Live: Al Jazeera coverage of Egypt’s growing revolution

[153den]

I'm not very optimist about whatever end result will be.Who is going to subjucate the Egyptians,religious leaders or military leaders?

[AlicetheKurious]

Who is going to subjucate the Egyptians,religious leaders or military leaders?

I think the plan was for the Islamists to control a weak parliament and get to lord it over Egyptians internally, and in exchange, the military junta would control the presidency and areas like foreign policy and the economy and any other things that affect US/Israeli interests, on behalf of their American patrons. I've been saying this for months, at least since March.

That is the plan, but there are signs that it may not work out quite that way: the Islamists are so hungry for power that now that they've had a taste, all bets may be off and they'll go with everything they have for the whole shebang. At that point, the military junta will undoubtedly hit back, hard. I'm fervently hoping they'll tear each other to bits and that the revolutionary forces will be smart enough to mobilize and prepare themselves to take over the country, this time for real. At this point, that's the best scenario I can imagine.

@dada, you've very welcome, my pleasure!

[Allegro]

...@dada, you've very welcome, my pleasure! [REFER.]

Hi there, Alice, and thanks from me, too.
Just call me a bibliothecary! (That's the self-chosen word of the day.)

I much appreciate you sharing Arabic music vids, and I just had to bibliothecarize them. The most recent Oh Square with lyrics, I've added as a blog entry. Two other pages you've posted with videos on each: Sat May 07, 2011; Wed May 04, 2011.

Many thanks.

[AlicetheKurious]

Well...since you are actually encouraging me... Here's my favorite Cairokee song: I spend lots of time in the kitchen with music, and this is one of the few songs I "rewind" & play over and over. The original video clip is great, but it's not available on Youtube for copyright reasons, so here is the concert version -- not as polished, but the audience reaction conveys a sense of how I, for one, feel when I hear it.




Wanted: A Leader

Wanted: a leader
for a people that was always great,
a people that had a role to play long ago,
before big hands and little hands
divided and mixed it up to hell and back,
in order to kill it, or finish it off.

Wanted: a leader
for a people whose rulers betrayed it
and confused it and wore it down,
and when some among the people woke up and realized the truth,
they were bound and blindfolded
and handed over, in prisons
for hungry dogs to rip apart.

But despite this, it rose up and revolted,
and in two weeks made an earthquake
that shook the foundations of the fortresses of the torturers
and brought down the regime on the heads of the corrupters.

Wanted: a leader
who will defend rights,
who will dispense true justice among people
like the Prophet,
who will be merciful with the poor,
and ruthless with the corrupt,
who will knock down their ruins on their heads
and string them up on the gallows,
or impale them on a stake.
(Big applause)

Wanted: a leader
who will not describe the coward as wise,
who will be sound of hearing
and listen to the pulse of our heart
and whose place will be among us.

Who will never live in palaces, when
some of us, sorry to say, live in tombs.

Who will eat and drink as we do,
and live as one of us,
who will listen to us and care what we think;
in times of danger we will all gather around him
and sacrifice, with him, our very lives.

Wanted: a leader
who will be faithful to his responsibilities,
who will be bold, who will be brave
not a cringing slave, and us his property,
who will say no to injustice
and who would rather die than betray what's right

Yes. Yes.

Wanted: a leader
that we can hold accountable under the law,
and remove from power, should he abuse it.

There are no conditions concerning appearance or age
or religious affiliation.

The only condition is that the leader be human.
In short,
Wanted: a Man.*

*The Arabic word is actually "dakar", which translates to "male", but in slang a more accurate translation is "has balls of steel", and isn't only applicable to males, but can also refer to a brave and strong woman.

[justdrew]

Who is going to subjucate the Egyptians,religious leaders or military leaders?

I think the plan was for the Islamists to control a weak parliament and get to lord it over Egyptians internally, and in exchange, the military junta would control the presidency and areas like foreign policy and the economy and any other things that affect US/Israeli interests, on behalf of their American patrons. I've been saying this for months, at least since March.

That is the plan, but there are signs that it may not work out quite that way: the Islamists are so hungry for power that now that they've had a taste, all bets may be off and they'll go with everything they have for the whole shebang. At that point, the military junta will undoubtedly hit back, hard. I'm fervently hoping they'll tear each other to bits and that the revolutionary forces will be smart enough to mobilize and prepare themselves to take over the country, this time for real. At this point, that's the best scenario I can imagine.

@dada, you've very welcome, my pleasure!

but they can't have tasted it, the goal now must be to vacate these sham ballot stuffed elections right? If that can't happen (and I don't see how it would happen), I guess boycotting the elections was not a good move? Is it possible these fucking Salafists actually win legitimately? Do they have popular support?

I fear for Egypt.

[AlicetheKurious]

Is it possible these fucking Salafists actually win legitimately? Do they have popular support?

Let's see: on the one hand, the answer is no, clearly they don't have as much popular support as they want, or they wouldn't need to use so many strong-arm tactics and vote-buying, ballot-stuffing, etc.* (to which the ruling junta and others, including its US patrons, are turning a blind eye.) After all, few Egyptians had even heard of "Salafists" as recently as a year ago.

