Putin Appeals to Russia’s “Silent Majority.” By Walter Russell Mead.

Putin Appeals to Russia’s “Silent Majority.” By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, February 9, 2013.

Parsing the Marriage of Ksenia Sobchak, Russia’s Paris Hilton. By Leonid Bershidsky.

Parsing the Marriage of Russia’s Paris Hilton. By Leonid Bershidsky. Bloomberg, February 5, 2013.

Twitter End to Love Story Born in Russia’s Protests. By Andrew E. Kramer. New York Times, February 2, 2013.

Socialite Sobchak Secretly Marries Opposition-Minded Actor. By Lena Smirnova. Moscow Times, February 3, 2013.

Ilya Yashin and Ksenia Sobchak, the Russian Opposition’s Romeo & Juliet. By Anna Nemtsova. The Daily Beast, December 17, 2012.

Ksenia Sobchak, puzzled by sexism. By Eliot Borenstein. Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University, October 24, 2012.

From Party Girl to Putin’s Threat. By Elisa Lipsky-Karasz. Harper’s Bazaar, July 2012. Also find it here.

Ksenia Sobchak, the Stiletto in Putin’s Side. By Andrew Meier. New York Times, July 3, 2012. Also find it here.

Ksenia Sobchak in her Moscow restaurant.

   

Ksenia Sobchak in a more revealing position.



Archaeologists Reveal a Desecrated Iron Age Temple and Find Possible Evidence of Samson at Beth Shemesh.

Tel Beth-Shemesh, the ancient meeting point of the Canaanites, Philistines and Israelites. Tel Aviv University archaeologists are excavating the site, looking for evidence that it once was an ancient border.

 

Archaeologists Reveal a Desecrated Iron Age Temple at Beth-Shemesh. By Noah Wiener. Bible History Daily, November 13, 2012.

Desecrated Ancient Temple Sheds Light on Early Power Struggles at Tel Beth-Shemesh. American Friends of Tel Aviv University, November 12, 2012.

Holy Site Desecration Traced to Philistine Era. By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu. Israel National News, November 13, 2012.

Israel Temple Discovery Shows War Horror, Ancient Border. By Gwen Ackerman. Bloomberg, February 4, 2013.

Ackerman:

We are standing in the middle of Israel on a quiet hill overlooking a fertile green valley.

Some 3,000 years ago, this peaceful place was right at the center of conflict, says archaeologist Shlomo Bunimovitz.

“The border lies somewhere between here and there,” he says, pointing to the west. He is co-leading excavations which have found the remains of a temple which was later desecrated and used as animal pens.

This is Tel Beth-Shemesh, the ancient meeting point of the Canaanites, Philistines and Israelites. The Bible describes it as the northern border of the Tribe of Judah. The area also features in the story of the return of the Ark of the Covenant, earlier captured by the Philistines. King Solomon ruled the district and it was the site of the battle between Joash and Amaziah, the respective kings of Israel and Judah.

“We are looking for evidence that this was a border, tangible evidence in the material culture that reflects this,” says Bunimovitz, from Tel Aviv University.

The excavation, just outside the modern Israeli town now called Beit Shemesh, is investigating the extent of Philistine dominance some 3,000 years ago and the impact its culture had on the indigenous Canaanites.

Tel Aviv University started excavating in the early 1990s. Bunimovitz says that Beth-Shemesh may have been the first line of resistance against the Philistines, the seafaring people who began to settle there.

Philistine Pottery

He produces plastic-covered charts that show how as excavations moved eastward, there were less remains of decorative Philistine pottery and a complete disappearance of pig bones.

“The Philistines wanted this fertile valley,” Bunimovitz says, “but had this pain in the neck here at Beth Shemesh.”

Before the Philistines settled, the Canaanites did eat a little pork, he says. Then they seemed to want to set themselves apart from newcomers and maintain a distinct culture.

“There is a modern example of this, in the wearing of keffiyehs (headscarf),” he says. “Israelis always wore them until Yasser Arafat adopted it. Now you won’t see any Israelis with it. Suddenly the keffiyeh becomes an ethnic marker.”

His team has uncovered the outer wall of what they say is an ancient temple, with a row of three flat stones. One was surrounded by chalices and goblets, another surrounded by bones -- evidence of offerings to the gods or sacrificial slaughter.

Black Lines

Most interesting to Bunimovitz is the black lines that run through the hill along the temple that has yet to be uncovered.

“Normally I would say these are destruction layers, there was a temple, it was destroyed, and that’s it,” Bunovitz says. “But we ran chemical checks on this and found out that what caused the lines was animal dung. Someone came and used the place after the temple was destroyed for animal pens. We surmise it must have been their enemies. If you want to overcome resistance you desecrate a temple.”

