This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
More deaths in Egypt yesterday – 50 and counting. Some call it a massacre. Is there another word for it?
This prompted Essam el-Erian of the Muslim Brotherhood to demand the reversal of the ‘fascist coup government.’
Meanwhile there was a spirited debate on yesterday’s Democracy Now – when is a coup a coup and what kind of coup means what kind of future.
Everyone is spinning everything. Can the spinning be controlled if the streets become uncontrollable?
Everybody in Egypt is under tremendous strain, including the pundits on all sides. Meanwhile the New York Times reports the election roadmap: there will be amendments to the constitution, then parliamentary elections will be held in February, which will set the stage for Presidential elections in the future. When the Presidential elections will be held is unknown. The Guardian reports the same scenario.
That is, if the country doesn’t slip into civil war.
How likely is civil war? We know that there is no going back. President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood will not be returning to power. What’s up ahead is unknown. Is it possible that the Egyptian army will lose control?
Right now the Presidential election seems a long way off. One can only imagine what might happen during the interim, especially after the coup and the violence yesterday.
Of course, American aid and coordination with Israel is unaffected. The crackdown on the press continues. How are issues to be debated for the upcoming elections if the press is muzzled and dissenters of all stripes are monitored, beaten and jailed? How can Egypt hold together if the press is unmuzzled and dissenters on all sides are allowed to roam free?
Deutsche Welle, Reuter AlertNet and LinkTV report that women are being assaulted and gang raped – as a political tool? For some this might seem ancillary to the debate about the future of Egypt. Perhaps. Or is assault and rape being used as a political weapon of choice to help shape the future?
The Egyptian police are revising their history. They now contend that the Muslim Brotherhood was responsible for the killings in the days before Mubarak’s ouster. The police were innocent. Their point of view: Doesn’t the now deposed traitorous government and the violence of the Muslim Brotherhood prove their innocence?
Egypt is spiraling out of control and only an ever expanding martial law can contain the violence that the army, too, is partaking in and in some case may be instigating. Is there an alternative to ever expanding military control?
Will Egyptian progressives and their supporters continue to justify the army’s expanding powers? Having initially sided with the military, they may have little choice.
A deal will be struck. That deal will be with the Mubarak holdovers in the army, judiciary, moneyed elites and elsewhere that never went away and have now reasserted their power. How future oriented does that sound?
Revolutions hide continuities in tradition, culture and power – for a while. They appear in different guises – for a while. Sometimes they reappear – and remain.
The reality is that the post-Mubarak era is looking more like the pre-Mubarak era that crystallized in the Mubarak era. Whether in the post-Mubarak Mubarak-like era there will be less repression and more freedom is yet to be seen. So far – not so good.
Under martial law, on the brink of civil war, the Presidential elections are a horizon that seems suspended in the distance. How much blood will be shed in the interim and what that bloodshed will mean for the future of Egypt is the great unknown.
What does “pre-Mubarak era” refer to? Sadat? Nasser? King Farouk? Egypt under the British, the Ottomans, the ancient Romans? The pharaohs? Which of these looks to you like the present situation and in what respects?
“Of course, American aid and coordination with Israel is unaffected.”
Israel has been all over the WH phones, urging the US not to suspend aid to Egypt, required under US statutory law in case of coup on an elected government–because Israel is afraid if Egypt does not get it’s US aid, there’s no reason why Egypt will continue kissing Israel as it’s done for over 3 decades:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/09/israel-urges-us-not-to-freeze-egypt-aid-report/
Israel is #1, Egypt #2 recipient of US aid, in both cases mostly Military aid, although all aid to Israel is fungible.
a short course
who is the army?
“He is a professional soldier,” says an Israeli security official who has known him, “He is a real Egyptian patriot”
http://www.thetower.org/the-egyptian-army-is-the-third-time-the-charm/
and what is it doing, fighting the good fight?
“First, a contradiction lies at the heart of Ikhwan discourse, at the heart of all vulgar “analysis” of recent Egyptian politics in fact. The military’s actions in 2013 are the same as they were in 2011, and that is because they follow from the same motivation. Sisi’s supposed recognition of the legitimacy of the protestors’ demands and ultimatum to Morsi on 1 July 2013 was essentially identical to Tantawi’s recognition and ultimatum to Mubarak on 31 January 2011. In both instances, the military protected its vast material interests by sacrificing the class wielding political power. Either 25 January 2011 was a revolution, and now so too are these political machinations, or 25 January 2011 was a coup, and now so too is this. It is rhetorical drivel to contend that in 2011 the military helped execute a revolution, but now is committing a coup. It is the extension of this contradiction that produces such paradoxical realities as reactionary Islamists, and they are always reactionary, claiming to be revolutionary while supposedly progressive liberals desire a military coup.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/09/class-warfare-in-egypt/
The Neocons and Israel are successfully setting the region on fire this summertime – even though their prize of hoaxing the US into an attack on Iran has eluded them so far
The Deep State in Egypt – the Egyptian military/in cahoots with the US and Israeli Lobby have successfully pulled off their Arab Spring counter-revolution to return Egypt to their controllable/bribe-able puppet state
The clearest report on Egypt I’ve yet seen is this by Eric Margolis
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/07/eric-margolis/so-much-for-mideast-democracy/
The Syrians have been torn apart – thanks to the Neocon/Saudi/Israeli support of the phony rebellion – and now there are more ‘mysterious explosions’ taking place in arms depots in Syria.
‘When the Middle East burns the Palestinians are forgotten’ – so the favorite Israeli saying goes – Israel and her Lobby are revelling in this right now – and it has big thumbs in both conflicts.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were not a Israeli/Neocon angle on Turkey as well but have seen no evidence of this yet. Pretty good timing of the revolts in Turkey to derail Erdogan’s previously planned visit to Gaza late June.
and read the comments, the armies brutality is genuinely shocking, as we are no better than Syrians, perhaps we are all going to share the same fate. And Ethiopia is going to dam the Nile, America has us on a tight Scaf leash. There are an amazing range of reactions to the latest developments pointing to the utter confusion we all now find ourselves in, the general population, the masses are being excluded from the political arena via the re-militarization (securitization) of Egyptian processes of state, some of us are not buying the war of Islamists and the Army, people are very scared, the American Mamluks seem to be carrying the day.
http://youtu.be/uu1XD_98DTc