What are people reading and hearing about Egypt? I found the links you all provided yesterday to be fascinating.
I’m watching some guy on MSNBC right now who’s mostly making sense to me and then he closes with “the fundamental issue of Israel”. That bothers me. There are 82 million people in Egypt, there is widespread poverty, and I’m sure, all sorts of other issues (I don’t claim to know anything about the country). Does everything always have to be about the United States and Israel?
Malron
Well, since the United States and Israel have been meddling in the affairs of every country in that region for the past 62 years unfortunately the answer is yes.
sherifffruitfly
But… but… I’m white! You mean everything ISN’T about me????
lols
nwithers
Well, if it’s US news, it’s amazing the pretzels people will tie themselves into to make it that way. I’ve been watching the Al-Jazeria live stream, it gives some of the best stuff out there.
http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/
Yutsano
There has been blood. Blood means martyrs. Things are about to get real serious real fast. And the military is still sitting things out.
Genine
I agree. I think our ego-centric view of things adds to the tension between ourselves and the Arab world.
Props on the title of this post. I love it!
BGinCHI
82 million people, almost all of whom are Muslim.
How many people is that in Christians?
/wingnut
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
@Yutsano:
You know, maybe this is a wrong impression, but I am surprised how peacefully things are going in Egypt and how peaceful they were in Tunisia. I realize there has been some violence, but I would have expected more.
The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts
does anyone else have al jaz english live streams fux0r their Chrome browser?
morzer
Bugger Israel. They are strategic dead-weight as allies, provoke the Arab world on a regular basis, blackmail our politicians through AIPAC, guilt-trip the rest of the world, and treat the Palestinians despicably.
When are we going to stop listening to Bronze Age propaganda and religious tripe and start dealing with the real world?
Why don’t we try supporting democracy and clean elections in Egypt, give them foreign aid with strict accountability and show them that we want to do business in a friendly way? Why must we push peoples (who might well show us goodwill if we treated them decently) into the arms of extremists by following a short-sighted, bigoted foreign policy dreamed up by a bunch of cowardly, corrupt frauds?
Davis X. Machina
They need an American angle… and there is none, really, except the bank shot to Israel.
Egypt isn’t a major trading parter. There’s no large Egyptian-American community — it’s not Mexico. It’s not a neighbor. What trade moves through Suez affects us little — and it’s no longer a major oil-transport conduit.
Freedom as such, apart from securing the widest possible range of choice in consumer goods, are just abstractions to the television audience.
So if it weren’t for Israel, it wouldn’t be on your telly at all except to the extent that the available footage was cinematographically more interesting than an ice-storm in Oklahoma to a network news director.
24/7 news has its own imperatives.
PurpleGirl
Unfortunately, it does seem that US Middle East policy does come down to “what is the effect on Israel”. There are two special interest groups: Jewish Americans and Christianists who are interested in the “end of days and the rapture”.
I’m not really following the events in Egypt closely but I am concerned about what could possibly happen to the National Museum and the ancient artifacts. Egypt has a long history and importance in so many areas (art, architecture, religion, etc.) The modern country has grinding poverty that affects many (most?) of its people.
Ancient Egypt has long been an interest of mine (like back to childhood) and I’ve always wanted to travel there.
wobblybits
@The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts: I’m watching/listening on Chrome.
Yutsano
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice: The lack of much bloodshed is mostly due to the fact that the military is sitting back and just watching for now. That really suggests a major disconnect between Mubarak and the military leadership. Egypt’s military isn’t exactly a bunch of wusses. We should know, we trained a lot of them.
morzer
@The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts:
It works for me. Maybe update Chrome and add-ons/plug-ins?
Mnemosyne
@morzer:
Because short-sighted, bigoted foreign policy is more profitable for the top 1%.
The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts
@wobblybits: hmmm. every time i do so, the flash plug-in crashes in the middle. weird.
Davis X. Machina
@Yutsano: I’m plugging Robert Farley’s LGM post on the military in crises — China ’89 and Iran ’09 — to all and sundry: Tank Man, and Tank Commander.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
As I said down below, if the reports of the police and army holding back or even joining the protesters are accurate, Mubarak had better hope he’s got his jet to Switzerland fueled up and ready to go.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
I’ve been doing link roundups on Egypt for The Rumpus. Here’s the latest, if you’re looking for some reading material.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
Especially since Israel only has a population of about 7.5 million people — which makes the whole country a little smaller than NYC, but we get nowhere near the same deference.
