The streets are emptied, it would seem. After last night, mostly-Coptic Christian protestors in front of the TV Building in Maspero Square demonstrating against sectarianism and unfair treatment of Copts have cleared out. Some of their demands were indeed met, and it appears that the Army High Council met with several representatives of the Church and protests who agreed to disband the sit-in.…
Read more »Plebiscites and Parasites
The upcoming referendum on the proposed amendments to the Egyptian constitution, scheduled March 19th, gives people a sense that the revolutionary process is reaching its end. The limited scope of the amendments, the majority dealing with electoral matters (such as presidential term limits, reduced length of the president’s term, judicial oversight of elections…), imply that the 11 men of the amendment drafting committee were not attempting to upend the existing order, but were attempting to establish a legal framework for the transition from Mubarak’s rule.…
Read more »Recent History Repeated
Yesterday, without warning, Tahrir square was stormed by a hundred or so soldiers who swarmed towards the encampment in the square’s middle, closely followed by a crowd of perhaps a thousand plain-clothes cops/thugs/citizens—who knows anymore. They beat peaceful protestors, destroyed tents and then—once the majority had either fled or been arrested and dragged into the Egyptian Museum compound opposite the square—destroyed the memorial raised for the martyrs of the revolution.…
Read more »The Post-Revolutionary Road
After eighteen days of a peaceful, democratic, participatory Revolution, President Hosni Mubarak fled Cairo – and left us, the people of Egypt, to begin fixing our country. On Friday night – one month on from that first, astonishing Tuesday – the Army entered Tahrir square wearing balaclavas and wielding machine guns, batons and tasers.…
Read more »The Two ‘Youths’ of the Revolution
The Arabic word shabab, meaning ‘youth’, has been used quite a lot since January 25th. It’s an important lens for understanding many of the events that have taken place thus far in the revolution just as it seems to be an integrated part of the rhetoric of the counterrevolution.
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