Jan. 30-31 updates

TUNISIA
• International media and the community of nations, in their hustle to the next crisis in Cairo, are missing out on critical moments of Tunisia's transition. The general feeling our friends convey is that the security situation is improving, but the political situation is stagnating, refusing to move in one way or the other. If things go badly in Tunisia, we'll look back on last week and this week as the time when it all went wrong, as the West neglected Tunisia while enthralled by Egyptian events.
• Our friends recommend this article from Le Monde. Google translate it; it's not bad.
• Our friends have complained that freedom of the press is, shall we say, underdeveloped at this point, no matter what the official line is from the government. NYT shooter was injured today by the cops.
• Rachid Ghannouchi came back yesterday. Thousands of adoring fans met him at Tunis-Carthage Intl Airport. But there's a lot more happening behind the scenes, according to our friends. Phrases like 'civil war' are being bandied about. People who bore the brunt of the conflict feel very much as if the revolution and movement toward the future is being hijacked by the Islamist Ennadha party. Our friends represent a well-educated, urbane section of Tunisian society - the people who saw through Ben Ali, and seem right now to be seeing through Ghannouchi.
• Major skirmishes in downtown Tunis along Ave HB today. Plenty of video on FB and YouTube if you care to watch.
• Lawlessness continues on the frontier. The city of which they speak here is the one we commonly spell Kasserine.
• Damn, my assets are FREEZING! Osterreich is latest to lock down Ben Ali funds.
• UNHR meeting with Cabinet this weekend.

EGYPT
• A million man march is planned for tomorrow. Unlike the eponymous event in the United States, this one may actually attract a million humans. Who are angry at one particular human.
• When Israel says they 'fear' something, look out. A destabilized Egypt isn't exactly an existential threat to Israel, but it makes a lot of things politically more difficult if Gaza essentially becomes open.
• The Egyptian Army is playing this really coooool. They haven't lost either Mubarak's, or the public's, confidence. It becomes increasingly interesting with each passing day to see how they play their hand.
• It sounds more and more as if AMB Wisner is on an ultimatum mission; tell Mubarak to either open up society, or we're withdrawing aid and support.
• US to citizens: Beat feet. Now.
• How bad are things in Egypt? Even Tunisia says to it's expats, "Dude, you need to get out of THAT mess!"

ELSEWHERE
• Our friends say that Feb. 5 has been declared a "Day of Anger" at the Syrian government, with nationwide protests planned.
• Protests in Northern Sudan claim one already.

Jan. 29 updates

EGYPT
• We're used to seeing history repeat itself. We're used to people not learning lessons from ancient history. But not learning lessons from two weeks ago?! In the fine line Obama is attempting to walk from last night's speech, he's putting himself in a no-win situation. Mubarak isn't going to last forever; at the rate we're going, he may not last until the next Friday prayers. So if you know your guy isn't going to be your guy for long, it's time to (if not cut him loose) at least be publicly supportive of the protestors.
No matter what happens, the other side of this transition is going to be chaotic, frightening, and confusing. If we lend a little support, at least it will mitigate some of the blow-back we're going to get after supporting Mubarak for years and years.
• Curfew? What curfew? Egyptians are holding their curfew in even lower regard than the Tunisians did. In Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, the reports indicate that the soldiers are not only unwilling to fire, they're admitting that the only way this ends is for Mubarak to step down.

TUNISIA
• The General hits the big time! A big rally and concert planned for central Tunis will feature the rapper whose arrest was a turning point in the capital city protests in early January.
• This sort of cracks me up. I desperately hope that Mubarak falls tomorrow, because Rashid el-Ghannouchi has planned his big, melodramatic return to Tunisia for tomorrow. He was counting on the world press covering his triumphant return, and it would be just about right if events got ahead of him, too, as he carpetbags on the people's revolution.
• Tunisia's open for business! That's what the central banking chief says!
• The US is easing its travel advisory for Tunisia.
• Given the Hairdresser's current condition, the Arab Women's League will be transferring its presidency...

JORDAN
• Is Jordan next? One of my students, who lived in Jordan until 2002, claims the family back home say yes. Reports indicate large protests in Amman, and the same food price pressures are eating away at the Jordanian regime.

Jan. 28 updates

EGYPT
* (Update, 1310 ET): You can almost sense where it's going now; the people are in the streets, embracing the military and chanting 'the military and the people are one!' These soldiers won't follow orders; at least, not all of them will. In his desperation, Mubarak is expaning a curfew nationwide, but it probably won't make a difference. The footage coming across is nothing short of breathtaking.

