Guest Post: The Last Egyptian, A Black Comedy Set In Late Roman Egypt

Got another guest post from Luis "Lou" Salcedo, he who wrote the earlier synopsis for a Seth Rogen comedy set during the reign of Justinian. Now he's decided to write a black comedy set in late Roman Egypt. Behold...

The Last Egyptian

Since there are sparingly few notable movies on Roman Egypt, besides Agora (2009), I had a fleeting thought for an A24-style black comedy-drama. The Last Egyptian would be a satirical black comedy starring Rami Malek as Flavius Onuphrius, a mid 5th Century Roman officer from Egypt who comes home after years serving the Empire abroad.

Flavius Onuphrius (Rami Malek) serves under Magister Arnegisclus (Mads Mikkelsen), leading a detachment of the Emperor's Palatines. Onuphrius scouts ahead and is ambushed in a skirmish. Onuphrius and a select few return to Arnegisclus, who decides that it's time to take the battle to Attila (Fabio Ide). On the following day, the Romans meet the Huns at the river Utus.

Arnegisclus' army is wiped out. Onuphrius is shot in the eye and left for dead, witnessing Arnegisclus and his fellow soldiers get cut down one by one. Fade to black. Onuphrius is discovered by Prefect Constantinus (Mark Ruffalo) and made to report his findings to Emperor Theodosius (Chris Sarandon) and he faints from shell shock.

Onuphrius finds himself in the imperial infirmary and receives word from the doctor (Hank Azaria) that he's been dismissed unceremoniously from service. No pension or land, especially since we're talking a millennia and some change prior to OSHA. He finds out that his long term partner, the actress Eudoxia (Dasha Nekrasova) had left him for senator Liberius Babylas (Rob Lowe).

Onuphrius gets a letter from his father informing that his mother had passed away and he would want him to come visit Syene (modern day Aswan) to give respect to her gravesite. Having nothing better to do, he decides that it's time to come home.

In Syene, Onuphrius reunites with his baby sister Kattrin (Yara Shahidi), a Rupi Kaur-esque poet/scribe and his elder sister Lucra (Hannah Simone) who's married to Isidorus (Dominic Rains), a bandit leader who seeks to drive out the Romans. Onuphrius' father Pamoun (Bassem Youssef) is the priest to Isis. He guilt-trips his son into helping him maintain the temple as his youngest brother Shenoute (Mena Massoud) converted to Christianity and is now a deacon in the newly constructed church.

As the weeks turn into months, Onuphrius' assistance turns into being a participant in Pamoun's schemes, chiefly trying to accuse the newly appointed priest Hormisdas (David Chokachi) of being a proto-Pizzagate guy grooming young men and women to serving a foreign god and being responsible for the climate change, barbarian invasions, etc. All these accusations fall flat and the temple continues to fall into disrepair as more people visit the church.

Onuphrius starts a relationship with Sophia (Lucy Boynton), a down to earth baker. He confides that he wants to run away from everything, ever since his father would spend more time worshiping Isis than raising him. Sophia suggests that he tries to rebuild that connection.

The relationship between Onuphrius and his father is slowly rebuilt and he gains more enthusiasm participating in his father's crazy, hare-brained schemes, seeing it as making up for lost time. Onuphrius suggests using Isidorus and his bandits to ransack the church. The bandits do so but this only angers the town. The temple of Isis, also Onuphrius' mother's burial place, is burned to the ground by a mob.

Onuphrius and his family, including a saddened Shenoute watches the temple's destruction from a distance. Pamoun mourns the temple, seeing it as an extension of his devotion to his wife. Onuphrius points out that while the temple's destruction is a loss, the family's shared memory of the mother, the temple and conspiring together made them a much stronger family.

CAST

Flavius Onuphrius - Rami Malek
Pamoun - Bassam Youssef
Sophia - Lucy Boynton
Kattrin - Yara Shahidi
Shenoute - Mena Massoud
Lucra - Hannah Simone
Hormisdas - David Chokachi
Liberius Babylas - Rob Lowe
Isidorus - Dominic Rains
Arnegisclus - Mads Mikkelsen
Constantinus - Mark Ruffalo
Byzantine Doctor - Hank Azaria
Emperor Theodosius - Chris Sarandon
Attila - Fabio Ide

On Halle Bailey's Ariel and the Egyptian 25th Dynasty

Disney recently announced that Halle Bailey, an African-American singer and actress from Atlanta (represent!), has been cast as Ariel in a live-action version of the Disney animated classic The Little Mermaid. Although I haven't seen any ugly commentary on social media about it myself, I have heard some people are getting upset and I can easily imagine this being true, either due to authenticity concerns about the source material, straight-up racism, or other issues.

