DISCUSSION
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An anti-government protester waves an Egyptian flag on top of a tank during celebrations in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo, Egypt , Saturday, Feb. 12, 2011. Cries of "Egypt is free" rang out and fireworks lit up the sky as hundreds of thousands danced, wept and prayed in joyful pandemonium after 18 days of peaceful pro-democracy protests forced President Hosni Mubarak to surrender power to the military, ending three decades of authoritarian rule. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
CAIRO (AP) — On Egypt's first day in nearly 30 years without Hosni Mubarak as president, its new military rulers promised Saturday to abide by the peace treaty with Israel and eventually hand power to an elected government. Protesters, still partying over their victory in pushing Mubarak out, now pressed for a voice in guiding their country's move to democracy.
The protesters' first act was deeply symbolic of their ambition to build a new Egypt and their determination to do it themselves: Thousands began cleaning up Cairo's central Tahrir Square, the epicenter of their movement. The sprawling plaza was battered and trashed by 18 days of street battles and rallies by hundreds of thousands.
Even as thousands flowed in to celebrate, broom brigades fanned out, with smiling young men and women — some in stylish clothes and earrings — sweeping up rubble and garbage. Others repaired sidewalks torn apart for concrete chunks to use as ammunition in fighting with pro-regime gangs. Young veiled girls painted the metal railings of fences along the sidewalk.
"Sorry for the inconvenience, but we're building Egypt," read placards many wore.
"We are cleaning the square now because it is ours," said Omar Mohammed, a 20-year-old student. "After living here for three weeks, it has become our home ... We're going to leave it better than before."
A coalition of youth groups that organized the protests issued their first cohesive list of demands for handling the transition to democracy. Their focus was on ensuring they — not just the military or members of Mubarak's regime — have a seat at the table in deliberations shaping the future.
Among their demands: lifting of emergency law; creation of a presidential council, made up of a military representative and two "trusted personalities"; the dissolving of the ruling party-dominated parliament; and the forming of a broad-based unity government and a committee to either amend or rewrite completely the constitution.
"The revolution is not over. This is just a beginning. We are working on how to move into a second republic," said Shady el-Ghazali Harb, the representative on the coalition from one of the youth organizing groups, the Democratic Front.
Protesters were debating whether to lift their 24-hour-a-day demonstration camp in Tahrir. The coalition called for it to end and be replaced by weekly mass demonstrations every Friday to keep pressure on. But many in the square argued to remain. One man on a megaphone encouraged everyone to stay until all their demands were met, while others chanted "the people want the square to be cleared," referring to public grumbling that the protest camp is disrupting life downtown.
Many in the square were pouring love on the military: Families put babies on the laps of soldiers on tanks for photos, crowds cheered when a line of soldiers jogging by. But there was also realism that the military's ultimate intention is unclear.
"We don't know what they'll do, they might keep hanging on to power," said Muhammed Ali, a 22-year-old archaeology student who argued for the protests to continue.
With Mubarak gone, Egypt's future will likely be shaped by three powers: the military, the protesters, and the sprawling autocratic infrastructure of Mubarak's regime that remains in place, dominating the bureaucracy, the police, state media and parts of the economy. Right now, the protesters' intentions are the clearest of the bunch.
The Armed Forces Supreme Council is now the official ruler after Mubarak handed it power on Friday. It consists of the commanders of each military branch, the chief of staff and Defense Minister Hussein Tantawy. It has not explicitly canceled the constitution drawn up by Mubarak's regime, but the constitution seems to have effectively been put in a cupboard for the time being until it is decided what to do with it.
The military seized power after pleas from protesters, and it has repeatedly promised to ensure democratic change, making it highly popular with the movement.
But on the face of it, the elderly generals are no reformers, and their move to push out Mubarak may have been more to ensure the survival of a ruling system the military has been intertwined with since a 1952 army coup. The deeply secretive military has substantial economic interests, running industries and businesses that it will likely seek to preserve.
The council of generals has said nothing so far about how the transition will be carried out or addressed the protesters' demands.