There is a possibility that the Canaanites living in Beth Shemesh may have further evolved into being part of the Israelite people, he says. “We see a process of becoming something not eating pig that will later become an identity marker of the Israeli monarchy. This may or may not be an evolution into being Israelites or part of the Israelites.”

Beth Shemesh later became part of the Israelite monarchy, although the Bible never calls the people there Israelites, only the people of Beth Shemesh, he says.

Pig Bones

Neil Silberman, a historian at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, cautions against reading too much into archaeological findings. The absence of pig bones may be an environmental issue, such as the climate no longer being conducive to the raising of the animals.

“What is interesting about Beth Shemesh is the concept of it not only being a border town between the Philistines and the kingdom of Judah, but also of the inevitable tension between the two,” he says by telephone. “Archaeology is sort of like Sherlock Holmes at a crime site: Unfortunately in archaeology there isn’t an end to the process.”


Lion Seal from Beth Shemesh Sparks Samson Discussion. By Noah Wiener. Bible History Daily, July 30, 2012.

Does this coin found near Jerusalem prove that Samson lived . . . and that he did fight the lion? By Leon Watson. Daily Mail, July 31, 2012.

Seal found by Israeli archaeologists may give substance to Samson legend. By Nir Hasson. Haaretz, July 30, 2012.

Israeli scholars claim possible evidence of Samson. By Adrian Blomfield. The Telegraph, July 30, 2012.

Beth Shemesh: Culture Conflict on Judah’s Frontier. By Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman. Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1997.

The Archaeology of Border Communities: Renewed Excavations at Tel Beth-Shemesh, Part 1: The Iron Age. By Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman. Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 72, No. 3 (September 2009).

Canaanite Resistance: The Philistines and Beth-Shemesh—A Case Study from Iron Age I. By Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 364 (November 2011).

Abstract:

In two excavation cycles conducted at Tel Beth-Shemesh in the early 20th century, a scholarly myth about Philistine domination at the site during Iron Age I was born. Renewed excavations at Beth-Shemesh by the authors dispelled this unfounded hypothesis. In a sequence of Iron I levels, Canaanite cultural traditions are dominant. Only a meager amount of Bichrome Philistine pottery was found, and other items of Philistine affiliation are missing. Furthermore, pork consumption was completely avoided at Beth-Shemesh in contrast with adjacent Philistine sites. Review of geopolitical changes in the Shephelah during the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition indicates that the Canaanite inhabitants of Beth-Shemesh took advantage of their location at the Philistine periphery and resisted Philistine hegemony. By denying foodways (eating and drinking) that symbolized their new aggressive neighbors, the people of Beth-Shemesh culturally identified themselves as “non-Philistine.” But since an inverse process, by which elements of Philistine culture were adopted by Canaanites living within the Philistine territory, is also evident, it is apparent that whether adopting or denying Philistine cultural elements, the indigenous population of the Shephelah changed its previous way of life during Iron Age I.


Ceramics, Ethnicity, and the Question of Israel’s Origins. By William G. Dever. The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 58, No. 4 (December 1995).

How to Tell a Canaanite from an Israelite. By William G. Dever. In Hershel Shanks et al., The Rise of Ancient Israel. Biblical Archaeology Society, 1991.

How Did Israel Become a People? The Genesis of Israelite Identity. By Avraham Faust. Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 35, No. 6 (November/December 2009).

Ethnicity, Assimilation and the Israelite Settlement. By Pekka Pitkänen. Tyndale Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 2 (2004).

The Rise of Secondary States in the Iron Age Levant. By Alexander H. Joffe. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2002).

This 11th century BC seal from Beth Shemesh shows a person next to a leonine figure. The site and chronology have led some to associate the seal with the Biblical story of Samson.

How the Gun-Control Movement Got Smart. By Molly Ball.

How the Gun-Control Movement Got Smart. By Molly Ball. The Atlantic, February 7, 2013.

Egypt’s Incompetent Politics Turn Citizens Against the State. By Issandr El Amrani.

Egypt’s incompetent politics turn citizens against the state. By Issandr El Amrani. The National, February 7, 2013.

More posts on Egypt and Morsi here.

Soviet Lessons for the Arab World. By Anne Applebaum.

Preparing for freedom before it comes. By Anne Applebaum. Washington Post, February 7, 2013. Also in National Post, and Slate.

More on Egypt and Morsi here.

China Marches West. By Yun Sun.

Westward Ho! By Yun Sun. Foreign Policy, February 7, 2013.

As America pivots east, China marches in the other direction.

For the Taliban Love Is a Battlefied. By Mujib Mashal.

Love Is a Battlefield. By Mujib Mashal. Foreign Policy, February 5, 2013.

