Egyptian riots

I missed this when it was posted a couple hours back, but the King of Jordan dismissed the current government and appointed a new prime minister. There had been some small protests in that country, and it looks like the king is hoping to head them off at the pass.

Dirt wrote:

So, who is Israel and the USA going to prop up to be the next President of Egypt?

You're talking like we have the ability to influence things in Egypt. Short of a messy CIA/Mossad coup or direct military intervention we've lost our say in what happens in Egypt.

I think it's fair to say that if any potential Presidential candidate even has a whiff of American or Israeli stink on them the Egyptian people won't touch them with a 10-foot pole.

Hypatian wrote:

W. T. F. ?

"The truth has no agenda, but The Media does," said the man with a radio program and TV show on a network with a known political bias.

OG_slinger wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

W. T. F. ?

"The truth has no agenda, but The Media does," said the man with a radio program and TV show on a network with a known political bias.

I have no words. Listening to that made me stupider.

Honestly, every time I get pointed at something and listen to the man, he's moved up a notch on the grand paranoid delusion scale. In another couple of years, he'll have gone all L. Ron Hubbard and will be talking about how the progressive agenda is to bring back the ancient (socialist) alien overlords.

OG_slinger wrote:
Dirt wrote:

So, who is Israel and the USA going to prop up to be the next President of Egypt?

You're talking like we have the ability to influence things in Egypt. Short of a messy CIA/Mossad coup or direct military intervention we've lost our say in what happens in Egypt.

I think it's fair to say that if any potential Presidential candidate even has a whiff of American or Israeli stink on them the Egyptian people won't touch them with a 10-foot pole.

t

$1.5 billion/year is not something a new government is going to want to give up right away. Unless it's a Muslim government.

Dirt wrote:

$1.5 billion/year is not something a new government is going to want to give up right away. Unless it's a Muslim government.

$1.5 billion is just 0.6% of their governmental budget. I'm sure they can save more than that by ditching their massive internal security forces and not buying all that American-made tear gas.

OG_slinger wrote:
Dirt wrote:

$1.5 billion/year is not something a new government is going to want to give up right away. Unless it's a Muslim government.

$1.5 billion is just 0.6% of their governmental budget. I'm sure they can save more than that by ditching their massive internal security forces and not buying all that American-made tear gas.

I don't think they bought the American-made tear gas. $1.5 billion isn't paid all in cash.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa...

Mubarak formally announces he won't run for re-election. This is a good thing. If he just up and quits, his VP becomes President and nothing changes in the people's eyes. A power vacuum would be even worse. Sit around until the next election and let the people vote.

I can't see that million person mob being content to wait until September for him to leave office.

Dirt wrote:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa...

Mubarak formally announces he won't run for re-election. This is a good thing. If he just up and quits, his VP becomes President and nothing changes in the people's eyes. A power vacuum would be even worse. Sit around until the next election and let the people vote.

You are not making sense. He can't leave because his VP will be just like him?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I can't see that million person mob being content to wait until September for him to leave office.

I can't, either, but it would insure a safe and ordered transition of power. It may be the best options.

Flip side: it gives Mubarak months to grease the wheels of the election and hire his own personal Medvedev.

Dirt wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Dirt wrote:

$1.5 billion/year is not something a new government is going to want to give up right away. Unless it's a Muslim government.

$1.5 billion is just 0.6% of their governmental budget. I'm sure they can save more than that by ditching their massive internal security forces and not buying all that American-made tear gas.

I don't think they bought the American-made tear gas. $1.5 billion isn't paid all in cash.

Exactly. $1.2 billion of that aid was military aid, which is why you saw the Egyptian Army driving all those M113 armored personnel carriers and Abrams tanks on Al Jeezera. But most of that money really went to beefing up Egypt's internal security forces, hence the American-made canisters of teargas.

Your point that a new Egyptian government would want to continue getting that military aid--which is really an annual bribe we pay to Egypt for them signing the 1979 peace treaty with Israel--is just wrong on so many levels.

It's wrong because $1.5 billion, even if it was cash, is an amount so small that the Egyptian government wouldn't miss the funds in the least. It's wrong because a popularly elected government doesn't need a massive internal security force to stamp out dissent. And it's wrong because regardless of whether the new government is a "Muslim" government (whatever that means) or not, it will be a government of a country that is 90% Muslim. That means it would be exceptionally unlikely that its people would want its government to continue a foreign policy that allows fellow Muslims who are right on their border to continue to be hurt and oppressed.

Seth wrote:

Flip side: it gives Mubarak months to grease the wheels of the election and hire his own personal Medvedev.

Which is exactly why I don't think the people will go for it. It's widely known that the last round of parliamentary elections were rigged in favor of Mubarak's party; they're not going to give him and his cronies another chance.

Mubarak should immediately convene a Constitutional Convention/National Assembly and transfer power to them. The main question would be who would be a member.

Hypatian wrote:

W. T. F. ?

You're reading this wrong, Glenn's pitching the plot to Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 3.

