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

from what I can tell there are PLENTY of weapons in Syria, the bigger issue is probably organizational - safe communications, supply lines, etc.

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/02/29/venezuela-aids-syria-regime-with-fuel-shipments/

This does not help

http://news.yahoo.com/terrified-residents-syrian-border-cities-quseirare-fleeing-lebanon-103500866.html

Not entirely convinced given the sources (Stratfor via Wikileaks, Jerusalem Post), but anyway:

Alawite defections from Syrian army may be on rise

In a video posted on the Internet, Abdo Hussameldin, the deputy oil minister, said he had defected from President Bashar al-Assad’s government, making him one of the highest-ranking civilian officials to bail on Mr. Assad in the increasingly chaotic insurgency, which the United Nations estimates has left at least 7,500 people dead.

But
http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/222843/u.s._officials_warn_against_syrian_intervention.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/egypts-ngo-raids-are-a-full-frontal-assault-on-civil-society/2012/03/11/gIQAP1jx5R_story.html

This is the 2nd piece I have read suggesting that Fayza Aboulnaga, Egypt’s minister for planning and international cooperation, a holdover from the Mubarak regime, is a problematic presence

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/12/analysis-stopping-syria-via-russia/

We'll see if US efforts to get Russia to alter their view will work. I'm skeptical

The Obama administration has decided to resume funding for Egypt’s military and will bypass congressional requirements that U.S. officials certify the country’s progress toward democracy, according to Capitol Hill aides.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-to-resume-aid-to-egypt/2012/03/22/gIQA3B3UUS_story.html

This decision seems wrong to me

The post-Gaddaffi Libyan situation has now created chaos in Mali

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46813540

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/syrian-rebels-running-out-of-ammunition-as-government-presses-offensive/2012/03/22/gIQA05CNUS_story.html

Can I advocate supporting the Syrian rebels without sounding like a neo-con and their not well thought out ideas regarding Iraq, Iran and Syria?

x-post-I guess that Malian coup will prevent the election scheduled there in around a month

So I am sure the EU's new sanctions on Assad's wife will cause her hubby to give up.

The £3,795 that Asma Assad spent on a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes with crystal heels, or the £29,200 she spent on candlesticks and chandeliers from Paris, were just a fraction of the real price that Syria’s First Lady will have to pay for such excesses. They are about to cost her

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syria-accepts-annans-peace-plan-china-russia-also-on-board/2012/03/27/gIQAjav7dS_story.html

I knew it, his wife made him do this. (yes I am kidding )

crystal heels....

He's gonna break this deal though, the question is how soon

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-soft-landing-for-syria-that-could-oust-assad/2012/03/28/gIQAKhkNhS_story.html?hpid=z3

W. Post columnist is optimistic about this plan (but no mention of candlesticks, chandeliers, and crystal heels)

US State Department folks were on NPR this morning defending the renewal of US military aid to Egypt. An Egyptian blogger who was interviewed (and who had been previously jailed) disagreed.

http://www.negrophonic.com/2012/cairo-city-of-sand/

DJ Rupture's week in Cairo

via Greenwald, long NYT Mag piece on lawlessness and militia rule in post-Qaddafi Libya:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/in-libya-the-captors-have-become-the-captive.html

Also, from Tuesday's NYT:

Truckloads of armed men attacked the Tripoli headquarters of Libya’s interim prime minister on Tuesday, in a new demonstration of the lawlessness pervading the capital just weeks before a scheduled national election. . . . Security in the capital is negligible, and gunfights between armed groups from rival neighborhoods or towns are a frequent occurrence in its streets. . . .

“You know that security here is a big joke,” Fathi Baja, a council member, said at the time. With an antiaircraft gun mounted on a pickup truck, he said, “you can do whatever you want — nobody can stop you.”

So Greenwald is pointing out that Libya is now chaotic. Ok. But if the US and the others involved in getting rid of Q, had instead decided to stick around to help maintain order in the transition, wouldn't Greenwald be grumbling about the US and Western powers being in yet another country?

Or is he arguing that a Q dictatorship was preferable in a Mussolini trains run on time kinda way.

this seems stupid. of course it's chaotic, they're remaking their country after 50 years.

it's the NYT not GG dooing the reporting.... All that's being illustrated is you don't get to go "yay, victory, democracy via bombs and an execution, cue Star Wars medal theme."

so, Rumsfeld-style "messiness"

pretty sure 99% of democracies started with bombs/executions tbh

generally speaking peaceful transitions from one form of government to another don't happen

Around 1/3 of Americans were loyalists during the Revolution and many were tarred and feathered (usually fatally) and forcibly disposssed of their property. Also, the Whiskey Rebellion....

