Egypt in the Arab Spring (*)

The Arab Spring (Dec 2010/Jan 2011)

Turmoil in Tunisia spreads rapidly around the Arab world, including Egypt. 

Raw footage from Cairo (Jan 25, 2011)
From "Cracked Cauldrons" by Tamim al-Barghouti (**): "During the eighteen days of demonstrations between January 25 and February 11, the Egyptian army command estimated the number of demonstrators throughout the country to have been around 20 million...these large numbers of people were able to manage communication, supply, information, security, defense, and negotiation without any ministries, committees, parties, or any other hierarchical centralized governing body...when public opinion in Tahrir Square was to continue the sit-in until Mubarek resigned, no conservative party could convince the masses to leave and when the people decided to leave after Mubarek's resignation, no radical party could convince them to stay." (88-89)

Hosni Mubarak ascended to power following the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1980 and ruled with an iron fist for decades. The corruption is well known, even tolerated, but the people are energized and suddenly decide they want a new leader.

Mubarak steps down (Feb 11, 2011) The al-Jazeera overview of Mubarak's career. 

CNN presents President Obama's comment (Feb 11, 2011)
The USA has long supported Egypt's military, though the Americans have been wary of the other sectors of Egyptian culture. The American assumption is that if the military is well entrenched in the power structure then chaos will be avoided. Think of it less as USA trying to control Egypt (not possible) and more of USA just wanting to bet on a winner.

The upheaval leads to the closest watched Parliamentary elections in memory. The feeling of a new era in Egyptian leadership is palpable.

South African media on the Parliamentary election (Nov 26, 2011)

Here's the PBS view of Morocco on December 23, 2011. The Arab Spring has introduced terms and concepts for liberalization but not much real action. 

The Brookings Institution on the Presidential elections (May 23, 2012)

The Americans:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Vice President Joe Biden

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel 

US Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson

Head of Central Command General James Mattis

In short: Clinton thinks Morsi is in over his head, Hegel seems to kinda like Morsi, Mattis thinks Morsi is an Islamist zealot and must be stopped, Patterson thinks Morsi has no chance of staying in office for very long (*spoiler alert* Patterson's the winner here). 

(April 2012) Obama appoints Michael Flynn as Director of Intelligence. Flynn agrees with Mattis that Morsi is an Islamist of the rankest order and must go.

The Egyptian people choose Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brothers candidate. Truth be told he's a minor figure in the Brotherhood, which is precisely why he is allowed to rise to the top. Once elected, he tries to establish himself as leader.

Telegraph UK covers Morsi's symbolic oath (June 29, 2012) 

But the military asserts control over Morsi immediately, even demanding he take his oath of office in the Constitutional Court, who only begrudgingly allowed him to be elected in the first place. Telegraph UK covers as Morsi takes the real oath in the Court (June 30, 2012)

In January 2013, President Obama removes General Mattis as head of Central Command for Lloyd Austin.

In February 2013 John Kerry replaces Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. (Kerry thinks Morsi is an idiot and probably won't last long or be very effective)

The Americans (outside of Hegel) never develop much faith in Morsi. And...well...that lack of faith was rewarded. 

The al-Jazeera view of Morsi's ouster (July 3, 2013)

The Guardian UK with Sisi's announcement of Morsi's ouster (July 4, 2013) 
General Sisi was head of Intelligence from 2010-2012, then became Morsi's Secretary of Defense in 2013. Observers differ on how much power Sisi let Morsi have but everyone knows the power was always Sisi's to give.

EuroNews covers the Muslim Brotherhood slaughter (Aug 14, 2013)

On Demand News reports  Mohammad Bodie of the Muslim Brotherhood has been arrested (August 19, 2013)

Gen. Michael Flynn retires from the military (August 7, 2014)
An outspoken anti-Islamist, his rhetoric was not appreciated by the Obama White House (and still so generally unappreciated as to be chased from the Trump White House almost instantly). 

But this calls attention to the difference between USA and Egypt: the Director of Intelligence works for the President, who is the Commander in Chief of the military, but in Egypt the military is a separate and distinct autonomous body, divorced from the political apparatus of the state. In USA, a power hungry intelligence minister writes books, teaches grad students or gets a talk radio show; in Egypt he removes and replaces the President, because it is the military that rules not the politicians.

Sisi thought Morsi was too weak to rule and that forces compelled him to remove Morsi and take power himself (incidentally, virtually everyone preferred Sisi to Morsi, whether it was the right thing or not); while in USA Flynn is not only drummed out of power but the only way back into the politics game for Flynn was to jump on the Trump bandwagon (which had plenty of empty space on it in those days, if you'll recall) and even then he couldn't overcome petty politics. Hey, in USA the leaders can't say all that's really on their minds, in Egypt the leader doesn't ever have to say anything at all.

Kenyan media reports on Egypt's new election laws (March 2, 2015)

BBC interview of Sisi (Nov 6, 2015)

Mubarrak acquitted, gets to retire in peace (March 2017)

Trump with Sisi (April 3, 2017) 

Sisi wins election (April 3, 2018)

PBS talks with David Kirkpatrick about his book Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East. (August 14, 2018) (This was the book I read that inspired this blog-form deep dive)

Sisi has recently met with Germany's Angela Merkel, Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Vice President Wang Qishan, in addition to attempting to brokering a partnership between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. So Sisi is firmly in control of Egypt and seems to be looking outward for peaceful relations and economic growth. Will any of this benefit the Egyptian people?