No seriously, i'll put $100 down right now that this is the plot to MW3.

Mubarak formally announces he won't run

No, no. I think he's going to run. The question is where will he run to? (France? Former dictators all seem to end up in France for some reason.)

goman wrote:
Dirt wrote:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa...

Mubarak formally announces he won't run for re-election. This is a good thing. If he just up and quits, his VP becomes President and nothing changes in the people's eyes. A power vacuum would be even worse. Sit around until the next election and let the people vote.

You are not making sense. He can't leave because his VP will be just like him?

I agree about the not making sense. However, the VP is not someone that will cause the protestors to leave Tahrir Square. He was handpicked a couple of days ago and smells of Mubarak trying to control who his successor is. And he's former military. And he was a conduit for America's extraordinary rendition program with Egypt. This won't end if power is simply transferred to the VP.

50 or so Pro Mubarak demonstrators just charged the mobs of anti Mubarak demonstrators on camel and horse back, and on chariots as well. The feed I'm seeing on CNN is a grainy video feed. The videos of this will be amazing. What I've seen as somewhat controlled pandemonium is trying to boil over it seems.

This has been the 2nd time I've seen Pro-Mubarak incite violence in the past hour.

It's been my understanding that in the early days looting and violence were carried out by members of Egypt's police force. So this is simply an escalation of Mubarak's policy of trying to create a climate of fear that Egypt can't survive without a severe security apparatus. So sad.

Al Jazeera reported earlier that there were police officers in uniforms seen directing the pro-Mubarak thugs.

It would appear that way. I've heard one comment that many of the pro Mubarak are police officers who were asked to come out in civilian clothes. It's an insane scene, but time and again I see so many people try to bring calm.

DSGamer wrote:

It's been my understanding that in the early days looting and violence were carried out by members of Egypt's police force. So this is simply an escalation of Mubarak's policy of trying to create a climate of fear that Egypt can't survive without a severe security apparatus. So sad.

This happened in South Korea as well. The next step is to surround a city and annihilate its rioting residents. The bad news is that the military is not entirely reliable.

Oh well.

Paleocon wrote:

This happened in South Korea as well. The next step is to surround a city and annihilate its rioting residents. The bad news is that the military is not entirely reliable.

Oh well.

A lesson to all would-be dictators. Make sure your US equipped military is kept loyal.

Also

3:22pm Protesters in Tahrir Square shows the Al Jazeera camera the ID cards of accused plain clothed security (police ID) who came in earlier to create chaos.

Hotlinked image, let me know if it doesn't work, please.

IMAGE(http://blogs.aljazeera.net/sites/default/files/imagecache/blogpostFeaturedImage/images/680policeid.jpg)

*edit*

Also Also, Anderson Cooper been jumped by pro-Mubarak dudes.

stevebruskCNN: Anderson said he was punched 10 times in the head as pro-Mubarak mob surrounded him and his crew trying to cover demonstration about 1 hour ago via Mobile Web Retweeted by 100+ people

Reports I'm hearing on Al-Jazeera:

The pro-government rioters showed up in government vehicles, are all men, and started attacking the peaceful protesters almost immediately.

There are five instances so far where the pro-democratic protesters have performed citizen's arrests on pro-government folks after discovering police IDs, and handed them over to military standing at the gates of the national museum.

Paleocon wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

It's been my understanding that in the early days looting and violence were carried out by members of Egypt's police force. So this is simply an escalation of Mubarak's policy of trying to create a climate of fear that Egypt can't survive without a severe security apparatus. So sad.

This happened in South Korea as well. The next step is to surround a city and annihilate its rioting residents. The bad news is that the military is not entirely reliable.

I'd never known that about Gwangju - I really hope it doesn't come to that here, but it's clear that Mubarak is willing to risk anything to hang on to power for as long as possible.

If I remember it right, during the Cheju Island uprising, the Korean government deployed flamethrowers against the protesting students.

(but still kept its good standing with the democracy-loving US).

(Small) bright spot: Egypt is back online, hopefully making coordination for the pro-democracy demonstrators better.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

*edit*

Also Also, Anderson Cooper been jumped by pro-Mubarak dudes.

stevebruskCNN: Anderson said he was punched 10 times in the head as pro-Mubarak mob surrounded him and his crew trying to cover demonstration about 1 hour ago via Mobile Web Retweeted by 100+ people

An American reporter gets the crap kicked out of him by Mubarak's plain clothed police forces and yet American media outlets are still referring to them as "pro-Mubarak protestors?"

MrDeVil909 wrote:

*edit*

Also Also, Anderson Cooper been jumped by pro-Mubarak dudes.

stevebruskCNN: Anderson said he was punched 10 times in the head as pro-Mubarak mob surrounded him and his crew trying to cover demonstration about 1 hour ago via Mobile Web Retweeted by 100+ people

My god, they went after the hair.

/snark

I saw a story this morning on Wired about a missing Google exec. Hopefully with the internet coming back up, we can get more on-the-ground information.