a thread about the civil unrest in egypt (& elsewhere in 'the region' if necessary)

yeah they are amazing

speaking of which, via them

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e20148c81b5a88970c-550wi

Apropos of nothing, I once read that the noise level of Cairo is a constant 85 dBs, louder than a freight train 15 feet away. This doesn't take into account civil unrest, of course.

# Our administration is pushing for an Internet kill switch for POTUS while saying shutting down of tv and Internet is a "sign of dictators". 11 minutes ago via Twitterrific

# Egypt may be a tipping point. Yemen and Jordan also have smaller uprisings. Iran is smiling, the Saudis and Israelis are not. Pray4peace 14 minutes ago via Twitterrific

# Pray for peace. Egypt is run by a dictator, but Iran in 1979 started the same way. Legit outcry and then co-opted by religious radicals. 17 minutes ago via Twitterrific

glenn beck, ladies and gentlemen

Why is Palin silent!??! What is she afraid of!?!??!!!

mubarak speech was bizarre. i suspect (disagree w/ me pls) he spent the whole day holding out to see if the army would shut down the protest, hoping to make his public statement from a position of power, and when the army did nothing he was reduced to that weird tolerant-populist act. but yeah the government restructure is A) a total red herring and B) not the end of it; i don't really see how he can remain in power now.

Why is Palin silent!??! What is she afraid of!?!??!!!

She has other things on her mind now

Argh. The ideological incoherence makes me angry. EITHER you can think that the Dems are totally oppressive dictator nanny state OR you can think that state control of telecommunications is A-OK. Not both.

Like... "Pray 4 Peace"? So...Tea Party protests by radical Christianists are completely viable but Egyptian protests are DANGEROUS because some of them might be Muslims who don't like America?

Legit outcry and then co-opted by religious radicals.

lol irony

Mubarek should pull a judo move and join the protestors on the street in outrage over his rogue ministry. Perhaps their confusion will last long enough to allow him to flee before they hang him.

# Our administration is pushing for an Internet kill switch for POTUS

what is this abt

obama talking, trying sort of hopelessly to sell mubarak as sufficiently scolded.

yeah this is pretty artless

mubarak has a responsibility to provide concrete steps to something better

please don't kill anyone

egypt will always be a partner of the US

feel bad for the administration honestly, as their only possible position is "well we'll negotiate with whoever wins but heh we'd really kind of prefer that our guy of 30 years in this disastrous region stay in charge even though we know that sounds kinda shitty" and i mean i can't think of a less attractive position to have to sell.

supporting dictators makes things real complicated

"if i were an egyptian i'd like to think i'd be in the street, but i'm president of the us, sorry"

hahahahaha

I don't suppose he could say much else really - can't really influence anything here, so try to be calm while things develop and make sure not to get blamed meantime.

The US could help by surreptitiously airdropping in an internet connect.

i've gotta have some aol cds lying around somewhere

Set up a really powerful wifi hub in the Negev

thought Obama gave Mubarak about as little support as he could get away with

the British foreign minister on Newsnight offered up the same kind of evasions that O's press secretary did earlier today; when he was asked if Britain stood with Mubarak he said something like "the real question is..." - such a classic judo move

I wouldn't be surprised if Mubarak's cabinet had already fled to Saudi Arabia resigned hours before his speech began

sullivan (his support team perhaps less so) has way too much of a hard-on about twitter and such tho.

don't know the accuracy, but i am told that 8% of egyptians have web access

thought Obama gave Mubarak about as little support as he could get away with

as I've said before it's pretty clear from all the state Dept maneuvering today that they don't give a shit about Mubarak and would be happy to see him replaced. they just want him replaced with someone they can deal with and it's not clear if that's going to happen/who that will be.

like, there have not been any statements about what a great friend and ally Hosni Mubarak has been to the US, there's no "THIS MAN IS OUR GUY" posturing in any of the WH/State Dept statements

an interesting angle that I don't think anyone has remarked upon - Mubarak's cabinet includes the Minister of Defense, who is supposed to be in charge of the army... soooo, Mubarak currently casting around for someone from the Army that he can promote who will basically crush the opposition...? and if he can't find one he's probably well and truly fucked

The announcement was strategically made in the middle of the night in Egypt to give time for troops to take position.

The military’s interaction with the demonstrators will need to be watched closely. So far, the military has been able to move into the cities and has been welcomed by the protesters without employing the more heavy-handed tactics of the internal security forces. What order they imposed came not from violence but from the perception that they would enable the demonstrators to bring down Mubarak.

If the military is now physically backing the regime, confrontations between demonstrators (whose grievance is ultimately with Mubarak) and the military forces is likely to turn more violent in the hours ahead.

sullivan's ppl just put up an excerpt of a dude arguing that "more than social media, this is al-jazeera's revolution"

mumble fourth estate mumble mumble

Al Jazeera has really come out in a stellar light from all this. They really seem to be the best news organisation in the world right now, when did one press organisation do so much to bring down oppressive regimes in multiple countries? When I first started watching it I was amazed it was so liberal for an arab broadcasting company but I realised it's actually an incredibly fair network and is probably the least biased of any news organisation including the bbc.