Firstly, although The Little Mermaid is based on a Danish story (by author Hans Christian Anderson), the mermaid civilization is not connected to my knowledge to Danish society in any significant way. If it turns out they're descended from Vikings mutated by some kind of magic let me know, but it's my understanding that's not the case. The mermaids could easily be migrants from somewhere else who settled in the vicinity of Denmark, perhaps due to the Medieval Warm Period making their original homeland in the Mediterranean or even West Africa inhospitable. Therefore, even though the landlubbers nearby are white, the mermaids could be Semitic or even black. Although I'm generally not a fan of "if it's fantasy it doesn't have to be 'realistic'" attitude, the above explanation is a plausible one for a large Middle Eastern or black (mermaid) population in an otherwise European setting. After all, the Gypies (whose actual name for themselves is Roma or Romany) are originally from India and the Hungarians are a Turkic or Finnic people originally from Russia.

Secondly, even if the mermaid population generally is of European in appearance, ruling elites don't necessarily match up with the local population. Much of northern England was ruled by Vikings for awhile, the whole of England was ruled by different French dynasties from the Norman conquest of 1066 until the Welsh Henry Tudor took power in 1485, parts of or all of China were ruled by non-Chinese steppe peoples on many different occasions, etc. More appropos would be the 25th Dynasty of Egypt--although the Egyptians were a Semitic people, the 25th Dynasty was originally from Nubia, much farther south.

So here's where it gets Game of Thrones. Triton is originally from somewhere else and is the founder of a new dynasty, either elected by other members of the mermaid elite after the previous king dies without an heir or who seizes power in some kind of civil war. As king he exiles Ursula, ostensibly for practicing witchcraft and other sorts of bad behavior but really because she's a member of the previous dynasty. However, not only is Triton foreign, but Triton is a widower with no interest in remarrying and has only daughters, no sons. This makes his regime vulnerable and Ursula plays on Ariel's interest in human culture as part of some kind of scheme to seize power.

Yes, that's needlessly complicated for a kids movie, but they did elaborate on the original Aladdin to make the new live-action version more elaborate (Jasmine seeks to become the next ruler of Agrabah in the vein of Razia Sultan, the only female ruler of the Muslim Delhi Sultanate, Jafar is a "street rat" himself who rose to become the grand vizier). If this is too much and if Disney wants to keep Triton as a white Zeus-alike, they can always depict his late wife as being black and Ariel takes after her mother rather than her father in looks.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Stargate (1994)

The first time I saw the movie Stargate, I was in late elementary or middle school having a friend spend the night over and I'm pretty sure we'd rented it from a Hollywood Video. That's how long ago it was. The second time I saw it with some of my church friends, who had a tradition of a double feature and then going to the Chinese Buddha in Atlanta for midnight-or-later Chinese food, after I graduated college.

Well, the third time I saw it, it was for Myopia: Defend Your Childhood. Here's the podcast. And now for the review.

(Let the record state the version I saw was the extended version, which has a different beginning than the theatrical version.)

The Plot

On Earth in 1928, an alien artifact is unearthed in Egypt by an archaeologist with a young daughter Catherine. Flash forward to the present day and Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader), a fringe archaeologist on the verge of homelessness, is recruited by the grown up Catherine Langford (Viveca Lindfors) to translate the hieroglyphics on her father's artifact--which are in ancient Egyptian.

It's soon discovered the artifact is a stargate to a distant world and a military team led by the troubled Col. Jack O'Neill (Kurt Russell) is dispatched to explore it. There they find the distant descendants of Egyptians, led by the priest Kusuf (Erick Avari). Jackson befriends Kusuf's daughter Sha'uri (Milli Avital) and O'Neill his son Skaara (Alexis Cruz), but things get complicated when a tyrannical alien masquerading as none other than the god Ra (Jaye Davidson) shows up.

The Good

*The movie starts out with a bang with an alien spacecraft landing in ancient North Africa (extended edition), followed by the discovery of the buried stargate (the theatrical opening and, and in the extended version, it includes some of Ra's soldiers who'd been buried with it or attempted to come through after it had been buried and didn't survive). Then we see Dr. Jackson getting humiliated for his alien theories--that turn out to be right--and the game is on.

