And There was Much Rejoicing

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has finally ceded power after 18 days of protests. The doomers and the nay-sayers are still on about possible war with Israel, or the Muslim Brotherhood taking over and enforcing a Taliban-like government, chaos, anarchy, dogs and cats living together....but they just need to hold their breath for just a little while, because right now, right now the Egyptian people have done the impossible. For the first time in a few thousand years, they have peacefully overthrown a dictator by the sheer volume of their cries for justice, freedom, and rights. And that my friends, is a feat that needs to be celebrated by the world, just as we need to celebrate what happened in Tunisia.

Triumph as Mubarak quits - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Here's the tail-end of Pres. Obama's statement released today:

And above all, we saw a new generation emerge—a generation that uses their own creativity and talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears; a government that is responsive to their boundless aspirations. One Egyptian put it simply: Most people have discovered in the last few days…that they are worth something, and this cannot be taken away from them anymore, ever.

This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied. Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence—not terrorism, not mindless killing—but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.

And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history—echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice.

As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.” Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.

Today belongs to the people of Egypt, and the American people are moved by these scenes in Cairo and across Egypt because of who we are as a people and the kind of world that we want our children to grow up in.

The word Tahrir means liberation. It is a word that speaks to that something in our souls that cries out for freedom. And forevermore it will remind us of the Egyptian people—of what they did, of the things that they stood for, and how they changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.

UPDATED 2/14/11: Had to share this cool article:

Now that President Hosni Mubarak has been swept out of office, the protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Sqaure are sweeping the city clean. Literally.

The pro-democracy protesters who have called Tahrir Square home for the past 18 days are now cleaning house: sweeping the streets, scrubbing graffiti off walls and bridges, clearing burned cars and garbage and generally trying to restore the city to order.

Volunteers repainted black and white striped street curbs around a monument by the Egyptian Museum, which had been on the front line in street battles between Mubarak's foes and supporters. Police were starting to move barricades and trying to restore vehicle traffic at Tahrir Square, where many protesters vowed to remain, CNN reported.

"We're taking care of the square, and then we'll clean up the whole country," Mohammed El Tayeb said while standing amid the volunteer cleaning crews sweeping up Tahrir Square. "This is a beautiful country. Now it's ours and we're going to take care of it."

Across the crowded square, young men walked with paper signs taped to their chests that read: "Sorry for the disturbance, we're building Egypt." After days of protests that had such names as the "Day of Rage" and "Day of Millions," today's gathering was called the "Day of Cleaning," AOL News said.

Sherif Assaf, 27, a Microsoft employee who showed up with a broom, said the massive and spontaneous clean-up effort, like the protests, had been organised by word of mouth, text messages and social networking websites, Agence France Presse reported.

"We want to prove to the world that we are a very civilised and great nation. We were protesting for political change. Now that we’ve started to change politically, the people themselves are going to change," he told AFP.

As CNN aptly noted, it’s a sign that Cairo and the rest of the country are ready to rebuild and get back to work while the country formulates a plan for governance.

http://www.care2.com/causes/politics/blog/armed-with-brooms-cairo-cleans-up-after-the-protests/

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Impossible is a young adult fantasy based on the folk ballad "Scarborough Fair." In this retelling, Lucy finds out she comes from a line of women cursed by the elfin king to get pregnant (in Lucy's case, the elfin king possesses the body of her prom date and rapes her) at 18, and if they can't complete the 3 impossible tasks in the ballad before the child is born, they will go insane and become the king's consort forever. The premise was interesting....but yet, it was really kind of troubling. On top of really awkward dialogue and cheesy romance, the troubling part is the handling of Lucy's pregnancy and her marriage to her boyfriend while still a high school senior. The book completely fetishizes her pregnancy--after a tiny bit of morning sickness she's this glowing madonna who never has the slightest bit of discomfort or doubt about being a teen mother. Additionally the kids' marriage is complete bliss--they never fight, never have money issues, never have studying or grade issues, they only take cat naps at night so they can watch the other person sleeping because they just can't bear to miss one single moment apart (and yet can still be able to do work and school adequately the next day and Lucy do it pregnant?). Although it throws in a very brief, things were a little hard to juggle with high school and money and everything once the baby came, it was way too little and way too unconvincing after such this grand rosy picture of teen marriage and pregnancy as perfect and blissful. Additionally, there's this really nauseating bit where her boyfriend tells her she should marry him so her baby will carry his name essentially so it won't be a bastard. I kept rereading that conversation in shock and flipping to the copyright date to make sure this book was actually just written in 2008 and not 40 years ago.
The writing itself wasn't bad, and despite my distaste, it did keep me reading. But ultimately, it was far too slow building up to things. Lucy doesn't fully find out about the curse until almost halfway through the book, even though the rape and pregnancy happen at the beginning. And then it still takes forever to get started on the three impossible tasks. So all in all, I would give this one a pass.

