State of Emergency Anyone?

by Oly Mike

Egypt has lived in a government-declared state of emergency for 30 years. That state of emergency allowed for the government to function in a wildly repressive fashion. Egyptian civil rights were routinely discounted. Opposition parties were shut out of elections. Mohammed ElBaradei wrote about this in a December 2010 editorial in the Washington Post that predated the recent uprising.

The military appears to be in charge in Egypt at this moment and changes are happening. At least some demands of the uprising are being met. Parliament has been dissolved, presumably a precursor to the most open election that Egypt will have seen in decades. The NYT reporst that Swiss banks have started the process of searching for and freezing bank accounts of the Mubarak variety. The freeze process in anticipation of a review of whether the Mubarak fortune actually belongs to the Egyptian people. The NYT article discounts the high estimates of the Mubarak family holdings ($70 billion, which I repeated here) and thinks that the family holdings may be in the measly 2 or 3 billion dollar range. I guess any of could amass a couple of billion dollars with a little luck in our 401ks if we are energetic about our investment strategies, right?

Ali Abunimah has a piece up on the most serious threat to Egyptian democracy on Electronic Intifada. He says the most serious threat is the US. I think he is correct about that.

This is all very interesting, but what does it really mean to joe the plumber here in the USA?

Well, we have been in state(s) of emergency of numerous varieties for a long time. You connect the dots....