The US and the Egyptian Army may be playing the crowds with a good cop/bad cop routine....
The Guardian reports:
Bahgat said the pattern of accounts from those released showed the military had been conducting a campaign to break the protests. "Some people, especially the activists, say they were interrogated about any possible links to political organisations or any outside forces. For the ordinary protesters, they get slapped around and asked: 'Why are you in Tahrir?' It seems to serve as an interrogation operation and an intimidation and deterrence."
The military has claimed to be neutral in the political standoff and both Mubarak and his prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, have said there will be no "security pursuit" of anti-government activists. But Morayef says this is clearly not the case.
Of course, if the crisis continues, that could change.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
What Egyptian revolution?
Unless the army splits, ain't nothin gonna happen.
Pepe Escobar at Asia Times lays it out.
Excerpt:
Gilbert Achcar, professor of international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, goes straight to the point, "In order to impose such a thorough change, the mass movement would need to break or destabilize the regime's backbone, that is, the Egyptian army."
Meet the new boss ...
Egypt is a hardcore military dictatorship. The army, essentially paid for by US taxpayer money, is no "honest broker". The Mubarak regime's repression against the protests has not been even more vicious because soldiers in this conscript army would certainly have refused to shoot their own people; thus plan B, the regime's goons and the hated baltagia - state-sponsored thugs in plainclothes - unleashed last week.
Still, the regime was never shaken to the core - because the army remains in charge. Graphic example; the state-owned newspaper al-Gomhuria had a monster headline this Monday reading "New Era" above a photo of Suleiman meeting some of the opposition under a picture of Mubarak.
Mark LeVine writing in AlJazeera is correct that a true revolution would alter the world situation profoundly, for obvious reasons:
Whether Islamist or secularist, any government of "of the people" will turn against the neoliberal economic policies that have enriched regional elites while forcing half or more of the population to live below the $2 per day poverty line. They will refuse to follow the US or Europe's lead in the war on terror if it means the continued large scale presence of foreign troops on the region's soil. They will no longer turn a blind eye, or even support, Israel's occupation and siege across the Occupied Palestinian territories. They will most likely shirk from spending a huge percentage of their national income on bloated militaries and weapons systems that serve to enrich western defence companies and prop up autocratic governments, rather than bringing stability and peace to their countries - and the region as a whole.
They will seek, as China, India and other emerging powers have done, to move the centre of global economic gravity towards their region, whose educated and cheap work forces will further challenge the more expensive but equally stressed workforces of Europe and the United States.
In short, if the revolutions of 2011 succeed, they will force the creation of a very different regional and world system than the one that has dominated the global political economy for decades, especially since the fall of communism.
This system could bring the peace and relative equality that has so long been missing globally - but it will do so in good measure by further eroding the position of the United States and other "developed" or "mature" economies. If Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel and their colleagues don't figure out a way to live with this scenario, while supporting the political and human rights of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa, they will wind up with an adversary far more cunning and powerful than al-Qa'eda could ever hope to be: more than 300 million newly empowered Arabs who are mad as hell and are not going to take it any more.
Doesn't seem likely that the US and Israel would let that happen.
A revolution seems unlikely led by the twitterati. Without an insurrectionist party (which the MB assuredly ain't) able to organize a militia, hard to see the need for a coup. At this moment Khomeini looks like a genius while Osama bin Forgotten is shown to be the criminal terrorist idiot which he is.
Pepe Escobar at Asia Times lays it out.
Excerpt:
Gilbert Achcar, professor of international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, goes straight to the point, "In order to impose such a thorough change, the mass movement would need to break or destabilize the regime's backbone, that is, the Egyptian army."
Meet the new boss ...
Egypt is a hardcore military dictatorship. The army, essentially paid for by US taxpayer money, is no "honest broker". The Mubarak regime's repression against the protests has not been even more vicious because soldiers in this conscript army would certainly have refused to shoot their own people; thus plan B, the regime's goons and the hated baltagia - state-sponsored thugs in plainclothes - unleashed last week.
Still, the regime was never shaken to the core - because the army remains in charge. Graphic example; the state-owned newspaper al-Gomhuria had a monster headline this Monday reading "New Era" above a photo of Suleiman meeting some of the opposition under a picture of Mubarak.
Mark LeVine writing in AlJazeera is correct that a true revolution would alter the world situation profoundly, for obvious reasons:
Whether Islamist or secularist, any government of "of the people" will turn against the neoliberal economic policies that have enriched regional elites while forcing half or more of the population to live below the $2 per day poverty line. They will refuse to follow the US or Europe's lead in the war on terror if it means the continued large scale presence of foreign troops on the region's soil. They will no longer turn a blind eye, or even support, Israel's occupation and siege across the Occupied Palestinian territories. They will most likely shirk from spending a huge percentage of their national income on bloated militaries and weapons systems that serve to enrich western defence companies and prop up autocratic governments, rather than bringing stability and peace to their countries - and the region as a whole.