* (Update 1235 ET): Egyptian situation is obviously changing very quickly. What is happening in Egypt's response is very, very different from what happened in Tunisia. We'll see if the results are the same in time. Here are the salient points to consider in the similarities and differences between Ben Ali's response and Mubarak's:
-- Mubarak shut down as much social media as he could in a hurry.And still, the people organized. This either gives lie to the meme that the Tunisian Revolution was a 'Twitter Revolution' (lord, I'm tired of hearing that), or it proves that you can't effectively counteract social media. Time will tell.
-- Egyptian 'police' are going room to room in hotels along the main areas of Cairo and confiscating people's cameras. Ben Ali wouldn't have dreamed of offending the 'guests.' Even if Mubarak retains power, he's just cost his nation the lucrative tourist trade with one clumsy move.
-- Opposition leaders - not bloggers! - are the ones being rounded up as the usual suspects.
-- The military has been deployed to the cities, and so far, they seem to be following orders. This was the critical moment in Tunisia - once Ben Ali lost the military, his reign was over in hours. Can Mubarak keep the military loyal, even to the point of killing their own countrymen?
-- Mubarak is about to give his evening address. We know that he's already sent the family packing to Britain. Is he going to give an inch, and lose the kingdom like Ben Ali tonight? Or is he going to shed the entire veneer of democracy and tell people to buckle up - we're coming for you.

* Massive protests in Cairo today after Friday prayers; Mubarak's men tear gassed and water cannon'ed the demonstrators. Mohamed ElBaradai is leading from the front, and coming across more and more as a genuine hero in this.


TUNISIA
* Kicking Belhassan Trabelsi out of Canada may be no easy task, reports the Globe & Mail.
* Here's the WP's obligatory "Ben Ali's family lived extravagantly!" story. You're about two weeks late to the party on this one, Post.
* A little more detail today from Reuters on the government reshuffle. It now appears the UGTT will NOT accept this government composition. One has to wonder: Does the union have the interests of Tunisia first, or does the union have the interests of the union first?
* An interesting report from NPR about how the White House is having a hard time figuring out a rational and consistent response to the demonstrations across the Arab world sparked by the Tunisian Revolution. There was a great quote in an NYT column from Mohamed ElBaradai the other day about the slow-footed American response that sheds much light on the entire situation - to paraphrase, the the U.S. hems and haws, the stronger the fundamentalists become, and the weaker the moderates become. As we're starting to see, albeit too slowly, American foreign policy seems to finally be recognizing this, and gradually withdrawing scaffolding from under our old dictator buddies.

Jan. 27 updates

TUNISIA
• Ghannouchi forms another new government. This time, he's the only old RCD hand in the mix - all of the new ministers are people who never held RCD membership. There is considerable disagreement as to whether or not the UGTT is supporting the new government or not, both among international media and among our friends..
• Tucked into the end of this AJE article: UGTT wants a council of 'wise men' to advise the government. So, what ARE Balthazar, Melchior, and Caspar up to these days?
• Score! The Canadian government revokes Belhassan Trabelsi's citizenship. Let's see if Sakhr el-Marti's next.
• Justice Minister announces formal charges again Ben Ali, et. al.
• In the least surprising news ever, Amnesty International says Ben Ali's security forces acted brutally.
• In related news, UNHR's team arrived this week.
• Our people say that disbursements of money are now going out to families of the 'martyrs' of the revolution.

YEMEN
• Of all the Arab nations, Yemen might be the last in which you'd expect to see street protests against the government. And yet... here we go again.

Jan. 26 updates

TUNISIA
* Last night, Tunisia finally got mention on the biggest stage. Near the end of Obama's State of the Union address, he said that the United States "stands with the people of Tunisia, and all people striving for democracy." It was the clearest, and loudest, statement of support thus far from Washington - and on a day where Egyptians took to the streets in one of the largest protests in that nation in years. Boston Globe has a nice eddy on it today.
* The interim government has issued arrest warrants for Ben Ali and certain members of The Family, both in Saudi Arabia, and the Sakhr el-Matri gang in Canada. They're asking Interpol for help in apprehending them.
* AJE: The government is going to announce ANOTHER Cabinet re-shuffle today.
* Government sources say that more than 11,000 prisoners escaped from Tunisian jails in the chaos after Ben Ali's departure.
* Assistant SecState Jeff Feldman was in Tunis this week. US is offering help in recovering assets, and calling on the interim government to respond to the will of the people...
* Globe and Mail has a must-read. They confirm that Belhassen Trabelsi arrived in Montreal last week, meaning that along with Sakhr el-Matri, two of the worst of the Trabelsi gang have pretty much gotten away with it. Most interesting, in the context of the rumor we heard last week that Ben Ali himself may alight for Canada, is the fact that under Canadian refugee law, they could probably all go there, and stay damn near indefinitely as legal issues played themselves out.
* This NYT article talks about how there are still scattered protests on the streets, and still some anger about the composition of the interim government. But what I'm picking up on from my friends is not any sense of injustice in the transitional government, but a deep sense of frustration that life has not returned to even 80% normal. One friend noted that 'there's still nothing to do, no work, no school.' And work and school have changed for a lot of people; one friend's job at a media outlet disappeared because the outlet's director was a Ben Ali crony - verboten in the 'new normal.' Another institution with which we're familiar has sacked people for being too close to the old regime. It seems to this observer that the uncertainty; uncertainty about employment, about government, about the economy, about security is the biggest issue in Tunisie right now. Let's get a side of stability with this main course of freedom.

