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Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Morning links

So many links, so little time....

The Israeli video I mentioned in yesterday's linkdump showing footage from the Mavi Marmara as well as more generally how the Israeli navy trains and works is now on YouTube. Still only in Hebrew, though.

One of the potential next leaders of Egypt wants to trash the peace agreement with Israel, and says that he would hold a referendum on the issue.

An Egyptian writes an op-ed saying pointing out what I did last Friday - Egypt is now under military rule and we don't yet know how this will play out.

Jeffrey Goldberg links to a Cliff May piece that quotes Time magazine analysis of Iran in 1979 that is as wrong as much of the analysis of Egypt probably is today. Goldberg also links to a good David Frum piece on how little we really know about Egypt:
80 million people in the country. 17 million in Cairo. 200,000 protesters in Tahrir Square. Only the ones who speak English appear on our TV.

When we talk about the reach of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian society – or conversely the appeal of democracy – we are talking about things about which nobody knows very much and probably nobody can know very much. One out of seven Egyptians cannot read. Half of them live on less than $2 a day. What do they think? What do they want? And it may be an equally urgent question to know: who leads, guides and controls what they think and want?
Of course, the Thomas Friedmans of the world have a vested interest in pretending to know the answers to these questions. They don't get paid to say "I dunno," and their parachuting into the middle of Tahrir Aquare to form an instanalysis gives them ridiculous credibility when they don't even know Arabic.

Which country will be next domino? Saudi Arabia? Iran, Bahrain, Yemen?

Louis Harovitz looks at The Fairness Police:
In the Western world, among the people who know the history of the twentieth century and follow current events, no one is objective about Jews. Some people try to be fair, but that is very different from being objective. To find objectivity, read Chinese scholars (not affiliated with the government) who specialize in the history of the Jews. You will almost feel as if you’ve entered an alien world. You will never see anything like the pervasively judgmental rhetoric of the Fairness Police. A Chinese scholar would have great difficulty discerning any fairness at all in the actions, rhetoric, or demeanor of the Fairness Police.
Finally, another Goldberg piece excerpts an interview with an IAEA official who says that even after Stuxnet, Iran is "somehow" steadily producing enriched uranium and hellbent on building their nuclear program.

And an interesting profile of a religious Jewish jazz musician.

(h/t Mr. B., SoccerDad, Silke)