Egypt: Brotherhood Bloodshed

Morsi supporters killed by the Egyptian military

by Stephen Morgan

I must admit that I didn't at all foresee the ferocity with which the Security Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF) would attack the Muslim Brotherhood and it has now drastically changed perspectives. After the second revolution, I had even thought that the pressure of the masses could force some limited economic gains and that this, combined with illusions in the Army and a mood among the masses to give the new liberal government a chance, could have led to a temporary stabilization for a year or two before a new revolutionary wave broke out again.

But the prospect of a temporary stabilization now looks unlikely, because of the political factors which flow from the SCAF actions; Their repression has torn apart the fabric of Egyptian society to such an extent that civil war or some form of “Algerianization” of the country couldn't be ruled out. The military have done this on purpose, in order to crush an old foe and divide the masses, but they may have overstepped the mark now to the point that they will damage their own interests and those of the bourgeoisie.

That doesn't mean that strikes and social battles on things like wages, jobs and housing still won't take place, but there will now be a constant underlying backdrop of religious and sectarian violence, which can present a barrier to the working class. It also gives opportunities for extreme-right, religious groups like the Salafists and Al Qaeda to grow and pose a threat to the workers movement.

Furthermore, the SCAF tactics are clearly aimed to undermine and intimidate future struggles by the Egyptian working class who will also face the same brutality by the army in the future. Many left publications have made generally good analyses of the situation and I wont repeat or paraphrase that here. I only want to raise a few discussion points arising from the events last week and this weekend.

It is absolutely true that the MB is a thoroughly reactionary organization, but it would be wrong to stereotype it, so that it fits with notions of conservative parties or small right-wing extremist groups in the West. It isn't possible to pigeon-hole it like that. The MB has existed for 85 years and could previously boast a membership of some 600,000. While it is controlled by religious intellectuals it has had considerable support from the poor, the small peasants and even many workers. It is not simply a group of petty-bourgeois reactionaries, but it has enjoyed popularity because of its work among millions of impoverished Egyptians, running charities, providing cheap food, education and medical treatment, as well as creating workers' educational groups. It also earned considerable respect as the only major opposition forced constantly persecuted by Mubarak before the revolution and their cadres were respected for their courage.

However, its leaders initially opposed the revolution in 2011, but were forced to do a rapid U-turn under the pressure of the masses and the fact that nearly all its youth were in rebellion against the top and had joined the masses on the streets. The MB leaders were challenged by their youth members and the group began to split apart on a vague “right-left” basis and those who considered themselves the “truer revolutionaries” than the bureaucrats. In fact, the MB youth became respected revolutionary fighters, particularly because they didn't attempt to preach religion and fought shoulder-to-shoulder with secular groups.

The MB also has its different wings and shades of opinion despite its reactionary, religious policies and the way its leaders supported capitalism when in power. Among the large membership there are different questions of emphasis or interpretation, as well disputes on organizational issues. Some came to support the ideas of Islamized economic measures or even full Sharia Law as an alternative to the problems of Western-style capitalism, at a time when socialism seemed to no longer be an option. There are also the hundreds of thousands of grass roots workers and supporters involved in helping the poor and see themselves in a “left” or progressive role, despite their religious faith or inspiration.

Furthermore, the MB was the only well-organized, credible party, which could attract the confidence of the people. While not ignoring the low turnout in 2011, the absence of any other credible popular, and large parties, with historical roots, meant the MB was looked on as the natural party of the masses. However, mass moods can change with lightning speed in revolutions. Ironically, millions of MB supporters undoubtedly joined the second revolution again this time and were equally disappointed in Morsi and wanted him to step down. Given that some 20 million were involved in comparison to 2 million in 2012, far more MB supporters took to the streets this time. This goes to show that MB supporters aren't all reactionary enemies of the revolution.

I get the impression at the moment that the MB is only able to mobilize a hard core of cadres and has lost the majority of their active supporters. But that can change again to some degree and sympathies for those who are seen as martyrs can rise, especially as disillusionment reappears, when the new regime proves itself to be no more successful than Morsi in dealing with the country's economic problems.

