Egypt (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Black Hole or Another Day of Revolution

So there is a 13-hour curfew imposed in Egypt, right? What that means is that people should remain at home, there shouldn't be any gatherings and police should be in-charge of the street. Instead, the police are missing and people are swarming through the capital Cairo. The situation is made worse by opportunistic looters. Several people in Egypt are reporting that shopkeepers are gathering relatives and friends to protect their businesses from looters in isolated areas of the city.

Does that make sense?

0307 GMT: And now the mother of all disclosures?

The Daily Telegraph quotes a Wikileaks diplomatic dispatch with the following story:

The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.

On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011.

Read the full story on the Daily Telegraph here.

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Egypt: Politics, Land Sales, and Corruption (Iskander)

Membership in the ruling National Democratic Party brings business benefits and virtual immunity from punishment. The NDP has allowed this cronyism to prevail among some of Egypt’s top business figures, as the government focuses on implementing its privatisation agenda at any cost. While investigations, trials, and even convictions are allowed to go ahead to give the appearance of action by the state, these rarely achieve permanent results. This indicates why, despite the court issuing its “final” ruling in the case of the sale of land to TMG, the company announced on Wednesday that it will appeal the decision again.

Yet, if the NDP has been able to absorb these corruption scandals so far, its ability to do so is becoming impeded by uncertainties over the potential transition of power from President Mubarak to his son Gamal and the rising level of general discontent on the Egyptian street. Could the Mustafa case be the case that sets a new direction in Egyptian law and politics?

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