Plutonia wrote:Robert Fisk reports on the protesters in Cairo are decision-making and organizing with the help of twitter:
Bullshit. Fisk yet again misses the mark, almost completely. His "analysis" eerily echoes the Egyptian media's disinfo -- maybe he's been playing hookie and doing his "field reporting" watching
Al Arabiya and Egyptian tv from the couch in his hotel suite. Yesterday alone, on Day 13, there were nearly 2 MILLION demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square (plus 1 million in Alexandria and 1/2 million in Mansoura) --
Al Jazeera's continuous live coverage showed singing, dancing, poetry readings, satire and enthusiastic chanting of the revolution's objectives. The "exhausted, scared and trapped protesters" lie is one being peddled by the Egyptian media which is also, incidentally, preventing any filming or other coverage of the hundreds of thousands of Egyptian citizens who have been and are marching daily across
all of Egypt, not just in Tahrir Square.
Clue #1:
Sitting on filthy pavements, amid the garbage and broken stones of a week of street fighting, they have drawn up a list of 25 political personalities to negotiate for a new political leadership and a new constitution to replace Mubarak's crumbling regime.
Every word in this sentence is false. First, everybody I know who has been to Tahrir Square has remarked on how incredibly clean everything is, despite the huge number of people there. The demonstrators have organized street-cleaning crews that are doing an amazing job. Some are having fun with it, like the group of young people going around with garbage bags and shouting, "I am a representative of (the ruling) National Democratic Party, and we need donations!" If you look at the actual filmed coverage of Tahrir Square, I challenge anybody to find one piece of trash on the ground.
This suggests that Mr. Fisk may not even have been to Tahrir Square in person.
Second, the millions of Egyptians in Tahrir Square and elsewhere have been ADAMANT that they will not appoint ANYBODY to represent them or to engage in any negotiations whatsoever until their most important demand is met, for the regime to fall -- with the removal of Hosni Mubarak as a non-negotiable first step.
They include Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League – himself a trusted Egyptian; the Nobel prize-winner Ahmed Zuwail, an Egyptian-American who has advised President Barack Obama; Mohamed Selim Al-Awa, a professor and author of Islamic studies who is close to the Muslim Brotherhood; and the president of the Wafd party, Said al-Badawi.
The Egyptian regime is expert at creating a false "opposition" and then pretending that this "diversity" proves how democratic it is. None of these men have anything whatsoever to do with this revolution, and in fact are (witting or unwitting) sock-puppets for every talking point now being put out by the regime's propaganda machine as "concessions" -- the idea is to have these phony "representatives" say them, because it sounds so much better coming from them than from the regime itself.
Most striking is that while the millions of demonstrators are shouting themselves hoarse, saying "No to Mubarak and no to Suleiman, they are agents of the Americans" (it rhymes in Arabic), the first item that these phony representatives are "demanding" is that Mubarak transfer all his dictatorial powers to Omar Suleiman!! Every individual or organization or party that is "demanding" that power is transferred to Omar Suleiman is thus publicly exposed as an enemy of the people, but the Egyptian media is ignoring the real revolutionaries and giving a platform only to these fakes.
Other nominees for the committee, which was supposed to meet the Egyptian Vice-President, Omar Suleiman, within 24 hours, are Nagib Suez, a prominent Cairo businessman (involved in the very mobile phone systems shut down by Mubarak last week); Nabil al-Arabi, an Egyptian UN delegate; and even the heart surgeon Magdi Yacoub, who now lives in Cairo.
Oh, Fiskie, Fiskie, you pathetic excuse for a journalist, you. There is nobody named "Nagib Suez" -- one of Egypt's most famous businessmen is the billionaire Naguib Sawiris, whose family empire includes not only vast telecommunications but construction and tourism and manufacturing and media holdings. The family, who is Coptic, has accumulated the bulk of its enormous multi-multi-billion dollar fortune during the 30 years of Mubarak's dictatorship and enjoys an extremely close relationship with the US. Naguib Sawiris makes frequent appearances in the media and is portrayed as a real "mensch", or in Arabic "gada3", very Egyptian nationalist who cares about the little people, but it's worth noting that his telecommunications company was the sole firm to provide cellular phone services in Afghanistan after the American invasion and occupation, and the sole firm to provide cellular phone services in Iraq after the American invasion and occupation.
