Stop Me Before I Vote Again

From CNN:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/02/03/egypt.protests/

"The crisis has paralyzed the Egyptian economy, as the government has closed banks, idled trains and shuttered schools. Markets are running short of basic food staples, and the situation is hurting the ability of ordinary citizens to join the demonstrations, opposition activist Ziad Aly told CNN.
"We can't get enough bread. We can't get enough food supplies," he said."

A predictable problem, the standard lever of industrial age social control. Give it another week and the Cairo resistence will begin to starve. The quick take down of the communication system was one thing, but the depletion of food supplies puts an urgency into the situation that will stifle the resistance or lead to "deplorable" acts of violence and a level of disorder that will remind "us" why the USA is always properly on the side of "stability".

On the one hand there is the daily violence of the status quo ante. On the other, the chaos of hungry millions kept hungry by the "unrealistic demands" of "anarchic mobs."

More scare quotes needed:

remind "us" why the USA is always "properly" on the side of "stability".

flak your all to obvious accounting of the steps to doom
strikes me as an insult to the uprising
you think they can't organize a food chain ??

this isn't a mountain climbing expedition by maiden aunts

"oh dear no more cuccumber sandwitches "

more then a trace of jacobin grit and improvisatory ingenuity
has already revealed itself here
as much as i'd not rely solely
on the genius of the people aroused
to self organize their way
all the way to forming
a self sustaining
revolutionary organization of social power
they certainly can feed themselves enough to struggle on here

starvation en masse is out of the question in the relevent time frame
empty stomach's won't stop this storming of the mountain heights

Insult was not intended but naturally time will tell.

Notice that the comment clipped was "We can't get enough bread. We can't get enough food supplies." Of course, one wonders who the person is who says this. Did CNN dig this character up just to depress people like me? To what end?

If 20 million people live in the Cairo conurbation... well that's a lot of bread every day. In ordinary conditions Egypt can feed itself and has been pretty successful at it for 4 or 5 thousand years. But, if pharoah stops transport into the metropolis, the demonstrators will be very exposed.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/02/03/egypt.protests/

now the mooby boys are hunkering and curling in their tail

" Egypt's prime minister apologized Thursday for the violent attacks on protesters yesterday and said the country's president has asked him to investigate the security chaos.

"This is a fatal error, and when investigations reveal who is behind this crime and who allowed it to happen, I promise they will be held accountable and will be punished for what they did," Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq said on state-owned TV."

the military does have to choose
quite yet it seems

this really looks like a set back for mooby
i actually thought he'd try to take back the square with security police
now he knows it would be a bloody mess

it may be mooby's weak hold on power is now really working hard FOR the uprising

he can't crack down uncle won't play that i guess ...not if its him and his ilk cracking down

the empire's task now
maneuver around to where the people are sufficiently re divided
the military coup and immediate stiffening of "order in the streets" and return to "normalcy"
is taken without a popular mass refusal to comply

ie
very different power elite to people relationship
then poor mooby's displayed in yesterdays
ride of the goons

flak

i like your reply

the uprising needs to point the finger at the mooby goons and dark forces
trying to starve out the city
organize very showy food relief caravans to head toward cairo

believe me the food will begin to flow

riots and looting iof they occur will be by goons of course trying to create a pretext for
crack down

in the great haymark set to

it was the mails getting thru
of course
the mail got thru
and gold bar Dembo pericles
grover norquist cleveland
sent in the troops anyway

the workers taking matters into their own hands in time honored fashion
oughta be able to make sure the food gets in eh ???
if not
what's up with dat ???

my long yearned for
two comments per
non paine post pledge
is still turned off mates

sorry

it can't be helped
i am not a direct poster
.....for good reason
and this stuff is too glorious not to chimp chatter it up to the max

--makes on notice the basis for communication is too often
to feel joined in eh ??--

i hear ya good friends

"hey ya
mooby turned of the internet
paine
but he turned it back on

and you ??
you can't restore
a pledge you never even
got an interval to honor ??

How far up the chain of command do those conflicts percolate?
Damn. I wish I knew more about Egypt.

btw, to take a slightly longer term perspective: above lines reminded me of something Don DeLillo wrote more than 2 decades ago:

I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspapers of Persian dishes. I will tell you. The whole world takes an interest in this curious way Americans educate themselves. TV. Look, this is Iran, this is Iraq. Let us pronounce the word correctly. E-ron. E-ronians. This is a Sunni, this is a Shi'ite. Very good. Next year we do the Philippine islands, okay?

Another wordsmith, Arundhati Roy addressing a Western audience a few years ago also warned of the futility of getting wrapped around the axle of a "Will to Knowledge" of the country-du-jour under the microscope. Wise advice coming from someone raised in a large, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society whose various histories stretch across thousands of years and whose dividing lines are kaleidoscopic for the locals, much less for someone from the First World, even someone who has "been there", having once bought a Passage to that ancient land.

It might be a more manageable and fruitful endeavor — to oneself and to those at places like Tahrir Square — to focus our energies instead on the workings of the system based in DC, the one that casts the Imperial Gaze on all it surveys: to learn — and educate others in these parts — about the history of the Foreign Policy establishment, its doctrines, debates, the political/economic rivalries, the single-issue interest groups, the stock characters (figureheads, deep thinkers, mid-level thinkers, managers, communicators, troubleshooters, etc.). We should have been able to tell that a troubleshooter would be dispatched and what he would say to the Bela Lugosi lookalike still sucking the blood of his countrymen after 3 decades, because this is a script that will be repeated again and again in faraway places that have been seemingly "stable" for a while now.

How far up the chain of command do those conflicts percolate?
Damn. I wish I knew more about Egypt.

btw, to take a slightly longer term perspective: above lines (and earlier ones on same theme about Tunisia) reminded me of something Don DeLillo wrote more than 2 decades ago:

I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspapers of Persian dishes. I will tell you. The whole world takes an interest in this curious way Americans educate themselves. TV. Look, this is Iran, this is Iraq. Let us pronounce the word correctly. E-ron. E-ronians. This is a Sunni, this is a Shi'ite. Very good. Next year we do the Philippine islands, okay?

Another wordsmith, Arundhati Roy addressing a Western audience a few years ago also warned of the futility of getting wrapped around the axle of a "Will to Knowledge" of the country-du-jour under the microscope. Wise advice coming from someone raised in a large, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society whose various histories stretch across thousands of years and whose dividing lines are kaleidoscopic for the locals, much less for someone from the First World, even someone who has "been there", having once bought a Passage to that ancient land.

It might be a more manageable and fruitful endeavor — to oneself and to those at places like Tahrir Square — to focus our energies instead on the workings of the system based in DC, the one that casts the Imperial Gaze on all it surveys: to learn — and educate others in these parts — about the history of the Foreign Policy establishment, its doctrines, debates, the political/economic rivalries, the single-issue interest groups, the stock characters (figureheads, deep thinkers, mid-level thinkers, managers, communicators, troubleshooters, etc.). We should have been able to tell that a troubleshooter would be dispatched and what he would say to the Bela Lugosi lookalike still sucking the blood of his countrymen after 3 decades, because this is a script that will be repeated again and again in faraway places that have been seemingly "stable" for a while now.

Sk
Excellent advice

On target as usual, sk. Thanks.