revealed a collection of Palestinian documents that purported to shed light on the Palestinian Authority’s negotiations with Israel. Their reporting on the documents painted the Palestinians as reasonable and the Israelis as intransigent. But both the Guardian and Al Jazeera are openly hostile to Israel, so this may have colored their selection of documents to publicize.

Now an article in the Jerusalem Post does indeed paint a different picture. The Post reports that a full reading of the documents, rather than the ones cherry-picked by the Guardian and Al Jazeera, actually supports Israel and casts doubt on the Palestinians’ offer of concessions. There’s an important caveat: the documents were reviewed by an organization that seems basically unknown.

The article is pretty much unexcerptable, so I’ll pick one example:

THE KEY concession that the Palestinians were reported to have made was control over Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Al Jazeera broadcast that the Palestinians had offered to “let Israel keep all but one of the Jewish enclaves it built in East Jerusalem,” referring to Har Homa, and settlements over the Green Line amounting to some 2 percent of the land controlled by Jordan between 1948 and 1967.

But Christians for Fair Witness found that the Palestine Papers did not indicate that Abbas made a counter- offer to Olmert’s August 31 proposal. They revealed documents indicating that the Palestinians had decided ahead of the final Olmert-Abbas meeting on September 16 not to issue a counter-offer at that meeting and that Abbas had been advised by his team to wait to respond until George W. Bush was out of the White House.

A December 2, 2008, memo indicated that in response to Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs David Welch’s question about Olmert’s offer, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Welch that “We offered a 2% swap that would allow 70% of the settlers to remain.”

But the 2% figure is not mentioned at all in either a September 16, 2008, memo of “talking points” for Abbas at his final meeting with Olmert, or a September 22, 2008, memo of “Palestinian Talking Points Regarding Israeli Proposal.” Therefore, it appears that the 2% figure did not play a part in the Palestinian thinking about possible responses to Olmert’s package offer. Moreover, there is no indication whatsoever of this figure having been presented to Olmert post-September 16, 2008.

It’s a little hard to know what to make of this. The Guardian and Al Jazeera are hostile to Israel. The Jerusalem Post is generally friendly to Israel, of course, but as a western newspaper it is often sharply critical of its government. However it wasn’t the Post that did the analysis, but this unknown Christian organization. I was able to find the September 16, 2008 memo (mentioned above) myself using the Al Jazeera search tool, and it does say what the organization claims. But other documents mentioned in the article were hard to find. I wish a mainstream news outlet would do an independent review.

(Via the PJ Tatler.)

. . . in 2001, reports the Guardian:

The US and Pakistan struck a secret deal almost a decade ago permitting a US operation against Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil similar to last week’s raid that killed the al-Qaida leader, the Guardian has learned.

The deal was struck between the military leader General Pervez Musharraf and President George Bush after Bin Laden escaped US forces in the mountains of Tora Bora in late 2001, according to serving and retired Pakistani and US officials.

Under its terms, Pakistan would allow US forces to conduct a unilateral raid inside Pakistan in search of Bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the al-Qaida No3. Afterwards, both sides agreed, Pakistan would vociferously protest the incursion.

This isn’t the least bit surprising.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Pakistanis have outed the CIA’s station chief, again. (Via Instapundit.)

Those who pay attention to the Middle East are familiar with the phenomenon in which the region’s villains tell different stories to western audiences (in English) and domestic audiences (in Arabic). They get away with this because the western media almost never reports speeches given in Arabic. Whether this is because they are just too lazy, or because, for political reasons, they don’t actually want to expose these villains, is not clear. (Probably it’s some of both.)

Thus we had the spectacle in which Yassir Arafat was perfectly open about how the Oslo treaty was a ploy for the PLO to gain what it could, after which they would return to war (which is exactly what happened) — but he only said it in Arabic so it was not widely reported.

Thus, when the Muslim Brotherhood (the “moderate” and “secular” group likely to end up in control of Egypt) publicly laments the passing of Osama Bin Laden, they just do it in Arabic and most in the west will never hear about it.

