Tag Archives: Egypt

Podcasts

The Roundtable Podcast 50!

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• Week of 18.08.2013

Califone

Egypt mulling Muslim Brotherhood ban as forces storm Islamist-held mosque | The U.S. government has finally confirmed the existence of Area 51 | Canada’s military forced to accept fatter, less educated recruits as demographics change, audit reveals | Senators are partisans, appointed for life. How could that not go wrong? | Recommended Article: 4 biggest myths about crack | Chinese zoo accused of trying to pass off dog as African lion | Meet the Mayoral Candidate Who Believes Russia Will Vanquish the Antichrist | Music: Califone “A Thin Skin of Bullfight Dust” (from the album Stitches, out September 3) | Police probe Mayor Rob Ford friends who sought crack video | Extensive Timelines Of Slang For Genitalia | H&M pulls headdresses from Canadian shelves after complaints | B.C. bedroom dentist was headed to Toronto, officials say

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World

The Egyptian People Are Ready for Democracy: Too Bad About the Politicians

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Egyptian Protest

IN A MAY 2013 Ahram Online interview, the US ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, fielded a question about her government’s delicate relationship with the Morsi regime:

The fact is [the Freedom and Justice party] ran in a legitimate election and won. … Of course it is challenging to be dealing with any new government. However, at the state institutional level, we are for instance still liaising with the same military and civil service personnel, and thus have retained the same long-established relations.

One month later, footage of Tahrir Square brought to the world an outpouring of hostility, aimed at Ms. Patterson and President Obama. Why, ask the Egyptian critics of Morsi, did Obama keep up the flow of money and other material supports, as the Freedom and Justice Party undertook to replicate the authoritarianism of earlier regimes? Or to put it another way — the way Patterson did — why did the American government “retain the same long-established relations”?

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Personal Essay

The Decay Of Poetry In The Year Of Revolution

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When the terrible European war which everyone had known for years was coming finally did arrive, W. H. Auden composed a poem, “September 1, 1939,” which begins:

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Continue reading The Decay Of Poetry In The Year Of Revolution →

Religion

A Shame Indeed: The Persecution of Christians Considered

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The predictable and vile business of the Christmas attack has produced a renewal of concern with worldwide persecution of Christians. An idea now tendered is that these acts are outcomes of the Iraq war. Accept at your own risk this counterfeit of history, which requires you to believe nothing like this could have occurred eight years ago. Religious persecution is an old habit of our species, a primal barbarism which establishes the enduring threat and generalized impediment to our evolution. Continue reading A Shame Indeed: The Persecution of Christians Considered →