Month: August 2013

How Best To Challenge Putin? Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

14th IAAF World Athletics Championships Moscow 2013 - Day Eight

More readers add to the discussion:

It seems to me the best way to put pressure on Putin is to put pressure on the corporate sponsors that make hosting the Olympics so lucrative. Most of these companies are headquartered in the gay-friendly West and make most of their profits there. I applaud those athletes that choose to risk the repercussions of speaking out, but it shouldn’t fall on them to call out their hosts. Rather, the companies that seek to boost their images by association with these tremendous athletes should be made to think twice about instead associating themselves with Putin’s thuggery and demagoguery. At the very least, they should make clear that they do not condone the anti-gay laws. Companies truly concerned should ensure that their sponsorship money doesn’t enrich the Russian kleptocrats that wrote the laws, and if that’s not possible, they should withdraw their sponsorship and dare their competitors to sell their souls instead.

Another reader:

You want Obama to challenge Putin? Easy. All he has to do is call a press conference and publicly condemn the anti-gay laws Russia is promulgating.  I know Andrew is a fan of Reagan, so when he demanded that Gorbachev “tear down this wall” – even in the midst of an incredibly delicate peace process – it had more effect than all of our military spending.  Why?  Because the cause was so plain, so fortified by moral righteousness, that it was instantly recognizable by anyone that heard the speech.  I think that the same is true here.  Especially in the digital age.  No matter what our athletes do in the Olympics, no matter what our foreign policy officials do in the background, nothing will so publicly shame and humiliate Putin as much as that.  It’s the same as throwing the ball in his court, if you will.  Yes, it could be described as reckless … but so was Reagan.  Sometimes, reckless is all that works.

(Photo: Gold medalists Tatyana Firova and Kseniya Ryzhova of Russia kiss on the podium during the medal ceremony for the Women’s 4×400 relay during Day Eight of the 14th IAAF World Athletics Championships Moscow 2013 at Luzhniki Stadium on August 17. By Paul Gilham/Getty Images. More on the controversial kiss here.)

Face Of The Day

by Chris Bodenner

Colorado School of Mines whitewash the M

Freshmen at Colorado School of Mines, class of 2017, haul 10-pound rocks up to the university’s iconic mountainside M on Mt. Zion, August 19, 2013. The incoming students climb to the university’s M to give the landmark, and their classmates, a fresh coat of whitewash. By RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images.

Open For Criticism

by Brendan James

Luke O’Neil insists that restaurants should be subject to critics’ reviews as soon as they open, rather than enjoy the customary grace period:

Perhaps the best parallel to the restaurant industry for our purposes is the world of theater. Most plays and musicals offer previews to paying audiences to give the cast and crew a chance to work out the kinks of a production. There has been pushback against critics’ self-imposed prohibition on writing about theater previews for a while now, because previews, like delayed restaurant reviews, don’t make sense. Why shouldn’t an early performance, or meal, be subject to judgment? People are paying full price for it. Is the money of the first few hundreds or thousands of people to buy a ticket or make a reservation worth less than the people who see a play or visit a restaurant after it’s hit its stride?

There are two functions of criticism: to inform the public, and to write for writing’s sake. The latter is great—who doesn’t appreciate reading a beautiful essay about an old film or book?—but it should take a back seat to the former. A struggling new restaurant may turn into the city’s most beloved establishment after a few years, but the fact that it opened poorly is news that diners have a pressing interest in knowing today. And a place that opens immediately running on all cylinders is newsworthy as well. Withholding either piece of information out of a sense of critical noblesse oblige seems like a dereliction of duty.

Cool Ad Watch

by Chris Bodenner

Copyranter spotlights a campaign that he calls “the best beer advertising in the world”:

The “No Bollocks” tagline is perfect: It gives you a taste of the beer’s blue collar British heritage without cramming it down your throat, and it serves as a challenger brand positioning against pretty much every other beer in the world. It’s especially brilliant when placed side-by-side with the bad base beer advertising of America’s big spenders Budweiser, Coors, and Miller.

Head here to watch several more TV spots.

Christie Threads The Needle

by Patrick Appel

Allahpundit sees through Christie’s recent actions:

Last week he signed a bunch of minor gun-control bills, then vetoed one that would have banned .50-caliber rifles. He vetoed the Democratic bill easing access to medical marijuana for sick kids, but promised he’d sign a new one if they made a few tweaks. Today he’s signing a bill that’ll ban “gay conversion therapy” from being administered to people under 18, but he’s also committing to supporting NJ’s Republican candidate for Senate despite expectations that he’d stay out of the race. Expect three more months of this from Christie — a little for the left to protect his gubernatorial bid and a little for the right to protect his presidential ambitions — and then a tilt towards conservatism once he’s reelected.

