Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
January 31, 2011
Egypt – Oil Prices Demand A Coup

Looking at the live pictures from Tahrir Square it seems that there are more people there than yesterday.

The army has build concrete block barricades into many access roads to the square. They may be intended to stop or at least hinder the big demonstration the opposition has announced for tomorrow. A pro-regime demonstration has also been announced though it is not clear yet if the plan is to have both demonstration meet and fight it out.

Mubarak promoted some additional hardliners to cabinet positions. He clearly does not want to give up.

The international community, aka the U.S. and EU, now have a new incentive to push Mubarak out. Brent oil just broke the 100$/barrel mark. Oil prices over $100 usually pushes the U.S. economy into a recession. Obama certainly does not want or need another one.

Insecurity about Egypt and the Suez Channel demands that the world pays a high risk premium – or change the situation.

From Wikileaks cables we know that the U.S. "Leahy vetted" what seems to be every officer in the Egyptian Army. We can thereby be sure that the Pentagon has quite intimate knowledge about and good connections with, not only to the very top officers of Mubarak's army, but also to the Colonel and One-Star General level.

Some phone calls made, some money transfer arranged and a coup scenario suddenly becomes a real possibility. Brent at $100 makes it a necessity.

Comments

i piss on the phrase, ‘international community’, it is just another permutation of u s imperialism

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 31 2011 17:34 utc | 1

the army is 460,000 strong, the reserves almost as much and the paramilitary around 390,000.
even if every officer has been vetted and officer needs troops. i just posted about the ‘friday of departure’ on the other thread but afterward i googled that phrase and the news is out if andrew sullivan’s writing about it.
whether it’s true or not i have no idea but that’s giving them lots of warning, all week. i wouldn’t count on the army not turning w/the opposition.

Posted by: annie | Jan 31 2011 17:36 utc | 2

The Friday Lunch Club presents some proof that the thugs in the streets of Egypt were indeed pushed from the Interior Ministry:
From the Google translation

Minister’s Office – Circular No. 60 / B / M – secret and very important
Topic: Plan to address the mass demonstrations
Strategies

2. employ a number of thugs and pay them amounts rewarding and meet with them in their role in the sites gatherings and in private by the elements authorized to do so without an official status, it and surrounding the deployment plan according to the attached table of the site entitled to 1 and tell them the time of the move and plan to create chaos scalability mentioned in the statement ,

Posted by: b | Jan 31 2011 17:53 utc | 3

The above plan is quite extensive and has been followed to the letter. Go read it to learn how “government” works.

Posted by: b | Jan 31 2011 18:00 utc | 4

Following the fall of the Shah, the new government set about trying, punishing and even executing many of the senior officers of the former royal army. Now I know why.
I’m not suggesting Egypt do such a thing. I’m just sayin’.

Posted by: Lysander | Jan 31 2011 18:29 utc | 5

Oil prices over $100 usually pushes the U.S. economy into a recession. Obama certainly does not want or need another one.
Another one? The U.S. still has not extricated itself from the first one despite all the propaganda to the contrary. There is no recovery on the horizon. It’s a decline from here on out, and the oil price shocks and subsequent retreats just serve to obscure what will be the general trend downward.
I agree that the U.S. appears to be holding Mubarak out on a limb…..but wasn’t he always on a limb? It just so happens that the limb he is on is snapping, and there’s nothing but asylum if he’s lucky…and he will be, down below.
Assuming the people of Egypt get a Government that reflects a broad cross-section of their aspirations, keeping in mind that the Egyptian people are not monolithic in their aspirations, it would be important for this new Government to insist that Mubarak, his son, Suleiman, and the countless other criminals be remanded back to Egypt for trial. Justice must be served. If the host country does not turn Mubarak over, do what Israel did with Eichman and the countless other Nazi psychopaths they brought to justice.

Posted by: Morocco Bama | Jan 31 2011 18:37 utc | 6

thanks for the friday lunch club link b

Posted by: annie | Jan 31 2011 19:05 utc | 7

Another example of why I cannot give a pass to Carter. How dare he speak admiringly of this sadistic, torturing, toady scumbag. Doing so says volumes about the true character of Jimmy Carter.
Carter: Egypt’s revolt ‘earth-shaking,’ Mubarak ‘will have to leave’

Mubarak dismissed his cabinet Friday and appointed as the new vice president Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief, who Carter described as “an intelligent man whom I like very much,” and one who “has always told me the truth.”

Who Is Omar Suleiman?

Suleiman is a well-known quantity in Washington. Suave, sophisticated, and fluent in English, he has served for years as the main conduit between the United States and Mubarak. While he has a reputation for loyalty and effectiveness, he also carries some controversial baggage from the standpoint of those looking for a clean slate on human rights. As I described in my book “The Dark Side,” since 1993 Suleiman has headed the feared Egyptian general intelligence service. In that capacity, he was the C.I.A.’s point man in Egypt for renditions—the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances.

