U.S. launches airstrikes on Libya

[StrangeSox]

Oh man. This is going to get ugly.

[Flash Tizzle]

It better get interesting, quickly. I'm growing bored watching these people angrily shake their shoes in the air.

 

And please, save me the self righteous attitude of acting like you all don't deep down agree with me.

 

 

 

 

[bmags]

what a provocative statement!

[StrangeSox]

al Jazeera reporting the Mubarek has stepped down. Egypt goes crazy!

 

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

[StrangeSox]

The military is taking over, which probably isn't as bad as it sounds, at least for now.

 

Great day for unarmed organized resistance. The Al Jazeera English coverage is giving me chills listening to the emotion in the voices of the Egyptians.

[BigSqwert]

What a great day. This is absolutely fantastic.

[BigSqwert]

For those not at a TV:

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/AlJazeeraEnglish

[bmags]

props to them. I hope the elections in 8 months will be seen as legitimate.

[BigSqwert]

best tweet so far:

 

Egyptian people greet selves as liberators

[GoSox05]

When do the Communists and Islamic fundamentalists take over?

[lostfan]

Half the comments I see today really give me the urge to give a foreign policy/IR lecture.

[StrangeSox]

Comments here?

[lostfan]

My own comments? As of now, probably the best case scenario for the US. It gives them some kind of stability having the military take over, and gives time for other political movements (meaning one that is not the Brotherhood) time to organize.

 

All of the other half-assed rants about how the US is so hypocritical (granted, it is, but that's not my point) are dumb, though. People like to act as if they've known an easier, better answer to Mideast problems all along and almost never know what was done, when, why it was done, and/or how. If it was that easy we'd have world peace already.

 

edit: n/m SS, no I wasn't talking about comments here. I mean Twitter, Facebook, news sites, etc. The people who are generally idiots about everything.

Edited February 11, 2011 by lostfan

[Balta1701]

This is awesome. Read the full thing.

They chose 20 protest sites, usually connected to mosques, in densely populated working-class neighborhoods around Cairo. They hoped that such a large number of scattered rallies would strain security forces, draw larger numbers and increase the likelihood that some protesters would be able to break out and link up in Tahrir Square.

 

The group publicly called for protests at those sites for Jan. 25, a national holiday celebrating the country's widely reviled police force. They announced the sites of the demonstrations on the Internet and called for protests to begin at each one after prayers at about 2 p.m.

 

But that wasn't all.

 

"The 21st site, no one knew about," Mr. Kamel said.

 

....

On Jan. 25, security forces predictably deployed by the thousands at each of the announced demonstration sites. Meanwhile, four field commanders chosen from the organizers' committee began dispatching activists in cells of 10. To boost secrecy, only one person per cell knew their destination.

 

In these small groups, the protesters advanced toward the Hayiss Sweet Shop, massing into a crowd of 300 demonstrators free from police control. The lack of security prompted neighborhood residents to stream by the hundreds out of the neighborhood's cramped alleyways, swelling the crowd into the thousands, say sweet-shop employees who watched the scene unfold.

 

At 1:15 p.m., they began marching toward downtown Cairo. By the time police redeployed a small contingent to block their path, the protesters' ranks had grown enough to easily overpower them.

 

The other marches organized at mosques around the city failed to reach Tahrir Square, their efforts foiled by riot-police cordons. The Bulaq al-Dakrour marchers, the only group to reach their objective, occupied Tahrir Square for several hours until after midnight, when police attacked demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets.

 

It was the first time Egyptians had seen such a demonstration in their streets, and it provided a spark credited with emboldening tens of thousands of people to come out to protest the following Friday. On Jan. 28, they seized Tahrir Square again. They have stayed there since.

[kapkomet]

My own comments? As of now, probably the best case scenario for the US. It gives them some kind of stability having the military take over, and gives time for other political movements (meaning one that is not the Brotherhood) time to organize.

 

All of the other half-assed rants about how the US is so hypocritical (granted, it is, but that's not my point) are dumb, though. People like to act as if they've known an easier, better answer to Mideast problems all along and almost never know what was done, when, why it was done, and/or how. If it was that easy we'd have world peace already.

 

edit: n/m SS, no I wasn't talking about comments here. I mean Twitter, Facebook, news sites, etc. The people who are generally idiots about everything.

 

Let's put it this way - there's a reason the military is in power right now and not someone else.

 

This is kind of like Pakistan, in a weird sort of way. Let's see where it really ends up.

 

Right now, we're dealing with the evil we know, vs. the evil that we don't know. And bad option A is better then bad option B.

[Balta1701]

Right now, we're dealing with the evil we know, vs. the evil that we don't know. And bad option A is better then bad option B.

That involves pretending that we actually had options.

[kapkomet]

That involves pretending that we actually had options.

