Egypt, June 20th.

From the files of News I Made Up

ElBaradei Victor In Facebook Poll

In an informal poll conducted through the Facebook social networking site, Mohamed ElBaradei emerged as the leader in the Presidential race in Egypt.

The poll was organised through the Facebook presence of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and has been criticised as unrepresentative.

However, a spokesman for the SCAF said:

Our Facebook presence is totally democratic. We have Liked many people. We Like Barack Obama, for sure. We also Like Eric Clapton and the Church of Mormon, they are so friendly. Also the muffins are great. But we do not like Lady Gaga. This has nothing to do with her lewdness. It is just that her music is sucky! Total suck. Made entirely from suck. We Like Minogue. The blonde one. She is made from awesome. What? Who the hell is Cher Lloyd? Well, yes, okay, we will Like her, too.

Some commentators have wondered aloud whether the new Egypt will Like the State of Israel’s page, but the spokesman refused to be drawn.

Israel has not yet made a Friend Request. We visited their page and there is great internal debate within the SCAF Online Team about whether we Like them or not. It is like dating! Is it cool to make the first move? But we love that guy with the amazing electric car thing going on. He can so entirely come to Egypt and electrify our transport system. What is his name? Agassi. That dude rocks. So we figure, if they have more like him in Israel, we should be golden.

But not Lady Gaga. She sings like a baby.

Mohamad ElBaradei could not be reached for comment by this journal.

The first attempt to steal Egypt’s revolution…

The realpolitik apparatus around the world may be about to line up behind Omar Suleiman as successor to Hosni Mubarak. Suleiman, former foreign intelligence chief, is credited with shattering an Islamist terror network – using tactics still spoken of in whispers. He is highly educated in a variety of pretty tough schools, including the Soviet military academy in Frunze. He is also – and this is the important bit – an acceptable candidate to the military and security apparatus in Egypt, and a man who sees eye to eye with the US on Israel-Palestine and a variety of related issues. He is being touted as a logical successor and one who can hold the line against the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamism inside Egypt, a comforting idea to many in the Pentagon and the State Department.

He’s not really a democrat, though. In fact, he was seen two years ago as a possible successor to Mubarak because he was hard enough to continue the same policies, making it comfortable for Egypt’s strategic partners – basically, us. So as I said in my earlier post, this is the classic opportunity for the US and EU to sell a democratic movement down the river in the hope of securing our lines of supply. There will be much chatter about ‘stability’ in the region – by which is meant political and social lockdown so long as the oil continues to flow. The contention is and has always been that it’s better to have a strongman – like Saddam Hussein, for example, or Hosni Mubarak himself – than a weak democratic government or, worse yet, an unfavourable government elected in free and fair elections.

It’s a bad idea for so many reasons. Chalmers Johnson, alas now dead, wrote extensively about the phenomenon of blowback, which is essentially endemic in our lives today. William Blum has detailed the interventions and upsets which have resulted from this position since WWII in his book, Killing Hope.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t be pushed hard and represented as our only sensible course. Watch for talking heads telling us we’re far better off with Egypt under the thumb of a powerful leader than Egypt free.

“The Book Of Revolution is not written, it is sung.”

Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic has a translation of what appears to be the manual of the Egyptian protestors – except that, if they’re following this text, they’re not engaging in civil disobedience, they’re attempting – or believe they are attempting – the full monty.

Briefly – because that manual is too fascinating to mess around talking about it and analysing it too much right now – that is a professional document. It is written by someone with some form in civil disobedience. It is cautious of communications media – the new dictat of technologically asymmetrical rebellion is that you abandon more advanced comms for more secure ones. A lot of thought has gone into it. There’s always one, wherever you are; announce you’re having a demo, and it turns out the mild little bloke who makes the tea is a union rep.

The document makes no mention of religion, but it does strike the basic chords I mentioned in my earlier post – it talks about freedom, justice, and peace, and it mentions the exploitation of Egypt’s resources in the context of those things. In other words, it may not be directly taken from 1917, but it wouldn’t look out of place there, either.

The question is what will happen to this action plan out in the world. At the Poll Tax riots here in the UK in the 80s, I saw three disparate strands of rhetoric become one at the lowest common denominator. The South Africa House Picket was about the ‘fascist South African Embassy’; the Anarchists were screaming that the police were the ‘Guardians of the fascist ruling class’; and the Socialist Worker people were talking about the ‘fascist Poll Tax disenfranchising the working man’ and the representatives of the government were – again – the police. That wasn’t half so loaded nor so lethal a situation as what’s happening in Egypt, but you know the outcome: South Africa House was set on fire, and the police were suddenly in a fight they weren’t really prepared for.

The five hundred devils of revolution – personal greed, personal fear, political expediency, cock-up, itchy trigger fingers, old scores and vengeance, opportunism, fundamentalism both religious and secular, overcaution, overextension, betrayal from without, and misunderstanding, to name just a few – will be out in force if this really does become the moment Egypt enters a new era.

I realise I sound like a doom-monger. I’m not. I believe this can be a moment of positive change. But only if those inside hold the line, and the governments of the world around behave with an eye to the long haul and the world we want, not the world we fear. Since 1989, we have missed any number of moments where a little hope and a little courage from our governments might have achieved amazing things. We missed, for example, the moment when Russia could have become truly democratic.

Let’s not miss this one. Please.