In Egypt the liberals did all the heavy lifting but then they took their eye off the ball

[NNN0LHI]

After Mubarak was gone they went home and started posting nekid pictures of themselves on the web to demonstrate how free they were while the right-wing religious zealots got busy filling the political vacuum.

Wonder if there is something to be learned from that?

Don

[EFerrari]

1. I've been reading the twitter feeds of about 20 revolutionaries

since Jan 25. The truth is, they didn't go home. Mubarak left and there was little change because the military junta that propped him up was still in place, only now openly.

Those young people immediately started a campaign to hold the junta accountable and to push for reform and elections. And for their trouble, they were hounded, arrested, shot at, and even killed. This morning I read that the junta's candidate is mocking them by using some of their photographs in his campaign.

Alaa abd el Fattah is one of the activists I try to follow. The junta put him in jail over a trumped up charge (dismissed finally) but they cost him missing the birth of his first kid. Alaa was one of the guys who was saying, over and over, this work doesn't stop just because the figurehead stepped down. His sister Mona is one of the quarterbacks of the No Scaf movement (no supreme council of the armed forces). She was recently arrested and charged with vandalizing the junta's campaign HQ even though she wasn't there when the damage was done.

They are fighting the good fight but it sort of breaks your heart that their youth is being eaten by these evil f#ckers who are being winked at by the rest of the world.

The right wing zealots you refer to are making backroom deals with the junta, as far as I can see from this distance.

It's an ugly situation but I admire the people that are not quitting, even against these odds.

[NNN0LHI]

9. Any idea why Mohamed ElBaradei didn't run for president?

Well spoken, impeccable credentials, experienced in both political and international diplomacy. Every time he would have held a news conference the international media would have been there reporting what he said.

He could have changed things.

Don

[riderinthestorm]

11. He doesnt have Egyptian support iirc. He was part of Mubarak's cabinet for a long while

and he's been viewed with suspicion since he's participated in "western" politics for so long (I know, I know, it's not really "western" politics but to many post-colonial countries, participating in any foreign agencies is suspect).

I agree that internationally, elBaradei would be a great selection but internally he faces some problems.

[EFerrari]

14. I really don't know his status right now.

[EFerrari]

2. This is Mona Seif talking about SCAF

&feature=player_embedded#!

[EFerrari]

3. This is her brother, Alaa

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. Sorry Don, you're blaming the victim here. n/t

[EFerrari]

5. But the post is valuable because it shows

that the campaign to get us to close the file has been sort of successful.

It's always the media, isn't it? Mubarak is gone so, the reporting is anemic and lazy. Unless you make a point of following the situation on Twitter or by following the reporters who are following it -- most of them not big names, how are you supposed to know what is going on?

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. That's true. I knew when the Prez started using the phrase "orderly transition" that

the revolutionaries were screwed. We don't care who runs the country as long as they do as we tell them to do.

[TheKentuckian]

10. Truth

[EFerrari]

12. Yep.

[Mairead]

8. But the victims are also, in a way I can't completely quantify, self-harming

They're trying to persuade by appeal to ethics in a situation where there are no ethics. Mubarak saw to it that his generals would be supportive of autocracy, and those are the same generals still in power.

It's not clear how far down the authoritarianism goes. It might go quite far, since it's a religious country.

Or maybe it only goes down through the officer ranks, and ORs could be persuaded to oust the officer class.

But any road, I'd bet some serious money that their current tactics are not going to take them any further.

[EFerrari]

13. Oh, please. Naming your values is not self harming

especially in a society where speaking out for the truth has been against the law.

/oops

[Mairead]

15. What???

I didn't follow that at all.

[EFerrari]

16. Maybe I didn't understand you post.

What do you mean by "self harming"?

[Mairead]

17. Maybe that was a bad choice of term on my part

What I meant by "self harming" was that some of them are being assaulted and even killed, but they're not really getting any closer to the change in government that I presume is their goal. And the reason they're not, is that in their situation their tactics are useful mostly to the thugs.

To persist in doing something that doesn't work but does provide an excuse for rape, GBH, and even homicide sounds like self-harm to me. What term would you have used?

[EFerrari]

18. If part of your point is that appeals to ethics don't work on thugs,

I agree with that. The thing is, thugs are only part of the audience. There's another part that has been trained to accept whatever abuse the authorities hand down. For that part of the populace, speaking out clearly against abuse may be very important.

And I think that it is premature to say what the revolutionaires are doing doesn't work. They ousted Mubarak and shamed SCAF into holding elections. That's a lot considering most of the Western power structure is just fine with SCAF.

[Mairead]

19. "For that part of the populace, speaking out clearly against abuse may be very important."

Okay, I'd agree with that. As consciousness-raising for the populace, it could indeed be important and I hope it will be.

I truly would be willing to bet some serious money, though, that they won't get further than they are now without a radical change in tactics. Here in the States, we routinely get rid of particular scoundrels via election, but somehow it never seems to make much difference. Ave bossa nova, similis bossa seneca.

[riderinthestorm]

7. Its not that simple. I believe the protesters are TRYING to persist

(without a lot of success though). They are getting pushed back by the military, the Islamists reactionaries, the corrupt elite etc.

Here's an article from today which is pretty insightful... Egypt Transition on the Brink of Collapse

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/egypt-transition-brink-collapse


snip

Every aspect of Egypt's transition has been badly mangled over the past 16 months and its legitimacy has been seriously called into question. Calls are growing for the entire process to be dumped in favor of a fresh start without the army at the helm. What is more likely to happen is that political elites will not come together to take on the military council, but instead pursue their own interests; band-aids will be used in a bid to save a decapitated political process and the country will stagger clumsily into another phase of uncertainty. For its part, the revolution will continue its struggle confined to where it first began: on the streets.



And another from LBN

Egyptian women protesters sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square (not just roughed up, assaulted and raped by Islamist thugs like the Saudi mutaween)

A mob of hundreds of men assaulted women holding a march demanding an end to sexual harassment in Cairo, as attackers overwhelmed male supporters and molested several of the marchers in Tahrir Square.

Some victims said it appeared to have been an organised attempt to drive women out of demonstrations and trample the pro-democracy protest movement.

The attack on Friday follows a spate of smaller-scale assaults on women in Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the uprising that forced former president Hosni Mubarak to step down last year.

Earlier in the week, an Associated Press reporter witnessed around 200 men assault a woman who eventually fainted before others came to her aid.

snip

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/09/egyptian-women-protesters-sexually-assaulted