Here it comes, looming into sight over the horizon – war.

Tomorrow, Monday February 21, 2011, Iranian warships, at least one of them carrying long-range missiles for Hizbullah, will pass through the Suez Canal and enter the Mediterranean. [Monday update: their passage has been postponed to Tuesday.]

From DebkaFile:

Up until now, Saudi Arabia, in close conjunction with Egypt and its President Hosni Mubarak, led the Sunni Arab thrust to contain Iranian expansion – especially in the Persian Gulf. However, the opening of a Saudi port to war ships of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the first time in the history of their relations points to a fundamental shift in Middle East trends in consequence of the Egyptian uprising. It was also the first time Cairo has permitted Iranian warships to transit Suez from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, although Israeli traffic in the opposite direction had been allowed. …

Iran is rapidly seizing the fall of the Mubarak regime in Cairo and the Saudi King Abdullah’s falling-out with President Barack Obama as an opportunity not to be missed for establishing a foothold along the Suez Canal and access to the Mediterranean …

King Abdullah’s “falling-out” with Obama? The King to whom Obama bowed deeply now furious with him? Not much reported in the US, although it’s a transformative event.

The King (DebkaFile reports here) has changed his policy towards Iran as a result of what he regards as Obama’s betrayal of Mubarak.

The conversation between President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah early Thursday, Feb. 10, was the most acerbic the US president has ever had with an Arab ruler … They had a serious falling-out on the Egyptian crisis which so enraged the king that some US and Middle East sources reported he suffered a sudden heart attack. …

Those sources disclose that the call which Obama put into Abdullah … brought their relations into deep crisis …

The king chastised the president for his treatment of Egypt and its president Hosni Muhbarak calling it a disaster that would generate instability in the region and imperil all the moderate Arab rulers and regimes which had backed the United States until now. Abdullah took Obama to task for ditching America’s most faithful ally in the Arab world and vowed that if the US continues to try and get rid of Mubarak, the Saudi royal family would bend all its resources to undoing Washington’s plans for Egypt and nullifying their consequences.

According to British intelligence sources in London, the Saudi King pledged to make up the losses to Egypt if Washington cuts off military and economic aid to force Mubarak to resign. He would personally instruct the Saudi treasury to transfer to the embattled Egyptian ruler the exact amounts he needs for himself and his army to stand up to American pressure.

It’s too late for King Abdullah to save Mubarak now, but he is carrying out his threat to end his country’s alliance with the United States and turn towards Iran.

Through all the ups and downs of Saudi-US relations since the 1950s no Saudi ruler has ever threatened direct action against American policy. … [But this time] the King informed Obama that without waiting for events in Egypt to play out or America’s response, he had ordered the process set in train for raising the level of Riyadh’s diplomatic and military ties with Tehran. Invitations had gone out from Riyadh for Iranian delegations to visit the main Saudi cities.

Abdullah stressed he had more than one bone to pick with Obama. The king accused the US president of turning his back not only on Mubarak but on another beleaguered American ally, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri, when he was toppled by Iran’s surrogate Hizballah.

Our sources in Washington report that all of President Obama’s efforts to pacify the Saudi king and explain his Egyptian policy fell on deaf ears. …

The initiation of dialogue between Riyadh and Tehran is the most dramatic fallout in the region from the crisis in Egypt. It is a boon for the ayatollahs who are treated the sight of pro-Western regimes either fading under the weight of domestic uprisings, or turning away from the US as Saudi Arabia is doing now.

This development is also of pivotal importance for Israel. Saudi Arabia’s close friendship with the Mubarak regime dovetailed neatly with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s alignment with Egypt and provided them with common policy denominators. The opening of the Saudi door to the Iranian push toward the Red Sea and Suez Canal tightens the Iranian siege ring around Israel.

