There’s a genuinely weird feeling to this. Obviously there’s some sort of political re-alignment going on, but it’s impossible to say what it is or how far it will go. It all seems to be dependent on things like the story about the journalist who started taping all his phone calls because his drinking problem meant he couldn’t remember what they told him and he feared they would use this to exploit him. Charming people. Someone apparently has copies. But who?
Newly established authoritarian regimes are always the most vulnerable during their succession process, as various Roman generals turned emperors found out on their deathbed. The Murdoch empire has had scandals and legal troubles before, but Murdoch has always been too useful for some and too powerful for others to have been bothered too much. that was Rubert though; but who is afraid of James?
The Nasserist state, for all its flaws, gained legitimacy because it was seen as a state for the mass of Egyptians, whether abroad or domestically. The present regime is widely seen in Egypt as a state for the others– for the US, Israel, France and the UK– and as a state for the few– the Neoliberal nouveau riche. Islam plays no role in this analysis because it is not an independent variable. Muslim movements have served to protest the withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities, and to provide services. But they are a symptom, not the cause. All this is why Mubarak’s appointment of military men as vice president and prime minister cannot in and of itself tamp down the crisis. They, as men of the System, do not have more legitimacy than does the president– and perhaps less.
It’s been another eventful day in Egypt and more and more this feels like what watching the revolutions taking place in Eastern Europe in 1989 felt like — but hopefully Egypt won’t be another China. The best place to watch it all go down is still Al Jazeera,as the official Wikileaks twitter also acknowledges: Yes, we may have helped Tunisia, Egypt. But let us not forget the elephant in the room: Al Jazeera + sat dishes.
For us watching from the outside in it’s hard to understand what is going on now in Egypt, but one thing is clear: this is a spontaneous uprising, fueled by the despair and anger of the average Egyptian, not something organised by either the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist organisations, or by what’s left of the secular leftwing opposition to Mubarak. This doesn’t stop the western defence analysis community from invoking the old Islamist terror bugbears of course. And as discussed at Blood and Treasure, Mubarak’s new vicepresident and prime minister are both hardliners not adverse to using violence to solve their problems. Which may mean that either Mubarak is preparing to unleashthe army (if it let’s itself be unleashed at this point) or that the security services are mounting their own coup first against Mubarak, then against the protestors. But can they stop this spirit?
(Ignore the horrid music)
Aussie net magazine Crikey reports on one of the more interesting cyberspace aspects of the Tunesian and Egyptian revolutions, the involvement of the 4chan hackers’s movement Anonymous in helping the protestors communicate with the rest of the world as well as attacking government communication channels. However:
It is also profoundly at odds in its ethos and methods with traditional NGOs and activist groups. This is not your traditional protest movement and elements of it would be deeply hostile to more traditional political activism. Anonymous is something that, because it grew organically in cyberspace rather than reflecting the cyber version of existing real world phenomena, looks and works differently to real-world organisations or movements we’re familiar with. Something important and new is happening here.
That’s because, in the final analysis, the US needs a friendly government in Cairo more than it needs a democratic one. Whether the issue is Israel-Palestine, Hamas and Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, security for Gulf oil supplies, Sudan, or the spread of Islamist fundamentalist ideas, Washington wants Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous and influential country, in its corner. That’s the political and geostrategic bottom line. In this sense, Egypt’s demonstrators are not just fighting the regime. They are fighting Washington, too.
“So I’m lying on the floor, stomach down, legs up, hands behind my back, my cheek on the floor, and then all of a sudden, the closest thing that I could think of really, to describe it, was someone pouring lava on my soles. That felt like nothing I could describe. I flipped from the pain. I just flipped and grabbed my legs. Of course, during all that time it’s insults, calling me names, kicking me. So they got me back down, but now so that I don’t flip again, one guy stood over my head, one guy stood over my back, and the others were kicking me with their wooden soled shoes, and another guy was beating my soles with the cables he had…â€
What happened to victims of the US’ War on Terror who were sent to Egypt: “If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt.” – Robert Baer, former CIA case officer. One more reason for the US to keep supporting Mubarak and not be too keen on a genuinely democratic revolution as is happening now to actually succeed. Who knows what will come out…