Hey, there’s an idea! If only NYC had it’s own nukes …
.
BGinCHI
@Mnemosyne: Agreed. Capitalism needs cooperative nation states; stability is the goal for this brand of foreign policy. The 19th and 20th-century examples are legion.
polyorchnid octopunch
@morzer: ding ding ding!
morzer
@JGabriel:
Saath Cah’lina first!
Richard
@The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts: Yeah, that’s been happening to me all morning. Are you on an Apple? It streams sound but no video for about 20 to 60 seconds, then crashes Flash player. I have NO idea what is doing it. I’ve only found two others on the Apple forums where this has happened to them. Nothing in Google Help forum so far as I can tell.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: That equation is half-right: apparently police fired upon protesters storming the Interior Ministry. But the police force has long been considered a corrupt institution in Egypt. The military is much more respected. This could have some relationship with why they are exercising such restraint. Or Mubarak pissed off the wrong general.
Amir_Khalid
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice: It looks like the death toll is headed towards three figures by the third day, from the BBC’s feed which I am following. Wounded already well over 1,000. Reports of looting, buildings set on fire, people cowering in fear as hotels and apartment buildings come under assault from rioters, some of which might have been instigated by the secret police. This isn’t the most violent uprising, but I wouldn’t call it all that peaceful.
JGabriel
@PurpleGirl:
Interesting Bit O’ Trivia: The Coptic language is the only living descendent of Egytptian.
You probably know that already, Purple Girl, but it’s an interesting little tidbit others might like.
.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
I HATE most of the coverage; even the American belly dancers we know of in Cairo have no idea what’s going on, really — and now, of course, most of them can’t even get word out.
And the worst part in some ways is how we — and I mean some Progressives as well — keep pushing “our” version of what is going to happen, mostly because it matches some pre-written script that has shit-all to do with what the Egyptians want, much less “need”.
One real lesson of this revolution, for Americans, is that we’re really not all that important to their day-to-day lives.
WyldPirate
@BGinCHI:
schrodinger's cat
According to greater Wingnuttia, we are the center of the universe and everything revolves around us.
GregB
Al Jazeera, Professor Juan Cole, Col. Pat Lang, Haaretz, Mondoweiss.
To name a few decent sources.
The Dangerman
Of the MSM’s (I couldn’t get Al-Jazerra to load), MSNBC has been the best. Richard Engel is the correspondent there, learned Arabic in Cairo, and is, in general, the most sober of the analysts. How he found time to get some sleep is rather amazing (or maybe he’s just on a major caffeine buzz).
For all the intelligence and resources thrown into that region, it seems like the U.S. and Israel now find themselves in a rather fucked up set of circumstances; should be fascinating and I hope Obama is smart enough to navigate through the resulting mess.
Yutsano
@The Dangerman:
Dude, coffee is a drink of Arabic origin. They make some seriously potent brews there that will keep even the most somnolent up for days.
BGinCHI
@WyldPirate: Is that the new TN math?
Seriously, my snark was aimed at the “how is this really about us, the USA” approach of the media and the neocon types.
Can’t believe Cole hasn’t posted something from Reason on this yet…..
BGinCHI
@Yutsano: Quality use of “somnolent.” That really got me out of my torpor.
Alex S.
@Mnemosyne:
It seems though that Mubarak still has control over the secret service, if his choice for vice-president is any indication… I would like to know how much power that institution has got.
The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts
@Richard: bingo. same here. glad it’s just not my crazy ass.
Richard
@The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts: Here’s the Apple forum: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=13007008
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: I can’t really use any of my fancier vocabulary words at work. I keep getting the blank stare and the dog-like head tilt. So I pretty much just save them for here and the occasional conversation where I want to cause an interruption because the discussion has gone off the rails.
Morbo
I watched MSNBC for about a half hour when I got up today and just couldn’t take it after having AJE streaming in the background all day yesterday. MSNBC was about 75/25 how this affects the US vs. what’s actually going on; whereas Al Jazeera was more like 95/5 news vs. foreign implications. It is pretty irritating.
Richard
@The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts: No, it’s not your crazy ass. I’ll let you know if I come up with a solution. It doesn’t seem to affect other Flash sites, so I think it might just be Al J. Sucky.
General Stuck
The hated interior police have all but disappeared from the streets in the country, and the military has not intervened, and likely won’t at this stage. So it sort of looks like this might end up being a relatively low violence successful revolution. Maybe.
