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Ed Webb

Cairo's new Cabinet proves how little has really changed - The National - 0 views

  • blame falls first and foremost to the military's handling of the post-Mubarak period, the greed and other failings of his Muslim Brothers and other political parties, and the inability of revolutionaries to turn their symbolic capital into a political vision. The present situation is also a reminder of how "sticky" bad old habits of governance in Egypt are, and the extent to which the question of why the country was so badly run for so many years extended far beyond the dull rule of Hosni Mubarak.
  • the Brotherhood and the generals do have some power, but far more significant is their lack of power and legitimacy in imposing themselves against each another, and upon society
  • the Brotherhood and the generals do have some power, but far more significant is their lack of power and legitimacy in imposing themselves against each another, and upon society
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  • The Muslim Brotherhood has made inroads into some ministries (not for the first time: in the 1960s, some members had been allowed, as individuals, ministerial positions). It should be of little surprise that these include the ministries of housing and education - institutions whose role is to provide services, something in which the Brotherhood has some experience.
    • Ed Webb
       
      Education is not simply a service. It is a privileged site of ideological elaboration and indoctrination, alongside Information, and always a prime target for religious parties.
  • blame falls first and foremost to the military's handling of the post-Mubarak period, the greed and other failings of his Muslim Brothers and other political parties, and the inability of revolutionaries to turn their symbolic capital into a political vision. The present situation is also a reminder of how "sticky" bad old habits of governance in Egypt are, and the extent to which the question of why the country was so badly run for so many years extended far beyond the dull rule of Hosni Mubarak.
  • the beginning of a shake-up of the manner in which politics have been codified for the past 60 years, with myriad actors trying to adapt to this change - and salvage what they can from the old power structure at the same time
  • a Brother now heads the information ministry, a costly behemoth whose reform is one of the biggest headaches of post-Mubarak Egypt. That the media is on a warpath against the Brotherhood has been a refrain of its members; perhaps they hope to better control it. But the loyalties of Egypt's state media are divided; its multiple organs now have different masters. And, for the printed press in particular, the new minister will have to face the politically influential Journalists' Syndicate
  • There will not be a political Islamist in control of either endowments or state mosques
  • In a sense we've now seen a return of real politics, unmediated by the micromanagement of security officials
Ed Webb

Summer's here and it's time to call the 'Arab spring' a revolution | Ed Rooksby | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 1 views

  • plenty of commentators are drawing direct comparisons between the current events and the collapse of the eastern bloc. This approach performs an ideological function, in that it discursively integrates the current upheaval into a pre-existing approved ideological narrative – the dictatorships of the Middle East are merely the latest in a long line of tyrannies to have been undermined by the relentless march of progress and liberal democracy. Thus these upheavals represent further confirmation of the moral and organisational superiority of the western order.
  • The dynamic of change in countries such as Egypt is much more radical. In Marxist terms, the "political revolution" (reorganisation of the political institutions and changes among the leading state personnel) threatens to carry over into a "social revolution" (a more far-reaching reconfiguration of social relations and of the economic system). This can be seen in the way the focus of struggle, post-Mubarak, has shifted from Tahrir Square to the political-economic space of factories as workers organise strikes, articulate demands that are both political and economic, and start to challenge the power of Egypt's "little Mubaraks" – the country's economic elites. The revolution is deepening and taking on a definite class dynamic.
  • the pressures which are driving the revolts in north Africa are just as much systemic, economic ones as they are to do with political repression in Arab states
gabrielle verdier

Hosni Mubarak « OFAC SDN List Removal Lawyers - 1 views

  • The U.S. does not currently have a country-based sanctions program for Egypt. Therefore, in order to freeze Mubarak’s assets by placing him on the SDN List, OFAC would have to designate him under one of the subject matter areas. Specifically, OFAC would have to designate Mubarak as a terrorist, narcotics trafficker, diamond trader or a proliferater of weapons of mass destruction, which seems extremely unlikely.
Ed Webb

Egypt Elections: Setback for the Transition - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - 0 views

