Egypt Erupting

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No matter what happens next, TONIGHT is going to be one helluva party in Egypt. My best wishes to them.

Yet another dictator bites the dust. Yay democracy!

 

That depends if they want to bother. There may be some who want more control over the government, but I wouldn't be surprised if most are quite happy to get some concessions in terms of budget, pensions etc and go back to their stuff. They are still a great power in Egypt, and for now they enjoy high support. It IS possible that they try to assume full control, but this is a riskier path, and IMO depends on the personalities of the men on top of the Egyptian army.

At any rate, I found the below at the BBC live blog reporting, and it cracked me up:

The BBC's Paul Danahar is observing the clean-up in Tahrir Square: "The infrastructure of the revolution is being quickly dismantled," he says. "The angry young men who led this revolution seemed to have been replaced by their mums who are now cleaning up the mess."

The mums of Egypt, the unsung heroines of the revolution. Praise be to such virtuous Egyptians !

On a more political note, it also had this:

16:35 The Muslim Brotherhood say they will not put up a presidential candidate at the next election. "The Muslim Brotherhood... are not seeking personal gains, so they announce they will not run for the presidency and will not seek to get a majority in the parliament and that they consider themselves servants of these decent people," the Brotherhood said, according to the Reuters news agency. The BBC's Yolande Knell, in Cairo, says this is a restatement of their previous position. The Brotherhood are very wary of how they are seen in the West, our correspondent adds.

Huh. I guess they are trying to wait and see which way the wind blows - if the military backs down and restores civilian rule they would probably back down some party.

 

Well, Mubarak was a military man and they didn't go out of their way to support him when the crap hit the fan. My personal and perhaps rosy tinted take on things is that most of the high militaries are well educated men who have been around the world and have no real interest in politics and that they are stepping in now to keep things calm and orderly until proper elections can be organised. Now this has been claimed by generals many many times before and I do not know why I believe them now but I do. When Egypt first erupted I had no hopes of things turning out better than it was but looking at the protests, listening to what they had to see, seen the general lack of violence and the "modernity" of the protests I actually think that we might see a proper democracy in Egypt in the near future.

Oh and we will definately see some religious party as one of the main players in a future democratic Egypt. Many countries have this, the current party in power in Turkey is an islamic party and the biggest party in Germany is called the Christian Democrats and neither of them are extremely fanatical or fundamentalistic. Now I personally loathe religion and religious involvement in politics but sadly many others don't and isn't that what a democracy is all about? Giving people choice whether you agree with that choice or not.

 

One thing that was mentioned to me by a friend was that Egypt mandates all men over 18 to serve a certain time in the military. That means at least the lower level of the military are going to be pretty sympathetic to the people. If the military higher-ups tried to sieze power, I think they would find their military may not be so much 'their' military any more.

 

From what I've read the lower, younger ranks of the officers tend to be very supportive of the protesters. It's the higher brass - the top generals and the likes - who had a lot to loose with the fall of the president.

 

Well, that's usually quite hard to predict. On one hand, militaries tend to be nothing if not hierarchical, and there have been many cases where they were oused to oppress a population who called for something the privates and ensigns could sympathize with. On the other hand, iirc it was the lower officers who were instrumental in the ouster of Egypt's last king and the abolishment of the monarchy, despite the monarchical sentiments predominant among the top of the army.

 

The Lara Logan incident

Spoiler

"60 Minutes" correspondent Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, "Jew! Jew!" as she covered the chaotic fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo's main square Friday, CBS and sources said yesterday.

The TV crew with Logan, who is also the network's chief foreign correspondent, had its cameras rolling moments before she was dragged off -- and caught her on tape looking tense and trying to head away from a crowd of men behind her in Tahrir Square.

"Logan was covering the jubilation . . . when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration," CBS said in a statement. "It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into a frenzy.

"In the crush of the mob, [Logan] was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.

"She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning," the network added. "She is currently in the hospital recovering."

A network source told The Post that her attackers were screaming, "Jew! Jew!" during the assault. And the day before, Logan had told Esquire.com that Egyptian soldiers hassling her and her crew had accused them of "being Israeli spies." Logan is not Jewish.

In Friday's attack, she was separated from her colleagues and attacked for between 20 to 30 minutes, The Wall Street Journal said.

Her injuries were described to The Post as "serious."

CBS went public with the incident only after it became clear that other media outlets were on to it, sources said.

"A call came in from The [Associated Press]" seeking information, a TV-industry source told The Post. "They knew she had been attacked, and they had details. CBS decided to get in front of the story."

Most network higher-ups didn't even know how brutal the sexual assault was until a few minutes before the statement went out.

"We were surprised it stayed quiet" as long as it did, one source said.

Another source insisted that Logan was "involved in the process" of deciding whether to make her attack public, and ultimately understood why the statement had to be released.

The horrific incident came a week after the 39-year-old reporter was temporarily detained by Egyptian police amid tensions over foreign coverage of the country's growing revolution.

As part of the anti-media backlash, CNN's Anderson Cooper had also been roughed up, and ABC correspondent Brian Hartman had been threatened with beheading.

"[Logan] was not in the country for long -- she'd been thrown out, if you remember -- and had just gone back in," one source said.

"She had security with her, but it wasn't enough."

