Coup In Positioning Stage in Egypt

Armored vehicles and military troop transports (these latter really just trucks painted sand-brown) are moving around the city. Reporters keep saying "tanks" but I think they mean armored vehicles. Because reporters are dumb.

These vehicles are especially being deployed around the places where pro-Mursi forces are rallying.

The head of the Egyptian military, General al Sisi (incidentally, the worst general's name of all time), is delaying their own statement -- which will likely simply proclaim that Mursi is no longer in power -- in order to avoid violence, they say. Which I take to mean they want to get their armored vehicles and soldiers into place in a show of force designed to discourage a counter-coup.

8 pm Egypt time would be 2 pm Eastern time.

Al Jazeera has live reports.

There are reports that Mursi is under house arrest, but that was denied. It's my guess that report was a misreporting of the true story, that airport officials say a travel ban has been issued for Mursi, forbidding him from getting on a plane.

I would imagine the point of this is to let him know that if there is violence, he will not be able to flee the country to escape retribution for it.

The military has moved some of its people into Egyptian media buildings.

Before the deadline expired at 5 p.m. local time (11 a.m. ET), employees at Egypt's state TV station said military officers were present in the newsroom monitoring its output, but not interfering with their work.

The military also beefed up the presence of troops inside the building, the employees told the Associated Press, though they were not visible outside. Even before the crisis, a small army contingent usually guards the state TV headquarters.

Tweets from Egypt (which seem legit, but YMMV) say that it has been announced that Mursi is no longer "part of the decision making process" at Egypt's state newspaper Al Ahram and at its state television channel. A more direct way to say this is that the military has taken over the state media.

So then here's Al Ahram's prognostication:

On Al Jazeera, there are pictures of celebrating citizens standing on top of troop transports, next to soldiers armed with machine guns, in case there was any question that the protesters and military were now part of the same force.

Meanwhile, Egyptian men continue surrounding women in Tahrir Square and raping them or sexually assaulting them in wolfpack style.

posted by Ace at 01:18 PM

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