On the other hand, given the insane sums of money they've received from the Saudis and other Gulf monarchies, which also happen to dominate the media, and the recruitment, grooming and glamorization of effective spokespeople and foot-soldiers for their Wahhabist ideology, and given the fact that no other political movement can compete with them in terms of resources, organization and lack of accountability, then yes, of course they do.

Let me ask you a similar question: Is it possible that the fucking zionists in the US actually win legitimately? Do they have popular support?

Trust me, the answers to both questions are the same.

*We're learning about all kinds of clever tricks, like "the revolving ballot". It works like this: with the help of complicit insiders, including, according some reports, some judges assigned to monitor the elections, the Salafists & Muslim Brothers are obtaining blank, official ballots. They stand outside the polling stations with these blank ballots, and get poor voters to provide them with their ID numbers and personal data with which they fill in the ballots, then mark them with votes for MB/Salafist candidates. Then the voter hides the filled-in ballot on his person and goes in to vote. When he is given a blank ballot to fill out, he exchanges it for the filled-in ballot and puts the latter in the box. When he comes out of the polling station, he hands the blank ballot to the MB/Salafists standing outside, and receives a sum between LE 100 and LE 400 in exchange.

Another trick is to use fully-veiled women, who collect several ID cards of women in their village or poor neighborhood, then use ID's to vote in different polling stations. Since most fully-veiled women hide not only their faces but their hands as well, with gloves, and since many polling stations have only male monitors, the women don't even have to dip their fingers in the indelible ink. The rumors about this were rampant since the early hours of the elections, but it was confirmed when one judge became suspicious and demanded that one of these women be searched by a female monitor. The ID's of 15 other women were found on her person. She was prevented from voting any more, but she was let go and little has been done to prevent future occurrences.

[vanlose kid]

Egyptian cameraman at the heart of the Tahrir Square clashes

A jerky six-and-a-half minute video by a local journalist could be the most important document of the recent violent conflict
Jack Shenker in Cairo
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 December 2011 18.09 GMT


Mostafa Bahgat's video of the recent conflict in Tahrir Square.

Through clouds of smoke, two black-clad and face-masked central security troops advance steadily towards the camera, pausing every few seconds to fire shotgun rounds that whistle perilously close to the screen.

On one side of the street is a column of armed riot police; on the other, hundreds of stone-throwing youths, their heads wrapped in scarves, bodies occasionally crumpling to the floor as another volley is fired.

And in the middle of it all stands the cameraman, Mostafa Bahgat. "This stretch [of road], this little distance, is the most important 15 metres of urban space in our country right now," says the 31-year-old film-maker. "If I'm not there to record what is happening then the lies of the state will go unchallenged. If I wasn't in that place, at that time, I couldn't live with myself. It's what I have to do."

The past two weeks have proved to be a turning point in Egypt's ongoing revolution, with huge anti-junta street protests coming under relentless assault from the security forces and millions of Egyptians defying the bloodshed to turn out and vote in elections for the first post-Mubarak parliament.

But although future historians looking back at this period will have ample primary source material available – from a mountain of ballot papers to the hundreds of hours of footage covering rallies in Tahrir Square – their most important asset may prove to be six-and-a-half minutes of jerky video, shot by Bahgat from the heart of the violence.

The film, which consists of a series of clips made over several days at the height of the unrest, directly contradicts many of the claims made by the ministry of interior regarding the type of weaponry deployed by its troops and its insistence that only "reasonable force" has been used to confront protesters.

Better than anything produced by more conventional media outlets, the footage captures the dramatic reality of Cairo's recent clashes. It is also one of the most intense recordings of guerrilla warfare ever produced and has rapidly become a viral sensation, clocking up over 100,000 hits on YouTube.

But for the quiet, softly spoken man behind the lens it's just another piece of work, albeit one that serves a vital purpose in the ongoing information war between the Egyptian authorities and the young revolutionaries who accuse the country's ruling generals of unleashing brutal violence against those who dare to speak out against them.

"People in Egypt who only have access to state TV find it hard to believe that the army could hurt or kill anyone, or that the police under the army's control could do the same.

I want to enable them to think differently," explains Bahgat, who stumbled into video journalism by accident while working as a moderator at Egyptian news outlet al-Masry al-Youm.

In early 2009 the multimedia desk wanted to cover a factory strike but was short of personnel; despite having no experience with a camcorder, Bahgat volunteered. "Since then, I haven't stopped," he grins.

At the outset of this year's anti-regime uprising, the tall, red-headed Egyptian found himself in Suez, an industrial city that in January and February played host to some of the biggest street battles between pro-change demonstrators and the hated central security forces – who after three decades of Mubarak's dictatorship had come to symbolise the detachment and brutality of Mubarak's all-powerful political elite.

Having witnessed the violence himself, Bahgat decided that footage shot by others failed to convey the real drama of the frontline, and resolved to do something about it.

"When I looked at the other videos, I didn't see in them what I'd seen with my own eyes on the ground," he says. "I knew I needed to start filming myself from the frontline, and that I had to get close to the armed police in order to get proper details of how they behaved, what they were doing."

