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

fairly stated

cnn showing some horrific shit, just showed a tape of a fire truck plowing into a crowd and running over a handful of people at a high rate of speed. same thing happened with an civilian opposition forces truck.

soooo things going well so far today...?

not really apropos to what's happening now but damn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farouk_of_Egypt

Farouk was widely condemned for his corrupt and ineffectual governance, the continued British occupation, and the Egyptian army's failure to prevent the loss of 78% of Palestine to the newly formed State of Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Public discontent against Farouk rose to new levels.[citation needed] In the CIA, the project to overthrow King Farouk, known internally known as "Project FF [Fat Fucker]"[6], was initiated by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. The CIA was disappointed in King Farouk for not improving the functionality and usefulness of his government [7] and had supported the coup d'état against King Farouk by not opposing the efforts of the free officers to overthrow him.[8] Finally, on 23 July 1952, the Free Officers Movement under Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser staged a military coup that launched the Egyptian Revolution of 1952.

fucking kermit roosevelet

goole have you ever read all the shahs men

no!

there was an interesting blog post in that al jazeera feed about how the underlying issue in all this is really civilian oversight of the military

xp

recommended! its about how kermit roosevelt jr, basically all by himself, took out mossadegh and installed the shah of iran. its like a cracking, deeply infuriating spy novel.

"Project FF [Fat Fucker]"

ah the CIA of the 50s

cool max i'll look out for that

yeah that fucker had his finger in a lot of cia imperialist pies

NY Times:
Live television footage of Cairo's central Tahrir Square resumed Friday, but it appeared that some foreign journalists were still being detained, and fresh reports of attacks on reporters and news organizations suggested that the effort to stifle the flow of news out of Egypt had slowed but not ended.

a bunch of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Int'l people are missing and reportedly being held by the army in the burbs somewhere

Kermit sure got around but let's be fair, the combination of Farouk, the Wafd and the British was just too much for Egyptian nationalism to bear after awhile.

the underlying issue in all this is really civilian oversight of the military

This what is depressing me. The military have ruled Egypt since its independence and I find it hard to believe they'll give that up, though they may be fine w/getting rid of Mubarak if they have to.

http://grab.by/8Mas

The military have ruled Egypt since its independence and I find it hard to believe they'll give that up, though they may be fine w/getting rid of Mubarak if they have to.

― Le mépris vient de la tête, la haine vient du cœur (Michael White), Friday, February 4, 2011 12:33 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im sure theres a lot true abt that but were it totally accurate mubarak would already be gone no - no one ever fully controls anything much less a lol hueg complex country - this display of people power and its resultant chaos is a real threat to everyone w/a vested interest

From the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/02/inside-and-outside-tahrir-square.html

The protesters who had been fighting on that corner for two days were grimy but happy; they ate a breakfast of cheap rough country baladi bread and foil-covered triangles of Laughing Cow cheese. Mohammed Gazi, a chemist, wanted the world to know that they were not eating “Kentucky”—a reference to taunts from the pro-Mubarak people about Kentucky Fried Chicken, meaning that the protesters were being fed by the America and the West.

mubarak would already be gone no

Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak all had to play internal politics to get to the top but as military men, even if not toppled by a coup, they're susceptible to the argument that they need to either fall on their sword or get pushed into falling on their sword for the good of the military and the country.

My friend's wife (an Italian reporter) was detained, questioned , had her camera seized, but was thankfully released in the past hour.

Farouk was widely condemned for his corrupt and ineffectual governance

guy knew how to party though

no kentucky jus loling cow nbd - btw i saw a picture of some bandaged but resilient protestors earlier and was struck by how old they were - it was like 10 fully middle aged guys out there mixing it up - impressive!

http://english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images/2011/2/3/201123114815699784_20.jpg

Is that guy wearing a Gunners' jacket?

Egyptian FA suspends football indefinitely

xxp Some protester a couple days back was talking about having to physically drag away an elderly professor who was throwing rocks at the front lines by the 6th of October bridge.

so now that egypt is grabbing all the headlines, i have no idea what's going on in Tunisia now.