Sullivan made the point that Al Jazeera was vilified by Bush and in retrospect that was hugely telling about everything.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/hs051.snc6/168127_10150173351369199_602254198_8639524_7093712_n.jpg

"Egypt Flips Internet Kill Switch, Will The U.S.?"
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376905,00.asp

Pamela Geller cheers for mass arrests, worries that Obama will throw our 'ally' under the bus

as I've said before it's pretty clear from all the state Dept maneuvering today that they don't give a shit about Mubarak and would be happy to see him replaced. they just want him replaced with someone they can deal with and it's not clear if that's going to happen/who that will be.

regardless of how they feel about him, i feel like he's conciliatory enough compared to the rest of the arab league foreign-policy-wise that they'd rather keep him around than roll the dice on anyone else? or i may have misread my frantically swotted wiki articles.

for whatever anyone thinks about people power and democracy and mubarak as a dictator, i would imagine that every international actor save iran would prefer the "stability" that he offers

this has just been insane to watch. less than a year ago i was in Tunisia and then Egypt - and now i'm watching on the news total pandemonium in spots i stood at 11 months ago. if you'd told me a year ago this was going to happen there - i wouldn't have believed you. this is just blowing my mind.

I am staggered at that FB post image. How sheltered are some americans anyway bloody 'eck.

going by the image - i would put it more down to being young and stupid.

^^^canadian friend

Jordan's bustin' out too: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011128125157509196.html

What I love about all these stories is all the "after prayers" or "they stopped for an hour for prayers on the highway" stuff. In awe that as a unit they'll fight, protest, but all down arms and pray when its required. Some kind of elegance in that, I dunno.

Apropos of nothing, I once read that the noise level of Cairo is a constant 85 dBs, louder than a freight train 15 feet away. This doesn't take into account civil unrest, of course.

BS. At the worst it's no louder than Manhattan.

NY Times re Al Jazeera:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/28jazeera.html

“The notion that there is a common struggle across the Arab world is something Al Jazeera helped create,” said Marc Lynch, a professor of Middle East Studies at George Washington University who has written extensively on the Arab news media. “They did not cause these events, but it’s almost impossible to imagine all this happening without Al Jazeera.”

Yet Al Jazeera’s opaque loyalties and motives are as closely scrutinized as its reporting. It is accused of tailoring its coverage to support Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza against their Lebanese and Palestinian rivals. Its reporter in Tunisia became a leading partisan in the uprising there. And critics speculate that the network bowed to the diplomatic interests of the Qatari emir, its patron, by initially playing down the protests in Egypt.

Have to admit that when I woke up this morning and turned on the news and heard the name of the newly appointed Vice President (Omar Suleiman), the first thing that came to mind was:

http://i52.tinypic.com/e5hfmu.jpg

...even though he's Syrian.

YELLA!

Looking at articles and comments on US and UK news sources, there seems to be a big difference in how Americans and Brits see the situation. Americans are all "yay, go democracy," and Brits seem to be saying "it's very dangerous to destabilize the closest thing to a democracy the M.E. has." Or am I misreading it?

Scratch that . . . the latter seems to be the the growing conservative response in both the US and the UK.

I dunno, I hardly keep up with our media myself - I pick & choose off the internet - but when I have dived into it I've found the quality abysmal. Three examples:

*- the initial coverage about Tunisia and Egypt in turn was both weeks late and led heavily on the 'difficulties for returning holidaygoers' angle
*- inappropriate experts: in a single bulletin yesterday there was an IT guy who, after having spoken about the Internet shutdown mechanism, was then invited to opine on how this was going to change the protests; followed by an Egypt expert who turned out to be a Phd student who tried to turn every question into a 'war crimes of Blair & Bush' diatribe
*- Blair again: the BBC carried a story where Yv0nne R1dley condemns Blair for supporting Mubarak, without comment. Follow the link to the audio, and Blair's actually saying he's been advocating change for years, it must happen but the danger is if doesn't happen in a stable environment.

Personally, I find it so insular it's embarrassing. The human interest angle is fair enough as part of a whole, but to carry on the rest as if it's just an extension of the usual entertain-ourselves-by-talking-shit, when it may turn out to be a once-in-a-decade global event, is just hopeless. It just feels like nobody's particularly interested.

(Unconfirmed) reports have Mubarak's sons arriving in London and the military is openly fraternizing with protesters. Looks like he is done.

Anyway, to answer your question from my own point-of-view - I'm caught somewhere between the two I guess. I couldn't be happier about democracy outing ... but I'm terrified that's not what's going to happen. Rather dictatorships than theocracies. I'm optimistic and feel it's worth rolling the dice, but for me it's very much a leap of faith, I just don't know enough about these places locally.

Feeling is that the north Africans would be secular enough to pull it off, the other countries less sure. I do wonder whether Turkey ought to be more of a player - it seems to be the only viable model on offer here.

what about turkey differs from any other secular constitutional democracy?