DebkaFile lists six strategic advantages that Iran gains by acquiring an open route through Suez into the Mediterranean:

1. To cut off, even partially, the US military and naval Persian Gulf forces from their main route for supplies and reinforcements

2. To establish an Iranian military-naval grip on the Suez Canal, through which 40 percent of the world’s maritime freights pass every day

3. To bring an Iranian military presence close enough to menace the Egyptian heartland of Cairo and the Nile Delta and squeeze it into joining the radical Iranian-Syrian-Iraqi-Turkish alliance

4. To thread a contiguous Iranian military-naval line from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and the Gaza Strip and up to the ports of Lebanon, where Hizballah has already seized power and toppled the pro-West government

And not improbably –

5. To eventually sever the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, annex it to the Gaza Strip and establish a large Hamas-ruled Palestinian state athwart the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea

And evidently –

6. To tighten the naval and military siege on Israel.

Israel is about to be threatened on three fronts: from Lebanon on its north, from Gaza on its west, and from Sinai on its south.

Obama’s policies have brought about this world-endangering crisis. He has weakened Israel (see here and here); relied on wrong intelligence about Egypt; lost the alliance of hitherto friendly Arab states; and above all allowed Iran to grow steadily stronger despite its president’s repeated announcements that his country intends to make war.

Obama wants the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the government of Egypt, the country where it was founded but in which it is officially banned.

Obama may or may not be a Muslim, but it’s plain enough that he holds Islam in high esteem. He has steadily extended its reach and influence inside the United States, strengthened Islamic regimes, and facilitated the spread of sharia. We see him as a man with a mission – to aid the advance of Islamic power.

Here, in selected quotations from two articles at FrontPage Magazine, are facts and informed opinion that support our contention.

By Ryan Mauro:

The [Obama] administration has extensive relations with groups and leaders tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. … [It has] opened its doors to Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Islamic Society of North America and other Islamic leaders who come from Muslim Brotherhood backgrounds …

Even before Obama came into office, he was choosing advisers with relationships to Brotherhood front groups. … In the first month of becoming President, Obama selected Ingrid Mattson, the president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), to take part in the inaugural prayer services. The federal government has designated ISNA as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Holy Land Foundation trial, and the Brotherhood’s internal documents identify it as one of its fronts. …

President Obama chose Rashad Hussain to be his special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. He has long been a featured speaker at conferences by Brotherhood-tied groups in the U.S., …  has spoken for ISNA since being appointed, and has shared the stage with officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), another Brotherhood-tied group that has been listed as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Holy Land Foundation trial.

One of the members of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is Dalia Mogahed. She has been described as the “most influential person” in crafting Obama’s speech in Cairo to the Muslim world. She is a close colleague of John Esposito, perhaps the Brotherhood’s most prestigious apologist in the U.S. He gave expert testimony on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation during its trial and is a vocal defender of CAIR, ISNA and the other organizations tied to the Brotherhood. …

In June 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited Esam Omeish, who describes the Brotherhood as “moderate,” to take part in a conference call following President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo. Omeish sits on the board of directors of the extremist Dar al-Hijrah mosque, which is closely connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. …

Officials have met with the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) on at least two dozen occasions, including Attorney General Eric Holder, the assistant director in charge of the FBI, and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. From January 27 to 28, 2010, leaders from ISNA, the Muslim American Society and MPAC met with Napolitano and other officials to be briefed on the agency’s counter-radicalization and counter-terrorism efforts. …

The influence of Brotherhood groups in the government even extends to the FBI and military. An official from ISNA was asked to lecture U.S. troops at Fort Hood about Islam after the terrorist shooting took place. The FBI has also held meetings with top ISNA officials and is engaging the organization as part of its outreach to the Muslim community. Shockingly, the decision to use the ISNA came after the FBI decided to end its relationship with CAIR because of concerns over the organization’s ties to Hamas and designation as an “unindicted co-conspirator”—the same label applied to ISNA from the same trial.

