Once again validating the growing belief that "moderate" is just a meme. From the Sultan -- (hat tip Jane)
A little note now for all the commentators who approvingly quoted and celebrated Sandmonkey, treated him as a martyr during the riots, and discover that now he's joined the conventional liberal Egyptian line in essentially calling for tearing up the Camp David accords, remilitarizing the Sinai and opening up the border to Hamas. Oh he's phrasing it better than that, but that's what it amounts to.
Some like Barry Rubin are giving him the benefit of the doubt. I'm not. There's a certain commonality to these things. We got played. And it isn't the first time. The difference between Curveball and Sandmonkey isn't as big as you might think. There are no shortage of "dissidents" from the Arab world with a focused narrative, who are very good at telling us what we want to hear, when we want to hear it, and even capable of believing it themselves, before shifting on a dime. They are often members of prominent families, often with ties to previous regimes (according to his blog, Sandmonkey's grandfather was a general in the royal guard, that would be the royal family overthrown by Mubarak's predecessors) and often sympathetic and believable. Word to the wise, be wary. Be smart. And don't be taken in.
I didn't pay the monkey too much mind or devote space to his tweets when on January 28th, he initially tweeted:
Sandmonkey tweets: today's protest is NOT about Muslim Brotherhood & shouldn't be portrayed as such.
Although I did post on his arrest. Rubin's assessment of things tends to be overrated and wrong.
I never thought Sandmonkey was going to battle and defeat Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood, but this takes the cake.
