Reza Pahlavi, the one-time heir apparent to the Peacock Throne who pledged to work with then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon to build a counter-revolutionary army in 1982 (a plan that was aborted after the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon forced Sharon’s resignation), has just tweeted: “In the history of humanity, never has there been a government that was able to resist a unified and committed people.” He has first-hand knowledge of this belief, of course.
AlMasry AlYoum: The Egyptian political arena is witnessing unprecedented activity following the 25 January uprising, with calls for the establishment of 13 new political parties.
Political thinker Tarek Higgy said he had contacted Coptic political activist Michael Mounir to collect signatures for the creation of a new party that aims to establish a secular and democratic state based on the principles of citizenship, liberalism and religious freedom.
Also, some 100 leftists met on Tuesday to prepare for the establishment of a party of their own. Spokesmen for the
Liberation, Development and Defense Front said they had so far collected 20,000 signatures from citizens all over the country.
What’s more, 5000 National Democratic Party members have also decided to form a new party, to be called the Egyptian Youth party.
Muslim Brotherhood (MB) member Nageh Ibrahim, meanwhile, said his group intended to establish a “civil†party with an “Islamic orientation†now that the group is no longer banned by the state.
MB dissident Khaled al-Zaafarany, for his part, said that 500 young people from the 25 January Revolution in Alexandria had vowed to join his new party, dubbed the Islamic Justice and Development Party after Turkey’s ruling Islamist party.
The Egyptian Orthodox, Anglican and Catholic Churches, however, have refused to establish a political party for
Christians, saying this would merely contribute to sectarian strife.
This is why I like Colbert more than Stewart.
The Iranian Student Alliance in America (ISAA) at the University of California, Berkeley is deeply concerned with the launching of the film Iranium, directed by Alex Traiman and produced by the Clarion Fund. Iranium falsifies, exaggerates and overtly generalizes reality to manipulate the public’s emotions. Through such actions, the makers of Iranium instill fear within their viewers to justify their war agenda. Worst of all, they ruthlessly use the sacrifices of the people of Iran to push for a war that will target the same people.
ISAA strongly condemns Iranium and the violent and hateful messages it conveys. As Iranians who stood by our sisters and brothers while they peacefully protested for their basic civil liberties, we are here to denounce the producers of this film for falsifying the sacrifices of our fallen compatriots and to ensure that they will not succeed in using the struggle of the Iranian people to push for their war-agenda. The unjust war that Iranium calls for will lead to the death of thousands and the destruction of national resources of a country. It is a shameless and inhumane act to profit from the blood of the innocent people who are after freedom and reform.
Read the full statement here.
You can just picture it now, the Saudi king Abdullah smacking ousted Tunisian president Ben Ali beside the head for succumbing to the Tunisian revolt. He would have preferred him to stay put no matter what. The Arab regimes’ have long feared that if one of them fell to a popular revolution, then it would spread to the rest of the Arab world.  “The Daily Star” editor in 2009 even opined that although some of these Arab regimes disliked the Iranian government, they feared it falling to the Green Movement because they worried it would become an exemplar for action in their own countries. The Iranian regime survived, but instead Tunisia brought to reality these Arab regimes’ biggest fear by serving as the spark that ignited an inferno of revolution across the Middle East. After Tunisia, demonstrations began in Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen.  The people finally shed their fear of their own rulers. 18 days later, the long-hated Mubarak regime crumbled in the face of a concerted and relentless protest movement. Since then, the Yemenese have been trying to orchestrate their own revolution. Today entered the 4th day of consecutive protests. See the video here. Bahrainis also held their own demonstration today. Iran, too, tapped into the momentum gripping the region to re-launch its Green Movement… oh the irony.
You have to see this interactive map of Tahrir Square. Make sure you click on the tabs within the picture.
