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in title, tags, annotations or urlCairo's new Cabinet proves how little has really changed - The National - 0 views
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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.
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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 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 Mirage State of Egypt - Daily News Egypt - 0 views
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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
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The illusion was so strong that they thought it was real even after it was destroyed.
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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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AP News: Analysis: Egypt still in turmoil after 16 months - 0 views
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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.
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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.
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there was no move to dismantle the system that Egyptians had risen up against
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Egypt Elections: Setback for the Transition - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - 0 views
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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.
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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
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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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Alexandria bucks national trends and Islamist reputation | Egypt Independent - 0 views
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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.
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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
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“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,”
Egyptian Elections, Necessary But Not Sufficient - By Rabab El Mahdi | The Middle East Channel - 0 views
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for the first time Egyptian elections are characterized by one of the most important features of democracy: uncertainty
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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.
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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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Boston Review - Emon, Lust, and Macklin: We Are All Khaled Said - 0 views
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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.
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During the revolution I was the only person using their real account to administer the page, so I was terrified and took extra measures
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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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Egypt's Unfinished Revolution | FRONTLINE | PBS - 0 views
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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
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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.
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Maher bristles at the notion that what happened in Egypt was the first "Facebook revolution."
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Hosni Mubarak « OFAC SDN List Removal Lawyers - 1 views
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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.
Summer's here and it's time to call the 'Arab spring' a revolution | Ed Rooksby | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 1 views
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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.
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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.
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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
Mubarak knew of 'every bullet fired,' says ex-spy chief - 0 views
BBC News - A woman's place in the new Egypt - 0 views
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Before the revolution, men didn't have their rights and would take out the injustice they felt on women. If all Egyptians have their human rights, women's rights will be achieved
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As a result of taking part in the revolution, Egyptian women now see themselves as equal to men and have the confidence to demand their rights. We've proved that we can organise and effect change and the challenge for us and all Egyptians is to make sure extremists don't take control
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All this means nothing, however, to 25-year-old Hemmat Ahmed, who sells vegetables on a wooden cart at the side of a busy Cairo road. "I stand here from 0600 every day to feed my children and I earn more money than my husband, who doesn't have a regular job. I left school and went to work when I was eight years old, but I'll make sure my children get an education, even if I have to beg for it." She has no faith in the political system and thinks that the new president, whoever it may be, will continue to steal the country's riches. "At least Hosni Mubarak was full from 30 years of robbery. "People will soon be back in Tahrir because nothing will change. There are no jobs, no good salaries, I can't even afford oil and sugar anymore. "All I dream of is to have a home and some new clothes for my children."
Thug life: Pro-Mubarak bullies break their silence | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt - 0 views
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The brutal attack came during the early hours of 3 February, and with it, what Abdel Kader describes as “a wake-up call. I realized these weren’t a bunch of sissy kids, and that they weren’t just having fun. They were fighting for something, and they were putting up a brave fight.” Abdel Kader pauses before continuing. “They were willing to die for what they believed in, and I was fighting them because I had been paid LE200. The thought of it broke my heart.”
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“I am a drug dealer,” he admits. “I am not going to deny it. But I am only a drug dealer because the police bullied me into becoming one.”
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“They threw me in jail to show me what it would be like, and then took me back out so I could sell their drugs for them.”
Egypt: Lessons from Iran | openDemocracy - 0 views
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There is no doubt that Egypt cannot go back to what it was under Mubarak, but the shape of the future system is very much dependent upon the presence of the youth, women, and the working people in articulating and pushing for their democratic demands in the public sphere. A crucial lesson from Iran for the progressive secular forces - the left, liberals, feminists, artists and intellectuals - is to not sacrifice their secular democratic demands, and not to trust the army, the Islamists or the traditional elite.
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another lesson from Iran is that in the post-revolutionary anarchy there is always the danger that the reactionary forces use the religious beliefs of the masses to get the upper hand
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The clerical/military oligarchy in Iran, with its intricate network of religious, repressive and economic institutions and multiple military and intelligence systems, is highly complex and also independent from any foreign power. It is a fascist-type system that still has millions on the payroll of the state and para-statal organizations, including religious foundations. It has also shown on numerous occasions that it does not hesitate to use extreme brutality against its opposition. In the long run, its fate will not be different from those of other dictatorships and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East or elsewhere, but the Iranian people unfortunately have a much more difficult fight ahead of them.
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