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

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?

Ever heard the term "Turkish prison?"

Ever heard the term "Turkish delight?"

The Turkish Army is a very strong presence in Turkish politics and has intervened several times when secularism has been threatened. AKP is Erdogan's second or third political parties, earlier incarnations havng been banned IIRC. The Army has been less active in politics in recent years mainly because Turkey has been trying to join the EU which it sees as a reinforcing secularism against Islamism

also it is the only secular democracy named after a sandwich

but the "on a bloomer, with lettuce, tomato and salad cream" part of the full name is only ever seen on passports.

also geographic proximity

not sure if Joe Biden, Asshole was posted:

http://warincontext.org/2011/01/27/biden-shows-his-contempt-for-the-people-of-egypt/

turkey's the piece of the ottoman empire that came out of world war i thinking OKAY WE ARE NOT GOING TO BE FUCKED AROUND WITH LIKE THE REST OF THE CARCASS AND WE'RE GONNA HOLD ON TO ISTANBUL and threw itself into an ultranationalist movement and an aggressive xenophobic language reform and now is this mix of admirable forward-thinking constitutional liberal principles and scary right-wing theocratic nationalist militarism. which means it succeeded: it's just like the ottoman empire.

xp re: biden -- as with obama's waffling statement, have trouble really faulting people who regardless of how they feel about the situation are required to act as if the interests of u.s. foreign policy in noted regional clusterfuck the arab world are morally sound. honestly, sort of suspect biden was dispatched specifically to blurt out "mubarak is not a dictator" so that the idea could enter the discourse from a Known Loose Cannon and obama's totally non-scolding speech could look slightly more scolding by comparison. but yes, obv mubarak is a dictator.

admirable forward-thinking constitutional liberal principles

this lot being the ones who think the army can stage coups whenever it likes and passed laws making it a crime to speak languages other than Turkish.

believe i mentioned the scary right-wing theocratic nationalist militarism and the aggressive xenophobic language reform

"forward-thinking" economic principles might be more apt

ok so when we say the turkish model we mean a model where the army intervenes whenever

And the genocide of the Armenians comes to mind. Granted, that was 1915 or so.

I think when we say the Turkish model we mean "friendly to the west," i.e. they let us use their air space to go bomb Iraq.

but the country is Western in its financial principles xpost

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/8288555/Authoritarian-governments-start-stockpiling-food-to-fight-public-anger.html

Authoritarian governments across the world are aggressively stockpiling food as a buffer against soaring food costs which they fear may stoke popular discontent.

By Ben Farmer in Islamabad 4:11PM GMT 28 Jan 2011

Commodities traders have warned they are seeing the first signs of panic buying from states concerned about the political implications of rising prices for staple crops.

However, the tactic risks simply further pushing up prices, analysts have warned, pushing a spiral of food inflation.

Governments in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa have recently made large food purchases on the open market in the wake of unrest in Tunisia which deposed president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Resentment at food shortages and high prices, as well as repression and corruption, drove the popular uprising which swept away his government.

Youths reportedly chanted "bring us sugar!" in the demonstrations which toppled his regime.

Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economics professor who predicted the financial crisis, this week told the World Economic Forum in Davos that high prices were "leading to riots, demonstrations and political instability." "It's really something that can topple regimes, as we have seen in the Middle East," he said.

Algeria purchased 800,000 tonnes of milling wheat on Wednesday and Saudi Arabia has said it will purchase enough wheat for a 12 month reserve.

Egypt, which has seen several days of unrest in part provoked by high food prices, is expected to follow.

Bangladesh has tripled its rice import target and Indonesia this week bought 820,000 tonnes of Thai rice.

Jim Gerlach, of commodity brokerage A/C Trading, said: "Sovereign nations are beginning to stockpile food to prevent unrest." "You artificially stimulate much higher demand when nations start to increase stockpiles."

"This is only the start of the panic buying," said Ker Chung Yang, commodities analyst at Singapore-based Phillip Futures. "I expect we'll have more countries coming in and buying grain."

Prices have not hit the peaks seen in 2008 when inflation caused a food price crisis, but economists have warned they still have the power to topple regimes

basically i am just impressed that turkey is not iran. i am impressed that they got through an ultranationalist and predominantly islamic revolution designed to minimize parasitic western influence and promote turkish self-sufficiency without actually collapsing into a theocratic disaster. and yeah, they're plenty cool with exterminating non-turks when the feeling strikes them, but their citizens could do worse. xp

soon, i hope to be even more impressed by egypt!

James Baldwin dug Istanbul quite a lot.

With Egypt, anything could happen now. The fundamentalists will definitely make a power grab, right? I hope the Egyptian people will resist them.

european and middle eastern history, c. 300-1918: a series of people digging istanbul quite a lot.

i haven't read anything today but yesterday what everyone was saying was "it's bizarre how decentralized these protests seem". like there were plenty of muslim brotherhood dudes out there i'm sure, along with plenty of everyone else, but it really did seem like just several hundred thousand people simultaneously pissed off at a single guy for their own reasons. which is an impression you can artificially create (and that telegraph article posted upthread was intriguing/bizarre) but which might also be totally real, in which case the process of reestablishing order might be seriously epochal, change-wise, and which could go anywhere.

