Friday, March 25, 2011

So what happened to the Egyptian revolution?

1 comment:

John Powers said...

Lawrence Lessig is interested in "non-obvious" corruption and not so much interested in outright law breaking. The trouble with thinking that way is thinking they are utterly different and can be easily sorted out. I think the sorting is almost never easy. Thug life: Pro-Mubarak bullies break their silence provides a glimpse of why it's so hard to do. One "thug" was extorted by threat of imprisonment on drug charges if he didn't sell drugs. The "drug gang" threatening him were the police selling confiscated drugs.

The police were pro-Mubarak for all sorts of reasons including protecting their rackets.

One "thug' says: “We were told to strike hard and fast, that the protesters were a bunch of American University pansies who’d run away at the first gunshot.” It turned out that the protesters stood their ground. And it's that courage and insight into what they're up against that gives me some hope something good can emerge in Egyptian politics. It's never easy.