It was in Suez too that Bahgat learned how to survive amid the rocks, molotov cocktails, teargas and live bullets. He wears no helmet or flak jacket, preferring instead to stay open to the elements, hyper-attuned to the situation unfolding around him, including the shifting position of all the combatants, the direction of the wind, and the precise location of every lamp-post, phone box and scattered piece of street furniture that could be pressed into use as an emergency barricade.

"Much of the time I'm not even looking at the viewfinder; instead I'm glancing all around me, calculating what's going to happen next and whether or not I need to move," he says.

"My strongest tactic is to think back to when I was younger. As a child we jump, roll, hide and play all the time; it feels instinctive to move around in a creative way. Those instincts don't leave us, and now I know what I can use them for."

Beyond those instincts, Bahgat's only protection is a pair of heat-resistant gloves that enable him to hurl back any teargas canisters landing near his feet, and some onions and eyedrops to help combat the effects of the gas.

Bahgat's exploits have earned him an almost mythical reputation among revolutionaries, many of whom describe him standing serenely with his camera in the thick of the action, seemingly immune to the ammunition and chaos exploding all around him.

But as Bahgat himself explains, rumours of his invincibility are wide of the mark: he has been hit by gas cylinders, sprayed with birdshot, and has had eight pieces of metal in his leg for 10 months; shrapnel embedded so deep that doctors are loth to remove it.

The distinction between activist and journalist is one that doesn't concern him; he also dismisses any claims to heroism, shuffling uncomfortably whenever passersby stop to offer praise.

"I take this risk because when you see people die in front of you who are on your side, you can't go around thinking of your own safety," he says.

"My bravery is nothing compared to those who walk forward with nothing, their hands held aloft, only to be shot down, rushed back to a field hospital for treatment, and who then swiftly return to the frontline to confront oppression once again."

Bahgat now works for a private television network called ONtv, but much of his footage ends up being distributed on social media and other independent channels.

The experience of seeing such police brutality up close has convinced him that a complete rebuilding of the security forces is needed if Egypt's stuttering revolution is ever to succeed. He says he has sympathy for the police conscripts who are placed on the frontline and are given little more than rocks to fight with, but he finds it hard to view with any humanity the officers with guns, who can sometimes be seen in the video beckoning protesters towards them before firing.

In Bahgat's eyes, military rule is also beyond redemption, and he remains determined to document the struggle against it.

He says that when Mubarak was toppled, the military generals told the young people they were amazing.

"'We always thought you were useless before, but you have proved us wrong,' they said. 'Now you've achieved what you want, go home and stop making trouble.' They did this because we were in a state of revolution and this was the best way to suck the oxygen out of that desire for change. But violence begets violence and they are running out of chances.

"They tell us to wait and be patient, but what are they waiting for? For the revolution to die out? We won't let that happen. And whenever they strike against us, we will be there to record their crimes."

US defends teargas exports

The US government says it has yet to see any evidence of the "teargas misuse" by the Egyptian authorities. Washington is under growing pressure for granting export licenses to US companies selling riot control agents to Egypt's police forces.

Brutal police assaults on anti-junta demonstrations have left more than 40 dead and thousands injured in Cairo and other major cities in recent weeks, but despite this the US State Department confirmed that a fresh shipment of US-made teargas arrived in Egypt on 25 November.

Officials insisted no more deliveries were pending, while the US Embassy in Cairo told the Guardian that any evidence of teargas misuse by the Egyptian government could jeopardise future exports.

Meanwhile, a police gunman who was caught on camera apparently targeting a protester's eye – prompting cheerful congratulations from his colleagues – has turned himself in after revolutionaries pasted "Wanted" pictures of him across the capital.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/de ... re-clashes

*

[justdrew]

With the Brotherhood and its ultra-conservative Salafi rivals apparently set for a majority in the assembly, newspapers were debating if they would unite to form a dominant bloc.

Nader Bakkar, spokesman for the Salafi al-Nour Party, told al-Dustour daily that talk of forming a coalition with the Brotherhood was premature and the results of the second and third rounds would determine the possibilities.

“All the indications show that the Muslim Brotherhood does not want to inaugurate an alliance with Islamic forces, but rather to conclude a coalition with liberal and secularist forces during the coming parliament,” Asem Abdel-Maged, spokesman for al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, a Salafi group not aligned closely with al-Nour, told al-Dustour.
...

well, that could be good, I can't believe the MB cares for Saudi infiltration. Hopefully these salafists will be the odd man out.

Good article on the Muslim Brotherhood from 2007...
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/03/0081425

It's long, but I'll post it if anyone wants who can't see the archive

[AlicetheKurious]

A jerky six-and-a-half minute video by a local journalist could be the most important document of the recent violent conflict

The role of Youtube and social media like Twitter really cannot be overestimated during this period. They've been so useful in forcing more conventional media (not including state tv, which is beyond redemption) to portray reality more honestly than they would have had the guts to do otherwise. It's too bad the video isn't dubbed in English, because the repeated juxtaposition of the army and the police's lies and the filmed evidence of what was really going on, is priceless.