Fars (Iran’s official news agency) gets its tin-foil hats on:

The US has killed the Al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, in a bid to prevent any possible leakage of intelligence and information about the US-Al-Qaeda joint terrorist operations, a senior Iranian legislator underscored on Monday.

(Via Gateway Pundit.)

Fatah and Hamas are burying the hatchet:

The two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, announced Wednesday that they were putting aside years of bitter rivalry to create an interim unity government and hold elections within a year, a surprise move that promised to reshape the diplomatic landscape of the Middle East.

The deal, brokered in secret talks by the caretaker Egyptian government, was announced at a news conference in Cairo where the two negotiators referred to each side as brothers and declared a new chapter in the Palestinian struggle for independence, hobbled in recent years by the split between the Fatah-run West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza. . .

Israel, feeling increasingly surrounded by unfriendly forces, denounced the unity deal as dooming future peace talks since Hamas seeks its destruction. “The Palestinian Authority has to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a televised statement. The Obama administration warned that Hamas was a terrorist organization unfit for peacemaking.

Netanyahu has it exactly right. Hamas is an implacable enemy of Israel; Fatah can’t make peace with both. But, in truth, Fatah has made is clear to those paying attention that it has no real interest in peace with Israel, only in the benefits that accrue from play-acting a part in the “peace process”.

Hopefully, this will be a clarifying moment, and will put and end to our willful blindness toward Fatah’s intentions. For example, the Economist often writes that “the outline of a peace deal is clear”. Sure, it is clear to us, but Fatah (to say nothing of Hamas) doesn’t want the deal. It doesn’t matter if the deal seems reasonable to us; we can’t make them want it.

POSTSCRIPT: It is troubling that Egypt’s interim government brokered the deal. It might bespeak a hostility toward Israel that we expect from the Muslim Brotherhood, but we did not expect from the generals.

(Via Pajamas Media.)

The latest Palestinian attack on Israelis was perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority itself:

Palestinian Authority police Sunday morning shot and killed one Israeli and wounded four others after they prayed at Joseph’s Tomb (Kever Yosef) around 6 a.m. Sunday (11 p.m. Saturday night EDT). . . A group of 15 worshippers from the Breslov Chassidic sect had driven to the site and were returning when they were gunned down by Palestinian Authority police in a jeep.

The PA security forces continued to fire at the cars as they fled.

Remember, the Palestinian Authority (in contrast to Gaza) is supposedly run by the moderate ones.

(Via Power Line.)

The weekly instructions to the Chinese media from the censors gives a fascinating look into the stories that the regime sees as dangerous. There ought to be a paper that reports exclusively on these stories.

Sources say President Obama’s new ambassador to Afghanistan will be Ryan Crocker. Crocker, of course, served as President Bush’s ambassador to Iraq, and, together with General Petraeus, oversaw our victory in Iraq.

Two thoughts: First, this is really good news. It’s almost happy-dance good. Crocker is exactly the right man for the job.

Second, it is striking to see Obama re-assemble the entire Iraq Surge team. First Gates, then Petraeus, and now Crocker. I won’t indulge in the obvious snark (get some here, if you want), but I’ll say it couldn’t have been easy for Obama to swallow his pride and do this. Kudos to him.

I sure hope this story is true.

Russia wants an override power for any European missile defense system.

The Palestinian governments in Gaza and the West Bank are torturing journalists.

Will this help the legacy media figure out which side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are the good guys? Don’t count on it.

Mohammed ElBaradei, running for president of Egypt, is pledging to make war against Israel.

Strictly speaking, he made the pledge in the event of war between Israel and Hamas, but renewed war between Israel and Hamas is a virtual certainty — especially if Hamas thinks that Egypt would come into the conflict on their side.

Remember this the next time a talking head speaks of ElBaradei as if he were one of the good guys.

A lot of people worry that some day China will use its enormous holdings of US debt to put pressure on our foreign policy. Well worry no longer, that day has arrived:

Leaked diplomatic cables vividly show China’s willingness to translate its massive holdings of US debt into political influence on issues ranging from Taiwan’s sovereignty to Washington’s financial policy.