A known member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Kifah Mustapha, was even given a six-week tour last year of FBI facilities including the National Counterterrorism Center and a training compound. Documents from the Holy Land trial show that he is a member of the Brotherhood’s secret “Palestine Committee” that set up organizations in the U.S. to support Hamas. …

By Nonie Darwish:

The Muslim Brotherhood has long been a major political force in the Muslim world. … [It] has been a major force in bringing down regimes and installing new governments, and whether we like it or not [it] will play a significant role in any administration, whether it is openly Islamic or nominally secular. …

Now the Brotherhood is operating in the U.S. under pretty names, and influencing our politicians from the lowest to the highest levels. …

Obama has empowered the Islamists not only in the Muslim world, but also inside in the U.S. Could anyone have imagined the U.S. president [would] support the building of a mosque on Ground Zero against the wishes of his own people and the families of the victims? Could anyone have imagined that Islamists are being hired in our homeland security apparatus and in the White House? Could anyone have imagined an American president bowing before the Arabian despot King whose countrymen were behind 9/11? …  Who could have imagined that the first US president elected after 9/11 would declare  … that America is … a Muslim nation?

How can these actions and policies of Obama’s be explained if not by his being devoted to Islam?

Islam is waging war on America, and America’s head of state is devoted to Islam?

Can it be true?

Why do journalists believe they are or ought to be exempt from the violence they report?

Last Saturday (February 5, 2011), the reporter Greg Palkot and cameraman Olaf Wiig appeared on Fox News , for which they work, describing how they were attacked by the revolutionary mob in Cairo as they were doing their job. They were obviously badly beaten. Their wounds looked painful. They claimed plausibly that they had feared for their lives.

They deserve sympathy, and they did not suggest that they should have special treatment as newsmen.

But the media in general have taken the wrong side of the conflict between Western civilization and Arab barbarism for at least the last 44 years since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. If sometimes the nature of barbarism is brought home to newsmen in the field with a body-blow, they have no moral standing to justify complaint. There are exceptions, no doubt, and Polkot and Wiig may well be among them. But none should imagine that they have a right to some special immunity that all the world should respect. Barbarians, they should understand, are by nature and definition no respecters of persons.

If journalists from strong societies insert themselves into places where weaker order prevails, they should not expect to be safe. Non-combatant though they are, objective though they may claim to be, their presence has an effect on the events they describe. They’re part of what happens whether they like it or not. They dance with the throng.

If they want to be treated in a civilized fashion, they should promote civilized values. Being anti-American, as so many Western newsmen are, does not wrap them in a sort of moral armor. It approves and encourages belligerence, sometimes extremely savage, of which anyone can be the victim.

The production of bio-fuels promotes hunger. Ethanol is the sacrifice of food to ideology.

Driven by its obsession with “green energy”, the left – whose heart, remember, is constantly aching for the wretched of the earth – has food turned into fuel (rather than drill for more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska). The result – the wretched of the earth go hungrier.

This is from Breitbart:

World food prices reached their highest level ever recorded in January and are set to keep rising for months, the UN food agency [Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO] said on Thursday, warning that the hardest-hit countries could face turmoil.

Some of them already have – Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria …

And in its latest survey, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said its index which monitors monthly price changes for a variety of staples averaged 231 points in January — the highest level since records began in 1990. …

The Index rose by 3.4 percent from December — with big increases in particular for dairy [cattle feed becomes more expensive because of the ethanol program], cereal and oil prices. …

The data from the Rome-based FAO showed that prices for dairy products rose by 6.2 percent from December, oils and fats gained 5.6 percent, while cereals went up by 3.0 percent because of lower global supply of wheat and maize. …

The Food Price Index hit 200 points over the whole of 2008 at the height of the 2007/2008 food crisis. It breached that level for the first time in October 2010 with 205 points. …

And this is from FrontPage Magazine:

One of the most common causes of societal discontent, the very factor that led to the ongoing Egyptian protests, is hunger. Unfortunately, worldwide global warming fanaticism has only contributed to this plight. By consuming ever-expansive portions of the world food supply for the production of green bio-fuels, the left has increased the cost of food for those who can least afford it. This has caused much undue suffering for the world’s poor and significantly exacerbated Third World instability — and Egypt is no exception. …

Today, we’re seeing that effect in Egypt and we’re going to see more of it throughout the world unless we can fix the growing worldwide food crisis. We’ve been skating on thin ice, in terms of food supply, for more than a decade now. Between 2000 and 2010, the World Food Price Index, the inflation-adjusted measure of how expensive food is across the globe, almost doubled. In 2000 the index sat at a value of 90. By 2010, the index had risen to a value of 172. That’s a 91% increase in the cost of food over the course of a decade. …