While it decides that, it sought on Saturday to reassure Egyptians and Egypt's allies abroad.
A spokesman, Gen. Mohsen el-Fangari, appeared on state TV in front of a row of Egyptian military and national flags and read the council statement, proclaiming that the military is "looking forward to a peaceful transition ... to permit an elected civil authority to be in charge of the country to build a democratic free nation."
The military statement also said Egypt will "abide by all regional and international treaties and agreements, and commitments" — reassurance to its top ally the United States that Egypt's 1979 peace accord with Israel is not in danger.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the statement, saying the treaty "has greatly contributed to both countries and is the cornerstone for peace and stability in the entire Middle East."
Israel has been deeply concerned that Egypt's turmoil could threaten the peace accord, the first between an Arab nation and Israel. But Egypt's military strongly supports the peace deal, not in small part because it guarantees U.S. aid for the armed forces, currently running at $1.3 billion a year. While anti-Israeli feeling is strong in Egypt, few so far seriously call for the treaty's abrogation.
Also, the Supreme Council asked the current government, installed by Mubarak after protests broke out Jan. 25, and provincial governors to "continue their activities until a new government is formed."
It did not say when that would happen, but it seemed to imply the army would draw one up to replace the current one.
The move to keep the government of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq in place appeared to be a stopgap measure to keep the state and economy functioning at a time when the country is trying to recover from the economic fallout of the upheaval.
For days, many businesses and shops were closed, much of Cairo's population of 18 million stayed home under heavy curfew, and foreign tourists — one of the top sources of revenues — fled the country. Earlier this week, even as businesses began to reopen on a wide scale, labor strikes erupted around the country, many at state industries or branches of the bureaucracy.
The Supreme Council statement asked the public, particularly the millions in the government sector, to "work to push the economy forward," an apparent call for everyone to return to work.
The military relaxed the curfew — now to run from midnight to 6 a.m. instead of 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. — and the stock market announced plans to reopen on Wednesday after a closure of nearly three weeks.
The other force that has hardly been heard from yet is the remainder of Mubarak's regime, which was accused of widespread corruption and authoritarianism but also has the experience in the nitty gritty of running the country, unlike the military.
Members of Mubarak's National Democratic Party still dominate ministries, parliament, state industries and other bodies. The powerful security forces, accused of widespread use of torture and involvement in past vote rigging, remain empowered by the emergency law that gives them wide authorities of arrest.
The regime remainders are battered. Some of its top personalities were purged in Mubarak's last days. Seeking to placate protester demands, the public prosecutor has launched a corruption investigation into four of the millionaire businessman politicians who came to dominate the NDP under the leadership of Mubarak's son, Gamal — former ministers Ahmed Maghrabi, Rashid Mohammed Rashid and Zuheir Garana as well as ex-ruling party figure Ahmed Ezz.
On Saturday, the prosecutor general asked European countries to freeze the assets of the four. He also announced a travel ban on former prime minister Ahmed Nazif, former interior minister Habib el-Adly and information minister Anas el-Fiqqi, who told state TV on Saturday that he has now resigned his post.
But much of the regime is in place — too entrenched to call "former" — and parts of it may resist changes that threaten their position. The security forces, in particular, have hardly been heard from since they were pulled off the streets during the crisis following clashes with protesters and replaced by the army.
Regime figures are certain to play a role in the transition. The question is how much of a role the military will give them and to what degree it will let in other voices.
The protest organizers say they so far have had no direct talks with the military. "There are no channels of communications between us and the army but some public figures can help us," said Harb. He said "prominent figures" may play a mediating role.
The coalition that called for the Tahrir protest camp to be lifted and replaced by weekly rallies is highly influential in the square. But they do not claim to be its leaders and often say they can't defy the will of the "revolution." It is made up of several youth activist groups, including supporters of reform advocate and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei and youth from the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
On Saturday, there was no sign that protesters were heading home from Tahrir, and the tent city set up to accommodate them remained largely in place. If any did leave, they were replaced by crowds streaming in to celebrate. Families with children and revelers filled the square, dancing, singing and chanting, their faces painted in the black-red-and-white colors of the national flag. A rock band with an electric guitar played on a stage, vendors sold popcorn.