Are the Taliban using sex to fight America?

Florence and the Drones. By David Brooks.

Florence and the Drones. By David Brooks. New York Times, February 7, 2013.

Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart? By Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.

Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart. By Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. New York Times, February 6, 2013.

Andrew Jackson Teaches Us To Rein In Bureaucrats. By Dick Morris.

Andrew Jackson Teaches Us To Rein In Bureaucrats. By Dick Morris. Video. DickMorris.com, February 9, 2013. Also find it here.

“Suicide Conservatives.” By Charles Blow.

“Suicide Conservatives.” By Charles Blow. New York Times, February 8, 2013.

See also here and here.

The White South’s Last Defeat. By Michael Lind.

The white South’s last defeat. By Michael Lind. Salon, February 5, 2013.

Hysteria, aggression and gerrymandering are a fading demographic’s last hope to maintain political control.

Lind:

In understanding the polarization and paralysis that afflict national politics in the United States, it is a mistake to think in terms of left and right. The appropriate directions are North and South. To be specific, the long, drawn-out, agonizing identity crisis of white Southerners is having effects that reverberate throughout our federal union. The transmission mechanism is the Republican Party, an originally Northern party that has now replaced the Southern wing of the Democratic Party as the vehicle for the dwindling white Southern tribe.

As someone whose white Southern ancestors go back to the 17th century in the Chesapeake Bay region, I have some insight into the psychology of the tribe. The salient fact to bear in mind is that the historical experience of the white South in many ways is the opposite of the experience of the rest of the country.

Mainstream American history, from the point of view of the white majority in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, is a story of military successes. The British are defeated, ensuring national independence. The Confederates are defeated, ensuring national unity. And in the 20th century the Axis and Soviet empires are defeated, ensuring (it is hoped) a free world.

The white Southern narrative — at least in the dominant Southern conservative version — is one of defeat after defeat. First the attempt of white Southerners to create a new nation in which they can be the majority was defeated by the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Doomed to be a perpetual minority in a continental American nation-state, white Southerners managed for a century to create their own state-within-a-state, in which they could collectively lord it over the other major group in the region, African-Americans. But Southern apartheid was shattered by the second defeat, the Civil Rights revolution, which like the Civil War and Reconstruction was symbolized by the dispatching of federal troops to the South. The American patriotism of the white Southerner is therefore deeply problematic. Some opt for jingoistic hyper-Americanism (the lady protesteth too much, methinks) while a shrinking but significant minority prefer the Stars and Bars to the Stars and Stripes.

The other great national narrative holds that the U.S. is a nation of immigration, a “new nation,” a melting pot made up of immigrants from many lands. While the melting pot story involves a good deal of idealization, it is based on demographic fact in the large areas of the North where old-stock Anglo-Americans are commingled with German-Americans, Polish-Americans and Irish-Americans, along with more recent immigrant diasporas from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

But even before the recent wave of immigration from sources other than Europe, the melting pot never included most of the white South. From the early 19th century until the late 20th, the South attracted relatively few immigrants. Who wanted to move to a backward, rural, apartheid society dominated by an oligarchy of a few rich families? Apart from several encapsulated minorities — Cajuns in Louisiana, Germans in central Texas — most white Southerners remained descendants of colonial-era immigrants from the British Isles, chiefly English and Scots-Irish. And while Irish and German Catholics and Jews diversified the religious landscape of the North, the South was dominated by British-derived Protestant sects like the Episcopalians, Baptists and Methodists from Virginia to Oklahoma and Texas.

Two maps illustrate the demographic distinctiveness of the white South. The first shows the close correlation of evangelical Protestantism with the states of the former Confederacy. The second map is even more revealing.  It shows the concentration of individuals who identified themselves to census takers as non-hyphenated “Americans.”

It is clear from the map that most self-described unhyphenated “Americans” are, in fact, whites of British descent — many if not most of them descendants of the Scots-Irish diaspora that emigrated from Ulster to the British colonies in the 1700s.  The point is that many white Southerners do not think of themselves as having any “ethnicity” at all. Others — German-Americans, Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Chinese-Americans — are hyphenated Americans. White Southerners tend to see themselves as “pure” Americans, “real” Americans, “normal” Americans. Long after Mayflower descendants were submerged by waves of  European migration in New England, large regions of the white South remain the last places in the country where local majorities can trace their family ancestry back to before 1776 in British America.

As difficult as it may be, outsiders should try to imagine the world as viewed by conservative white Southerners, who think they are the real Americans — that is, old-stock British-Americans — and the adherents of the true religion, evangelical Protestantism. In this perspective, the rest of the country was taken over by invading hordes of Germans, Irish and other European tribes in the first half of the 19th century, leaving the South, largely unaffected by European immigration, as the last besieged pocket of old-stock British-Americans, sharing parts of their territory with subjugated and segregated African-Americans.