Between 1999 and 2009, the amount of cropland used to grow wheat in America dropped by over 3 million acres, or almost 5 per cent. … The amount of land used to grow rice dropped over 15 per cent; for oats, over 30 per cent; for rye, over 20 per cent; for peanuts and edible beets, over 25 per cent; and for sugarbeets, a shade under 25 per cent. These are some of the commodities that are used, directly and indirectly, to produce the food that once fed the world. And, those statistics are just a few highlights, or lowlights if you will, of the overall trend.

In the US, farmers use ever more land to grow “energy-crops” – chiefly corn and soybeans – because they are subsidized by the government, and ever less for crops that can only be eaten.

Overall, the amount of United States cropland used to grow basic food commodities — crops other than corn and soybeans — has decreased by over 22 million acres since 1999. …

The American taxpayer … ultimately pays the bill for the bio-fuel incentive programs that make growing energy crops more profitable than providing nutrition to the globe.

It’s ironic that the United Nations should be warning about the disastrous results of the food-into-fuel policy, since it is the central church, the Vatican one might say, of the “green” religion.

But don’t take my word for it, consider instead the viewpoint of the organization that has been pushing global warming hysteria harder than anyone this side of Al Gore: the United Nations. According to the UN, almost 10 per cent of world grain production – that’s about 100 million metric tons per year – goes for bi-fuel production. They expect that number to double by 2018. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says that “competition between the three Fs (food, feed and fuel) is expected to intensify,” which is probably about as close in tone to criticism that one branch of the UN is going to use about another branch: the International Panel on Climate Change.

So it seems that the left has now become more sentimental about the planet than about the poor.

Michelle Obama and her fans might try fussing less about Americans being too fat and think more (if think they can) about why other nations are too thin.

President Bush tried to democratize the Arab Middle East. It was an effort worth making. But did he understand what he was up against?

In his World Economic Forum Address, delivered at Sharm el Sheikh International Congress Center, Egypt, on May 18, 2008, he said:

“Democracies do not take the same shape; they develop at different speeds and in different ways, and they reflect the unique cultures and traditions of their people.”

This is typical waffle of Western statesmen trying to accommodate multicultural “values” when speaking of dysfunctional polities.

There is some variety among national democracies, differences in types of representation and electoral process – administrative differences – which may reflect local mores and preferences, but these are superficial. True democracies, the ones which allow for change of government and limits upon government, do not reflect the “unique cultures and traditions” of their people: they reflect a core Western (British) cultural development, a tradition of limiting absolute power constitutionally. This political principle – like the zero in mathematics – may have originated within one culture, but it is of benefit to all mankind in the establishment of national political institutions. It is through these institutions that we know freedom (civil rights, the freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, the individual protected from the predations of power). Democracy is a superior idea, and the West should continue to offer it – insist on it – to nations which have inferior arrangements. Diluting the idea by allowing for local versions of power-sharing to substitute for it is foolish. For example, I do not count the loya jirga, the traditional tribal forum for dispute arbitration, as a cultural equivalent of democratic government, nor can I see how it could form the institutional basis for a national democracy as it enshrines tribal power. Societies which borrow the trappings of democracy – elections – without the civil institutions that sustain the core principle are parodies of democracy (one-party communist states, kleptocracies, oligarchies, autocracies, theocracies). There is a distinct element of parody in setting up national arrangements which submit to local traditions by enshrining sectarian power, by having individuals of different sects take up different political offices (as in Lebanon).

When the West allows parodies of democracy to be installed because this shape of democracy “reflects the unique culture and tradition of [a] people”, it is relegating the people to more of the (not so unique) culture and tradition of absolute power: dynastic, tribal, sectarian, ideological powers asserting themselves and oppressing their rivals for as long as they have strength of arms and/or superior numbers (not to be confused with a democratic majority).

