On Monday, I went to Alexandria for a rally by presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh, and wrote this piece about it for The Daily Beast. I noted that:

Egyptians are excited, but there is also great confusion and anxiety. The upcoming elections are the final, fraught act of a muddled transition process that still threatens to unravel.

Now there are 12 dead in clashes between protesters and "thugs" in Abbaseya, near the Ministry of Defense; most presidential candidates have put their campaigns on hold; and two have visited the scene.

The conflict -- which escalated today -- started out as a sit-in by supporters of disqualified candidate Hazem Salah Abu Ismail; the protest was attacked by the usual difficult-to-define groups of "concerned citizens" (supported by army and police and incited by state media) and was then joined by revolutionary youth out of solidarity. 

Supporters take photos in front of Abul Fotouh's bus. Will they make it to the polls? (courtesy Tara Todras-Whitehill)

It's hard to overstate how fraught and chaotic this transitions process has become. Now we are seeing the same kind of destabilizing violence (warning: this is graphic) we witnessed ahead of the parliamentary elections last fall. 

Egypt's presidential election will be on May 23rd and already things are out of control. Not only did deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood Khairat El Shater suddenly enter the race this week -- reversing a pledge on the group's part that they wouldn't field a member, creating a fair amount of internal disagreement and showing his hand as the group's real boss...

But creepy Mubarak spy-master Omar Suleiman has also apparently just announced he will join the race! Suleiman was appointed Mubarak's vice-president and heir apparent during the uprising and you can see him here, sulkily announcing his boss' (and his own) resignation. Suleiman as Egypt's next president would really be ten times worse than a slap in the face to the revolution (it'd be more like a foot endlessly stomping on the face of the revolution...) That said, I'm surprised by news stories calling him a "front-runner." in a recent Al Ahram poll, he had 10% of the vote. While he can count on the police and intelligence communities, reactionaries and morons in search of "an iron fist," I think a majority of the country would never vote for him. They'd have to rig it to get him in. 

Finallly, I was at a rally in Tahrir Square this afternoon by supporters and sympathizers of presidential hopeful Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, who is embroiled in a weird scandal over whether his mother might have become a US citizen in the last years of her life (thus barring him from running according to a recently expanded xenophobic law). Abu Ismail is a charismatic Salafist with the usual ultra-conservative social and religious views, a vague populist platform and an anti-authoritarian streak (he supported the revolution from the start and has been very critical of the military leadership).

Abu Ismail likes to score points by criticizing the West, so there's been quite a bit of schadenfreude in liberal circles over his embarrassing American connections. Then again, I met some at the rally who said they came out because they think Abu Ismail's disqualification would be just the first step in rigging the election. Not that any of this has seemingly led the public in Egypt to question the stupid law banning presidential candidates' parents and grandparents from holding foreign nationalities, or the way any foreign connection continues to be used as a political smear. In fact, Abu Ismail's supporters believe he is being set up by the SCAF, the Americans and Israel, of course. It's true that he is probably all three's least favourite candidate. 

Abu Ismail supporters were sporting all sorts of pins, posters, T-shirts etc. But the weirdest thing had to be the very popular Abu Ismail masks. 

Automatically posted links for January 23rd through January 24th:

• Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi : "La Mauritanie n'est pas un pays de prédilection pour les terroristes" - Afrique - Le Monde interview with Mauritanian president


• Egypt holds scores from Brotherhood over Gaza protests - Backlash against MB for organizing first major protests since 2006


• Gazans flood through Egypt border - Things are not looking good, especially as Israelis have cut fuel supplies again


• YouTube - TPMtv: War of Attrition - Excerpts from Democratic debate - some good jousting there


• The worst market crisis in 60 years - George Soros in the FT on the current financial crisis

Automatically posted links for November 27-28th:

• Critical writer jailed in Tunisia - On Monday, police in Sfax, Tunisia's second largest city, detained Slim Boukhdhir, a well-known blogger and contributor to the London-based Al-Quds Al Arabi.
• 'Aqoul: Hirsi Ali: Ideological Chameleon - Holy CRAP! Hirsi Ali's rightward shift
• tabsir.net » Al Qaeda?s generational split - Yemeni tactics for splitting jihadist groups
• Talking Points | National Security Network - Website of reality-based security types
• Le Monde.fr : Une vidéo-amateur contredit la version de la police sur l'accident de Villiers-le-Bel - Amateur video indicates initial shock of police car against motorbike not very violent, car was damaged with metal bars afterwards and police is lying about it
• WHO'S WHO OF PREZ CAMPAIGN SECURITY ADVISERS - New list of security / FP advisors to US presidential candidates, surprisingly does not include the more well-known rabid neocons in Rudy's list
• Hillary Clinton's advisers too gung-ho on Iraq war, critics say - Is Hillary Clinton the hawk masquerading as the dove?
• 'Not very good' Saddam spy gets 4 years - Yahoo! News - More examples of the terrible threat to the US that Saddam represented. Hmm, let me think, what other Middle Eastern country successfully infiltrated spies in critical national security institutions?
• Police say Paris rioters are armed as clashes escalate - Officials in Paris last night warned that rioters in the suburb of Villiers-le-Bel were armed with hunting rifles and air rifles as clashes with police continued to escalate.
• Boom fuels new Saudi spending spree | Business | The Guardian - Annual revenues of $165bn are funding six new cities to create jobs - but can it last?
• Cairo International Film Festival - Home Page - Schedules, events, etc. (apparently Morocco is focus of festival)
• In Annapolis, Conflict by Other Means by Robert Blecher and Mouin Rabbani - "As for the Annapolis meeting itself, it is being greeted with indifference, with few believing it will lead to either meaningful change in their daily lives or substantive progress toward the end of an Israeli occupation now in its fifth decade."