Posted by: Morocco Bama | Jan 31 2011 19:14 utc | 8

I’m not an usual follower of AJE but the presenter right now is very confrontational about the US position.

Posted by: ThePaper | Jan 31 2011 19:21 utc | 9

unusually so, the paper, in this last weeks it has really seesawed from one point to another but its general coverage is leagues away from anybody else

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 31 2011 19:26 utc | 10

Video shows workers welding 6 feet high metal walls onto just installed 3 feet high concrete barricades across the main Nile bridges.
I expect those barricades will be fought about tomorrow when a big march may try to reach Tahrir on the east side of the river. Static defenses like this Maginot line can NOT hinder an determined assault. But such fight is likely to be bloody.

Posted by: b | Jan 31 2011 20:07 utc | 11

b, the army is saying one thing but we are witnessing quite another

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 31 2011 20:22 utc | 12

Yes, I also saw those images and was about to comment about them. They don’t look very solid for a serious assault. I guess the Egyptian security forces wasn’t well prepared and didn’t had at hand those big concrete wall pieces that have become such a fashion wherever the US put its friendly and loving feet.
Are the Egyptian security forces seriously planning to refight the battle of Friday over the bridge? The video images are quite impressive. I don’t think a few concrete blocks and thin metal walls are going to help them. In fact it will hinder the freedom of movement of their armed trucks. However groups of protesters could be come cornered and the barrier could become a deadly bottleneck.
Of course the actual play may be to create a walled government citadel like other US friendly ‘independent’ governments citadels that come to mind. Talk about refuse to accept reality.

Posted by: ThePaper | Jan 31 2011 20:26 utc | 13

Also the number of people in Tahrir is quite large this night. If enough of them remain there through the night and morning it may not become easy to eject them from there or prevent new people from coming in. They police would be fighting two fronts.
So something seems odd.

Posted by: ThePaper | Jan 31 2011 20:37 utc | 14

yes

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 31 2011 20:42 utc | 15

White House prepares for life after Mubarak
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/31/white_house_prepares_for_life_after_mubarak

Posted by: Anthony | Jan 31 2011 20:42 utc | 16

The army has now said it won’t fire on civilians.
A pro-regime demonstration has also been announced though it is not clear yet if the plan is to have both demonstration meet and fight it out.
I don’t think they can raise the people.
It seems to me that Mubarak’s strategy now is to wait it out, until people run out of food, of water, of money. While Mubarak himself holes out somewhere.
This is the question: where is Mubarak? A march on the presidential palace at Heliopolis is planned for Friday. But I don’t think he is there. The one report I saw (but I forget the link), says that he is in Sharm al-Sheikh. So protected by the thousands of western tourists.
This report is to a degree confirmed by today’s AP report:
the officials say that Israel allowed the Egyptian army to move two battalions about 800 soldiers into Sinai on Sunday. The officials said the troops were based in the Sharm el-Sheikh area on Sinai’s southern tip, far from Israel.
So the army has become publicly neutral, and Mubarak is in hiding. What next?
Mubarak is evidently determined to stay in power, aided, no doubt, from Washington and Tel Aviv.
Mubarak is now on the third grand plan. The first was to shoot demonstrators. But the police and then the army collaborated with the demonstrators. Then to replicate Baghdad 2003, a chaotic desert. That didn’t work either, as Egyptians defended their museum, and their own quarters. Now the idea is to hide out, and wait out the troubles, while the demonstrators exhaust themselves.
I have no doubt that the ideas are flowing from Washington, as a proxy even of Tel Aviv. Otherwise he would have fled already.

Posted by: alexno | Jan 31 2011 20:47 utc | 17

The regime can’t just hide out for weeks until the people gets hungry. If there is no authority a new authority and organization will appear and replace the existing. They will form their own police, tribunals and government and ignore whatever is aired from the official TV. Army or not army. That’s not sound a realistic scenario given the size of the protests. However they sound quite out of touch.

Posted by: ThePaper | Jan 31 2011 20:51 utc | 18

AJE seems to be airing current videos from anti-riot equipped police directing people, around Tahrir Square?

Posted by: ThePaper | Jan 31 2011 20:57 utc | 19

i think it is from nile tv

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 31 2011 21:11 utc | 20

The army is in a dilemma. The high command is with Mubarak, the soldiers with the demonstrators.

Posted by: alexno | Jan 31 2011 21:31 utc | 21

AJE says now that those images are from pro-regime groups.