*The back-story for Col. O'Neill and his son is exposited in an "as you know Bob" fashion, but this time it actually makes sense--one of the two soldiers sent to "reactivate" him honestly doesn't know why he's acting so weirdly, so the other guy needs to fill him in.

*Per the above, the relationship that O'Neill develops with Skaara makes a lot of sense and is generally well-done.

*When we meet the beasts of burden the peasants of Abydos use, they use practical effects, and these are good practical effects. It looks like Dr. Jackson is interacting with an actual animal. Since so little CGI is used, the special effects have aged well in the 24-odd years since the movie came out.

*The arrival of Ra and his entourage of Abydos is well-done. So are the armor and equipment of Ra and his minions (in the SG-1 TV series they're called Jaffa and they're augmented humans who serve the "gods")--they're designed to look as though they inspired Egyptian gods and iconography and they work. The armor and gadgets are also practical effects generally speaking, so there's no risk of good-for-its-time CGI aging badly.

*Sha'uri and the other villagers have pretty good teeth and that actually makes sense--if they're transplanted Berbers or other North African peoples from the pharaonic or pre-pharaonic period of Egypt and retain their traditional diets, they wouldn't have very much if any sugar. The increased availability of sugar owing to the Caribbean plantation system is what led to growing dental problems--Queen Elizabeth I of England had black rotten teeth from snacking on sugar.

Of course, their teeth might have gotten worn out in other ways--ancient Egyptian bread might have actually had sand in it.

*One of Ra's henchmen has a particularly creative death.

The Bad

*When the American soldiers leave the pyramid on Abydos, it's pretty obviously a matte painting behind them.

*The soldiers other than O'Neill are pretty interchangeable. They don't get a lot of differentiation beyond Kowalsky being a bit of a hothead.

*Dr. Jackson and Sha'uri are pretty obviously making eyes at each other not long after he arrives. Just how old is she? Avital would've been 22 and Spader 34 when the movie came out, but I got teenager vibes off the character, at least at first. The second viewing I remember some ribald commentary about the age difference.

*In one scene, Dr. Jackson is allowed to wander around Ra's spacecraft. This is after hostilities have occurred between the American troops and Ra's soldiers. It'd make more sense if he were forcibly taken into Ra's presence as soon as possible.

*Not going to go into further detail for reasons of spoilers, but Ra really needs to study nuclear strategy. His scheme would generate only around half the destructive power of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo when I was a little kid, and in a fairly isolated area too. There's only one way I can possibly think for Ra's grandiose claim to actually bear fruit, which you can see at this post here, but it's a long shot.

The Verdict

The third time around is up with the first in terms of fun. 9.0 out of 10.0. It's not great cinema, but it's entertaining. I never watched the TV show (other than part of one later episode that seemed so silly it really soured me on the whole concept), but the story expands well beyond the film if you'd like to see how far down the rabbit hole it goes.

Frederick the Great an Austrian General and Marc Antony Surviving: Two Cool Alternate Timelines

Although to avoid wasting time in arguments I've had myself banned from the alternate-history forum for probably close to three years now (the exception being a window where I could alert them to the release of The Thing in the Woods last spring/summer), I do browse the public forums quite a bit. There are some cool ongoing timelines I follow and I just found a couple interesting new ones.

The first is "Dionysus Lives: A Mark Antony Survival Timeline." It diverges from our history with Marc Antony winning the Battle of Actium by leading his army in person and keeping the sixteen legions from abandoning his cause. With his army and fleet intact, the war with Octavian, the future Caesar Augustus, is prolonged and ends up in a negotiated truce where Antony is dominant in the East and Octavian in the West. Antony wages wars against the Parthians and others, but has to deal with the rivalry between his Egyptian wife Cleopatra and his powerful client Herod the Great. It's pretty interesting, especially for enthusiasts of the Late Republic and the personalities of that era.

(One of the few shows I watched after high school was HBO's Rome after all.)

The second is "Odyssey of Fritz, the Turncoat Prince." In real history, the young Prussian prince who would become the warrior-king Frederick the Great ran away from his father with a "friend" (possibly a homosexual lover), but was caught. In this story, he flees on an alternate route south and ends up in Austria, where he befriends (friends only, much to the latter's annoyance) future Empress Maria Theresa and ends up becoming a major Austrian general. Without Frederick's genius organizing Prussia the state runs into...some trouble (not going into more detail for reasons of spoilers), but Frederick rises high in Hapsburg service and has all sorts of interesting adventures. Highlights include a more brutal subjugation of Scotland and Ireland foreshadowing an earlier American Revolution, an earlier emancipation of the serfs, and the woman who in our history became Catherine the Great of Russia marrying into the British royal family.

