And the arseholes move in



D-Squared was right. From Al-Jazeera:

Meanwhile, another Al Jazeera correspondent said men on horseback and camels had ploughed into the crowds, as army personnel stood by.

At least six riders were dragged from their beasts, beaten with sticks by the protesters and taken away with blood streaming down their faces.

One of them was dragged away unconscious, with large blood stains on the ground at the site of the clash.

The worst of the fighting was just outside the world famous Egyptian Museum, which was targeted by looters last week.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent added that several a group of pro-government protesters took over army vehicles. They also took control of a nearby building and used the rooftop to throw concrete blocks, stones, and other objects.

Soldiers surrounding the square took cover from flying stones, and the windows of at least one army truck were broken. Some troops stood on tanks and appealed for calm but did not otherwise intervene.

Many of the pro-Mubarak supporters raised slogans like “Thirty Years of Stability, Nine Days of Anarchy”.

Satisfying to see those fuckers on horses being dragged down and hurt, but it shows the desparation of the Mubarak regime that it would try and hire thugs to suppress the revolution. As Lenny said, The ruling class never does anything for itself; counter-revolutions always depend on coopting middle and working class people. There are plenty of numbnuts wanting to break heads for five dollars a day.

Arseholes

Daniel Davies, in his usual inimicable style, gets to the real reason the Egyptian army is playing nice with the protestors:

Numbers make a difference. An invading army can take over a city quite quickly; partly because an invading foreign army can usually be reasonably sure that all the guns are pointing in the same direction, partly because an invading army has physical momentum and has worked out ahead of time where it is marching to, but mainly because the population of an invaded city are usually not on the streets in anything like the numbers seen in Egyptian cities. Even a tank[1] is surprisingly little protection once it has stopped moving[2] and is surrounded by a mob. I saw pictures on the news yesterday of a tank crew sitting around at the edge of a square in Cairo – I have never in my life seen the crew of a tank looking so small and vulnerable. People are still talking about the army as if it was in control of the situation and for the moment at least, it just isn’t.

He also has the solution: Mubarak should’ve gotten the arseholes on side:

Basically, what you need is a large population who are a few rungs up from the bottom of society, who aren’t interested in freedom and who hate young people. In other words, arseholes. Arseholes, considered as a strategic entity, have the one useful characteristic that is the only useful characteristic in the context of an Egyptian-style popular uprising – there are fucking millions of them.

In the midst of an excellent analysis of why the protestors would be insane to accept Mubarak’s proposal to stay in power but not stand re-election again, Jonathan Wright provides evidence that Mubarak may have belately started to implement Davies’ suggestions:

A very disturbing trend which has surfaced in the last 24 hours is the appearance of pro-Mubarak supporters in close proximity to where the protest movement has gathered. Television stations reported on Tuesday evening that some of those pro-Mubarak supporters attacked protesters on the margins of the 100,000-strong march in Alexandria. I heard a noisy group of them in Kasr al-Aini Street just south of Tahrir Square in the early hours of Wednesday morning but I was reluctant to investigate because of rumours about their aggressive behaviour. Some of these pro-Mubarak gangs could be armed and dangerous. Some members of the protest movement would inevitably respond in kind, leading to gang warfare and even something akin to civil war. This is a very dangerous trend, carrying the potential for large-scale bloodshed. The trend suggests some regime elements are willing to fight for their privileges and will not easily accept defeat.

We’d like to think that authoritarian regimes like Mubarak’s only depend on the support of a small elite and brutal repression, but this is wrong. Plenty of people are willing to trade freedom for material gains (and you can’t always blame them either). In any revolution therfeore there’s always a sizeable portion of the middle classes, plus some priviledged parts of the working classes who stand to lose more from freedom than they will gain. Success or failure in any revolution is based in large part on keeping those elements at home cowering in front of the televisions screens, rather than on the streets.

Saying stupid things about Egypt: blame the media

How not to be a dumbass about Egypt; aimed at Americans:

“The Twitter Revolution”. No, this is the Revolution of the Egyptian people. Egyptians resisted for decades. They were tortured, jailed and repressed by the Mubarak and Sadat regimes. Twitter and Facebook are tools. They did not stand in front of the water canons, or go to jail for all these years to get the credit. There were demonstrations all summer long and for a several years through out Egypt but they are rarely covered, because we are worried about what Sarah Palin said, or some moronic Imam saying something stupid. Does it sound a bit arrogant to take credit for a people’s struggle?

It’s a bit unfair to blame yer Average American for this sort of misconception, when so much of the mainstream news coverage is hideously stupid, with the commentary even worse. For example, I saw bits of the European Unions’ pronouncements about the revolution and it was so obviously disconnected from the reality on the ground as seen on Twitter, blogs and Al-Jazeera, with its focus on wanting a “peaceful dialogue between government and the people” rather than actually siding directly with the people struggling for democracy. If the news coverage is all slanted towards what powerful people in the west think how Egypt must forward and how the White House should manage the situation and most of the socalled experts shown are deeply compromised through links to the American foreign policy bureaucracies, how easy is it for normal people to understand what’s really going on?

EU will not interfere in Egypt

Making a huge change from all those years that our governments did support Mubarak, the EU has said it won’t interfere in Egypt’s internal affairs:

“I’m certain the European Union today will signal to people of good will in Egypt and Tunisia that we’re ready to help organise elections, but not to interfere.”

In more relevant news, the Egyptian army has said it won’t use violence on the protestors, according to Al-Jazeera. With businesses and banks closed and tourists returning in droves, the protest movement has called for a general strike on Wednesday. The economic pressure on Mubarak to either leave or crackdown are therefore increasing rapidly, but as it seems he’s starting to lose the military, repression may just be too late.

Also 3arabawy in the Washington Post.