China’s clout — gleaned from its nearly $900 billion stack of US debt — has been widely commented on in the United States, but sensitive cables show just how much influence Beijing has and how keen Washington is to address its rival’s concerns.

An October 2008 cable, released by WikiLeaks, showed a senior Chinese official linking questions about much-needed Chinese investment to sensitive military sales to Taiwan.

However, I’m not sure that China’s holdings give them the kind of leverage they hope (and that we seem to fear). With so much of China’s sovereign wealth tied up in US treasuries, I don’t think they can afford to endanger those holdings.  As the old saying goes: if you borrow a million dollars, the bank owns you; if you borrow a billion, you own the bank.

A 14-year-old girl in Bangladesh has been executed by flogging. Her crime: being raped.

The morality of the Arab League (paraphrased):

The Golan Heights—0.65% of Syria’s land mass—is in Israel’s usurping hands. So fire away at those protesters! Asad has a license.

Here’s a shocker: the Muslim Brotherhood is proving to be the dominant force in post-Mubarak Egyptian politics. How could anyone have seen that coming. . . ?

(Via Hot Air.)

Is there anything capitalism can’t do?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who routinely blames capitalism for many of this world’s troubles, pointed elsewhere in the galaxy for his latest critique, saying Tuesday that the economic system may have destroyed life on Mars.

“I have always said, have heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars,” the firebrand socialist said on Venezuela’s state television. After pausing a moment, he added, “But perhaps capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived, and finished that planet.”

Potentially exciting. If I could pick a regime to fall, Syria’s would be my third choice.

President Bush had twice as many partners in his anti-Saddam coalition (30) as President Obama (or should I say President Sarkozy) has in his anti-Qaddafi coalition (15).

Bush also had the approval of Congress. But Obama has the approval of the Arab League. (Or at least, he did until the action actually started.)

None of which is to say that Obama’s action is illegitimate. But it’s very interesting how Bush was condemned for his “unilateralism” when he was actually much more multilateral than Obama.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: A listing of the coalitions for major recent US military actions. This is the smallest of all — smaller even than Kosovo.

Years ago, back when people still took the Israel/Palestinian “peace process” seriously, my eyes were opened when I read a story (I wish I could find it now) that observed that Yasser Arafat gave dramatically different speeches in English and Arabic. In English he would act like a reasonable partner for peace, but in Arabic he continued to pledge to destroy Israel. He even declared openly that the Oslo treaty was just a ploy, intended to gain Palestinians what they could, after which they would return to war. (Which is exactly what happened.) He got away with this because the western media only ever reported his remarks given in English.

I’m reminded of this when I read of Hamas’s statements regarding the recent slaughter of an Israeli family in the West Bank. In English they decry the murders, claim no involvement, and suggest that an Israeli was responsible. In Arabic they celebrate the murders and laud the Palestinian perpetrator.

The head of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, that thoroughly moderate and indeed secular organization, says that Egypt’s new government should be modeled after Iran’s. He also says that Egypt needs “innocent, honest and brave leaders” like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Claire Berlinski adds:

It’s weird how items like this always get reported in Fars [Iran’s official news agency], but not the New York Times, isn’t it?

Well, not really.

If the cause of radical Islamism is resentment over American imperialism and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, why the violence against Egypt’s Copts?

Why aren’t we seeing any leadership on Libya from President Obama? I know it’s too much to hope for him to approve US action against Qaddafi, like a no-fly zone to keep Qaddafi from bombing protesters. But is it too much to ask for a speech or something? So far nothing.

UPDATE: Well, the president gave a speech condemning the violence. Unfortunately, I don’t see anything in it that would give Qaddafi pause, or encourage the opposition.

Moammar Qaddafi has reportedly fled for Venezuela. Al Jazeera is reporting that military jets are bombing the protesters. Two colonels from the Libyan air force have defected rather than obey those orders.

But in the end, as always, it’s all about the Jews of course.

