Inequality, Ideological Fallacy, and Capitalist Crisis

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Lately I’ve been doing a lot of my favorite activity: sitting on my couch and watching documentaries on Netflix. One of the recent suggestions that came up was the documentary produced by former US Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, called “Inequality for All.” In this film, Reich presents a compelling case that economic inequality has been the cause of two major economic crises in American history, the Great Depression of the early 1930s and the Great Recession which began in 2008 and which many in the US are still living through.

While Reich is speaking with the best of intentions, I believe his argument suffers from one of the most common logical fallacies: confusing cause and effect. This fallacy is especially pernicious because it systematically keeps us from asking important questions about how our economy is organized. Continue reading →

Gender Trouble in Egyptian satire

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The latest episode of the program “the program” from noted Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef is creating quite a stir in Egypt this week. Airing on Thursday night, the episode was the first of season three, which begins after a nearly four-month long break  coinciding with the popular coup d’etat/revolution that replaced former Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi this past summer.

Since Mursi’s fall, popular attention has gravitated to the head of the army, Abd al-Fatah al-Sisi, as the man responsible for executing the people’s will. “Al-Sisi mania” has swept through Egypt and provided a cover for the grim reality of the killing of hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters by the army this past summer.

Many of the civil society groups that have sprung up supporting the army’s violent dispersal of the protests–including the group “al-Sisi for President” and local chapters of the 6th of April movement–have now submitted complaints to the attorney general accusing Youssef of “insulting the army and its leaders.” Ironically, these are the same charges which Mursi used as a pretext to throw Youssef in jail temporarily last April, and which the current regime has officially decreed to be an illegitimate basis for censorship.

So how do we explain the backlash? Returning to the episode itself can help to highlight its subversive potential. Continue reading →

Translation: Egypt’s Interim Constitutional Declaration

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The general outlines of the next phase of Egypt’s transition process–the second transition process, after the second revolution–were announced by interim President Adly Mansour this week. The rushed process and bare-bones nature of the announcement produced a smaller document from past Egyptian constitutions, which I have translated in full at the bottom of this post. Following the basic thesis of a previous post I wrote on the history of Egypt’s constitutional transition, I believe we can read this document as evidence of the institutional competition taking place in the realm of statist politics during Egypt’s revolution. Continue reading →

Mursi’s Rebellion: A New Kind of Revolution?

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In 1543, Copernicus wrote his treatise on the movement of planets around the sun De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of Celestial Bodies). Today, we call his monumental intervention a “scientific revolution,” but in the 16th century, the term “revolution” in English was reserved for technicians in the fields of astronomy or Euclidean geometry. It was not until the events in English history that have come to be known as the “Glorious Revolution” that the term was regularly applied to political change. Continue reading →

Mursi’s Rebellion: How Did We Get Here?

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Tens of thousands have taken to the streets in Egypt the past two nights, in anticipation of today’s call for nationwide protests against the Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Muhammad Morsi. While supporters of Mursi have staged their own counter protests in Raba’a al-‘Adawiyya Square, the opposition has occupied Tahrir Square, the largest and most central public space in Egypt. The opposition is loosely-organized by a grassroots campaign that claims to have collected over 22 million signatures calling for Morsi’s impeachment: Tamarod or “Rebellion.” Continue reading →

Translation: Khaled Fahmy offers 32 reasons to vote “NO” on the proposed constitution

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I wanted to follow up my last post, a translation of the preamble of the proposed Egyptian constitution, with another translation. This time the source text is a response by the Chair of the History Department at the American University in Cairo, Khaled Fahmy, to the proposed constitution on his facebook. Fahmy argues that the constitution, which was drafted by a Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi-dominated body, proposes sweeping changes to Egyptian governance that open up space for abuse and corruption. I think this document provides the most in-depth account of secular/liberal grievances against the constitution that I have yet seen, so I wanted to share it with the English speakers among us. Continue reading →

Translation: Preamble of the proposed Egyptian constitution

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Thousands of Egyptians have again taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest. This time, the offense stems from President Morsi’s efforts to ram through the text of a constitution that would drastically change the rule of law in Egypt. Morsi announced last Saturday, December 1st, that a referendum will be held on December 15th–a straight up or down vote on the constitution. Egyptians living abroad were supposed to begin voting today, but reports have surfaced that that process has been delayed. Continue reading →

The Muslim Brotherhood Takes to the Streets (pt. 2)

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This post is the second in a two-part series attempting to explain the massive crowds we see in Tahrir Square today in Egypt. In part one I tried to lay out the political-legal wrangling that has led to the dissolution of Parliament, the seizure of certain aspects of executive authority by the military, and the delay of the announcement of the winner of Egypt’s Presidential elections held last week. Continue reading →

The Muslim Brotherhood Takes to the Streets (pt. 1)

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In massive demonstrations of roughly 100,000 over each of the past three nights, Egyptians took to the streets. Demonstrations have become a regular feature of political life since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, but most of them these days number around 1-2,000. When numbers like this take to the streets, emotionally-loaded developments are usually a key cause.

So what caused this latest round of demonstrations? In the next two posts, I will try to answer this question by looking at two sides of the story. In Part One (today), I will try to summarize the political-legal wrangling taking place between Parliament, Army, Judiciary, and the (as of yet unnamed) President. In Part Two (tomorrow) we will look at the coalition-building taking place between the Muslim Brotherhood, young liberals, and supporters of a more radical fundamentalist interpretation of Islam in politics. Both sides together account for the story of these stunning developments. Continue reading →

On the History of Egypt’s Constitutional Transition

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The big news coming out of Egypt today is that secular liberals have walked out of  the latest meeting of the Constituent Assembly (CA). This comes after a similar boycott of the last meeting of the CA in March 2012, and thus cast serious doubt on the ability of the Egyptian parliament as it is currently configured to write a new constitution. Continue reading →