Chris Cillizza tries to compare Christie to past presidential candidates and comes up short:

The truth of the matter is that Christie is surprisingly hard to pin down in terms of who he most resembles from the past of the Republican party. He is a northeastern Republican but not nearly the moderate (or liberal) that Giuliani is. He is a pragmatist but not in the vein of a former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman who wanted the party to overhaul itself in the midst of the 2012 race. He’s a real populist, not someone trying to act like regular people ala Mitt Romney in 2012. Here’s how one Christie ally described the governor: “Christie’s a conservative, but he’s not angry about it.”

The struggle to create a Christie analog worries Democrats since there’s no blueprint for how to run against him if he does wind up as the Republican nominee in 2016.

The Bodies Pile Up In Egypt

by Chas Danner

Friday night, Egyptian security forces laid siege to Cairo’s al-Fath mosque, where pro-Morsi protesters had been holding up after Wednesday’s massacre and Friday’s violence, which killed at least 173 people. Once the mosque complex was cleared, as many as 1,000 protesters were arrested. Yesterday, another 38 Morsi supporters were killed while in police custody, apparently suffocated by tear-gas inhalation under circumstances which remain unclear. Then today, 25 off-duty police officers were found executed on the side of a road in Sinai, as is purported to be seen in the tweet above. Sharif Abdel Kouddous is certain the chaos will continue:

As Egypt plunges headfirst into a deadly downward spiral with no end in sight, many of its citizens are baying for still more blood. Both sides leading the conflict, the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, are playing a zero-sum game, based on a false binary demanding that Egyptians choose one or the other. Both are defined by hierarchy, patriarchy, secrecy, mendacity and a blinding sense of their own superiority. Both are juggernauts in the Egyptian body politic that have heedlessly clawed away at Egypt’s social fabric in their struggle for power, proving time and again that their own political and economic interests trump all. …

Today, many of the revolutionaries who fought the country’s successive authoritarian regimes—first Mubarak, then the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, then the Muslim Brotherhood—now find themselves sitting on the sidelines, pushed out of the discourse and forced to watch as the bloodletting continues. The transformative revolutionary moment that exploded on January 25, 2011, has become a faint glimmer, in danger of being extinguished completely. “Despair is betrayal” is the mantra that has echoed throughout Egypt during the many tough times over the past two and half years. Today, it is very hard not to feel like a traitor.

Adding to the craziness, there are even reports that Mubarak will soon be released, while Morsi will face yet more charges. Elsewhere, Kristen Chick reports on the anti-Christian violence:

The Coptic Orthodox church had just opened in April after 13 years of construction, in a country where the government strictly curtails building permits for churches. Now, its elaborate dome stands above a ruined, charred interior. The walls are blackened and rubble litters the floor. A picture of Jesus is half burned, the charred edges curling where they were licked by flames.

“The religion of God is Islam,” reads graffiti sprayed in yellow on a wall of the church. Three burned out cars, one of them upside down, rest in the courtyard. Next to the gate, sprayed in black, is another phrase: “Victory or martyrdom.”

The Saint Virgin Mary church in Al Nazla is one of 47 churches and monasteries that have been burned, robbed, or attacked since Aug. 14 in a wave of violence against Christians since the brutal police crackdown on the former president’s supporters, according to Ishak Ibrahim of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. He adds that dozens of Christian schools, other religious buildings, homes and shops have also been attacked and burned, and seven Christians killed. Police have done little to stop the attacks.

And lest anyone forget Egypt’s economy, which is still a complete mess and getting worse due to the near total cessation of tourism as well as widespread cancellation of foreign investments. Nonetheless, H.A. Hellyer thinks the country can still right itself:

The future of politics in Egypt, along with the regional and international repercussions that accompany it, directly depends on how this crisis is resolved. The same path that was open before this terrible turn of events is still open. The basic outlines of a political accommodation are still there for everyone to grasp. An interim government is unsustainable, and means for little or no accountability of anyone — and the reinstatement of Morsi is also a bad move. Fresh presidential elections under the watch of international observers are needed as soon as possible, but that is only a starting point. Consensus is key to unlocking Egypt’s deadlock — and that demands an alternative vote system for the presidency. Whoever becomes Egypt’s next civilian president must have the largest possible mandate and be best positioned within a vote system in which the winner is the first or second choice out of many candidates.

That consensus cannot be established without the full participation of all political forces in the country — and that means the Muslim Brotherhood, popular or not, must be permitted to have political representation as a group.