The Obama administration has lacked consistency in terms of its public statements regarding the uprising in Egypt. At first, the administration declared that the regime is “stable” and then a week ago referred to Mubarak as a “patriot,” only to change course and demand a “transition” and at the end a “quick transition.” The administration never once demanded his resignation, even though the masses willed it and even though the death toll climbed fast thereby further chipping away at Mubarak’s legitimacy. But to be fair, Obama’s later criticisms were much more than Bush would have offered and probably McCain as well. The issue now is whether democracy can be forged in this post-revolutionary environment. Officially, the military is the main state power until elections. Unofficially, popular will in Egypt has become a potent force. In this uncertain climate, two issues seem to haunt the day. How much power will the military cede in the next elections, presumably in September? The military has declared that it will maintain power in the interim and vest it back to civil authority after the elections, but I fear that what may come to be will resemble the Turkish democracy that was controlled until recently by the military; the military overthrew democratic governments whenever those governments acted in contradiction to views and principles espoused by the military. The other concern I have is the military or other domestic centers of power and especially foreign entities subverting or “directing” the elections to produce an outcome favorable not to the will of the people but to themselves. For instance, the Obama administration has already hinted at this possibility: “Administration officials agreed that the $250 million in economic aid was a pittance compared with the $1.3 billion in annual military aid, and the White House and the State Department were already discussing setting aside new funds to bolster the rise of secular political parties.”
He is out. Mubarak has been toppled. What was unthinkable a month or so ago is now a reality. This is not to say that the revolution is complete, certain power centers in Egypt and abroad will continue to try to subvert the revolution as it progresses through the stages, but this is nonetheless the biggest development in the region in recent memory. Here’s the al-Jazeera news break. Remember it.
Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, has resigned from his post, handing over power to the armed forces.
Omar Suleiman, the vice-president, announced in a televised address that the president was “waiving” his office, and had handed over authority to the Supreme Council of the armed forces.
Suleiman’s short statement was received with a roar of approval and by celebratory chanting and flag-waving from a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, as well by pro-democracy campaigners who attended protests across the country on Friday.
The crowd in Tahrir chanted “We have brought down the regime”, while many were seen crying, cheering and embracing one another.
Mohamed ElBaradei, an opposition leader, hailed the moment as being the “greatest day of my life”, in comments to the Associated Press news agency.
“The country has been liberated after decades of repression,” he said.
“Tonight, after all of these weeks of frustration, of violence, of intimidation … today the people of Egypt undoubtedly [feel they] have been heard, not only by the president, but by people all around the world,” our correspondent at Tahrir Square reported, following the announcement.
“The sense of euphoria is simply indescribable,” our correspondent at Mubarak’s Heliopolis presidential palace, where at least ten thousand pro-democracy activists had gathered, said.
“I have waited, I have worked all my adult life to see the power of the people come to the fore and show itself. I am speechless.” Dina Magdi, a pro-democracy campaigner in Tahrir Square told Al Jazeera.
“The moment is not only about Mubarak stepping down, it is also about people’s power to bring about the change that no-one … thought possible.”
In Alexandria, Egypt’s second city, our correspondent described an “explosion of emotion”. He said that hundreds of thousands were celebrating in the streets.
Pro-democracy activists in the Egyptian capital and elsewhere had earlier marched on presidential palaces, state television buildings and other government installations on Friday, the 18th consecutive day of protests.
Anger at state television
At the state television building earlier in the day, thousands had blocked people from entering or leaving, accusing the broadcaster of supporting the current government and of not truthfully reporting on the protests.
“The military has stood aside and people are flooding through [a gap where barbed wire has been moved aside],” Al Jazeera’s correspondent at the state television building reported.
He said that “a lot of anger [was] generated” after Mubarak’s speech last night, where he repeated his vow to complete his term as president.
‘Gaining momentum’
Outside the palace in Heliopolis, where at least ten thousand protesters had gathered in Cairo, another Al Jazeera correspondent reported that there was a strong military presence, but that there was “no indication that the military want[ed] to crack down on protesters”.
She said that army officers had engaged in dialogue with protesters, and that remarks had been largely “friendly”.
Tanks and military personnel had been deployed to bolster barricades around the palace.
Our correspondent said the crowd in Heliopolis was “gaining momentum by the moment”, and that the crowd had gone into a frenzy when two helicopters were seen in the air around the palace grounds.