If it weren't for heroic cameramen like Mustafa Bahgat, most people would have believed the Minister of Interior's claim that "not one bullet has been fired by security forces" and that nobody was hurt. Starting at around 2:09, while police troops are shown far from the Ministry of Interior, standing on a rooftop and shooting unarmed protesters below, the Minister of Interior's voice-over is earnestly claiming that the only police forces in place are those surrounding the Ministry of Interior and that they are there with strict orders not to shoot. He goes on to say, "Let me ask you something: our forces have been on Mohamed Mahmoud Street yesterday and today. Has anybody been hurt? Has anybody been shot? We're right there! Nobody's been wounded. It proves that all this talk [about police forces shooting protesters] is nothing but lies." Meanwhile, the film shows unarmed protesters being barraged with bullets, and one young man falling with a bullet wound in his back.

BTW, I was downtown last Friday, and walked around, saw Mohamed Mahmoud Street -- unbelievable. Until recently, this was a quiet side street leading from what used to be the main campus of the American University in Cairo to the AUC library and the old "new" campus. Now it looks like a scene from after the apocalypse, with walls covered in graffiti against the SCAF and police, surrounded by smoke-stained buildings looming over a street filled with rocks and broken glass and other debris, blocked mid-way by immense cement blocks fronted with barbed wire, behind which stand rows of armed soldiers. They stood passively, even awkwardly, exposed to the stares of passers-by.

In fact, leaving the oddly festive crowds in Tahrir Square last Friday, walking past Mohamed Mahmoud Street towards the Cabinet headquarters, it was striking to see all the metal barriers, behind them huge coils of barbed wire, and behind the barbed wire, silent soldiers like mannequins, holding their rifles. They really looked like prisoners in cages, on display in a zoo. I almost, not quite, felt sorry for them.

What really lifted my spirits, though, was when I entered the street where the Cabinet headquarters are, and where the revolutionaries have sworn to prevent the SCAF's appointed prime minister from entering. They recognize neither the SCAF's legitimacy to rule, nor to appoint any civilian government. The revolutionaries have set up a security check-point at the entrance to the street, where I was searched and asked to show my ID card, and then I found myself inside, not the Cabinet headquarters, which behind their forged iron gates were deserted but for the soldiers standing guard, but the true revolution's headquarters. The street was undeniably revolutionary-occupied territory. People were sprawled on blankets, others were clumped in groups, sitting or standing, earnestly discussing, singing, being interviewed by foreign and local reporters. Many of them had bandages on their heads or limbs or covering one eye, but they seemed in high spirits, some talking cheerfully on the phone. A latex-gloved woman was busy filling and piling up garbage bags. I asked her if she had a broom so I could help, and she said no, she just had her gloves and the garbage bags, and she had simply decided to come on her own to clean up. The number of people streaming in kept getting larger. I left and came back that evening and the number of "visitors" was even bigger, and included a number of well-known activists and some politicians and even a couple of famous actors.

There are still hundreds of people camped out in Tahrir, despite the bitter cold, especially at night, but as one of the demonstrators himself told me, the "beating heart" of the revolution has moved to the street where the Cabinet headquarters are, and "there is no force on earth that can move them out."

[AlicetheKurious]

Wow. I just read this, and found it so insightful about the complementarity or, as the author says, symbiosis between the two distinct revolutionary front lines -- Tahrir Square and Mohamed Mahmoud Street, I had to post it. I think there are some important lessons here. Of course, since this article was written, they have become three front lines, including the sit-in in front of the Cabinet headquarters:

The Battle of Muhammad Mahmud Street: Tear Gas, Hair Gel and Tramadol

A protester throws a tear gas canister initially launched at protesters by security forces. Image from Reuters.

“The people in Muhammad Mahmoud [street] are decidedly not revolutionaries,” they are “vandals,” insisted a police captain on the phone to Yusri Foda’s prime TV show Akhir Kalam. The officer in the video has a point. Four days into what became known as “the Second Revolution”—though many emphasize that this is the part two of the same January 25 Revolution—the Egyptian state media admits that Tahrir Square is populated with “protesters” who might even have “legitimate demands.” But explaining, and even more so, understanding what has been going on in Muhammad Mahmud and large parts of Abdin remains problematic.

The Egyptian police have used numerous brutal methods to suppress the peaceful protesters who gathered in Tahrir Square starting on Friday 18 November. In the early hours of Saturday morning, security forces cleared the saniyya (the “tray” — the circular grassy area about seventy meters in diameter near the entrances of Talaat Harb and Tahrir Streets) of a small sit-in of individuals who were wounded in the wake of last winter’s eighteen-day uprising. The tactical goal of such a brutal attack on a small number of protestors begs many questions. Supporters of the protestors rushed to their aid, and on the afternoon of Sunday 20 November, the military police once again cleared the Square. Videos of security forces throwing bodies on trash piles shocked the world. But ever since that Sunday, Tahrir Square itself and the Talaat Harb area to the north of it was a perfectly safe, “liberated” zone, with the exception of the occasional teargas canister thrown deep into the crowds, and particularly the vicious attack by a suspected nerve agent on Tuesday 22 November shortly before midnight. In fact, when people talk to each other on the phone to make sure their friends or loved ones are safe, one often hears “don’t worry, I am in the Square” meaning, I am safe. It is Abdin, the streets east of Tahrir Square between Muhammad Mahmoud Street and Bab Al-Luq Square, leading to the ministry of interior, where a battle was waged for approximately five days.