This local British-American ethno-racial hegemony in the South was eroded somewhat by the migration of Northeasterners and Midwesterners to the Sun Belt following World War II and the advent of air-conditioning. And now, predominantly nonwhite immigration from Latin America and Asia threatens to make white Southerners of British Protestant descent a minority in their own region. Texas and Florida are already majority-minority states. It is only a matter of time before the same is true of every state in the South. Southern whites will go from being a minority in the nation as a whole to a minority in the South itself.

If Southern culture had a tradition of assimilating immigrants, then cultural “Southernness” could be detached from any particular ethnicity or race. One could be an assimilated Chinese-American good old boy or a Mexican-American redneck.  To some degree, that is happening. And Southern whites and Southern blacks have always shared many elements of a common regional culture.

But it is difficult, if not impossible, for many white Southerners to disentangle regional culture (Southern) from race (white) and ethnicity (British Protestant). The historical memory of white Southerners is not of ethnic coexistence and melting-pot pluralism but of ethnic homogeneity and racial privilege. Small wonder that going from the status of local Herrenvolk to local minority in only a generation or two is causing much of the white South to freak out.

The demographic demise of the white South is going to be traumatic for the nation as a whole. A century ago, when European immigration made old-stock Yankee Protestants a minority in much of the Northeast and Midwest, one response was hysterical Anglo-American nativism. In a 1921 essay in Good Housekeeping titled “Whose Country Is This?,” then Vice President Calvin Coolidge, an old-stock Yankee from Vermont, explained:  “Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides.” Patrician Yankees promoted immigration restriction to prevent “inferior” European races from further contaminating America. Some eminent Americans of New England descent, including Henry James, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, all of them nasty anti-Semites, took the extreme step of expatriating themselves. James and Eliot became British subjects and Pound made anti-American broadcasts for Mussolini during World War II.

Just as white Southerners today are gerrymandering congressional districts and contemplating gerrymandering the Electoral College to compensate for their dwindling numbers, so the outnumbered Yankees of the North sought to dilute the political influence of European “ethnics” in the early 1900s.  When the 1920 census revealed that largely European urbanites outnumbered mostly old-stock Anglo-American rural voters, Congress failed to reapportion itself for a decade, because of the determination of small-town Anglo-Americans to minimize the power of “white ethnics.”

By the 1970s, the social divisions among old-stock Anglo-Americans and the “white ethnics” had faded to the point that most white Americans in the North had ancestors from several Western European nationalities. Similarly, the trans-racial melting pot in the U.S. will probably blur or erase many of today’s racial differences by the middle of the 21st century.

But the old-stock Yankees in the Northeast and Midwest did not accept their diminished status in their own regions without decades of hysteria and aggression and political gerrymandering. The third and final defeat of the white South, its demographic defeat, is likely to be equally prolonged and turbulent. Fasten your seat belts.

The World George H. W. Bush Built. By Robert Kaplan.

The World George H. W. Bush Built. By Robert Kaplan. Real Clear World, February 8, 2013.

Morsi and Egypt. List of Relevant NJB Repository Posts.

Cut Egypt Off. By Joseph Raskas. February 7, 2013.

Letter from Cairo: Back Street’s Back. By Elijah Zarwan. February 6, 2013.

When Tyrants and Hatemongers Embrace. By Jonathan S. Tobin. February 5, 2013.

“Groundhog Day” in Cairo. By Ashraf Khalil. February 5, 2013.

Deadly Deserts. By Ralph Peters. February 3, 2013.

Sen. Rand Paul on Failure to Ban Transfer of F-16s From US to Egypt. February 2, 2013.

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy and Femen Protest Against Morsi in Stockholm. February 2, 2013.

Mark Levin: “The Muslim Brotherhood Has Infiltrated Our Government, It’s Called Barack Obama.” January 31, 2013.

Think Again: The Muslim Brotherhood. By Eric Trager. January 30, 2013.

Aide to Egyptian President Morsi Claims Holocaust a US Hoax. By Paul Alster. January 30, 2013.

Hillary Clinton Talks Benghazi With Greta Van Susteren In All-Encompassing Foreign Policy Interview. By Josh Feldman. January 29, 2013.

Is Egypt Facing Another Revolution? By Ariel Ben Solomon. By January 29, 2013.

Is Morsi a Two-Faced Manipulator? By Dieter Bednarz and Volkhard Windfuhr. January 29, 2013.

Why Is Obama Bragging About Egypt? By Jonathan S. Tobin. January 28, 2013.

Morsi Declares State of Emergency in Three Egyptian Cities. By David D. Kirkpatrick. January 28, 2013.