“By all accounts this is a highly civilised gathering. people are separated from the palace by merely a barbed wire … but nobody has even attempted to cross that wire,” she said.
As crowds grew outside the palace, Mubarak left Cairo on Friday for the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Shaikh, according to sources who spoke to Al Jazeera.
In Tahrir Square, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered, chanting slogans against Mubarak and calling for the military to join them in their demands.
Our correspondent at the square said the “masses” of pro-democracy campaigners there appeared to have “clear resolution” and “bigger resolve” to achieve their goals than ever before.
However, he also said that protesters were “confused by mixed messages” coming from the army, which has at times told them that their demands will be met, yet in communiques and other statements supported Mubarak’s staying in power until at least September.
Army statement
In a statement read out on state television at midday on Friday, the military announced that it would lift a 30-year-old emergency law but only “as soon as the current circumstances end”.
The military said it would also guarantee changes to the constitution as well as a free and fair election, and it called for normal business activity to resume.
Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Tahrir Square said people there were hugely disappointed with that army statement, and had vowed to take the protests to “a last and final stage”.
“They’re frustrated, they’re angry, and they say protests need to go beyond Liberation [Tahrir] Square, to the doorstep of political institutions,” she said.
Protest organisers have called for 20 million people to come out on “Farewell Friday” in a final attempt to force Mubarak to step down.
Alexandria protests
Hossam El Hamalawy, a pro-democracy organiser and member of the Socialist Studies Centre, said protesters were heading towards the presidential palace from multiple directions, calling on the army to side with them and remove Mubarak.
“People are extremely angry after yesterday’s speech,” he told Al Jazeera. “Anything can happen at the moment. There is self-restraint all over but at the same time I honestly can’t tell you what the next step will be … At this time, we don’t trust them [the army commanders] at all.”
An Al Jazeera reporter overlooking Tahrir said the side streets leading into the square were filling up with crowds.
“It’s an incredible scene. From what I can judge, there are more people here today than yesterday night,” she said.
“The military has not gone into the square except some top commanders, one asking people to go home … I don’t see any kind of tensions between the people and the army but all of this might change very soon if the army is seen as not being on the side of the people.”
Hundreds of thousands were participating in Friday prayers outside a mosque in downtown Alexandria, Egypt’s second biggest city.
Thousands of pro-democracy campaigners also gathered outside a presidential palace in Alexandria.
Egyptian television reported that large angry crowds were heading from Giza, adjacent to Cairo, towards Tahrir Square and some would march on the presidential palace.
Protests are also being held in the cities of Mansoura, Mahala, Tanta, Ismailia, and Suez, with thousands in attendance.
Violence was reported in the north Sinai town of el-Arish, where protesters attempted to storm a police station. At least one person was killed, and 20 wounded in that attack, our correspondent said.
Dismay at earlier statement
In a televised address to the nation on Thursday, Mubarak said he was handing “the functions of the president” to Vice-President Omar Suleiman. But the move means he retains his title of president.
Halfway through his much-awaited speech late at night, anticipation turned into anger among protesters camped in Tahrir Square who began taking off their shoes and waving them in the air.
Immediately after Mubarak’s speech, Suleiman called on the protesters to “go home” and asked Egyptians to “unite and look to the future.”
Union workers have joined the protests over the past few days, effectively crippling transportation and several industries, and dealing a sharper blow to Mubarak’s embattled regime.
