[dorlomin]

Maeresk and British Gas have suspended operations in Egypt.

[dorlomin]

I knew it was truly over when I came home to find a neighbour in a panic. He had smelled a fire nearby. We traced its source soon enough, after climbing to the roof of my building. Smoke drifted from the garden of the villa next door, where workers had recently been digging a peculiarly deep hole, as if for a swimming pool. In a far corner of the garden stood rows of cardboard boxes spilling over with freshly shredded paper, and next to them a smouldering fire.

More intriguingly, a group of ordinary looking young men sat on the lawn, next to the hole. More boxes surrounded them, and from these the men extracted, one by one, what looked like cassette tapes and compact discs. After carefully smashing each of these with hammers, they tossed them into the pit. Down at its bottom another man shovelled wet cement onto the broken bits of plastic. More boxes kept appearing, and their labours continued all afternoon.

The villa, surrounded by high walls, is always silent. Cars, mostly unobtrusive Fiats and Ladas, slip in and out of its automatic security gates at odd hours, and fluorescent light peeps through shuttered windows late in the night. This happens to be an unmarked branch office of one of the Mubarak regime's top security agencies. It seems that someone had given the order to destroy their records. Whatever secrets were on those tapes and in those papers are now gone forever.

Guardian

The wiff of clinging on to destroy evidence?

[dorlomin]

It said "freedom of expression" was guaranteed to all citizens using peaceful means.
It was the first such explicit confirmation by the army that it would not fire at demonstrators who have taken to the streets of Egypt since last week to try to force Mubarak to quit.
"The presence of the army in the streets is for your sake and to ensure your safety and wellbeing. The armed forces will not resort to use of force against our great people," the army statement said.

"Your armed forces, who are aware of the legitimacy of your demands and are keen to assume their responsibility in protecting the nation and the citizens, affirms that freedom of expression through peaceful means is guaranteed to everybody."
It urged people not resort to acts of sabotage that violate security and destroy public and private property. It warned that it would not allow outlaws and to loot, attack and "terrorise citizens".

Hmmm the army seems to be ready to through Mubarak under the bus.

[evilgenius]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2011/01/30/3124994.htm

2 hours ago in Cairo, the police have withdrawn, the army is effectively under popular control.
Cairo is in near gridlock. Buildings on fire all over the place. Nobody putting them out.
Leadership vacuum. How long will it last?

Your description suddenly caused me to remember what it was like living in Orange County as the Rodney King riots broke out. There were lines of official vehicles 30 at a time and larger moving north into the trouble. It doesn't sound like anybody is moving in to gain control of this mess. That doesn't bode well for Mubarak. They can shut off the internet, but they can't shut off the satellite tv.

[dorlomin]

My best guess is that it is endgame for Mubarak. His VP is now openly talking about negotiations. The US has sent a "special envoy" basically a placeman to see what can be salvaged.

Mubarak is old, his son has zero chance of securing power. Now its time for people to save their arses and buy time. There is a quote from Nasser that Egypt was the only Arab country the rest were just tribes with a flag. If Egypt becomes more democractic and open it is going to be very bad news for the Saudis, Libyans, Syrians and Jordanians. Even Iran may feel the pressure. Egypt is the leader of the Arab world, perhaps even the muslim world (Turkey and Indonesia the only real rivals).

Id guess a moderatly Islamist tint to the next parliament bit like Turkey.

Bahrain is perhaps the most valnrable to fall so may be next in line but its a toss up between them Jordan and Morroco.

[dissident]

Let's hope the fundamentalists don't take over the revolution and turn Egypt into another Iran. The disorganized street mob may get Mubarak unseated but that does not mean they will install a government that is secular and democratic.

[Tyler_JC]

The Suez Canal was shut down for 8 years between 1967 and 1975. The world can survive without it but the price of transportation goes up considerably. At least some small portion of Stagflation can be blamed on the wasted shipping (and resultant higher prices) of having to ship goods all the way around Africa.



Also don't forget that Suez actually brings in about as much money every year for the Egyptian government as foreign aid from the USA.

If the canal gets shut down, expect bad things to happen.

[Sixstrings]

Israel shocked by Obama's "betrayal" of Mubarak

(Reuters) - If Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is toppled, Israel will lose one of its very few friends in a hostile neighborhood and President Barack Obama will bear a large share of the blame, Israeli pundits said on Monday.

Political commentators expressed shock at how the United States as well as its major European allies appeared to be ready to dump a staunch strategic ally of three decades, simply to conform to the current ideology of political correctness.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told ministers of the Jewish state to make no comment on the political cliffhanger in Cairo, to avoid inflaming an already explosive situation. But Israel's President Shimon Peres is not a minister.

"We always have had and still have great respect for President Mubarak," he said on Monday. He then switched to the past tense. "I don't say everything that he did was right, but he did one thing which all of us are thankful to him for: he kept the peace in the Middle East."

Newspaper columnists were far more blunt.

One comment by Aviad Pohoryles in the daily Maariv was entitled "A Bullet in the Back from Uncle Sam." It accused Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of pursuing a naive, smug, and insular diplomacy heedless of the risks.

Who is advising them, he asked, "to fuel the mob raging in the streets of Egypt and to demand the head of the person who five minutes ago was the bold ally of the president ... an almost lone voice of sanity in a Middle East?"