There He Goes Again: Egypt’s Morsi Stuns U.S. Senators In Meeting With “Jews-Control-Media” Slur. By Richard Behar. January 27, 2013.

Apes, Pigs, and F-16s. By Andrew C. McCarthy. January 26, 2013.

Rand Paul: “Attack On Israel Will Be Treated As An Attack On US.” January 26, 2013.

Senator Rand Paul on US, F-16 Fighters, Egypt and Israel. January 25, 2013.

Kerry Defends Weapons Giveaway to Muslim Brotherhood Terror Regime. By Daniel Greenfield. January 24, 2013.

Morsi Explains Anti-Semitic Remarks by Saying Jews Control Media. By Walter Russell Mead. January 24, 2013.

Ralph Peters on Benghazi Hearing and Gift of F-16 Fighter Jets to Egypt. January 23, 2013.

Egypt: The Rule of the Brotherhood. By Yasmine El Rashidi. January 23, 2013.

Rand Paul Questions Hillary Clinton at the Senate Benghazi Hearings. January 23, 2013.

In Light of Benghazi Hearings, Taking Stock of Arab Spring, North Africa Turmoil. January 23, 2013.

Mark Levin Interviews Rand Paul on Benghazi Hearing. January 23, 2013.

Basmallah, Three-Year-Old Egyptian Girl: Jews Are Apes and Pigs. January 22, 2013.

Bring Back Mubarak! By Jamie Dettmer and Mike Giglio. January 22, 2013.

Egyptian protestors attack Morsi look-a-like. January 19, 2013.

New clips quote Morsi calling Obama a liar, urging Muslims to nurse hatred of Jews. January 18, 2013.

Morsi’s Anti-Semitic Rant Comes to Light. By Walter Russell Mead. January 15, 2013.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi says Israelis are the blood-sucking “descendants of apes and pigs.” January 9, 2013.

Egypt Official: Israel Will Be Wiped Out in a Decade. By Roi Kais. January 1, 2013.


Newer posts on Morsi and Egypt, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here., here, here, here, here, here, here. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

Cut Egypt Off. By Joseph Raskas.

Cut Egypt Off. By Joseph Raskas. National Review Online, February 7, 2013.

Why Is Obama Arming Enemies? By Michael Rubin. Commentary, February 5, 2013.


Raskas:

Since 1979, when Egypt struck a peace treaty with Israel following the Camp David accords, the U.S. has provided Egypt with approximately $2 billion of foreign assistance each year. This aid was purposed to promote short-term U.S. interests, such as regional stability, and long-term goals, such as promoting human rights and democracy in Egypt.

During the Mubarak era, this aid included up to $1.3 billion in military assistance each year, and copious amounts of economic aid. In the wake of Mubarak’s ouster and the subsequent rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country, Congress passed legislation that prevents the Obama administration from distributing military aid to Egypt unless the State Department can independently verify that Egypt is taking concrete steps toward democracy. Their definition of such steps: Egypt must abide by its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, support “the transition to civilian government including holding free and fair elections,” and enact policies that protect “freedom of speech, association and religion and due process of law.” However, according to a senior Obama-administration official, there is no way to certify that all conditions are being met, so they’ve been ignored.

Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, has turned Egypt into a bastion of authoritarian rule. Since his rise to power last June, Morsi has orchestrated a constitution based on sharia law, usurped the supreme court’s constitutional power of judicial review, silenced media critics, and allegedly ordered both the killing and jailing of political dissidents. Moreover, Morsi has incited hatred toward Egypt’s Coptic minority, expressed doubt about maintaining the peace treaty with Israel, supported terrorist organizations such as Hamas, and pledged to work for the release of the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman, a militant Islamist preacher imprisoned by the U.S. for planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. When Morsi was exposed by the Middle East Media Research Institute for calling Jewish people “descendants of apes and pigs,” Morsi’s response was farcical: My words, he said, were distorted by the Jews who control the American media.

Meanwhile, Egypt is teetering on the brink of financial collapse. In the fall of 2012, President Obama informed Congress that the U.S. would provide Egypt with $450 million in immediate aid to stave off a fiscal disaster. Senator John McCain noted that a delay in foreign aid was liable to “contribute to the chaos that may ensue because of their collapsing economy.” But financial woes make Morsi susceptible to American demands, so President Obama should use Egypt’s desperate situation as leverage to insist on true democratic reforms.

Congress should implement legislation that makes economic aid to Egypt’s new government contingent upon the precise conditions it previously applied to military aid — abiding by the peace treaty with Israel and supporting policies that promote democracy and human rights. Absent these changes and independent confirmation of them by the State Department, economic aid should be withdrawn.