6.36pm: The leader of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood has warned that unrest in Egypt will spread across the Middle East and that Arabs will topple leaders allied with the United States, AP reports.

Hammam Saeed's comments were made at a protest outside the Egyptian embassy in Amman, inspired by massive rallies in neighbouring Egypt.

About 100 members of the fundamentalist group and activists from other leftist organizations and trade unions chanted "Mubarak, step down" and "the decision is made, the people's revolt will remain."

yeah see that really does sound to me like the m.b. putting their name on the list--100 people!--and trying to sound like they're in control of something they're not. which isn't to say they couldn't get control of it.

is my fear. I'm not aware of any other potential leaders out there. A fundamental problem with revolt-crushing dictatorships I guess

i think the best-case scenario is a coalition govt w/ the brohood and elbaradei--the thing is its sorta unclear what kind of support elbaradei actually has beyond like... western journalists

He has some I think but I just don't know enough about who else is out there. Would not want the mb anywhere near power. It may be that an interim govt of technocrats until there is time for parties to coalesce, then elections, is the best-case outcome.

Sulieman is known for crushing Isalmic revolts, bloody-like, which some Westerners may find reassuring, at least initially. Meanwhile, dunno how much street cred ElBaradei has, although criticized by some demonstrators for not coming home and stepping up quickly enough, he's still got quite a rep as voice of sanity, which property will only get you so far of course. Here's his Wiki (yeah, but I checked a bunch of the links, they're legit) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_ElBaradei

Sorry! it's actually http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_ElBaradei

How does Aynam Nour fit into all this? Does he have widespread popular support?

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/51015000/jpg/_51015832_011145563-1.jpg

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20110129-red-alert-hamas-and-muslim-brotherhood

oh god they're fucking with the antiquities. so anti-protester now.

The last I read, the army had moved into the Museum, after some vandalism, but apparently no theft beyond the gift shop (they're not protecting the neighborhoods though; they're encouraging vigilantes, who didin't need encouragement). It;s Ayman, not Aynam Nour. Some say he was hurt yesterday, but haven't verified. Meanwhile, from Euronews.net,a thumbnail & recent quotes:

Ayman Nour, Egyptian opposition emblem
28/01/2011
Ayman Nour is the leading opposition politician of the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. A lawyer, Nour is an emblematic figure in Egypt. His wife Gamela Ismail is also involved in the protests.

At the head of the liberal El-Ghad party (‘Tomorrow’), which he founded in 2004, he was Hosni Mubarak’s main opponent in the 2005 presidential elections. He only won eight percent of the vote but gained second place after the huge majority claimed by Mubarak. Nour contested the results, but above all castigated the regime for being unable to tackle unemployment.

Amongst the crowds demonstrating in Cairo this week, Nour told the authorities: “Our message today consists of one word, “leave”. We are telling President Moubarak to leave. We do not want you. We cannot stand you or your regime. The Egyptian people no longer want this system. You have closed all doors to peaceful change.”

For this opposition leader the regime is finished. Before the communication black-out with Egypt, Ayman Nour told euronews how he saw the end of this crisis: “With all the political parties from all sides we will form popular assemblies as an alternative to parliament to fight against the fraud of the last parliamentary, senatorial and presidential elections.”

In 2005 Nour was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of forging documents used in applying for legal status for his El-Ghad party. He was released on medical grounds – diabetes – in February 2009, but remains ineligible for elections which it had been forecast would take place in September this year.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e20147e2198006970b-550wi

i think the best-case scenario is a coalition govt w/ the brohood and elbaradei--the thing is its sorta unclear what kind of support elbaradei actually has beyond like... western journalists

― max, Saturday, January 29, 2011 2:45 PM Bookmark

In this conflict I really feel a sense of being doomed to either get new filtered through the liberal western media lens ("yay, peaceful democratic protest that will probably bring in a moderate, freedom-loving leader!") or the conservative western media lens ("uh oh instability this makes me really nervous guys better to have the monster we know"). Agenda-based spin is sort of inevitable, to the point that the journalists themselves may not realize what they are superimposing on the conflict. I mean I guess this has always been true of US coverage of foreign conflicts, but maybe I'm more aware of it in our internet age?

sorry that should be "get NEWS filtered"

http://i53.tinypic.com/epq7g2.jpg

http://c2771442.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/EgyptMuseum-09.png

;_;

pictures of some of the vandalism of the egyptian museum by looters:

http://hyperallergic.com/17815/egyptian-museum-damage/

:(((

next thing you know they'll be tearing down those pyramids.

The Egyptian Protests: Phase II

http://www.latinoreview.com/images/stories/rotf-dev_on_pyramid.jpg