PoliticsEgypt: Parliamentary Vote: Stage 3 of the historic voting will include Egypt's rural areas and some urban centres in the midst of these

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"The Corner" feature of National Review (December 15, 2k11)
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Hat Tip to Dr. Paul Marshall; thanks to author Samuel Tadros
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The Egyptian Elections:  What to Expect in Round 2 December 13, 2011 4:03 P.M. By Samuel Tadros On Wednesday and Thursday, Egyptians will head to the polls for the second stage of the country’s lengthy parliamentary elections. Unlike the first stage, which included Cairo and Alexandria, this stage will take place mostly in the countryside. So far the Islamists have won 69 percent of the seats in the first stage. This result will be repeated in the second stage with an increased percentage. The Islamist tsunami will only gain strength as it moves into more friendly districts. In the second stage, nine Egyptian governates will be voting to elect 180 members of parliament. Those governates will include for the first time the heart of the Nile Delta, Monofia, Sharkia, and Behira. They will also include Giza, with its urban and rural districts, the Suez Canal governates Ismailia and Suez, as well as the Bani Suif and the southern governates Sohag and Aswan. Providing more proof of how chaotic the electoral process has been, the election commission has indicated today that it will implement a court order stopping party-list elections in Behira’s 2nd, Sohag’s 2nd, and Monofia’s 1st districts, representing 24 seats. In those areas voters will only vote to fill individual seats. Party-list elections in those areas will be take place simultaneously with the runoff elections for the individual seats next week. In preparation for the second stage, and after the shock of their terrible performance, the non-Islamist parties have attempted to offer a unified front to counter the Islamist onslaught. The main non-Islamist parties have agreed on a list of candidates to back on the individual seats, while each maintain their separate lists on the party list seats. This will be the test of their combined power, though it is quite doubtful that it will be of any actual value. Please read the complete article ...

Politics: Religion: Islam wants a special status to protect itself from free speech, critical speech of it as a religion provoking critique

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National Review Online (December 13, 2k11)
Reposted here by Owlb

D.C. Islamophobia Conference Was a Bad Idea December 13, 2011 11:19 A.M. By Nina Shea   Yesterday marked the opening of the international conference announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a high-level meeting on Islamophobia that she co-chaired, held last July in Istanbul and hosted by the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). At the time, Secretary Clinton described this week’s conference as a move to implement U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18 on “combating [religious] intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization.” This State Department conference, entitled “The Istanbul Process,” is proving to be a very bad idea. It remains to be seen whether speech limitations to protect religion generally and Islam specifically will be officially endorsed by the conference — similar recommendations have already been adopted by the OIC and by the EU conference participants — but, judging from the opening session, at least some of my misgivings seem well founded. The three-day conference was closed to the public, but I was invited to its opening session (as well as to the closing session to be held on Wednesday) by virtue of my being a commissioner on the official but independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “Chatham House Rules,” which State directed us to abide by, forbid releasing anything about a specific delegation or quoting for attribution. To speak more generally, then: Legal and security officials of a delegation which will remain unnamed gave a sweeping overview of American founding principles on religious freedom and how they have been breached time and again in American history by attacks against a broad variety of religious minority groups — including now against Muslims. A raft of current cases were mentioned; America’s relative exemplary and distinctive achievement in upholding religious freedom in an emphatically pluralistic society was not. That same speaker reassured the audience, which was packed with diplomats from around the world, that the Obama administration is working diligently to prosecute American Islamophobes and is transforming the U.S. Justice Department into the conscience of the nation, though it could no doubt learn a thing or two from the assembled delegates on other ways to stop persistent religious intolerance in America. Across the room, smirking delegates from some of the world’s most repressive and intolerant regimes could be spotted, furiously taking notes. The Saudi Justice Minister was recently in the U.S. but unfortunately departed before the conference opened and won’t be making any presentation on how the Saudis stop religious intolerance. Nor will his delegation be making any apologetic mention of the Saudi ban on churches, its repression of its large indigenous Shiite population, its textbooks teaching that Jews should be killed, or its beheading yesterday of a woman for sorcery, in addition to another recent beheading of a Sudanese man for the same crime. Meanwhile, at U.N. headquarters in New York, a new resolution following on 16/18 has been introduced by the OIC and will soon be voted on by the General Assembly, where it will no doubt passed with U.S. approval. It singles out for praise regarding the promotion of religious tolerance one state — Saudi Arabia. — Nina Shea is director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and co-author with Paul Marshall of Silenced: How Apostasy & Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide. E-MAIL AUTHOR   |   ARCHIVE

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The Christian Post > Politics|Tue, Dec. 13 2011 10:13 PM EDT

US Meets With Muslim Countries That Want to Ban Free Speech in America

By Amanda Winkler | Christian Post Reporter

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PoliticsUSA: American political polarization: Ethics and Public Policy Center writer says Obama polarizes us designedly

Who's Polarizing America?  By Stanley Kurtz  Posted: Friday, February 18, 2011  ARTICLE  National Review Online's The Corner    Publication Date: February 18, 2011  American politics just keeps getting more polarized. Be assured that Obama wants it that way. I argue in Radical-in-Chief that Obama's long-term hope is to divide America along class lines (roughly speaking, tax payers versus tax beneficiaries). Obama's attack on the Supreme Court at his 2010 State of the Union address, his offensive against the Chamber of Commerce, his exhortation to Hispanics to punish their enemies, and several similar moves were all efforts to jump-start a populist movement of the left. Like his socialist organizing mentors, Obama believes that a country polarized along class lines will eventually realign American politics sharply to the left. Yet the entire strategy is based on the need for an activated, populist movement of the left. So far, Obama has failed to create such a movement. His expensive economic agenda has provoked a populist counter-movement of the right instead: Obama's nightmare. This one deserves your attention.  Read the whole article here I'm looking for an equally serious article explaining Obama's political strategy written on his side of the divide.  But you can view a perspective on Obama's "centrist" strategy if you click up the refWrite post yesterday, featuring Naomi Klein.  Between these two view, what woud Obama's people say to these charges? -- Politicarp