And a battle it was. People went there knowing what they were getting into. They went there to fight. Police threw teargas canisters and used shotguns (occasionally also live ammunition); against them was a line of young men throwing stones, but also Molotov cocktails and small homemade bombs. This battle line started on the first day of the “Second Revolution” as a line protecting the Tahrir Square protesters from the advance of the police forces bent on clearing the area, but then developed into a battle for its own sake. (As I write, on Thursday, 24 November, a wall of concrete blocks demarcated the battle line and imposed a truce between both sides). But for the first five days of the battle, this fighting zone was constantly changing, consisting of advances and retreats closer and further from the Ministry of Interior, often penetrating deep into the Abdin neighborhood. Smells, sounds, and collective body language marked this moving battlefield. Groups of young men on the front line were exposed to unabated tear gas. Motorcycles carried wounded and those exposed to the teargas back into safety. Behind the front line there were crowds of supporters and onlookers, escaping from the rain of teargas and shotgun fire, and moving back and forth closer and further from the Ministry of Interior. But taking over the Ministry was hardly a practical target. Rather, this maneuver in the side streets was the whole point. It was a “battle for the dakhiliyya [the Ministry of Interior],” but it does not mean that any of the young men facing the police necessarily wanted or intended to take over the Ministry’s building. It was rather a symbolic battle—or more precisely, a frighteningly real and bloody fight over a symbolic location; the fight itself was the message.

The firing line belonged to particular people who went there to beat and get beaten. Throughout the first week of the “Second Revolution,” Tahrir Square proper and the battlezone nearby each had its own demographics. Each was a different crowd, but they can only be understood as a symbiosis—a specific social alliance—as both constructed and supported each other, and increasingly overlapped. The Square, the “safe” zone, contained a truly socially mixed crowd. People from all walks of life came there, often several times a day in support of those who decided to camp there, to help “hold” the Square and support its cause. One saw a social mixture rarely seen in Egypt (though it was famously present in the eighteen-day uprising): middle-class men and women, some of them activists but most of them not; young and old, in suits, kufiyyas, and jeans, alongside galabiyas and long beards; bareheaded women as well as munaqqabat (women donning the full face covering). On the front line, by contrast (and naturally so given the nature of the battle), the demographic was predominantly (though not exclusively) young, male, and socially marginal.

As in some of the key engagements of the eighteen-day uprising, major credit for holding the frontline goes to Egypt’s football ultras. They know how to maneuver collectively, how to engage the police, and how to and play “hide, seek and hit” with the security forces. Crucially, they have a long-standing “open account” with the security forces; they had suffered at the security forces’ hands, and wanted payback. Ultras often provided the “leadership” (however improvised) as well as the communicational and organizational know-how to survive major and prolonged exposure to teargas and shotgun fire and to make sure fighters changed and rested periodically. The ultras have no clear social profile: they include the lower as well as middle strata of Egypt’s young men, united by age, codes of honor marked as much by loyalty to their team as by enmity to the security forces. What marks the ultras is both the will and the capacity to engage the police on something approaching an equal footing—though the logistical capacity to inflict damage is of course not comparable. But while ultras’ know-how might have helped substantially in articulating and holding the frontline, that frontline was made of many other young men who carried on the fight. Some were young Islamists, who refused to obey the directives of Egypt’s largest Islamist groups not to participate in the demonstrations. But the majority of frontline fighters came from the substantial population of young, socially marginal men from Cairo’s peripheral ‘ashwa’i (informal) neighborhoods [Actually, the more accurate term is "shanty-towns" - Alice]. They are sometimes called the wilad sis.

The wilad sis are young men who might be described as working class, though most of them are unemployed, underemployed, unskilled and semi-skilled, doing little occasional jobs that change every day (though on most days, there is no “work”). Their prevailing dress code and hairstyle involves copious quantities of gel (the word “sis” alludes to the attention they often pay to their appearance, considered by other Egyptians as almost effeminate). In the past few years, motorcycle culture became widespread among this crowd. It was their cheap Chinese motorcycles, constantly moving the wounded back into safety, which provided the lifeline of the battle zone. Motorcycle “cavalry” was an important element of the Battle of Muhammad Mahmud Street. Such tactics would not have been possible a few years ago as the flood of Chinese motorcycles is a fairly new phenomenon. Unlike Tahrir Square, marked by an articulate political culture and clear political stances and demands, the front line fighters who defend the safe zone of the Square are the same crowd who “terrorize” downtown Cairo on foot, and recently on motorcycles, during both the two Muslim holidays ‘Id al-Fitr the ‘Id al-Adha — a phenomenon much publicized in recent campaigns against sexual harassment. In the Battle of Muhammad Mahmud the same unstoppable force of sheer young masculinity that temporarily engulfs downtown during holidays was settling its longstanding accounts with the Ministry of Interior.