The MB has shown in the last week that it can still muster strength and has hard core cadres ready to die for it. Regardless of the army's ruthlessness, the MB is far from finished and cannot be exterminated. Indeed, in the future it can regain popularity. In fact, the army's actions are solidifying a fighting cadre of embittered and enraged opponents. Persecute group members and people only identify more loyally with their organization and become more prepared to sacrifice or die for it. A group which was close to splitting during the first revolution can now become more compact and consolidated and, although it might be partly driven underground, it has sufficient popular support to be a constant thorn in the SCAF's side and a major destabilizing factor in Egypt's future.

The MB is a complex group which can't be simplified down into a some neat designation as a monolithic bourgeois party. Like with many other developments and groups in the underdeveloped world, Marxists have to recognize that hybrids or mutant groups exist, which don't fit easily into traditional notions or formulas. To do otherwise would be mechanistic and undialectical. Such a mistake can also be a basis for opportunism, in the sense of falsely analysing something like the MB and labeling it incorrectly, but in such a way as to avoid complex questions and risk losing popularity among some secular youth and workers. If we look more closely at the MB then we see that it has hundreds of thousands of supporters, who are the natural allies of the revolution, as long as they are approached in an empathetic way and only a small minority are determined reactionaries.

Therefore, although no socialist could support Morsi's Presidency, no socialist can support the army's attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood either, nor fail to stand up and say so. But, at the same time socialists unconditionally criticize the MB's policies and actions particular their sectarianism to Christians, other minorities and their attitudes to and attacks upon women.

However, dealing with MB is a political and not a military issue and it is the duty of the labour movement to intervene independently, without any support for army, police and security forces or for that matter the use of the state machinery to ban the MB as a party. The SCAF is using this situation to hone its abilities to deal with workers' unrest in equally bloody ways later and to ban strikes, protests and independent organizations as well.

Therefore, we should defend the MB's right to protest (as long as it's not in a violent or sectarian manner) and oppose any army or government bans on demonstration or rallies. Socialists should demand the army withdraws and discuss with the rank and file troops about not shooting. Labour Movement groups should organize marches to any similar flashpoints where massacres could take place and demand the right to appeal to and discuss with MB supporters. They would have to develop credentials as an independent arbiter and such an approach might well catch the ear of MB members more than the liberal groups who are in power colluding with the army.

The army and security forces are also conniving to simultaneously allow sectarian bloodshed to divide the masses. The army or police will never protect minorities or workers. Therefore, the labour movement must also intervene to stop MB and/or Nour Party thugs from attacking Christians and others. Secular and united, multi-faith self-defence teams must be organized and arms will be needed for personal protection, although all efforts should be made to avoid bloodshed. Women too should also have the means to bear arms.

End the massacres of MB members!
Freedom of assembly, the right to protests and strike!
Labour movement intervention and arbitration now!
Workers' self-defence groups to protect Christians and minorities!
Immediate elections to a Provisional Assembly!
Build independent unions and a workers' party to take power on a democratic socialist program.

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Sana Saeed, Guardian: How We 'Other' Sexual Assault to Ignore Our Own Norms of Abuse

by Jack Gerson

We reprint a Guardian op ed by Sana Saeed that pulls no punches about how rape is used to terrorize women in Egypt, and how mob sexual violence in particular is an open tool used to discourage women from taking part in demonstrations and other political activity. But she also takes on the racist and chauvinist media propaganda prevalent in the West that sexual violence against women is mainly attributable to religious and cultural roots: Islam, Hinduism, Middle East, Indian subcontinent. But as she discusses, Egypt and India have no monopoly on sexual violence -- we need look no further than the U.S. (especially, but not only, the U.S. military).

How We 'Other' Sexual Assault to Ignore Our Own Norms of Abuse by Sana Saeed (Guardian, 7/7/13)

On 30 June, as “the Coup That Must Not Be Mentioned” was being celebrated in Tahrir Square, Cairo, news of over 80 reports of mob sexual violence and harassment emerged as a reminder of an ugly undercurrent behind the two-and-a-half-year-long anti-regime uprising. Sexual harassment and violence in Egypt is a daily occurrence – an epidemic, even – with 99.3% of women (pdf) claiming to have suffered some form of it.

Mob sexual violence, however, carries a certain brand of particularity as a near-explicit political tool used to discourage women, who make up nearly half of the total population, from attending demonstrations. Maria S Muñoz, co-founder and director of the anti-sexual assault initiative Tahrir Bodyguard, traces the advent and use of organized mob sexual assaults to the days of Mubarak, pointing to the 2005 assault of journalist Nawal Ali by hired “thugs” during a demonstration. Despite being aware of the risk of attending political demonstrations, women, Muñoz notes, “have continued to share the public space in protests, becoming an essential part of the opposition’s voice and presence.”