Military aid should also be rescinded until the conditions already set out by Congress have been met. President Obama recently promised to send 16 F-16 fighter jets and 200 M1A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt before the end of the year. This harms U.S. interests rather than advancing them — Morsi is likely to point the F-16s toward Israel and the Abrams tanks toward Tahrir Square.

The American people certainly support rethinking our relationship with Egypt. According to a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, 42 percent of Americans think aid to Egypt should be reduced and 29 percent think it should be cut off entirely. A super-majority of Americans — 71 percent — believe that U.S. foreign aid to Egypt is a flawed policy prescription.

The Egyptian people, too, reject the notion of being dependent upon American aid. Indeed, according to a Gallup poll, more than eight out of ten Egyptians oppose receiving foreign aid from the United States.

On Tuesday, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Egypt, marking the first visit by an Iranian leader in more than three decades. A red-carpet welcome would have been unthinkable under Mubarak.

The U.S. seeks a democratic Egypt, a country that is a bulwark of peace and stability in the region. Until Cairo supports these vital American interests, it is morally irresponsible to use U.S. taxpayer money to fund or arm the Egyptian government.

The Demonization of the Iraq War Ensures No Syria Intervention. By Jim Geraghty.

The Demonization of the Iraq War Ensures No Syria Intervention. By Jim Geraghty. National Review Online, February 7, 2013.

Intervene in Syria. By Roger Cohen. New York Times, February 4, 2013.

Syria Is Not Iraq. By Shadi Hamid. The Atlantic, February 4, 2013.

Hamid:

Lastly, it is worth thinking about what this means for future instances of mass slaughter. With the Libya intervention, there was hope that a post-Arab Spring precedent would be set – that whenever pro-democracy protesters were threatened with massacre, the U.S. and its allies would take the “responsibility to protect” seriously and consider intervention as a legitimate option. But, nearly two years later, what we didn’t do in Syria is more relevant than what we did do in Libya.

If I sound defeatist, then it is likely because I am. It is worth speaking frankly, and, unfortunately, this probably requires speaking in the past tense. For Syria, it is likely too late. Notwithstanding something sudden and entirely unexpected, the international community will not intervene. That does not mean that the Syrian people are doomed. They will likely “win” in the end, but their victory, if we can even call it that, will have come at a much greater cost – in the sheer number killed – than was necessary. It will have come at the cost of a country destroyed, of sects polarized beyond any hope of reconciliation, of Salafis and Jihadists ascendant, of a state too torn and divided for real governance. As has been reported elsewhere, the Syrian opposition feels that it has been not just forgotten, but, worse, betrayed. They are unlikely to forget this anytime soon. Anti-Americanism, a given among regime supporters, has slowly taken root among the opposition as well. The Syrian protest movement’s Friday theme for October 19, 2012 was “America, has your spite not been sated by our blood?” In due time, the Obama administration's inability or unwillingness to act may be remembered as one of the great strategic and moral blunders of recent decades. Hoping to atone for our sins in Iraq, we have overlearned the lessons of the last war. I only wish it wasn’t too late.

Movement Conservatives and Tea Partiers Rise Up Against Rove. By Garance Franke-Ruta.

Movement Conservatives and Tea Partiers Rise Up Against Rove. By Garance Franke-Ruta. The Atlantic, February 7, 2013.

Suspected L.A. Cop Killer Christopher Dorner Posted Pro-Obama, Pro-Gun Control, Leftist Rant on the Web.

Suspected L.A. Cop Killer Christopher Dorner Posted Pro-Obama, Pro-Gun Control, Leftist Rant on the Web. By Bryan Preston. PJ Media, February 7, 2013.

Suspected Mass-Murderer’s Manifesto Endorses Hillary, Obama, Gun Control, Elite Media. By John Nolte. Breitbart, February 7, 2013.

News Media Scrub Cop Murderer’s Manifesto of Pro-Obama, Hillary, MSNBC, CNN, Gay, and Anti-Gun Comments. SooperMexican, February 7, 2013.

Christopher Dorner’s Manifesto. Crime, Guns and Videotape, February 6, 2013.

A New GOP? Not Yet. By Michael Tomasky.

A New GOP? Not Yet. By Michael Tomasky. The Daily Beast, February 7, 2013.

Tomasky:

The Rove–Tea Party feud is a joyous thing to watch. Rove, after an utterly disastrous run around the track in 2012, is now suckering people into writing him checks for a new outfit that will allegedly hold the zanies at bay, filter out the Sharron Angles and Richard Mourdocks of the world, and promote electable conservatives.

First of all, I hardly have the words to describe how happy this makes me, after decades of watching conservatives chortle about unelectable Democrats. And second and more to the point, rather than freezing out challengers from the far, far right as intended, this seems almost certain to invite them. There’s nothing those people love more than the idea that everyone, even their own party’s establishment, is against them. And conservative voters will vote for that.

