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

reading thru the corner reminds me that the american right has hated el baradei from way back:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/258519/el-baradei-and-al-qaqaa-affair-cliff-may

yeah elbaradei is a "stooge of iran" fyi

also has anyone seen elbaradei and bill ayers in the same place at the same time??? not saying just sayin....

*slaps glenn beck's fire icon to thread*

ilx is on fire, twitter is on fire, the internet is on fire

we learned to troll from code pink

sounds like mubarak might announce he wont seek re-election

and for my next failed gambit at maintaining power

nowhere else to go after that, except to live in Saudi

#
1859: Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq appears on Egyptian television without a shirt and tie - an unprecedented event. He says he is worried, but is confident that he can make the country stable again.

huh?

and 'obama urges mubarak not to run again'

honestly that doesn't really seem like such a bad option - interim gov't can get set up in the intervening months, parties can form, etc. and then free elections in the fall. of course whether the protesters are willing to wait that long is another question

I guess at this point I should just say whether the COUNTRY is willing to wait that long lol

yeah it seems like its pretty obvs the protestors have the upper hand at this point so why not just play it out

mubarak stepping down in sept can still mess w/things/the election til then

as he has been known to

does anyone else find it odd that Bin Laden/Zwahiri et al have apparently been totally silent through all this?

mubarak stepping down in sept can still mess w/things/the election til then

^^^yes definitely. potential grounds for rejection of that option there. no doubt he would try to reassert authority via proxy or something

dude should probably cut his losses and flee the country before he gets put on trial tbh

does anyone else find it odd that Bin Laden/Zwahiri et al have apparently been totally silent through all this?

probably for the same reason everyone else (Muslim Brotherhood, Israel, other groups) is silent. they're waiting to see how it plays out before they decide how they feel about it

cut a deal for immunity and gtfo seems like his best bet at this point xp

like, it looks to me like egypt might become a liberal democracy. it might look that way to bin laden too, which would suck for the mission obv. but he can't exactly condemn a popular anti-fascist uprising or he'll look really bad. idk.

outside forces dont want to be seen as influencing the process as egyptians are seeming p fed up w/outside forces influencing their processes at this point

also, it's pretty clear that whatever the population wants right now, they don't want a theocracy and they don't want violence. There's not much AQ can gain by trying to insert a role for themselves here

I bet Zawahiri is paying very close attention.

it might draw attention to the fact that this is an utter, crushing defeat and humiliation for them

Typically in this sort of long-term dictatorship, once the central figure is broken there are too many, and too scattered, centers of potential power to make any predictions about how it rearranges itself. I expect the military is going to be the decisive factor, which would also be pretty typical. If they want elections, that seems like it would be a promising development. I expect the Muslim Brotherhood would be outlawed as a political party, in any event.

Al Qaeda isn't going to give anybody jobs in Egypt and that's what they really want. They may successfully become a more liberal democracy, but their economic straits are going to be much harder to turn around. They seem intent on getting the elite's hand out of the cookie jar and rolling back the oppressive authority of the security services that have been messing with them since the emergency law was put into effect, a law that allowed the c ops to mess with people in many and mostly corrupt ways. I doubt many are in the mood for religious police or anybody to fcuk with ordinary ppl right now and the essential dignity of common Egyptians has been amazing.

It's my impression from news stories that the Muslim Brotherhood is much more interested in limiting any extremism/violence and becoming a part of the new government (obv I'm assuming there will be some kind of parliamentary solution).

I expect the Muslim Brotherhood would be outlawed as a political party, in any event.

I don't think this is likely - the role they've played so far points to genuine political ambitions

yeah i read a bunch abt them a while ago, the specifics escape me, but the overall impression was of a not that extreme anymore nationalist wide ranging political org

don't know if this has been posted yet but live feed from al jazeera in egypt here: http://www.youtube.com/user/AlJazeeraEnglish

M: Hey Omar…you know that there many tweets coming in saying he is going to shut down everything tonight…whatever little internet was left and mobiles and landlines even?

O: Fuck the internet! I have not seen it since Thursday and I am not missing it. I don’t need it. No one in Tahrir Square needs it. No one in Suez needs it or in Alex…Go tell Mubarak that the peoples revolution does not his damn internet!

