Showing posts with label President Mubarak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label President Mubarak. Show all posts

Saturday, 12 February 2011

Egypt & Iran: Gay Rights & The Gay Right

Everyone's pleased about the fall of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, right?
Wrong.
Adocate columnist, porn "entrepreneur" and gay NeoCon, Michael Lucas, is gonna be really pissed off.
In his latest column, Democracy In Egypt A Myth?, Lucas writes;
"Hope, freedom, and democracy — these are three words that have little or nothing to do with what’s happening in Egypt at the moment. Yet utterly ignorant newscasters and liberal bloggers seem to equate the situation there to Tiananmen Square — where protesters two decades ago risked life and limb in a face-off with China’s authoritarian leaders. Of course, in China they lost.
"The frightening thing is that the protesters in Egypt are looking more and more likely to topple Egypt’s regime and replace it with something far worse. We, as gay people and Americans, shouldn’t be surprised by the horrors likely to come. We shouldn’t buy into the false and ignorant hopes of those on the left who falsely frame the events unfolding in Cairo and other cities in Egypt as a fight for human rights."
Something that no informed analyst of the situation in Egypt thinks, but there you go.
Indeed Khalid Zaid, a gay Egyptian man who's been granted asylum in the US, has written in reply on Gay.com;
"In 2001, after many years in Egypt I was granted asylum by the US following an arrest for suspicion of being gay. In Egypt, there simply are no human rights. Whoever thinks that there are such freedoms should actually move there rather than remotely label the aspirations of protesters as false or ignorant hopes! There is nothing frightening about an awakening that is long overdue.
"It will not be easy to predict the upcoming leadership in Egypt. Due to the complexity of the situation, it is presumptuous to assume that it will fall into the hands of radical Islamists...
"It's true that the first thing they [The Muslim Brotherhood] have promised to do is hold a referendum on Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Regardless of what anyone tells you, they are not part of a master plan to impose Sharia law on the entire Arab world."
"Inciting baseless panic about the creation of an Islamic, anti-gay, anti-Western regime is a reckless act stemming from fears over Israel's security and stability."
Michael Lucas has form on this sort of far-right scaremongering - he bends over backwards to defend every Zionist crime and has baldly stated;
"I hate Muslims... They have not contributed to civilization in any way, in any field — political thought, science, music, architecture, nothing for century after century. What do they produce? Carpets."
The gay right's championing of gay rights in the Middle East is a sadly familiar saw these days - seemingly unaware that right-wing politicians have always been the most vociferous opponents of gay rights in any country in the world.
The flipside are all those gushing "Don't mention the occupation" travel features about Israel in the gay media - Pinkwash, about trips paid for by the Israeli government.
In January New York's Gay City News ran a bizarre feature; 'Sanctions Must Respond to Iran’s Anti-Gay Genocide' by one Benjamin Weinthal.
(Gay City News regularly publishes nutty rants about Iran by Doug Ireland - who Weinthal quotes approvingly. He also joins in Ireland's attacks on Human Rights Watch - who he believes “continues to be driven by an anti-Israel bias").
Weinthal is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard, known as "The Neo-Con Bible", and a fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neo-conservative think tank.
Their policy on Iran? "Pursuit of even “tougher” sanctions, including measures intended to terminate non-U.S. purchases of Iranian oil. And, when that doesn’t work, we’ll give war another chance."
Presumably cause the last two have worked out so well.
It's shameful that the gay press regularly publishes such crude far Right propaganda.

Saturday, 29 January 2011

Egypt: Queen Of Denial?

"Suave and smooth, Gamal Mubarak would seem ideally qualified to steer Egypt through political and economic turmoil while retaining the trust and friendship of the West. Only a few months ago he was seen as “the best hope for Egyptian democracy”.
"Today, his very name is toxic. Although he has been poised for power and swiftly embraced the cause of the poor and the disaffected, two fatal flaws disqualify him from office: his name and the opposition of the powerful Egyptian Army. No one in Egypt will stomach the hereditary succession of another pharaoh, as President Mubarak, his father, is known, and the army has no time for a civilian who has not demonstrated an understanding of military power.
"To his many Western friends and former banker colleagues, Gamal is affability itself, ferociously intelligent, well-informed, a clear analyst, a man who embraces Western standards with a shrewd understanding of image and public relations. Egyptians, however, see a man aloof from their daily lives, cocooned by privilege, the beneficiary of nepotism, wealth and inherited influence...
"A few years ago it was also rumoured, improbably, that he was gay, a slur [sic] with resonance among the Islamist faithful. He married in 2007, at the age of 44."

The Times wonders if President Mubarak could hand over power to his son, Gamal.

• Read Robert Fisk on the new Arab revolts in Egypt and the Middle East, plus other essays on the current crises, via ZNet.