One man on the sidewalk had a stand with dozens of wallets that had been taken from pickpockets caught in the square, and people came by to try find their lost property.
At one corner of the square, a memorial to the around 300 people killed in the turmoil was erected, with pictures of some of them on the sidewalk surrounded by velvet ropes. Elsewhere a group of artists lowered a four-meter-tall (13 foot) stab of granite to the ground with a crane, planning to engrave it with the names of the dead as a memorial.
"The day of beautifying Tahrir Square," a giant banner read.
Piles of trash were packed into bags. Young men repainted curbs in the black-and-white pattern used in Cairo, then stood in lines to prevent crowds from marring the wet paint. Burnt-out vehicles used as barricades during the fighting were towed away.
Among many was a powerful optimism that in the days ahead the military, which allowed protests to grow without interfering over the course of the crisis, was now sincere in ensuring democratic change.
"I have full confidence in the army, they are the cleanest institution in the whole country and I know they'll do the right thing," said Mustafa al-Husseini, a 25-year-old electrical engineer who left his work 10 days ago to protest in the square. "The Egyptian army is made up of people like us and it's not their job to get into politics. They'll guide us through a peaceful transition."
AP writers Maggie Michael and Ben Hubbard contributed to this report.
Fri
13
Nov
2015
Are Languages Products of their Environment?
DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article:
Languages Are Products of Their Environments
The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different
environments.
Tue
03
Jun
2014
The Case for Reparations
The Case for Reparations
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 21, 2014
Chapters
- I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
- II. “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
- III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
- IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
- V. The Quiet Plunder
- VI. Making The Second Ghetto
- VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
- VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
- IX. Toward A New Country
- X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
Mon
02
Jun
2014
A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA
PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.
As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.
The New York Times
Sunday Review
By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014
American children of the 19th century had a reputation. Returning British visitors reported on American kids who showed no respect, who swore and fought, who appeared — at age 10 — “calling for liquor at the bar, or puffing a cigar in the streets,” as one wrote. There were really no children in 19th-century America, travelers often claimed, only “small stuck-up caricatures of men and women.”
This was not a “carefree” nation, too rough-hewed to teach proper manners; adults deliberately chose to express new values by raising “go-ahead” boys and girls. The result mixed democracy and mob rule, assertiveness and cruelty, sudden freedom and strict boundaries. Visitors noted how American fathers would brag that their disobedient children were actually “young republicans,” liberated from old hierarchies. Children were still expected to be deferential to elders, but many were trained to embody their nation’s revolutionary virtues. “The theory of the equality” was present at the ballot box, according to one sympathetic Englishman, but “rampant in the nursery.”
Boys, in particular, spent their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture. After age 5 or so they needed little attention from their mothers, but were not big enough to help their fathers work. So until age 10 or 12 they spent much of their time playing or fighting.
The writer William Dean Howells recalled his ordinary, violent Ohio childhood, immersed in his loose gang of pals, rarely catching a “glimpse of life much higher than the middle of a man.” Howells’s peers were “always stoning something,” whether friends, rivals or stray dogs. They left a trail of maimed animals behind them, often hurt in sloppy attempts to domesticate wild pets.
And though we envision innocents playing with a hoop and a stick, many preferred “mumbletypeg” — a game where two players competed to see who could throw a knife closer to his own foot. Stabbing yourself meant a win by default.
Left to their own devices, boys learned an assertive style that shaped their futures. The story of every 19th-century empire builder — Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt — seems to begin with a striving 10-year-old. “Boy culture” offered training for the challenges of American manhood and a reprieve before a life of labor.
But these unsupervised boys also formed gangs that harassed the mentally ill, the handicapped and racial and ethnic minorities. Boys played an outsize role in the anti-Irish pogroms in 1840s Philadelphia, the brutal New York City draft riots targeting African-Americans during the Civil War and attacks on Chinese laborers in Gilded Age California. These children did not invent the bigotry rampant in white America, but their unrestrained upbringing let them enact what their parents mostly muttered.