EGYPT
* Once again, one needs to voice caution in comparing Egypt's situation to Tunisia's. Tunisia is smaller, wealthier, more secular, and better educated. Plus, Tunisia's military was largely apolitical - and Ben Ali actually believed his own hype about the people loving him. Hosni Mubarak's Egypt is a completely different scene - the powerful Muslim Brotherhood waiting in the wings; poverty at a scale unheard of in Tunisia; large, uneducated masses. And Mubarak and his military? Peas in a pod.
Or at least, that's the way it looks from the outside. What's interesting for our discussion are the similarities between the Egyptian situation right now and the developments that led to Ben Ali's ouster. Consider, if you will, the following...
* Does this sound familiar? Mubarak's son beat feet for Britain last night. Kind of like Sakhr el-Matri's unexpected trip to Canada four days before Ben Ali fell in Tunisia?
* Does this sound familiar? Egyptian markets plummeting because of the unrest.
* Egyptian authorities seem to have learned at least one thing from Tunisia: Pull the plug on Twitter and Facebook, and quickly.

Jan. 25 updates... the revolution spreads?

THE NEIGHBORHOOD'S GETTING INTERESTING
* The top news from the Maghreb today is the mass rioting in Egypt. Obviously, the Egyptians have been emboldened by the events in Tunisia - but again, let's not get carried away and call it the Twitter Revolution or any such nonsense. Mubarak - unlike Ben Ali - has dealt with this sort of thing before. His regime has always been a lot more stable than other such dictatorships. This will be a dangerous time - misplay even one hand, and you could find yourself in Jeddah (if it happens, we know a good Hairdresser!).
* Self-immolations continue in Algeria at an alarming rate; alarming in many ways. The Tunisians took to the streets quickly after the much smaller rash of desperate suicides. In Algeria, the public seems to just be hanging back... despite the fact that the overall standard of living was far, far lower than Tunisia.
* In the broader Arab world, there's a major story that has been developing over the past week from al-Jazeera. They got ahold of documents from inside the peace process, which they've termed the Palestine Papers. It's one hell of a look inside the negotiations, in which the Palestinians offered everything but the kitchen sink, and Israel refused to budge. You've also got the collapse of the formerly-promising government in Lebanon. I still think people are overreaching when they say that Tunisia was the beginning of a wave of democracy throughout the Arab states. But it sure does seem like there's a lot happening, all at once, and it's hard to imagine all of it happening absent the successful (so far) Tunisian revolution.

MEANWHILE, BACK ON THE RANCH...
* Gen. Rachid Ammar will go down in history in one of two ways: He will either be the next dictator, or he will be the George Washington of Tunisia - the old soldier who understood liberty, and laid down his career to protect it... or the other thing. Wouldn't it be something - wouldn't it be something! - if it was a general who was the guy who established the first homegrown democracy in the Arab world?!

Jan. 23 updates

• The country has come to the city, and not necessarily in a good way. A caravan from Sidi Bou Zid governorate has arrived in Tunis to protest; overwhelming Ghannouchi's offices and lending to a renewed climate of fear.
• France24 has a typically great piece - this about the online humor around the revolution.
• Good to see you cousin, when are you leaving?: Egyptian press report that negotiations are underway to move the Ben Alis out of Saudi Arabia, and into Egypt. Good God, if Hosni thinks he has problems NOW...
• Rachid Ghannouchi of the Islamist 'Ennadha' Party has left London, and is chillin' in the Gulf States before his expected 'big return' to Tunis.
• A few more of The Family have escaped to Canada, where they apparently have resident status.
• From one of our friends' Facebooks - the funniest YouTube you'll ever see on the Flight of the Conquereds.
• Marches are planned for Monday morning by unionists in Tunis; Gabes; Jendouba, and more.
• One radio station, and the private Hannibal network went off the air for a while, its director charged with treason. Seems ominous.