Much of the political right and the pro-Israeli camp are fearmongering that the Obama administration should not demand Mubarak’s resignation, which Obama has not done because the “democracy” that the US championed in Iran in ’09 does not apply in the same way to a stalwart ally such as Mubarak, arguing that Egypt could become the next Iran, that should a revolution triumph in Egypt then the regime born of that revolution will mirror that of Iran’s in 1979, which , of course, was a nightmare for American interests in the region. Here’s an article from Foreign Policy that I feel effectively refutes (or to quote our illustrious Sarah Palin “refudiates”) that analogy:
From London to Washington, and as far as Tehran, the question is being asked: Will Egypt of 2011 become the Iran of 1979? Some leading figures in Tehran, as well as Iranian state-run media, are trying to cast Egypt as another country caught up, as is Lebanon, in the region’s tilt toward the Islamist orbit. “I herewith proclaim to those (Western leaders) who still do not want to see the realities that the political axis of the new Middle East will soon be Islamic,” Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a hard-line cleric, said last week at Friday prayers. He also applauded what he called an end to “Western-backed dictators in the Arab world.” Meanwhile, a few European leaders are already sounding the alarm that Egypt’s venerable Muslim Brotherhood, which dates back to the 1920s, could fill the vacuum left by the collapse of the Mubarak regime. British Foreign Secretary William Hague told reporters it was not up to foreigners to run Egypt, but “certainly we would not want to see a government based on the Muslim Brotherhood.”
And in Washington, some neoconservatives — the very same circle that not long ago was calling for regime change in Iran based on their reading of the will of the people — are now backpedaling and advising President Obama to tread lightly, so as not to create an opening in Egypt for an Islamist state to emerge from more than a week of mass popular protest. Some Israelis are also making the same recommendation out of fear that Egypt will go the way of Iran. “…Israelis, have been overtaken by fear: The fear of democracy. Not here, in neighboring countries,” Sever Plocker, an Israeli commentator, wrote in the daily Yediot Ahronot. “It is as though we never prayed for our Arab neighbors to become liberal democracies.”
The voices making comparisons with 1979 have failed to understand the seeds of the Islamic revolution, nor do they seem to recognize that today’s Egyptian uprising is a non-ideological movement. As someone who conducted research on the Brotherhood in Egypt for many years, I predicted 10 years ago that the only alternative to Mubarak would be a more democratic state run by the Brotherhood; I have been surprised at just how minimal a role the Brotherhood has played so far — not only in the street movement, but in the consciousness of the young people in Tahrir Square.
Their grievances are aimed squarely at the repression, cronyism, and stagnation that have smothered the Egyptian people for decades under Mubarak and his regime. Both the weakness and strength of their protest movement lies in the fact that they have no prescribed path forward. Of all the slogans chanted in the streets of Egypt over the last week, the Brotherhood’s decades-old cry — “Islam is the solution” — has been noticeable mostly for its absence. There are several reasons the Brotherhood has found itself in the background, even though it has stated that the movement supports Mohamed ElBaradei as a symbolic leader of the opposition, and it is steadily becoming more visible in the protests.
The organization put forth no leader of its own, either to negotiate with Mubarak’s regime or to guide the street protests, because it fears that today’s Egyptian youth — who has succeeded in a short time where the Brotherhood has failed for nearly 90 years — might shun the Brotherhood altogether if it were to become a political liability. The Brotherhood also wants to deprive Western leaders, such as British Secretary Hague, of any ammunition to support warnings that this is another Islamic revolution.
And third, the opposition — which is comprised of middle class, non-ideological youth, workers and the Brotherhood — wants to avoid at all cost giving the military a reason for a violent crackdown against the protestors. To date, the military seems to be preserving the regime while also respecting the rights of the people, who have great respect for the army as an institution. But all parties know the military’s attitude might change drastically if it felt the influence of the outlawed, but semi-tolerated Muslim Brotherhood was becoming too prominent in the uprising.
Some skeptics make the point that the Iranian revolution succeeded because of its diversity of secularists and nationalists, not just the clerical establishment. True enough, but the driving forces of the revolution were Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was clearly the charismatic figure leading the way, and his cadre of clerics, some of whom are still the pillars of the regime today in Iran. There are no clerics or even leaders within the Brotherhood positioning themselves as stand-ins for Mubarak.
If anything, this is a bittersweet moment for the Brotherhood. Although Mubarak appears on his way out, the movement seems to have missed the historical moment when it could have captured a powerful place in the corridors of power. That window began closing in 2005, after the Brotherhood captured 88 seats in the Egyptian parliament only to be targeted aggressively and largely suppressed by Mubarak’s security services ever since. During these intervening years, a new Egyptian generation has arisen that is more secular, more worldly, and not loyal to any particular organization or movement. Though the Brotherhood, in the long term, may still prove to have a profound role in a new Egypt; after all, the skills and tools it takes to start a revolution are rarely those needed to finish it. Ask the Mensheviks and Lenin.
