At the CNN site, video shot by American tourists close to the Al Nile bridge show the police clashing with protestors:
Real Life Revolutions
Will the Arab revolutions spread?
With Tunesia having overthrown one decades long strong man and Egypt doing its best to oust another one, will these revolutions spread is the question Marc Lynch asks, as he acknowledges that there are reasons to be skeptical about this possibility, and yet…
Tunisia has manifestly inspired people across the region and galvanized their willingness to take risks to push for change, even without any clear leadership from political parties, Islamist movements, or even civil society. The Tunisian example has offered the possibility of success, and models for sustained action by a decentralized network, after a long and dispiriting period of authoritarian retrenchment. Al-Jazeera and the new media have played their role in reshaping political opportunities and narratives, but it is people who have seized those opportunities. And the core weaknesses of these Arab states — fierce but feeble, as Nazih Ayubi might have said — have been exposed. They have massively failed to meet the needs of their people, with awesome problems of unemployment, inflation, youth frustration and inequality combined with the near-complete absence of viable formal political institutions.
Mubarak’s party still a member of the Socialist International
And, as the Wayback Machine shows, so used to be Tunesia’s ruling party, until a few days after Ben Ali had fled the country. Will the National Democratic Party be kicked out too when Mubarak fled, or will the Socialist International take its responsibility sooner this time. And which other parties led by dictators are still on the membership list? Look for yourself…
Prague 1968 – East Germany 1989 – Cairo 2011?
Let’s hope Cairo 2011 will be more like the Eastern European revolutions in 1989 than the failed revolution of ’68. So far even calling in tharmy hasn’t stopped the protests and now the headquarters of the “National Democratic Party” is on fire and helicopters and tanks are entering Cairo. Well over eight hundred people have been wounded, with god knows how many murdered like the poor sod in the video below:
For some reason the BBC thought people would want to know what Tony “mass murderer” Blair had to say about the Egyptian revolution; if you can stomach it, the audio is here — watching the video is liable to cost you your computer. Reactions from people with actual power, like Hillary Clinton is not much better: much finger wagging, little support for the demonstrators.
Better mainstream coverage is at The Guardian. At (ugh) The Atlantic an alleged Egyptian activists’ action plan has been translated into English and it’s a must read.
You can’t make a sweet drink out of a rotten fish
The LBR‘s Adam Shatz on Egypt’s anti-Mubarak protests and its reception abroad:
Despite the Mubarak regime’s efforts to invoke the spectre of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptians aren’t demonstrating for an Islamic government any more than the Tunisians were; they’re demonstrating for an honest government – one that will improve education and infrastructure, reduce poverty and inflation, end the Emergency Law, stop torturing people in police stations, stop doing the bidding of the US and Israel in Palestine, stop rigging elections, and, above all, stop lying to them. And whatever their differences, they are united in the conviction that neither Mubarak nor his son Gamal, who is being groomed to succeed him, is capable of meeting these demands. As one young activist said to me last year, ‘We need a radical shake-up. We have a saying in Egypt that you can’t make a sweet drink out of a rotten fish.’
[…] And so, as police were dispersing protesters in Tahrir Square, Hillary Clinton did her best to scatter seasoning on the rotten fish: ‘The Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.’ Later that day in his State of the Union address, Barack Obama hailed the people of Tunisia, but said nothing about the Egyptians who hoped to repeat their example, and in whose capital city he had delivered a grand speech full of promises yet to be fulfilled.
Once again, it’s the supposedly democracy-loving EU and US that put themselves firmly in the way of actual democratic progress. Imagine my surprise.