The selection – and the makeshift committee of Tahrir Square demonstrators and Facebook and Twitter "electors" – has not been confirmed, but it marks the first serious attempt to turn the massive street protests of the past seven days into a political machine that provides for a future beyond the overthrow of the much-hated President.
There has been no "selection". In fact, it is the regime and its sock-puppets that have been doing all the selecting of who they want to address. The millions of Egyptian citizens who have launched and are conducting this revolution are very clear on this point: no "representatives", no "negotiations" (or as the regime nauseatingly puts it, "dialogue"), but a list of legal demands, beginning with the removal of the illegitimate regime and all its representatives.
Indeed, yesterday morning, to the shock of all of us standing on the western side of the square, a convoy of 4x4s with blackened windows suddenly emerged from the gardens of the neighbouring Egyptian Museum, slithered to a halt in front of us and was immediately surrounded by a praetorian guard of red-bereted soldiers and massive – truly gigantic – security guards in shades and holding rifles with telescopic sights. Then, from the middle vehicle emerged the diminutive, bespectacled figure of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the chief of staff of the Egyptian army and a lifelong friend of Mubarak, wearing a soft green military kepi and general's cross-swords insignia on his shoulders.
This
utterly false statement alone should get Mr. Fisk forcibly retired.
FM Tantawi, the Army Chief of Staff and head of Mubarak's Republican Guard DID NOT GO TO TAHRIR. It was General Hassan Ruweini, the only high-level army representative to go there:
General Hassan Ruweini
Field Marshal Hussein TantawiThe Brotherhood's insistence in not joining talks until Mubarak's departure – and their support for ElBaradei, whose own faint presidential ambitions (of the "transitional" kind) have not commended themselves to the protesters – effectively excluded them. Suleiman has archly invited the Brotherhood to meet him, knowing that they will not do so until Mubarak has gone.
Aw jeez, more bullshit. Omar Suleiman invited the Muslim Brotherhood for "dialogue" and the MB spent several days dithering, refusing to say whether they'd go for it or not. After all, following 6 decades of being labeled an illegal organization, here was the regime running after them and brandishing the promise of legitimacy. Finally they decided that they would agree to one meeting to hear what Suleiman had to say. This tentative meeting cost them dearly in terms of public support and it was in response to loud public outrage that they insisted they'd only gone to listen and to repeat the "street's" demand for Mubarak to leave, and said that the meeting was unfruitful and that they saw no purpose to any further meetings. In other words, Fisk has it exactly bass-ackward: the MB lost some support, not because it refused to talk with the regime, but because it temporarily gave in to the temptation to meet with Suleiman, though they realized their mistake and are trying to make up for it now.
The MB has been desperate to ensure that they are not totally left behind by this revolution that had nothing whatsoever to do with them. In fact, they'd firmly refused to join the initial demonstrations on January 25, saying that they did not know who was calling for these demonstrations and they could not join something whose agenda and organizers were unclear. Only on January 28 (the "Day of Wrath") did they decide to join, but in doing so they were exposed as much weaker in terms of number and influence than they or the regime have been claiming. Of course, this has not stopped the regime's media from constantly pushing the lie that the MB is "behind" this movement (along with the Mossad, Hezbullah, Iran, Hamas and Al Qaeda) and that its members form the bulk of the demonstrators.
The MB itself, however, has maintained that its members are Egyptians just like everybody else and deserve the right to have some representation in Egypt's political landscape, but that they do not feel that they have the right to make any demands of the regime that differ from those made by the revolutionaries themselves. Interestingly, they have even signed off on the revolutionaries' demand that Egypt's new constitution be designed to make Egypt a "democratic, secular state".
I really don't understand why Fisk is still being quoted -- he's a very poor and lazy researcher who bases his slapped-together "analysis" on errors of fact and what are clearly second- or even third-hand sources.
"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