I didn’t notice this when the story broke last October:

The three American hikers arrested by Iran last year were on the Iraqi side of the border, according to US military documents released on Friday by WikiLeaks, reported the New York Times. The internal US document highlights military grids where the group was detained, which the Times said were on the Iraqi side of the border.

Iran crossed the border into Iraq to abduct three Americans. That is an act of war. Unfortunately, the world is learning that America will brush off nearly any provocation.

President Obama actually offered to approve it, if only the Palestinians agreed to make it non-binding. Abbas refused, apparently deciding that a defeated binding resolution is better than a unanimous non-binding resolution. Good thinking!

Still, the administration was determined to get its anti-Israel on, and followed its veto with a tirade against Israel’s settlements. (On that note, let’s recall that the US and Israel had a deal to extend Israel’s settlement moratorium, but the deal fell through when the US refused to put it in writing.)

Something very strange is going on in Argentina:

Argentina’s relations with the U.S. took a sharp turn for the worse Monday as the country continued to hold military equipment it confiscated last week from a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane sent as part of a training course for local police.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, called on Argentina to return the property without delay. . . Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman quickly rebutted Mr. Valenzuela and called on the U.S. to apologize for violating Argentine law. . .

Mr. Timerman accused the U.S. of using the plane to smuggle undeclared firearms, surveillance equipment and “various doses of morphine” into the country for ulterior motives. . .

A State Department official familiar with the seizure told Dow Jones Newswires most of the material, which was intended for use in a hostage-rescue course, had been properly declared and previously approved by Argentine authorities.

The only thing that hadn’t been declared was the medication confiscated at the airport, said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the delicate nature of the issue.

The medication, including morphine, is part of a first aid kit belonging to an Army medic who participates in the training courses, the official said. The course uses real weapons and live-fire exercises, making it imperative to have medication available in an emergency, the official said.

Glenn Reynolds suggests that this is payback for President Obama skipping Argentina in his South America trip next month, but I doubt it. I think this is most likely all about domestic politics: attacking the United States always plays well, whether it makes sense or not. The fact that the foreign minister personally supervised the confiscation lends additional credence to that interpretation.

In case you’re not yet clear on where Human Rights Watch is coming from, they have just appointed a terrorist to their Middle East advisory board.

I think they still do some worthwhile work in other parts of the world, but in the Middle East HRW is a cesspool.

This story provides a much darker perspective on the Egyptian protests:

On Friday, Feb. 11, the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a “60 Minutes” story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.

In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.

The media has tended to focus on the English-speaking, pro-western elements in the crowd. This is a dreadful reminder that neanderthal elements are also represented.

(Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: Another such incident. (Via Instapundit.)

The Muslim Brotherhood is not moderate, not secular.

Judith Levy adds:

I call your attention particularly to that last point. [“Muslims must be patient.”] Americans are eager to believe that because the Brotherhood is not using jihadist language or imagery now, its goals must have changed. If you fall in with this view, you are, quite frankly, allowing yourself to be played.

Hosni Mubarak has stepped down. The Associated Press is reporting that he was forced out by the military.

POSTSCRIPT: Glenn Reynolds quotes a reader who wonders why the administration is welcoming this coup, but fought tirelessly against the coup in Honduras, which was actually not a coup at all (as even Hillary Clinton acknowledged).

Despite being given several opportunities, the White House press secretary refuses to say that we don’t want the Muslim Brotherhood to rule Egypt.

POSTSCRIPT: If you need more fodder for worry, see Victor Davis Hanson’s column on President Obama’s complete cluelessness regarding Egypt.

POST-POSTSCRIPT: Need still more fodder for worry? The Obama administration is backing away from its own Egypt envoy.

Turkey backtracks further:

Turkey’s “mildly” Islamist (to borrow the Economist‘s curious description) Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has been up to his “mildly” authoritarian tricks again. Claire Berlinski has the details:

How certain am I that the world will not notice this development? Oh, 100 percent. It’s one of those little items, again. No one’s reporting it in English. Compared to Iran’s hanging binge, it’s such a modest outrage against civil liberties that who’s going to bother to get exercised about it? But an outrage against civil liberties it is. Erdoğan has begun pressing charges against bloggers whose writings meet with his displeasure. A 22-year-old college student, Barış Ünver, could face two years in prison for intimating that Erdoğan was “the soul mate” of PKK terrorist Ocalan.