Both timelines are ongoing, so check back often. I know I will.

A Grimdark Alternative Ending for the 1994 Stargate

The following discussion contains spoilers for the 1994 science-fiction film Stargate, although given how the movie is 24 years old I don't know why that's important.

In the film, Ra plans to send an American nuclear warhead back to Earth, enhanced with the type of materials his advanced technology uses (in Stargate SG-1 it's called naquadah). He states this will enhance the warhead's power 100 times and claims that he created human civilization and now he will end it.

Hold it right there. Assuming that the military sent a W78 nuclear warhead through the Stargate with O'Neill, that's 350 kilotons. A nuke enhanced with naquadah to 100x its force would be around 35 megatons. That's around a third more than the 1960s-era B41 nuclear weapon. Mount St. Helens' eruption was 25 megatons of explosive power, while Mount Pinatubo was around 70 megatons. So Ra sends the nuke back through the Stargate and it detonates in the decommissioned nuclear silo that was the base of operations for the mission. Assuming he can remotely detonate it through the gateway, he's basically just caused a volcanic eruption in the U.S. Rocky Mountains, and that assumes the mountain on top of the explosion cannot contain it. After all, underground nuclear tests generally don't disturb the surface that much.

Mount Pinatubo caused a worldwide temperature drop of one degree, and that was with smoke, gas, and other crap continuously pumping into the atmosphere from the bowels of the Earth and spreading all over the world rather than a one-time big bang and, depending on what's around it, a big radioactive forest fire. Assuming the equivalent of Mount Pinatubo, Ra has just caused--maybe--a repeat of the Year Without a Summer in 1994. That would suck if it causes drought and famine in marginal areas, but it would not destroy modern civilization.

That said, there's a more grimdark possibility here. If there's a major nuclear detonation in the US, it could potentially lead to a confrontation with Russia, although I doubt President Clinton would have ordered a nuclear strike not knowing what happened. Assuming the US panicked and launched on Russia and the Russians fired back, you could have a civilization-ending nuclear exchange depending on what missiles are fired, where they detonate, etc. Bonus points if there's a nuclear winter to cause famine and ecological collapse in otherwise unaffected areas.

Ra (or some other opportunistic Goa'uld who notices) could wait a few years or decades for civilization to collapse, show up and pull his "I'm a god" trick on the debased, uneducated descendants of the exchange survivors, and assume control over Earth. I'm now imagining the Earth's surviving libraries as the equivalents of the fresco Sha'uri showed Dr. Jackson that depicted Ra bringing Earthlings to Abydos and the rebellion that ended his rule on Earth thousands of years ago.

Of course, Ra in the movie doesn't actually seem powerful to pull that off, even if post-nuclear civilization is reduced to medieval levels. He's got a couple fighter jets, one spaceship, and a few guards with armor resembling that of Egypt's gods. The basis of his rule is deception, not raw strength. He might not be able successfully take control of Earth, although one of the TV series' Goa'uld with their planetary empires, navies, etc. would.

That said, I could easily imagine him taking control over part of it. Maybe he keeps Dr. Jackson alive using the sarcophagus long enough to see him returning to Egypt and re-establishing himself as god there once more.

How's that for a Downer Ending?

The American Principate Or, The Right-Wing Dystopia That Wasn't

Writing stories in order to play on present-day political issues is walking a dangerous road, since the stories will lose much of their urgency if the political winds shift. This is especially dangerous if they're set in the present day, or in the very near future, since current events can render them obsolete. Let the following be a lesson to you...

One of my unfinished novels--which will almost certainly never see the light of day--is called The American Principate. The Principate refers to the early Imperial period in Rome. The Republic still survived--on paper--and the emperor was referred to as princeps or "first citizen." Instead of being a monarch, he just happened to have hold multiple Republican offices at the same time and command the majority of its military. However, the wider culture was so anti-monarchical that even the emperor couldn't openly call himself king.