"The politically correct diplomacy of American presidents throughout the generations ... is painfully naive."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/31/us-egypt-israel-usa-idUSTRE70U53720110131

So democracy is just "political correctness."

On the other hand, I can understand why Israeli's are freaking out.

[SeaGypsy]

It is never right to claim a right you deny others.

[Sixstrings]

As Egypt's government attempts to crackdown on street protests by shutting down internet and mobile phone services, the US is preparing to reintroduce a bill that could be used to shut down the internet.

The legislation, which would grant US President Barack Obama powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet, would soon be reintroduced to a senate committee, Wired.com reported.

It was initially introduced last year but expired with a new Congress.

Senator Susan Collins, a co-sponsor of the bill, said that unlike in Egypt, where the government was using its powers to quell dissent by shutting down the internet, it would not.

“My legislation would provide a mechanism for the government to work with the private sector in the event of a true cyber emergency,” Collins said in an emailed statement to Wired. “It would give our nation the best tools available to swiftly respond to a significant threat.”

The proposed legislation, introduced into the US Senate by independent senator Joe Lieberman, who is chairman of the US Homeland Security committee, seeks to grant the President broad emergency powers over the internet in times of national emergency.
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/as-egypt-goes-offline-us-gets-internet-kill-switch-bill-ready-20110131-1aah3.html

Rhetorical question:

Is this really just to protect us from a "cyber emergency?"

Seriously though, what is a "cyber emergency?" The internet doesn't feed anybody. It doesn't provide water, or fuel. If it does nothing essential to life, how can it become an "emergency?"

[SeaGypsy]

They are using our fear of losing our money through internet banking scams to goad acceptance of police state application under emergency provisions. If you read emergency provision acts throughout the modern world they authorise extreme powers over persons and property. The internet has largely falllen outside the traditional emergency acts, this is obviously bringing them into line with other government rights. It means that in an emergency the government can round you up, take your property, stick you in an internment camp AND switch off your internet. To protect you. Feel better?

[rangerone314]

It does seem a tad hypocritical that the Israelis expect support because they are democratic, yet the first whiff of a democratic movement in the Arab world and they freak out.

[Keith_McClary]

It does seem a tad hypocritical that the Israelis expect support because they are democratic, yet the first whiff of a democratic movement in the Arab world and they freak out.

Yeah, I think the PA will go, forget about 2-state if you ever took it seriously. It wont take an uprising - the PA has no legitimacy or mandate to negotiate anything, and Israel will not allow new elections.

So instead of being "the only democracy in the Mideast" they will be the Apartheid state in a democratic Mideast.

Or maybe that's what they mean by "Jewish Democracy".

Also:
Iranian leaders, opposition both embrace Egyptian protesters

While some governments are trying to walk a fine line between supporting Egypt's president and supporting protesters in that tumultuous nation, Iranian officials are taking the side of the protesters.

[Keith_McClary]

The NYT says it's class warfare.
Rich, Poor and a Rift Exposed by Unrest

As the government of Egypt shakes from a broad-based uprising, long-simmering resentments have burst into open class warfare.
...
“These big guys are stealing all the money,” said Mohamed Ibraham, a 24-year-old textile worker standing at his second job as a fruit peddler in a hard-pressed neighborhood called Dar-al-Salam. “If they were giving us our rights, why would we protest? People are desperate.”

He had little sympathy for those frightened by the specter of looting. He complained that he could barely afford his rent and said the police routinely humiliated him by shaking him down for money, overturning his cart or stealing his fruit. “And then we hear about how these big guys all have these new boats and the 100,000 pound villas. They are building housing, but not for us — for those people up high.”

The widening chasm between rich and poor in Cairo has been one of the conspicuous aspects of city life over the last decade — and especially the last five years. Though there were always extremes of wealth and poverty here, until recently the rich lived more or less among the poor — in grander apartments or more spacious apartments but mixed together in the same city.

But as the Mubarak administration has taken steps toward privatizing more government businesses, kicking off an economic boom for some, rich Egyptians have fled the city. They have flocked to gated communities full of big American-style homes around country clubs, and the remoteness of their lives from those of average Egyptians has become starkly visible.

[dorlomin]

Jordans King has dismissed his government and promising political reform.

Erdogan has cancelled his visit to Cairo and is calling for political reform. Giant protests in Cairo today.

Sulieman is likely to head a coallition government that will take over and manage the transition to a more open society.

[Ludi]

Turning off the internet violates the Constitution.

Like that matters.

[vision-master]

All one needs to connect with some kind of outside sources are an older computer with a dial up modem?

[SeaGypsy]

They can't kill the mainframe without killing international finance.

[Ludi]

It's shocking to me that a Republican, Susan Collins, is co-sponsoring this bill. I thought the Republicans are supposed to be all freedom-y and stuff.

That a Republican is in favor of this bill which would give President Obama powers outside the review of the courts is bizarre.

I wonder what our resident Republicans (Fishman, where are you?) think of this?

[Oakley]

I think that bill or no bill, if revolution breaks out in the US, whoever is in power could shut down the internet, cell phones, and other means of communication.

If violence seriously breaks out, I would suspect that rebel forces would be attacking the electric grid in an effort to cripple the government. The number of rail miles carrying coal to power plants is large and very insecure as are transmission lines that crisscross the country, not to mention sabotage from inside these industries.

The absurdity of such government action would only inflame the situation since shutting down the internet and cell phones would have serious economic consequences which would just direct more anger toward the government.