Because this is so darn catchy (and appropriate to my life)

Song is "I'm Reading a Book" by Julian Smith

Jasmine Revolution and the Days of Anger

The last several weeks, I've been following events in Tunisia, and now in Egypt especially, alternately cheering and crying. And if you don't know what's going on across the Middle East and North Africa right now, what rock do you live under?
I did a study abroad in 1997 in Israel, Jordan and Egypt. And since then, I've desperately longed to go back. Despite not having learned the language (my semester was only 2 months, if I did the longer semester, we would have been required to take either Arabic or Hebrew), it felt very much like home. I'm sure it helped that I went during a time when it was very stable and peaceful--it was pretty soon after I went that the second Intifada broke out and there was a series of bombings at tourist sites in Egypt.
Anyway, back to current events. For those who don't know what's been happening, here's my very amateur understanding of events. It all started in Tunisia in mid-December. Tunisia is/was ranked one of the most repressive and corrupt nations, ranked something like 141 out of 167 countries, and is also very poor. It's been run by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali since 1987, who's family liked (in addition to the whole repressive and dictatorial rule thing) to buy up villas, private jets, keep pet tigers, etc while the rest of the country barely made ends meet. So in December, an unemployed college graduate was selling fruits and vegetables trying to make money, and was arrested for not having a license to sell in the market. He set himself on fire in protest and later died. That was the catalyst, and it sparked a series of mostly peaceful protests over all of Tunisia for 4 weeks which finally led to Ben Ali fleeing the country. The army has stepped in to command the country with the agreement that elections will be held in 60 days. http://www.al-bab.com/arab/countries/tunisia/tunisia_fall_of_ben_ali.htm has a good series of blog posts detailing events throughout the "Jasmine Revolution."
And from there, it has sent a shock wave throughout the whole area. Oppressed and poverty-stricken people in other countries saying wait, if they were able to rise up and get rid of their bad leaders, maybe we can to. Protests carrying on the Jasmine Revolution, sometimes calling for a "Day of Anger" or "Day or Rage," have going on in Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, but the largest have been in Egypt.
Egypt isn't far ahead of Tunisia on the corruption or repression scale and is poorer than Tunisia is. Hosni Mubarak has been president of Egypt since 1981 and is extremely autocratic and unpopular; but essentially, Egypt has been under martial law since way back to 1967. Tunisia has been cited as the Egyptians' inspiration, as well as the beating of young man to death by the police in June 2010 for refusing to pay them a bribe. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/01/whats-happening-egypt-explained is a really good article for current updates to the Egyptian situation all in one place throughout the week-long protests.
The president has tried to quell the protests by shutting down the internet, this also happened in Tunisia. The people have found some way around it and still managed to use Twitter or Facebook or whatever else to organize the protests. One report talked about how they had organized the protesters to come in waves every half hour or so. But what's also troubling in addition to the internet shutdowns, is that there are reports that the Egyptian police are apparently specifically targeting journalists to try to silence them; several BBC journalists and others in the area have reported being beaten and arrested.
And since coverage about women in all of these protests is often non-existent (despite the fact that women were very active in the Tunisian protests and a woman, Tawakul Karman, is one of the main leaders in the Yemen protests http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011123103756528513.html), there's a great series of photographs on Egyptian women out there taking part as well: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=268523&id=586357675#!/album.php?fbid=493689677675&id=586357675&aid=268523.
There are rumors that the study abroad group I went with was in Egypt, Luxor specifically (about 450 miles from Cairo) when the protests started, and since flights have been suspended, they haven't been able to get out of the country. Since protests are going on all over Egypt, it isn't necessarily a comforting thing that they aren't in Cairo, although Cairo is certainly the epicenter. Generally, the group would take a flight from Cairo to and from Luxor, and then a flight from Cairo to/from Jerusalem, since the group was headquartered in Jerusalem. Supposedly they are hoping to be able to take a bus from Luxor out of the country someplace. Here's hoping they are successful.
There's a lot of rhetoric against the Muslim Brotherhood, a large political party in Egypt and what might happen if they gain control if Mubarak is forced out. Again, I'm not an expert, but from what I've read, although the Brotherhood has used violence in the past and although they are allies with Hamas, they have moved away from violence in the last few decades. Additionally, the Brotherhood is against al-Qaeda and has been almost since it's (al-Qaeda's) conception. So there's really no chance of the two forming any kind of alliance. But finally, this series of protests is not in any way being affiliated to one party, in fact, it's mostly secular and the Brotherhood hasn't really been involved until after it was on for three or four days, and then only offering tepid support at best. If the Brotherhood were to win control, there is no doubt that relations with Israel would not continue on the same terms, so that is definitely a concern. As I say, the Brotherhood is pro-Hamas and very much for a separate Palestine state, so that would be a big issue between the Egypt and Israel were the Brotherhood to gain control. I know Washington DC feels like a dictator committing human rights violations at home but keeping peace with other countries is better than war. I can't feel like that's the right answer, but I don't really know how we get to the right answer when both choices seem like bad ones. Anyway.

