Most newspaper editors refrained from mockery of Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, during his thirty-year reign, but in the new Egypt, things are different. A law against “insulting” the President remains in the penal code, but illustrators unabashedly lampoon Morsi on a daily basis.
I’ll be asking what I’m doing “watching it with you”, but, for a while, I’ll be watching for videos and tweets on what would seem to be shaping up as a bloody day in Egypt.
As the world turns, Cairo’s about six hours ahead of New York City, so no “all nighter” seems necessary here, and, part of answering my own question, I’m not scoopin’ nobody!
If I’ve two cents to add, it’s going to have to do with analysis and reflection.
A friend called a couple of hours ago to commiserate over reports of another gang-type rape of a journalist in association with Egypt’s violence, but one would expect that to play at the top of reports, and an attempt to access a referenced video link sent by the same party seemed only to block my web connection in general.
Reduced street-to-world time in reporting:“Egypt protests set for showdown, violence feared.” The URL is about two hours old — I think CNN and Reuters are going to “own my eyeballs” as other outfits start begging subscriptions when they really haven’t any monopoly on a large story nor, if narrow casting, all that unique a perspective (but that brings up my motivation too, and it nags me that I might fare better working on much narrowed research by contract).
Lessons yet to be learned:
At 0:32, Hamada Moharram says, “He can’t even rule a village. This isn’t fair. The Muslim Brotherhood as a whole is an organization full of corruption.”
The black hole that is today’s official Syria and Syrian Civil War — a state so dense with evil and steeped in blood that it attracts its own kind and drowns them too — has continued sucking at humanity’s heels.
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This is a long clip from Al Jazeera, and I post it with mixed feelings — for length, for “carrying someone else’s water” as some may put it — but the Hezbollah story is integral to my view that events in Syria channel back to Iran, it’s nuclear and missile programs, it’s deeply anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist stance, and from Evin Prison stories back to the “chain murders”, and it’s own inherent evil and hypocrisy demonstrated in both its contempt for human rights and its grandiose ambitions.
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In addition to those still most recent YouTube videos, I continue scanning the war news — sadly, there’s more of that around the world than any geek at a computer might look over in a day — and in Syria, the conflict has achieved an odd kind of stability, a sort of infernal stalemate cordoned a bit by Russian forces, perhaps orchestrated some too with Putin’s hands on the really interesting levers — incumbent relationships with Syria, those ghosts of the Soviet-era; the Russian military presence at sea; the contracts and delivery schedules between Russia and Syria — and otherwise drawing fighters to its agony and struggle on behalf of two diabolical systems: an absolute dictatorship dispossessing and murdering its own constituents at will and with impunity; an equally absolute theocratic design representing a privileged few no less inclined to exploit minions.
Which of those two would you gamble on?
Place your bets.
Mine: Syria is it’s own anachronistic, self-destructing demolition project, the burning, energy-sucking black hole of global conflicts — and with close to 95,000 dead, 1.6 million refugees, and 2.4 million internally displaced persons, the Assad’s Syria — the state and the cities and marketplaces and neighborhoods that were — is no more.
Muslim Student Associations members are documented in their own voices expressing loyalty to Osama Bin Laden. “I don’t know this guy,” Amir Mertaban, recorded in 2007 when President of MSA West, “I don’t know what he did. I don’t know what he said. I don’t know what happened. But we defend Muslim brothers, and we defend our Muslim sisters to the end. Is that clear?”
If I were really lazy — or equally ambitious — I would turn off the computer altogether and settle down to tackling Just One Thing for a couple of hours; however, with days complicated by many potential paths plus social networks, the fragmentation of my personal time continues.
Every conflict — and now every battle — is a little different. About an hour ago, a CNN clip shows a conversation between two citizen-reporter residents, one in Gaza, the other in Israel, both in the combat area and both reporting and addressing the conflict: “Let’s agree on one thing. Let’s get this game of who is the victim and victimizer out of the way, so we can talk about more substantial issues,” says Mohammed Sulaiman, a resident of Gaza.
Also, much in reference comes from bookmarks, not today’s news, much less “breaking news”; however, being so, it too tells a story within today’s story. Incidental rocket fire from Gaza never stopped after “Cast Lead” (2009); the Hamas government itself has been in the proverbial doghouse with the human rights groups for some time (and reports of “confessions” obtained through torture seem common); the use of civilian centers for arms caches and even children’s playgrounds for launch sites seems to have been and to have remained a part of Hamas doctrine, essentially calling in return fire on, across, or through innocents.
CBN News. “Palestinians Escalate Rocket Attacks on Israel.” November 12, 2012: “JERUSALEM, Israel — Palestinians in the Gaza Strip bombarded southern Israel with more than 75 rockets and mortar shells in a 24-hour period. At least eight of them were longer-range missiles . . . The latest escalation came after terrorists fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli army jeep patrolling near the Karni border crossing early Saturday evening, injuring four soldiers, two seriously and two moderately.”
I have shared a reading log through “delicious” for a while, but with this blog I’m inclined to try posting each day, or for every few days, a rolling list of articles, the kind of thing I had intended for the “Fast News Share (FNS) category. This seems like it might be less disruptive to the blog as well as more pleasant for the reader stopping by in his own newsy meandering through the conflict arena and related subjects. –jso
Possibly intended to assure or incite westerners in the MEMRI fashion, Quradhawi is telling a story about political and sectarian Islam without fully comprehending the post-WWII arrangements that today have Syria’s nuts — seriously as well as every possible pun intended — in a vice.
Posted by MEMRI, October 15, 2012.
In the post-WWII world, Syria has been Russia’s client and buffer for decades, and the mixed bag of a revolution in Syria has threatened to bring Russia and NATO into conflict. Recognizing that, both have agreed to stand off while Russia fulfills its contractual obligations with the Assad regime (for economic and military support) and the United States, probably most unhappy with this state of affairs, fears Turkey tugging on its leash to drag into a war in which it has little interest.
Within Islam in the middle east, large rivalries defined as Shia vs. Sunni and Arab vs. Turkish vs. Iranian (I’m not going to endorse the morally hideous regime there by linking it with “Persian”, even though that is what it wants) will keep blood flowing in Syria because there is no solution to the kinds of problems combatants (from the dictator to the shia to the sunni to the Turk, the Arab, and the Iranian) have in their heads.
War in Syria involves the power of language and promises expressed.
One — to be clear, everyone — would inherit their power by family or ethnic or sectarian assignation, not by building the same painstakingly on good business and good deeds all around.
Interfering with transformation: the locked down mind cultivated by multiple literary clerical bodies insulated from criticism through a haut posturing developed to reject the same out of hand.
Well, the Malala Yousufzai backlash took all of … five minutes. The outpouring of shock and outrage over the Taleban’s attempted assassination of the teenager who advocated for girls education has been replaced with a campaign of character assassination and conspiracy theories.
A Times correspondent ending a three-year assignment reflects on the fears and horrors, but also on the beauty and people that will make her miss Afghanistan.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times
October 22, 2012, 5:04 p.m.
KABUL, Afghanistan — After years of comings and goings, almost everything about leaving Kabul is familiar: the ride through dusty dawn streets, skirting past old men on bicycles and boys in horse-drawn carts, the long airport trudge through four luggage screenings and pat-downs, the way the plane’s wingtips seem to almost scrape the jagged peaks surrounding the city.
Everything is the same — but the knowledge that this is the last time.
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