There might, or might not, be something happening in Egypt. ABC’s The Drum has a Twitter feed following developments.
This is an open thread to discuss the events there.
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Nothing resonates with greater authority than the demand for modern democracy. The citizens of Egypt are giving the west a lesson.
It seems Mubarak has made a specch saying he will stay, will lift the emergency law and will begin the transfer to a new govt, some are saying that in the speech he effectively transferred his powers to the sulliedman, but there are always rumours coming out Egypts twitter feeds that may or may not be true.
Apparently Wael Ghonim DID NOT call for the protesters to go home although there are countless reports he did.
The one thing that seems to be sure is that the crowd didn’t like his speech.
Yesterday there were lawyers, doctors, academics and civil servants protesting against the govt, and throughout Egypt people have been disappearing etc according to reports so I don’t think anyone will settle for OS or HM staying.
http://bambuser.com/channel/RamyRaoof/broadcast/1404332
Thats Ramy Raoof with live video from Maspero in the last half an hour.
Mubarek The Misunderstood:
Dear, oh dear, the slings and arrows of an ungrateful nation must be almost too difficult for a philanthropist like Mubarek to bear. El Presidente’s sacrifices for Egypt included accumulating his personel net worth of $70 billion.
A worker who can bring home $3 for a day’s labour is considered a good little earner. Most get around $2. Millions can’t get a job.
Interesting title given to an Army statement before the President’s speech:
“Egyptian television interrupted all programming to present footage of a panel of senior military officers, one of whom read out a statement described as “communique number one” of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.”
[quoted on 'The Age' website]
Doesn’t “communique number one” have the whiff of coup?
@5. Ambigulous I heard that meeting took place without Mubarak, (head of armed forces) and that was the first time this had happened, so perhaps it was a coup? I doubt Mubarak would take any notice of that either.
Sulieman threatened one on national television the other night.
There will be a new word in Egyptian within a year based on Mubarak. And meaning something unpleasant that won’t go away. I have seen hundreds of variations on the joke over the last day or two.
There have been calls for 20 million people on the street today after Friday prayers. Thats a third of the country. I dunno how realistic that number is but it’d be amazing to see.
AlMasry AlYoum in it’s round up of other Egyptian media reports that the hegemony of the ruling party over state press is crumbling…
Al-Gomhorriya, (state-owned paper), dedicates its entire page to the pictures of “Egypt’s Martyrs” who lost their lives in recent weeks.
Al-Akhbar’s (state run) front-page: “Protests escalate in governorates” and “The masses siege the parliament.”
The top headline in Al-Ahram 9state run) is “The protesters force the government to move its meeting to Heliopolis.”
(Privately owned) Al-Dostour’ front-page unveils the land grab of corrupt Egyptian ex-officials under Mubarak.
The independent paper writes that no one can determine the exact amount of state lands seized by ex-ministers and wealthy businessmen. However, sources estimate that 6 million acres of land–value LE2 trillion–have been illegally occupied to establish resorts, tourist villages and residential compounds, says the report.
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/thursday%E2%80%99s-papersconstitutional-amendments-land-seizure-potential-presidential-palace-seige
Well, let’s not be coy. There are shit loads of things happening in Egypt. They may even be as important as Labor getting 32% in Newspoll.
@Robert Bollard, I don’t feel myself across enough detail about the situation in Egypt to make snarky blog posts about it. I’m just watching with my heart in my mouth.
http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/
Impossible to stop this momentum now. Impressively peaceful regime change operation thus far. Preferable to the American invasion of Iraq. Suleiman will end up taking asylum where?
wbb,
I hope you’re right, but there doesn’t seem to be any signficant movement yet. The army is at the core of the current regime and they don’t appear to be doing much but waiting and hoping that the protests run out of steam.
Mubarek’s gone! Allez Les Peuples!
Under the current Egyptian constitution, the Speaker of the Parliament should replace the dead/resigned president.
Instead, a military coup has subverted the Egyptian constitution.
Good riddance to the old constitution?
Whatever, Egypt now needs a new constitution.
Bush tried to foist a conservative, pro-business, secular constitution on Iraq. Notoriously, he failed. Instead, Iraq got a Shiite-dominated theocratic constitution engineered by a coalition of very able Iraqi Shiite political infighters.
What will Egypt make of this rare opportunity — a conservative, pro-business, secular constitution, or something different?
Robert Bollard, at the time I put up the post what I should have said was that things were happening; what those things were, and what they might mean, was as clear as mud.