In the end, my hopes and prayers are that all protesting against autocrat and repressive regimes will succeed in forming a government of their own choosing and that this will not turn out to be aborted attempts like Burma 2007 where the government(s) succeeds in cracking down even harder; that there will not be a power vacuum in which one dictator is exchanged for another; and above all that the situation does not disintegrate into war or anarchy.

The blogger as an infant in Cairo (back in the dark ages before digital cameras)

The Insecurities of (Hollywood) Men

You know what I would like to see an end to? Fictional scenes in biographical films where a woman has to choose between her career and her husband. It seems like Hollywood can't imagine a man would actually be willing to stand by a more famous and successful wife, whatever era they live in, and so they have to write them into every biographical film on a female subject. I honestly can't think of any that don't feature them. And while it is true that some marriages might break up over a husband's insecurity over his wife's success; it's also very true that there are men out there that are just fine with their wife being more well-known or successful then themselves.

In both the Annie Oakley (1932) and Annie Get Your Gun films, after out-shooting Frank Butler throughout a competition, Annie Oakley ends up throwing it at the last minute, because his fragile male ego couldn't handle losing to a woman and because she's enamored with him and thinks she has to lose to win his affections. Yet in real life, she wins the competition between them and after they eventually got together, Butler willingly quit his career as showman sharpshooter to manage Oakley's career. They had a long and happy showbiz marriage with him as manager behind the scenes, and her the successful star, they died within a few weeks of each other and everyone said when Butler followed Oakley so quickly it was from a broken heart.

In The Rosa Parks Story, even Rosa Parks for crying out loud, they show her husband as jealous of the time she's spending working with the NAACP. Which does Raymond Parks a total disservice. Raymond Parks was also active in the civil rights movement, and although he was worried about his wife's safety, especially once she became such a public figure after the bus boycott started; he absolutely did support her work in the movement. The two were married until his death in 1977.

In Princess Kaiulani, a film about the last Hawaiian heir to the throne; Princess Kaiulani is sent to England for schooling to escape some of the unrest at home. There she gets meets and gets engaged to a young man named Clive Davies. The movie is a result of a great deal of speculation, since the whole romance in the film is based upon one letter stating the princess may have been engaged to Davies, all circumstances surrounding it, and the engagement's end, completely unknown. So anyway, Davies claims he will come to Hawaii and support her as princess and later queen, and repeats over and over that he knows how much her people and land mean to her. She gets back to Hawaii soon after the Dole corporation has deposed the monarchy and Davies comes after her to bring her back to civilization and have her be a proper Victorian wife for him now that her people no longer need her. Or something like that. She promptly refuses him and says with a hostile business having just taken over the monarchy in a coup, the new government is now denying native Hawaiians any rights or privileges, so her oppressed and beaten people need her as their advocate more than he needs a trophy wife cooped up a home. But thanks for playing as a contestant in the self-centered egoist contest.

The best send-up of the trope was in The Calendar Girls, a movie based on a women's club in England. After a member's husband dies from cancer, they decided to do their yearly calendar with photos of them posing nude and give the money to a cancer charity. The whole thing becomes a worldwide sensation. Chris (Helen Mirren), who had the idea for it, absolutely relishes their completely unexpected fame. Up until then, she has run a floral business out of her home with her husband, and been an attentive mother to her 16 year old son. And when the whole success thing starts, she makes it very clear to her family that promoting the calendar will last for a year, and then she will be back home, no exceptions. While on the road doing interviews, she gets word that her son has gotten into trouble with the police, and Annie, who's husband was the one who died, totally lays into Chris for daring to leave her family in the first place, for daring to like success, for daring to have fun, etc. And it's all so ridiculous because as I said, Chris up until this point has clearly been an attentive wife and mother, she clearly knows this fame is not going to last and while she's enjoying it she hasn't become overly selfish or arrogant about it, and again, it's only for ONE YEAR! So Chris goes home upset and talks it over with her husband. In a Hollywood film, the husband very likely would have added to Chris' guilt and misery about how badly she's been treating them or neglecting them and all that. But amazingly and refreshingly, her husband simply says I'm proud of what you've done, keep doing it; and our son's an idiot and would be an idiot whether or not you were here. So way to resist the insecurity trap Calendar Girls.