This is the Republican problem. The basic organizing principle of Republican campaigns for 40 years now has been: they are coming. They’ve mixed in a little positive stuff. Ronald Reagan did that well, Bush Sr. had his thousand points of light, Bush Jr. his ownership society. But fundamentally Republicans have won elections by telling the white majority that “they” are coming after your money and status and privilege. I was surprised to read in Tom Edsall’s latest column, although I should not have been, that the GOP has won the white vote in every election except one going back not to 1980 or 1968, but 1952 (the exception was LBJ’s ’64 landslide).

Now, Cantor, Rove, and Rubio—sweet reason itself on immigration, or so he tries to be—are signaling in their different ways that it’s time to stop playing resentment politics. But they have a base that’s seething with resentments, resentments they themselves, Rove in particular, built and nursed going back to Goldwater’s time. You can’t just undo something like that in one election cycle.

What’s coming, therefore, seems pretty obvious. A grand civil war between the rebranders and the dead-enders. The latter will run candidates against the former for Senate and House races in 2014. Those outcomes will be pivotal in setting a tone for 2016. If the rebranders win a majority of races, including the two or three the media eventually identify as somehow symbolic, then maybe they will have the momentum heading into the presidential election and will be able to get the party to coalesce around an electable candidate. (By the way: If this is supposed to be Rubio, let us pause briefly and note that Rubio is on most issues a far-right-wing politician and is almost surely unelectable, provided the Democratic campaign isn’t completely idiotic. If it’s supposed to be Chris Christie, that’s perhaps—perhaps—another matter.)

But if the dead-enders prevail, or pull a draw?

I think the Republican Party right now is like an alcoholic who hasn’t yet hit rock bottom. He’s not fooling anyone anymore. Everyone’s on to him. But he’s still holding on to his job by a thread, his wife hasn’t yet taken the kids and walked out on him, the cops don’t happen yet to have been there as he swerved his way home from his usual bar. He can still, in other words, kid himself. Disaster hasn’t struck yet.

In this case, disaster would be losing to Hillary Clinton three years from now. I believe that’s what it will probably take to sober the Republicans up; most especially to sober up the base—to make rank-and-file conservatives realize that the age of victory via resentment is gone. That middle Americans who once identified with their grudges are now over them and sick to death of hearing about them. Cosmetic rebranding can’t fix this.


The Persistence of Racial Resentment. By Thomas B. Edsall. New York Times, February 6, 2013.

Edsall:

What are we to make of these developments? Is the country more or less racist? How can the percentage of people holding anti-black attitudes have increased from 2006 to 2008 at a time when Obama performed better among white voters than the two previous white Democratic nominees, and then again from 2008 to 2012 when Obama won a second term?

In fact, the shifts described by Tesler and Pasek are an integral aspect of the intensifying conservatism within the right wing of the Republican Party. Many voters voicing stronger anti-black affect were already Republican. Thus, in 2012, shifts in their attitudes, while they contributed to a 4 percentage point reduction in Obama’s white support, did not result in a Romney victory.

Some Republican strategists believe the party’s deepening conservatism is scaring away voters.

“We have a choice: we can become a shrinking regional party of middle-aged and older white men, or we can fight to become a national governing party,” John Weaver, a consultant to the 2008 McCain campaign, said after Obama’s re-election. Mark McKinnon, an adviser to former President George W. Bush, made a similar point: “The party needs more tolerance, more diversity and a deeper appreciation for the concerns of the middle class.”

Not only is the right risking marginalization as its views on race have become more extreme, it is veering out of the mainstream on contraception and abortion, positions that fueled an 11 point gender gap in 2012 and a 13 point gap in 2008.

Given that a majority of the electorate will remain white for a number of years, the hurdle that the Republican Party faces is building the party’s white margins by 2 to 3 points. For Romney to have won, he needed 62 percent of the white vote, not the 59 percent he got.

Working directly against this goal is what Time Magazine recently described as the Republican “brand identity that has emerged from the stars of the conservative media ecosystem: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and others.”

It is not so much Latino and black voters that the Republican Party needs. To win the White House again, it must assuage the social conscience of mainstream, moderate white voters among whom an ethos of tolerance has become normal. These voters are concerned with fairness and diversity, even as they stand to the right of center. It is there that the upcoming political battles - on the gamut of issues from race to rights - will be fought.


Does the GOP Really Want to Woo Blacks and Latinos? By Touré. Time, January 31, 2013.

