The hated dictator fires everyone but himself and promises to appoint new people. I don't see that as real progress.
In other news America knew this was going to happen for years. Egypt says that the US govt was backing the protests but the document linked to just makes it seem like US officials met with one of the leaders.
The New York times had an article accusing Al Jazeera of deliberately fermenting this series of riots.
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i wonder if the egyptian people will accept that though... tunisia got their guy to run away to mecca or something like that. ball is in your court, egypt.
On a lighter note, things seem to be going decently well, Mumbarak isn't going to step down willingly obviously but I think from what's been seen in Tunisia he won't last very long.
__________________ "Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian."
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Last edited by Liberator on Jan 29th, 2011 at 05:08 PM
This is not good. This is Iran, 32 years later. Muslim extremeists will take control of Egypt (and thus the Suez Canal) and possibly Jordan, and even Saudi Arabia. Oil will shoot to $250 a barrell. Any peace agreement that Egypt had signed with Israel will be moot. This could destablize the already fragile global economy and who knows, spark a major war.
This isn't good.
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Actually it's different. The Shah, with the backing of the US wiped out all liberal, socialist, and communist opposition to his rule leaving only the extreme right wing to take power. In Egypt, it's kind of the opposite with certain right wing extremists also having tacit government support. This is why in the mix of all this rioting and confusion, the coptic christians are taking part while the Muslim Brotherhood makes generic statements and doesn't know what to do. Israel is just kind of standing back and commenting on the fact that the borders are all peaceful and Hamas is afraid to get involved. Most of dictators and terrorist groups are coming out in favor of Mubarak which isn't helping their cause at all and if any country is next, it's probably Iran. Hell, if the people weren't afraid of a US or Israeli attack, they could have had Ahmedinejad and the Mullahs hanging from the gallows 5 years ago. It seems like the destiny of many of these presidents is the same as Ceausescu and Mussolini. I'm more worried that if the democrats don't grow a spine and/or if the republicans get their way, this is going to be happening in New York and Washington with deputized minutemen and tea partiers working crowd control with fully automatic weapons.
Also, Saudi Arabia is already controlled by extremists and controls by proxy nearly all Sunni extremists on the planet to some degree. If protests broke out and the royal family ended up being wiped out, Al Qaida would solve the middle east's unemployment problems because they would need a lot of grant writers and financial planners.
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Last edited by Darth Jello on Jan 30th, 2011 at 12:17 PM
Very informative! Watched the ongoings on the news with interest but without an awful lot of background knowlegde, thanks for a bigger picture.
With the defiance and rioting spreading this fast (and bringing down 2 governments already), the suppressed 'fertility' for great public unrest in many other nations and the currect election of the dictatorial president of Equatorial Guinea as chairman of the African Union combined, can we expect a large scale revolution that might have a global impact?
These 'low profile uprisings', if I had to translate your perspective, still carry notable weight. Those people are standing up in protest while knowingly risking their lives. Can you imagine what it takes to go there and that it's real people we're talking about?
Although China has indeed made itself almost immune to such public rebellion, indirectly by international support I'm afraid, you cannot deny the possibility that this trend will spread over to more countries with questionable ethics and eventually hit nations among these that you might deem less 'flimsy'.
For someone who complains so much about the establishment, i'd think you'd find it exciting to see things shaken up. Hey if gas goes up too high, maybe people will start paying attention to the bad foreign policy that led to these problems.
I am looking at that part of the world's track record. The only majority muslim country on earth to ever have anything resembling democracy is Turkey and there are the rumblings of radical Islam there as well. I think Egypt is in real danger of becoming an Islamic theocracy and that should scare the hell out of everyone. As bad as Egypt's current regime is it would be better for both the world, and the people of Egypt, for it to stay in power than for a bunch of fire breathing Imans or Mullahs to come to power.
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Jan 29th, 2011 01:01 AM
