The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    People of Egypt: Let Us Help You Keep Strong, Our Hands in Your Hands.

    By we are stardust on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 10:11am |

    Bravehearts of Egypt: we close our eyes and see you coming together in Tahrir Square twelve days ago, first in trepidation, but with conviction and courage.  As the hours and the days passed, you grew into a glorious organism, a whole that grew and multiplied, fed by the love you feel for each other and your nation, strengthening your bonds so well that your brothers in the Army could not resist your Rightness and Light.

    We marvel at your strength as a people.  You have for centuries been ruled by Pharaohs and those who have ruled as proxies for them, victimized by those who would keep you half-buried in sand to further their own ends.

    We attempt to name the reasons you have now risen to throw off the yokes of oppression and tyranny as if we can know.  Perhaps you can’t even name all of the pieces that propelled you here , but you feel that it must be thus.

    Perhaps you feel it on the wind, the voice of freedom that may be wafting over the planet, emanating from the stars and planets beyond…we close our eyes to imagine being you, and can almost hear the same celestial chimes, almost hear the sounds your poets and musicians will translate and sing of from now into eternity:

    A change is going to come.

    You will make it to the Promised Land.

    It is written.

    It may have been written by Seers in the ancient texts in Alexandria that were said to be all the knowledge in the world…and though the texts were destroyed, their contents were whispered to you over time, knowledge kept locked inside as archetypical hero images ready to spring forth when the time was right.

    There is no turning back; you have changed Egypt forever, no matter what the next days and months bring.  It's clear to us, as we hear the muzzeins call believers to prayer...Allah Akbar!..., and watch as they kneel on prayer rugs, encircled by Christians who would protect them from dangerous government hirelings. 

    A change is going to come.

    Let us help speed you on your way; feel us giving you strength and resolve, softening your hunger and thirst and pain as you move through this journey, shaming us a little with your valor in the face of such danger.

    We are in awe of you, people of Egypt.  Your dedication makes us weep, and it causes our hearts to grow larger.  You may even help us find our own way one day.

    That so many of you have returned to Tahrir Square and cities all over Egypt today after the days of violence is astounding; may this Day of Departure bring you the next steps you seek.  Godspeed to you all, our hearts and hands…to yours.  Hard days are still  ahead, and we'll be with you in spirit.

     

    (cross-posted at FDL)  Watch live events:    http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

    Juan Cole takes off the gloves in his outrage at the administration's humiliations in the ME.

    Comments

    Nicely penned, star wonder person. BTW, where ya'll been?


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 1:59pm

    Beautiful.  Thank you for sharing this here.


    by Ramona on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 2:18pm

    day of departure...

    I heard an 80yr old woman on NPR (Major figure in Egypt, PhD++) talking about their gut level need for justice, and how just shuffling Mubarak off to a comfortable exile, a la "raison d'etat" was really not going to get them there.  She declared her intention to stay in Tahrir Square come what may.  80!   There's a problem with her paperwork, cause she sounded 19 to me.

    BTW, it would be nice if some in this country could show  little zeal for bringing our torturers, renderers and their accomplices to justice as well.  Of all the long list of betrayals by Prez, his deliberate interference with the rule of law vis-a-vis Bush-Cheney will be history's most damning indictment of he himself.  All he had to do was nothing--just let the independent justice system grind.

     


    by jollyroger on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 3:18pm

    the 80-year old:

    We Are All Egyptians
    By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
    Published: February 3, 2011

    ....In the center of Tahrir Square, also known as Liberation Square, I bumped into one of my heroes, Dr. Nawal El Saadawi, a leading Arab feminist who for decades has fought female genital mutilation. Dr. Saadawi, who turns 80 this year, is white-haired and frail and full of fiery passion.

    “I feel I am born again,” she said, adding that she intended to sleep with the protesters on Tahrir Square. She also suggested that instead of being sent into comfortable exile, Mr. Mubarak should be put on trial as a criminal; that’s a theme I’ve heard increasingly often among pro-democracy activists....

     

    Caption: Dr. Nawal El Saadawi, a leading Arab feminist, with protesters in Tahrir Square. Photo by Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times, February 4, 2011


    by artappraiser on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 3:38pm

    Yeah, that's her..  I was right-19.


    by jollyroger on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 3:51pm

    El Saadawi is so beautiful, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the guys with her are serious, serious dudes.  All three (even the younger one on the right) have eyes with depth.

    I remember an old picture of Chavez and Achmadinadjad talking at some Teheran conference, and the same impression of seriousness jumped out from their eyes--I thought at the time how utterly vacant, juvenile, trivial and emptyheaded GW Bush's eyes looked by comparison.

