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Egypt anti-government protests grow

Thanks for that. Not had a chance to look at the reading guide yet but the article about the RS matches what I've seen from them in recent months. Apparently the rev. socialists are doing some protest marches today too, not just the MB, but numbers so far are small. As for the MB, further arrests of leaders and spokesmen may be taking its toll on their organisational structure and this and other factors (such as fear) may be notably affecting their ability to get very large numbers onto the streets. It also sounds like they have abandoned the idea of having the various marches end up convening at a particular destination, and no sit-ins are planned for today.


Gigi Ibrahim ‏@Gsquare86
22m​
Feels so much like pre jan25 protests .. same small group protesting, streets are empty, down town is a ghost town #Egypt
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And here is a rather lengthy rant about the RS and their previous support for Tamarod. It probably overdoes things in places, but I link to it because it contains some interesting details about Tamarods links to the military, and because RS themselves are always keen to paper over the terrible mistakes of their previous stances.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/08/20/revs-a20.html
 
Yes, have to be careful with the WSWS though - they are engaged in a never-ending internecine battle with the other 'sell out' trot groups everywhere. They are useful for info-picking though.
 
Yeah, they are laying it on a bit thick in that article to say the least. All the same the idiotic positions taken by many in recent months are out there for all to see. Would it really have been that hard for people & groups to come out against the MB without being suckers for the military etc agenda?
 
Via the AlJazeera blog: (http://blogs.aljazeera.com/liveblog/topic/egypt-21121)

More images are coming through from Al Jazeera's D. Parvaz at the anti-coup march in the Mohandaseen area of Cairo.
One notable feature, she reports, is the absence of posters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi at the protest.

"Because this protest is anti-coup [...] the problem is bigger than President Morsi. We're here to protest the killing of our brothers and sisters in Rabaa," said Sara Ahmed-Omar, a 22-year-old software engineer.
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Although i didn't specifically have the RS in mind when i wrote about the whittling away of the popular movements and reformists from the El-Sisi coalition i think they are part of that process.

I think many that took part in the protests to remove Morsi from expected a transition similar to that which removed Mubarak from power. Niave with hindsight but the army by intervening to remove Mubarak deftly positioned themselves as supreme arbitrators in egyptian politics people were either inclined to trust them to act with restraint, hoping international public opinion would provide the checks and balances, or expected general disobedience amongst the ranks to prevent bloodshed,as Khamisis experience shows much to his chagrin not every Egyptian Policeman is inclined to murder on a whim.
 
elbows said:
Yeah, they are laying it on a bit thick in that article to say the least. All the same the idiotic positions taken by many in recent months are out there for all to see. Would it really have been that hard for people & groups to come out against the MB without being suckers for the military etc agenda?
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Picked up the morning star to look at at work, there was a full page on Egypt, I assumed that it would be the the usual idiot anti imperialist puff for the MB, instead it was fulsome in its applause for the generals.
Tankies don't change their spots
 
^I notice that i used army and police interchangably there, going to need a moment of clarity to express the sentiment better i guess.
On a wider note, i think it is telling that El-Sisi feels he has weakened the opposition sufficiently that he can risk invoking their wrath by downgrading Mubaraks incarceration from prison to house arrest.

WRT the wider populations love in with the military i think there are several processes at play here;

the tanking of the already critical economy under morsi.

Protest fatigue and general desire by Egyptians to get on with their lives.

the social dissonance between urban and rural power elites.

electoral shock at how well Islamic and salafist parties did in elections.

Nostalgic revisionism for stability, driven by fear and uncertainty about the future.Like the way the economic crisis in post soviet break up russia saw the emergence of groups of ecconomically impoverised people finding solace in looking back to the Stalinist era.
 
You can add to that list the awful propaganda across most the media there, all of the other mistakes by Morsi, the cowardly and opportunistic deal-making by 'pro-revolutionary' political parties and alliances, and a lingering question about what proportion of the population were actually up for a proper revolution in the first place (e.g. Shafiq got a similar proportion of votes as Morsi).

As for the fate of Mubarak, it's been suggested in the media for a long time that interest in his fate had wained. So I wouldn't want to overstate the potential wrath, e.g. compared to the wrath of not going after the police etc that murdered protesters in the past, although they still didn't go as far as to risk freeing him completely. Not that house arrest necessarily means much, especially as he seems to spend most of his time at medical facilities anyway.

Regarding peoples expectations that the transition would be similar to the previous one, I'm not so sure. They must have realised that the MB would not take the coup lying down, and those aware of the electoral power of the MB compared to other groups must have been aware that in order to rig the future game in the favour of the liberals etc, something would have to be done to change the MB's position in the game. And from a 'proper revolutionaries' point of view, the previous transition was also a deliberate botch job that demonstrated how far the revolution had not come in certain key areas.

