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

"we're judging the US by what we know has to be said in private"

who told us, Bob Woodward?

u guys did read that Bush phoned Mubarak?

At a cost of over a billion a year, we got the premier Arab country to remain at peace with Israel (and to switch from the Soviets to the US) even though it ended up costing them their leader and us our credibility, but we didn't impose this military leadership on Egypt, we just helped it stay in power. Since the Free Officers revolt/Revolution of 1952, though technically a Republic, Egypt has essentially always been ruled by a military officer.

no matter what else is true about this situation, this stuff definitely is: a corrupt regime the united states has supported for years because it's uniquely friendly to u.s. foreign policy objectives is being overthrown in an obviously justified middle-class revolution that may lead to a government similarly friendly to u.s.f.p.os. it may also be crushed, or turn into something much less obliging to the united states. if the united states throws itself behind the revolution and the revolution succeeds, the state it creates will have been tainted by u.s. involvement. if they do so and the revolution fails, they lose a whole lot of willingness to cooperate from mubarak. if they do so and the revolution becomes notably less middle-class and secular, they might as well not have done so. the only thing anyone in the administration can possibly do, with this giant inertia-swollen thing behind them, is find a good way of phrasing "we are waiting to see what happens". expecting anything more from them seems pretty fruitless.

i'm sure there are plenty of cia guys in cairo doing all kinds of exciting stuff. those guys are being similarly pushed by history but they'd be easier to argue about than what speeches robert gibbs gives.

(as far as i can tell "crushed" is off the table now, but it wasn't as late as monday.)

Mubarak could have cracked down on the protestors at any time over the last few days. But the violence didn't erupt until Mubarak's statement last night that he will not seek another term this year. Today's clashes were probably not the regime's final death rattle, but rather the beginning of the struggle to determine who emerges on top in the post-Mubarak era.

from David Kurtz at TPM

obama, OSAMA ... amirite morbius

really kinda sorry (and glad) I'll probably die around the time the USA becomes a second-rate power.

don't give up! i feel that your posts here are laying the groundwork for a violent revolution that will restore the nation to greatness.

bye guys. I have already advised Bam not to let Mubi over here if he gets sick.

internet is back on there, my cousin and her kids are leaving on an ordered departure, her husband is staying, they just moved there a couple weeks ago fyi

Video footage:

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/201122124446797789.html

no matter what else is true about this situation, this stuff definitely is: a corrupt regime the united states has supported for years because it's uniquely friendly to u.s. foreign policy objectives is being overthrown in an obviously justified middle-class revolution that may lead to a government similarly friendly to u.s.f.p.os. it may also be crushed, or turn into something much less obliging to the united states. if the united states throws itself behind the revolution and the revolution succeeds, the state it creates will have been tainted by u.s. involvement. if they do so and the revolution fails, they lose a whole lot of willingness to cooperate from mubarak. if they do so and the revolution becomes notably less middle-class and secular, they might as well not have done so. the only thing anyone in the administration can possibly do, with this giant inertia-swollen thing behind them, is find a good way of phrasing "we are waiting to see what happens". expecting anything more from them seems pretty fruitless.

i'm sure there are plenty of cia guys in cairo doing all kinds of exciting stuff. those guys are being similarly pushed by history but they'd be easier to argue about than what speeches robert gibbs gives.

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, February 2, 2011 9:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this seems otm 2 me. idk about 'tainted' by US involvement. a perception thing really. i mean, did anyone begrudge the fact that the american revolution got an assist from absolutist france?

oh a perception thing's what i mean. nobody begrudged america france that i know anything about, but america wasn't right in the middle of a region with an endless unpleasant history of being fucked around with by france to serve french interests. i mean, not in the same way.

wheres kermit roosevelt when you need him

serious poetry here - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/world/middleeast/03arab.html

i don't know if anybody else is showing this right now, but MSNBC is essentially broadcasting a battle in a way i've sort of never seen before.

yeah i'm watching

oh god

this is... i don't know if i want to see this.

hard not to assume the worst - seems like anti-govt ppl are brutalizing some pro-mubarak truck driver that they surrounded

i'm hearing what sounds like automatic fire elsewhere too

Oh AJE, there's been gunfire off and on the past hour from the pro-Mubarak side at Tahrir square.

