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

Speaking of it being all about the US, I see in a Washington Post editorial that a Egypt working group made up of moderate Dems and neo-con Republicans like E. Abrams who profess to want democracy around the world, are complaining that Obama's State Department is not encouraging Mubarak to move faster on leaving and instituting reforms.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/08/AR2011020805786.html?sub=AR

No surprise that the media is also reporting that Israel, Jordan and Saudia Arabia are all pressuring the US to move slow with its political efforts in Egypt.

welp

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67351/joshua-stacher/egypts-democratic-mirage

Despite the tenacity, optimism, and blood of the protesters massed in Tahrir Square, Egypt's democratic window has probably already closed.

Contrary to the dominant media narrative, over the last ten days the Egyptian state has not experienced a regime breakdown. The protests have certainly rocked the system and have put Mubarak on his heels, but at no time has the uprising seriously threatened Egypt's regime. Although many of the protesters, foreign governments, and analysts have concentrated on the personality of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, those surrounding the embattled president, who make up the wider Egyptian regime, have made sure the state's viability was never in question. This is because the country's central institution, the military, which historically has influenced policy and commands near-monopolistic economic interests, has never balked.

and with Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, et al urging "restraint," it ain't bloody likely.

http://grab.by/8RvP

think they would rather have bread than freedom tbh

Btw, that guy's in Yemen, not Egypt.

Recent Krugman column connected the steep rise in food prices, especially wheat (think: bread), with the widespread unrest in the middle east. He then connected the steep rise in food prices to crop failures and reduced yields caused by extreme weather events. He then connected these weather events with global climate change.

Thank you, Paul Krugman. Someone needs to be saying these things out loud in the media. He's the only one I can think of, offhand.

given the level of unrest/strikes/riots still going on in Egypt dunno if stacher is really right there

Wael Ghonim: This is no longer the time to negotiate, unfortunately. We went on the street on the 25th, and we wanted to negotiate, we wanted to talk to our government. We were, you know knocking the door. They decided to negotiate with us at
night, with rubber bullets, with police sticks, with water hoses, with teargas, tanks and with arresting about 500 people.... Thanks, you know, we got the message.

lol

Xpost, krugman's drawing from Joe Romm (Climate Progress), who has been repeatedly drawing attention to the issue in recent weeks, who in turn has been pointing to Lester Brown (earth policy institute, food/climate expert), but yeah, ad usual no one is willing to make the connection.

I think people are hesitant to do it because look what happened to Krugman: the Atlantic immediately ran the headline "Paul Krugman blames global warming for middle east uprisings"

In fact, Krugman presented a nuanced argument, that climate change was likely a contributing factor, and unfortunately a factor that will be impacting food production more and more as time passes since, you know, we're not doing anything about it.

yeah i read that article and liked it but sort of half-prepared myself for exactly what you say the Atlantic did

light is shed on the protest organizers http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/world/middleeast/10youth.html

King warned Obama Saudi could fund Egypt

that headline is

strange

There was a ":paper" at the end which made it even worse. It refers to today's time front page story but that is behind a paywall.

US internet memes go global

http://chzmemebase.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/memes-y-u-no-mubarak.jpg

BREAKING NEWS10:32 AM ET
Egyptian Army Officers Are Meeting to Discuss Taking Over Government, State TV Reports

Murbarak quits tonight

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704132204576136101983949120.html

question i guess is to what extent the military are willing to yield to reform and how the protestors react

AP: military commander for Cairo area, told 1000s of protesters in Tahrir Square: "All your demands will be met today"

lmao via @hoosteen

AriFleischer Ari Fleischer
If I were an Egyptian protester, I'd be careful of saying "Mission Accomplished" too soon...
26 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

i guess Mubarak isn't a big Foreign Policy reader

Murbarak quits tonight

amazing. so awesome.

it is!

Except, like always, it's just the miltary making sure that their poltical liability goes away. What are the chances Egypt will really get a truly democratic regime where the Emergency Law is gone and the Mukhabarat are disbanded or at least disempowered and restrained?

i think theyll get something, as far as ~truly democratic~ not likely, tho who knows theres an opening which is more than before

http://i1.nyt.com/images/2011/02/11/world/11egypt3/11egypt3-hpLarge.jpg

whats up w/grabbing this guys head

itll be interesting to see across the middle east the effect of egypt/tunisia acting as a proof of concept - will these governments be able to put the genie back in the bottle

What are the chances Egypt will really get a truly democratic regime

Probably about the chance any of us will anywhere -- not terribly likely. But any kind of representation is better than no kind of representation.

What are the chances Egypt ends up like Turkey used to be, "democratic" with a military that acted with impunity

itd be a big improvement

If there is a tacit understanding, as there was under the Ataturk regime, that 'this is the system you get, guaranteed by the Army, and here's how representative it will be' and they stick to those rules, it will at least assure the ppl that the regime is sticking to its rules.

The same problem besets Iran; they fake elections, eschew any kind of accountability for their excesses, blame 'foreign spies', etc...

"truly democratic"

I can't think of a single country that is "truly democratic" lol

I am cheering improvement here, not the attainment of perfection

you could replace 'truly democratic' w/'liberal democracy' if that helps

Okay, fine, let's not quibble over what is 'truly democratic', let's just say a regime where there is enough freedom of assembly to form parties, fair enough elections that they are properly represented in the Majlis Al-Sha-ab, a chance to get rid of the 1980 constitutional amendment which gives the President 88 votes in the Al-Shura and some kind of fair balance btw civilian and military auhtority.

Also some kind of real habeas corpus.

well I am hopeful for all those things. but we'll see.

I am cheering improvement here, not the attainment of perfection

true, the protestors would grow old and gray in that square waiting for the military to cede power. will take decades.

^ yeah, i'd agree with that, but that's fine in a historical sense.

just talking out my ass here, in order for liberalism to take hold and be a force to be reckoned with in a society, a constituency of liberals has to grow. the events of the past few days point to a lot of bottled up energy in egypt for such a thing but it's hard to know numbers, and decades of emergency/military/autocratic rule means there aren't any other institutions to turn to

Frankly, giving the military their due maybe the only guarantor of liberalism, perhaps more so than democracy.

O RLY? Egypt's army 'involved in detentions and torture'

yeah didn't mean to snark, this is a real improvement. xpost

what army isn't involved with that

there are plenty of countries that have made transitions from authoritarian gov'ts to better ones, all people want to talk about is iran or maybe turkey. there are plenty of latin american examples... pinochet still has his defenders!

you could replace 'truly democratic' w/'liberal democracy' if that helps

― ice cr?m, Thursday, February 10, 2011 12:00 PM

liberal! u mean moonbat!?!?

that's a little fractured, what i meant is that the 'bad regime' never really disappears because there are always people left who loved it.

xp

Egypt Charges Government Figures with Corruption

Egypt's state prosecutor has launched a corruption investigation against three former government ministers and a member of parliament from Egypt's ruling National Democratic party, as protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square continued anti-government demonstrations for a 17th day.

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Egypt-Charges-Government-Figures-with-Corruption-115720774.html

Murbarak quits tonight

amazing. so awesome.

― lmao reminisces about his days in southern china (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, February 10, 2011 11:25 AM

it is!

― ice cr?m, Thursday, February 10, 2011 11:28 AM

http://www.biomedresearches.com/root/images/Animated-Flag-Egypt.gif

like the CIA guy said to Charlie Wilson, "We'll see."