Posts tagged egypt
Results of the Egyptian Parliamentary Elections
The political science blog, the Monkey Cage, has a helpful entry on the results of the Egyptian parliamentary elections. Someone should do a study about why liberal-secular parties don’t join forces while (moderate) Muslim parties do.
Why are the putative leaders/organizers of the April 6 movement hitting the talk circuits in the west? Don’t they have more important work to do back home in Egypt? We can follow your good work on facebook and twitter, thank you very much. Now stay there and make something of your fledgling revolution! A nation’s path to democracy should not be sacrificed at the altar of self-promotion.
Democracy or Raw Capitalism?
OR Books has just published a collection featuring tweets by activists and eyewitnesses in Tahrir Square at the time of the Egyptian revolution. The book is attracting attention (more and more) from the mainstream press for its unusual approach to covering the role of social media in the Arab uprisings.
To be blunt, I find product releases like this somewhat grotesque. Yes, social media did play a role in the uprisings; but I find it rather insulting that in lieu of the heroic persistence and sacrifices of countless men and women of all ages in the face of brutal repression, we are so hastily asked to honor Twitter and Facebook for “enabling” these mass movements! I think the bottom line (and I use this phrase intentionally) is that in an age when complex and contextual explanations of anti-authoritarian movements are presumably no longer lucrative for booksellers, even progressive publishers are duped into thinking that there’s great value in curating a shallow snapshot of an otherwise earth-shattering event. Shame.
“”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 not to sacrifice their secular democratic demands, and not to trust the army, the Islamists, or the traditional elite.
At a time when progressive forces are not prepared to provide an alternative or clear leadership, preventing the total collapse of the old regime may not necessarily be all negative, as it may provide time and space for progressive forces to get better organized. Yet again, another lesson from Iran is that in the post-revolutionary anarchy there is always the danger that the reactionary forces will use the religious beliefs of the masses to get the upper hand.
Egypt’s Masses-Induced Coup d’Etat | The Mark
A wonderfully sober-minded analysis and commentary by my former undergraduate professor and mentor, Saeed Rahnema. Many friends and colleagues have been asking me about well-informed sources on the region; well, you can do much worse than starting with Prof. Rahnema’s writings.
Color pictures from Egypt, ca. 1920s. (Click on image for more)
Autochromes taken by Gervais Courtellemont and W. Robert Moore for National Geographic.
Congratulations to the Egyptian people! Now let the hard work of building a decent government begin.
Bin Laden's nightmare in Egypt - Shibley Telhami - POLITICO.com
A typically sharp, insightful and well-informed commentary on the implications of the Egyptian revolution. My colleague Shibley Telhami is Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institutioin.
The New Yorker: Five Egyptians
Samia Salim, thirty-one, is an assistant at a company that manages oil fields. She refuses to wear a veil—she is not “psychologically prepared” to do so—even though most of her friends think she should.
Describe the past sixteen days.
Initially, Salim had “mixed feelings” about the protesters….
“”JIM LEHRER: The word — the word to describe the leadership of Mubarak and Egypt and also in Tunisia before was dictator. Should Mubarak be seen as a dictator?
JOE BIDEN: Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel. And I think that it would be — I would not refer to him as a dictator.
TRANSLATION: As long as you serve our “geopolitical interests in the region,” you’re not a dictator to us. Take that people of Egypt! Torture away, Mr. Mubarak!
Of all people, of all US administrations, and of all times, it has to be Joe Biden and the Obama administration to shit on a rejuvenated Arab public like this. Shameful.