If it spreads to Saudi Arabia, that will be when it gets very serious. It is a center, or the center of wahabism there, and with lots of Texas T. It will be harder for us to stand on the sidelines with those things in the mix.
Svensker
@BGinCHI:
Reason’s front page has Hispanics and School Choice; Tax Credits?; and Grade Inflation. They’re right on top of those pressing issues of both the national security state and international democracy movements.
The Dangerman
@Yutsano:
As a former resident of the Seattle area, I’m jonesing for some Arabic inspired joe now; I used to frequent a place just south of Boeing Field that had a wonderful blend they called “jet fuel”. Busy busy buzz buzz blend.
Yeah, these war correspondents probably learn to sleep later and are just mainlining caffine.
Bob Loblaw
@Yutsano:
You have it backwards. Standing back is the plan.
It’s imperative that the military and the police don’t provide a force for the protesters to countervail against. So they just sit back and let the economic and property distress envelop, in the hopes that working class Egyptians come to grudgingly accept Mubarak over anarchy. This while acting covertly to send “state-sponsored” looters out and about to reinforce this growing distress. It’s authoritarianism 101.
By current indications, it looks like some of the momentum has already waned. The Friday holiday may very well have been the high water mark of the revolution. There probably won’t be any immediate collapse of government, like in Tunisia. The odds are in Mubarak’s favor.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Yutsano:
Arabic origin? I thought it was from the Horn of Africa…Or did the those Africans chew the beans rather than brew a drink from them?
BGinCHI
@Svensker: Grade inflation??
Damn. Now I gotta go over there.
kdaug
@Yutsano:
I know the feeling.
But one suspects matoko_chan is soaking in it.
John PM
I can understand the concern over how this affects Israel, given the shared border and the past history with Egypt. And because of the US relationship with Israel, we could have a stake in the outcome.
The Daily Show (what else) covered this very well the other day. Two correspondents wore competing Team W and Team O shirts, alternatively trying to credit Bush and Obama with the recent uprisings. Samantha Bee was the senior Teen Twitter analyst, arguing that Twitter and Facebook were responsible. Asif Manvi then came on with a shirt labeled Team Local Conditions, stating that the uprisings had nothing to do with the US. He was shputed down by the others.
BGinCHI
@kdaug: You have to say her name three times to get her here.
Violet
While I was making lunch I had CNN on in the background. I heard them saying that they thought Mubarak was looking to install a temporary leader as a way of transitioning from power. Or something like that. Also heard that tourists are trying to get out of the country. Not sure if governments are suggesting tourists leave or hunker down and hope things calm down. Also that mobile phone service was somewhat restored.
Anyone else hear more?
And, OT, I heard Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” on the radio. I’d forgotten how much I like Dire Straits and how that song always cracks me up. I want my MTV.
kdaug
@Bob Loblaw: I largely agree, but the pressure still builds. Something’s gotta give.
me
@The Dangerman: MSNBC has been using video from Al Jazeera and CNN has been using video from Nile TV. Best I can tell, FOX News has been the all USA narcissism channel
benjoya
i just heard biden say mubarak is not a dictator. whew, that’s a relief! i guess all those troublemakers in the streets should just go home.
kdaug
@BGinCHI:
Won’t be me.
Until it can pass the Turing test, I refuse to assign a gender-specific pronoun.
Yutsano
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): They primarily chewed the beans (you’re correct in that the coffee plant is native to the Horn of Africa) but the Arabs took the idea of making the beans into a drink. I’m guessing it was more culinary accident than deliberate invention, although from what I understand coffee fruits are rather tough to eat.
@Bob Loblaw:
The police have already failed in that objective. So what’s their Plan B?
BGinCHI
@BGinCHI: Following up, from the geniuses at Reason. On the higher ed beat, they have a piece on Federal spending on education, and so of course the angle is to try to defend for-profit colleges. This gem in the beginning of the article:
Yes, it literally represents a fraction. Any part of a larger whole represents a fraction. No indication of whether 22% is significant. I’d say it’s very significant and surprising, given that these places rack up the biggest debts for their students.
Fucking Reason, how does it work?
The Dangerman
@me:
What was surprising to me was that all the traditional MSM’s still brought in the B or C teams for this VERY important story; at least MSNBC interrupted Prisonporn for it. Maybe it’s in the B and C talents contracts that they get the Saturday morning gigs regardless.
Edit: I’m referring to the Studio talent.