Rather than reaching for false analogies between Iran of 1979 and Egypt today, Western leaders should accept the fact that any new Egyptian government is unlikely to support policies the United States has promoted for 30 years, regardless of whether the Muslim Brotherhood has a small or large share in a new government. The time has come for the West to acknowledge that Egyptian society opposes the country’s 1979 peace agreement with Israel, resents the United States’ close relationship with the Jewish state (a country most Egyptians loathe), and has been historically prepared to end the country’s reliance on U.S. aid. In fact, Mubarak’s image as a puppet of the United States has for years been a political liability.
It is clear the new Egypt in the post-Mubarak era will be self-determined, more anti-American and closer to its Arab and Muslim neighbors. And this will happen whether or not the Muslim Brotherhood takes the driver’s seat in a new government.
Geneive Abdo, director of the Iran program at the National Security Network and The Century Foundation, is the author of No God But God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam.
(See CNN’s video here, the footage is amazing!) al Jazeera: More than a million protesters have flooded into central Cairo, turning Tahrir Square in the Egyptian capital, into a sea of humanity in a massive show of protest against Hosni Mubarak, the country’s president for three decades.
Packed shoulder to shoulder in and around the famed Tahrir Square, the mass of people on Tuesday held aloft posters denouncing the president, and chanted slogans “Go Mubarak Go” and “Leave! Leave! Leave!”
Similar massive demonstrations calling on Mubarak to step down are also being witnessed across other cities, including Sinai, Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura, Damnhour, Arish, Tanta and El-Mahalla el-Kubra.
Tens of thousands were reportedly marching in Alexandria while the number of those protesting in Sinai was estimated to be around 250,000.
Tuesday’s protests were by far the biggest since street demonstrations broke out against Mubarak’s rule last week.
“The crowd is very diverse – young, old, religious, men, women – and growing by the minute,” Al Jazeera’s online producer said from Tahrir Square.
(And here’s Jordan’s king responding to protests there with cosmetic changes.)
Has been excellent, so much so, that the NY Times has offered these words: As street protests raged across Egypt on Friday, with the future of the Arab world seeming to hang in the balance, rapt viewers across the region — and the globe — watched it unfold on Al Jazeera, which kept up an almost continuous live feed despite the Egyptian government’s repeated efforts to block broadcasts. The channel was widely hailed for its early and aggressive coverage of the revolt in Tunisia, and it seemed bent on playing a similar role with the turmoil in Egypt. [To access al Jazeera’s indispensible live feed for free, go here.]
NY Times: By removing a despot who was the main obstacle to democracy, the Tunisian revolt has immense importance for the Arab and Islamic world. Above all, it has opened up a future that, due to the iron grip of an authoritarian political system backed by European and Arab governments, had been considered closed.
As we see from the burgeoning demonstrations in Egypt, it is not lost on others in the region that ousting corrupt autocrats is no longer just an impossible dream. Tunisia’s message to others in the region is that despotism is not a lot in life to which they must submit. That message is spreading fast because the Tunisian democratic movement is legitimately homegrown and not tied to a Western sponsor, as was the case with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
As I well know from personal experience, however, an open future includes not only the possibility of democracy, but the possibility of resurgent dictatorship.
In order to achieve democracy and diminish the prospect of a new strongman taking over, certain conditions have to be fulfilled.
First, the movement has to distance itself from the old regime and its elites. Revolutions only happen when the system is thoroughly dismantled and rebuilt. For now, the political and neoliberal economic structures that supported Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s dictatorship, although shaken and fragile, are to a large extent still intact. The same elites are still in charge.
From this perspective, it was a mistake for the movement to enter into negotiations to form a coalition government with the old elites. They can be trusted only when they voluntarily resign and allow themselves to be replaced by others elected by the people.
Second, the entire structure of the despotic regime — the executive, judiciary and legislative branches — should be revolutionized. It would be a mistake to limit the objectives of the movement to simply changing personalities.