The liberal intelligentsia has been reassuring us that the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and non-violent, but the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t seem to agree:

A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt told the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam on Monday that he would like to see the Egyptian people prepare for war against Israel, according to the Hebrew-language business newspaper Calcalist.

Muhammad Ghannem reportedly told Al- Alam that the Suez Canal should be closed immediately, and that the flow of gas from Egypt to Israel should cease “in order to bring about the downfall of the Mubarak regime.” He added that “the people should be prepared for war against Israel,” saying the world should understand that “the Egyptian people are prepared for anything to get rid of this regime.”

(Previous post.)

An account of what’s been happening in Egypt that doesn’t fully agree with what we’ve been hearing. I can’t speak to its accuracy, but it’s interesting.

(Via the Corner.) (Previous post.)

Last year, Pew polled several Muslim countries, including Egypt, on various subjects. With Egypt looking likely to adopt a new government soon, the results are troubling:

The Pew researchers found that 84 percent of Egyptians favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion. In another survey, Pew found that 90 percent of Egyptians say they believe in freedom of religion.

Evidently at least 74% of Egyptians mean something very different by freedom of religion than we do.

ASIDE: To be fair, Americans can be inconsistent in a similar way. Lots of people say they support free speech while simultaneously supporting restrictive speech codes. I think that people know that free speech is something they are supposed to be for, and they don’t really think about what that means. But, a sufficiently great difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. We’re talking here about the death penalty for changing religions, and you just can’t get a clearer violation of freedom of religion than that.

And there’s more:

When asked which side they would take in a struggle between “groups who want to modernize the country [and] Islamic fundamentalists,” 59 percent of Egyptians picked the fundamentalists, while 27 percent picked the modernizers. . .

A majority, 54 percent, support making segregation of men and women in the workplace the law throughout Egypt. . .

When asked whether suicide bombing can ever be justified, 54 percent said yes (although most believe such occasions are “rare.”)

Eighty-two percent supported stoning for those who commit adultery.

(Via Power Line.) (Previous post.)

I’m alarmed by what I’m hearing from the liberal intelligentsia about Egypt. Yesterday on NPR I heard someone from the Brookings Institute talking about how the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and non-violent. This, of course, is nonsense. The Muslim Brotherhood’s modus operandi is to maintain a thin veneer of respectability, while promoting violent extremism throughout the world through its links with local branches, such as Hamas.

Now, I don’t know for certain that the Obama Administration and the State Department share that wishful thinking. I haven’t heard Hillary Clinton speak clearly about the Muslim Brotherhood (or really any other matter related to the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt, other than to say that violence is very, very bad). But it is certain that NPR and the Brookings Institute represent the same culture that informs our current administration. I’d be very surprised if they differed.

We need to be very careful. Propping up Mubarak doesn’t look like a realistic option, and anyway it would be disgusting if we were reduced to doing so. But the Muslim Brotherhood will make a play to take over any post-Mubarak regime, and they are likely to succeed. We need to oppose them however we can. This is exactly the sort of situation that calls for clandestine action, but unfortunately, after years of neutering the CIA, we probably don’t have much ability or will to conduct clandestine political action any more. Between the wishful thinking prevailing among the liberal intelligentsia, and a risk-averse CIA without a lot of contacts on the ground, it seems all but certain that the Obama Administration will convince itself that its best course of action is to do nothing.

UPDATE: And there it is:

The Obama administration said for the first time that it supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government.

The administration did say that the Muslim Brotherhood must renounce violence, etc., but history has taught us clearly that our government will be satisfied if the Muslim Brotherhood merely mouths the words. Indeed, our government will be flexible even on the words. The Palestinian Authority never did amend their charter to delete its call for the destruction of Israel; they merely declared that some parts of it were “no longer effective.”

(Via the Corner.)