One piece of good news: amazingly, the unarmed man who was gunned down by security forces in the brutal video we featured on Friday, survived.

Organized Non-Violent Crime?

by Tracy R. Walsh

Today’s gangsters are less bloodthirsty than their 20th-century counterparts, according to The Economist:

The United Nations identifies a series of “emerging crimes” mostly committed by criminal gangs: These include poaching, illegal logging and trafficking controlled goods, such as archeological artifacts and endangered animals. Those sorts of crimes required ever more dispersed networks, with specialized skills replacing sheer muscle. But even they require more violence than the newest of crimes: cybercrime, identity theft and fraud. These are increasingly being committed by new organizations from countries with little history of organized crime, and are probably the fastest-growing ways of making an illicit buck. By contrast, the trade of the old-fashioned gangster, well-known in his district, his monopoly enforced by violence, now looks antiquated.

More Dish on the rise of globalized gangsterism here.

Saudi Arabia’s Witch Hunts

by Brendan James

Ryan Jacobs describes them, which are in accordance with the state’s brand of Islamic law:

The Saudi government’s obsession with the criminalization of the dark arts reached a new level in 2009, when it created and formalized a special “Anti-Witchcraft Unit” to educate the public about the evils of sorcery, investigate alleged witches, neutralize their cursed paraphernalia, and disarm their spells. Saudi citizens are also urged to use a hotline on the CPVPV website to report any magical misdeeds to local officials, according to the Jerusalem Post.

If you’re accused, good luck defending yourself in court:

In the 2006 case of Fawza Falih, who was sentenced to death on charges of “‘witchcraft, recourse to jinn, and slaughter’ of animals,” she was provided no opportunity to question the testimonies of her witnesses, was barred from the room when “evidence” was presented, and her legal representation was not permitted to enter court. After appeals by Human Rights Watch, her execution was delayed, but she died in prison as a result of poor health.

The End Of The Muslim Brotherhood?

by Chas Danner

Bassem Sabry outlines the treacherous path that lies ahead for the organization:

On one hand, the Brotherhood is faced with the combined power of an antagonistic administration, the media, the judiciary and a substantial number of people who seem to be confronting the Brotherhood in the streets out of their own volition. The Brotherhood is even facing the leaderships of the country’s top two religious institutions, the Coptic church and Al-Azhar. Most remarkably, a senior Al-Azhar leader and scholar, Dr. Ahmed Kreima, had reportedly declared that Al-Azhar’s council of Sharia scholars has deemed the Brotherhood apostates.

On the other hand, as the Brotherhood seemingly continues to lose control over its base, and and as supporters resort to open violence, their cause and any sympathies garnered are damaged, and the position of the government strengthened. The prevailing narrative in Egyptian media of an “Egypt Fighting terrorism” becomes more palatable for some than it previously seemed.

Eric Trager adds that, while the Egyptian military has been very successful in targeting the Brotherhood’s leadership, the consequences of that success may prove dire:

[The generals have] demonstrated that they understand the Brotherhood’s vulnerabilities, since the Brotherhood cannot function effectively once its top leaders have been apprehended. After all, the Brotherhood is at its core a hierarchical vanguard, in which legions of fully indoctrinated cadres are organized under a nationwide, pyramidal chain-of-command. …

Still, the military’s decapitation of the Brotherhood is a double-edged sword.

By removing the top layers of the organization, the military has made it impossible for the Brotherhood to execute a change in strategy. The military thus has no way of compelling the Brotherhood to abandon its disruptive protests and instead re-enter the political process, as the military says is its goal, because all of the top and provincial leaders who could command their cadres to change course are being removed from the scene.

Even worse, by disorganizing Egypt’s most cohesive Islamist group, the generals have turned hundreds of thousands of deeply ideological Muslim Brothers into free radicals, who will no longer listen to their typically cautious leaders.

Lynch surveys the response of other prominent Islamists across the Arab world, noting that the crackdown in Egypt may result in greater polarization between Islamist organizations and Gulf nation governments, most of whom have loudly offered their political and financial support to Egypt’s military-backed government. And then there’s the Syria angle:

These Islamist networks and personalities have been instrumental in building support and raising money for the various factions of the Syrian opposition. Now, they are prominently equating Egypt’s General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Suwaidan, for instance, proclaims that “the right is clearly with the revolutionaries in Syria and with those who adhere to legitimacy and reject the coup in Egypt.” What will happen if the Islamist networks which have been working to support the Syrian opposition begin to turn their fundraising and mobilizational efforts to Egypt?