lawsuit against the NCAA heating up

HERE.

I’m with the players on this one. Their labor is being exploited by universities (and the majority of star players are from minority groups, as well).

The presence of big-money athletics in universities also undermines the academic integrity of those universities in so many ways. (The recent case at Penn State is simply the most egregious one we’ve seen.)

I’ve greatly enjoyed college sports over the years, but have really started to question whether the situation can continue as it has been.

the situation of Egyptian foreign policy

Ahram with an interesting article, HERE, on the Egyptian foreign policy decline that Nabil Fahmy will need to address as the newly installed Foreign Minister.

Obviously, since Nabil was a university colleague for the past three years, the entire situation is even more interesting for me to observe.

Meanwhile, today is Friday, and Friday means protests. There are fears of violence today, and the Army has issued stern warnings.

But I’m watching all of this from a distance, having cleared out my Zamalek apartment nearly two weeks ago. We’re on summer home leave in the U.S., and I’ve been too occupied to post much here.

arrested for selling Turkish flags in Turkey?

That’s what this photo is said to depict. Erdoğan has reached a pretty sorry position if he has to interpret flag sales as a protest against his rule.

removal of Morsi: the case against and the case for

The case against: “Morsi was the first democratically elected President in the history of Egypt. Removing him with military force deals a terrible setback to Egyptian democracy, sends a message to Islamists around the world that they have nothing to hope for from joining the political process, and also suggests the empowerment of shadowy Mubarak-era officials who might be using the Army to restore the old regime.“

The case for: “Morsi barely received a majority in the election, and only because he was running against Mubarak’s Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik, the very emblem of what the Revolution was trying to topple. And regardless of the election results, Morsi invalidated his own rule last November by declaring himself beyond the reach of the courts. There are currently no legal impeachment methods –Parliament does not currently exist– and thus a mass outpouring of millions of citizens onto the streets is the closest one can come to a legal impeachment under the current system; hence the Army had no choice but to remove the President.”

I was saying for months that I oppose military coups in all cases. Nonetheless, I now find myself gravitating towards the second option here, primarily because I was in Egypt on June 30 and saw something unprecedented in terms of public outcry against a truly terrible President. It’s one thing to say “respect the result of elections” if you’re in a stable Western democracy, quite another if you’re in Egypt (where of the top 5 Presidential candidates, the three “sane” options split the sane vote, leaving the rest to vote for Morsi or Shafik and putting them into the runoff; actually, there were some sane votes for both Morsi and Shafik as well, so I don’t want to exaggerate, but both also received too many insane votes for comfort).

But my inclination to see why Morsi had to be removed still does not incline me to trust the Army. Some Egyptian friends are annoyed at me for having expressed these sentiments, but I can’t shake them. If you’ve been following the news at all recently, you’ll know what I mean.

Egypt’s interim government sworn in

HERE.

I’m in the United States right now and have thus fallen a bit out of touch with the ebb and flow of street emotion in Egypt. Anyway, we are now officially residents of Turkey, and I will be in Egypt only on university business in the future.

El Baradei is taking a pretty big risk here. If the civilian cabinet turns out to be nothing but a fig leaf for extended military rule, his reputation will take a hit. But other than among Morsi’s own people and a large segment of the Left, the removal of Morsi on July 3 remains wildly popular among Egyptians, who see it as an emergency step to prevent theocratic extremism and/or utter governmental ineptitude.

NABIL FAHMY, the new Foreign Minister, is one of our AUC Deans (of the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy). He was perhaps best known for his work as Egypt’s Ambassador to the U.S. during the Bush years, a challenging job indeed. I worked with him for three years on the Provost’s Council, and he seems level-headed. He’ll have his work cut out for him, especially when dealing with countries such as Germany which adamantly opposed the military action against Morsi.

video clips of the incident tht left 51 dead

The New York Times has an assortment of clips, HERE.

Michael Hanna on Morsi’s role in his own downfall

HERE.

I completely agree with Hanna that Morsi was a stupid, selfish, and incompetent President who simply didn’t have what it takes to lead a country in terms of intellect, personality, or breadth of vision. Living under his rule was a miserable experience even for me, a non-Egyptian. (Which doesn’t mean that the Brotherhood should now be demonized and persecuted, as the widespread insensitivity to yesterday’s bloodshed indicates is already happening.)

And I agree with this passage from Hanna’s article (though I would also add that the “brutality and stupidity” of the security sector is not “inevitable” either, even if likely):

“While Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood will undoubtedly now assume their more familiar role as victims, significantly aided by the brutality and stupidity of a repressive Egyptian security sector, the primary responsibility for Morsy’s ouster and Egypt’s perilous state resides with the deposed president and his Brothers. None of this was inevitable.”

I keep coming back to Khaled Fahmy’s point about how badly the Brotherhood misread what was happening in Egypt politically. Not only for fairness’ sake, but also for their own long-term sake, the Brothers should have compromised and collaborated and showed themselves to be practitioners of fair play. Instead, they ruled incompetently and also managed to scare everyone to death with their relentless power-grabs.

4 amateur video clips of yesterday morning

From the NY Times, HERE.

The fourth clip is the longest and the most interesting.

It’s erratic amateur footage that offers few visual clues to responsibility for the incident, but it effectively captures the horrific atmosphere of military weaponry being discharged on a normal residential street in Cairo.

photo of explosion that just happened in the southern part of Beirut

From this photo, it looks to me as though a vehicle has been struck, and that immediately suggests a possible target and a possible targeter.

the Independent on yesterday morning’s shooting

HERE.

I’m deeply disappointed at how many people are making excuses for the Army in this case. This sort of incident was always the risk of the situation.