How does this apply to the American context? Well, those of you who were politically aware during the presidency of George W. Bush will surely remember there was a lot of fear in certain circles of creeping dictatorship due to things like the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, etc. Things like Muslims being put in internment camps were bandied about as if they were plausible. This was mostly on the left (in particular on sites like DemocraticUnderground), although some Libertarians and dissident conservatives got in on it too. This supposed quote from Julius Caesar made the rounds on the Internet. That was when I started writing the book, to tap into that zeitgeist.

My scenario begins in 2007 with an Iranian nuclear test. The United States under a president who is not George W. Bush (cough) and Israel jointly raided the Iranian nuclear facilities. The Iranians retaliated by sinking the carrier USS Ronald Reagan (symbolizing the later repudiation of Reagan's ideals in his name by men who claim to revere him) in the Persian Gulf using a nuke modified to fit on one of their Sunburn missiles, although in retrospect I would have simply had them use "missile spam" to do it, with the nuke appearing later on. The United States nukes Tehran and launches another war of "regime change."

(If I were writing this now, the nuke would be a giant land-mine, since fitting a big first-generation atomic bomb onto a cruise missile and hoping it gets through a carrier battle group's defenses is REALLY hard to swallow. The nuking of Tehran would come in reprisal for the Iranians detonating said nuke under a large number of US ground troops during the actual invasion, delaying the pivotal events in the United States by weeks.)

This kicks off a massive antiwar movement in the US that the administration uses the Patriot Act and other ostensibly anti-terrorist measures to suppress. Protesters are interned in Guantanamo alongside real or alleged al-Qaeda members. The Secret Service assassinates Not-Bush for this (acting under the orders of dissident members of Congress) and Not-Cheney becomes president. He uses a combination of regular US Army units (most of whom follow his orders) and "Red State" National Guards to defeat Congress's forces (some regular troops but mostly "Blue State" National Guards) in a yearlong civil war. Most countries begin selling off American assets and calling in US debts as soon as the mayhem begins and it's the Chinese that save the Not-Cheney regime's bacon with some large loans--in exchange for a free hand against Taiwan and later the extradition of Chinese dissidents in the U.S. to be executed. The prologue depicts the destruction of the last major Congressional military force and the battlefield execution of Not Ron Paul, who was retreating with them to the Congressional strongholds in New England for a last stand.

Once firmly in power, Not-Cheney federalizes the electoral system in order to ensure that both major parties' delegations to his puppet Congress are sympathetic to his aims (i.e. Republicans like Ron Paul would be excluded and Democrats like Joe Lieberman permitted) and third parties are excluded entirely. When Islamists take control of Egypt and Saudi Arabia U.S. forces repress them and occupy those countries. Domestically the regime uses a guest-worker program to ensure it has adequate soldiers for the wars without a draft (that would risk popular discontent), buys off unions with an equipment-heavy military buildup that generates manufacturing jobs, and throws some bones to the Christian Right. The most notable is the suppression of pornography and even artistic nudity using the "erotoxin" argument (this to keep the appearance of legality, since explicitly doing so on Christian grounds would fail the "Lemon Test").

(The story itself takes place in 2015 and involves a college student given the choice between jail and the military who goes on the run and join a resistance group.)

Those of you reading this may be surprised I plotted this out, given how conservative I am on most political issues. However, most "right-wing dystopia" novels (think The Handmaid's Tale or the relatively new Christian Nation) are written by leftists and REALLY implausible. Although The Handmaid's Tale is a very well-written book, the back-story--the US military launching a coup and imposing a Christo-Taliban regime in which an obvious 1980s televangelist is a major figure and women are forbidden from reading and writing--is, simply put, not going to happen.

And Christian Nation, which depicts Sarah Palin (and more importantly, her successor) establishing an overt Christian theocracy, doesn't even have the quality-writing defense. The one person I've spoken to who thinks the book is remotely plausible is basically a Christian fundamentalist's straw-man of an atheist--he claims not to believe in the Christian God but pretty obviously hates Him. This is exemplified by how he kept a thread on my alternate-history forum on the movie Noah going for weeks asking questions about the film to obviously reinforce his own views--i.e. he asks if Noah's daughters-in-law are different races or is non-whiteness depicted as a punishment for sin, are the deaths of children depicted, etc.--rather than seeing it himself.

