Jesse Jackson appears at the Wisconsin protests and compares it to the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia...

... and leads the crowd in a singing of "We Shall Overcome" — which is probably more inspiring than the trio of recorded songs I heard the people sing/sway along with yesterday: "We're Not Gonna Take It," "Revolution," and "We Didn't Start the Fire."

I'm working at my desktop computer, writing this, and a text message comes in from Meade, who's gone back to the demonstration, to get his extra share of abuse, and the text is: "Rev j about to give speech." The news report I linked to above is from 10 a.m. So Jackson's been there for a long time. Anyway, I should have the video soon.

Meanwhile, oddly enough, before we left for the rally this morning, without knowing Jackson would arrive, I picked up my old "Jesse Jackson '88" button and told Meade he should wear on his lapel as part of a blending-in strategy. Am I psychic?! (He declined the button. Blending-in is more about being inconspicuous.)

As for the Wisconsin-is-like-Egypt theme... man, am I sick of that. I'm seeing it everywhere. For, example, today...



"Hey Scottie I hear Egypt is looking for a leader. So is Wisconsin!" says that guy, who was very proud of his sign. And see the woman next to him? In the red hat? Her sign says "Walker like an Egyptian" or something like that. And remember these charming folks from yesterday?



UPDATE: Jackson is still not out there, as the folks wait in the cold. It's dinnertime, maybe they have to pee, and they're only just now getting to sing "We Shall Overcome." Hey, how bad are your tribulations, compared to segregation? You're cold, you're hungry, you have to pee, and you have to pay 5.8% of your salary into your own pension fund. The oppression!

UPDATE 2: Jackson finally speaks.

"Harvard historian Niall Ferguson schools MSNBC’s Mika on what has happened in Egypt and Obama’s incompetence."

Very intense:

"State-Run Media Beg Egyptian Citizens to Praise Pharaoh Obama."

Hilarious.

ADDED: Scroll past the first 2 paragraphs to the interviews by CNN correspondent Nic Robertson, who tries to get Egyptian protesters to show how much Obama means to them and gets less than nothing:

ROBERTSON: Achmed, you've been here down here on the Square for many days. The United States and the international community. You've just listened to President Obama saying that America will support Egypt if it wants help and assistance, and hopes that there will be a good transition for jobs for the young people. What would be your message for President Obama?

ACHMED: We don't know, actually, who he supports. He serves for his own purposes, and the Egyptian people serve for our freedom and democracy. Any democratic country should see for the people, not for its own purposes....

ROBERTSON: Mustapha is joining me now. We just heard President Obama say that he wants to extend, eh, support and assistance to Egypt and Egyptians if they want any, and he hopes that there are more jobs for the young people in the future. What's your message for President Obama?

MUSTAPHA: Well, my message to President Obama is just, "We started this revolution without any outside help, and we are going to finish it also without any outside help."...

ROBERTSON: Are you pleased that President Obama has come out, however, now and said he supports this change and supports the people and supports the young people and -- and what they've done?

MUSTAPHA: Well, actually President Obama's views were kind of conflicting during the last week... but now he's saying that he's supporting the change....

ROBERTSON: The view from here is one of very happy to now hear that President Obama has swung behind the people.

Why do some people presume the best of the Egyptian protesters and the worst of the Tea Party protesters?

This is something I've been mulling over especially after I heard Rush Limbaugh tie up a long monologue like this:

I find Obama's respect for protests funny.  He hates the Tea Party, he hates their rallies, he accuses them of being all kinds of things, but the protesters in Egypt, why, they are great, Muslim Brotherhood, secular, they're not interested in violence. Obama loves these people in Egypt all the while he is in violation of a federal judge.  This man is so concerned about the law in Egypt, he's got his own health care bill declared unconstitutional, and he acts like the court has never ruled.  So all this talk about democracy and the rule of law, give me a break, he's flipping Judge Vinson the bird.

He may claim to love democracy in Egypt.  He knows what that group is.  He's a community organizer.  He knows exactly what that group is.  That's why he's such a big supporter of that.  He knows that group's just a bunch of agitators.  But to sit around and start talking about, "Oh, we love democracy, and whenever we see it bubbling up, we're gonna support it out there."  Yeah, except when the judge says your health care bill's unconstitutional, we're gonna ignore that.  He loves democracy in action except when it's the Tea Party.  Then all of a sudden they become a bunch of tea baggers, as far as he's concerned.  Yeah.  I'm not kidding.  The American Tea Party, they're responsible for shooting people, they're responsible for all the violence. I mean, who's worked this crowd up into a fevered pitch?  I don't know that my program's on the air there.  And if it were -- he-he-he-he-he-he-he -- they wouldn't like me much.