Katz@14
Mubarak has left the building, but the regime remains intact. Nobody should imagine that Suleiman and the ‘Military Council’ will voluntarily allow any actual democracy to take place. Only continued direct action will force a democratic result. The moment the mass of people decide they’ve won and go home, the brutal crackdown on identified leaders of the popular movement will begin.
Democracy is the very last thing the hegemonic powers want to see breaking out in Egypt. Doubtless US and Israeli agents are already working with their Egyptian counterparts in the preparation of hit lists and readying black sites for reception of large numbers.
Perhaps, Hal9000…
An early indicator is whether there are calls for a process to institute a new constitution, who makes those calls, what level of force backs up those calls, what constitutional proposals are aired, and what current administrators of the remains of the old regime do in response to those calls.
One option, as you say, is the use, by those current administrators, of black sites, of which Egypt already has plenty. Ask Mamdouh Habib and his ASIO torturer.
Hurray, the swine has gone! I think Mubarak is lucky he didn’t go the way that Romanian fellow, Ceausescu, did in 1989.
I guess the future is very murky indeed for Egypt, especially with the likes of US and Israel trying to stick spokes in the wheel. But today is a good day, regardless.
Hal9000, according to some reports thousands of people have already disappeared during this uprising. But I’ve seen photos of some “black sites” that have been burnt out by protesters.
Most likely, tho I don’t think the Egyptians are ready to go home just yet. Not until at least the whole regime is gone and the state of emergency lifted. I think the idea is they will go home to get changed on the day of the first free and fair election, before dressing up and going out to vote. (OK I’m being silly, but my impression is the people on the street aren’t stupid especially those that have been there since the start. They know exactly whats going on and they know that it ain’t over yet.)
Good luck to the people of Egypt- they’ll need it.
As others have said, the regime is intact and it’s been very very good at managing public calls for reform (whih have been going on for at least the last ten years). On each occasion, the constitutional changes have been tailored to the advantage of the regime.
Though this does seem to be a much more significant challenge.
A couple of tweets from Sharif Kouddrous:
I’m having my first post-Mubarak beer
and more to the point
Thanks to everyone for the congrats. A big battle has been won but the war is far from over. We celebrate tonight, tomorrow we struggle on
Might have a beer for the protesters this arvo, its kind of appropriate as they have been brewing there for millenia.
Hooray, the first of many demands by the protestors has been met!
The ruling party is crumbling with mass resignations.
Several key figures submitted their resignations on Friday from Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) before and after President Hosni Mubarak stepped down and handed power to the military.
The list includes the recently appointed general secretary of the NDP Hossam Badrawi.
Abdel Monim Saeed, chairman of the state-run daily Al-Ahram and member of the Policies Secretariat.
The Head of the Lawyers’ Syndicate, Hamdy Khalifa, also resigned.
Media reports also suggest that all members of the recently appointed NDP’s political bureau are to submit their resignations within few hours.
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/list-resignations-egypt%E2%80%99s-ruling-national-democratic-party
I do hope you are right, Katz. Tariq Ali in the Guardian sounds an optimistic note, and also points out the positive impact these events will have in other regional tyrannies.
I have noted, however, that abductions, disappearances and tales of torture and mistreatment of citizens and foreign journalists have continued and indeed increased right up until the present moment. The torturers and their superiors are not dependent on Egyptian taxpayers for their well-stuffed pay packets.
In all likelihood the real reason for acquiescence to the people’s demands now is that soldiers on the ground could not be relied on to massacre their fellow citizens. The first priority therefore was to avoid mutiny while still giving the impression of being in control. There appears however not to have been any widespread organised fraternisation – that is, soldiers and junior officers haven’t been actively joining demonstrations in any numbers. The ruling elite haven’t yet had guns pointed at them. If there is to be a purge, it will commence within the military.
Zurich–Switzerland has frozen assets possibly belonging to Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down as president of Egypt Friday after 30 years of rule, a spokesman for the foreign ministry said.
reported in AlMasry AlYoum
jules@19 and Katz passim
I agree that the people have displayed extraordinary perseverance thus far and have not fallen for the various stratagems to divide or mollify them. I am hopeful, but I also do not doubt the viciousness or organising ability of the ruling elite and their foreign backers.
Fan-fucking-fantastic. What wonderful people the Swiss are.
After thirty years of receiving stolen goods from him they’ve shut off his account. Hooray.
If the tumbrils roll in this revolution I want to see Swiss bankers on them.
That is one country that should be shut down for the good of all of us. Let them eat grass with their cows.
One of the annoying things about the commentary on this revolution is the way that it’s being spun (most obviously by Obama) as “non-violent”. They’re trying to spin what happened in an unthreatening way – Gandhi and MLK brought to you by Twitter.