Although I have too much respect for Bush and Cheney as people (even if I disagreed with many of their actions and policies) to think they'd ever, EVER actually do this, my intention was to write something more subtle as a cautionary tale. The power of the Executive Branch, in particular in the realm of war, has been growing unhealthily over the last few decades. Our government becoming a a de facto presidential regime with representative government as window-dressing is a lot more realistic than the U.S. becoming an overt Christian theocracy or even a president declaring himself President-for-Life or even Emperor. It's easy to write off ridiculous scenarios like the other two books I've mentioned because they're implausible, but something subtle will make you think.

From a writing POV, if I'd sent this to publishers in 2004, I'd have good odds of selling it if it were good enough. However, once 2007 passed and Iran doesn't test a nuke and Bush leaves office like every other president before it, it would have been good only for the landfill.

Some Thoughts On Egyptian Elections...

It's been awhile since I've blogged about the Arab Spring.  So here goes...

I'm not one of those people who's terrified of the Muslim Brotherhood, for several reasons.

*Firstly, the way they're hyped as a Big Bad that's going to turn Egypt into a new Iran and start a war with Israel reeks of the whole "justify your tyranny by creating an enemy," especially when it's mixed with the erroneous notion that Islam and democracy (in the colloquial sense of the word) are incompatible.  I'm sure people could make the case Christianity and democracy are incompatible based on how most of the anti-Semitic violence, witch trials, etc. long ago were populist in nature and it took monarchies and the like to restrain them (the king of Poland offered protection to Jews persecuted in Western Europe during the Black Death, frex), and that would be just as foolish.

*Secondly, a former member of my alternate-history message board, though we've had our disagreements on a lot of things (namely the revisionist theory of the Cold War, which is my personal bugbear), made a good case that the Freedom and Justice Party (the political face of the old Muslim Brotherhood) is more akin to the Christian Democratic parties of Europe rather than some anti-democratic death machine.  He even compared it more positively with the Turkish Islamist party, which he described as "peasanty."

*Thirdly, the Freedom and Justice Party's platform at present seems to indicate the MB's priorities at present are more economic than anything else.  Quibbling about social values in times like these is a luxury in a wealthy country like the United States.  In a much poorer country like Egypt, which has had food riots relatively recently, there's even less justification.  Luckily the Freedom and Justice Party seems to be aware of this, based on these comments about Islamic punishments being suspended in a time of famine.

That being said, the fact there's been violence against Christians in Egypt after Mubarak's fall is something to be legitimately concerned about.  Furthermore, the Salafist al-Nour Party, which looks a lot more like the scary fundamentalist entity the Western pro-Mubarak types are afraid of, is expected to do well in the coming second phase of the elections.  Not to mention the Freedom and Justice Party isn't entirely sweetness and light by its own admission--the Al-Ahram article indicates the party doesn't want members of certain Islamic splinter sects to proselytize, which is antithetical to the idea of freedom of religion, while the Wikipedia article states that they don't think Christians or women should be the country's president.

So here's a suggestion for the Freedom and Justice Party.  When the time comes to form caucuses and alliances and such, they should ally with the secular liberal types who kicked off the revolution against Mubarak in the first place rather than the al-Nour Party.

Not only would this show respect to the people who helped make these elections possible, but it would ensure Egypt does not become a pariah trade nobody will trade with and tourists won't visit.  That will in turn hurt Egypt's economy and cause mass suffering among the population, something I'm sure Mohammed and the other early Islamic leaders wouldn't have wanted given the Islamic doctrines on charity and the like.  Plus if al-Nour does really well in the second and third phases of the elections, which look to be taking place in poorer and more conservative areas, the Freedom and Justice Party might need to ally with the secular liberals in order to maintain a majority.

The Al-Ahram article quotes some Freedom and Justice Party types saying they won't caucus with the Salafists, which is a good sign.  The article about violence against Christians assigns much of the blame to the Salafists, so they seem like the true villains anyway.

In Support of the Bahraini Protesters...

Hosni Mubarak has been removed from power and the Egyptian military is overseeing reforms in the county's corrupt, schlerotic government (I hope), but here's something else potentially going wrong in the Middle East.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-middle-east-12471243

Bahrain is a largely Shi'a state ruled over by a Sunni royal family who employs foreign thugs to keep their people down.  It's also home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

There are Egypt-style protests brewing there that may well bring down the monarchy just like the Egyptian protesters brought down Mubarak.

There's one key difference though--the presence of a militarily-powerful neighbor that doesn't want its own oppressed masses getting ideas.  And I'm not talking about Iran, although that designation certainly applies.  I'm talking about our "friends" the Saudis.  The BBC article suggests the Saudis might intervene militarily if the al-Khalifa family looks like it's losing control of Bahrain, much like how the Soviets intervened in Hungary to crush the rebellion that had thrown out their Communist puppet government in 1956.