General Stuck
@kdaug:
If that is the strategy, then it is a hail mary of sorts. This was personal between Mubarek and 30 long years of governance and economic and human rights deprivations that folks there are fed up with. Until he is gone and his party gone from power, it could only buy him some time, and not much of that. Seems to me.
The other possibility is the police got while the getting was good, and helped themselves to whatever they could carry out of a sense of desperation.
David Fud
@Davis X. Machina: excellent read, thanks for sharing that.
morzer
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
The word coffee in English derives from the Arabic qahwah, via the Ottoman Turkish kahve. As to who first began roasting the beans and drinking coffee, we shall probably never really know.
BGinCHI
@morzer: I thought it was Joe DiMaggio.
Yutsano
@morzer: So every time I drink a cup of coffee I’m supporting sekrit Muslin terrtsts? SWEET! I’m running up my Starbucks bill now!
@James Hare: Egypt has their long-standing history as one of the most ancient and long-standing civilizations. They are also highly regarded as a center for Sunni Muslim education (the name of the big Muslim university in Cairo is escaping me right now but it’s huge and very highly respected in the Muslim world) and also have been at the cornerstone of many of history’s greatest turning points. Egypt has a long very proud very honorable history. And they will tell you up front they are Egyptian first before identifying as anything else.
James Hare
Read Naguib Mahfouz. That’s all I really know about Egypt. I took a great course on Middle Eastern novels in my freshman year. It’s a real different place.
kdaug
@BGinCHI:
It’s Koch-powered!
Freedom!
Amir_Khalid
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill:
The Obama administration has already said all there was to be said yesterday. In an ideal world, where news editors weren’t desperate to fill column-centimeters/airtime/web pages with something, anything, important or important-looking on the hot news story of the moment, they’d just follow developments and leave the bloviating on the significance of it all till later.
But there’s a audience out there that expects leaders to strike big rhetorical poses, like this clown who wrote to the BBC:
What the frak does he expect Obama to say or do?
me
@me: Ah, caught FOX using Al Jazeera Arabic video (MSNBC has Al Jazeera English, at times they even use the audio, they must realize that Al Jazeera’s coverage is much better, i’ve been watch it for several hours, it’s riveting). They are covering the story just much less and with more of a “How it effects the US” focus.
Alex S.
@Bob Loblaw:
Maybe the problem is that the uprising doesn’t have a leader and no organization. Someone should try to challenge the military to force them to take a position. And there seems to be no move to take the strategic positions, airports, government facilities, palaces of the regime and the like.
Caz
Because MSNBC has not standards or integrity. They will politicize anything, so if they have an opportunity to bring Israel into the discussion, they’ll do so, even though this situation has absolutely nothing to do with Israel at this point.
Fox News has mentioned Israel maybe once or twice in the last week. Their coverage is excellent, accurate, comprehensive, and fair.
BGinCHI
@James Hare: And you know what happened to him…..
Great writer.
BGinCHI
@Caz: I call bullshit.
Anyone have time to eat this troll’s lunch?
General Stuck
LOL, What you smokin’ Gracie?
jwb
@Bob Loblaw: You might be right, except that the street and everyone else seems to believe that the secret police are in fact seeding the looting, so it’s not at all clear that the general response will be to call for Mubarak or any other strongman to come in and restore order. My personal take is that Mubarak is already toast and he’s being kept around just long enough that the military and other powers that be can get their ducks in a row to have a more or less orderly transition. As for anything fundamental changing… Well, it happens occasionally, but not often, so I wouldn’t bet on it.
kdaug
@General Stuck:
This is a hail mary in all caps. If they can tamp it down, it won’t be for long.
First the Green Revolution in Iran. Then Tunisia. Then Algeria. Then Yemen. Now Egypt.
Accelerating.
If the House of Saud is next, I hope you live close to public transport or have an electric car.
Doesn’t fucking have anything to do with us, except our “interests”.
The Dangerman
@Caz:
You forgot balanced.
Davis X. Machina
@Amir_Khalid: Resign, and get Biden to resign, so’s we can have President Boehner, is my guess.
The problem is, you could find the twin of that posted on RedState and DemocraticUnderground.
A taste for grand, gestural politics that accomplishes nothing isn’t the province of any one party.
Violet
@kdaug:
If (when?) this happens, it’s going to be a whole different world. Where will all those excessively rich Saudi princes go? They gonna go live with W. on his ranch in Crawford?