Anyways I only just woke up so not sure how much poop I am spouting.
 
Beinin on the labour movement after June 30. Very demoralising with what appears to be the independent union tops sleep-walking into the role that the official state unions had with the Mubarak regime - and that for the local groups to break with them would be just what those who want the old set-up back actually want to happen.
 
Sadly much of that article does not surprise me, since the article that sihhi linked to on July 16th set the scene for this:

http://www.madamasr.com/content/and-where-do-workers-stand

And the subsequent statement by Fatma Ramadan in late July, which I think I linked to at some point, which revealed that the EFITU Executive Committee vote about whether to issue a statement supporting al-Sisi's call for 'protests to mandate a crackdown on terrorists' went 9-5 in favour of issuing the pro-military statement.

http://menasolidaritynetwork.com/20...fool-you-independent-union-leader-speaks-out/
 
Seeing as Gigi Ibrahim has come up a lot on this thread, she's just done a short video for Vice called "Egypt after Morsi"



Like a lot of Vice stuff it skims over a lot of the politics, but has lots of dramatic footage, a bit like how they report on the far-right over here.
 
It doesn't focus on the state violence much.

On one of the Syria threads I wondered whatBlair had been saying about Egypt in a Times piece that is behind their paywall. Thanks to quotes by other media I now know:


Mr Blair said it was a ''grave strategic error'' to ostracise the interim government in Egypt as the policy was based on treating the Muslim Brotherhood as a political party not a movement which sought to ''subvert'' the state in ''pursuit of values that contradict everything we stand for''.

''You can rightly criticise actions or overreactions of the new military government but it is quite hard to criticise the intervention that brought it into being,'' he suggested.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...to-prevent-breeding-ground-for-extremism.html
 
Yet again the protests on Friday have been smaller than hoped by the likes of the MB. AlJazeera admit this on their blog, but not in the video which accompanies the following article. A video which shows their desperation and spin pretty clearly, especially at the end.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/08/20138308441552984.html

el-Beltagy finally got nicked on Thursday as well.

The arrest and continued detention of a number of AlJazeera journalists seems to be receiving very little attention beyond AlJazeera itself.

Not a lot of other news to report this week unless I've missed something. There has been a bit more of the chatter about some kind of possible impending deal between the state and the MB again recently though, along with the PM reserving his previous comments about considering banning the MB.
 
Oh and earlier in the week AlJazeera did draw attention to this disturbing video. It's presumably from when the sit-ins were being cleared, and shows a bulldozer pushing a load of stuff along the street, straight into a structure which contains many wrapped corpses of those presumably killed earlier in the day. In a subsequent video on the same youtube account it becomes clear that there were more bodies being stored further behind the structure, and that fire has started to engulf them. The video is especially disturbing due to the terrible sounds of anguish of those witnessing the scene.

 
Some shit is happening in relation to the 'war on terror' and Egypt, both in terms of actual terrorist action, the government &TV bullshit that tries to paint the struggle with the MB as being a war on terror, and the longer-term fallout from the crushing of political Islam via the ballot box.

An Al-Qaeda Iraq leader has got in on the propaganda action:

http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/al-qaeda-in-iraq-calls-on-egyptians-to-fight-army_873249.html

Cairo: A leader of al Qaeda's Iraqi branch on Saturday called on Egyptians to fight their army and derided the Muslim Brotherhood as "evil" for seeking power through democracy.

The audio message by Abu Mohammed al-Adnani highlights the militant movement's attempt to use Egypt's July 3 coup, which toppled the country's first freely elected president, to bolster a hard-line ideology favouring armed struggle over peaceful politics.

In the 32-minute audio, al-Adnani derided the Brotherhood, from which ousted President Mohammed Morsi hails, as "a secular party with an Islamic cloak, worshipping power and parliaments, and their jihad is for democracy and not for God's sake."

It is "more evil and malevolent than the secularists, and if seizing power necessitates bowing to the Devil, they will bow without hesitation," he said.
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And:

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-arti...t/middleeast_August375.xml&section=middleeast

Al Adnani called on Egyptians, Syrians and Iraqis to “renounce peaceful calls and to carry weapons and join jihad for the sake of God ... We advise those in the Egyptian army to repent and to defect.”

He described the militaries of Arab states as “armies of the oppressors,” “renegades” and “infidels,” especially the Egyptian army “which tries to prevent God’s rule and establish secular rules.”

He said 2011’s Arab Spring uprisings went astray by focusing on rallies, rather than armed struggle.