The culture of sexual violence and harrassment, in Egypt, has received considerable media attention, often highlighting the efforts of groups such as Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault, HarassMap and Tahrir Bodyguard as people-powered initiatives tackling sexual violence and harassment head-on. Despite this, it is apparently still difficult to have an honest discussion over why it happens.

On 5 July, US author Joyce Carol Oates (whom I know primarily from her having never written this) decided to join in with the sea of insta-Egypt Twitter experts and opined:

If 99.3% of women reported being treated equitably, fairly, generously–it would be natural to ask: what’s the predominant religion?
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) July 5, 2013

Despite the brevity of “Oatesgate”, the rhetorical question of a well-respected literary figure highlights popular characterizations of sexual violence and harassment when it takes place elsewhere. Rarely does sexual violence and harassment in our own societies – as it is perpetrated, prosecuted and cultured – allow the sort of cultural reductionism that seems to come with ease when sexual violence is associated with “the other”.

When a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern is brutally gang-raped and beaten in Delhi, we speak of “India’s woman problem”; when an incapacitated 16-year-old student is raped, photographed and filmed for six hours by peers – who share the images on social media – the incident is treated as an isolated act of unfortunate deviance and not part and parcel of a larger endemic culture that normalizes rape and the appropriation of women’s bodies as public property.

Child groomers of Muslim and South Asian backgrounds become cultural ambassadors raised on a steady diet of “savage” notions of sex embedded in anti-white biases and misogyny. Revered coaches and university administrations hiding decades of child sex abuse, on the other hand, become their own victims.

Thus there are no protests, no calls of a “woman problem”, no “natural” inquiries into the predominant religion when a country has ranked 13th in the world for rape, 10th for rapes per capita (pdf) and where 26,000 military service members reported sexual assault in 2012 alone. There are no popular anthropological undertakings by stiff-haired anchors of the inner secrets and dark forces of American culture, religion and society. No white American woman asks why the white American male hates “us”.

None of this is to provide a level playing field for discussing sexual violence. It is to highlight how understanding of sexual violence is reliant on how it is reported and how this, in turn, is reliant on who is involved. In the case of Egypt, the extent to which there is sexual harassment and violence is abysmal and even unique in how it occurs. Yet, this violence did not emerge overnight, nor does it occur in a political and socio-economic vacuum. It is the result of decades of state, legal and political decay. It is the result of a state that itself has created a culture of acceptability of violence and torture, often sexual, inside its own walls.

In the explicit act of violating bodily sovereignty, there is an active search for the conquest of power and control in a space where these have become vulnerable. This requires no sermon, book or belief to legitimize it; it only needs submission.

To read this article on the Guardian website, please go to:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/07/sexual-assault-norms-abuse/print 

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Egyptian revolution: Out of the mouths of babes

What an incredible young man. A 12 year old.  This is what revolutionary activity does to us, it politicizes us, makes us more human.

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Egyptian Revolution: perspectives and international repercussions after Morsi

A woman protester celebrates near the presidential palace in Cairo as news spreads that Morsi has been taken out of power by the military. Source

by Stephen Morgan

I would like to offer some remarks on the international repercussions of the 2nd phase of the Egyptian revolution, the effects on the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, plus some comments on the perspectives for the workers' movement in the Arab world.

Another key factor which needs to be considered is what the international repercussions will be for the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamists and Al Qaeda, as well as for the growing global anti-capitalist movements.

With regard to the MB and Islamists, the effects will probably be very contradictory. In the first place, the scale of the secular revolt against their government will have been a startling blow to their leaders and core supporters, both in Egypt and around the Muslim world. Similar revolts on a lesser scale have taken place in Tunisia already and it will no doubt have further repercussions there. It will also definitely affect the political process in Islamic countries across the North African/Maghrebian region such as Libya, Morocco and Mauritania.

The MB's authority or their equivalents across the Arab world will be undermined and their influence and popularity diminished temporarily. It will most certainly strengthen the secular movement in Turkey, Jordan, Yemen and even in Syria, it may well give a fillip to the secular or moderate Sunni rebel groups. It will also have repercussions in Muslim Asian countries such as Indonesia and Pakistan strengthening secular opposition to the governments there. However, that doesn't mean that the effects will be simply a copy of Egypt, but they will take forms and nuances relevant to the historical background and concrete situation in the different countries.

