Egypt's Canal Zone Sends Message to Cairo

“We don’t like this country any more. We don’t want to be here any more,” said 23-year-old Mohamed Aboud, who on Monday saw his friend, 22-year-old commerce student Osama Sherbini, shot dead by police snipers while he was shopping for his sick father.

Earlier this week, some locals were seen burning Egyptian flags.

“The people in Port Said died in order to satisfy the people in Cairo,” said Saeed Mohamed Ibrahim, a taxi driver carrying a large tricolour of green, yellow and blue, which he had knitted himself the previous day. The flag read in Arabic: “The United Republic of the Canal”. It was not a serious statement of separatist intent, but was indicative of a feeling – common among Port Said demonstrators – that the region had been marginalised by politicians in the capital.  >continue<

New Fundamentalist Constitution Approved, Heralds turn to Egyptian Theocracy

Juan Cole | Informed Comment »

Egypt is deeply polarized, and there has been blood in the streets in Cairo and Alexandria. The Muslim Brotherhood has moved from a cadre organization to providing street thugs to attack leftist demonstrators, in a haunting evocation of what happened in revolutionary Iran in the early 1980s.

Still, with regard to power dynamics, Morsi has won.  >continue<

US media angrily marvels at the lack of Muslim gratitude

Glen Greenwald | Guardian »

Given the history of the US in Egypt, both long-term and very recent, it takes an extraordinary degree of self-delusion and propaganda to depict Egyptian anger toward the US as “ironic” on the ground that it was the US who freed them and “allowed” them the right to protest. But that is precisely the theme being propagated by most US media outlets.  >continue<

"Was the Arab Spring Really Worth It?"

The Fascinating Arrogance of Power
Bassam Haddad | Jadaliyya »

“The voyeuristic perspective ought not be missed… The Arab ‘Spring’… is like a spectacle. But not any spectacle. It is a spectacle in which “we” the democrats and “developed” world watch the “others” trying to catch up, despite so many efforts to support their oppressors. Until last week, the voyeurism was sympathetic, even if patrimonial or patronizing. But after the recent events, the voyeurism and subsequent reactions to the violence that killed a US Ambassador in Libya turned into something else. It recast the entire spectacle in terms and imagery reminiscent of what we are used to observing in the center’s gaze towards the periphery: a sense of amazement and intrigue that can under certain circumstances quickly turn into something associated with zoology. Was it really worth it to let these creatures out of their cages? After all, look at what they are doing. Only now do we know that fighting for one’s dignity may not have been worthwhile because a bunch of fanatics did what they did.”  >continue<

Egypt: Fundamentalist President + Junta = ?

Juan Cole »

Egypt’s transition after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak has been extremely troubled and democracy is a long way off. But the theory under which SCAF seems to be operating is simply incorrect, and it is far too soon to declare the transition to democracy forestalled. SCAF is taking desperate measures in hopes of shaping Egypt’s post-Mubarak era in the long term. It cannot. In a country with regular, fair elections, a military junta will inevitably gradually be weakened. Only if some authoritarian practices are maintained, as in Algeria or Pakistan or pre-2002 Turkey, can a military junta cohabit with an elected government over time. It seems unlikely to me that a mobilized Egyptian public such as now exists will put up with any such return to authoritarianism.  >continue<

Military (SCAF) Warns Tahrir Protesters  |  Whirlwind Week

Movie Examines Journalists' Battle to Report Egypt's Uprising

The documentary “Reporting… A Revolution” tells the story of six intrepid Egyptian journalists who watched in horror from their Cairo hotel as security forces attacked protesters near Tahrir Square during last year’s revolution. The film, which screened at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, delves into how reporters react when their home city turns into a war zone.

“I just got back from Tunisia and rather than being with my baby son, I had to go to Tahrir Square. The revolution was happening here,” she told Spiegel ONLINE. “It feels very different when it happens in your own country: When the outcome of the battle will influence your own and your son’s future, it is no longer about journalism. It becomes a personally decisive moment.” That fine line between the personal and the professional forms the crux of the documentary “Reporting… A Revolution,” part of the Berlin International Film Festival’s spotlight on the Arab Spring.  >see the video<