Any definite reports on what's happening or just attempts to work it out from general confusion?

oh, AJE, good idea, thanks rev. anything's better than ed schultz now that maddow's off the air.

engel is reporting there's a lynching occurring

Oh AJE = On AJE

Btw, what up Clay! Sorry I never returned your message on fb. I am horrible about that.

engel is reporting there's a lynching occurring

i hate to ask this, but who is allegedly lynching who?

i can't tell either

would guess anti-s are lynching pro-s but can't say

hopefully he's just mistaken

s?

sup rev! (don't want to clutter up this thread too much with personal stuff, but yeah, no biggie. i'm the worst at email/fb/texts etc. hit me up sometime, though, let me know what's going on!)

lol im kinda drunk, that's my ignorant way of pluralizing xp

here's a characteristically grim take:

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2011/02/02/hyper-realism-to-the-rescue/

no matter what you think of that, the idea that the military is just hanging back and chillin out of, what? loyalty? patriotism? needs to be second guessed maybe.

eh out of not killin ppl presumably

larison makin me depressed as usual

Someone on AJE just said "twitteratti". u_u

this is absolutely terrifying and there's about zero chance it doesn't get way, way worse.

fascinating, terrifying, confusing.

It is still unclear what exactly happened in the events that followed, but rumor has it that one of the ministers responsible for the security of the nation didn't react well to Mubarak asking him to resign and ordered the police to leave and opened the doors to dozens of prisons so that more than 2000 prisoners could leave. Others say Mubarak was responsible because the minister couldn't have ordered anything once resigned. Either way, prisoners escaped, thugs went into empty police stations and stole all the weapons.

That's when real fear spread around the nation. We didn't fear the government or Mubarak but our own people. The triggering of this event brought out the best and worst of Egyptians. The looters started breaking into homes, raping girls (one of them the daughter of a friend of mine), stealing whatever they could and threatening citizens with the guns they stole. The sound of gunfire echoed all over the city.

Sounds like creating pretexts for imposing martial law.

unfortunately I agree with that

Anyone know if the shooting is still going on? Not finding any reports from the last couple of hours.

Doesn't sound like it. Looks like things have calmed down some as morning has broke.

A bunch of video from down on the ground at Tahrir Square here: http://bambuser.com/channel/RamyRaoof/broadcast/1378380

well, i mean, per the guardian, the army is "dispersing" the mubarak goons, so that's (obligatory bet-hedge here) promising/better than them being allowed to let rip

I think one bit of the army dispersed one lot of Mubarak thugs, but that does not mean that the army is definitively intervening in favour of the pro-democracy people.

horrible footage of one of the supporters being dragged from his horse.

The one famous Egyptian politician we haven't heard from yet is the geezer in charge of the pyramids etc, the guy in the Indiana Jones hat who's usually always trying to get his face on the telly

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/11/xin_372020612081229610051.jpg

http://progressiverealist.org/blogpost/al-jazeera-spotlight

Al Jazeera is generally hesitant to shine a critical spotlight on states and political organizations that it views as a part of the Islamist "resistance" against Israel. This explains its sympathetic reporting towards Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah. It also provides some insight into why its coverage of the PA, Fatah, Egypt, and other Western-leaning states tends to be so hostile.

Again, though, the point is the following: that despite the extremely important role that Al Jazeera has played in Tunisia and Egypt, it is not a given that the network will continue to be at the forefront of propelling future protest movements in the region. Al Jazeera has its own editorial line, and it is also restricted by its Qatari patrons. The network was very late in covering the initial demonstrations in Egypt, for example, which some analysts speculate may have been because Mubarak's government cut some sort of deal with Qatari authorities. Or perhaps it was because the Qatari monarchy was worried about its own skin -- that another burgeoning protest movement, so soon after Tunisia, might eventually encourage an uprising back at home. Whatever the case, this is not to say that Al Jazeera won't cover additional uprisings in the Arab world -- the network most certainly will, or it risks losing credibility (not to mention market share.) But it is quite possible that, in countries like Syria or Saudi Arabia, about which the network has historically tended to give more favorable coverage, that its reporting will be much less sympathetic towards the ambitions of the protesters.

i have to admit that nearly as fascinating to me as the events themselves has been the insanity of the right wing in analyzing it. insane in a more confused and self-contradictory way than usual.

here's a pretty good "yup, they went there" roundup from tpm

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/right_wing_reacts_to_egypt_protests_obama_is_in_le.php

i hadn't heard some of these