Like the MB, Al Qaeda and its equivalents will have been caught off-guard and confused by events, just like they were by the first Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions in 2011. In the interim period since then they have regained something of their equilibrium and broadened their influence to some degree. While having fiercely denounced the MB in the past, Al Qaeda has nevertheless also been making overtures and toning down their rhetoric against the MB governments recently, in order to reach out to their wider supporters. So, in general terms, the shift towards the MB and the election of MB governments helped them to recover from the disastrous blow they suffered by the secular revolt in 2011. For their supporters, the new MB regimes seemed to reaffirm the idea that the shift towards Islamism was still continuing, that the secular nature of the first revolutions was merely a passing aberration and that history was in fact on their side. However, the scale and power of the new mass secular movement in Egypt and the passionate rejection of even the MB's milder Islamist ideology will again flabbergast them and disorientate them temporarily.

Having said all of that, there are two sides to the coin of what is happening or developing. The crack down on the MB by the Egyptian military can make martyrs of them among their supporters, who will fight back. Moreover, they are used to this situation, having learned how to sustain themselves during persecution by the military and secular state under the Mubarak regime. The current attacks on them by the military, compounded by the eventual disillusionment with new regime's failure to meet the expectations of this second revolutionary wave, will lay the basis for a recovery in their support, although I doubt it will be sufficient to sweep them to power again in the future. A far "messier" period is opening up in my opinion.

The eventual failure of the new regime to fulfill the expectations of the second revolution will instead lead to a clearer left/right polarization in society, though this will be complicated by the fact that the military could also retain the support of an important section of the population, particularly among the middle classes, who will want stability, particularly if the MB turns to violence and Al Qaeda begins an urban guerrilla offensive and terrorist activities in the cities and the Sinai.

The outlines of civil war will emerge and the international effect of civil war in Egypt would likely plunge the whole of the Arab world into an inferno of civil war with confrontation with secular, religious and sectarian groups, thus significantly complicating the tasks of the socialist revolution.

Therefore, so much depends on how the Egyptian labour movement develops in the next period. It alone could be the force which would cut across or diminish such developments and send a different beacon of light to the workers of the region. Like the rest of the underdeveloped or emergent countries, the Arab nations have seen a huge growth in the size of the working class. 21% of the workforce in the Arab world are now employed in industry, equivalent to Latin and Central America and only 1% less than Western Europe!

In Tunisia, a colossal 32% of the workforce are industrial workers, Algeria 24%, Turkey 26%, Libya 23%, Palestine 22%, Saudi Arabia 21%, Jordan 20%, Morocco 20% and Egypt 17% (although this is probably an underestimation, given that some 40% of peasant small holders have a primary income from working in industry, while at the same making a part of their income from small farms and are therefore classified as part of the agricultural workforce) Even in Syria, 16% of the workforce are in manufacturing.

Furthermore, statistics show a drastic rise in days lost to strikes across the N. African countries in the last decade often trebling in number. Unfortunately, I have been unable to obtain detailed statistics for the numbers and ratios of women in the workforce in the region, but one can suppose that it has risen dramatically as in other underdeveloped and newly industrialized countries. Women have played a key role in the strike waves in Egypt and Tunisia often leading the men into action, as well as playing a prominent role in the protests in Tahrir Sq.

Moreover, despite the fact that the Arab working class is largely a "virgin" proletariat whose class consciousness and independent organization is weak, in the Maghrebian countries especially, there are established trade union and leftist traditions. It is an ironic offshoot of French imperialism that union federations based on the French models do play a prominent national role in countries like Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The fact that many of them have become stooge unions of the state in a way confirms the potential for industrial action by the workers, in the sense that the ruling classes have taken control of the hierarchy of the unions, precisely because they recognize and fear the potential for independent working class organization.

Regardless of this the ruling class was unable to stop the massive strike waves which swept Tunisia and Egypt in advance of the revolutions. Indeed, in Tunisia during the 2011 revolution, while independent, free unions were established, the workers in the industrial heartlands, who started the revolution, took the local stooge unions by the neck, invading their offices and removing regime puppets or forcing them to call regional general strikes, which snowballed into national actions.