There's a lot of stuff in there. I'm focused on the question I put in the title. Obviously, I'm also interested in the health care case. He wove that into the discussion — awkwardly... or elegantly?

Meanwhile, the NYT reports:

The Egyptian military, complying with most of the principal demands of the opposition, said Sunday that it had dissolved the country’s parliament, suspended its constitution and called for elections in six months, according to a statement by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces read on state television. It also said it would honor all of Egypt’s international agreements, including the peace treaty with Israel.

The military did not address a third major opposition demand to lift emergency rule. In previous statements, the council had promised to take that step once the security situation improved.

So, at this point, it's pretty much a military coup, making references to an entity called "the opposition," dissolving parliament, and suspending the constitution. I'm just trying to understand what's going on and why we should feel so much confidence about it.

Or is it political theater? Perhaps Obama et al. are only acting as though they have full confidence that the outcome will be democratic and free, because it is a way to state our expectations, make that outcome more likely, and position us to pressure the military government if that doesn't happen.

Have I stumbled into the answer to my original question up there in the post title? If it's "political theater," then a completely different set of gestures with respect to the Tea Party makes perfect sense.

"President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt turned over all power to the military..."

"... and left the Egyptian capital for his resort home in Sharm el-Sheik, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced on state television on Friday."

The crowd shouts "Egypt is free!" and let's hope that it's so.

"What is absolutely clear is that we are witnessing history unfold. It's a moment of transformation that's taking place because the people of Egypt are calling for change."

Maybe the world doesn't actually work according to the transformative moments visualizations of President Obama.

Mubarak refuses to validate the news reports that revealed that Mubarak was going to step down.

Ha.

I knew it. I declined to link to the reports earlier today that said he was stepping down. He will step down when he steps down and not when the news media fall over each other trying to pre-scoop the news.

"The Army and the people in one hand."

Chanted in Egypt.

Hosni Mubarak has resigned?

"Reuters is reporting, via Egyptian state television, that President Hosni Mubarak resigned as head of Egypt's ruling party on Saturday. Al Jazeera is reporting the same."

ADDED: Question mark added to the post title.

AND: From the NYT live-blog linked above:

While we are awaiting clarity on whether President Hosni Mubarak remains the head of the ruling National Democratic Party in Egypt-- he is definitely still president, in any case-- here is some news on one of Egypt's leading opposition bloggers.

"2 Detained Reporters Saw Secret Police’s Methods Firsthand."

Could you please read this NYT article very carefully and explain to me how we know it was the Egyptian government's secret police as opposed to an exercise by opponents of the government, done to induce reporters to write stories antagonistic to the government?

The reporters were kept in "a plain room," where they were not beaten but they could hear what sounded like beating. What did they actually see?

We saw a journalist with his head bandaged and others brought in with jackets thrown over their heads as they were led by armed men....

A plainclothes officer who said his name was Marwan gestured to us. “Come to the door,” he said, “and look out.”

We saw more than 20 people, Westerners and Egyptians, blindfolded and handcuffed. The room had been empty when we arrived the evening before.

“We could be treating you a lot worse,” he said in a flat tone, the facts speaking for themselves. Marwan said Egyptians were being held in the thousands. During the night we heard them being beaten, screaming after every blow.

Isn't that odd? Lots of blindfolded people, and then alarming sounds coming from elsewhere? They were kept for a day and then released.

They put us in our car with orders to put our heads down. “Look down, and don’t talk. If you look up you will see something you don’t ever want to see.”

They left us that way for 10 minutes. The only sounds were of guns being loaded and checked and duct-tape ripping.

Again, the hearing without seeing. Isn't this a strange article? Seriously, I am not trying to make trouble. I just read this article and felt like the reporters could have been duped by people manufacturing disinformation.

"I don't care what people say about me. "

"Right now I care about my country, I care about Egypt."

"Why Egypt's Revolution Is Not Islamic" — Part 2.

On Monday, I linked to and we discussed this article by Haroon Moghul. Today, he's on a new Bloggingheads. Topics:

The revolution in Egypt is not Islamic
A primer on the Muslim Brotherhood
The Brotherhood in America
Conservatives fight against Islamic organizations in the US
What Shariah is and isn’t
How Egypt could reduce American Islamophobia

I haven't listened yet, but I was impressed by the article and am interested in hearing him questioned about it.

ADDED: Moghul's interlocutor is Sarah Posner, who has written about "The Roots of the American Right’s Muslim Brotherhood Panic." Yesterday, I listened to Rush Limbaugh (which I always do) and watched Glenn Beck (which I'd never done for more than 5 minutes) and thought they were making overconfident statements about things they were only guessing about.