 

 

We had options. Otherwise, your blathering idiot propagandist extraordinaire Baghdad Bob wouldn't have been speaking about getting Mubarak out of there.

[Balta1701]

We had options. Otherwise, your blathering idiot propagandist extraordinaire Baghdad Bob wouldn't have been speaking about getting Mubarak out of there.

I know I had a drunken angry post or two on the night he left, but did I ever come off as this insane in my dislike of the last President?

[kapkomet]

I know I had a drunken angry post or two on the night he left, but did I ever come off as this insane in my dislike of the last President?

 

 

Where did I say anything about Barakus the Great? I was talking about Baghdad Bob (Gibbs). And the answer is yes, and you still do.

[DukeNukeEm]

I'm not really sure this was organized, or at least not politically, and I think that's kind of where a lot of the failure by the United States to understand what this situation stems from. The entire lens through which we've viewed the revolutions in Egypt has been economic or political. The Muslim Brotherhood has been a buzz word, the Suez Canal has been made into an issue and people are throwing around the same cliched elements of Middle Eastern politics that have been thrown around since decolonization. I mean I dont want to just come out and say this s*** is basically inconsequential, but it sort of is.

 

The issue has always been, like it was in areas I'm much more fluent with in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, a dignity one. The contempt for the state in Egypt is not a fresh movement and its not necessarily bred out of a political desire to govern themselves. Democracy of course complements this revolution but its not the end-goal. There was an editorial by Nikolai Grozni in the NYT a day or so ago that likened the collapse of the Soviet bloc and independence of the former republics to the Egyptian revolts that I think really nailed it, and he does a much better job of articulating how this works than I'm about to do.

 

When there's repression in a state it starts to form these alternate political and moral universes, where people are fed up with their quality of life as provided by the regime and the regimes response to it falls into a predictable pattern. At first they repress further but then work to install or amend the regime to be more friendly to the current power structure while still palatable to people who are unhappy with the current situation. Think Hungary in 1956, during Nagy's brief stint running the country after Rakosi resigned there were some sweeping reforms in the country and even demands for Hungary to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Of course Soviet tanks rolled in, killed half of them and put Kadar in power under a new very Soviet-friendly government. But even after 1956 Hungary became probably (other than Yugoslavia and maybe Albania) the most independent and least-communist state in Eastern Europe with a lot of reforms by Kadar. Hungarians still rejected the new party, but without the power to match the Soviets many of them simply began to drop out from society. Quality of life didn't necessarily improve in Hungary, just like it didn't in Poland after the de-collectivization of agriculture in the 50's or in Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring, but it started eroding the states notion of a politically "guaranteed" moral universe and forming an alternate moral universe in its place. One where people actually feel like they dont need the state to feel dignified and they dont have a despot who holds them back. As time goes by more people subscribe to the alternative until the political institutions that enabled a wholly political response to what was clearly a moral problem evaporates.

 

That's kind of what just happened in Egypt. Enough people dropped out that the idea of rejecting the government became rapidly contagious, and without an overwhelming outside influence like the Soviets willing to put it down it actually succeeded in toppling Mubarak. What's happening in Egypt is not about installing democracy or realigning the power structure in the country, its about people wanting to be treated like people. That's why its impossible for there to really be an organized political backdrop fueling the revolution. So what you have is a very prominent state reseting its trajectory, not necessarily in another direction, but just taking it off the path it was going down. Its a very exciting time for Egyptians, and something the rest of the world shouldn't fear but instead start embracing. There are a lot of people in other countries watching this and understanding that they dont have to submit themselves to the state and be continually repressed. We'll see where it goes.

[BigSqwert]

Ugh

On Friday February 11, the day Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a 60 MINUTES story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.

 

In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.

 

There will be no further comment from CBS News and Correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.

 

via

[Steve9347]

Ugh

 

 

via

Absolutely terrible.

[Balta1701]

The NY Times with a piece on how many years of planning and really, practice, it took before the organizers finally pulled off the overthrow. Several years of work, attempts at protests that were broken up, increasingly sophisticated organizing techniques, culminating in the final protest happening in response to the events in Tunisia, with all the added craziness of the 20 planned marches and the secret march that made it into the square.

[Balta1701]

One more good one. Somehow fitting that the cell phone plays another important role.

Last night, a military officer guarding the tens of thousands celebrating in Cairo threw down his rifle and joined the demonstrators, yet another sign of the ordinary Egyptian soldier's growing sympathy for the democracy demonstrators. We had witnessed many similar sentiments from the army over the past two weeks. But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters.

 

Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.

 

[Balta1701]

Ugh

 

 

via

I'm going to take this report as good news. At least as much as one can in a situation like that one.

Sources familiar with the situation say Logan has recovered to the point that she was expected to be released from the hospital Wednesday and reunited with her two young children. She is described as being in remarkably good spirits despite her ordeal.