Increasingly distinctions between the young men on the front line (Islamist youth, ultras, and wilad sis) are blurred. All of them share a history of engagement with the regime and its harshly imposed order, and an articulation of codes of honor. For them, this is a battle that is not articulated as being “for something,” but as a visceral fight to settle accounts with the security forces. For them, it is a battle of karama (literally “dignity”), but not of karama as universal human honor. It is rather a historically and socially constituted honor that has a lot to do with how honor and masculinity are constructed locally. They were not fighting for any high-minded outcome such as democracy; in fact, most possibly they do not think anything “good” will come out of this fight. But the fight gives them back their dignity, even if temporarily. Karama for them means their bodies not being subject to torture and mistreatment at checkpoints and police stations. It means not having the small cash in their pockets extracted by each officer they pass. It meant not getting thrown in detention overnight until they can produce more cash. They do not necessarily believe that any force (any political outcome that might come as result of this fight) will help them to recover their dignity. They fight to beat the Ministry (dakhiliyya), to have beaten the dakhiliyya. They do not have much to do tomorrow, so they will be back to the Muhammad Mahmud battlefield.

As I write, they have been battling the Ministry of Interior forces for a week; as the battle goes on, it is increasingly addictive and contagious. Here, both the ultras’ culture and the Tramadol drug culture of the youth from marginal neighborhoods hold major credit for their endurance. The ultras blurred the line between battle and sport early on; especially at night, the battlefield in Muhammad Mahmud was often lit with the colored fireworks (shamarikh) used during football matches. When a police advance was impending, the frontline warned the crowds of supporters and onlookers at their back and prepared itself for an attack by regular, drum-like melodic banging on metal fences. Cheering and whistling also signaled police attacks and action. The cheers, whistling, lights and smells of fresh rounds of teargas soon to fall on and beyond the frontline, rather than being a deterrent, were an energizing and contagious force.

Also, running has a meaning. The crowds had long learned to not react to collective running, knowing the danger of stampede and cautious of the fact that such running might often be the action of provocateurs to create fear and panic. But close to the frontline, running back and forth was a function of the fight, of the energy (to keep up the adrenaline) and self-protection necessary to endure. Provocateurs on the payroll of the secret service were also responsible for lighting up rubbish bins in the streets of Abdin on fire. Their purpose might again have been to create fear and chaos (and of course to feed the state media discourse portraying the events as acts of vandalism). But the real outcome was often the opposite: small localized fires in the side streets of Abdin helped the fighters. They lit up the streets whose public lights had been off for the whole week. More importantly, they were morale-boosters, adding to the dramatic battlefield mis-en-scene. But while similarities with stadium rituals are key to understanding the endurance of the fighters, what was going on in the streets of Abdin was also decidedly not sport. It was a bloody fight with immense casualties inflicted disproportionately on the “civilian” side. But this fight was intended to be very physical (to hurt) on both sides. In Egypt, power has a long history of inscribing itself on the bodies of its subjects. Torture and humiliation are endemic, and are performed disproportionately on this demographic. In the current fight, the police aimed its guns at the upper body, and specifically eyes.

Not everybody came to the battle line to fight. Many came to have a look, to hang out, to support their friends, and got dragged into the contagious atmosphere. All the rituals were so energizing and adrenaline-making that anybody could become a fighter. Middle class activists (as well as Islamist youths) were also part of the front line, including middle-class activist women. But the rank and file of the front line was from a different world, from a very masculine culture; they might fight hand to hand beside middle-class women activists, but they would never tolerate their women to be there; (and indeed they might harass foreign women when they see them as totally out of place).

Egyptian mainstream middle class culture can hardly relate to most of the frontline fighters. This is what will keep giving the state and state-allied media an upper hand in defining them as thugs (“baltagiyya”) whenever the camera gets uncomfortably close. The focus on middle-class martyrs has a positive function of “translating” the battlezone for the rest of the country, its middle class publics. In Tahrir Square as of Thursday morning, the effort to stress the martyrdom of the not-so-middle class youth was evident on banners across the Square: rigala Bulaq al-Dakrur qadimuna li-shehada (the men of Bulaq al-Dakrur coming for martyrdom). Bulaq al-Dakrur is one of the many informal but socially mixed neighborhoods on the periphery of the formal city of Cairo.

But the frontline and the Square are also part of one whole. The frontline’s raison d’être is (partly, originally) to protect the Square, even if it also developed into a fight for its own sake. Without the on-the-ground crowd of ultras and the wilad sis prepared to stop police violence with their own bodies, and most importantly, to hit back, the largely middle-class opposition could not have held the Square for long. The strength of Tahrir Square, physical, political, and intellectual (tens of thousands of people, substantially of middle class demographics, including the occasional celebrity, making politically articulated demands) made the fight on the frontline possible and somehow “legitimate.” Without the protection of the greater cause of the Square, the brutal force of the army would have crushed the not-so-photogenic fighters a long time ago, with nobody paying any attention. They would have been swept away and forgotten as vandals and thugs.

