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

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

haha:

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney urged the Obama administration to press for the resignation of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday, and said it was time for Mubarak to listen to Egyptian protesters and "step out of the way."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20030197-503544.html

no solidarity between the shockingly young-looking, i guess.

its starting to look a lot like the end of the Hodgson regime

crowds are hard to count

not according to professional crowd counters.

sign in the crowd

YES WE CAN TOO

aww

oh we're gonna see that one again believe me

lol al jazeera just interviewed an official from mubaraks party and he was all i told him many times just this year he had to listen to the people and be nicer and change things alalalala sure buddy

god richard cohen is the WORST

so hitler > richard cohen, is that what ur saying

http://grab.by/8HWChttp://grab.by/8HWChttp://grab.by/8HWChttp://grab.by/8HWChttp://grab.by/8HWC

AJ reporting that security for the tahrir square demonstration being provided by an army/civilian collaboration to prevent secret police from entering.

max it's just a little pro-dictator rhetoric in america's most influential political newspaper, let's be cool.

i've resisted putting up all the crazy right wing crap i've been seeing, but tracer that's the weak end of it believe me

again from that Al-J interview with the state dept:

interviewer: "democracy would be destabilizing to the region, wouldn't it?"

Batshit Rightwing Cartoons 2011