Allowing the Muslim Brotherhood power, or Shia equivalents, or communists for that matter, in Egypt would not be an expression of freedom, nor an example of democracy in action. These are not political parties, they are absolute powers waiting to seize office. The West has long established that one may not sell oneself into slavery. That idea is incorporated into the idea of democracy: an electorate may not vote itself out of sovereignty.

Obama is making a very grave error – as have administrations before him – in allowing totalitarians opportunities to take power at all, but to do so under the pretense that their elected accession to power reflects “democratic self-determination” or some collective expression of “freedom” is an appalling betrayal of democratic principles. The Nobel peace prizewinner is guaranteeing that there will be blood …

C.Gee   February 2, 2011

Our view of the upheaval in Egypt, how the new technologies of personal communication have played a vital part in its causes as well as its spontaneous organization, is endorsed by Victor Davis Hanson, who writes in a must-read article at PajamasMedia:

So what’s the matter with Egypt? The same thing that is the matter with most of the modern Middle East: in the post-industrial world, its hundreds of millions now are vicariously exposed to the affluence and freedom of the West via satellite television, cell phones, the Internet, DVDs, and social networks.

And they become angry that, in contrast to what they see and hear from abroad, their own lives are unusually miserable in the most elemental sense. Of course … their corrupt government is in some part a reification of themselves, who in their daily lives see the world in terms of gender apartheid, tribalism, religious intolerance, conspiracies, fundamentalism, and statism that are incompatible with a modern, successful, capitalist democracy. …

Instant global communications have brought the reality home to the miserable of the Middle East in a way state-run newspapers and state-censored television never could even had they wished.

In reaction, amid this volatile new communications revolution, the Saddams, the Mubaraks, the Saudi royals, the North African strongmen, and all the other “kings” and “fathers” and “leaders” found an effective enough antidote: The Jews were behind all sorts of plots to emasculate Arab Muslims. And the United States and, to a lesser extent, Great Britain were stealing precious resources that robbed proud Middle Easterners of their heritage and future. Better yet, there was always a Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, or, for the more high-brow, a Jimmy Carter to offer a useful exegesis of American conspiracy, oil-mongery, or Zionist infiltration into the West Wing that “proved” Middle East misery was most certainly not self-induced. … The more we promised to pressure Israel, the more we could ignore the misery of Cairo, and the more a thieving Mubarak could perpetuate it. …

He concludes for the moment as we do, though with slightly less optimism:

Watch it play out with encouragement for those who oppose both Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood — hoping for the best, expecting the worst.

Even if the Egyptian revolution is aborted now, how long will the despots be able to resist the transformative power of the new technologies?

It’s in the lap-top of the gods, so to speak.

Hanson does not believe, any more than we do, that if America “lets” Mubarak go, an Islamic fanatic will take his place as happened in Iran when Jimmy Carter abandoned the Shah and welcomed the Ayatollah Khomeini – with what appalling results to this day we know all too well.  True, the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood strains to take power in Egypt, but has no Khomeini-like figure ready to implement instant oppression. Besides which, the causes in Egypt are different. The world has moved on since the Iranian revolution.

It is this new world which is making the prison-walls of the Arab states crack and crumble.

It may burst the Islamic theocracies too.

It may render all religion obsolete.

Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules Gaza,  is a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, so it’s not surprising that it’s taking advantage of the failure of government in Egypt.

This comes from DebkaFile:

Gunmen of Hamas’s armed wing, Ezz e-Din al Qassam, crossed from Gaza into northern Sinai Sunday, Jan. 30 to attack Egyptian forces … They acted on orders from Hamas’ parent organization, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood … to open a second, Palestinian front against the Mubarak regime. …

Hamas gunmen went straight into battle with Egyptian Interior Ministry special forces (CFF) in the southern Egyptian-controlled section of the border town of Rafah and the Sinai port of El Arish. Saturday, Bedouin tribesmen and local Palestinians used the mayhem in Cairo to clash with Egyptian forces at both northern Sinai key points and ransack their gun stores. …

Hamas terrorists aim to follow this up by pushing Egyptian forces out of the northern and central regions of the peninsula and so bring Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip under Palestinian control. Hamas would then be able to break out of the Egyptian blockade of the enclave and restore its smuggling routes in full. …

For the last 30 years there has been a multinatinal force posted in the area to ensure that Sinai remains peaceful. Now for the first time it is needed to fulfil its mission and keep the peace as hostilities erupt.

