Brains Like a Shoe

(Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

On this Halloween weekend, I have been catching up with some reading in between watching the Gators take down the Bulldogs and partaking in some of the weekend festivities.

Here are a few items of interest and a few interesting pieces I have collected over the last week:

• In yesterday’s post, I mentioned the great coverage that the J Street conference received. Before the conference, a former AIPAC and Israeli embassy official Lenny Ben-David questioned “Why do so many Arabs contribute to an organization that purports to be ‘pro-Israel?’” A friend of mine, Rebecca Abou-Chedid, wrote an exceptional response in Foreign Policy to the distasteful accusations that her donation, because she is of Lebanese descent, “clearly indicates that…[her] dollars must be intended to advance some pernicious anti-Israel agenda — and that J Street must be the vehicle for those aims.”

• Ken Silverstein has ‘Six Questions for Desmond Travers on the Goldstone Report.’ Travers was one of four members on the UN fact finding mission that produced the report. A retired Colonel of the Army of the Irish Defence Forces, he discusses the criticism and reaction to the report.

• Concerning another issue of international justice, the Confirmation Hearing of Bahr Idriss Abu Garda, a Darfuri rebel leader, continued this week at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He is being tried for attacking an African Union peacekeeping base in 2007.  His defense lawyer is making  the case that the AU base by that point in time had lost its protected status under international humanitarian law and had become a legitimate military target. Bec Hamilton is also following the case.

• Michael Kevane writes a post taking on the claim by J. Stephen Morrison and Jennifer G. Cooke at CSIS that ”Lack of consensus within the [Obama] administration has confused potential partners who have for some time seen the United States policy as hostage to zealous domestic pressures (emphasis added).”  It’s always amazing to me how much clout some people think that the Save Darfur Coalition and other Darfur organizations and activists have in the creation of U.S. policy.

• Fighting continues in Yemen, as The New York Times highlighted this week.  The paper also ran a great story this morning on the country’s unsustainable addiction to qat. The blog Waq al-Waq notes the better late than never acknowledgement by the U.S. State Department of the Yemeni government’s conflict with Houthi rebels in north Yemen.   A Yemeni humanitarian aid worker in an Emirati paper wrote a moving essay about his experience over the last few months: “I never thought I would be trapped in the place I call home, but all I can do is try in my own way to help those who have lost everything and pray that peace comes sooner rather than later.”

• Lastly, I continue to follow the rumblings surrounding Egyptian presidential elections in 2011.  The big questions, of course, are (first) will Hosni Mubarak run again;  and (second),  if not, will his son Gamal take his place.  This week, the noted Egyptian historian and philosopher Mohammed Hassanein Haikel expressed the common opinion of most Egyptians whom I know –  Gamal is “unfit” to be the next president.  He added, “They tell us we have elections, but is it a coincidence that the president’s son is portrayed as the most worthy to be the leader of Egypt?” Laura Rozen at Politico and others commented about intriguing statements from both Amr Moussa, the current head of the Arab League, and Mohamed El Baradei of the IAEA regarding their interests in running in 2011. Al Ahram Weekly (an English language state-owned newspaper) though ran a “news” story revealing that most ordinary Egyptians aren’t concerned about rumors or even who there next president will be.