Some Responses to Protests
Fortunately, both judges (who were being sacked for criticizing election fraud) were acquitted, yet Ayman Nour's appeal was rejected. The judge involved for Nour's appeal is a total crackpot. Occasional good editorials on this.
Some media coverage misses a few points though. BBC reports:
"Many of the beatings were administered by pro-government thugs backed by riot police. They were seen plunging into crowds of demonstrators and beating people to the ground."
Almost makes it sound like the thugs were freelance supporters of the government.
Hell no. The thugs were government employees, who came out of troop carriers (the same trucks that riot police came out of, the same trucks the army travels in) and looked completely conspicuous. Put simply, they looked ridiculous, with stupid-looking "plain clothes" (3 layers of denim on a hot day) and were easily identified with a second glance.
The US response to all this was tepid and meaningless ("we know they believe in freedom and democracy, the brutal beatings were just a mistake on their part, plus we're glad that there are protests now! so we're not going to even talk about the billions of dollars, 3% of their GDP, we give them every year so they can buy fighter jets and then pay their soldiers to harass women and masturbate on the street"), so Egypt feels no pressure in any way, and Mubarak still feels bold enough to rip on the US for it (I miss the days, just a few years ago, when the US deserved, and got, some respect from the world), and now there's all this talk about strains in the US-Egypt relationship.
Mubarak keeps bringing out the stupid line of 'reforms must be gradual' (even if it's true... meanwhile, you fix elections, and beat people for standing on the street, and imprison everyone you don't like?) or else Egypt will be in chaos (Egyptians might just be too lazy for this to be a problem). Yet judges are probably the single best chance for gradual reform that Egypt has.
Sigh.
Some media coverage misses a few points though. BBC reports:
"Many of the beatings were administered by pro-government thugs backed by riot police. They were seen plunging into crowds of demonstrators and beating people to the ground."
Almost makes it sound like the thugs were freelance supporters of the government.
Hell no. The thugs were government employees, who came out of troop carriers (the same trucks that riot police came out of, the same trucks the army travels in) and looked completely conspicuous. Put simply, they looked ridiculous, with stupid-looking "plain clothes" (3 layers of denim on a hot day) and were easily identified with a second glance.
The US response to all this was tepid and meaningless ("we know they believe in freedom and democracy, the brutal beatings were just a mistake on their part, plus we're glad that there are protests now! so we're not going to even talk about the billions of dollars, 3% of their GDP, we give them every year so they can buy fighter jets and then pay their soldiers to harass women and masturbate on the street"), so Egypt feels no pressure in any way, and Mubarak still feels bold enough to rip on the US for it (I miss the days, just a few years ago, when the US deserved, and got, some respect from the world), and now there's all this talk about strains in the US-Egypt relationship.
Mubarak keeps bringing out the stupid line of 'reforms must be gradual' (even if it's true... meanwhile, you fix elections, and beat people for standing on the street, and imprison everyone you don't like?) or else Egypt will be in chaos (Egyptians might just be too lazy for this to be a problem). Yet judges are probably the single best chance for gradual reform that Egypt has.
Sigh.
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