They will seek, as China, India and other emerging powers have done, to move the centre of global economic gravity towards their region, whose educated and cheap work forces will further challenge the more expensive but equally stressed workforces of Europe and the United States.
In short, if the revolutions of 2011 succeed, they will force the creation of a very different regional and world system than the one that has dominated the global political economy for decades, especially since the fall of communism.
This system could bring the peace and relative equality that has so long been missing globally - but it will do so in good measure by further eroding the position of the United States and other "developed" or "mature" economies. If Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel and their colleagues don't figure out a way to live with this scenario, while supporting the political and human rights of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa, they will wind up with an adversary far more cunning and powerful than al-Qa'eda could ever hope to be: more than 300 million newly empowered Arabs who are mad as hell and are not going to take it any more.
Doesn't seem likely that the US and Israel would let that happen.
A revolution seems unlikely led by the twitterati. Without an insurrectionist party (which the MB assuredly ain't) able to organize a militia, hard to see the need for a coup. At this moment Khomeini looks like a genius while Osama bin Forgotten is shown to be the criminal terrorist idiot which he is.
Give us a lever large enough....
Maybe I'm too isolated from the mainstream, but this clip with the rapper Omar Offendum, full of visual cliches as it might be, reminds me what is possible as large numbers of people get empowered and energized...
Once a process starts, it sometimes takes on a life of its own
From the Guardian blog:
9.30pm GMT: Still on the Suez Canal, Ahram Online says that workers from five service companies owned by the Suez Canal Authority have begun "an open-ended sit-in" today:
Over 6000 protesters have agreed that they will not go home today once their shift is over and will continue their sit-in in front of the company's headquarters until their demands are met. They are protesting against poor wages and deteriorating health and working conditions and demanded that their salaries and benefits meet the standard of those working for the Suez Canal Authority.
9.30pm GMT: Still on the Suez Canal, Ahram Online says that workers from five service companies owned by the Suez Canal Authority have begun "an open-ended sit-in" today:
Over 6000 protesters have agreed that they will not go home today once their shift is over and will continue their sit-in in front of the company's headquarters until their demands are met. They are protesting against poor wages and deteriorating health and working conditions and demanded that their salaries and benefits meet the standard of those working for the Suez Canal Authority.
The Adriana Maneuvre
Michael Wolff on the merger of the week:
It’s an advertising play.
What’s wrong with the Internet and with HuffPo and with AOL is that Internet content CPMs suck. HuffPo, as a senior-most media buyer told me over lunch last week, will sell anything and do anything for an ad buy—becoming the true generic mix-up of the sponsored and the true—and still it couldn’t muster a CPM that was worth much. That would be true of AOL, too. What the business demands, then, is ever-more traffic—and this is where the combination is arguably "one and one makes three" (we conjure an extra page view from your traffic, you conjure one from ours)—ever more miserly economies of scale, and a whole new level of clout.
That last point is the play: clout.
The proposition is that AOL is on the way to controlling so much traffic and so much content real estate that it can start to have more meaningful, more creative, more—spread your arms, and gesticulate widely—wide-ranging conversations with marketers and media buyers. The combination of so many opportunities and so much one-stop ease and so much smart and efficient packaging can result in significant margin improvement
It’s an advertising play.
What’s wrong with the Internet and with HuffPo and with AOL is that Internet content CPMs suck. HuffPo, as a senior-most media buyer told me over lunch last week, will sell anything and do anything for an ad buy—becoming the true generic mix-up of the sponsored and the true—and still it couldn’t muster a CPM that was worth much. That would be true of AOL, too. What the business demands, then, is ever-more traffic—and this is where the combination is arguably "one and one makes three" (we conjure an extra page view from your traffic, you conjure one from ours)—ever more miserly economies of scale, and a whole new level of clout.
That last point is the play: clout.
The proposition is that AOL is on the way to controlling so much traffic and so much content real estate that it can start to have more meaningful, more creative, more—spread your arms, and gesticulate widely—wide-ranging conversations with marketers and media buyers. The combination of so many opportunities and so much one-stop ease and so much smart and efficient packaging can result in significant margin improvement
Monday, February 7, 2011
Cascading Effects of Extinction
"The buds ripen and send a colour signal but they don't open up until a bird comes along and squeezes the top and if that doesn't happen the plant doesn't get pollinated. It turns out these native pollinating birds are pretty much the only birds that know the trick of opening these."
More here.
J'accuse.....
More here.
J'accuse.....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