I take on Bob Wright in the "Underhanded Humiliation Edition" of Bloggingheads.

Topics include: snow, Egypt, the Constitution (as political argument and as possibly not violated by Obamacare), gun rights, sex and violence (and Jack Nicholson), comparative quarterbacks (with a bonus display of my Aaron Rodgers cheese), and a gigantic blow-up over Glenn Beck and freedom of speech.

Rachel Maddow thinks she's so sharp and funny that...

... she fails to see that other people are sharp and funny too and mocks a satire as if it were serious. Embarrassing. At least she humbly acknowledges the mistake... unlike some people:

Maddow's humility sparkles in comparison to The Huffington Post's, which upon being duped by ChristWire last August, simply erased parts of the article that showed they weren't in on the joke. In that instance, ChristWire had published an advice guide for women on how to tell if their husbands are gay.

Do we want Mubarak in America?

A teaser for a Bloggingheads.

"4 Reasons Why Egypt’s Revolution Is Not Islamic."

By Haroon Moghul:

1) The political Islamism that ended up triumphing in Iran was a much more authoritarian interpretation of Islam....

2) Iran’s Islamist opposition to the Shah was shaped by the peculiarities of Shi’a Islam and Iranian history....

3) People who study Iran know how vexed the relationship is, and has been, between Persian cultural identity and Islam. While many Iranians before the revolution were religious in a non-political way, the country’s elite tended to see Islam and Persianness as mutually incompatible. On the other hand, Egypt is a proudly Arab society... which has never seen Islam as incompatible with their specific ethnic and national project....

4) Egypt’s revolution doesn’t have to be Islamic because Islam isn’t at the heart of the problem on the ground.... Egypt’s society is a deeply Muslim one, and the very success of this non-political religious project has negated the need for a confrontational Islam. Egyptians know their religious identity is not under threat....

As an aside, I might also add that Muslim societies often have flourishing religious institutions and practices, organic and varied. But in the case of Iran, the regime paradoxically undermined that popular and organic religiosity when they sought to enforce faith through the state. This is an argument for keeping religion and politics separate in the Muslim world: in the interest of defending both from the negative effects of the other....

Interesting. I hope it's true. That last insight — valuing the separation of religion and politics  to defend each from the negative effects of the other — has been fundamental to the separation of religion and government in American history. (Read James Madison, Roger Williams, and all the rest.)

Egypt...

... some links... in lieu of having something useful to say.

"I had hoped... with millions of people, that our children will live in a more human society..."

"... but this society we have, lucky enough, that the heroes in Egypt are making today. They are not waiting for our children to dream. They are bringing all of our dreams true today.... The biggest square in the Arab world is being liberated today.... I'm proud to be an Egyptian today.... I kiss the dust under your feet."



(From the NYT live blog.)

"The crowd went unchallenged by troops, who... smiled and shook hands with protesters and invited them up onto their tanks."

"On Friday, the troops had appeared steadfastly neutral. Late Saturday, however, they were doing nothing to move demonstrators out of the streets..."

Asked if they would enforce the curfew, soldiers said they would not.

"We are with the people," said Ahmed, a 20-year-old conscript.

Soldiers accepted fruit, water and soda handed out by protesters in Tahrir Square and smiled as protesters chanted, "Go, Mubarak, go!" Children were hoisted up on tanks in the middle of the square to have their photos taken with troops as the hulking remains of the National Democratic Party headquarters building, home to Mubarak's ruling organization, burned in the background.

"The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning 'regime change' for the past three years."

Reports the UK Telegraph, looking at a WikiLeaked document:

In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year...

Ambassador Scobey questioned whether such an “unrealistic” plot could work, or ever even existed. However, the documents showed that the activist had been approached by US diplomats and received extensive support for his pro-democracy campaign from officials in Washington. The embassy helped the campaigner attend a “summit” for youth activists in New York, which was organised by the US State Department.

That's 2008 — pre-Obama. And here's Elliott Abrams in the Washington Post: "Egypt protests show George W. Bush was right about freedom in the Arab world."

[The developments in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen] seem to come as a surprise to the Obama administration, which dismissed Bush's "freedom agenda" as overly ideological and meant essentially to defend the invasion of Iraq. But as Bush's support for the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon and for a democratic Palestinian state showed, he was defending self-government, not the use of force. Consider what Bush said in that 2003 speech, which marked the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, an institution established by President Ronald Reagan precisely to support the expansion of freedom.

"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe - because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty," Bush said. "As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export."