For most of the week, and until Thursday, the dynamics between the Square and formal politics had reached the point of a standoff. The emerging formal political forces and alliances of the past nine months are null and void in the Square. From the Square it seems clear that the time for compromise has long passed. Only radical solutions are acceptable: withdrawal of the army from politics, a complete restructuring of the police forces, a transitional government or presidential council with a clear time-frame and full powers. From the position of formal politics, such solutions are not (yet) acceptable. One may question whether they ever will be. But the Square is determined to accept nothing less, this time. The comparison with last winter’s eighteen-day uprising is on everybody’s lips. Indeed, people are here because they see themselves as having been naïve in the spring when they cleared the Square, leaving SCAF in charge of the revolution.

It is now a battle of will: who will put conditions on whom: us, or them? Who names the new government or transitional council: SCAF, or the Square? Even if not everyone expresses their position in an articulate way, the general refusal to accept and trust the SCAF on the ground seems overwhelming. Just as the Square sees formal political channels (SCAF and parties alike) as illegitimate, the regime’s tactic is to delegitimize the Square, to create a rift between it and the rest of the country, to pose the “Square” against the “street.” The moment to apply brute force has probably passed, but the army has not necessarily had its last word. Internal developments inside the army might be the one thing that resolves this standoff in one way or another.

But for most of the frontline fighters, the battle is not about politics in the formal sense, but about resistance in the most basic, instinctive sense. The police might mean stability and order for mainstream middle-class society, but not for them. Most of these youth come from neighborhoods that never experience constructive policing. The police for them constitute a repressive regime that extracts rents and performs its crude power on their bodies. They have never seen anything good come of it, and cannot imagine that they ever will. The best that can happen for them is that the police stay away from their lives. But while the momentous social alliance of the Midan allows them, for the time being, to settle their accounts with the police “as men” (face to face, crude force against crude force), this is also a very momentous situation. Much of their determination comes from knowing that once the Muhammad Mahmoud Street fight is over, the police are likely to continue their blood feud back in their neighborhoods, away from the scrutiny of the media, and far from the middle-class activists they protected in the battle for Muhammad Mahmud Street.



2 comments for "The Battle of Muhammad Mahmud Street: Teargas, Hair Gel, and Tramadol"

Excellent editorial defining the "Who's who?" of the past week's battle for Tahrir, w/ only a couple of minor criticisms... 1) painting the male street fighters as purely misongynistic is akin to painting all Arab males as misongynistic, which may be true for the majority of men the world over, but isn't necessarily accurate across the board in any culture or subculture. The author may have more experience w/ ultras than me, but I have met at least one who calls himself a feminist & who has very concrete ideas about politics- which leads to my 2nd criticism- 2) some anarchists would argue that it isn't always necessary to articulate a stance in favor of any particular outcome- the actions themselves are often the guide, and this in itself can be labeled democratic (even, dare I say, "ultra" democratic- forgive the pun). From what I've seen, there are those among the "baltagiyya" who think this way- who are university educated & have a very astute knowledge of political organization & theory, that to them meshes well with their active participation in football clubs. Many Western anarchists share a similar affinity. Though most of what's written here is spot-on & commendable- putting into perspective the value of the street fight & crediting all sides of the equation in last weeks protests- I just felt it necessary to caution against over-generalizing about any particular faction. Peace, from Cairo.

David wrote on November 28, 2011 at 06:10 PM

v good and useful article, but being one of the people who went to tahrir square for the whole period i feel grateful to the battle of mohamed mahmoud: without them we could have never been in the square for so many days and would have never been able to build up to that huge friday demo. simply when we went home to sleep the heroes of momhamed mahmoud kept the police from taking over a very vulnerable tahrir square. over 40 people died and revived a spirit that even probably had a huge impact on the participation of disappointed parts of the society in the elections...

nadia Link

[AlicetheKurious]

More symbiosis on the way, assholes:



#OWS and Egyptian demonstrators play dead in front of tear gas company Combined Systems Technology with fake tear gas and a "die-in".

Furthermore, speaking of symbiosis: I'd love to see as a key demand of #OWS, that the US government stop all US "aid" to Israel and Egypt, and eliminate all tax deductions for private and corporate donations to any supposed "charity" that is related to violations of international law, like Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. That alone would free up not less than US$ 8 billion annually (probably much, much more) that could be spent on improving the lives of American citizens, instead of on destroying the lives of others.

[Allegro]

Well...since you are actually encouraging me... Here's my favorite Cairokee song: I spend lots of time in the kitchen with music, and this is one of the few songs I "rewind" & play over and over. The original video clip is great, but it's not available on Youtube for copyright reasons, so here is the concert version -- not as polished, but the audience reaction conveys a sense of how I, for one, feel when I hear it. [REFER VIDEO CAIROKEE MUSIC.]

