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

http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/13/lamborghini_morsi

After long weeks of political gridlock and stagnation, Egypt's elected President Mohammed el-Morsi suddenly hit the gas over the weekend. Over the span of a few days, Morsi removed the head of General Intelligence, the head of the Military Police, the top two senior leaders of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and the heads of all the military services. In addition to this SCAF-Quake, Morsi also canceled the controversial Constitutional amendments promulgated by the SCAF just before he took office and issued a new, equally controversial amendment and roadmap of his own. What's more, this all came after he replaced the editors of major state-owned newspapers with people viewed as sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and cracked down on several other critical papers. Zero to 180 in three days -- even Usain Bolt would be impressed by that acceleration. Swirv.

not really sure what 'swirv' means in that context tbh

oh ha i just figure it out. carry on...

The fundamental problem remains one of trust and the absence of legitimate institutions. The political polarization of the last year and a half, fueled by all too many political and rhetorical mistakes on all sides, has left profound scars. The Shafiq voters in the Presidential election have hardly reconciled themselves to Morsi, and most activists and revolutionaries remain as alienated as ever from a political struggle dominated by the military and the Brotherhood. On top of the polarization comes the legal Calvinball, where rules and legal institutions are fundamentally contested and no arbiter has uncontested judicial authority. And then there's the regrettable absence of a Parliament, another casualty of the pre-election institutional warfare. With so much in flux and so much distrust, every move, no matter how minor, becomes deeply laden with potential treachery and disaster. And this was no minor move.

In most cases, I would think that the removal of the SCAF's senior leadership and the assertion of civilian control by an elected government would be celebrated as a major triumph in the push for a transition to a civil, democratic state. But the deeply rooted fears of the Muslim Brotherhood, fueled by recognition of their popular strength and doubts about their democratic convictions, prevents any easy acceptance of that reading in many quarters. That's why the next few weeks will be crucial, as Morsi makes clear what kind of constitutional process he really intends and as the military and the anti-Islamist trends in Egyptian politics weigh their next moves.

go morsi!!!

sudan now?

http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/28/sudans_protests

i thought sudan barely has govt as it is??

omar bashir is still around, that's all i know tbh

exactly how eager for war w/Syria is Turkey...? this whole thing seems to be spiralling into worst-case-scenario territory

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324399404578583932317286550.html wow at the WSJ :

"Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy."

rolling middle east 2013 thread

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/egypt-sentences-3-al-jazeera-reporters

US keeps giving Egypt military aid so that it can have an influence there, says the US gov. This latest "trial" again shows the lack of influence

Oops, already discussed over in this other thread:

Rolling MENA 2014

Why Obama and Clinton make no secrets of seeking out Kissinger for advice and photo ops. They're his children.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/16/egypts-u-s-backed-military-regime-brutalizing-student-protestors/

I'm with you re this one.

we like giving lip service to democracy but what we really want more than anything else is stability and our economic interests secure. that trumps everything.

In the world of realpolitik those have always trumped everything. And an oligarchy is more likely to align with our interests than would a democracy atm, because current U.S. government functions as an oligarchy more than a democracy.

i think it's facile to say that an oligarchy will necessarily have the same or similar interests as another oligarchy. that would make geopolitics much simpler than it is.

also US foreign policy has never been subject to the sort of "democracy" that domestic politics have

but you'll get no argument from me re. our egypt policy being atrocious

Q: is "realpolitik" really just a 20th Century term for "the way empire has always functioned"?

we don't have an empire, i heard Bill Maher say so.

this is the thread where we self-congratulatorily affirm the fact of an american empire to one another

http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/album-cover-rage-against-the-machine-evil-empire.jpg

woah lol huge soz

@sharifkouddous
State Dept official in 2010 email from Egypt to Hillary Clinton about Mubarak government: "They love you here"

https://twitter.com/sharifkouddous/status/711883543601942528

Ergodan below 50%

🔴#SONDAKİKA | Anadolu Ajansı'na göre Tayyip Erdoğan'ın oyu %50'nin altına düştü. (%49.99)

— ibrahim Haskoloğlu (@haskologlu) May 14, 2023

*Erdogan