One step....sideways for human rights?

So yesterday the Senate voted a repeal on the Don't Ask Don't Tell law, which has cost a staggering 13,500 military personnel to lose their jobs because of their sexuality over the 17 years it's been in effect. (I've never quite understood how it's federal law that you can't discriminate based on gender, age, race or sexuality; yet a branch of the federal government is able to do so.) So now it only remains for Pres. Obama to sign into law, and he has already expressed his support of it. And since the Secretary of Defense, and several Pentagon officials have already expressed their support of the Repeal, hopefully there are no appeals. So good on you Congress for finally doing the right thing.

But before celebrating too much, let's see what else Congress was up to this week. Why, the House voted against the Child Marriage Prevention Act (the Senate had already passed the Act unanimously). The House claimed it would support abortion and be too costly. It's alleged cost? Well, the bill itself actually does not specify ANY cost whatsoever. The opponents came up with the number of $108 million over a 5 year period. Even if that were true, this after a tax cut which will create a $858 billion deficit signed just a few days before. And $108 billion over 5 years is an incredibly paltry sum. Especially in comparison to the billions being spend on defense yearly. And finally, the bill says absolutely nothing about abortion or family planning. Not one thing. The bill is to prevent girls from getting married, it is not addressing girls who are already married and possibly trying to get out of said marriage and don't want children because then their families will make sure they stay in said marriage. Nope, not in there.
Seriously Congress, an estimated 60 million girls worldwide under the age of 17 are married off. Because these girls are having children before their bodies are ready: they are dying in childbirth; or they develop fistulas for which many developing countries don't have the doctors or the resources to fix and they have to live with the stigma and infections, smells, and sores that accompany it; their children are often premature, malnourished, or stillborn. They are unable to complete their education, and it is proven that for every year of education a mother has, her family's income and education for her children rises, as well as the size of the family decreasing to a manageable amount. How can that not be a good thing?

So major yeas for doing one thing right Congress, but also major boos for doing another wrong.

Cliches that need to be buried forever

--The bastardized Beatrice and Benedick romance. The sassy female protagonist loathes on sight the arrogant insulting cruel vindictive dirtbag male (but secretly can't stop thinking about him cause he's just so dreamy), and they try to kill each other, literally or figuratively, throughout the story. Yet it turns out, under that crusty evil exterior, the guy's just really an old softy with a heart of gold. And they go from loathing to wedding or bedding within about 4 pages. For examples see 80% of all YA fiction, 60% of all urban/paranormal fantasy, and 100% of all romance.

--As an extension of that bad boy thing, how in period pieces, there's a tendency to Byronify the male hero as much as possible, and make him all brooding, glowering, and mysterious; even if the original character bore very little resemblance to such a character.

--Misery lit and putting characters through every single possible tragedy imaginable without a single ray of hope anywhere.

--The wish fulfillment characters, most notably embodied in the Bella Swann types. If not only the character, but also the narrator, mention almost every other page about how ordinary or plain or awkward or unremarkable she/he is; and the character as written also has zero personality, charm or common sense and is often also self-absorbed in the extreme; don't make every character of the opposite gender fall madly in love with them. Seriously. If your character has all the personality of a rock, and on top of that is whiny, self-obsessed, vacant, and supposedly unattractive--is everyone really going to be falling all over themselves to get with them?

--How many writers have what's touted to be a "feminist" work but their work is only feminist in that it passed a feminist in a subway once. And they can't create their main heroine without making her extremely pushy, shouty, nosy, lacking in any tact or empathy whatsoever; and she must always suffer a huge comedown where she learns her place by ending up in humiliating and humbling circumstances because of her meddling or her reaching outside her sphere.

--The next time I see an female superhero, fighter, police detective or other active profession doing their jobs in high heels and especially stilettos, I can't be held responsible for my actions.

--Protagonists who have never fought or have any training whatsoever going up against a whole gang to bringing them all down single-handedly. Or additionally, a hero/heroine who has never had any magic training or used their magic before managing to save the whole world through their powers.

--The glamor fatal illness, where the character grows more and more radiant and beautiful as they die.

Any others to add?