Touré:

A large part of the problem the GOP has with voters of color is the brand identity that has emerged from the stars of the conservative media ecosystem: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and others. When those people are some of the loudest voices in your party, then most black and brown people are going to be repelled and feel unwelcome. The GOP needs louder voices — leadership voices — speaking back and saying, “No, that’s not who we are (anymore).” Donald Trump is a prominent Republican who pushed the birther cause years into Obama’s presidency. There must be prominent Republicans who loudly push back and say, “We disagree with the president, but are certain that he’s legitimately American.” Otherwise potential voters don’t know whether the party condones racist behavior.

The party also needs to change the rhetoric of their elected officials and surrogates to not be racially toxic, baiting and dog whistle-ish. This week the GOP was told by the Hispanic outreach arm of a GOP SuperPAC to avoid pejoratives like illegal, alien, anchor baby and electric fence. To that I’d add: food stamp president, lazy, un-American, handout, takers, democratic plantation and other obviously loaded terms that show a blatant lack of respect for black and brown people. It’s hard to consider the policies of a party whose members use inflammatory language about you. Also: avoid at all cost having panels about how to successfully communicate with black and brown people in rooms named “Burwell Plantation,” which is named for a slave-owning family. That actually happened at a recent House GOP retreat. How is it possible that no one thought that might leave a bad taste in the mouths of the people you’re talking about reaching?

The GOP could also refresh some of its messaging for black and brown people. For example, their gun rights position could be tailored to black and brown people — many of whom live in neighborhoods where crime is not unexpected. Something like “you need to protect yourself, the cops can’t always be there for you, and we’re the party fighting to continue your right to protect yourself” could work. An ad saying, “What if Trayvon had a gun?” could be persuasive. I personally think more guns leads to more bloodshed, and if Trayvon had had a gun, he’d either be dead or on trial for murder. I believe guns provide the illusion of security, not true security, but the GOP disagrees and some black and brown Americans could be persuaded to see it their way.

But there will have to be some policy changes, too. Voter ID laws seem very much designed to functionally disenfranchise black and brown voters (as well as other traditional democratic voters). Harsh anti-immigration laws like Arizona’s S.B. 1070, a.k.a. “Papers Please,” stigmatizes the Latino community, leaves them targeted as enemies and makes it hard for them to seriously consider the GOP. Stand Your Ground is also a problematic law that many black and brown people see as set in place to aid whites in protecting themselves from blacks. You can argue the specific merits of these laws if you like, but you’ll struggle to get black and brown people to not see them as an assault.

It also may be time to take a hard look at entitlement reform. It’s in vogue in D.C., but Medicare and Medicaid are popular with all Americans, including black and brown people who hear themselves demonized in the debate. They hear that the Democratic Party will be there in a time of need, while the Republicans will demand you pull yourself up by your bootstraps in a world marked by white privilege, where for many people race is a difficult hurdle to get over. They hear that if the world is divided into makers and takers then a dollar given in welfare is given to a lazy person of color and taken from a hard-working white person. This thinking is corrosive to the Republican Party.

These ideas may not be easy to adopt because the policies I suggest they leave behind speak to white anxiety and give whites, especially in the working class, a sense that the Republican Party is there to protect them, while the Dems are going to protect the racial other. Stoking fear of that other is baked into their appeal to a key part of their constituency, and has become part of the soul of the party. They’re going to need to extract that before they can begin an honest conversation about wooing voters of color. All that’s at stake is getting back in the White House.

India vs. China vs. Egypt. By Thomas L. Friedman.

India vs. China vs. Egypt. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, February 5, 2013.

Nixon in China: An Opera From 1987.

Nixon shakes hands with Zhou Enlai, February 21, 1972. During the Geneva Conference in 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles refused to shake Zhou Enlai’s hand. Knowing of this rebuff, President Nixon made a point of shaking Zhou Enlai’s hand upon landing in China. White House photo by Byron Schumaker. Wikipedia.

Nixon in China. Houston Grand Opera, October 22, 1987. Music by John Adams. Libretto by Alice Goodman. Directed by Peter Sellars. Complete Opera. Video in 17 parts, January 26, 2010. YouTube. Libretto.

Act 1, Scene 2: Meeting with Mao. Video with historical footage, September 3, 2012. YouTube.

The Evolution of Irregular War. By Max Boot.

The Evolution of Irregular War: Insurgents and Guerillas From Akkadia to Afghanistan. By Max Boot. Foreign Affairs, January 5, 2013.

When MOOCs Go Bad. By Walter Russell Mead.

When MOOCs Go Bad. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, February 6, 2013.

How the Online Revolution in Higher Education Will Eliminate Factory Jobs. By C. A. Bowers. Tikkun, February 4, 2013.

See also: Revolution Hits the Universities. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, January 26, 2013.

See also: The End of the University as We Know It. By Nathan Harden. The American Interest, January/February 2013.