  • This was the worst possible outcome of the elections: it is the prelude to the direct confrontation between the old regime and the Muslim Brotherhood that Mubarak warned about and used to justify—and win tacit international acceptance for—his authoritarian policies.
  • On one side of the battle will be the military, state institutions including the courts that are still controlled by Mubarak-era personnel, the business community, other people who thrived under the old regime, and ordinary Egyptians who want order restored. On the other side will be the Muslim Brothers, most Islamists, and the Egyptians who rose up in January 2011 and do not want to see the regime they thought they had defeated make a comeback.
  • in the middle will stand over 50 percent of Egyptians who did not vote for either Morsi or Shafiq, but for three candidates that represent, in their own very different fashion, an alternative
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  • there are no established voting patterns to base predictions
  • there is no constitution yet and nobody knows how much power the new president will have or how responsibilities will be shared between him and the parliament. The SCAF, expected to step down at the end of June after the president is elected, is now trying to issue a new, last-minute constitutional declaration to define the powers of the president, preempting the decision of the constituent assembly and the prerogatives of the elected parliament to choose who will write the constitution
  • The Supreme Constitutional Court (whose president, not incidentally, is also the head of the presidential election commission) will soon rule whether the election law used in the parliamentary election was constitutional. If it decides it was not, it is possible the court will disband the parliament, depriving the Muslim Brotherhood of the only center of power it, rather than the old regime, controls
  • Should Ahmed Shafiq win the presidential vote and the court finds the parliament was unconstitutionally elected, Islamists will have lost the battle with the old regime
  • In the short run, these are the battles that will determine the winners, and the old regime appears to be better armed, controlling the institutions and the security forces. In the long run, the outcome is much less predictable because the majority of Egyptians have rejected both the Islamist candidate and the one from the old regime
Ed Webb

Boston Review - Emon, Lust, and Macklin: We Are All Khaled Said - 0 views

  • We secured ourselves and our connections, but I can tell you in many cases we didn’t for different reasons: slow connections, the need to update from a public device, etc. Luckily, the state security were not that smart, because I know ways in which they could have pinpointed our location and identity, but they didn't. Even the arrest of Wael Ghonim, as far as I know, was not related to his Khaled Said activity; it was something that was discovered during their interrogation of him on a different matter.
  • During the revolution I was the only person using their real account to administer the page, so I was terrified and took extra measures
  • Facebook in Egypt is very limited in its outreach. You can only reach certain areas (mostly neighborhoods in Cairo and Alexandria) and a certain segment (the middle class youths). We had only around 400,000 members on the page, mostly from Giza and the surrounding region, and mostly in their twenties and 30s. This is a very homogeneous group, but, clearly, given some conditions, they can start something significant.
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  • Blocking websites like Facebook and Twitter would have angered the business masters in whose lap [Hosni Mubarak’'s son] Gamal Mubarak was sitting. It was an unholy coalition between the sponsors of the corrupt regime and the popular social-networking Web sites.
  • youths in Egypt, pre-revolution, lived two lives, one online and one off-line. The off-line life is very limited in access to information, freedom of speech and mobilization, and even in access to each other. For decades, it was illegal for five people to gather for any reason (per emergency law), although it was tolerated except when it was politically motivated. Online political activists used terms like “group,” “room,” and “comment” as if they had physical meanings. The Internet offered an open environment that politicized the youths, allowed them to raise awareness on possibilities of shaping their future, diversified their perspectives, anonymized their identities, gave them the taste of free speech, and pushed them to see through the regime propaganda and despise it.
  • Since the Egyptian government had made the brick-and-mortar world so unfriendly to free expression and the Internet was so readily available to just tweet, update Facebook, or send a quick blog post, it became the space to express your thoughts or post a news item. As the people posted live, people would react live and a conversation developed. I believe 2010 was a tipping point for this interaction; we went from conversation to a public debate, and just not with activists but with a larger, less engaged tech-savvy population. Administrators were very deliberate in cultivating a relationship with this population.
  • none of the administrators in Egypt, for obvious reasons, could use his real Facebook identity to administer the page, and that was a violation of Facebook terms and conditions. Nadine, given her relatively safer location, was the firewall whenever Facebook realized the fake identities we used and deleted them. She would give us back access.
  • the most important factor in triggering the Egyptian revolution was the effect of Tunisia’s revolution, which did not start on Facebook. Neither did any of the other Arab revolutions. If it weren’t for Facebook, the Egyptian revolution would have started anyway. The effect of a Facebook call to a timed revolution with a large outreach (that activated an organized political activist community that’s been in the making for decades) is making the revolution shorter, more organized, with fewer casualties and more theatrical. These are important effects, especially to reduce casualties. But the multitude of factors involved with the startup, the process, and the success of the Egyptian revolution makes the Facebook effect a minor one
  • the angle that I hear most on Arab revolutions in Western media is the social media/Facebook/Internet one, rather than the more important, stronger and more direct effect of the injustice perpetuated by the dictators sponsored by Western regimes.
  • We have to remember that 850 people died. Not just Facebook profiles but flesh and blood people
Ed Webb

