Joe the Biden famously warned us that the new President will be tested by a foreign policy challenge--and most of us assumed that challenge would come from somewhere like Pakistan, Afghanistan...or Russia.

New developments in the Middle East are suggesting that the challenge might come from an entirely different direction.

It’s quite a story we’ve been telling--and today’s installment involves massive electoral manipulation, intimidation, imprisonment... and a recanting witness who dies in his jail cell.

Hop on board the international train, Gentle Reader, and we’ll see what we can learn about a country that is hardly an enemy...that is, in fact, such an ally that they have been willing to torture for us.

As the title notes, this is Part Two of a larger story, so let’s recap:

The Arab Republic of Egypt has been ruled by various versions of one political party more or less forever. That political party is today known as the National Democratic Party (NDP); and at its head is Egypt’s President (since 1981), Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt’s Constitution is written so as to ensure the perpetual dominance of the NDP.

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It has been but a few hours since Sarah Palin took the stage to have a conversation with Joe Biden, and of course the Nation has a ton of questions.

What will happen now?
How will we view all this in a few days?
How will it affect McCain and Obama?

I don’t know...and I’m not even going to try to figure it out right this minute.

Instead, we’re going to take a trip halfway across the world to a country that has been essential to understanding the Middle Eastern story, has been at the center of international conflicts time and time again...and has lessons to teach us that, if we learn them well, could make us a much smarter “Foreign Policy Nation” than we are today.

The country? Egypt.

So grab your virtual passport...and after we arrive, there are a few people I want you to meet.
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Update: Watch Death in Gaza. [Thank you, The Proletariat.]

It's way past time for silence on this issue from the progressive community.

One rarely reads of the US-supported Israeli atrocities committed in Gaza and the occupied territories. I mean what's Gaza, and are Palestinians really human beings?

They are. And what's being done to the Palestinians is an obscenity, a bloody siege described in a widely-distributed pamphlet at a 2002 demonstration as a "macabre saga of violence and methodical repression (Islamic Circle of North America)". It's unclear that if the violence and repression were to be featured on broadcast TV what the reaction would be.

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