“Muslims who came out unarmed to remove injustice missed their way when they thought that redemption is achieved by getting rid of rulers and that change comes through demonstrations,” he said.

He said dignity and freedom from oppression “can only be achieved through the rattle of the swords, shedding blood and sacrifice of life,” he said.

He told Brotherhood members: “You have suffered yourselves from the reality of democracy and the loss of your power that you have sought for a century when the army snatched your power within one night and left you either arrested, dead or homeless.”
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And Egyptian officials have claimed to have thwarted an attack on a container ship in the Suez canal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23918642
 
Some detail about Beltagy of the MB's attempts to defend himself when questioned about various comments he made after the coup. Unsurprisingly his detention has been extended by 15 days:

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/beltagy-claims-he-referred-‘protests-famous-sinai-video

Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed al-Beltagy told the prosecution that when he said that the “violence in Sinai will stop the second [Defense Minister] Abdel Fattah al-Sisi overturns the coup” he was referring to protests rather than the terrorist attacks.

He added that he meant that protests will break out throughout the country and particularly in Sinai as a result of the coup and will only stop if ousted President Mohamed Morsy is reinstated.

When asked by interrogators what he meant when he referred to “millions of martyrs” in another video, Beltagy said that the people will hold their ground even if the sit-in was forcibly dispersed and everyone killed.
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On the economic front, the IMF stuff is still on hold. There is talk of increasing VAT.

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/egyptian-government-temporarily-halts-imf-loan-negotiations
 
Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya are not the only faction calling the shots in the Sinai though. the regional balance of power has shifted back towards the informal Al Queedia/Eygptian Islamic Jihad alliance due in part to MB pissing off local smuggling network bosses through Gaza tunnel closures during their tenure in power.

As this 19/6/13 upload shows there is no love lost between the two groups

 
http://www.egyptindependent.com/new...ay-scrap-workers-and-farmers-quota-parliament

very good article on the scrapping of the 50 percent allocation of workers and farmers in parliament. Outlining the flaws in the current system and the concerns of Nagy Rashad, a caretaker member on the board of the ETUF and Abdel Meguid al-Khouli, president of the Independent Farmers’ Federation.

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/qa-ray-bush-horrors-egypt’s-rural-life-part-i

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/qa-ray-bush-horrors-egypt’s-rural-life-part-ii
 
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Yes al-Nour announced the other week that they would put forward people to become members of the committee, although I think most people expect them to get pissed off when they fail to achieve all of their aims.

In a statement issued last week, Al-Nour said, "It decided to join the 50-member committee, representing the second stage of Egypt's new political roadmap, to defend the Islamic shari'a articles stressing Egypt's Sunni Islamic identity." The party has said it strongly objects to the 10-member committee's proposal aimed at removing article 219, which provides an interpretation of Islamic shari'a, from the new constitution. Informed sources told Ahram Online that Al-Nour, after a series of meetings with the secular Al-Wafd party, agreed that "the new constitution must retain article 219."
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(from http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsCon...represent-Islamists-in-Egypts-final-cons.aspx )

As for the 50 percent allocation being scrapped, for the sake of clarity I should point out that the article you posted is from a year ago when the MB were calling the shots, although many of its details about who else supported the scrapping are obviously still valid.
 
And of course the other big news is that Morsi and 14 other MB members are to stand trial for inciting violence, in connection with the protests outside the presidential palace last December.

Some of the detail provides another glimpse at whether the security apparatus were really willing to do the MB's work for them when the MB were in power. (One of the topics I argued with sihhi about on this thread the other month)

On Sunday, state media said an investigation revealed that Mr Morsi had asked the Republican Guard and the minister in charge of police to break up the protesters' sit-in, but they had refused to obey the order.

Mr Morsi's aides are then alleged to have called their supporters to deal with the demonstrators.

At least seven people died in the clashes and hundreds more were injured.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/23924145
 
elbows said:
Yes al-Nour announced the other week that they would put forward people to become members of the committee, although I think most people expect them to get pissed off when they fail to achieve all of their aims.



(from http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsCon...represent-Islamists-in-Egypts-final-cons.aspx )

As for the 50 percent allocation being scrapped, for the sake of clarity I should point out that the article you posted is from a year ago when the MB were calling the shots, although many of its details about who else supported the scrapping are obviously still valid.
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ta for the clarification, was initially puzzled by the reference to this part in the current article
The 50-member committee has said it prefers canceling three contingent articles: the interpretation of the principles of Islamic Sharia, the cancellation of the Shura Council and the 50 percent quota allocated to workers and farmers in parliament.
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so went off and did a bit of background search, forgetting i'd editted out the question relating to it.
 
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