Egypt Update for July 1, 2013

The big Egypt news today, just in case you hadn’t seen it:

  • Widespread protests estimated at 17 million people have called for the ouster of Mohammed Morsi and his violent, corrupt, incompetent Muslim Brotherhood from power.
  • The Egyptian Military has given Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood 48 hours to meet people’s demands or Eddie Murphy goes back to prison the military will step in and impose their own solution.
  • There have been scattered reporters that some police have gone over to the protesters’ side.
  • Protesters have burned and ransacked Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in Cairo.
  • The MSM seemed to largely ignore the story over the weekend and is now playing catchup.
  • Some links:

  • This point by point breakdown of the last three years isn’t awful.
  • Thanks to Obama’s bungling middle east policy, protesters now hate the U.S. more than ever. “We are very critical of the Obama administration because they have been supporting the Brotherhood like no one has ever supported them.”
  • When I read these sorts of Egypt is finally ready for Democracy pieces, I want to believe them, but I just don’t. I do believe the Egyptian people are ready to kick the Muslim Brotherhood to the curb, but I’m not yet convinced a majority there (or in any Arab nation) want a constitutional democracy and the rule of law.
  • Walter Russell Mead thinks that Egypt is just coming apart.
  • He, in turn, links to this New Yorker piece.

    In conversations with opposition politicians over the past six months, I have been struck by two things: their vehement hatred of the Brotherhood, and their inability to articulate solutions to the country’s problems. People speak in vague terms about social justice and democratic values. I have yet to meet a politician with a substantive plan to overhaul a system of food and fuel subsidies that eats up almost one third of the budget, or to reform the education sector, or to stimulate foreign investment….

    After two years of watching politicians on both sides of the fence squabble and prevaricate and fail to improve their lives, Egyptians appear to be rejecting representative democracy, without having had much of a chance to participate in it. In a country with an increasingly repressive regime and no democratic culture to draw on, protest has become an end in itself—more satisfying than the hard work of governance, organizing, and negotiation. This is politics as emotional catharsis, a way to register rage and frustration without getting involved in the system.

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