Their sisters followed a different path. Girls were usually assigned more of their mothers’ tasks. An 8-year-old girl would be expected to help with the wash or other physically demanding tasks, while her brother might simply be too small, too slow or too annoying to drive the plow with his father. But despite their drudgery, 19th-century American girls still found time for tree climbing, bonfire building and waterfall-jumping antics. There were few pretty pink princesses in 19th-century America: Girls were too rowdy and too republican for that.
So how did we get from “democratic sucklings” to helicopter parents? Though many point to a rise of parental worrying after the 1970s, this was an incremental change in a movement that began a hundred years earlier.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, middle-class parents launched a self-conscious project to protect children. Urban professionals began to focus on children’s vulnerabilities. Well-to-do worriers no longer needed to raise tough dairymaids or cunning newsboys; the changing economy demanded careful managers of businesses or households, and restrained company men, capable of navigating big institutions.
Demographics played a role as well: By 1900 American women had half as many children as they did in 1800, and those children were twice as likely to live through infancy as they were in 1850. Ironically, as their children faced fewer dangers, parents worried more about their protection.
Instead of seeing boys and girls as capable, clever, knockabout scamps, many reconceived children as vulnerable, weak and naïve. Reformers introduced child labor laws, divided kids by age in school and monitored their play. Jane Addams particularly worked to fit children into the new industrial order, condemning “this stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play.”
There was good reason to tame the boys and girls of the 19th century, if only for stray cats’ sake. But somewhere between Jane Addams and Nancy Grace, Americans lost track of their larger goal. Earlier parents raised their kids to express values their society trumpeted.
“Precocious” 19th-century troublemakers asserted their parents’ democratic beliefs and fit into an economy that had little use for 8-year-olds but idealized striving, self-made men. Reformers designed their Boy Scouts to meet the demands of the 20th century, teaching organization and rebalancing the relationship between play and work. Both movements agreed, in their didactic ways, that playtime shaped future citizens.
Does the overprotected child articulate values we are proud of in 2014? Nothing is easier than judging other peoples’ parenting, but there is a side of contemporary American culture — fearful, litigious, controlling — that we do not brag about but that we reveal in our child rearing, and that runs contrary to our self-image as an open, optimistic nation. Maybe this is why sheltering parents come in for so much easy criticism: A visit to the playground exposes traits we would rather not recognize.
There is, however, a saving grace that parents will notice this summer. Kids are harder to guide and shape, as William Dean Howells put it, “than grown people are apt to think.” It is as true today as it was two centuries ago: “Everywhere and always the world of boys is outside of the laws that govern grown-up communities.” Somehow, they’ll manage to go their own way.
________________________________
A National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society who is writing a book on the role of young people in 19th-century American democracy.
Mon
21
Apr
2014
Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change
From The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD
APRIL 19, 2014
HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.
In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.
But President Xi Jinping has targeted Mr. Zhou in an extraordinary corruption inquiry, a first for a Chinese party leader of Mr. Zhou’s rank, and put his family’s extensive business interests in the cross hairs.
Even by the cutthroat standards of Chinese politics, it is a bold maneuver. The finances of the families of senior leaders are among the deepest and most politically delicate secrets in China. The party has for years followed a tacit rule that relatives of the elite could prosper from the country’s economic opening, which rewarded loyalty and helped avert rifts in the leadership.
Zhou Family Ties
Fri
13
Nov
2015
Are Languages Products of their Environment?
DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article:
Languages Are Products of Their Environments
The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different
environments.
Tue
03
Jun
2014
The Case for Reparations
The Case for Reparations
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 21, 2014
Chapters
- I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
- II. “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
- III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
- IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
- V. The Quiet Plunder
- VI. Making The Second Ghetto
- VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
- VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
- IX. Toward A New Country
- X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
Mon
02
Jun
2014
A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA
PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.
As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.
The New York Times
Sunday Review
By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014
Mon
21
Apr
2014
Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change
From The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD
APRIL 19, 2014
HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.
In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.
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