M: Ha ha! You just gave me a possible title for the piece my friend…

O: Tayyib good. But honestly I mean 40 % of this country is living below the poverty line and a large chunk above that is barely surviving and then you have middle class doctors and lawyers etc and then you have you know rich people like me yaani…I mean it is true that cell phone penetration has improved very much…you know they even say that maybe 60 million have cellphones…you know…but its like those basic yaani really basic mobiles…nothing fancy…no internet bullshit for example…I can tell you that the majority of Egyptians have no idea what Facebook is or what Twitter is! I mean you ask me this everyday—but its true yaani…and look at this… a very basic mobile is from 180 Egyptian pounds…a fancy internet capable phone like an Iphone and that Droid thing or the blackberry cost around 3000 pounds…and I will just talk about the so called middle class for a second…before revolution they said they would increase the minimum wage to 1200 pounds a month…right now it is about 800 pounds…800 pounds to feed a family of 4 maybe more? And then you go and buy an internet enabled phone which costs more than 3 months of your salary?.

Me: So how and why is this whole narrative evolving?

O: You mean all this internet stuff…well before he shut us out on Thursday…there was vibrant communication between a certain and very small class of society in terms of relative numbers…this is the class of people who have ALWAYS been absent and apathetic from the suffering of the Egyptian majority…the poor people…you know that was good…so maybe a little bit through twitter and all the apathetic students and professional class started communicating for the first time…

does anyone else find it odd that Bin Laden/Zwahiri et al have apparently been totally silent through all this?

It's not like these guys can call a press conference. Their "timely" proclamations usually come weeks or months after the fact.

Fuck the internet! I have not seen it since Thursday Go tell Mubarak that the peoples revolution does not his damn internet!

as always, Robert Fisk gets the story-interview no one else gets

Thanks a ton for that al-jazeera live feed! They are reporting that the state run Egyptian TV expects an announcement from Mubarak "soon".

lol wikipedia already updated w Mubarak's declining to run for reelection announcement

oh man been looking forward to this since thursday.

None of them ever seems to master a few simple survival techniques: Don't let the supreme leader's extended family go on shopping sprees; don't publicly spoil some firstborn as if the people can't wait for him, too, to be proclaimed from the balcony; don't display your personal photograph all over the landscape; don't claim more than, say, 75 percent of the vote in any "election" you put on.

^^^lolz. was just remarking to my wife the other day how odd/hilarious it was that none of these guys ever win less than 90% of a vote; like they're incapable of faking a realistic election result

the best is putin, whose crew would win even free elections but who fixes them anyway.

best line in the hitchens thing is

We argued that the supposed attractions of authoritarian "stability" are in fact illusory, since nothing is more volatile and unsafe than dictatorship, which lacks any self-critical method for learning from its mistakes.

although that redundant "self-critical" scuppers the prose. but he's ill.

Mordy and Aimless, you can also get it directly on their site: http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

US aid for democracy promotion and civil society in Egypt in 2010
= $24 million

US military aid to Egypt in 2010
= $1.3 billion

so i guess he's dead

http://www.othermeanspolitics.com/uploads/2/2/6/9/2269187/8858284.jpg

i feel like hitchens 'dictatorships fall therefor they must not be constructed v well' formulation doesnt really work irl - i mean mubaraks been in power for 30 years right - that a p good run - you think any elected official wouldnt take 30 years - i mean how longs the n korean regime been rolling - theyve got lol hueg pictures of themselves everywhere - everything in the world eventually fails youve got to look at it in relative terms

looks pretty stoic about it

kinda bemused imo

Hitchens' point is what I've been mulling over all week. What's more stable than a system, if not a particular govmt, that is widely perceived to be legitimate and responsive to real popular feeling? It could be a constitutional monarchy or a republic but it's likely to last longer than a dictatorship or an oligarchy.

ice cr?m, 30 years is pretty short according to the long view and it can be argued that w/o America as bogey-man and PRC as a benefactor, NKorea would have toppled already. Maybe the corollary to his point is that, yes, you can keep an authoritarian regime in power for ages but the more successful you are at it, the poorer and more brutalized the ppl, i.e., Burma or NK.

Obv, the key to any dictatorship is to prevent the mass of people from openly communicating their true thoughts about it. The moment these thoughts become openly available to everyone, the dictator falls.

BTW, the whole point of those thousands of grandiose portraits and statues of the Maximum Leader is to cow you into accepting your insignifigance in comparison and to project omnipresent superpotency. That's why they do it, fella. No mistake being made there.

I like this bit in Hitchens' essay:

None of them ever seems to master a few simple survival techniques: Don't let the supreme leader's extended family go on shopping sprees; don't publicly spoil some firstborn as if the people can't wait for him, too, to be proclaimed from the balcony; don't display your personal photograph all over the landscape; don't claim more than, say, 75 percent of the vote in any "election" you put on. And don't try to shut down social media: It will instantly alert even the most somnolent citizen to the fact that you are losing, or have lost, your grip.