In the continuing saga of Egypt, my friend wrote this today:

i was waiting the whole day since we had the internet back to write you
i was just waiting, saying to myself, now it will get better! now it will be ok, i will be able to write a cheerful positive message to my friends (my virtual family) saying, guys we are just fine! all is ok now!
well guys, all is not just fine! nothing is ok now!
it’s getting worse
but at least we are still safe at our homes, family and friends are ok
it’s true that our heart is broken, we are shaken and we are hoping for the best

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...

10 replies on “An Egyptian Gets Internet Back: ‘Our heart is broken’”

  1. It is so heartbreaking. I am so grateful to your friend for giving you what news she could.

    There must still be hope even after today, but a little over two hours ago the Guardian linked to this grim piece by Robert Springborg in Foreign Policy – how I hope events can still prove him wrong:

    While much of American media has termed the events unfolding in Egypt today as “clashes between pro-government and opposition groups,” this is not in fact what’s happening on the street. The so-called “pro-government” forces are actually Mubarak’s cleverly orchestrated goon squads dressed up as pro-Mubarak demonstrators to attack the protesters in Midan Tahrir, with the Army appearing to be a neutral force. The opposition, largely cognizant of the dirty game being played against it, nevertheless has had little choice but to call for protection against the regime’s thugs by the regime itself, ie, the military. And so Mubarak begins to show us just how clever and experienced he truly is. The game is, thus, more or less over.

    The threat to the military’s control of the Egyptian political system is passing. Millions of demonstrators in the street have not broken the chain of command over which President Mubarak presides. Paradoxically the popular uprising has even ensured that the presidential succession will not only be engineered by the military, but that an officer will succeed Mubarak. The only possible civilian candidate, Gamal Mubarak, has been chased into exile, thereby clearing the path for the new vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman.

    http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2…

  3. …We interrupt this program to mention that on MSNBC live at this very moment there are lynch mobs operating on the streets of Cairo…beatings, Molotov cocktails, drivers being pulled from vehicles, pro- and anti-Mubarak forces engaged. All very graphic and nasty and undoubtedly terminal. That is all… Now back to regular inane programming involving hand-held devices, navel-gazing and hoping Jeopardy! isn’t pre-empted by the Egyptian Revolution.

  6. Canuck, that’s so sad. Given the economic misery Springborg wrote about, the temptation to loot antiquities must be so strong.

    It’s so hard to suss it out minute-to-minute. Rachel Maddow had a live satellite feed from NBC’s bureau chief from a rooftop over the square, and amid much gunfire he sort of breathlessly declared a victory for the anti-Mubarak part of the crowd there – for the evening. Maybe. If what he could see from the roof was anything to go by. Then he seemed a little sheepish.

  7. I’m not sure what you thought was going to happen. If you didn’t see this coming a mile away you are a fucking child.

    The real heart break was the lack of forsight yesterday, with a face-saving solution, and a reasonable 7 month transition , being eschewed for ideological enthusiasm. Anyone who has spent any time in the region could have predicted exactly what has developed over the last 24-36 hours. Or did you think an entreched cold-war era dictator of a large, strategically important country w/ a massive security force was gooing to allow himself to be removed from office and exiled to Isreal or Malta and not push back?

  9. All of the coverage I saw from Al Jazeera last night (and HOLY SHIT are those guys on top of it!) seemed to indicate that the anti-Mubarak crowd “won” the night, or felt they did, by staying entrenched in Tahrir Square.

    An @8, you’re totally right – lots of on-the-street voices last night were saying the exact same thing. Usually adding that they didn’t trust someone who was hiring men to shoot at them.

  10. @8- I think there was a better chance than this plan working out, and it could provide a framework for international monitoring of a transition.

    I guess my question is: What is your plan, protesters? Are we re-writing the constitution? who gets to do that? what process? Do we dissolve the state? Do you have a plan for security/payrole/trash collection in the mean time?

    If you don’t handle a transition correctly it is easy to end up much worse off than you were to begin with, through destruction of institutions and infrastructure (ala’ Iraq) or worse.

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