Soccer Mania: Mark LeVine's Latest Contribution to Al Jazeera

Mark LeVine is a professor at UC Irvine, part-time rocker, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Lund in Sweden (Or is it Guest Researcher? That's what the Lund website says he is).  He is also a contributing op-ed columnist for Qatar-based Al Jazeera. In this latest piece, LeVine (Yes,that's with a  capital V) examines a faction of the Egyptian resistance.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/02/egypt-ultras-fast-furious-150211051440616.html

Now far be it from me to try and match LeVine's extensive expertise when it comes to Egypt and the Middle East. I spent a week in Cairo back in the 1990s when I attended a UN conference on crime as a member of DEA International Training. That hardly makes me an expert though I did visit the pyramids, Anwar Sadat's grave, and stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. Mark, on the other hand, was in Cairo during the protests at Tahrir Square. I mean he was right there on the front lines. This was no Brian Williams I want you to know. When Mark returned Stateside, he gave a briefing on his experiences at UC Irvine, which I attended. Mark actually described meeting with protest leaders as they debated their strategy. He also proclaimed that if it (the fall of Mubarak) only ended in some form of military, capitalist government, it would have all been for naught. (I am paraphrasing, of course.) Did I get that right, Mark? If not, please respond, and I will correct the record although my memory is pretty clear.

At any rate, I wish Mark had said something about the persecution of Christians, which is on-going, but reached its peak while Mohammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were in power. I wish he had said something about the terrorist attacks against Egyptian security forces on-going in the Sinai.

Recently, it was reported to me that LeVine had blasted me on his Facebook page as "some moral idiot who is a troll for Campus Watch". Well, I don't know about that since I am neither employed by nor paid by Campus Watch. At any rate, better Campus Watch than Al Jazeera.