Amir_Khalid
@Yutsano: I think you’re trying to think of Al-Azhar University, the oldest university in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Yutsano
@Violet: Dubai. Two-thirds of their wealth is there anyway. And they pay off their populace well to keep them under wraps. Which is much easier to do when there’s only a few million of them.
@Amir_Khalid: Thank you for that. I knew someone here would know what I was talking about. And it is an actual university too, they do more than just train imams there.
BGinCHI
@Violet:
There, fixed. And the answer is, well, prolly yes. No, wait, even our taxes are too high. Something in a Cayman maybe?
Violet
@Yutsano:
But Dubai is right in the midst of all this chaos? Will it stay calm? It’s been built by slave labor. I don’t know how long that dam will hold. Although most of the slaves are imported.
@BGinCHI:
I wonder how long the Saudi princes would last if they don’t have access to their oil money? I’m sure the really rich ones will be fine. But the lesser ones? Life could get very interesting for them.
Bob Loblaw
@Alex S.:
That is one of the thornier problems, yes. The Arab world has done an atrocious job of developing credible underground non-Islamist democratic opposition groups in the face of autocratic powers.
@jwb:
I quite agree, but the key is weathering this period out to cobble whatever shreds of credibility can be kept together for the new succession plan later this year.
Hosni Mubarak was unlikely to remain president beyond 2011 much longer anyway. He is rather old. Obviously, if any plans for a dynastic succession were in order, those are gone now. There won’t be a President Gamal. But the military has every intention of keeping the core security state in place, regardless of what civilian veneer they have to wrap it in. That’s why the Suleiman appointment makes so much sense. It’s risky to have to tie him so directly to Mubarak, but the regime doesn’t really have much of a choice otherwise.
Alex S.
Some people are tweeting that Mubarak’s wife has left for London.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@morzer:
Well, you can look for the earliest evidence of cultivation, ya know, and find where the plant evolved in nature, the same way you can trace the cultivation of Emmer Wheat to the Fertile Crescent…Just sayin’…Tangentially of course…
Yutsano
Oh shit. Jordan might be the next domino to fall.
Amir_Khalid
The BBC feed is linking to this from Foreign Policy. Worth a look if you haven’t seen it already, I think.
Violet
@Yutsano:
Jordan? Holy crap. It’s getting crazy out there.
joe from Lowell
@Amir_Khalid:
Use The Bully Pulpit, and make him feel awesome.
The Dangerman
@Yutsano:
May have to cue up some Genesis, Invisible Touch edition.
So, both Arab countries that have peace treaties with Israel. Fascinating.
Edit: For any Genesis fans out there, the song I’m referencing was written by Tony Banks when he was in Beirut (or someplace in Lebanon) during one of those times when shit was going down.
Yutsano
@Violet: Running the tally in my head, we’ve got Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt, and now Jordan is starting to experience unrest. If I’m a Saud or an Assad I’m telling my secret police to start quashing things now before shit really gets serious.
(Although I question how much trouble the House of Saud is really in. They made a deal with the Wahhabi leaders to be the guardians of Mecca in exchange for expanding their sect of Islam, so they have some air of legitimacy to them. Then again Abdullah of Jordan makes a similar claim. Plus his stepmom is teh awesome.)
Amanda in the South Bay
I only hope its not like Iran, where the revolution early on attracted wide segments of opposition to the government, but had religious nutjobs take it over pretty quickly.
As far as shitty outcomes are concerned, I’d ra
El Cid
@kdaug: I think the level of US response to any threat to Sa’udi stability — such that the outcome is not pre-determined — would be stunningly intense. A threat to the Sa’udi regime would not just be passively observed.
Amanda in the South Bay
I only hope its not like Iran, where the revolution early on attracted wide segments of opposition to the government, but had religious nutjobs take it over pretty quickly.
As far as shitty outcomes are concerned, I’d rather have another Sadat than a religious shitocracy.
*of course it helps that Egypt is Sunni and not Shia, and hence doesnt have the hierarchial religious establishment Iran does.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Yutsano:
Wow, this is 1848, the Arab version.
PeakVT
Does everything always have to be about the United States and Israel?
I think the protesters are motivated by internal reasons, but Mubarak has been able to survive for the last 30 because the US pays him protection money on behalf of Israel. Without the payoff, I doubt Egypt would have made and maintained peace with Israel. OTOH, the US and Israel are not particularly relevant in the other North African countries, except to the extend that Islamists can exploit passions about the I/P conflict to gain supporters.
de stijl
@BGinCHI:
On blegged donations. I know, I know, I’m horrible. But it is so fucking funny that a libertarian magazine / foundation cannot make a profit and subsists on donations and Koch subsidies.