As usual, not being a writer shows up as I tend to strain too much putting words on the screen especially when I’m about to show naivete wrt something of which I know little: creations of art and music in the streets during early 21st century uprisings. There is one idea you wrote, in what’s been quoted above, that ‘rang them bells’ in a certain way I hadn’t heard: the clue to my thought is the word kitchen. Not even I know where writing will take me when thinking about kitchens and art and music and uprisings in streets.

Oh. My. Goodness! I’m not kidding. I just thought: the writing will be about women. Oh magosh. I’ve believed for a long time that women are much better talking and writing about what women do than men. And, I mean that, too, from experience. Now that the idea has been sprung, I’ll click anyway, and think on it for the time being.

Alice, I couldn’t let another day go by without acknowledging your posts of Egyptian music and lyrics.

Thank You.

~ A.

[AlicetheKurious]

...the clue to my thought is the word kitchen. Not even I know where writing will take me when thinking about kitchens and art and music and uprisings in streets.

"A woman's place is in the kitchen". Yes, in my case that's true, although it would be more accurate to say that the kitchen is the place where I am most myself. I designed my kitchen to be an oasis of high efficiency and functionality and also beauty, a physical manifestation of what I love. But I've always been fascinated by the concept of kitchens. A proper kitchen is where everything makes sense and has a purpose and a place, where there is order and light and good ventilation and space to move around. It's where creativity is important, where you can make your own rules, but only as long as you respect the rules of physics and chemistry and good taste, which you often learn the hard way. It teaches you to seek the knowledge of those who have succeeded before you, and then to adapt this knowledge to your own and your family's needs. It's where high technology and age-old traditions can come together to nourish and delight.

It's where you can take time out, while something simmers or bakes, listen to music and enjoy a cup of something and a cigarette while gazing at the changing world outside, and think about things, while another part of you is alert to what's going on in the oven or on the stove. The kitchen teaches patience, and teaches you to trust your senses - all six of them. It teaches you to respect limitations: of time, of resources, even weather (for example, sometimes it's just too hot to leave the oven on all day), and skill. But it also teaches you that with experience and advance planning, these limitations can be overcome, or worked around.

Now see what you've started? What does this have to do with uprisings in streets? More than most people are capable of understanding, unfortunately.

Here's another song. It's by Abdel Halim Hafez, one of the truly iconic stars of the 1950s and 1960s, not only in Egypt but throughout the Arab world. He was called "the son of the Egyptian (1952) revolution", and was closely associated with the Nasserist and pan-Arab Socialist ideology that was systematically suppressed by the Sadat regime, to be replaced with the rise of Saudi Wahhabism. Nevertheless, his songs were played in Tahrir Square throughout the January 25th revolution.

"A7lef", or "Ahlef" (I Swear) is a song that he wrote after Israel invaded and occupied Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, Syria's Golan Heights and Palestine's West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 War. He ended all his concerts with it, and said that he would do so until all the Arab territories were liberated from Israeli occupation. This song in particular was ubiquitous after January 25, 2011, and many young people today use it as a ringtone on their cell-phone.

Abdel Halim died on March 30, 1977; only a few months later, on November 19, 1977, Sadat made his historic trip to Jerusalem that led to the Camp David Accord, Egypt's "separate peace", and the Arab sun's descent into a darkness from which we have yet to emerge.



I Swear

I swear by her sky and her dust
I swear by her alleys and her gates
I swear by her wheat and her factories
I swear by her minarets and her cannons
I swear by my children and the days to come
That the Arab sun will never set as long as I live on this earth.

[AlicetheKurious]

If anybody failed to understand why the military junta would make sure, by hook or by crook, that the Islamists win big in Egypt's elections, it should be crystal clear by now:

Egypt's Generals Assert Control


In Cairo last month, soldiers guarded a polling place before it opened to voters. Islamists have taken a big lead so far, prompting military rulers to act.

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: December 08, 2011

CAIRO - Egypt's military rulers said Wednesday that they would control the process of writing a constitution and maintain authority over the interim government to check the power of Islamists who have taken a commanding lead in parliamentary elections.

In an unusual briefing evidently aimed at Washington, Gen. Mukhtar al-Mulla of the ruling council asserted that the initial results of elections for the People's Assembly do not represent the full Egyptian public, in part because well-organized factions of Islamists were dominating the voting. The comments, to foreign reporters and not the Egyptian public, may have been intended to persuade Washington to back off its call for civilian rule.

"So whatever the majority in the People's Assembly, they are very welcome, because they won't have the ability to impose anything that the people don't want," General Mulla said, explaining that the makeup of Parliament will not matter because it will not have power over the constitution. He appeared to say that the vote results could not be representative because the Egyptian public could not possibly support the Islamists, especially the faction of ultraconservative Salafis who have taken a quarter of the early voting.

"Do you think that the Egyptians elected someone to threaten his interest and economy and security and relations with international community?" General Mulla asked. "Of course not.

"The military's insistence on controlling the constitutional process was the latest twist in a struggle between the generals' council and a chorus of liberal and Islamist critics who want the elected officials to preside over the writing of a new constitution. ... Link

[AlicetheKurious]

This is funny: Egypt's government being sworn in.