Egypt’s ruling military council said they would reactivate the emergency law they promised to end after Egyptian protesters stormed the Israeli Embassy in Cairo on Friday.
In an attempt to bolster their own power, and in response to heavy pressure from the US and Israel to crack down, the military vowed to use the emergency law to try suspects in emergency state security courts, block roads, and censor the press, among other things. Under Mubarak, the emergency law was used to stifle opposition and repress Egyptian rights, and fears are widespread that the military council will utilize the law for similar reasons.
Egypt’s young pro-democracy movement is criticizing the military council for backsliding on promised reform and maintaining Mubarak’s repression. Among the promises were to end the emergency law within six months of Mubarak’s fall, an end to violence against protesters, to set a firm date for a parliamentary election, all of which the military has now broken.
The most pernicious of the emergency measures taken thus far has been the attacks on news media, which is an essential ingredient to Egypt’s ongoing revolution. Egyptian security forces raided the Egyptian offices of al Jazeera on Sunday as Egyptian and Israeli officials jostled to repair relations after Israel pulled diplomats out of Egypt in response to the storming of the embassy.
Egypt’s minister of media, Osama Heikal, said the government would take legal action against news media that “endanger the stability and security” of the nation, a clear sign that control of the population is taking precedence over their newly reaffirmed rights.
As Egypt’s transition has struggled along, US pressure and military assistance has remained strong. The warnings from the protest movement that things are going sour is a good sign that US national security planners are succeeding in snuffing out the Arab Spring’s fire.
and so starts the arab winter.
If Egyptian people would put their rich ruling class in an open air prison — democracy would be theirs in less then a day. But you have a self-absorbed and indifferent laboring class, a slave driver loving educated middle-class and a High Society that laughs all the way to the bank.
The Egyption revolution will be incomplete until the holdover military brass are removed from power.
they threatened Egypt with war and the USA said that they will turn it into Iraq,this is the real face of the US a terrorist state along with their boss Isreal
Out from under one set of boots…and under another set. Freedom…a fleeting concept.
Same boots. "Change you can believe in", Egyptian style.
That said, the Egyptian folks who made the revolution, and still have the same tools and motivations, may not take this lying down. I heard a nine year old Iraqi boy in one of the countless little video bleeps from that war zone show a level of political sophistication that would put most US media pundits — I'm talking pundits here, not just talking heads — to shame. He knew with perfect clarity exactly what was being done to his country. Nine years old. Ever since, despite the mind-raping, truth-destroying sh*t-storm of MSM propaganda, I have had the impression that the semi-modern, internet generation, routinely literate if not highly educated, know the score. OF COURSE, the old regime is going to try to maintain the same old same old. Which is to say slavish loyalty to their US benefactors (who, in turn jump in slavish obedience to THEIR Israeli masters). But the Egyptian people see through this — have always seen through this. The difference now is that the energies of youth have been unleashed, and the future — bloodless or bloody, it matters not — belongs to them. They know who their enemy is, they know that Israel is the power, the real power, behind the old regime. The sacrificial offering of Mubarak, while emotionally gratifying, will not beguile the Egyptian people into accepting continued dominance by the co-opted military protectors of the old regime.
I suspect that they will follow a course similar to Turkey: establish an elected government and then gradually bring the military under civilian control.
The new civilian government will, of course, enjoy the usual temptations to corruption, to which they will to some degree, human nature being what it is, acquiesce. But hey!, welcome to the real world.
All hail the internet era! Real change doesn't give a sh*t whether you believe in it or not.
Is there no limit to how far Obama is willing to go as Netanyahu’s b-tch?
No. No limit.
In case anyone wonders why the youth of Egypt are still on the streets. If they're not vigilant, the US will steal…ney, buy their revolution right from under their noses. And I'm actually not so sure that hasn't already happened.