Before the attack, Logan -- who is based in Washington, where she lives with her 2-year-old daughter and husband -- had been set to return to the States sometime over the weekend to tape a "60 Minutes" segment on Wael Ghonim.

Ghonim, Google's head of marketing in the Middle East, had been briefly kidnapped after helping to organize protesters.

But after she was assaulted, Logan went back to her hotel, and within two hours -- sometime late Friday and into early Saturday -- was flown out of Cairo on a chartered network jet, sources said.

She wasn't taken to a hospital in Egypt because the network didn't trust local security there, sources said.

And neither CBS nor Logan reported the crime to Egyptian authorities because they felt they couldn't trust them, either, the sources said. "The way things are there now, they would have ended up arresting her again," one source said.

 

She was not alone, a Swedish reporter got stabbed in a similar situation. It was not nice being a reporter there during those days several hundred were assaulted. The old regime did not want reporting, they did not want people to know what was going on so they spread all kinds of rumours mostly that all westerners were Israeli spies and also used other ways to silence reporters. It didnt work though. Kinda sucky to be assaulted during the celebrations though.

 

Not just assaulted - from the story, it sounds like she was gang-raped.

 

Yes, I heard about this. Terrible. I find it baffling that CBS felt the need to announce the details of her assault without her consent.

 

Well, the article did intimate that she was in agreement:

But the ratings hunt by all networks-- left, right, central, backward, whatever -- never ceases to nauseate me. Just as the behaviour of racist mob criminals also nauseates me -- it looks like half of the reason they attacked her was because they thought she was a Jew.

 

Then this might give you a chuckle...




hmmm... the video doesn't seem to be working. Here's the link instead.

 

Should we get another thread for Libya, or can we use this one?

 

Normally I don't trust things from the NY Times, but since they are supporting what I thought would happen I guess I have to give them a link.

Spoiler

CAIRO — In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.

It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment.

As the best organized and most extensive opposition movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to have an edge in the contest for influence. But what surprises many is its link to a military that vilified it.

“There is evidence the Brotherhood struck some kind of a deal with the military early on,” said Elijah Zarwan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “It makes sense if you are the military — you want stability and people off the street. The Brotherhood is one address where you can go to get 100,000 people off the street.”

There is a battle consuming Egypt about the direction of its revolution, and the military council that is now running the country is sending contradictory signals. On Wednesday, the council endorsed a plan to outlaw demonstrations and sit-ins. Then, a few hours later, the public prosecutor announced that the former interior minister and other security officials would be charged in the killings of hundreds during the protests.

Egyptians are searching for signs of clarity in such declarations, hoping to discern the direction of a state led by a secretive military council brought to power by a revolution based on demands for democracy, rule of law and an end to corruption.

“We are all worried,” said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is also regarded warily by some religious Egyptians, who see it as an elitist, secret society. These suspicions have created potential opportunities for other parties.

About six groups from the ultraconservative Salafist school of Islam have also emerged in the era after President Hosni Mubarak’s removal, as well as a party called Al Wassat, intended as a more liberal alternative to the Brotherhood.

In the early stages of the revolution, the Brotherhood was reluctant to join the call for demonstrations. It jumped in only after it was clear that the protest movement had gained traction. Throughout, the Brotherhood kept a low profile, part of a survival instinct honed during decades of repression by the state.

The question at the time was whether the Brotherhood would move to take charge with its superior organizational structure. It now appears that it has.

“The Brotherhood didn’t want this revolution; it has never been a revolutionary movement,” said Mr. Zarwan of the International Crisis Group. “Now it has happened; they participated cautiously, and they realize they can set their sights higher.”

But in these early stages, there is growing evidence of the Brotherhood’s rise and the overpowering force of Islam.

When the new prime minister, Essam Sharaf, addressed the crowd in Tahrir Square this month, Mohamed el-Beltagi, a prominent Brotherhood member, stood by his side. A Brotherhood member was also appointed to the committee that drafted amendments to the Constitution.

But the most obvious and consequential example was the recent referendum on the amendments, in the nation’s first post-Mubarak balloting. The amendments essentially call for speeding up the election process so that parliamentary contests can be held before September, followed soon after by a presidential race. That expedited calendar is seen as giving an advantage to the Brotherhood and to the remnants of Mr. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, which have established national networks. The next Parliament will oversee drafting a new constitution.

Before the vote, Essam el-Erian, a Brotherhood leader and spokesman, appeared on a popular television show, “The Reality,” arguing for the government’s position in favor of the proposal. With a record turnout, the vote was hailed as a success. But the “yes” campaign was based largely on a religious appeal: voters were warned that if they did not approve the amendments, Egypt would become a secular state.

 

Well doesn't that just suck? It's because of things like this - not knowing exactly who or what will fill the power vacuum - that I'm a little leery on the whole Libya thing too.

 

That is why Obama needs to stop this illegal war against Libya. Does anyone know where I can buy some "no blood for oil" bumper stickers and where to get an application to join Code Pink? Anybody? C'mon Liberal left we have to rally the troops to stop a war over here. Don't you care any more?

 

I care deeply if we actually send troops in. Last I heard, the mission has been officially turned over to NATO, which means the US isn't going to shoulder the whole load. The only way you can maintain the initial US involvement was to avoid a massacre of thousands of civilians is if that is what actually comes to pass. If we go boots on the ground to get rid of Momar, I think it's a terrible decision.