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

official announcement from the Army that they will not fire on protestors

...?

the worst thing in the daily mail was a column by christopher hitchens' mirror-universe brother peter clicking his tongue at clueless western liberals "supporting" the protests and saying that the best advice for dealing with "nasty arab regimes" was to be found in hilaire belloc's line about "always keep ahold of nurse for fear of finding something worse"

that was pretty bad

that seems to be the meme emerging on the gutter right -- obama is giving egypt away to the muslim brotherhood to destroy israel, or something

wait til they get around to canal-closure speculation

is this must-get-home-at-all costs mentality solely a British thing? An acquaintance once spent just shy of two grand flying home early from holiday in Jamaica because there was a hurricane coming.

xp -- yeah the line they've been using is YOU GUYS WERE EXCITED ABOUT THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION TOO which a) probably isn't really true and b) assumes there are no important differences to be considered between various upset masses of brown people

http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0111/Egypt_experts_head_to_WH_powwow.html

not a great bunch of people on first glace

The White House and their efforts to be bipartisan--they saw Abrams piece in the Sunday W. Post...

The Brit newspapers have their approach and some former Bush administration neo-con hacks (E. Abrams and M. Thiessen in the W. Post) keep repeating their own party line re how W should get credit, while others just want to blame Obama for any problems created by a lack of "stability"

It was a good, serious meeting, an attendee said afterwards.

good to know it didn't degenerate into the ribald japery that so frequently characterizes these white house "meetings"

got Egypt competing hard with Fernando Torres & Andy Carroll on my Sky 'breaking news' ticker atm

that seems to be the meme emerging on the gutter right -- obama is giving egypt away to the muslim brotherhood to destroy israel, or something

Someone on Andrew Breithard's blog posited as much.

"Heavy Fog in channel; Continent cut off" is not a new sentiment in our papers.

Egypt crisis: Beleaguered Mubarak reshuffles cabinet

The army said in a statement carried on Egyptian media: "To the great people of Egypt, your armed forces, acknowledging the legitimate rights of the people... have not and will not use force against the Egyptian people."

Basically this leaves Mubarak to try every single cabinet option until he finally realises that he has to leave.

g/o, exits mubarak

^not breaking new btw, just commenting on the armys statement

what sort of crazy person would leave the country under those circumstances, youre witnessing history people!

not sure if you're being serious. i was there this time last year and part of me thinks it would be awesome to have witnessed this shit firsthand - and i know there's another part of me that would want out asahp! i mean - if anything did happen to you there, as a tourist, you'd feel pretty dumb for having intentionally stayed behind. and i can only image the hell my parents would be going through knowing i was there and had no way of easily getting in touch with me.

footage on the bbc just now of vigilantes patrolling street corners brandishing cricket bats - where'd'you get hold of a cricket bat in Cairo?!

is cricket not popular there

Egypt not really known for it in my experience

British colonial legacy is pretty nuts

I was there during the caricatures protests and even saw a march in Tahrir Square - I'm not sure I'd want to be there right now.

you guys are all total wimps and afraid of momentouness, id totally be out there fist pumping away man, dodging tear gas canisters from my hotel balcony

Soccer clubs central to ending Egypt's 'Dictatorship of Fear'

guess this is why they canceled the game with usa usa usa

i'm just jealous of the reporters. i wanna be sprinting through the streets in a hawaiian shirt and a flak jacket. xp

The last ISP still running (Noor) has gone offline, so Egypt basically has no internet any more, unless people can dial international numbers w/modems. (I think a French ISP offered free access to anyone calling from Egypt).

Egypt basically has no internet any more

Doesn't that mean the economy is fucked? I thought they said the stock exchange needed something on the day or everything would seize up.

'British colonial legacy is pretty nuts' - a person living in north america, writing in english

on his cricket bat

jolly good

Media Matters notes a hilarious study in contrasting headlines at FOX Nation:

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/foxnation-20110131-palin1.jpg

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/foxnationpalin2.jpg

ElBaradei's sudden emergence as a national consensus figure has caught many international observers by surprise. It has also prompted American policy makers to go silent, fearing that any public U.S. support for ElBaradei or any other potential Egyptian leader could undermine prospects for unifying the country.

"They are really, really trying hard not to personalize and not to focus on individuals," said Marc Lynch, an associate professor at George Washington University and Foreign Policy blogger who was briefed today by White House officials on the administration's Egypt policy. "They are bending over backwards not to be seen as appointing the next president of Egypt." But ElBaradei, he notes, is "extremely well placed to reassure all constituencies which need reassuring that he is not likely to stick around for ever and be the next Mubarak."

http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/31/el_baradeis_personal_revolution_from_multilateral_bureaucrat_to_populist_patriot

So, Jordan's King Abdullah has just sacked his entire govt in wake of protests. What next?

Why his name ElBaradei and not Elbaradei or El Baradei or El-Baradel or el Baradei or el-Baradei?

L. Baradei

Larry Baradei - he's just trying to build some gravitas

Just heard a really moving dispatch on NPR (BBC I think)

Just read a Richard Cohen piece in the W. Post that I am guessing is wrong and uninformed. Something about a Muslim Brotherhood member who was hanged in 1966 and was anti-semitic, plus middle east chaos.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/31/AR2011013104014.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Things are about to go from bad to worse in the Middle East. An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is nowhere in sight. Lebanon just became a Hezbollah state, which is to say that Iran has become an even more important regional power, and Egypt, once stable if tenuously so, has been pitched into chaos. This is the most dire prospect of them all. The dream of a democratic Egypt is sure to produce a nightmare.

Looks like after several days of not showing or naming their reporters in Egypt in the wake of being banned by Mubarak and having some of its reporters arrested, AJE is putting its reporters there back on camera.

Unconfirmed rumours that Mubarak has gone according to Channel 4's foreign affairs correspondent on Twitter.

@jrug Rumour is that Mubarak has gone. Can not confirm. Celebrations in streets #c4news #jan25 #feb01 #egypt

Probably bullshit, but...

"Facebook is banned in Syria, which makes organising more difficult"

lol

nothing on Al-J about it Matt..

'has gone' is sort of a vague turn of phrase

Al-J interviewed a state dept spokesman on Thursday. Hey, TV media: here's how to do an interview:

http://english.aljazeera.net/video/middleeast/2011/01/201112713644706462.html

interviewer: "There have been reports of police firing rubber-coated steel bullets at protestors, perhaps that's more important than Twitter being up"

The rumor I'd heard was that he was at his winter residence at Sharm-el-Sheikh.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8290760/Locals-in-Sharm-el-Sheikh-convinced-Mubarak-is-holed-up-there.html

protests getting much bigger, hundreds of thousands out there now, thats the final piece

ban richard cohen

The Washington Post should have done that a long time ago

eh times says hundreds of thousands al jazeera says two million - crowds are hard to count

Police all over the world are esp. bad at counting, ime