I want Libya's Thomas Jefferson and "yay democracy" now(we'll ignore some of TJ's faults)

Perhaps someone who know Libya's people, and who saw the mistakes in Iraq, can make a case that the US and the West could have avoided some (but not all) of this Rumsfeld style messyiness and aided in a transition by doing x, y and z, and getting a, b, and c involved.

http://www.afriquejet.com/libya-nears-key-moment-in-democratic-transition-2012051138274.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0927/Lessons-for-US-in-Libya-s-transition-Avoid-mistakes-of-Iraq-Afghanistan

Election in Egypt today. Runoff likely

DJ Rupture on Egyptian radio in below link

http://www.negrophonic.com/2012/radio-cairo/

"It is a shock. I don't want either one, so I am not going to vote."
AHMED KABANY, an engineer, on the upcoming Egyptian election for president, in which a hardline Islamist is facing off against an authoritarian former general.

from NY Times

and there's this bit of sad, horrible news too

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/bombardment-of-syrian-village-leaves-more-than-90-dead-activists-say/2012/05/26/gJQAQcwBsU_story.html

32 children under the age of 10 killed

WTF WTF WTF

no kidding!

I don't really understand the ruling - on what basis were all the parliamentary election rules "illegal"? the way the US press reports on these things (with absolutely zero understanding of Egyptian jurisprudence) just makes it sound like a naked power grab.

• Egypt's political transition has been thrown into chaos by a court ruling which invalidates the recent parliamentary election where Islamists won a majority. The court ruled that the system for electing a third of the MPs was unconstitutional and its decision is being seen as a "soft coup" for the military.

• Former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq has been cleared to contest this weekend's presidential run off against the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi. The court ruled that banning Shafiq as member of the former regime was unconstitutional. There was a heavy police presence outside the court as activists gathered to protest against the verdict. The Muslim Brotherhood said it accepted the verdict on Shafiq.

from gaurdian, today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle-east-live/2012/jun/14/syria-crisis-war-crimes-evidence-live

The court ruled that the system for electing a third of the MPs was unconstitutional

I thought they didn't even have a constitution! they're getting a new one on Friday...?

http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/14/cairo_s_judicial_coup

ah okay, this is the answer I was looking for

The parliamentary election law also ran against past SCC rulings requiring independents to have the same chances to get elected as party members. Of course, since the two-thirds of seats assigned to party lists were written into the constitutional declaration (as amended in September 2011), so that could not be challenged easily. But for the remaining one-third the case of unconstitutionality was easier to make. (Past rulings rested in part on constitutional rights in the 1971 constitution that had been removed from the March 2011 constitutional declaration, as Harvard's Tarek Masoud has pointed out. But there was still strong jurisprudence suggesting that the court regarded the system as discriminatory against Egyptians who were not members of any party.)

Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel-Prize winning diplomat who withdrew from the presidential election in January because of the military's continued hold on power, warned that electing a president with no Parliament and no constitution was a recipe for dictatorship.

As the state-owned Ahram Online reports, Mr. ElBaradei "proposed two solutions to the current crisis: the first would be the formation of a 'presidential council' tasked with choosing members of the Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution, along with the appointment of a 'national salvation' government to preside over fresh parliamentary and presidential elections once a new constitution is written. The second solution proposed by ElBaradei would be to elect an interim president who would then appoint a national salvation government and preside over a consensual committee tasked with choosing Constituent Assembly members, with presidential and parliamentary polls to be held once a new constitution has been drafted."

Mr. ElBaradei's was been calling for such an arrangement for months, and warning that the conditions in Egypt are still not right for a presidential election.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/latest-updates-on-electoral-turmoil-in-egypt/

alas, looks like the "cynics" were right.

There's a documentary film making the rounds in which the Tahrir demonstrators voice skepticism (in Feb 2011) about all this "support" from the army.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/tahrir-liberation-square/6336

What a mess.

Then there's this

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/06/egypt-muslim-brotherhood-islamic-banking-.html

the Brotherhood’s economic policies may run counter to demands for social justice and better living conditions for Egypt’s poor.

“Their economic doctrine is not really attentive to social justice; it is very right-wing capitalist,” Sherif said. “They aren’t interested in any social restructuring that can be disruptive to this, especially in Egypt, because there are liberals who are widely represented in the economy.”

from what i know it's hard to place the economics of the country or its parties' proposals. the generals/military/ruling party own everything worth owning. a "right wing capitalist" position could mean making them divest everything. or nationalizing it and then selling off, or whatever.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/15/egypt-mohamed-elbaradei-warning

At times ElBaradei has been viewed as an opposition figurehead who occupied the rare position of being able to command respect from revolutionaries, secular liberals and political Islamists. On Friday, though, he spoke out against a catalogue of revolutionary mismanagement on all sides, with his harshest words reserved for the Muslim Brotherhood – whose role in the past year's "transition process" has led many pro-change activists to blame political Islamists for empowering the military and being sucked into an electoral game designed to give the old regime a facade of democratic legitimacy.

I wish Nahguib Mahfouz had lived to see this and write about it

He also argued that revolutionary momentum had been stalled by the failure of young protesters to embrace institutional leadership – wading into a thorny debate over the relative merits of horizontal and "leaderless" political change about which many activists feel strongly.

"The mortal mistake was that from day one the youth never agreed on a unified demand and never agreed to delegate authority to a group of people to speak on their behalf," said ElBaradei.

heh

i miss mahfouz too.

ElBaradei drinking too much tea w/ US Democrats