It’s always nauseating to hear rulers who are engaged in war, who bomb and torture (the latter famously outsourced to Mubarak) praise revolutionaries for “non-violence”.
Next time any of us are at a demo we have a licence to throw rocks at the cops, pull them off their horses and beat the crap out of them. Then we should march on the headquarters of whichever party happens to be in power and burn it to the ground. We can then justify all this by saying we were simply following the advice of our imperial master and modelling our protest on the non-violence of the Egyptians.
Hey Robert thats what happened at Palm Island. After the cops tortured and killed someone. A bit like Khaleed Said in some ways.
But the violence in this protest has been self defense from the anti Mubarak crew from day one. Its the agents of the state that initiated the violence every time, and while some people fought back even they were moderated by others.
Burning down a copshop that is used for torture is self defense, and thats what happened in Egypt at the start of this thing more than once (and at Palm Island, but thats not the issue right now).
Obviously the fact is that apart from specific circumstances, and they appear to be self defense on every occasion, this uprising has been as non violent as you could expect given the regime they were dealing with.
Good interview with John Keane here, who argues its more Berlin ’89 than Iran ’79. http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3135616.htm
(…Although I cant say I like the term “refolution”.)
It could have positive consequences for our world…shrugging off the oppressors…perhaps be part of a social revolution that is spreading across the globe w/ the assistance of the internet:
My view here:
Standing up to Oppressors…Peacefully
http://cafewhispers.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/standing-up-to-oppressors-peacefully/
Some might say it’s “drawing a long bow” but we shall see.
Cheers
N’
“Good interview with John Keane here, who argues its more Berlin ’89 than Iran ’79.”
I agree Lefty E.
Why doesn’t it surprise me that some of the “usual suspect” media, including CNN, are trying to give this comparison w/ the Iranian Revolution? Mubarak is a crafty one. Picking this date. Grotesque man.
N’
“Might have a beer for the protesters this arvo, its kind of appropriate as they have been brewing there for millenia.”
Jules, I’ll have one too.
“Hurray, the swine has gone! I think Mubarak is lucky he didn’t go the way that Romanian fellow, Ceausescu, did in 1989.”
Indeed. I imagine he’s hoping to retire as a hero. But will eventually be forced into exile as he flees crimes prosecution. I’m thinking he’ll recall the fate of a certain Serbian leader.
“Bush tried to foist a conservative, pro-business, secular constitution on Iraq. Notoriously, he failed. Instead, Iraq got a Shiite-dominated theocratic constitution engineered by a coalition of very able Iraqi Shiite political infighters.”
Katz, it goes to show that the Bush administration did not need to invade Iraq…the people were ripe for this type of revolution…in fact, if his father had not called for them to rise up back during the Gulf War & then abandoned them to die…many would’ve have become a key part of an Iraqi uprising.
The Bush Doctrine caused far more trouble than it was worth…sexing uo ecidence to invade was & still is a war crime in my books. How many Iraqis needlessly died & were traumatised to fit the Bush admin’s corporate profiteering agenda?
N’
Should be: sexing “up evidence”.
N’
Jules #28 The violence of the oppressed is morer often than not either in self defence or an act of legitimate revenge in the face of unbearable provocation. Its only when you have elites trying to act on behalf of the people that you get acts of terrorism directed at innocent third parties. So, burning down the NPR building wasn’t self defense, but it was entirely justified (as would be giving Mubarak and Suleiman the Mussolini treatment).
My point is that normally the violence of the oppressed is depicted as mindless mob violence whereas the violence of the oppressor is hidden or legitimated. Now when it’s no longer viable to portray the revolutionary people as a “mob”, the next line of ideological defense is to erase their just violence, to try and avoid anyone else repeating it.
I susopect that the next stage of the revolution, if it’s to continue forward, needs to be a systematic destruction of the apparatus of repression. More police stations need to be burned to the ground and their weapons expropriated. The torturers need to be either eliminated or forced to abandon their trade and go into hiding. The army, especially a conscript army like the Egyptian, can be split, but usually the police force are too brutalised, have too much at stake in the old regime and are too aware of how hated they are and what fate a successful revolution may have in store for them.
If this starts to happen, wait to see Obama and the western media tut tutting and brushing the dust off their old volumes of Edmund Burke. The violence of the mob will once again be deplored. The inherent backwardness and propensity to violence of those crazy Muslims will be resurrected by the pundits. And all the while Guantanamo will remain open, and the drones will do their murderous business in Afghanistan and Pakistan, piloted by reasonable men commuting from suburbia to their desktops in northern Virginia.
I think that Bush did help to precipitate these revolutions, but in a bad way.