So what exactly is it doing? It is going away. It is being withdrawn.

The  Multinational Force & Observers (MFO), most of whose members are Americans and Canadians, are on maximum alert at their northern Sinai base, while they wait for US military transports to evacuate them to US bases in Europe.

This force was deployed in Sinai in 1981 for peacekeeping responsibilities and the supervision of the security provisions of the 1979 Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel under which the peninsula was demilitarized except for Egyptian police. Ending the MFO’s mission in Sinai after thirty years knocks down a key pillar propping up the relations of peace between Egypt and Israel.

Early Sunday, the Egyptian army quietly began transferring armored reinforcements including tanks through the tunnels under the Suez from Egypt proper eastward to northern Sinai in effort to drive the Hamas forces back. The Egyptian troop presence in Sinai, which violates the terms of the peace treaty, has not been mentioned by either of the peace partners. Our Jerusalem sources report the Netanyahu government may have tacitly approved it.

The people of Gaza could seize this moment to overthrow the tyranny of Hamas. Will they? Right now no development in that region is predictable.

Afterword; The Egyptian military is reported to have re-sealed the Gaza border. Mubarak is reported to have fled to Sharm el-Sheikh in southern Sinai.

Will the continuing protests in Egypt bring about a democratic revolution?

Or will Mubarak survive as president?

Or will a worse regime take power?

It seems probable that the armed men who went round the prisons in Egypt and let prisoners out were  Mubarak’s agents. The freed villains set about obligingly looting and raping, while the police were withdrawn, and the populace, the householders, the shop-owners were left to defend themselves and their property with whatever makeshift weapons they could muster. The idea behind these moves was almost certainly to provide Mubarak with an excuse to crack down hard on the protesting crowds. But if it was for that purpose that he then sent in the army, his will was frustrated. The soldiers started at once to fraternize with the protestors.

(Events are moving so fast in Eqypt that by the time any state of affairs is reported, it has probably changed. There are now reports that some police are back on the streets.)

“Experts” are expecting that the outcome of the uprising will be a worse regime than Mubarak’s.

The Muslim Brotherhood, some predict, will seize power. But they have no leader to put in place. Some expect Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei to take over the presidency. (He was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. It was a wonderfully counter-productive idea the UN had, to appoint a Muslim to head the watch-dog organization in the years when Islamic states, chiefly Iran, were hell-bent on becoming nuclear armed powers. Funny that he didn’t manage to deter them.)

ElBaradei, however, has no base in Egypt. He has been living in Vienna for many years.

So will an organization that has no leader match neatly with a would-be leader who has no organization? If so, some say, ElBaradei may become president of an Egypt ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood.

These items of news come from the Jerusalem Post:

Sunday, the Muslim Brotherhood threw its support behind ElBaradei to hold proposed negotiations with the government in order to form a new unity government. …

ElBaradei, in an interview aired on CNN Sunday, said that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak must leave the country immediately.

“It is loud and clear from everybody in Egypt that Mubarak has to leave today, and it is non-negotiable for every Egyptian.” he said. He added that it should “be followed by a smooth transition [to] a national unity government to be followed by all the measures set in place for a free and fair election.”

Addressing Mubarak’s Friday night move to sack his entire cabinet, ElBaradei said, “I think this is a hopeless, desperate attempt by Mubarak to stay in power.” …

The statements came as protests continued in central Cairo, where tens of thousands of protesters were reportedly gathered despite an announced curfew and strong military presence. …

Minutes before the start of a 4 p.m. curfew, at least two [fighter] jets appeared and made multiple passes over downtown, including a central square where thousands of protesters were calling for the departure of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Al-Jazeera (Qatar-based, pro-Muslim Brotherhood) was officially, but apparently not effectively, closed down by Mubarak on Sunday. It is still reporting.