The workers in the phosphate mines and industrial heartlands of Tunisia and the textile workers of Mahalla in Egypt played a crucial role during 2006-2008 in paving the way for the revolutions. They fought the forces of the state and broke the "fear barrier" surrounding the dictatorships. The effect of their struggles was to leave the imprint of the idea in the subconsciousness of the masses that it was possible to stand up to the state and win. However, as we have said before, despite the mass strikes which later complimented the revolutionary movements, the proletariat has yet to assert its domination and leadership of the uprisings. Even so, there is tremendous potential for an independent workers movement to grow in the coming period and the possibility not only of general strikes in different countries, but even regional transnational, general strikes similar and probably greater than the one-day general strike against austerity, which took place across Southern Europe in 2013.

At the moment, the masses are going through a process of testing out alternatives; firstly the Muslim Brotherhood, which they have rejected and now the army backed by the liberal center. They are searching for a way out on the basis of trial and error and it can be that a sense of desperation and impasse will overcome them. But if the working class moves into the arena and fills the vacuum with its own independent unions and a party with a radical, anti-capitalist programme, this new alternative to secular liberalism, military Bonapartism and radical Islam can quickly grip the imagination of the masses, who will flock to its banner, pulling behind them the semi-lumpen and lumpen sections of society, the poor farmers, the street vendors and craftspeople and sections of the middle classes, particularly small shopkeepers and professionals like doctors and lawyers, engineers and those working in the high-tech communication sector.

Even then, however, it may take new upheavals, victories and defeats before it becomes crystal clear to the masses that the workers' movements have to do away with capitalism all together. That would be an earthquake with worldwide consequences. We have already seen how the first stage of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions swept North Africa and the Middle East from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf and how it inspired movements like Occupy, the Indignados and the strikes in Greece and across Europe and elsewhere as well.

Its effects have continued to be felt in the massive movements recently in Turkey and Brazil. This second phase in Egypt now will solidify the idea in the minds of the masses around the world that 2011 wasn't a "one-off"but that it is indeed really possible to remove dictators and unpopular governments through mass action. The masses globally will become more confident in their potential power as a result. In that sense it is also possible that while Egypt has influenced the developing world revolution, events stemming from it in other countries, especially through the intervention of the labour movement in other nations, can in turn affect the future events in Egypt as well.

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Egypt: Some thoughts on the fall of Morsi

The following is from the International Socialist Network and we reprint it here for our readers' interest.

Hannah Elsisi: Interview on the fall of Morsi – live from Cairo

Published on Wednesday, 3 July 2013

Is today a victory for revolution or counterrevolution?

In a way, both. I’m currently sitting just off Tahrir Square with the woman who started ‘no to military trials’, a musician, one of Cairo’s most active street artists, and a novelist of the revolution. That is precisely the question we’re discussing now – and we are split down the middle. Half of us see this as a victory for the revolution and the other half as a victory for the counterrevolution – half as a step forward, half as a step backwards.

We’re in this café, not the square, for a reason. We all feel and know that this is not the square we owned – as if we have no tangible place in it, despite knowing that we hold a ‘place’ in the revolution.

Which half of the discussion are you in?

I’m in the optimistic half. Despite the fact that I’ve been most vocal about this unease for a few weeks now. Here’s why.

Two years ago there were untold millions who either knew nothing of the revolution or had no time for it because they couldn’t afford a minute off. Some resented it for stripping them of their privileges. Others even saw it as a return to the nice, ‘civilised’ Egypt that they knew under British occupation and the monarchy!

What we have today is a mixture of the following. Several million Egyptians who previous took to the streets and remember the Muslim Brotherhood’s lies, the blood they abandoned and the blood they themselves spilled. And many more, particularly outside the cities (where Morsi still managed to fare well in the presidential elections after a six month majority in parliament) have taken to the streets to protest their despair and disappointment in those they placed their faith in – not just now, but for a good 20 years.

However overarching this is a set of objections to the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule that transcend class, religion, social occupation or revolutionary reference-points.

What are the politics of the protests, and which tendencies dominate?

There is still a very strong discourse that Mubarak, and Sadat’s regime before him, built over many years and for specific historical reasons. This discourse is built on both a rejection of ‘political Islam’ without a rejection of Islam itself – indeed they entrenched Islamic discourse. At the same time they built a fairytale scenario where the Muslim Brotherhood and its members contain some transgenerational, transpolitical trait that causes them to rule ruthlessly and dictatorially, in a manner that is somehow worse than Sadat or Mubarak’s dictatorships.