Reason, the Invisible Hand has spoken. You are not profitable.
The Dangerman
@Yutsano:
From what I’m hearing from multiple sources, the economic forces driving Egypt aren’t in play in Saudi Arabia; the wealth has trickled down sufficiently well to prevent it.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@El Cid:
That would be a helluva conundrum for the regime, seeing that they derive their power originally as the protectors of the chastity of Islam’s traditional Holy Land.
BGinCHI
@de stijl: Reason, where our economic ass gets spanked by the invisible hand.
It’s like McMegan lite.
TOP123
@BGinCHI: Ha! Good one…
But in all seriousness, since the wingnuts of course value the lives of all, but seem to glaze over whenever the Middle East, Arabs, and brown people in general are mentioned, I would provide a serious back of the envelope estimate: c. 10% of the population of Egypt, or, in USA! terms, probably a fair amount more than the Christian population of Teapatriotic Arizona… or even, (gasp) Old Virginny…
Yutsano
@PeakVT:
Real big this here. The Arab League gives a shit ton of lip service to the Palestinian cause, but when it comes down to actual action…they just go back to lip service. Think about it: if the Saudis really wanted to improve the conditions of the Palestinian people, they could pay to feed and house every single one for decades and barely notice the dent in their pocketbooks. Keeping them downtrodden and oppressed makes for great bright shiny objects to keep their populace focused on other things besides their own internal misery. I really do feel for the Palestinians, they really don’t have a true advocate on the national stage.
Ruckus
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m waiting for the flat earther’s to make a reappearance. I think it may be the last step in total regression to the 15th century.
Amir_Khalid
@Yutsano: Plus, if the Palestinians ever got their own state for reals, rather than whatever feeble excuse for one Israel is willing to grant, they’d be just one more member of the dysfunctional family that is the Arab League.
kdaug
@El Cid:
Natch.
There are national interests, and there are NATIONAL FUCKING INTERESTS.
The extent of our influence and ability to project (with two wars in the neighborhood) remains to be seen.
Sure as shit don’t envy the big O right now. It’s a tightrope.
Mark S.
I hate Reason quite a bit, but to be fair, they are covering Egypt in their blog section (scroll down a little).
Cain
@The Dangerman:
FTFY
The problem has never really been Obama for foreign policy.. the problem has been Congress. They need to educate themselves about what’s going on before opening their mouths.
cain
Darkrose
The chances of this happening in Saudi Arabia are slim to none. The royals cut their citizens fat checks on a regular basis, which does an awful lot to cut down on any grumbling. Egypt, on the other hand, is a country with massive income inequality and rampaging unemployment; combine that with political repression and…
Any comparisons are left as an exercise for the reader.
General Stuck
@kdaug:
Aside from my status as unrepentent Obot, I can’t think of another American soul better to be in the Oval office right now. Doesn’t hurt him being a Kenyan Muslim with a doctored up birth certificate/wingnut
kdaug
Oh shit, now MSNBC is reporting on rioting in Riyadh.
Fill your gas tanks now.
Cain
@General Stuck:
That would be a power keg, that is where the Haaj is. It will be more than just the U.S. who will be concerned. Every muslim in the world will be watching that. We would have to do covert things, we can never do anything else.
I sure hope that the U.S> is not interfering with this revolution in any way shape or form. It would make a mockery of what Obama talked about in Egypt when he first got elected.
Obama is the greatest asset we have for muslims. If he says something there will be some chance that people will believe him.
The world it is changing.. I’ll be interested to see if the ouster happens, what the rest of the Muslim world is going to do. I wonder what’s going on in Pakistan….. (!)
cain
cain
Cain
@Bob Loblaw:
Interestingly enough, the protestors seem to have understand this. They’ve been standing guard over museums and catching looters and then caught them with government tags and promoting it. These guys are pretty intelligent. Someone is doing a good job of organizing.. I think they know the tricks.
cain
BGinCHI
Twit Revolution: topple Saddam Hussein and then turn the country into a shithole.
Twitter Revolution: leave it to the people to do what’s best for themselves, avoid Colonialist/Imperialist impulses.
Amanda in the South Bay
@BGinCHI:
Do you think the Iranian Revolution was what is best for the Iranian people? After all, you even had the spectacle of Carter telling the Shah not to use the military to stop the revolutionaries.