Posted by: ThePaper | Jan 31 2011 21:55 utc | 22

Egypt VP Suleiman, Defense chief preparing transition from Mubarak rule, analyst says
http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0111/Egypt_VP_Suleiman_Defense_chief_preparing_transition_from_Mubarak_rule_analyst_says.html?showall#

Posted by: Anthony | Jan 31 2011 22:45 utc | 23

Video shows workers welding 6 feet high metal walls onto just installed 3 feet high concrete barricades across the main Nile bridges.
If you don’t know, walls in the Middle East last 24h before being penetrated, little more before complete distruction

Posted by: alexno | Jan 31 2011 23:01 utc | 24

Here’s an excellent analysis from Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research.
The Protest Movement in Egypt: “Dictators” do not Dictate, They Obey Orders

The Mubarak regime could collapse in the a face of a nationwide protest movement… What prospects for Egypt and the Arab World?
“Dictators” do not dictate, they obey orders. This is true in Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria.
Dictators are invariably political puppets. Dictators do not decide.
President Hosni Mubarak was a faithful servant of Western economic interests and so was Ben Ali.
The national government is the object of the protest movement.
The objective is to unseat the puppet rather than the puppet-master.
The slogans in Egypt are “Down with Mubarak, Down with the Regime”. No anti-American posters have been reported… The overriding and destructive influence of the USA in Egypt and throughout the Middle East remains unheralded.
The foreign powers which operate behind the scenes are shielded from the protest movement.
No significant political change will occur unless the issue of foreign interference is meaningfully addressed by the protest movement.
The US embassy in Cairo is an important political entity, invariably overshadowing the national government. The Embassy is not a target of the protest movement……
Our message to the protest movement:
Actual decisions are taken in Washington DC, at the US State Department, at the Pentagon, at Langley, headquarters of the CIA. at H Street NW, the headquarters of the World Bank and the IMF.
The relationship of “the dictator” to foreign interests must be addressed. Unseat the political puppets but do not forget to target the “real dictators”.
The protest movement should focus on the real seat of political authority; it should target (in a peaceful, orderly and nonviolent fashion) the US embassy, the delegation of the European Union, the national missions of the IMF and the World Bank.
Meaningful political change can only be ensured if the neoliberal economic policy agenda is thrown out……
The cooptation of the leaders of major opposition parties and civil society organizations in anticipation of the collapse of an authoritarian puppet government is part of Washington’s design, applied in different regions of the World….
While the US has supported the Mubarak government for the last thirty years, US foundations with ties to the US State department and the Pentagon have actively supported the political opposition including the civil society movement. According to Freedom House: “Egyptian civil society is both vibrant and constrained. There are hundreds of non-governmental organizations devoted to expanding civil and political rights in the country, operating in a highly regulated environment.” (Freedom House Press Releases).

Posted by: Morocco Bama | Feb 1 2011 0:22 utc | 25

those who demonize the arab people do so degrading their own humanity – it was once sd that anti semitism was the socialism of the stupid – the hatred of the arab & persian people & their project – is a vulgarity worthy only of swine
the people of the middle east are not allowed to be seen in their multiplicity, their complexity – the depth of their feeling is reflected in some of the best poetry & music on this earth
those who detest the arab people & their desire for self determination are also those who oppose with all their hate – the desire for indigenous people to control their own destinies, to receive compensation for the crimes committed against them, the elites do not want to give equity to the people who are the real possessors of this world
what has happened when their financial berlin wall fell in 2008 was that the elites are revealed in all their utter brutality, their utter contempt for the people & the active desire to repress, incarcerate or kill them
anybody who possesses an ounce of compassion for the other cannot but be moved by what we are witnessing in egypt – the magnificent expressions of fear’s skin dropping off
there is great menace too – very great menace – tyranny never gives up gracefully – but as robert fisk quotes an old egyptian woman saying “if the soldiers shoot us – mubarak will have lost, if the soldiers do not shoot us – mubarak will have lost”
the people when not imprisoned by the institutions of fear are magnificent & we should “kiss the ground under their feet”

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 1 2011 0:31 utc | 26

Egypt – U.S. intelligence collaboration with Omar Suleiman “most successful”
http://wikileaks.ch/U-S-intelligence-collaboration.html

Posted by: Anthony | Feb 1 2011 1:29 utc | 27

arab people & their desire for self determination
This is just ridiculous. “Arab people” is a commonplace orientalism. But, sequestered as you are in the prison of your own mind, you would not know that the class struggle in Egypt is distinct from the class struggle and complications of sectarianism in let’s say, Iraq.
You’re a totalizing fool.

Posted by: slothrop | Feb 1 2011 3:55 utc | 28

While AJE is reporting that Google Launches Voice-to-Twitter Service To Help Protesters in Egypt if I were protest organizers, I’d think thrice before trusting google or twitter. There are other ways

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Feb 1 2011 4:38 utc | 29

Yo, Uncle $cam. Come back to RI.
Also, b, thanks for getting M of A back up and running. I didn’t even know you started back up until I saw a link some place in comments somewhere a couple of days ago. Glad to have you all back and bickering.

Posted by: 82_28 | Feb 1 2011 12:08 utc | 30

what slothrop knows about the history of the middle east & it’s culture could fit on the back of a postage stamp of omar sharif

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 1 2011 18:50 utc | 31