PS -- President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo, Egypt (June 4, 2009)

"Government of the people by the people....must maintain your power by consent, not coercion"

This all kinda reminds me of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in the early 20th century. A republic took hold (briefly), then Sun Yat-sen is quickly chased from power, the next guy is assassinated, the military rules for a while, the Qing comes back but then falls apart leading to pitched battles in the streets, which is how Chaing Kai-shek seizes power, rules through World War II. Once the dynasty falls, the people dream of republican gov't but it doesn't solve all problems right away, so the people lose faith, the political structure falls apart and then only the strong survive. The period of Chaing is kinda stable but hardly peaceful: he's fighting Communists pretty much from jump and then the invading Japanese. The combination of the two (and kleptocratic financial mismanagement) drives Chaing to Taiwan where it still pretends to be "China" pretty much to this day.

In that example, the Chinese people had been ruled for centuries by the steady boring empire that rules over everything. Then the empire falls apart and no one knows what to do. That leads to 1) chaos, 2) an attempt to return to the old way, 3) more chaos, 4) military rule.

So Egypt finally tired of Mubarak (thought to be the 2nd longest reign in 5000 years of Egyptian history) and reached for the opposition, the Muslim Brothers. Their introduction was fraught with peril from the beginning and the people tire of that within a year, which leads back to military rule. The Muslim Brothers are given just enough power to appear incompetent and then jerked back to the private sector or the jails (or the cemeteries). The military rule kinda pretends to be democratic and beholden to an elected legislature but really the military is the military. The upside is that Sisi provides stability for a long, long time; the downside is that now nothing will ever get better and the people will live in a...stable...hellscape of degradation and decline, while the military-industrial apparatus loots the wealth. 

The question is: Should Egypt prefer stability or progress? Should USA prefer what Egypt prefers? Is it possible to have both? When was the last time Egypt had either? 

(*) I read Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East by David Kirkpatrick in the summer of 2018. As I recall the book was fairly new at the time. The book (a good read, very informative) inspired me to undertake a long post or collection of posts that I didn't finish compiling at the time. So I just finished compiling them here. 

My last major edits were in November of 2018. I didn't put this up back in the day because I was...I dunno...having trouble with the links or something. But outside of minor word choice changes and updating/re-shaping the links and pictures, I didn't change this at all from what I found amongst the drafts. Not sure why I didn't try harder back then to get this up but I am a lazy man. 

I've never waited over two years to post anything before (though I do have unpublished drafts older than this), but I'm still cool with the sentiments that were in place. Text-wise, I didn't really delete or add anything. The links and pics were all there, I just never properly organized them before. I still think this all still relevant, so here it is. 

(**) This essay appears in the collection Shifting Sands edited by Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson.

'A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace' -- John Peter Barlow

More than two decades old and still (mostly) hits the mark. "The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish....May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before."

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves.

Amen.

The Heliopause

Last year I began work on a series of blog posts about astronomy, cosmology, physics, etc., that I grew tired of and have yet to post. Perhaps I'll return to them but until then I stumbled on this video and it intrigued me.

Heads up: You can skip the first minute (which is just internet-style self-congratulations) and you can stop watching around 5:30 minutes in, when it starts yammering on about the larger universe, as if that is pertinent to the edge of our solar system. But the four and half minutes in between is intriguing. 

This video doesn't really tell us anything new, just a follow up to discoveries made a while ago, as in this Nature abstract from November 2019 about Voyager 2. And while this video doesn't explicitly confirm anything I'm about to write, it doesn't refute either. So here it is. 

As discovered by Voyager 2 in the past decade or so, the edge of our solar system is a giant wall of plasma. It seems to me this is where the heat of the sun no longer warms the cold empty space and the wall of plasma is decaying photons that can exist no longer. While the title of the above video suggests that there is a wall at the edge of our solar system, the video doesn't actually go that far. So I will. On the other side of the wall of fire is likely a wall of cold--and yes, I mean a solid wall. A solid wall of Bose-Einstein condensate. 

At super cold temperatures, bosons will link together into a solid. On the other side of the wall of fire at the edge of the heliosphere is, I suggest, a solid wall of cold. It is perhaps permeable, it is perhaps not very thick. Is all of empty space solid? I doubt there would be enough particles to form into anything solid. But around stars it seems to me a screen of ice, like frost on a windshield, should be pretty standard. The wall of cold (protons) would be the other half of the decaying photons creating the wall of plasma (electrons). I'm sure I'm not saying that correctly; photons, bosons, fermions, etc, aren't really protons or electrons, but when the power of the sun begins to fade, the breakdown of the photons could create wildly reactive effluvia. 

Why is this important? Remember this thing from a coupla years ago: Oumuamua. If this is from outside of the solar system, how did it penetrate the wall of plasma and/or the wall of ice? As the outer layer of the earth's atmosphere basically shreds intruders to dust, wouldn't our solar system be similarly impenetrable? (Or at least only penetrable by highly coordinated systems?)

So are we sure Oumuamua is from beyond the heliosphere? Isn't it important for us to track it as it leaves the solar system? Yes, I understand it is vanishingly small but is there something better for NASA to do?

My astronomy binge last year was incredibly disappointing, almost heartbreaking as I've been fascinated by the cosmos since I was a little boy. But our understanding of what lies beyond our heliosphere strikes me as delusional at best, cynical and manipulative at worst and realistically is merely fiction. Again: perhaps I'll return to the subject (I actually did a lot of writing) and perhaps I won't (until something new happens, I reckon I'll just stick with my skepticism). 

The thing about Oumuamua is that it seems more likely to me that it is not alien to the heliosphere but native to it. How long has it been flinging around out there? Just a thought.