Cain
@Violet:
I’ve been reading reddit for commentary, they have plenty of expatriates who comment on the news. From what I can tell the Jordan folks are angry at the prime minister for the poor economic situation. It doesn’t have much to do with Israel and they are in fact still happy with the King and Queen of Jordan. So I don’t think you’ll see the monarchy fail considering that protestors are bringing pictures of them to the protests.
No, I think we might see an ouster of the prime minister though for doing his job poorly. Essentially what we are now seeing is the middle east reacting to the poor economic conditions that riddle the entire area.
The way it works is that young men have to have jobs before they can marry and with no jobs, means no wife, no future and well no honor. I think this is happening even in Saudi.. that’s the core problem. I think I was reading that they are also horny and having to wait for a marriage that will never happen is driving the younger ones quite crazy.
cain
Chuck Butcher
NBC’s Richard Engel made a point the other day that the proffessional and labor and social services organizations are heavily influenced by or run by the Muslim Brotherhood. Their advocacy/sponsorship of violence has diminished over the last decade but they sure aren’t anything like supporters of secularism.
In something like this uprising the one common thread amongst most of the “revolutionaries” is their religion, whether they’re theocrats or not. That link is what gives something like the Muslim Brotherhood a leg up versus any not theology centered group. I’d say the chances of Mubarak being replaced by something secular are real small.*
*based on multiple degrees in foreign relations, extensive Middle East postings and other imaginary bullshit – ie a guess.
Cain
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Iran should worry, because I can see the green revolution starting all over again. When the rest of the muslim world is throwing off their leaders.. I can’t imagine Iranians not feeling the same. Their complaints are exactly the same as the arab world.
Once they lose the fear of their government, it’s pretty much over.
cain
Amir_Khalid
The House of Saud has been riding a different tiger than Hosni Mubarak. The Sauds’ deal is with Wahabism, fundies who want to keep on living in what they imagine is the Prophet’s pure Islamic world, with everything but his (for its time) progressive sttitude. They keep trying to fend off a catastrophic collision between the 7th century and the 21st, but sooner or later that collision is going to happen.
Yutsano
@Cain:
I hope not. Queen Noor is probably one of the coolest royals on the planet. And King Abdullah was on Star Trek: Voyager. So they do a shit ton to stay in touch with the people, at least cosmetically.
Cain
@kdaug:
Link?
Goddam, the whole area is going crazy.
cain
BGinCHI
@Amanda in the South Bay: No, I’m not naive and wasn’t generalizing across all revolutions for the last 50 years. Clearly, even toppling an authoritarian gov’t is no guarantee that another won’t take its place. This is a very complicated business. This is also what is so wrong about the neocon version of this: spreading freedom leads to everything in the world looking more American, and if it doesn’t we interfere.
What makes this even more difficult is a revolutionary movement in a country that is not monolithic (ethnically, religiously, etc.). It’s best to have a process and an evolution of civic institutions, so that some kind of balance can be reached. Unfortunately, into power vacuums rushes a different power, with no guarantee that this is a benign change.
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s a good background piece on Egypt and the grievances leading up to the demonstrations.
If you’re on Twitter, I recommend following @abuaardvark and @blakehounshell, both of whom know the region and seem to be following an enormous number of people, then retweeting the best of what they see.
goatchowder
Fuck the corporate media.
If you want to find out what’s going on in Egypt, watch Al Jazeera English online.
TOP123
@Cain: Frighteningly, your last paragraph could be said to apply to East Asia, as well. There are a lot of people there. As well as a growing gender imbalance.
Cain
@Yutsano:
Huh! From what I understand Jordan has been pretty good to its people. They aren’t Egypt or Yemen.
I worry about Yemen more than Egypt. That place can turn into an even bigger shithole than it is now.
I’m also worried about Pakistan.. life hasn’t been good for them and having insanely successful neighbors like China and India is probably not helping.
cain
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Cain:
Relative to the other Arab states, that’s probably true, but Jordan is still a pretty poor nation, and there’s a sharp divide between the haves of the minority and the have-nots of the vast majority.
Yutsano
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): There have been several attempts to revive the Jordanian economy (tourism, becoming the high tech hub of the ME) but so far not much came from it, mostly because of rampant corruption and cronyism. Plus consider 60% of Jordan’s population is Palestinian and basically has second-class status, and things add up to not ending well.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Cain:
It hasn’t helped that the Punjabi-led military & ISI have managed to dump a lot of the nation’s wealth into a struggle to annex parts of India with Muslim majorities, including- but not limited to- the Indian Punjab.