We give foreign aid to China?

The LA Times:

Gates, headed to Beijing for talks, voices hope that the U.S. will be able to persuade Chinese military leaders to cut back on their pursuit of advanced weaponry.

Is this our new strategy for maintaining military superiority? Good grief.

(Via Hot Air.)

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Only days after it was removed from the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Information website, a “study” denying Jews’ rights to the Western Wall has resurfaced, this time on the official website of the PA’s news agency, Wafa.

By publishing the document on Wafa’s website, the official mouthpiece of the PLO and the PA, the authority has sent a message that its has officially endorsed its findings.

The “study,” which had sparked strong condemnations from Israel and the US, was written by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the Ministry of Information in Ramallah.

The five-page document claims that the Western Wall, which it refers to as the Al-Buraq Wall, is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and has always belonged to Muslims. It states that Muslim “tolerance” had allowed Jews to stand in front of it and cry over its destruction.

“This wall was never part of the socalled Temple Mount,” Taha wrote in his project. “The wall is the property of Muslims and there never was a stone in it that dated back to the era of King Solomon. Jewish faith has no connection to this wall.” The document accused “Zionist occupation of falsely and unrightfully” claiming ownership of the Western Wall.

How long would that “tolerance” last, I wonder, if the Palestinian Authority had the power actually to do something about it?

Saddam Hussein — whom the left says was an arch-secularist and would never, ever be involved in Islamic extremism — had a Koran written in his own blood.

Hugo Chavez is not a democrat. After failing to seize power by military coup 1992, he has seized power within the political system. Alas, the framers of Venezuela’s constitution lacked the foresight of a James Madison, and provided a means for Chavez to become a dictator within the system. History shows that such clauses usually get used eventually.

But Chavez cannot work within the system indefinitely. His economic program is essentially communist: he nationalizes industries, imposes price controls, and levies confiscatory taxes. Naturally, the Venezuelan economy has gone into an awful death spiral. (Without oil revenues, Venezuela would have cratered long ago, but the oil industry is now crumbling.)

At the same time, crime in Venezuela has skyrocketed. At 233 murders per 100k inhabitants, Caracas’s murder rate is the worst in the world, only slightly below Baghdad at the height of Iraq’s sectarian violence. (Chavez responded by barring the media from reporting crime.)

Consequently, Chavez’s popularity has plummeted. In legislative elections, the opposition won a popular majority, but due to the way that Chavez has rigged the electoral system, they barely earned a third of the seats. Still, a third is enough to block Chavez from ruling by decree, and with Chavez’s approval ratings in the cellar, his re-election looks iffy (in a fair election).

So it looks like this is the time for Chavez to hop off the democratic wagon. The new Venezuelan legislature doesn’t take office until January, and the lame duck legislature has given Chavez the power to rule by decree for 18 months. (The pretext for the move had something to do with a flood.) That will put Chavez in absolute control of the government until shortly before the next presidential election is scheduled.

Chavez gloated over the irrelevance of the incoming opposition:

“They will not be able to create even one law, the little Yankees,” said Chavez, who brands his opponents as stooges of an imperialist U.S. government. “Let’s see how they are going to make laws now.”

During his time as dictator, Chavez means to make opposition to his rule impossible. The Council on Foreign Relations has an enlightening brief on Chavez’s agenda. (Via Ron Radosh.) It includes:

