what’s happening elsewhere

While we’re all distracted by the ongoing downfall of Libya’s bizarrely charismatic and murderous leader, Bahrain is still seeing protests, as is Yemen.

In Egypt, a large amnesty has been granted to prisoners by new Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy, whom most of the Egyptians I spoke to today seem to trust. (I know little about his background.) His predecessor Habib al-Adly is now widely believed by the Egyptians I know to have orchestrated the January 1 Alexandria church bombing, and by and large they want to see him hanged for it. (The crime plus the cover-up would certainly be a crime of that magnitude, assuming you believe in the death penalty.) I’m not sure what the evidence is, but it’s being treated as fact rather than rumor by most of the Egyptians I know.

There’s also another new Cabinet, or mostly new. However, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was being accused a week or two ago of having cut a deal with the army to get its own way on constitutional reform, is now just as angry as everyone else with the new Cabinet, which they say is filled with Mubarak cronies.

I doubt there’s anything truly sinister going on here. The army is simply made up of a bunch of conservative ex-Mubarak loyalists with lots of vested economic interests, and while they can probably be trusted to move things towards a real election, it would be hard to trust them to give enthusiastic backing to any major changes. They’ll continue to forbid strikes and show suspicion towards the Brotherhood and the secular Left. They’ve shown a bit more openness towards the Google/Facebook/Twitter contingent, though that group isn’t entirely satisified either.

However, those are the two groups in Egypt that no one really wants to criticize these days: the Army, and the Google/Facebook/Twitter protestors. So, it may be those two that emerge on top in some way; strange combination, but one shaped by recent events.