Well, my actual website is now fully operational. I assure you, it is quite deadly. A lot of the content from this blog has been copied over there already, not sure if I'll move the rest or not.
If you're here for Dickwolves, see below. I've said all that I care to on the subject and you know, what I've been reading about for the past few days sort of makes this Dickwolf thing seem really trivial. The guy running the Dickwolf Debacle should maybe spend his time following a debacle of significantly greater importance. So then, what have I been reading about?
Egypt. I apologize in advance if this is overly general, I could seriously write pages about this stuff, but nobody would read it. If you want to crash course yourself in w
hat’s going on, just scroll to the bulleted text.
Everyone loves Egypt right? The Bangles, Mario, there was even that scene in Alladin where they startle the guy making the Sphinx and he accidentally chips the nose off. I cannot imagine a single reason why you wouldn't want to go to Egypt right now.
Oh, yeah, right. There's that.
So, what the fuck is going on?
While most of us (along with several major American 'news' channels) have been focused on other things like Dickwolves and the Academy Award nominations, the biggest social protests since the Berlin wall is going on in Egypt, but, what the hell for?
In 1981 Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak became the 4th ever President of Egypt, that's right, he's been President for coming up on 30 years. When he was elected, there were only two Star Wars films in existence, the NES was still 2 years away from being released, I'm pretty sure America was still in Prohibition.
So, as you can imagine, being the President of a relatively wealthy country for 3 decades might (and indeed almost will certainly) lead to a little bit of corruption. Mubarak is certainly not clean as a whistle, and reports (though I haven't found anything really accurate on this, if you have a better link I'd love to see it) are that Mubarak has amassed a personal fortune of about 40 billion dollars in the past 30 years. Yeah... I mean, a little kickback here, a little kickback there, we'll forgive our politicians for that sort of thing, but this averages to over a billion dollars a year of ill gotten gain. You thought baseball players are overpaid? To put this into perspective, the Canadian Sponsorship Scandal that basically cost the Liberals power only cost the country "a few millions". Add to this some government approved police brutality, ignoring fair trials and just top to bottom political corruption and you have the Perfect Storm for violent upheaval.
Still, they needed a spark. They got it on New Year's Day 2011, a bomb exploded in front of a Coptic Christian church and killed 23 people. Christians protested, Muslims protested (what?), they all blamed Mubarak for sucking so bad at national security.
So on January 25, 20 000 Egyptians were like "fuck this". Only took them 30 years but apparently they were fed up with their President stealing from them. They protested, and within a few days Mubarak's men showed up with American tanks. This is going to turn out bad. 300 protestor deaths, 3000 people injured bad, and it's been a week.
Just so you know, TOMORROW IS GOING TO BE BAD IN EGYPT.
Here's why and what's been going on in the past few days:
- January 25 - Protests start, more people show up than expected. Police use the usual tear gas, riot shields and water cannons... and kill two protestors. Oops.
- January 26 - Riots continue, policeman killed, another protestor killed, government buildings in Suez set on fire.
- January 27 - The Muslim Brotherhood declares support of the protests and official opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei promises to return in time for "Friday of Anger" (this was a Thursday), another protestor is shot dead, more fires in Suez, some 700 arrests are made (including at least 8 journalists).
- January 28 (Friday of Anger) - Mubarak blocks text messaging and other phone services (not only is this legal, but Mubarak is also a Vodafone investor), protest numbers in the hundreds of thousands, a police station is overrun in Suez and protestors are busted free, fires in Port Said, government issues a curfew which is totally ignored. Many religious protestors paused for evening prayer, police kept firing teargas, classy. Military is deployed. Protestors and military alike try to protect the Egyptian Museum but two mummy's had their heads ripped off anyways (I'm serious). The government also shuts down the internet.
- January 29 - Police brutality continues, more deaths, people chant "the people and the army are one" in Tahir Square, so nobody really knows what side the military is on or who they're loyal to. Most of the deaths I've read about were at the hands of the police, not the army. Tanks show up in Suez, a lynch mob Rafah kills three police officers.
- January 30 - Vigilante groups form in Suez and Cairo to try and keep their homes and families safe, the chief of military makes a statement that civilians are not to be fired upon. ElBaradei encourages the protestors. Mubarak asks former chief of Air Staff Ahmed Shafiq, to form a new government. Shafiq is a Mubarak loyalist, I'm sure Egyptians will love that. Google gets awesome by teaming up with Twitter and SayNow to provide a service that allows Egyptians to call specially set up phone numbers and speak their tweets (what with the text message and internet blackout).
- January 31 - 250,000 protestors in Cairo alone, security announces that curfew will now be at 3:00 pm and violators will be shot (this was thankfully not enforced). ElBaradei stresses to protestors "What we have begun cannot go back", the Muslim Brotherhood supports Elbaradei to negotiate with Mubarak. Pro-Mubarak protestors appear, but in much smaller numbers. Police presence disappears from Cairo.
- February 1 March of Millions - 2 million protestors gather in Cairo, Mubarak announces that he will step down... in September... no rush there buddy, a few months of this won't be so bad, right?
- February 2 - Clashes between anti and pro-Mubarak supporters continue, the "Pro" side is really well organized, reports that many of them are just off duty cops, news reporters are attacked by pro-Mubarak supporters.
- February 3 (hey, that's today) - Protests continue, international journalists are detained, shot at or threatened by pro-Mubarak supportors. Banks have not opened all week so Egyptians are poor and hungry, Mubarak controlled Vodafone sends a mass pro-Mubarak text message to all subscribers calling anti-Mubarak supporters disloyal. Mubarak tells ABC "I would never run away. I will die on this soil."
So why will tomorrow suck? It is the "Day of Departure". Protestors have called for Mubarak to step down and have named February 4th as their deadline; a massive protest in fron of the presidential Heliopolis Palace is planned. Remember that part about death on this soil? Yeah...
So what's the deal and does it matter?
We live in North America, so what difference does it make? Well, first of all America is a pretty staunch ally of Egypt (having a friend so close to the Middle East ain't a bad idea) and has been for a while, whoever takes over Mubarak might not be so buddy buddy, so there's that.
Also, there's the little matter of the Egyptian stock market, which ground to a halt last Thursday and hasn't traded since, resulting in an estimated $12 billion dollar loss. Why does that matter, oh right... oil.
So yeah, it's a big deal. I would highly recommend following the live Al Jazeera blogs tomorrow, since it'll be a big news day, and if you live in Canada you should probably watch Al Jazeera (many American networks, in their awesomeness have blacked out the coverage, while Canadian cable provider Rogers is actually providing the channel free.
Now, this is a debacle.
Images from: Mohammed Abou Zaid/Associated Press and Tara Todras-Whitehill/Associated Press
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