Mark S.
@Cheryl Rofer:
Thanks, that was an interesting link.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Yutsano:
It’s still that large a population of Palestinians, huh?
Yutsano
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): That ratio could be out of date, but that was the last number I heard. Most are in the west on the border with the West Bank/Israel and not in good economic shape. Most actual Jordanians live in either the region around Amman or south where the Petra ruins are. The western part of the country is more or less a big blank.
Amanda in the South Bay
@BGinCHI:
Egypt really isn’t that religiously diverse-contrary to media reports, the Coptic Orthodox make up…a really freaking small part of the population, just like most Eastern Christian churches in the Middle East. Maybe a hundred years ago, like when Christians probably made up 40% of the population of Constantinople, but as someone who used to live, breath, and shit Eastern Christianity…the Copts are just a really, really small group who simply happen to be the largest Christian sect.
My impression is that Egypt is overwhelmingly Sunni and doesn’t have the Shiite underclass of laborers that the Gulf States have, but that is just off the top of my head and not balanced by any Wiki or Googlefu.
BGinCHI
@Amanda in the South Bay: I’m not qualified to say whether this is likely, but if the Muslim Brotherhood get control of the gov’t, it’s gonna be a shitstorm. If Mubarak goes, watch the buildup on the borders.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Yutsano:
Eastern? Desert?
gwangung
@BGinCHI: Sorta like “if the Moral Majority” got control of the US government?
CaseyL
The seeming lull (in intensity, not in numbers) is very interesting. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with there being no real, credible opposition (a situation Mubarek, like other despots, deliberately created by imprisoning, co-opting, or plain killing anyone who could formed a credible opposition).
I think the lull means no one, including the protesters, know what happens next.
I’m hoping, very much hoping, that somewhere in Egypt members of the middle- and professional classes are having discussions about who among themselves has the interest and ability to form, or at least take part in, a government. I’m very much hoping Egypt doesn’t wind up with some minor functionary who is, or becomes, as corrupt as the present government.
Egypt, SFAIK, has no experience with democratic rule. It’s always been strongmen, of varying degrees of ability and charisma. Nasser collapsed and died; Sadat took over after him; and then there was Mubarek. That doesn’t bode well for democratic hopes going forward.
BGinCHI
@gwangung: Or the Tea Party.
I hope to allah Canada invades us if that happens.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Yutsano:
Umm, dude, that would be Ethiopia. They even have a whole traditional ceremony around coffee (though I believe it was spread to the rest of the world by Arabs through the Trans-Saharan slave trade).
Cheryl Rofer
More background from The Oil Drum.
The Raven
The coverage over at Democracy Now is pretty good–their Sharif Kouddous is tweeting from Cairo. They also have interviews with Juan Cole and Ahmad Shokr, an editor at the Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, up.
maya
I’m anxiously awaiting what Seven-Shot Sarah has to say about all this: Our Tutnik Moment?
Chuck Butcher
@maya:
Teh Google has nada
Jane2
Avoid US Cable news like the plague. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer is getting his info from Egypt state tv and the Egyptian ambassador. And if I took a drink every time he mentions Israel, I’d be legless by now.
Probably the most disheartening thing is that Wolf hasn’t done any fundamental research. He doesn’t have a clue that there are popular opposition groups and other points of view in Egypt, actually suggesting that the newly-minted VP would be somehow acceptable to people.
Erik
Al Jazeera has great live coverage of all the events and good analysis from regional experts.
befuggled
@JGabriel: Apparently there is a movement to revive it, but Coptic is basically in the same position as Latin.
Ed Marshall
@Jane2:
CNN is absolutely shameful. Do people understand that Blitzer used to be the editor for AIPAC’s Near East Report? His bullshit only makes sense if you understand that he has an agenda.
polyorchnid octopunch
@kdaug: I figured more that you needed a Koch-ring to be able to engage in.
polyorchnid octopunch
@BGinCHI: Not a chance we’d embrace that tar baby.
Stillwater
@BGinCHI: Points. Lots of em.
Stillwater
@morzer: I’d like this on a bumper-sticker so I could passively educate the masses while traveling to and fro work.
mclaren
Here are some provocative links: Don Vandergriff says:
Source: “What the media is not telling you about the riots in Tunisa, Egypt, Jordan and Yemen”
This analysis from STRATFOR points out that