The lack of experience on the part of ordinary people should not lead the movement to import elites from the former regime into the new government. My experience of the 1979 Iranian revolution taught me that in any department and ministry there are enough patriotic experts who are not tarnished by their association with the former regime and who are willing to play a constructive role in rebuilding the country. The fact that the existing elites have the lion’s share of the seats in government indicates that there is a serious shortcoming here. This gap has to be filled as soon as possible; otherwise, the elites of the ancien régime will reconstitute their power.
The people in the streets should not think that their work is done, and that they can leave the rest to political organizations. On the contrary, they must make their presence felt in every corner of the country and at every layer of government, perhaps through the formation of local revolutionary councils.
People should stop looking for leaders to take over, and recognize that everyone can develop leadership skills through taking responsibilities, engaging in debate and working with others in the movement.
In democracies, public space belongs to the people. Whenever they feel there are issues to be addressed, they must return to the streets. If people abandon the political space, it will inevitably be filled with power-oriented political organizations that will ultimately re-impose repressive practices.
Despite their many differences — from secular to Islamist — political organizations should develop a common commitment to democratic values. Any violation of these principles by the state, against even a single person or group, should be resisted by all.
The unfortunate lesson of the Iranian revolution was that most political organizations did not commit themselves to democracy. Lacking the unity of a democratic front, one by one they became targets of power-seeking clergy in the form of the Islamic Republic Party, and were pushed aside.
In this first peaceful revolt of the 21st century in an Islamic country, Islamic intellectuals have an important role in identifying, developing and introducing an Islamic discourse of freedom so that human rights are defended for all, regardless of religion or gender.
After the Iranian revolution, I protested against the show trials and executions of members of the former regime, arguing that those seeking power begin by violating the rights of those who have committed various crimes, but will ultimately violate the rights of the innocent.
The defense of the rights of all citizens must thus include the members of the old regime who are accused of crime and corruption. If the rights of these people are respected, then one can be sure that the rights of others will as well.
As we have seen (and may see further), those in power will resort to violence in order to impose themselves on society. They do so because they believe that people might compromise freedom in exchange for security, and thus become easy prey for a strong dictator.
In order to neutralize the violence of such groups, any new government must resist the temptation to create its own revolutionary guard. If contemporary Iran is any indication, such organizations can all too easily morph into an econo-military mafia that becomes part and parcel of the new elite. The solution is rather to reorganize the existing security forces so they are subject to civilian democracy and the rule of law.
Tunisia’s experience has shown that a revolution can succeed without relying on a power-oriented Ayatollah Khomeini. When a social movement is spontaneous and horizontal, it has a far greater chance of achieving its goals.
But social revolution is strewn with obstacles at every turn. It will require persistent struggle over many years, not just for a few weeks.
Now there is no turning back. The struggle will bring true democracy if those who made the revolution persist. If they fall back, strongmen are waiting in the wings to seize power out of the vacuum. Then, as in Iran, the people will have to start all over again to regain their freedom.
Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was the first president of Iran after the Iranian revolution overthrew the shah in 1979. He lives in exile outside Paris.
It’s hard to blog about what’s happening in North Africa and the Middle East because it’s hard to write without offering predictions. I hate giving predictions. It’s amateur hour when people spew predictions about any part of the world, especially the Middle East. It’s just damn near impossible to try to see what lies ahead. Without offering predictions, I will try to make sense out of what’s happening in the region. First, and I know this sounds pretty simple and cliche, but the Tunisian Revolution has changed things, it really has. It shattered the aura of the invincibility of Arab dictatorships. Now, protests are happening in Algeria, Yemen, and most notable of all, Egypt. I do feel, however, that the Mubarak regime is the hardest to unseat mainly because its existence fulfills a crucial component of American-Israeli policy in the region, i.e. ensuring the security of Israel’s southern border. Professor AbuKhalil has even opined that the Mubarak dictatorship is so crucial to US-Israeli policy that they will do whatever necessary to prevent its downfall. What that means, I think, is that if things really begin to unravel, the two governments will sponsor a military coup and/or a military solution to what’s happening on the streets of Egypt. A massive and sustained uprising intertwined with concerted labor strikes, however, can render a military solution unfeasible. I don’t know how strong the labor unions are in Egypt, but labor action was vital both to the Iranian and Tunisian revolutions.