This is what motivates the majority of Egyptians on the streets today, though to varying levels. It is most extremely entrenched within the middle classes, and among Coptic Egyptians and older generations. Another motivating feature of the protests is a bourgeois notion of safety or “law and order” having disintegrated over the past few years, particularly under Morsi’s rule.

However, the revolution itself is yet to explicitly take up an ideology or “leadership”, and there are so many who have taken to the streets against Morsi simply to protest against their social and economic living conditions without any clear alternative in mind.

I feel the majority of those I encounter are there to remove the Muslim Brotherhood and their beards before they are out to remove the government. Here, I am in a minority. Beyond that though it seems as if most people are out to remove the government rather than wanting to install the military in power. Here, I am with the majority.

So the victory for the revolution today, in my opinion, shows the ruling class’s weakness. Our prime fear should not be the military, as there are many who do not find the answer to their prayers there. The victory for the counterrevolution is quite frankly the threat of popular sectarian violence against a particular group of citizens that also happens to be the military’s greatest political foe.

Can the rank and file of the army be split from the generals, or is this over-optimistic?

The rank and file of the army will only consider such a situation if the majority or a large number of lay soldiers are forced to rule and govern, and deal with civilians. However, if the army can achieve what it had managed to not only in the shape of Morsi but also Sadat, Mubarak and Nasser – that is, rule under the auspices of revolutionary or liberal parliamentary governance – then there is no need for such direct rule, and as a consequence the circumstances will not necessarily be ripe for the institution’s disintegration.

We've heard over the years about efforts to form a new, mass workers' party. How far have these efforts got?

Notions of class have nowhere in Egypt’s history (save for short spells in the 1890s and 1920s-30s) asserted themselves over political, cultural or socio-religious considerations. It is difficult to speak of a workers’ party when we cannot speak of any more than 700,000 to a million Egyptians who identify with this notion at the most basic level.

Working class self-organisation has not ebbed one bit over the past five years, and under current circumstances there is nowhere for working class consciousness to go but to develop further. However I say this to emphasise that while revolutionaries in Egypt use the slogan “general strike until the regime falls”, and many agree, on the ground for all of us the main contradiction that needs explaining – or the main discourse we feel we lack – is a revolutionary narrative against the current government that stands on clear principle with respect to the military’s role, while also rejecting the reactionary discourse against the Muslim Brotherhood specifically and supporters of political Islam more generally.

Right now I can hear the calls to prayer, and a march chanting ‘Egypt (clap clap clap) Egypt’. And this is what I was referring to earlier in terms of the reactionary discourse of the revolt, making nationalist, militaristic sentiment the focus.

What is the left doing, and what does it have the capacity to do?

The left has the capacity to nurture and give confidence to those sections of the square who have no vested interest in military rule. We are working hard to keep chants and art against "el 3askar" (military rule) on the walls and on our tongues. The left will no doubt work hard to defend human rights and reject any calls for indiscriminate violence against any group. It will continue to build campaigns against sexual assault, and against the electricity shortages across Egypt’s governorates. However uncomfortable we might sometimes feel, communists’ place is on the streets, where the masses are.

What do you think of ElBaradei’s manoeuvring?

This is also a topic we have been discussing for a few days. At one end there are those like myself who thought the army’s game was to keep supporting the revolutionary movement on the street – and popular violence against the Muslim Brotherhood – while leaving the Brotherhood in power until its organisation had disintegrated enough to no longer pose a threat to the military. This would also have meant waiting until at least a good chunk of the population were at the point where they were begging for the army to rule. The other half predicted that the street would outstrip the military’s expectations, and want the government out ASAP.

ElBaradei or any similar liberals might be an unnecessary phase for the military if popular demand for straight-up military rule is high enough, and the Brotherhood is weak enough. For those with the latter view, ElBaradei is part of a larger play than just encouraging popular revolt against the Brotherhood, and will quite frankly be the next suit the military will rule through.

It is important to remember that the US government plays a not insignificant role in these outcomes. If the US has given up on the project of a client political Islam state in Egypt, at least for the time being, them some setup with ElBaradei at the helm is not unlikely.

I can hear celebrations – gunshots in the air. I’m half deaf! Wish you were here.

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