• Media and Telecommunications. The modification of the Media Responsibility Law and the Telecommunications Law place severe restrictions on the Internet, centralizing access under the control of a government server. They re-categorize the airwaves as a “public good” and set in place harsh penalties for arcane and obtuse violations of the law. The laws require TV stations to re-apply for their licenses and for the owners to be in the country (a clear reference to Globovision, whose owner, Dr. Guillermo Zuloaga, is in political exile in the United States).
• Electoral Reform. The reform of the Political Party Law establishes the crime of electoral fraud. Fraud would be committed if a politician changed parties, voted against legislation that was “ideologically represented” by their “electoral offer” (on file when they registered their candidacy with the National Electoral Council), or if they make common cause with ideas or people who are not ideologically akin to their electoral offer. Sanctions are the expulsion from parliament and inability to run for public office for up to eight years. This law is meant to protect against individuals or political parties turning against Chavez, as happened with the opposition parties of PODEMOS (We Can) and PPT (Fatherland for All).
• Economy and Governance. Chavez is pushing through a block of five laws: Popular Power, Planning and Popular Power, Communes, Social Control, and the law of Development and Support of the Communal Economy. These laws establish the commune as the lowest level of Venezuelan economy and government. They set in place the Popular Power, which is responsible to the Revolutionary leadership (Chavez) for all governing (eliminating the municipalities and regional government’s constitutional mandate). To facilitate the creation of this new governance model, the Assembly is approving the Law of the System for Transferring the Responsibilities of the States and Municipalities to the Popular Power.

ASIDE: The “electoral reform” that criminalizes legislators voting incorrectly is a marvelous idea. I expect we will see it adopted by tyrants everywhere.

In addition, Chavez is taking control of the banks and universities. In short, Chavez is taking complete control of Venezuela from top to bottom. The next time he seeks to institute a police state, he won’t have to backtrack. The next election will be a farce. Nothing short of a revolution will evict him from office now.

The Obama administration struck a deal with Israel for a three-month extension of Israel’s moratorium on settlement construction, in exchange for several considerations on our part. Whether this was a good idea on our part is moot; the deal fell through. The sticking point:

The United States ultimately decided not to comply with an Israeli request to put its offer in writing, including $3 billion worth of jet fighters, a commitment to object to anti-Israel resolutions in international organizations, and an agreement never again to ask for a suspension of settlement construction.

The deal was no secret, obviously, so there’s really only one reason why the administration would refuse to put it in writing.

(Via Power Line.)

The Washington Times reports:

The Obama administration, despite public denials, held secret talks with Russia aimed at reaching a ballistic missile defense agreement that Moscow ultimately rejected in May, according to an internal State Department report. . .

The four-page document circulated on Capitol Hill stated that administration officials held four meetings with the Russians and last spring presented a draft Ballistic Missile Defense Cooperation Agreement (BMDCA) to Russian negotiators.

The internal report contradicts congressional testimony by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in June denying a missile defense deal was in the works.

The content of the latest Wikileaks treason dump is mostly unsurprising. The main damage will be done not by the content of the document dump, but by world leaders’ unwillingness to speak frankly in the future since they know we cannot keep a secret.

Still, the dump does contain some interesting revelations:

1. During its 2006 war with Israel, Hezbollah smuggled weapons in ambulances marked by the Red Crescent.
2. When President Obama said he needed concessions from Israel to get Arab states to agree to action against Iran’s nuclear program, that was a lie. The Arab states wanted Iran stopped, and Israel had nothing to do with it.
3. Germany urged the Obama administration to tighten the screws on Israel. (One might have thought that Germany, with its history, would have felt it better to stay out of it.)
4. Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan, and his government lied in saying that they had not discussed basing missile defense on Turkish soil. (ASIDE: A high-ranking Turkish politician, nonplussed by this and other revelations, accused Israel of being behind Wikileaks somehow. The anti-Semitism is never buried very deep with these guys.)

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s infamous anti-Israel tantrum at Davos last year wasn’t spontaneous after all. The notion that Erdogan was reacting to anything that happened on-stage was mere pretense.

The good news is our government hasn’t been negotiating with the Taliban.

The bad news is they didn’t know that:

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the repeated appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

People have been worried about a repeat of the Carter administration. That’s starting to look like a best-case scenario.

(Via Instapundit.)

President Obama’s latest foreign policy brainstorm: getting the Russians back into Afghanistan. Sadly, I am not making this up.

(Via Power Line.)

The Burmese junta has released Aung San Suu Kyi, for now.

The United Nations has rejected Iran’s bid to join the UN Women’s Rights panel. It approved Saudi Arabia’s bid instead.

Can’t anybody play this game?