AP News: Analysis: Egypt still in turmoil after 16 months - 0 views

  • The leftist and secular revolutionaries, particularly reform leader Mohammed ElBaradei, argued that elections supervised by the military would be a farce and any constitution would be tainted. Instead, they proposed a civilian leadership grouping the "revolutionary powers" immediately start to rule and oversee the constitution.Divided and politically inexperienced, they were resoundingly overruled. The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists - who had joined the revolt against Mubarak - broke with the revolutionaries and backed the military-run transition. They had no time for worries over military rule or talk of a revolutionary government, keeping a laser-like focus on elections in which they were confident of vaulting to power on a strong popular base.Now the revolutionaries are saying: We told you so.
  • A turning point was a referendum in March 2011 in which the public overwhelmingly approved the military's plan for the transition. The Islamists strongly backed the plan, even proclaiming a "yes" vote to be required by God. The public trusted the military, was enamored at the promise of free elections and saw the revolutionaries' alternative as vague. The plan passed with 70 percent of the vote.From then on, the military pointed to that referendum as proof of legitimacy for whatever it did.
  • there was no move to dismantle the system that Egyptians had risen up against
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  • commanders of the feared security forces and intelligence agencies remained. Regime cronies kept their hold on state TV and newspapers. Mubarak-appointed judges and prosecutors made only superficial efforts to investigate or prosecute members of the regime, leaving the vast legacy of corruption and political skullduggery intact
  • State TV, firmly in the generals' hands, depicted revolutionaries as troublemakers or worse - agents paid by foreign powers to spread chaos. That fueled resentment of the activists among some in the public, frustrated with the instability and an economy sliding downhill fast
  • The highly organized Islamists largely stayed out of anti-military demonstrations, isolating the revolutionaries. In turn, the military paved the way for parliamentary elections - and the Islamists won big
  • The generals "played this well," Ashour said. As for the Brotherhood, he added, "all their gains are gone. ... Their chance of (being significant players) is very much minimum."The Brotherhood is also now largely without allies. Its former leftist and secular partners accused it of selling out the revolution. Repeatedly, it resisted concessions to work with other parties
  • Some revolutionaries joined new liberal political parties to contest elections. But their ideologies were indistinct, their efforts to build popularity fumbled, and they won no more than 6 percent of the seats in parliament.Others turned to street action and long-term organizing on the neighborhood level. Many of them feel vindicated, saying that while elections have proven futile, they have managed to mobilize some in the public against the military.
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    Really solid compilation of key events and analysis of balance of forces.
Ed Webb

Egypt: Rage against the Mubaraks | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian - 0 views

  • There is a reason why a national unity government which includes the opposition has been so difficult to stitch together in Tunisia. It is because remnants of the old regime are trying to ride a tidal wave over which they have no control. It is only when they all go, and fresh elections held, that political calm will be restored.
  • If nothing else happens, the idea that the Arab world needs ageing dictators as a bulwark against the rising tide of Islamism has been holed below the water line.
  • only free elections will begin to address Egypt's political problems
Ed Webb

Egypt's Unfinished Revolution | FRONTLINE | PBS - 0 views

  • Abbas, from a working class family loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood, now has friends who are Marxists, Christians, Nasserists, Salafists, liberals and Socialists. Some are rich kids from the posh enclave of Zamalek, a small island just across the Nile. Others are from the sprawling districts like Shoubra and Imbaba that envelop the capital. Back in January and February, these relationships were part of what Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch called the "Tahrir moment:" a collective revelry over the gentle belief that a diverse movement had toppled a dictator and was ushering in a new Egypt
  • Despite the unified cries for justice, the protest movement has largely splintered along lines of political parties and factions. All are competing for a spot in elections scheduled for November -- and to shape events in Egypt after Mubarak. The country of 82 million is still far short of the goals of its first free and fair elections, the writing of a new constitution and the reform of the police force.
  • Maher bristles at the notion that what happened in Egypt was the first "Facebook revolution."
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  • you could see the strain of the movement. He looked tired and stressed and he spoke of a growing sense that the movement is struggling to affect change, not play politics. Maher was criticized when it was learned that he hired a Beverly Hills public relations firm to represent the movement. He and his wife have a newborn who arrived just after the revolution, their second child, and he said he was struggling to balance his family, his work as an engineer with his dedication to being an activist
  • The Brotherhood clearly has wide appeal in Egypt's largely traditional society. But there is a youth movement within the Muslim Brotherhood that has grown impatient with the old guard, like El-Erian. The Egyptian Current Party is a small faction that includes maverick youth leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Abbas. The parliamentary candidate they plan to field is Islam Lotfi
  • I think I feel like a lot of Egyptians that we are going through dramatic change and we are unsettled by it and we are trying to cope in our own ways ... It is like the whole country is experiencing trauma. "We were so elated by the fact that Mubarak had to step down, but we all get pretty quiet and even a bit down when you think about how long it is going to take to bring real change, and how much real hard work there is ahead," she said. "How do we do that?" she asked, as protesters left the square in the fading light to get home before nightfall. "I think it is the question we are all asking ourselves."
Ed Webb