    What I am driving at is that we do not have a political class with the slightest beginning of the talent abroad--maybe it comes from having to surive a youth and middle age fighting US oppression, by proxy or up close.


    by jollyroger on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 6:04pm

    cross-posted at FDL

     

     So that's where you've been.


    by jollyroger on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 3:20pm

    I loved reading your blog post from this morning.

    I began writing a comment in response, and it has spun out of control. Like you, the events of the last number of days have affected me deeply. My emotions run the full gamut from despair to hope to joy to fear to anger to disgust...

    I've now determined that I will continue working on my "comments" and present them as a separate blog post. But I just wanted to let you know for now that I have seen and greatly appreciate your effort. History is being made. Hard to tell what direction we go from here, and good reason to be fearful - but not fearful of the Egyptians courageous pursuit of democracy. Rather, fearful for the consequences of our complicity in withholding Liberty and democracy from them (and Yemen, and Saudi Arabia, and Palestine, and Syria, and Iraq, and Sudan, and Nigeria, and...) lo these many years.
    Soldarnosz! A change is gonna come. Let freedom ring!


    by SleepinJeezus on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 5:44pm

    The Egyptians can use all the positive energy we can muster for them, and our President needs to hear from us and state clearly that it's time for Mubarak to go NOW, and not pretend that Omar Suleiman the Torturer is any possible option.  Secretary of State Clinton and our Members of Congress need to hear that they must cut all funding to Egypt; no more of our tax dollars should fund such repressive regimes.

    The President needs to be told that his Cairo speech was right, and he should read it again, and that the people of Egypt remember what he said to them.  And that peace between Israel and Palestine runs from a democratic Egypt to that peace.  Our support for ME self-determination will make our nation safer, not the security state monster and wars on brown people that the Powers That Be pretend will.

    Thanks all for reading and commenting.  Please tell Beetlejuice that this is hardly 'a distraction'; it's easily the most historical event we've witnessed in our  lifetimes: if it falters or goes bloody, a lot of that will be on the head of the United States.

    And yes; I blog at FDL in relative obscurity, and occasionally at a few other sites as my odd brain allows with different software.  ;o)

    Do read the Juan Cole if you haven't; the manis on fire!  Best to all; I'll try to get back later.


    by we are stardust on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 5:45pm

    security state monster and wars on brown people

     

    You might think that somewhere in the second week of these brave peoples' struggle, someone amongst TPTB would find a moment to express shame for our complicity in their decades of oppression...but oh, no...we are fuckin' shameless..  Sadly, Wolfie's satiric rendering of American complacency and self involvement is just scratching the surface.

    America--born on third base and we think we hit a triple. Lucky in location, predatory neighbor, self righteous and self important.  Exceptional, all right!  And the world is damn lucky, because two such *cities on the hill would be terminally toxic to life as we know it..

     

    * And, yes, (wait for it....) I largely blame the Yahwists for most of what's wrong with us.


    by jollyroger on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 6:19pm

    I blame the followers of Satan.

    A known slanderer, murderer,and  liar,


    by Resistance on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 6:39pm

    What's the difference?


    by jollyroger on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 6:40pm

    One told us the truth;  that we would surely die, the other said we wouldn't. 


    by Resistance on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 6:44pm

    Don't you have that backwards?  At least, according you your chosen texts.  Never mind, anyway. I regard Yaweh as a variant of Baal, and Baal, of course, is the mythic origin of Satan.  Like love and marriage in the song, can't have one without the other...


    by jollyroger on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 6:51pm

    I like that, thanks Jolly . You can't have life without the other?

     


    by Resistance on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 6:55pm

    Can't have Yahweh without his shadow Satan; Two faces of the same phenomenon.


    by jollyroger on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 6:57pm

    That reminds me of a comparison; male and female, two faces of human kind.   

    God and Satan two faces of the spirit kind, both with separate governments.

    One is a better government; the other a shadow government. Two faces of government.


    by Resistance on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 7:45pm

    Amen!


    by Watt Childress on Sat, 02/05/2011 - 1:43am

    We talk about Greece as the cradle of civilization. But Salon and Heroditus and Plato always pointed to Egypt.

    Oh great pyramid that seems to be reaching straight up into the sky.
    The ancient Egyptians long ago constructed and built you upon high.
    The mysteries of those who composed you still astounds me.
    A pyramid is a wonderful relic of the past, many of us do agree.

    http://allpoetry.com/poem/5695263

    You have to go back only 5,000 years, maybe ten thousand years to examine how we got to where we are today.

    Egypt has seen many regime changes in that time. Foreignors like Caesar have conquered it many times. Religions have changed hundreds of times in that period.

    Egypt will always survive!


    by Richard Day on Sat, 02/05/2011 - 5:53pm