Mohamed Beltagui, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Islamist group that had been the major opposition in Egypt until the secular youth revolt, said that the organization would not run a candidate in any election to succeed Mr. Mubarak as president.

He said his members wanted to rebut Mr. Mubarak’s argument to the West that his iron-fisted rule was a crucial bulwark against Islamic extremism. “It is not a retreat,” he said in an interview at the group’s informal headquarters in the square. “It is to take away the scare tactics that Hosni Mubarak uses to deceive the people here and abroad that he should stay in power.”

smart positioning here

Wow, that is amazing. Good for them.

it's really rather breathtaking how politically shrewd these demonstrations have been, especially without any kind of leadership or structure - the protesters seem to instinctively know precisely which positions will reinforce their leverage (secular, non violent, inclusive), and carefully avoided tactics that would allow them to be more easily demonized. really ingenious almost every step of the way.

Otm.

That's the advantage of having an educated, cosmopolitan middle class that is separate from the ruling establishment. Seems like Saudi Arabia and other emirates don't really have that. Makes this kind of revolution less likely, I imagine.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104576121663451288944.html

crazy story -- imromptu government among the protesters occupying tahrir square, and the somewhat mysterious presence and actions of the military in all this

the whole thing is somewhat mysterious, firstly i hope egypt gets an improved government, after that i really want to know wtf exactly happened

first reporter killed: http://cpj.org/2011/02/press-attacks-cairo-reporter-dies.php

My colleague, along with four other members of the Malaysian press, were detained and questioned for two hours yesterday but are safe now, thankfully. One of their attackers was carrying a gun, the rest were armed with knives.

the whole thing is somewhat mysterious, firstly i hope egypt gets an improved government, after that i really want to know wtf exactly happened

http://suziweissman.com/

listening to her show today and the first guest emphasized the caprice? (cant find the right word but its close) of successful revolutions he'd studied and how forensics on the exact whys whens and ways a given revolution goes down is usually harder than it seems if not close to impossible (in revolutions w/o a flashpoint event i'm assuming). he didn't get too much deeper than that in the short segment and you're probably asking from a less metaphysical/generic standpoint (hey it was on pacifica) but the comment jogged my memory

yeah that sounds abt right

the NDP leadership resigned. suleiman wants to form an interim government with the prime minister and the defense minister and they're discussing "plans to remove [Mubarak] from the presidential palace". this from here.

i'm assuming an interim government led by an intelligence guy and featuring the secretary of defense is a valentine to the army.

the American envoy says Mubarak should stay for the time being. so i guess that's that..

Presumably/hopefully indicates a facesaving interregnum being plotted out in advance of elections. If so may be a not-bad outcome, though will be spun badly.

KCET in los angeles is airing the English Al Jazerra feed. they've just reported that an Egyptian gas plant was damaged by an explosion. This plant supplies 80% of the power to Jordan; and egypt will suspend power to Jordan for a week while repairs are made. Not good.

!!

If Jordan is relying on a single plant for 80% of their power, that was also "not good". Are there any articles about this you can link to? crazy.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/20112514224368313.html this one says 40%. either way, with Jordan getting all of it's gas from Egypt, the instability in Egypt will spread through the pipelines to Jordan.

Oh, ignore that - it says that 40% of Israel's imports come from Egypt. Need to stop skimming things.

It sounds like this isn't that big of a deal. Gas supply can be rerouted and the damage is not that extensive. Apparently Jordan will not have a disruption in gas supply. There is some suggestion of sabotage though, which could be a troubling new chapter in this saga.

xpost

i was just walking through a kind of confused demonstration in downtown portland's pioneer square and one guy's sign said WE ARE ALL EGYPTIONS.

We are all Egyptrons

ha ha!

Sarah Palin weighs in on Obama's handling of the situation:

"And nobody yet has, nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak and no, not, not real enthused about what it is that that’s being done on a national level and from D.C. in regards to understanding all the situation there in Egypt."

I love when she gets quoted word for word.

i have a headache just from reading that quote