I hope Barack Obama tells the al-Sauds to keep their oppressive, terrorist-enabling fingers off Bahrain.  If the U.S. doesn't want a Saudi military intervention in Bahrain, it's not going to happen.  A long causeway connects Bahrain to the Saudi mainland and anything on that causeway is vulnerable to aerial and naval attack.  If we don't want Saudi troops crossing the causeway, they're not crossing the causeway.

I'm sure certain parties are going to go on about the dangers of radical Islam in this situation, with Iran standing in for the Muslim Brotherhood, but that would be rather foolish.  Based on the slogans the BBC is reporting, this is a non-sectarian popular uprising, not an Islamist one.

The only way terrorists will benefit from this is if the Bahraini monarchy or the Saudis crush the uprising and it appears the U.S. supported or allowed it to happen.  Then Osama bin Laden and his ilk will have a field day recruiting people who will be very upset at the United States and its allied regimes.

However, if the U.S. tells the Saudis to keep out and the Bahraini monarchy falls, something tells me that will generate a lot of good press for the United States among the Bahraini public and in the wider Middle East.

In Support of the Egyptian Protesters...

We're now several days into the protests in Egypt and things are not looking good for President Hosni Mubarak's semi-dictatorship.  The ruling party's headquarters in Cairo has been looted and set on fire, police stations have been looted of arms, some policemen have defected to the protesters, and the soldiers seem remarkably unenthusiastic about restoring order--they're letting protesters climb around on their vehicles. Mubarak has demanded his Cabinet resign, I imagine throwing them to the wolves to protect his own skin.

On Neal Boortz this morning, Boortz and a caller who was a Navy vet discussed how they think the fall of Mubarak could lead to the takeover of the country by Islamist theocrats and this new regime would control the Suez Canal, "the most important waterway in the world."

However, it seems to me the Muslim Brotherhood has mellowed since the days when they assassinated Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who signed the peace treaty with Israel as part of the Camp David Accords.  If I recall correctly, they even have representatives in Egypt's parliament and have denounced al Qaeda and been denounced in return.

This CNN link indicates that the Brotherhood is weakened and hasn't been involved in the protests.  This MSNBC link quotes the protestors' Facebook page describing their demands.  Basically they want to be rid of Mubarak and his son, whom he wants to succeed him North Korea-style, have free elections, and end the state of emergency that has been used to justify repression of dissent and judicial torture.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had a more detailed article about the protestors' demands, but I cannot find it right now.

The link also describes the protests as including both Christians and Muslims and rich and poor.  One Muslim man tried to shout an Islamist slogan and was hushed up by the protesters, indicating that most of them aren't interested in a theocracy.

This link indicates the protests are about freedom and democracy, something we as Americans should get behind. U.S. President Barack Obama has told Mubarak not to order the protests crushed and I think the $1.5 billion per year the U.S. has been paying Egypt since the Camp David Accords were signed is at risk.  Good for him.  If the U.S. is seen as backing a corrupt, oppressive regime in this time of crisis and said regime falls, it will give "street cred" to the most anti-American elements of Mubarak's opposition.  And that, controlling the Suez Canal, is not something we can afford.

Hopefully Mubarak, like the ruler of Tunisia and his mafia-like family, can take the hint and scram.  One of the links mentions several limousines went to the airport and several private jets took off afterward, so perhaps the rats are abandoning the sinking ship.

Go freedom!

Egyptian Muslims Serve as "Human Shields" for Coptic Christians

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/3365.aspx

Wow.  I'm impressed.

For those of you who don't want to follow strange links, thousands of Egyptian Muslims have attended the Coptic Church's Christmas Eve Masses (I assume the Coptic liturgical calender is different from the Western Church's) to serve as human shields and deter attacks against the churches by Islamic extremists.  Those doing so have included various Egyptian celebrities, the son of Egypt's president, and many others.  And it doesn't seem like the terrorists have dared try anything.

Good for Egypt's Muslims to defend the Copts, who have been subjected to lots of horrible things over the last few years, and good for Egypt that there's a resurgence in an Egypt identity independent of either faith in which everyone can live together harmoniously. 

I hope the Egyptian Islamist loonies who have been preying on the Copts for years and bin Laden and his ilk all have a collective stroke.