Alexandria bucks national trends and Islamist reputation | Egypt Independent - 0 views

  • Behind Sabbahi, Abdel Moniem Abouel Fotouh, a moderate Islamist independent candidate followed with 387,497, or 22 percent, of the votes, while former foreign minister Amr Moussa won 291,000 votes in third place, followed by Mohamed Morsy, the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate with 269,455. Ahmed Shafiq, former prime minister under Mubarak, who is leading the poll nationally, only won 212,275 votes in Egypt’s second largest city.
  • It was clear by now that people had lost trust and hope in both the ultraconservative Salafi Nour Party, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party
  • “Now, the split within the Salafis has been apparent these days, there are some who want to leave the political scene and go back to preaching and their religious roots, which was their main concern before,”
Ed Webb

Egyptian Elections, Necessary But Not Sufficient - By Rabab El Mahdi | The Middle East Channel - 0 views

  • for the first time Egyptian elections are characterized by one of the most important features of democracy: uncertainty
  • The absence of a pre-determined majority for the NDP is forcing all parties to shift their agendas away from simply opposing Mubarak policies to addressing voters concerns. It is also forcing all contenders and political forces, including the new post-January parties and "icons" to shift their attention away from television shows which have been their main venue and focus since the revolution, to building local constituencies and to adjusting their programs accordingly.
  • It is also allowing citizens to reclaim politics in a way that was shortly lived during the uprising, but soon gave away to an elitist monopoly of politics within a narrow public sphere of experts and ‘professional activists' debating on TV and in closed forums.
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  • Seen in isolation, elections cannot provide Egyptians with the much-needed transformation they went out for in January 2011. Luckily, elections seem to be happening in parallel with other forms of political participation, including continued strikes, protests, public-campaigns, and the rise of community and workplace organizations. The challenge for Egypt's transformation now is to build bridges between emerging institutional politics as expressed in elections, and the extra-institutional politics of the street and the workplace.
Ed Webb

The Mirage State of Egypt - Daily News Egypt - 0 views

  • The problem isn’t that the revolution created this Mirage State, but rather that it has always existed from the days of Mubarak, which we always suspected but never believed, because things used to function due to informal structure that we created without noticing. The state used to function based on a network of connections; the economy used to and still functions based on an informal sector that no one can either measure or penetrate; the policing used to be carried out away from the law or true investigative work and more reliant on torture and jailing; politics used to be the domain of one party that would insist that it believes in democratic transition and values while always rigging elections; and the president used to do anything he wanted in the country no matter what the constitution or the laws stated
  • The illusion was so strong that they thought it was real even after it was destroyed.
  • Instead of resolving the issues that exist between the governorates and the trash collection companies, or using the help of the zabaleen community, who have been doing a remarkable job of being the informal trash collectors of Egypt, President Morsy asked the people to simply resolve the trash problem by picking up the trash. Fine, but take it where? No answer. Would that mean that we no longer have to pay the trash collection money added to our electricity bill, since we are the ones collecting the trash? No answer. Is this part of maybe some sweeping recycling initiative, where we create a huge recycling industry and quite possibly create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process? Nope. The plan is simply to pick up the trash and for Egyptians to engage in their civic duty in collecting trash that they pay to be collected for them in order to… eh… nothing.
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  • I personally await his solution for the frequent breakdown of the sewage system of asking the citizens to hold it in as long as possible.
  • The people of the Mirage State of Egypt have just stopped being that, and started to become actual citizens. Hopefully the rest of the state will follow suit.
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