great reference in the Egypt debate

Someone in the Egypt Referendum email exchange just cited CARL SCHURZ, the German 1848 Revolutionary and later high-ranking U.S. general and then politician. Good stuff.

There’s also a very likable tone to the debate: basically, the Egyptians aren’t being jerks. They’re being quite passionate, but they are listening to each other and making actual arguments. Amazing how well the country is handling this, given the complete lack of a democratic political culture for 5,500 years of its history. They’ve certainly earned and deserved their chance.

on Libya

It’s starting to sound like sturdy German and Italian opposition may make both EU and NATO action on Libya impossible.

So, it may be a British/French/U.S. “Imperialist Trio” that does something.

As long as the fighting was either stalemated or an ebb-and-flow sort of thing, I could understand the “do nothing” approach, and occasionally even shared that view myself. But with Benghazi itself under threat, I think the game has changed. It would simply be intolerable to watch Qaddafi mop up that city, make severe reprisals, and then continue on as head of an outlaw state. This is the limit, I think, of the sort of politics that is satisfied merely with denouncing the evils of the West. Obviously, the West isn’t entirely evil (this is why I can respect Chomsky without being a true fan), and often it alone is technologically equipped to do certain things that involve force. I understand the dangers of the slippery slope, and with luck Iraq has taught a durable lesson. But I don’t think slippery-slope fears should lead us to sit back and watch the whole of Benghazi get massacred. It would be a bitter memory for all of us for decades to come.

Here’s ONE ARTICLE on the topic.

the Ahram poll on the referendum

In the West we often tire of the banality of public opinion polls, but there is a shocking freshness to them in a place like Egypt. Here is Ahram Online’s poll on the Saturday Referendum:

Say “no” to the amendments (56.09 %)

Say “yes” to the amendments (17.24 %)

Demand poll be called off (16.32 %)

Demand poll be postponed (8.74 %)

Boycott the poll (1.61 %)

Unless the Ahram readership is a terrible sample of the voting populace, the outcome for Saturday looks pretty clear.

Egypt referendum chatter

It’s quite marvelous to see an email debate underway among our Egyptian faculty about the Saturday referendum on Constitutional amendments. Watching the almost ex nihilo birth of a political culture is a rare opportunity. I’m copied on these messages just like the rest of the faculty, and of course as a non-Egyptian I have no vote, but it’s nice to witness the passionate debates among people who never had such a chance until now.

In my own social circles at the University, the “no” votes seem to have the upper hand. Their major complaint is that the changes are far too few, and especially that the President retains too much power under the proposed new Constitution. What these people seem to want is a slower process with a total overhaul of the previous Constitution.

The “yes” argument, among those I know, seems to amount to: “Let’s keep the momentum going and not slow things down.”

The Ahram Online poll showed the Referendum headed for a resounding defeat, but it’s an unscientific online poll.

Ironically, the most ardently pro-Revolution people are the ones who want the army to stay in control a bit longer. They want more time to ensure that the New Egypt (as everyone is calling it) is built on solid foundations, that there is time to organize proper political parties, and so forth. They worry that snap elections would mean ex-NDP members using their existing powerful organizations to be elected to parliament with merely cosmetic changes to their platform.

I will say this: I’m very confident about Egypt right now. Not everything has been perfect, but generally things have moved in the right direction. Most of the points that initially bothered me (“Why is Mubarak’s Prime Minister still there?”; “Why is State Security still in existence?”) have now been fixed, and we’re also seeing the army behave pretty well on the whole.

17 days of peaceful protest were enough to take down a dictatorship and send Egypt in the right direction. It’s an inspiring story, and a highly unlikely one that none of us here would have predicted at the beginning of 2011.

on bad headline writing

Here’s what it says on page 1 of the New York Times right now:

“With the loyalists’ advances, there is growing consensus in the Obama administration that a no-flight zone over Libya would no longer make much of a difference.”

When I read that, I nearly kicked the floor in disgust. It sounds like they’re rationalizing a sell-out, doesn’t it?

But what it actually says inside the article (which is suddenly behind a sign-up firewall since the first time I read it, and I don’t feel like signing up again right now) is that a more aggressive tactic is now being considered: a “no-drive zone” for tanks, and possibly even airstrikes against Qaddafi’s tanks.

That’s big news. And there’s no trace of it in the headline on page 1.

Libya would be the #1 news story right now if not for Japan, I think. The opposition has been very unlucky in that respect.

Dark Chemistry on Luhmann

HERE.