I think that it is not coincidental that the regimes to fall and/or experience dissent are those most closely associated with US ME strategy — i.e., US puppets. The term heard constantly on the lips of protestors is “humiliation”. It is clear enough that these folks are thinking about national humiliation caused by the puppet status of their regimes. These regimes were dragged by the ears into symbolic and sometimes practical support for Bush’s insane adventures in the region.
Revolution is at least partly national expiation.
wow. and fooking yah..
and looking forward, which i suspect most in Egypt will be doing re: constitutional reform…….after the partying that is….
as i said, the MB english site was an interesting read; linking to a variety of surprisingly non-partisan articles and analysis… read overall like calling cards to washington staffers ie. we getz it ie. democracy…
anyhoos, this particular article should be compulsory reading imho: (scroll down)
http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=22584
Thanks for that Jo. From the linked article:
There are a couple of presentations by Reza Aslan at SlowTv in which he says essentially the same thing – participation in electoral politics has a moderating effect. I think this one was the most recent: http://www.themonthly.com.au/taxonomy/term/773
Well said GregM.
Now that he’s likely to draw on his hoarded loot, they’ve cut him off.
Venal motherfucking turds.
Still, better than letting him at it, I guess.
I’ll eat these words with relish if the Swiss do something like donate it all to fund a mideast secular democratic institution of some kind. I’ll not be holding my breath though.
Attack of the failtags – last para should not have been blockquoted. Sorry mods.
Not only was my last comment’s wording a tad salty, I’d also like to apologise specifically to any Swiss folks who thought I was generalising beyond certain parts of their banking sector.
I’ve been to Switzerland, had a great time and met many lovely people.
/arsecovering
Katz,
Did any-one see the US flags waving in the hands of thousands of demonstrators ?
No neither did I.
The comparison between the Imperial slaughter in Iraq; allegedly required to bring democracy to the “towel heads” and the almost bloodless democratic revolution in Egypt will stand as a stark illustration of the ruthless bloodthirsty nature of US Imperialism.
There remains the possibility that the US will support a fascist coup in Egypt and thus precipitate a civil war in which they will have to participate.
Huggy
Its amusing watching the US leadership claim all this as a victory for people power, after backing Mubarak to the hilt for thirty years
As one Egyptian said in the crowd: “Hey President Obama: thanks for nothing!”
On the ground analysis from Hossam at 3arabawy:
http://www.arabawy.org/2011/02/12/permanent-revolution/
A snippet:
blockquoteToday, I’ve already started receiving news that thousands of Public Transport workers are staging protests in el-Gabal el-Ahmar. The temporary workers at Helwan Steel Mills are also protesting. The Railway technicians continue to bring trains to halt. Thousands of el-Hawamdiya Sugar Factory are protesting and oil workers will start a strike tomorrow over economic demands and also to impeach Minister Sameh Fahmy and halt gas exports to Israel. And more reports are coming from other industrial centers.
At this point, the Tahrir Square occupation is likely to be suspended. But we have to take Tahrir to the factories now.
That’s an interesting straw floating in the wind.
Jo@36
From Ikhanweb
WTF? Ikhanweb’s analysis must be taken with a grain of salt if they are prepared to play so fast and loose with the facts.
Ikhanweb’s analysis was obviously a puff piece rewriting history, look at the bottom of the page.
harleymc,
i linked to one v. particular third party article via the mb english site, did you read that one….
as i said the whole thing reads like…ah, forget it…
and just in case you didn’t get it..cough…the second time, one of the authors:
Charles Kurzman is a Professor of Sociology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in Middle East and Islamic studies.
And here’s the article via the original source – FP – just like it states on the MB page…honestly…
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/04/the_islamists_are_not_coming
and if you’d looked a wee bit harder, you may have found this likewise linked. it’s by an AEI resident scholar, you do know who the AEI are…
http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=14768
(and meant to say @47…the whole mb thing reads like…ah, sigh…)
Excellent summary of the situation as it now stands. From Lenin’s Tomb:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/02/egyptian-army-moves-to-preserve-its.html
Meanwhile the neocons embrace deep denial.
I love Egypt cause I used to live there. So I’m mighty pleased about all this – so far. I’m scared as well , revolutions turn nasty. I have said two things about it here and here.
You may care to read it, or you may not.
Jo don’t patronise me!
I quoted from the article you linked to, where the authors who have allowed their material to be copywrited by the MB claim political victory. Nowhere on that page is there a disclaimer form the MB that the article is not MB official position.
So and grab a reality check. MB is claiming victory.
Sorry Jo, clearly the writers for MB were writing for an audience who had done their PhD’s in post-something artsy and didn’t mean their page to be read by anyone who understands plain English.