30 January 2011

sunday in egypt uprising — UPDATED

[click image]

.

I know I'm tuning into today's uprising early, but I mistimed my nap. I'm crabby as hell to find the hairdos on al Jazeera now referring to the citizens' watch groups as "vigilantes". That's so much more colorful... and pleasing to plutocrats as a bonus. The truth fills the people on the streets and I am outraged to hear media turning it into lowly words and mind control.

It is Sunday in Egypt, which is the Egyptian equivalent of our Monday. The military has closed off the downtown area, keeping cars out, but letting people walk in. Reports of old people quaking in their homes with clubs, waiting for young men to come take everything they have, but, as of now, that is not happening. The people are policing themselves pretty darn well by what I can see and glean from when they actually interview Egyptians in the middle of it. Too much attention to the crap on the web. But... the day is just beginning... and the people will be out in force again today.

Heh, Chris Floyd seems to be in a similar mood:
Oh, but you know what? We even shouldn't be talking about all this. This whole Egyptian uprising business seems to be making some of our leading progressives feel a bit wiggly. Atrios, for example, has salted several of his brief squibs about these momentous events with grumpy asides. For example:
I get a bit fed up with the ultra-serious tweeting and retweeting the revolution stuff which happens when Big Events are going on.
Yes, don't you just hate that? People being all ultra-serious and stuff about a brave popular uprising in a long-repressed land? I mean, really: couldn't they just do some cat-blogging or something? That would be, like, way more cool.

Or this:
I get a wee bit uncomfortable at the way people enthusiastically cheer on revolutionary movements in other countries they don't know much about. I'm not defending bad governments, just objecting to the notion that revolution=democracy. It's never clear what will emerge on the other side.
Yeah, that makes me squirm a wee bit in my Barcalounger as well: people being all ignorantly enthusiastic about these breakthrough moments in history, these rare upsurgings of the human spirit. Why, they probably haven't even read an article from the Center for American Progress telling them what to think about it yet! People like that should just shut up.
For my part, it's mostly been about the audacity of what we only call things in this world. I'm chuffed that they're reporting Mubarak's appointments of vice president and prime minister as though Mubarak were pharaoh, as though someone can have proclaimed himself "president" and that means he can impose his will and whim for thirty years and everybody—EVEN when the entire nation is in the streets screaming for him to get out—keeps talking as though he is President of Egypt and those silly swearings-in had anything to do with actuality.

Two people got into the museum night before last, almost certainly police, wrecked a couple mummies and smashed a couple things and left. It continues to be reported as though it just happened and things are really senseless and out of hand. That is getting on my nerves. I know, I know, I suck as a reporter because I have so little patience for this crap. I CARE ABOUT THOSE ANTIQUITIES ALMOST AS MUCH AS I CARE FOR THE PEOPLE, BUT, PLEASE, LET'S JUST MAKE SURE THE ANTIQUITIES ARE VERY WELL GUARDED AND CUT THE SENSATIONALISM, CAN WE?

Anyway, everything is jake so far this morning. I'll try to stay awake into the zone where stuff stops happening.

.

Democracy Now!'s Kouddous reports from Cairo....

.

I LOVE THEM.

.

2:15am PST:

Okay. I just had to snap off al Jazeera. Couldn't take another second of their prattle, despite the occasional infusion of information we can use. The hairdos of this world have ALWAYS sent me over the edge, and my Zen gets very brittle and volatile after a while when faced with them in such heavy rotation. I mean, for sure it's better when they're only images on a screen and I don't have to scare the living snot out of them, which I unerringly do, in person, but, still... not pretty.

It is not pretty.

I've heard guys on the street, local bloggers, a journalist in Suez, I think, and one very riled woman protestor, ALL saying the looting was instigated by the state to frighten people into staying home to protect their belongings. This accounts fully for why the riot police suddenly disappeared from the streets yesterday. I don't know if it has worked. It's after noon in Cairo now and the crowds are still thin. I know they don't hit full stride until later, but I think there should be more people out right now. I don't want to sit here getting angrier and more frustrated over this stupid coverage for which I should be very, very grateful, it being the ONLY coverage of the Egyptian uprising we have.

I have added a bunch of links to this post that ought to keep you busy if you are patient enough to read back through and hunt them down, and I hope you will add links in comments while I'm trying to pull myself back together and/or getting some sleep.

.
love, 99
.

2 comments:

  1. You can't go wrong by following @sharifkouddous.

    @joely

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks. I only hate him a little.... :o] Mostly only because Amy rattling off his name at light speed drives me up the wall, but also because of his creepy tv persona. What a good son! I'm very proud of him for going home to be with his parents... and, yes, if anything on Twitter can be reasonably expected to be accurate, it would be his stuff.

    Funny thing: I was just looking at a piece of his when your comment rolled in.... Synchronicity!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.