The war-drums of Western intervention are beating ever louder against Assad, propelled by the 1,400 or more killed by the Syrian military’s chemical weapons attack in Damascus this week, in addition to perhaps 90,000 already killed in a vicious and seemingly endless civil war. Continue reading
Tagged with Egypt
Egypt’s day of terror
Egypt’s day of terror has been brewing for a long time. 18 months ago, Mubarak’s regime suffered a mortal body blow on Egypt’s Day of Rage as millions poured onto the streets. Approximately two weeks later Mubarak had been swept from power by an alliance of convenience of ancien regime’s opponents, and a military presenting itself as a neutral arbiter and guarantor of stability. The problem then became one typical of the fall of authoritarian governments. They are brittle things, despite the varying levels of repression they meted out during their life time, but at the same time the whole apparatus of secret policemen and stupid brutality can temporarily keep a lid on the contradictions building up in a developing society. Following Mubarak’s overthrow there was less a carnival of the oppressed and more a maelstrom of political antagonism, looting and violence. It could not be otherwise. Continue reading
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Egypt – why Morsi fell
Oh, hello again Mr ElBaradei. It’s been well over two years since I last wrote about Egypt. Since then, there’s been a lot of changes. But in a rather peculiar way, things are the same again. A heavy-handed and out-of-touch presidency is toppled by a de facto alliance of a millions-strong insurgency and the military, and once again the mercurial Mohamed ElBaradei prepared to act as an interim figure until things die down and elections are called.
The only difference between this time and last is, unlike ElBaradei and his military friends, his predecessor – the hapless Mohammed Morsi – actually had democratic credentials he could brag about. Oh, and that ElBaradei actually made it into the interim’s chair on this occasion.
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The epicentre of the Arab spring isn’t Libya or Syria; it’s Palestine
Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Syria, rumblings in Morocco and Algeria (and eventually Saudi?) even spreading south into sub-Saharan Africa such as Uganda, but the centre of this upturning of the old despotic order is Palestine. The tectonic shift in the latter has been little noticed, but is more momentous than any of the others. Palestine for half a century has been in thrall to US-Israeli domination, but without riots in the streets or even a new intafada that is now changing dramatically. Even hardened cynics were shocked at how far the Palestinian negotiators accommodated the ever-increasing and ever more humiuliating Israeli demands. But a new page is now opening, the most hopeful for decades. Continue reading
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Revolution and the rise of Al Jazeera
Perhaps it was unintended, but two or three weeks ago, at the height of the protests that were gripping the great cities of Egypt, the director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, appeared on the channel’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, in London as part of a debate on the future of newsgathering, and mentioned the BBC and Al Jazeera in the same sentence. Continue reading