What is certain is that the Middle East has been inspired and awakened by their Tunisian counterparts. When the protests happened after the elections in Iran in ’09, I read this amazing article in Lebanon’s “Daily Star” about how a few Arab regimes loved to see the Iranian government fall, but not at the hands of a popular uprising because they feared that such a revolt would spur their own masses to action. Tunisia has given life to these Arab regimes’ worst nightmare. Thus, if Egypt is the hardest to unseat, I feel that if another Arab dictatorship that isn’t as sustained by the US as say, Yemen, were to fall, it would further inspire the Egyptians to orchestrate a revolution, or perhaps, the revolution where it matters most, the political and cultural capital of the Arab world. It is not a prediction nor an exaggeration when I tell you that such a revolution would have ramifications that will change the entire region and with it the world.
But lets not be naive, the Mubarak regime’s fall is no where near certain. What concerns me most is the possibility of the Egyptian government staging some sort of bomb attack against its own government installations and calling it “terrorism” or provoking riots and then launching a full scale crackdown/massacre all in the name of “national security.” This is by no stretch of the imagination impossible. Governments are notorious for staging their own justifications for cracking down on dissent.
In terms of the mainstream media’s coverage of what’s happening in the Middle East in general and Egypt in particular is absolutely disgusting. It’s times like these when I feel that the US media is the 4th branch of the US government, or at least an integral part of the ruling elite. When the protests broke out in Iran, the news channels were falling over themselves to cover the movement and glamorize and glorify it. The coverage of the Egyptian protests have been the opposite bordering on fearmongering. They talk about how dangerous and how disastrous it would be for US national security if the Mubarak dictatorship, an American ally, fell to a popular democratic movement while they cheered on the democratic movement that was lining up against the regime in Iran, America’s arch foe. The fearmongering suggests that the US media could quite possibly be preparing Americans to accept if not welcome an Egyptian military crackdown that could make the Islamic regime’s repression of the Green Movement seem like a picnic. I hope I’m wrong.
Professor AbuKhalil had this to say about the media’s double standards:
“The Egyptian regime is clamping down hard: they stopped the internet altogether, they stopped SMS, (and Twitter and Facebook obviously shut down). Â Vodaphone and two other phone companies stopped SMS. Â Najib Suwayrus, the Egyptian billionaire friend of Jamal Mubarak, is a collaborator in the repression. Â Even the regime’s mouthpiece, Al-Ahram, has been shut down. Â Egyptian goons are erasing clips of repression from Youtube. Â In Suez, the land lines are down. Â What if this was Iran?? Â And when there were protests in Iran, Twitter (the company) and Facebook (the company) came out in support of the protesters. Â The US media were enamored with the protesters back then. Â Why are those protesters not sexy for you? Â You can’t say that they are Islamists this time (as if Islamists have no rights to protest–but let us go along with the argument for the sake of it), and yet they are all alone. Â It will be remembered (when you ask now and later why they hate us), that Mubrak’s repression took place with the full support of both parties in the US and the Obama administration. Â Do you know now why whenever a US official, any US official, ever utter the word “democracy”, Arabs get a strong urge to throw up? Â In Iran, the US covertly smuggled those cute camera pens for demonstrators. Â They were not cute enough for the Egyptian people.”
Lastly, tomorrow is Friday prayers, which is an opportune moment to bring people together for political purposes. To that end, massive demonstrations are set to take place afterward, this time with Egypt’s largest opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, throwing their lot in with the protest movement. The government predictably is taking measures to prevent the demonstrations, such as lining up main thoroughfares with security personnel, shutting down access to mobile phones, SMS, and to facebook and twitter (or perhaps they don’t want us seeing what’s going to happen). Nonetheless, whatever happens tomorrow, it’ll be a reminder that one man’s life (Muhammad Bouazizi in Tunisia) has changed everything.
