It's Easier To Drag Mubarak Through The Streets of Cairo Tied To A Camel, Than An Iranian Cartoonist Passing Through The Eye Of A Needle

Its been an interesting weekend if you have an interest in the Middle Eastern legal system. The big draw, of course, was the trial of Hosni Mubarak, over the responsibility of ordering the killing of demonstrators in Tahrir Square... The prosecutors could not provide any direct evidence that Mubarak gave such orders, so he was found guilty by association, of letting such actions occur on his watch. The case against him was constructed so that it could easily be appealed, and its likely that Mr Mubarak will spend about a month behind bars... In the meantime, people have taken back to the streets in protest, though some have admitted that they're not sure what they are protesting over, other than they wanted to see Mr Mubarak tied to a camel and dragged through the streets of Cairo... It didn't help that lesser officials, who had more to do with issuing those kind of orders, were acquitted, which still makes people mad...

Some pundits worry that the trial results will polarize Egyptian society even more, especially because the two remaining presidential candidates are merely two sides of the same coin; neither candidate represents a change in the system and young people and women will become locked out of the process of forming a new constitution. Most of the ideals that people marched and camped out in the streets for will only be paid lip service, while the same old corrupt system of cronyism and getting things done through bribery will continue on. The more things change the more they stay the same...

Also, there was a trial in Iran of a newspaper's cartoonist that resulted in 25 lashes of said cartoonist. This was the first time that a prosecution for a cartoon of a non-religious figurehead  went through the court system, and illustrates the vagaries of their judicial system. While their is rigorous schooling and training set up to become an ayatollah, there isn't much comparable training to become a judge. Many rulings seem based more on the whims of the judge than any kind of legal ruling. In this case, while there is a 90 year precedent in favor of newspaper cartoons of local politicians, it didn't matter to the judge, who found the cartoon offensive to Islam and a threat to the security of the nation. Even weirder is the fact that the Iranian judge was the one who sued the cartoonist, saying that he was offended by the cartoon, and he also was the one who passed judgement, and issued the 25 lashes. Said an observer of the mess:

"They don't want to understand what you have been doing; they want you to confess to what they think you have been doing, The Islamist judges in Iran have something they call "judges' knowledge." Whatever you say or whatever the law says, the judge can decide based on his own instinct. [Mortazavi] was the interrogator, the judge, and the prosecutor all in one: Judge Dredd..."

The cartoonist and his lawyer are going to appeal the verdict, but it looks like he'd have a better chance if he was an American back-packer accused of spying...


Tomorrow is the recall election in Wisconsin, and it is being over-hyped as to whatever the results will mean. the main problem for the Democrats is they are running against Governor Scott Walker a candidate who lost to him in the last election. It's doubtful that the citizens will rally behind a loser just to throw a bastard out of office...  Paul Krugman makes a good case in his column today, that we already have been practicing the Republican version of the economy for over the past two years, and it hasn't been doing us much good so far: "What should be done about the economy? Republicans claim to have the answer: slash spending and cut taxes. What they hope voters won’t notice is that that’s precisely the policy we’ve been following the past couple of years. Never mind the Democrat in the White House; for all practical purposes, this is already the economic policy of Republican dreams.


So the Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn’t followed (in large part because the G.O.P. wouldn’t let him), and that our woes can be cured by pursuing more of the same policies that have already failed."

Colorado politics may be the savior of the future for the Republican Party, if the bigwigs will sit up and take notice. We already have 4 gay people elected to the legislature, and come November that number may double, giving us the highest percentage of gays to elected office, along with California. We also have a high amount of minorities and women in office and running the local parties. It seems that our women are taking charge while our men partake of the medical marijuana... But our top figureheads are still white men, to keep the image of old-school GOP politics... And we still have our share of right wing extremists, like the woman who began the personhood amendments when she was a seventeen year-old home-schooled girl...