Al-Jazeera anchors on its English satellite channel directed viewers to follow the live Twitter feeds of its correspondents across the country who were updating on a consistent basis via satellite connection, while noting other prominent Twitterers and significant tweets, such as @Jan25Voices which was taking calls from Egyptian protesters and eyewitnesses and tweeting their messages in real time, thus circumventing the blackout in a creative way.

The network itself also found ways to bypass restrictions over the weekend, issuing a statement detailing its efforts: “While ordinary Egyptians have not had access to social networks like Twitter, Al-Jazeera have been using Skype to record messages by members of the public. It have made the recordings available on Audioboo, promoting them through Facebook.”

As the reported death toll rose drastically from 5 on Friday evening to over 95 by Saturday noon, Al-Jazeera broadcast graphic footage from inside hospitals and morgues of bloodied bodies, and of distraught family members. On Saturday, it showed scenes of laughter and amiable exchange between protesters and army officials. Some military personnel were filmed kissing young children and handing them back to their parents.

Also on Saturday night, Al-Jazeera’s live coverage provided viewers with real-time footage and reporting from Cairo as events descended into chaos when looting and vandalism became rampant, and thousands started escaping from prison. …

Al-Jazeera’s combination of mainstream coverage of the events on its satellite channel and website, including correspondents’ reports, expert commentary, interviews, and its staff’s savvy use of social media tools has maximized its influence and has turned it into a force to be reckoned with in the region.

As we have said before (see our post below, Tweet a changing world, January 26, 2011), American technology is transforming the world. The internet is an immense force for freedom – which is, of course, why governments want to control it. True, the forces of repression – Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood through Al-Jazeera – make use of the new technologies too. But in the long run they must surely be liberating?

The angry crowds in the streets of Egypt are demanding freedom. Will they overthrow a secular despotism only to replace it with an Islamic tyranny?

We wait, with an unfamiliar smidgen of optimism, to see if the glimpse of freedom young Egyptians have caught through their iPods will stop them from submitting ever again to the oppressive rule that characterizes the Arab states.

We say in the post below, Hope and change in the Arab world, that the violent revolts could develop into a conflict between a movement for freedom and religious tyranny. We say that if America ignores the dramatic change occurring there, Islamic forces (the militant Iranian Shia regime, the Muslim Brotherhood, Taliban-like al-Qaeda) stand a better chance of winning.

Already the dark Islamic forces are positioning themselves to seize power.

Oliver North writes at Townhall:

What’s most important right now is how the Obama administration handles the increasingly intense cries for greater freedom sweeping from Tunisia to Yemen — threatening every authoritarian Muslim regime in that region save one: Iran’s.

The theocrats in Tehran didn’t foment the “Jasmine Revolution” — the youth-driven popular uprising that forced Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee the presidential palace he occupied for 23 years. … But the ayatollahs are capitalizing on the expanding chaos.

Expatriate Iranian opposition figures claim that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds force have been dispatched to Tunis “to help guide developments.”

Ominous! And worse news follows – if it is true:

Tehran’s government-controlled Fars News Agency has since quoted Jamil bin Alawi, a Tunisian “student activist,” as saying, “The advanced revolutionary and Islamic models like the Hezbollah of Lebanon can provide a bright and promising prospect for Tunisia.”

Jamil bin Alawi sounds to us – as he does to Oliver North, we guess, since he puts the words “student activist” in quotation marks – like a parrot-mouth for the Ayatollahs rather than a spokesman for the Tunisian revolutionaries.

In Egypt — where riot police and the army are confronting angry protesters with tear gas, batons and gunfire — the Iranians may well see another autocratic regime ripe for Islamic revolution. Student-led riots opposing the 30-year reign of President-for-Life Hosni Mubarak erupted Monday in Cairo and quickly spread throughout the country.

Unlike their counterparts in Tunisia and Lebanon, the Egyptian police and army thus far appear loyal to their leader, Mubarak, and the government has all but shut down press access and communications, including many Internet links. …

Now reports are coming out of Egypt that at least some policemen and soldiers are discarding their uniforms and joining the protestors.