Tensions between the White House press corps and Indian security boiled over on the third day of President Obama’s visit, prompting press secretary Robert Gibbs to threaten to pull President Obama out of his bilateral meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. . .

At one point, according to Wilson’s pool report, Gibbs had his foot lodged in the door to the meeting as Indian security officials pushed hard to shut it. In an angry shouting match, Gibbs asked the officials if they were going to break his foot as he repeated his threat to pull Obama.

(Via Althouse.)

If you’ve got some free time, read Michael Totten’s report on the Golan Heights.

Palestinians attack an Israeli ambulance trying to save a Palestinian boy:

Jerusalem area Arabs once again have stoned two Israeli Magen David ambulances trying to help neighbors. This time, the medical rescue vehicles were trying to save an Arab boy who fell five floors from his home in El Azaria, a village between the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of French Hill and nearby Maaleh Adumim.

Magen David medics were resuscitating the youth when attackers began to pummel them with rocks from all directions, breaking the windshield.

Golda Meir once reportedly said “Peace will come when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us.” Rarely do you see that illustrated so literally.

(Via Instapundit.)

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley sent a birthday greeting to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urging him to release the two American hikers they have been holding since July 2009. He conducted this delicate foreign diplomacy over Twitter.

In the Obama administration, amateur hour never ends.

Jackson Diehl, the Washington Post’s deputy editorial page editor, has a piece about how President Obama has sabotaged the so-called Middle East peace process by introducing a new requirement that Israel institute a settlement freeze before talks can take place. Abbas cannot very well demand less than the American president so talks are at a standstill.

Now, I agree with Paul Mirengoff that this is fine. The “peace process” is pointless and counter-productive. There will be no peace until the Palestinians want it, and they manifestly do not. The Palestinians have never fulfilled a single one of their obligations under any of the peace plans (Oslo, Oslo 2, the Wye River memorandum, the Roadmap, etc.). Yasser Arafat spoke openly about how Oslo was merely a hudna (an Arabic word for pretending to make peace to obtain a strategic advantage). Palestinian terrorists continue to launch attacks against Israel, and the Palestinian government celebrates those attacks. Palestinian children’s programs teach children to hate Jews. And, in 2006, the Palestinian people elected Hamas in a landslide — a party whose constitution demands the destruction of Israel.

It’s popular to write that the outlines of a peace deal are clear (the Economist writes this all the time), and it’s true. The outlines of a reasonable deal are clear, to Western eyes. But the Palestinians don’t want the deal. Ehud Barak offered essentially that deal to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000, but Arafat rejected the deal and made no counter-offer. Instead, he left the bargaining table and within days launched the Second Intifada.

All Israel’s efforts to make peace with the Palestinians have accomplished nothing other than to weaken Israel’s security and, probably, to leave the Palestinian people even more miserable. It would be best to put an end to them.

But Obama presumably believes none of this. So why is he sabotaging the peace talks? Is it mere incompetence, or worse, is he trying to make Israel look bad so he can cut off American support?

The Economist has an encouraging article on the progress Georgia has made since the fall of communism, particularly in attitude. It’s a pity more former communist states don’t follow their example.

The Venezuelan opposition has won a popular majority in legislative elections. Unfortunately, because of the way Chavez has rigged the electoral system, the opposition may still fall short of achieving the two-fifths of the seats that they need to prevent Chavez from ruling by decree.

RELATED: Crime in Venezuela is at horrific levels. Hugo Chavez has responded by barring the media from reporting crime stories.

Fidel Castro:

The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.

(Via Hot Air.)

UPDATE: Fred Thompson quips:

He shouldn’t be so negative. I’m sure it would work fine if they passed just ONE more stimulus bill.

Hugo Chavez’s popularity is down to 36%, in part due an astonishingly high murder rate. Caracas’s murder rate of 233 per 100k is more than twice last year’s rate, and exceeds Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez and every war zone in the world.

The question is whether 36% is low enough to keep him from being “re-elected”.  I wouldn’t count on it.

Newt Gingrich has a great idea for how to promote liberty and free markets around the world.

Georgia is recovering well from its war with Russia.